The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

I heard about this movie when it was released in 2005, but I'd never seen it anywhere here, and really had forgotten about it. Until recently when I saw a blog post about a new bird movie The Central Park Effect. I couldn't find it in Australia of course. But I remembered The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill and searched that out. It wasn't easy. My library didn't have it. I eventually found it at JBHifi. Except I didn't notice the fine print stating that they weren't sure that they had it either. Thankfully they did and it didn't take all that long to drop into my mail box.

Recently we watched it for my pick for our weekly family movie and pizza night. A Friday night institution at our house. We take it in turns to pick a movie for all of us to watch. We've been doing it for years, and have watched lots of great movies, and a few duds. Tonight it was my turn. So I picked a film about birds, much to the boy's despair.

It's a rather fascinating film about birds, it must be said. Except wow, it's much more than just a film about birds.

Mark Bittner was single man living in rather difficult circumstances in Telegraph Hill in San Francisco in the 1990s. He wasn't working, and didn't have much money, but he had time. One day he noticed a small group of exotic parrots, these parrots came to be a big part of his life. Much bigger than he could have ever imagined. Those parrots changed his life.

A beautiful, moving true tale of birds, yes. But so much more. It's exceptionally sad at times. I highly recommend it.

The Adventures of Tintin 3D

I was so pleasantly surprised by this movie. The reviews I'd seen had been lukewarm at best really, and the gushings of Richard Wilkins have never swayed me, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I hadn't been a great Tintin fan as a child, and so wasn't familiar with the stories. I was hoping to catch up with the three stories that were the basis for the movie- The Crab with the Golden Claws (1941), The Secret of the Unicron (1943) and Red Rackham's Treasure (1944). But the Chrismtas period got away from me, and there was only one opportunity to go see the movie as a family outing so I went before reading the books.

And it was fun. Much more funny than I expected. Much of the humour comes from Andy Serkis's wonderful Captain Haddock. A hard drinking Scottish sea captain is always going to provide some excellent opportunities for humour. Certainly much is made of his drinking, and the movie actually has quite a strong anti-drunkenness message.

Tintin is of course a famous boy reporter, who rather unwittingly becomes involved in a mystery when he  buys a model of a ship at the town flea market. The story is action packed and I think the 3D effects are the least annoying of any 3D movie that I've seen so far. They didn't seem tacked on for the sake of it, even though I guess at times they were.

It is a movie that appeals to all ages too, my 11 year old son loved it, and my mother enjoyed it as her first experience of a 3D movie. Actually, my son and I both want to see it again.

After seeing the movie I did get a chance to read the books. All were so much better and more refined and developed than Tintin in the Land of the Soviets that I read recently.

The Crab with the Golden Claws has opium trafficking as a central plot which was skipped in the movie version. Opium trafficking not being too kid-movie friendly I guess. I do love Captain Haddock's strings of inventive profanities. Swine! Jellyfish! Tramps! Trogolodytes! Toffee-noses!

Some elements of the three stories are reproduced exactly in the movie, other parts changed, others omitted completely. Red Rackham's Treasure introduces the eccentric, stone deaf inventor Professor Calculus who is left out of the movie. Still it's fun to meet Tintin properly after all these years, and I hope to read some more Tintin titles.