Little Panel, Big Screen

During my interwebs surfing , I've come across two little chunks of comic-to-movie adaptation newslets that seem to beg some kind of comment: I don't have to remind my 4 readers how I feel about the whole comic-book to movie thing (Why...are...you....doing this?!), but I feel like the announcements are large enough to at least recognize.

The first is Zac Snyder's adaptation of Alan Moore's The Watchmen, something that I (and many others) would argue is the comic book that matured comic books: even Maus, since it's basically a biography, doesn't carry the heavy narrative weight that Moore's and Gibbons opus does. The Watchmen is basically the first movie released as a comic book first, which is why I actually have high hopes for it: unlike other comic books that are too fantastical or too intimate to make a good movie, The Watchmen reads like a movie from the beginning: the pacing, the framing, even the action, all seems made from production stills. I loathed Snyder's 300, but here's a (admittedly old) transcript of his talk that seems to show he at least has a lot of respect for the material. Below is also a rad graphic showing the casting options for the last two times The Watchmen was considering for Hollywood, as well as the most recent iteration. I personally think the casting of Ron Perlman as The Comedian would be brilliant (second only to Mel Gibson), but that's just me.



The second little piece of "Holy-shit-it's-really-happening" news released this week is that Spielberg has seemingly found his Tintin.

(sounds of shotgun being removed from gun rack)

The movies are slated to be all original scripts...

(sounds of shotgun cartridges being loaded into shotgun)

...with a lot of money attached to them; Spielberg is slated to direct the first, Peter Jackson the second, and as-yet-to-be-determined hot young director to helm the third...

(click-CLACK!)

and they will all be motion-captured CGI films. Hooray!

(BLAM!)

Toutes les autos de Tintin

This is an online gallery of every single car, along with a picture of it's real life counterpart, when possible, to ever appear in a Tintin book: some Tintin nutcase has a lot of time on his hands. Herge was known to be a religious collector of reference art for the books, especially in his later years. While the early books, like Tintin and Land of The Soviets, and Tintin in the Congo, are the slapdash work of a kid with a lot of things on his mind, as he got older, Herge began making sure everything in his books was accurate, going so far as to redo panels from books twenty years earlier because the objects that Tintin interact with isn't accurate enough. This gallery is a true monument to Herge's dedication to making the world that Tintin lived in as real as possible, and yet another reason he is one of the greats.

Found via the Musesum of Online Museums.

Tintin And The Race Race

In a move that immediately shoots to near the top of the list of Business Decisions Perhaps Performed Under The Effects of Some Serious Drugs, (and there's some serious competition), Little-Brown has just announced that they will be releasing Tintin in the Congo in English, apparently deciding that American won't truly be ready to plunk down 10 bucks to see the new movie until they have a deep understanding of his racist past. Besides the questionable nature of packaging it as they would any other Tintin (I could see it released as a scholarly work for cultural examination, but are they really planning to plop this down next to Explorers On The Moon in the kids section?), the greater question has immediately been raised, which is, does a racist past invalidate a piece of art?

For those not in the know, Herge's second foray into Tintin adventures, (the first being the deeply surreal and anti-Bolshevik Land of the Soviets) takes place in the Belgain Congo, and is a mishmash of uncomfortable stereotypes, cartoonish buffonery, and deep-seated ignorant carictures of the Congolese people specifically, and black folks in general. You don't need too much imagnation to get the loathsome gist: bones through the noses, fear and deference to the white man, and Tintin playing the good European and teaching the locales "manners". It is the worst type of repulsive racism. It was also 1930.

Now, I won't be labeled a defender of Herge's racists proclivities, or for any in the popular media, for that matter: any of you that know me, know my dedication to dismantling of the machinery let allows such odius thoughts to propagate. However, the underlying question proves trickier. Can someone extricate themselves from past mistakes and regain respect, espcially if so much of their art and lifework was for good?

I'm not a big fan of the word "hero", and I think one can appreciate and respect the work without respecting the artist: so many of my favorite works have been created by mosogynists, drunks, abusers, liars, adulterers, thieves, and monsters of every stripe, it's sometimes seems a wonder you can find any artist at that is a stand-up citizen. So I don't let that make me blue: I'm adult enough to separate the creator and the creation.

