Moomins and the Comet Chase
Encyclopedia
Moomins and the Comet Chase is a 2010 stop motion
film compiled
from the Comet in Moominland
-based episodes of the 1977–1982 Moomins TV series
animated at Se-ma-for
in Poland
, restored
and re-soundtrack
ed with multiple voice actors
replacing the single narrator
. It is the second such Moomin
film produced by Finnish children's film
company Filmkompaniet, the first being Moomin and Midsummer Madness, and the first one converted to stereoscopic 3-D
. A similar revision of the remainder of the series for high-definition television
of all 78 episodes will follow and is currently in production.
The same novel has been adapted into film at least twice before, with the 1978 Russian stop motion serial Mumi-troll
and the 1992 Japanese traditional animation feature Comet in Moominland.
International version of the film features the voices of known Swedish actors like Stellan Skarsgård
, Peter Stormare
, Alexander Skarsgård
. Musician and Moomins fan Björk
is also providing an original song for the film.
The international debut was at the Cannes Film Festival
in May 2010. In Finland, it arrived in movie theater
s on August 6, 2010 and will later be broadcast on the MTV3
channel. The film will also be produced in dozens of other languages and will subsequently receive global distribution.
wakes to notice that grey dust is covering everything in the Moominvalley
. He runs to ask the philosophical Muskrat if he knows what is happening, who advises him that things tend to look like this before an awful fate coming from the sky hits the Earth. With the help of his father, Moominpappa
, Moomintroll and his close friends Sniff
and Snufkin
build a raft and head out on a challenging journey to the observatory in the Lonely Mountains hoping to find out more from the wise professors there. The friends have to overcome several adversities in order to make it there. When they arrive, they find the professors deep in calculations. They reveal that a comet will reach the Earth in four days, four hours, four minutes and 44 seconds.
The group decides to get back home as fast as they can to share the news. On the journey home, they encounter more dangerous creatures and obstacles as well as some old and new friends, including Snork Maiden
and her brother Snork, who join them on their adventure. The sky continues to become redder and the air hotter. When they get to the seashore, they are shocked to see that the sea has completely dried up. A walk along the dried out sea bottom brings more excitement and danger.
Eventually they make it back home to the Moominhouse
and discover another shocking detail: the comet is supposed to land right in their own garden that very night. Ultimately, the big question is if they can get everybody to safety in time.
" for the film's soundtrack. Antonia Ringbom, a Finnish director, producer, animator and illustrator who specializes in children's programming, is working on the project's title sequence, which combines her animation with the theme song performed by Björk. Bjork : " I read the books as a child and then I read them for my children. I guess I realised that I still like them just as much. They probably stand for something Nordic, I think there's something quite stark, a certain kind of simplicity. You could speculate and say, 'because there are fewer plants there, and fewer animals, fewer buildings, so it's kind of more minimal. I've sometimes compared it to Scandinavian furniture , compared to Italian furniture. Italian - hundreds of little details, curls and curves and decoration - and Scandinavian furniture is kind of naked. And it's funny and sad at the same time. And the relationship to nature Tove Jansson has, that's very important to me. And everybody's allowed to be just as eccentric as they are, they don't have to conform. Reading to my children I actually noticed some kind of anti-authority aspect in it - there's no hierarchy between the characters, they are all equal. I like that a lot."
Stop motion
Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
film compiled
Compilation movie
Film historian Jay Leyda discussed the origins of the compilation film in his work Films Beget Films.-Anime:A compilation movie, or compilation film, a term used by reviewers of Japanese anime, is a feature film that is mostly composed of footage from a television serial...
from the Comet in Moominland
Comet in Moominland
Comet In Moominland is the second in the series of Tove Jansson's Moomin books, published in 1946....
-based episodes of the 1977–1982 Moomins TV series
The Moomins (TV series)
The Moomins is a stop motion animated children's television series based on the Tove Jansson's Moomin series of books which was originally produced by Se-ma-for and Jupiter Film between the years 1977–1982, originally for Polish, Austrian and German television. The series was later on sold to...
animated at Se-ma-for
Se-ma-for
Se-ma-for is a Polish animation studio. Founded in Łódź, Poland, in 1947, it has created many animated cartoons and stop motion puppet animations, for young and mature audiences...
in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, restored
Film preservation
thumb|300px|Stacked containers filled with reels of [[film stock]]The film preservation, or film restoration, movement is an ongoing project among film historians, archivists, museums, cinematheques, and non-profit organizations to rescue decaying film stock and preserve the images which they contain...
and re-soundtrack
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
ed with multiple voice actors
Voice acting
Voice acting is the art of providing voices for animated characters and radio and audio dramas and comedy, as well as doing voice-overs in radio and television commercials, audio dramas, dubbed foreign language films, video games, puppet shows, and amusement rides.Performers are called...
replacing the single narrator
Narrator
A narrator is, within any story , the fictional or non-fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for...
