Double O Section

First Pictures Emerge From Ben Affleck's Spy Movie Argo

2012-02-02T18:33:00.000-08:00

A little over a month ago, The Hollywood Reporter unveiled the first photograph of Ben Affleck playing self-described CIA "Master of Disguise" Antonion Mendez in his fact-based tale of a daring hostage rescue in Iran, Argo. If his book is to be believed, Mendez was something of a real-life equivalent of Mission: Impossible's Jim Phelps. Indeed, the rescue plot he came up with, which involved agents posing as a film crew shooting a fake sci-fi movie, sounds right out of that TV show. Further solidifying the connection, today the Huffington Post revealed another still from the movie... and this shot of Affleck briefing his team in a living room instantly makes me think of the obligatory team briefing in Jim's apartment that begins every episode of Mission: Impossible. Perhaps the connections are entirely unintentional, but this is shaping to look up like a really fun spy movie either way.

Book Review: A Murder of Quality (1962)

2012-02-01T22:32:00.000-08:00

Book Review: A Murder of Quality (1962)

Part 5 of an ongoing series, "The Smiley Files," examining the career of George Smiley in literature and film. Read my introduction to Smiley here.

John le Carré’s second novel, A Murder of Quality, features George Smiley, but it doesn’t feature any spying. While Smiley finds himself either pushed out of the Circus (le Carré’s sobriquet for British Intelligence) or resigning from it in disgust in nearly every novel he appears in, A Murder of Quality is his only adventure that occurs entirely outside of the Circus, and doesn’t feature any of its staff—not even stalwart Peter Guillam. Instead, Smiley is called upon by an old friend and wartime intelligence colleague, Aisla Brimley, to investigate the murder of one Stella Rode, a junior teacher’s wife at an exalted English public school, the fictional Carne. While Smiley may be somewhat out of his element here, the author is decidedly not out of his. Because while a detective story isn’t necessarily a spy story, nearly all of le Carré’s spy stories are detective stories.

In Call for the Dead (review here), Smiley is an investigator attempting to solve a murder. The circumstances in which it happened and the people involved put that particular murder in the realm of Smiley’s department (though he resigns from it early on and acts as a private citizen for most of the novel) rather than the police, but his methodical investigation is very much in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes’ or Hercule Poirot’s investigations. And le Carré’s careful plotting very much follows the classical mystery structure, revealing one clue at a time, along with plenty of red herrings and misdirection. Later Smiley novels follow the same formula. Smiley’s People is another out-and-out murder investigation. In that one, Smiley’s called out of retirement (yet again) to probe the murder of an agent he used to run, a trail which will eventually lead him to his old nemesis, Karla. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a similarly structured detective story (again beginning with Smiley being summoned out of retirement), only the mystery is uncovering the identity of a mole rather than a killer. Still, the process is the same: a meticulous search for clues and a methodical study of the facts at hand. Even The Honourable Schoolboy has a mystery at its core—the mystery of Karla’s Hong Kong Gold Seam. (I'm glad le Carré didn't call it that, thought!) A Murder of Quality, therefore, is hardly treading unique narrative territory for the author, although the public school setting is unique for the character.

As Otto Penzler points out in his introduction to the Walker edition, Smiley is a natural detective, in the same league as Holmes and Poirot and all of their ilk. It somehow makes sense to see him tackle the same sort of case those titans would attack.

Smiley approaches detecting the same as he does spying. “It had been one of Smiley’s cardinal principles in research,” le Carré writes, “whether among the incunabula of an obscure poet or the laboriously gathered fragments of intelligence, not to proceed beyond the evidence. A fact, once logically arrived at, should not be extended beyond its natural significance. Accordingly he did not speculate with the remarkable discovery he had made, but turned his mind to the most obscure problem of all: motive for murder.” Smiley’s investigation is a textbook approach that would do his literary forebears proud, and once again le Carré proves a master of the form, doling out clues with enough regularity to make the problem solvable for the reader, but at the same time obscuring them with enough misdirection to make arriving at a conclusion difficult.

