Peter Jackson's next trilogy . . .

in collaboration with Steven Spielberg . . .

The Adventures of Tintin!

Variety has the full story. It unfortunately does not say which three books will be adapted, but does have some interesting details on the format:

Jackson's New Zealand-based WETA Digital, the f/x house behind "The Lord of the Rings" franchise, produced a 20-minute test reel bringing to life the characters created by [Georges] Remi, who wrote under the pen name of Herge. "Herge's characters have been reborn as living beings, expressing emotion and a soul which goes far beyond anything we've seen to date with computer animated characters," Spielberg said.

"We want Tintin's adventures to have the reality of a live-action film, and yet Peter and I felt that shooting them in a traditional live-action format would simply not honor the distinctive look of the characters and world that Herge created," Spielberg continued.

(Thanks to Looking Closer for the link.)

In other news, my seven-year-old sister is reading Greek myths. Some of them she likes; others she considers morbid (her word, not mine). And she's just posed a question which I'm sure how to answer:

Why did Circe turn Odysseus' men into pigs?

snapshots

i'm sitting on my bed, by a filmy-curtained window. earlier, summer rain fell on the roof, and the moon will look in later tonight.

finals scribbled, juries played--not my best playing on some pieces, but good enough. classes well-passed, despite the 5 novels i read during finals week. tomorrow, the last service i have to sing at Trinity.

on the desk, a big purple candle burns, lit for the first time this evening. i've had it since Seattle, two summers ago now. i'm not sure why i've saved it this long. an open document holds 1,336 words of a new story. and i have a job interview monday.

"stawberry road" begins on itunes: "pain is sharper/when i suspect that true love runs/looking for us like a lion in our dreams."

i'm not sure why i'm here, or where i'm going--sometimes it feels like nowhere much, and the only thing i feel sure of is that i'm not who i want to be, or where i want to be. but tonight it's okay.

i can't explain, exactly. but something happened about ago, a very small something--and i realized, with a simple clarity, that while faith is a risk, in some ways, it's one i want. one i choose. (the water will hold you, if you dare.)

i have so many memories, so many places i want to go back to; but i know i can't. i live, as i have always lived, in an "Ilion"--a city on the brink of destruction, a city that will, sooner or later, fail and fall. and i can choose to live in ruins, becoming a ghost, or to "fare foreward"--and that's risk too. there's safety in ruins.

"call it romance or nostalgia/the hunger behind our memories/we've buried it in code/things we've wanted, when we get them/are never enough/but they lead us to the road"

and if faring foreward doesn't exactly let you go back, it sometimes comes close--or at least lets you understand where you were, what gifts you were given. you so rarely understand at the time . . . only in fragments, in flashes.

"you censor longing and organize beauty/because you're afraid/you want it more than oxygen or light"

you're afraid, because beauty too is a risk. the flashes of understanding are a risk, showing you what you will lose. but i think when we accept the risks, when we open ourselves to the dangers of faith, of beauty, of loss--when we fling out our arms to the cold wind and welcome it, letting it blow through us--then we're free to fare foreward. free to meet love, to run to the lion in our dreams . . . . accepting the pain that goes with love, with beauty, with all that is worth having.

and after all, the safety of ruins is an illusion: it's the ghost who loses the city completely. ("it's not suffering we fear, but loss.") it's only when you fare forward, when you accept the loss, that you can hold something of the lost city.

and tonight, for whatever reason, it seems possible to accept the memories, the lost cities, and the risks, and to fare forward--trusting that beauty will save the world.