When I was growing up, I used to read the much-loved Tintin comic books – I remember having all of them. I used to love reading all about his action-packed adventures. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that the premiere of the new three-dimensional film was taking place in Leicester Square last Monday. For those who don’t know, Tintin is a well-known character created 80 years ago by the Belgian artist Herge. The series is one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century and centres around a young reporter named Tintin, along with his beloved dog Snowy. He’s a strange-looking, round-headed boy with a blond quiff (hairstyle). They go on many action-packed adventures and are joined by other characters, including the short-tempered Captain Haddock, the highly-intelligent but hearing-impaired Professor Calculus, and two incompetent detectives, Thompson and Thompson. When I first heard that they were making a big budget movie adaptation, I didn’t really know how they would do it. However, as soon as I heard that Steven Spielberg would be directing and Peter Jackson producing, I knew it would be good. But is it? It opens today but there is a lot of doubt about how good and how successful this will be. For one thing, it’s all computerised and in 3D, so it will be semi-realistic. Usually, audiences prefer a film with real actors, with CGI only being used for certain scenes (like Transformers), or a film totally computer-generated (such as Toy Story). This will be somewhere in the middle. Secondly, the character isn’t as popular in America, which is half of the film’s targeted audience. So financially it may not do so well. Additionally, Americans are more familiar with their own world-famous heroes, like Superman or Spiderman. Personally, I think this is a very good way of presenting the comic book. The characters are uniquely drawn and it would be quite difficult to translate that onto film. Or if it was a live-action film, fans might not have accepted or connected with them: choosing the right cast is very difficult in these situations, when fans are so emotionally attached to the characters. The technology is also available to do this kind of 3D, even though it was probably very time-consuming. In any case, I am looking forward to watching this and I’m sure that it will be a ground-breaking success!
Compound Adjectives
Compound adjectives are adjectives that are made up of two or more words usually with hyphens (-) between them. Compound adjectives can be formed in a variety of ways such as:
Adjective / Adverb + past participle / noun + ed:
Much-loved Well-known Uniquely drawn Round-headed Emotionally attached
Noun / Adjective + verb-ing:
Strange-looking Ground-breaking Time-consuming
Noun + past participle / noun + ed:
Computer-generated Action-packed Hearing-impaired
Other
Highly-intelligent World-famous