. It is the second such Moomin
Moomin
The Moomins are the central characters in a series of books and a comic strip by Swedish-Finn illustrator and writer Tove Jansson, originally published in Swedish by Schildts in Finland. They are a family of trolls who are white and roundish, with large snouts that make them resemble hippopotamuses...
film produced by Finnish children's film
Children's film
A children's film is a film aimed for children as its audience. As opposed to a family film, no special effort is made to make the film attractive for other audiences. The film may or may not be about children. In Unshrinking the Kids: Children's Cinema and the Family Film which is a chapter in In...
company Filmkompaniet, the first being Moomin and Midsummer Madness, and the first one converted to stereoscopic 3-D
3-D film
A 3-D film or S3D film is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth perception...
. A similar revision of the remainder of the series for high-definition television
High-definition television
High-definition television is video that has resolution substantially higher than that of traditional television systems . HDTV has one or two million pixels per frame, roughly five times that of SD...
of all 78 episodes will follow and is currently in production.
The same novel has been adapted into film at least twice before, with the 1978 Russian stop motion serial Mumi-troll
Mumi-troll
Mumi-troll was a series of three short films made in the USSR in 1978, based on the book Comet in Moominland, which was a part of the Moomin series by Finnish illustrator and writer Tove Jansson.-The Films:Three films were made.* Mumi-troll i drugie Mumi-troll (Russian language: Муми-тролль,...
and the 1992 Japanese traditional animation feature Comet in Moominland.
International version of the film features the voices of known Swedish actors like Stellan Skarsgård
Stellan Skarsgård
Stellan John Skarsgård is a Swedish actor, known internationally for his film roles in Angels & Demons, Breaking the Waves, The Hunt for Red October, Ronin, Good Will Hunting, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist,...
, Peter Stormare
Peter Stormare
is a Swedish film, stage, voice and television actor as well as a theatrical director, playwright and musician.- Early life :...
, Alexander Skarsgård
Alexander Skarsgård
Alexander Johan Hjalmar Skarsgård is a Swedish actor. He is best known for his roles as vampire Eric Northman on the HBO series True Blood, Meekus in Zoolander and Brad Colbert in the HBO miniseries Generation Kill.-Early life:...
. Musician and Moomins fan Björk
Björk
Björk Guðmundsdóttir , known as Björk , is an Icelandic singer-songwriter. Her eclectic musical style has achieved popular acknowledgement and popularity within many musical genres, such as rock, jazz, electronic dance music, classical and folk...
is also providing an original song for the film.
The international debut was at the Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
in May 2010. In Finland, it arrived in movie theater
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
s on August 6, 2010 and will later be broadcast on the MTV3
MTV3
MTV3 is a Finnish commercial television station owned by Bonnier. It had the biggest audience share of all Finnish TV channels until Finnish Broadcasting Company’s YLE1 took the lead. The letters MTV stand for Mainos-TV , due to the channel getting its revenue from running commercials...
channel. The film will also be produced in dozens of other languages and will subsequently receive global distribution.
Plot
One day MoomintrollMoomintroll
Moomintroll is the main character in the Moomin books by Tove Jansson. He lives in the Moominhouse together with his father Moominpappa and his mother Moominmamma and has a keen spirit of adventure. Moomintroll is a 'moomin' - a little white troll with a hippopotamus-like big round nose.His best...
wakes to notice that grey dust is covering everything in the Moominvalley
Moominvalley
Moominvalley is a fictional place, where the Moomins live in the tales by Finnish author Tove Jansson.Especially in the early books Moominvally is depicted as a beautiful place with green slopes, rivers, fruit trees, flowers and a place for calm and peaceful life as in the tradition of pastoral...
. He runs to ask the philosophical Muskrat if he knows what is happening, who advises him that things tend to look like this before an awful fate coming from the sky hits the Earth. With the help of his father, Moominpappa
Moominpappa
Moominpappa - is a character in the Moomin series of books by Finnish author Tove Jansson.Orphaned in his youth, Moominpappa is a somewhat restless soul who left the orphanage to venture out into the world but has now settled down, determined to be a responsible father to his family: his wife...
, Moomintroll and his close friends Sniff
Sniff
Sniff is a character in the Moomin series of books by Finnish author Tove Jansson. Moomintroll's immature friend and later adopted brother. He is the son of the Muddler and the Fuzzy. He is one of the few characters in the Moomin series who is sincerely interested in money, and is always on the...
and Snufkin
Snufkin
Snufkin is a character in the Moomin series of books authored by Swedish-speaking Finn Tove Jansson, appearing in six of the nine books...
build a raft and head out on a challenging journey to the observatory in the Lonely Mountains hoping to find out more from the wise professors there. The friends have to overcome several adversities in order to make it there. When they arrive, they find the professors deep in calculations. They reveal that a comet will reach the Earth in four days, four hours, four minutes and 44 seconds.
The group decides to get back home as fast as they can to share the news. On the journey home, they encounter more dangerous creatures and obstacles as well as some old and new friends, including Snork Maiden
Snork Maiden
The Snork Maiden is a character in the Moomin series of books by Finnish author Tove Jansson. She is a member of the species known as Snorks, and is the sister of the Snork and Moomintroll's beloved, although their relationship is very innocent...
and her brother Snork, who join them on their adventure. The sky continues to become redder and the air hotter. When they get to the seashore, they are shocked to see that the sea has completely dried up. A walk along the dried out sea bottom brings more excitement and danger.