On the eve of her brutal murder, Mrs. Stella Rode wrote to Brimley’s agony column in a small nonconformist newspaper and expressed that she suspected her husband was trying to kill her. Thus her husband, Stanley Rode, seems the prime suspect when Smiley arrives on the scene, letter in hand for the local police. (As in Call for the Dead, he works hand-in-hand with an official detective.) However, despite the letter, Smiley quickly discovers a heap of evidence suggesting that Rode couldn't have done it. A whole assortment of suspects present themselves as the spy-cum-detective moves about in the halls of academia and the odd, fiercely class-conscious social circles of Carne.

Despite crafting a perfect mystery story, however (complete with a final false solution every bit as surprising and satisfying as the one in Tinker, Tailor), le Carré is less concerned about his genre than he is about his characters and themes. As with many of his spy novels, the thriller conventions here are merely a clotheshorse on which to hang a hilariously vicious condemnation of the British class system as cultivated in Etonian institutions—and with which to explore a handful of memorable, deeply flawed and deeply human characters.

The best dialogue comes from the characters for whom the author clearly feels the most contempt. Witness, for example, the venomous, socially-obsessed don’s wife Shane Hecht’s remembrances of the deceased: “Stella Rode was such a nice person, I always thought . . . and so unusual. She did such clever things with the same dress. . . .” Later, “I went to tea with Stella once. Milk in first and Indian. So different.” It’s clear that for someone like Shane Hecht, “different” could never be a compliment.

Or, on the subject of funerals: “I hate funerals, don’t you? Black is so insanitary. I always remember King George V’s funeral. Lord Sawley was at Court in those days, and gave Charles two tickets. So kind. I always think it spoilt us for ordinary funerals in a way. Although I’m never quite sure about funerals, are you? I have a suspicion that they are largely a lowerclass recreation; cherry brandy and seed cake in the parlour. I think the tendency of people like ourselves is for a quiet funeral these days; no flowers, just a short obituary and a memorial service later.”

For Shane Hecht, the author tells us, people exist “to be found wanting in the minute tests of social behavior, to be ridiculed, cut off, and destroyed.” A woman who collects the shame of others, she’s got Smiley’s number, too. She corners him at a dinner party and makes it clear what she thinks of this outsider in her hallowed circle:

“The only Smiley I ever heard of married Lady Ann Sercombe at the end of the war. She left him soon afterwards, of course. A very curious match. I understand he was quite unsuitable. She was Lord Sawley’s cousin, you know. The Sawleys have been connected with Carne for four hundred years. The present heir is a pupil of Charles; we often dine at the Castle.” For a moment the noise in the room stopped. For a moment, no more, he could discern nothing but the steady gaze of Shane Hecht upon him, and knew she was waiting for an answer. And then she released him as if to say: “I could crush you, you see. But I won’t, I’ll let you live,” and she turned and walked away.

Yes, this is very much the same Smiley we know and love from the other books. In addition to being hopelessly devoted to an absent wife, he’s “toad-like,” and “short and plump, with heavy spectacles and thinning hair,” and “the very prototype of an unsuccessful middle-aged bachelor in a sedentary occupation” whose “natural diffidence in most practical matters was reflected in his clothes, which were costly and unsuitable, for he was clay in the hands of his tailor, who robbed him.” Yet he’s also capable, when he finally corners the killer, of the same sudden ruthlessness we later witness on occasion in the Karla Trilogy. That doesn’t mean, however, that he has a taste for such things. “He had come to the end of the chase, and was already sickened by the kill.”