But what of Herge? Does it matter that he expressed shame and embarassment the rest of his life for those earlier follies? Do mistakes of such a catastrophic nature get forgiven as youthful ignorance? And perhaps even the biggest question: if it didn't become socially unacceptable over his lifetime to be a racist, would he still have renounced the work?

I can't answer these, nor can anyone, they're merely food for thought. But I beg of you, those that will no doubt be exposed to that hateful book in the coming months; let the work, not the worker, speak to you.

Tintin in the Land of Hollywood

The raiding of the temple happened slowly at first. A few keen-eyed grave-robbers here or there: a Philip K. Dick jewel, a Jules Verne bauble. Occasionally done right, more often done terribly, those of us In The Know could shake our heads and scoff, comforted in the knowledge that the true sources lay hidden, wellsprings that continued to delight those that cared to look for them. Then, the onslaught came, starting, oh, I'd say right around here.

I can't fault Hollywood for grave-robbing: I love movies. I went to film school, for chrissakes. And for every unmitigated disaster of a movie adaptaion of comic books or other imaginative stories, there's also some incredibly successful ones that make you love everything about it so much more. Unfortunately, Hollywood has a nasty tendency to recognize the brilliance if imaginative works, and then trying to substitute imagination for special effects. It takes a light touch , and an adding to the artistic effort, not just a rote copying with CGI, to make something like this work. And when it does work, when the creators do care enough to invest their own love and interests into it, it doesn't matter that the special thing you had to yourself now has a huge audience. So what if the douchebag in the next cubicle knows who Harvey Pekar is now: it was a great flick.

But this impending Tintin behemoth on the horizon makes me more nervous than anything that's ever been announced. Unless you've been living under a rock for the past week, you prolly know that Steven Spielberg has tapped Peter Jackson to finally head up the rights he decided to exercise, that of the long-awaited Tintin movies, a 3 picture deal that either has phenomenon or debacle written all over it. And my jittering excitment is tempered by a fear, that seems to harken back to my teen angst days as much as my art snobbery of Herge's mastery.

Here's the rub:

I am a rabid Tintin fan, ever since a very young boy,when I found a battered copy of The Calculus Affair at a book sale at the local branch of my town's library (and I still have it!). Anthony Lane has a rather pedestrian article in last week's New Yorker about Tintin that really doesn't illuminate anyone that has vaguely paid attention to the life and work of Herge. The long and the short of the piece explains away most of Remi's life as an effort to make up for some of his more racist carictures and collaboration with the Nazis by ennacting the indefatiguable wunderkind reporter as a kind of soul scrubbing boy scout, righting wrongs with an innocence Remi lost long ago in 1938. And I just call bullshit on the whole thing. Not just Lane's article, which, while a bit vanilla, is more or less quite accurate with the facts. I call bullshit on the whole Deconstructing Tintin thing.

There are some wonderful books taking apart the books, the characters, the man, the life, the times. Even some incredible comics that do the same. But the thing is, it's just too close for me. It takes the fun out of it. It's like taking a picture of a long lost relative out and going on a four hour lecture about why light turns silver halide into images the eye can see. I guess I can see it's informative: but it doesn't make me appeciate the person in the picture anymore or less. And this is just the beginning.

Within 2 years, Tintin will be on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, and Rolling Stone, that scumbag lead singer from Coldplay will wear a Haddock teeshirt onstage during shows, and Paris Hilton will name her new dog Snowy. And the Tintin that I know and love, the Tintin that is mine and rests on my bookshelves, the books whose spines contain crumbs of crackers eaten over them long ago, the Tintin who prompts puzzled looks when I wear him around, but that gets a look of knowing recognition by 1 out of 50 Americans, that smile that spreads across their face, that wink and nod I get...that Tintin will be gone, and I'll be left to pick up the pieces.

-> As a less curmudgony aside, (finally) check out the Seoul pix here! Woohoo!