Eventually they make it back home to the Moominhouse
Moominhouse
Moominhouse is a fictional house, where the Moomins live in the tales by Finnish author Tove Jansson. Its tall, round shape is said to be patterned after the porcelain stoves behind which the Moomins' ancestors used to live....
and discover another shocking detail: the comet is supposed to land right in their own garden that very night. Ultimately, the big question is if they can get everybody to safety in time.
Cast
(International / Finnish)- Max von SydowMax von SydowMax von Sydow is a Swedish actor. He has also held French citizenship since 2002. He has starred in many films and had supporting roles in dozens more...
/ Tapani Perttu as narrator - Stellan SkarsgårdStellan SkarsgårdStellan John Skarsgård is a Swedish actor, known internationally for his film roles in Angels & Demons, Breaking the Waves, The Hunt for Red October, Ronin, Good Will Hunting, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist,...
as Moominpappa and Hemulens / Tapani Perttu as Moominpappa - Alexander SkarsgårdAlexander SkarsgårdAlexander Johan Hjalmar Skarsgård is a Swedish actor. He is best known for his roles as vampire Eric Northman on the HBO series True Blood, Meekus in Zoolander and Brad Colbert in the HBO miniseries Generation Kill.-Early life:...
/ Jasper PääkkönenJasper PääkkönenJasper Pääkkönen is a Finnish film actor who has appeared and starred in over 15 films. According to a calculation published by Finnish tabloid IltaSanomat, Pääkkönen is "the most profitable film actor in Finland" for having starred in numerous box office hits during his career...
as Moomin - Peter StormarePeter Stormareis a Swedish film, stage, voice and television actor as well as a theatrical director, playwright and musician.- Early life :...
/ Taneli Mäkelä as Snufkin - Mads MikkelsenMads Mikkelsen' is a Danish actor.-Life and career:Mikkelsen was born in the Østerbro area of Copenhagen, the son of Bente Christiansen and Henning Mikkelsen, a cab driver. He is the brother of actor Lars Mikkelsen. After attending Århus Theatre School, he made his film debut in the movie Pusher...
/ Ilpo Mikkonen as Sniff - Helena MattssonHelena MattssonHelena Mattsson is a Swedish actress, currently living and working in Hollywood.Mattsson was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden, had roles early on in Wild Side Story and other cabarets there, and moved at a young age to London, England, to attend theatre school.When she was 19 years old she...
as Snork Maiden - Johanna Viksten as MoominmammaMoominmammaMoominmamma is a character in the Moomin series of books by Finnish author Tove Jansson.Moominmamma is married to Moominpappa and is the mother of Moomintroll. She very rarely gets cross and takes even the most distressing circumstances in her stride...
- Jarmo KoskiJarmo KoskiJarmo Koski is a Finnish actor. He stars as Seppo Taalasmaa in the half-hour soap opera Salatut Elämät.- Dubbed movies, Finnish voice :He's also a voice actor for children cartoons and animated movies :...
as Snork - Outi Alanen as Little MyLittle MyLittle My is a character in the Moomin series of books by Tove Jansson. She first appears in the fourth book, The Exploits of Moominpappa . She is a small, determined and fiercely independent Mymble. When she wants something done, she does it straight away...
- Jarmo KoskiJarmo KoskiJarmo Koski is a Finnish actor. He stars as Seppo Taalasmaa in the half-hour soap opera Salatut Elämät.- Dubbed movies, Finnish voice :He's also a voice actor for children cartoons and animated movies :...
as HemulenHemulenHemulens are a species of characters in the Moomin series of books by Swedish-speaking Finnish author Tove Jansson. Hemulens feature in several of the books. One Hemulen collects butterflies, and another is an avid skier...
Music
Icelanders Björk and Sjón, both big fans of the Moomin franchise, composed "The Comet SongThe Comet Song
"The Comet Song" is a song by Icelandic artist Björk, written by herself and long-time friend and collaborator Sjón as the title theme of the 2010 movie Moomins and the Comet Chase. The song is released as a charity single and all the benefits are donated to the victims of the 2010 Pakistan...
" for the film's soundtrack. Antonia Ringbom, a Finnish director, producer, animator and illustrator who specializes in children's programming, is working on the project's title sequence, which combines her animation with the theme song performed by Björk. Bjork : " I read the books as a child and then I read them for my children. I guess I realised that I still like them just as much. They probably stand for something Nordic, I think there's something quite stark, a certain kind of simplicity. You could speculate and say, 'because there are fewer plants there, and fewer animals, fewer buildings, so it's kind of more minimal. I've sometimes compared it to Scandinavian furniture , compared to Italian furniture. Italian - hundreds of little details, curls and curves and decoration - and Scandinavian furniture is kind of naked. And it's funny and sad at the same time. And the relationship to nature Tove Jansson has, that's very important to me. And everybody's allowed to be just as eccentric as they are, they don't have to conform. Reading to my children I actually noticed some kind of anti-authority aspect in it - there's no hierarchy between the characters, they are all equal. I like that a lot."