TinTin and the Lure of the Swamp*

How come I'm always the last person to hear about these things?

Turns out Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg have plans to work together on a TinTin trilogy, with both directing a film apiece but no news as yet of who will get to direct the third film in the series.

The latest news on a project that is a couple of years away is that the British tv writer, Steven Moffat, is the hired pen on one of the scripts. I can't help feeling that it would have been more interesting if Paisley's other son had got the writing gig. I'm sure he would have done something special with the character of the Captain.

But what would be more interesting would be if Jackson and Spielberg hired Peter Watkins to take the helm of the third film, with the intent of adapting for the screen my all time favourite TinTin novel, Breaking Free. (See image above.)

If Moffat doesn't feel he is properly up to the task of giving full justice to the spirit of the Attack International text, Jackson and Spielberg can always pass his typewriter onto Stewart Home or Mark Shipway or maybe even to the ICC's 'Melmoth'.

What with the sub-prime mortgage crisis, Bush getting in a bit of sabre rattling towards Iran and Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, forecasting hard times ahead for the American economy, I think Hollywood (and capitalism) is finally ripe for that ultra-left communist blockbuster that it's never got round to making. Paul Schrader's 'Blue Collar' was maybe a bit too left-field for its time. More of a bumper double issue of Aufheben, as opposed to the suggested broad strokes of a Aurora-like 'Breaking Free'.

We've had the anarcho-mysticism of the V for Vendettas and the Matrix Trilogy, the reheated social democracy of the Norma Raes and the Bulworths, but now's the time for a bona fide ultra-left movie blockbuster. With titles as big as a 'World Revolution' headline and a goodies versus baddies plot line that could have been ripped wholesale from the editorial pages of the bordigist press, the worldwide proletariat is ready for its close-up.

Hat tip to Mars Hill blog for the (late'ish) news about Jackson and Spielberg indulging in their childlike fantasies. And a doctors note from Porcupine Press in Kings X for the paper dust inhaled in its basement all those years ago whilst thumbing through old copies of Red Menace, Communist Bulletin, Communist Headache, World Revolution, Revolutionary Perspectives and Collective Action Notes.

*A 1957 classic.