Image from swallace99's flickr photostream

One character succinctly sums up the discrepancy between Smiley’s looks and his intellect: “Looks like a frog, dresses like a bookie, and has a brain I’d give my eyes for.” It’s certainly possible that the author feels the same way about his character. He may ridicule him in his descriptions, but at the same time I suspect le Carré may want to be Smiley as much as Ian Fleming wanted to be James Bond. Fleming’s alter ego was a man of action who lived the adventures the author dreamt of during his deskbound war—a classic schoolboy fantasy; le Carré’s alter ego is a man of intellect, but perhaps more crucially, a man of staunch convictions that the author, belonging to another generation who never fought a noble war, simply cannot subscribe to. If Smiley is a clergyman, le Carré is the lapsed parishioner who envies his faith, but is himself incapable of such devotion. But the later books better illustrate Smiley’s convictions.

At a scant 152 pages, A Murder of Quality is a breezy read. It’s light-weight entertainment with a fun mystery and some biting social satire sure to have readers laughing aloud, but it’s certainly not essential le Carré. Die-hard fans of Smiley will enjoy seeing the familiar character in an unfamiliar setting and recognize recurring themes in the author’s work, but newcomers to the le Carré canon are encouraged to seek out his more substantial, far more essential work first—like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, or even Call for the Dead.

The Smiley Files
Part 1: George Smiley: An Introduction
Part 2: Movie Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Part 3: Book Review: Call for the Dead (1961)
Part 4: Movie Review: The Deadly Affair (1966)

Network DVD Sale: Last Day!

2012-02-01T18:04:00.000-08:00

After skipping it last year (as I recall, anyway), Network is back to having a late-January (and early February) sale! Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to include their web exclusive titles (like Tightrope, Spyder's Web and The 4 Just Men); those have been taken off the site for the duration of the sale. But there are still plenty of great bargains to be had on Region 2 and Region B spy titles, including the feature-packed Blu-ray Persuaders! set and the Retro-Action BD titles, samplers which include one high-def episode each from such ITC classics as The Saint, Danger Man, Man in a Suitcase, Department S, The Baron, The Champions and more. All of the companies previous DVD collections of those shows (the non web-exclusive ones, anyway) are also on sale, many of them including slews of bonus material. This sale is also a good opportunity to pick up some of the company's excellent spy TV soundtrack sets, including The Saint (review here), The Music of ITC, and my personal favorite, Man in a Suitcase. They're all 40% off! But hurry, because the sale ends tomorrow, February 2.

Cold Light of Day Poster

2012-02-01T15:20:00.000-08:00

We saw the intriguing trailer yesterday; today, thanks to the Imp Awards, we have a glimpse at the 1-sheet for the Henry Cavill/Bruce Willis (yes, in that order) spy movie The Cold Light of Day.

First Official Still From SkyFall

2012-02-01T09:29:00.000-08:00

Though Empire previously touted an image of Daniel Craig from behind in another tiny blue swimsuit sitting at the edge of a blue-lit pool as the first official still from the 23rd James Bond film, SkyFall, the producers apparently didn't consider that to be the case. Officially, this image revealed today on 007.com is the first still from SkyFall. It's certainly more traditionally Bondian: we have an exotic location (Shanghai), a classic pose and a classic gun. A purist at heart, I'm glad to see Bond packing the Walther PPK again, even if it is an impractical antique, as some firearms enthusiasts claim. The return to the PPK was one of the few good things Mark Forster brought to Bond on Quantum of Solace. But this image isn't all traditional! Glaringly non-traditional for James Bond is the beard Craig sports. It's not a surprise, since we've already seen paparazzi shots of a bearded Craig filming in London, but it's still sort of jarring to see it in an official, purposefully composed photo. Previously, Bond has only ever sported a beard (of the Robinson Crusoe variety) after a period of long captivity in North Korea at the beginning of Die Another Day. Unlike that one, this neatly-trimmed facial hair appears to be a purposeful choice on Bond's part, and not the result of lengthy torture. As non-traditional as it is, I'm not against the beard... just commenting on its irregularity. Craig pulls it off... and manages to still look very Bondian. We know, of course, from other set photos, that the actor does not have a beard in every scene in SkyFall. I'm curious to learn its purpose and its placement in the film. All told, this is a pretty cool picture. And I like that that logo at the bottom kind of makes it look like a trading card. You can see it in super-high resolution on the official website.

