Tintin, a young journalist, and his dog Snowy, are browsing in an outdoor market in a European town. Tintin buys a model of a three-masted sailing ship, the Unicorn, for a good price, but is then immediately accosted by the sinister Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine, and the mysterious figure of Barnaby, who both try to buy the model from Tintin, without success. Tintin takes the ship home, but it is broken during a fight between Snowy and a neighbour’s cat. As it breaks, a parchment scroll slips out of the ship’s mast. Snowy spots it but is unable to alert Tintin. Meanwhile, incompetent detectives Thomson and Thompson are on the trail of a pickpocket, Aristides Silk. Tintin visits Sakharine in Marlinspike Hall, where he learns that there are at least two model ships.

Later, Tintin is shot at, then abducted by accomplices of Sakharine, and imprisoned on the SS Karaboudjan. On board, Tintin escapes and meets the ship’s nominal captain, Haddock. Haddock has been supplied with whisky by first mate Allan, who is working for Sakharine, and the captain is permanently drunk, and doesn’t know what’s happening on board his ship. Tintin and Haddock (and Snowy) eventually escape from the Karaboudjan in a lifeboat. Sakharine sends a seaplane to find them, but Tintin is able to capture the plane, and fly towards the (fictitious) Moroccan port of Bagghar, but they crash in the desert.

Dehydrated in the heat, and suffering from a sudden lack of alcohol, Haddock hallucinates, and starts to remember stories about his ancestor, Sir Francis Haddock(e), who was captain of the Unicorn during the 17th century. Sir Francis’ treasure-laden ship was attacked by a pirate ship, led by the masked Red Rackham, and, after a fierce battle and eventual surrender, Sir Francis chose to sink the Unicorn, and most of the treasure, rather than allow it to fall into Rackham’s hands. It transpires that there were three models of the Unicorn, each containing a scroll. Together, the scrolls will reveal the location of the sunken Unicorn, and its treasure.

In Bagghar, Tintin and the Captain find out that the third model ship is in the possession of the wealthy Omar Ben Salaad, but it is encased in a bullet-proof glass display case. Sakharine’s plan is to stage a concert involving famous diva Bianca Castafiore, the “Milanese nightingale”, whose penetrating singing voice will be able to shatter the glass case, allowing Sakharine’s trained hawk to fly down and steal the third scroll. After a chase down to the harbour, pursued by Tintin and Haddock, Sakharine finally escapes with all three scrolls. Tintin chases him back to Europe and arranges a police reception for him on the dockside. Haddock and Sakharine, who is revealed to be the descendant of Red Rackham, replay their ancestors’ swashbuckling sword fight, using dockside cranes, and Haddock is eventually victorious.

With the three scrolls in their possession, Tintin and Haddock find that the indicated location is Marlinspike Hall, and that the hall had been built originally by Sir Francis Haddock. There, in the cellar, they find some of the treasure, a clue to the location of the sunken Unicorn, and, perhaps, the excuse for another adventure.

In ancient China, superhero Huan (Louis Koo) falls in love with a female superhero called Red (Sandra Ng). They decide to retire and move to a small village for the sake of starting a family. Five years passes and they now live a happy and quiet life until a martial arts competition is being held in the very village they live. They plan to leave the village for good but end up being tangled in a conspiracy to murder the champion. To find out the identity of the mastermind, Huan and Red must don superhero costumes one more time in the name of justice.

Megamind (Will Ferrell) is a super-intelligent alien who– at the age of eight days old– is sent to Earth from his home planet during a time of crisis. However, he lands in a prison thanks to another infant alien similarly sent from a different planet who eventually becomes a superhero known as Metro Man (Brad Pitt), defender of the fictional Metro City. As a result, Megamind is raised as a social deviant, who is neglected for his destructive intellect, with his fish-like sidekick Minion (David Cross) as his only friend. Realizing that he enjoys causing trouble, and jealous of all of the attention Metro Man receives, Megamind becomes a super villain to rival Metro Man, though he is thwarted on a regular basis. During one of his many attempts to defeat Metro Man, Megamind kidnaps news reporter Roxanne Ritchi (Tina Fey) and uses her as bait to lure Metro Man into the city observatory where Megamind intends to kill him with a death ray. The plan appears flawed enough for Metro Man to escape, but he proclaims that the inside of the observatory is lined with copper, which he says drains his power. Metro Man is then killed by the death ray. Megamind is initially happy that he has defeated his archenemy, but soon grows depressed over the fact that without someone to fight, his life as a super villain no longer has any purpose.

Megamind talks with Roxanne while disguised as a museum curator named Bernard and is inspired to create a new superhero to fight using a serum of Metro man DNA. Hoping to uncover any evil plans Megamind has for the city, Roxanne breaks into Megamind’s lair and fights with him over a syringe gun containing the serum, which is accidentally fired and injected into Roxanne’s cameraman Hal Stewart (Jonah Hill). Megamind manipulates Hal into becoming a superhero named Tighten, but at the same time falls in love with Roxanne and begins dating her while disguised as Bernard. Tighten attempts to use his powers to woo Roxanne, but is quickly spurned and grows jealous of the Bernard-disguised Megamind. Megamind soon begins having second thoughts about being a villain, finding more enjoyment pursuing a relationship with Roxanne. He then gets in a fight with Minion and the two friends have a falling out. After Roxanne rejects him when his identity is accidentally exposed, Megamind follows through with his plan to fight Tighten. By this time, however, Tighten has decided he would rather be a supervillain since in his view, being a superhero is too much hard work. Unlike Metro Man, Tighten has no qualms with outright killing Megamind and he is forced to flee for his life. With nobody to stop him, Tighten begins wreaking havoc in Metro City.

