The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011), directed by Steven Spielberg
Spielberg went soul-searching and pondered on the meaning of action-adventure cinema as far back as 1989. Then Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade posed the question: why is the hero so driven to his endless escapades, what makes him tick and why should the audience have faith? The answer was that in screaming popular culture, it’s all a blur until you find something personally important to you: context, an angle you care about. In that case, it was Indiana’s father who defined the personality and very existence of our hero. No wonder the actor is also a symbol of the origin of the series, the Bond films. This motivation for packing action was redefined again in 2002 with Minority Report, when the image of the lost child unlocked the emotional resonance of the story after the breakneck Sci-Fi action intro. (more…)
November 4, 2011 1
Tokyo is so vast that one might hesitate before setting out to explore it on foot. Yet the city is surprisingly easy to navigate, thanks to its dense metro network and the lifesaving English signage. If you choose the right route, you can see a large part of the center — including some of the most famous sights — in about ten hours of walking. Endurance is essential, but the experience is guaranteed to be rewarding.
Few people know that Seoul is a wonderful city, because for most tourists it hardly seems as captivating as a European capital with its grand museums and buildings from different eras. The Korean metropolis has everything, but it’s not something you can experience in a single day. The charm of South Korea’s capital reveals itself simply by being there — observing the style and beauty of its everyday scenes.