Noticing how one of his copper-based attacks during the fight had no effect on Tighten, Megamind convinces Roxanne to search for clues on his weakness in Metro Man’s old hideout. There they find Metro Man alive and learn that he faked his death (and his weakness to copper) so that he could retire from being a superhero. Megamind and Roxanne try to persuade Metro Man to defeat Tighten, but he refuses and instead Megamind turns himself in. When Tighten kidnaps Roxanne, however, Megamind is broken out of prison by Minion and goes to save her. Megamind defeats Tighten by draining Metro Man’s DNA from his body, stripping him of his powers, and Hal ends up in Megamind’s former prison cell while Megamind is embraced by Roxanne and Metro City as its new defender. Megamind begins to enjoy his new reputation as a superhero while a disguised Metro Man silently congratulates him.

Contributed by Johnny Graves

One of my favorite animated movies to watch on satellite TV from www.bestchoicetv.com/satellite-tv/il/ is Shrek. The movie was released in 2001 and was directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson. Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and John Lithgow light up the screen with their voices that portray their characters to the “T”. The movie is hilariously funny and is one of those animated movies you do not care to watch again, again and again. Within the movie, Shrek a giant ogre tries to have privacy restored within his swamp but finds Donkey is going to accompany him along the trip which adds much of the funny details found within the movie. Along the way they bump into Princess Fiona who in the end they must rescue. Princess Fiona has a curse put on her and when the curse is lifted she is surprised that she stays as an ogre but with Shrek’s calming words he convinces her that she is still beautiful. Princess Fiona and Shrek fall in love and end up marrying one another. The movie has a very happy ever after ending.

Sammy, a sea turtle, hatches on a deserted beach and tries to climb out of the hole where he hatched. Being caught by a seagull, he struggles for his life and manages to escape, as the seagull clashes in the air with a another seagull, also carrying its prey, who turns out to be a female hatchling sea turtle, Shelly.

Sammy falls onto an old raft and gets carried into the open ocean, losing Shelly. In the ocean he meets another hatchling, Roy, who tells him the story of a “turtle paradise” on an island called “Lapagos”, and they together start their voyage there. Later, the two get caught by trawls. Sammy is released back into the sea by the fishermen, but loses Roy.

Washed onto the shore in California, he is picked up by a hippie woman and lives as a pet in the hippie commune with Vera, another female sea turtle, who is older than Sammy, and Catoff, a cat, who claims to be French. On a Christmas evening the hippies draw a peace sign on his shell to sign him as the peace ambassador. When the hippies see that Sammy and Vera won’t mate, they release Vera. The police evicts the hippie commune from the beach, and Sammy decides to return back to the sea.

There he meets Vera and a young female sea turtle who is attacked by a shark. Vera and Sammy save the turtle who turns out to be Shelly, his childhood friend. They decide to travel together to the paradise islands, but Shelly gets lost in the sea.

Vera tells Sammy to swim to the “cold waters”. Sammy finds an old refrigerator drawn by the humans and uses it to travel to Antarctic. An albatross he meets on his journey tells him that the paradise island can be only be reached through a “secret passage where the fresh waters run”. In the Antarctic waters Sammy meets a fin whale who barely escapes a harpoon from a whaling ship.

The harpoon destroys the refrigerator, but Sammy is saved by the anti-whaling protesters and placed into the sea animal shelter where he finds Shelly, Catoff and people from the hippie commune (who now work in the shelter). The ex-hippie recognized the peace sign on Sammy’s shell.

Shelly and Sammy are released into the ocean. They decide to find the secret passage and use it to travel to the paradise island. They manage to find the passage (which turns out to be Panama Canal) but get separated as they try to pass a lock. As he searches Shelly, Sammy encounters two sea turtles that urge him to help their friend who got trapped in an intermodal container. Sammy rescues the turtle, who turns out to be his old friend Roy. They swim together to a wrecked Spanish galleon where Roy lives with Rita, his girlfriend.

Being told about Shelly, Rita remembers her and advices Sammy to search for her in the galleon. Sammy finds Shelly being courted by another sea turtle. Disappointed and upset, Sammy returns to his friends only to find out that the turtle who courted Shelly is a playboy but has a strong relationship with another female. Together with Roy and Albert, a shark who lost his teeth, they set up a fake shark attack on Shelly to let Sammy save her again and win her heart. Shelly and Sammy then reunite and, along with Roy and Rita, return to the beach they hatched.

The closing scene of the movie shows Sammy helping one of his new-hatched grandsons to climb out of the hole.

It’s in 3-D and it’s gorgeous animation. But what really matters is the story. And it’s a good one. At first it seems the main story is about a Viking colony equally distant from nowhere, which is being constantly attacked by a wide variety of marauding dragons. It’s a full time job trying to keep the dragons at bay and the Viking warriors are often out on their boats hunting their wily and ferocious opponents.

But really the story is about a father and chief of the Vikings who has a young son, Hiccup, who is small and who is a slick, sarcastic talker and who doesn’t take orders well, but still seeks respect from his impressive father. At first, his Father will not let his son be a warrior Viking, but later relents to have Hiccup train with the other youngsters. But the young boy gets sidetracked and instead of wanting to kill dragons, the boy befriends them and seeks to understand them.

A young and inexperienced son seeking approval of a strong father is an often-told tale. Sons often act foolishly trying to impress their fathers. And fathers often ignore the strivings of their sons. In this case, there is honor and courage on all sides and it is inspiring to watch the father and son wrestle with their relationship.

And yes, about the dragons – they ARE ferocious and talented and aggressive warriors. But their motivations are a mystery that unfolds slowly. And that’s the fun of this film. This film is a must watch show and I highly recommend it.