Movie Review: The Deadly Affair (1966)

2012-01-31T23:31:00.000-08:00

Movie Review: The Deadly Affair (1966)

Part 4 of an ongoing series, "The Smiley Files," examining the career of George Smiley in literature and film. Read my introduction to Smiley here.

Note: This review incorporates and updates an earlier review of this film that I wrote in 2008.

Sidney Lumet's The Deadly Affair is based on John le Carré's first George Smiley novel, Call for the Dead (review here). Though it introduced the author's famous hero, Call for the Dead is generally considered one of le Carré's less significant works. The movie, with its more generic title, is even more obscure, though it's overall quite a good adaptation in that it actually improves on the book in some respects. Both are well deserving of rediscovery in the wake of the Tomas Alfredson's fantastic, high-profile new film version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (review here). However, fans coming to this movie from that one might be slightly confused at first by the lead character's name. Because Paramount owned the rights to the name "George Smiley" for their film of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (in which Smiley plays a relatively small part), Columbia had to change the name of the protagonist to Charles Dobbs. That’s too bad, because James Mason gives a really great interpretation of Smiley in Dobbs. (Even if, like most screen Smileys up until Gary Oldman, he's prone to wearing hats, something the Smiley of the books steadfastly refuses to do.)

Like the book, the movie begins with Smiley–er, Dobbs–interviewing a senior civil servant named Samuel Fennan in the park. An anonymous letter came in revealing Fennan’s involvement in communist circles back in his prewar college days and questioning his present-day loyalty, so as a formality the Security Services are obliged to check him out. Dobbs suggested the park instead of his office to spare the man any undue embarrassment. Indeed, Fennan seems very pragmatic about his idealistic college days (everyone wants a cause at that age, he argues, and for those who hated fascism, it was communism), and appears to be a loyal British subject. Smiley/Dobbs gives him his stamp of approval and routes it to his boss.

That night he’s awakened at an ungodly hour with a phone call: Fennan has killed himself. Going out, he passes his unfaithful, nymphomaniac wife, Ann (Harriet Andersson) coming in, and they have an argument they’ve clearly had a hundred times before. Mason excels as the conflicted cuckold, playing up a rather pathetic side of Smiley's personality that fades to the background in other performances. He clearly loves his wife very much and wants to forgive her condition, but the jealousy is tearing him up inside. Pushed near breaking point in his personal life, he dives whole-heartedly into his professional life, determined to solve the mystery of Fennan’s death. If the man was really loyal, why would he kill himself?

Dobbs interviews Fennan’s wife, Elsa (Simone Signoret), a concentration camp survivor who chastises him for playing games with people’s lives. She sees no importance in her husband’s loyalty or lack thereof, only that Dobbs and the Security Services are responsible for his death.

Amidst the usual interagency animosity, Dobbs teams up with Inspector Mendel, a narcoleptic, semi-retired Special Branch policeman played masterfully by the incomparable spy stalwart Harry Andrews. Andrews was seemingly in almost every British spy movie in the Sixties, and he’s always a joy to watch. This may be his best role. Spurred on by a wake-up call ordered by the dead man the night before (why would a suicide bother to arrange a wake-up call?), Dobbs and Mendel engage in a thorough, exciting investigation in the course of which they cross paths with Roy Kinnear as a greedy, polygamist informant, a hulking Nordic brute nicknamed Blondie who wants Dobbs dead, and Dobbs’ own boss, Maston (Max Adrian, perfectly channeling the character from the book), who–in the grand tradition of such bosses–wants him off the case.

While there are infrequent bursts of violence, le Carré relishes instead the inherent drama and humor of bureaucracy, and the mechanics of a thorough investigation. Though his stories are set in the murky world of international espionage, le Carré is a mystery writer at heart, and he’s constructed a good one here. Screenwriter Paul Dehn (who also co-wrote Goldfinger and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold in the two consecutive years preceding this movie, and went on to such varied fare as Murder On the Orient Express and Beneath the Planet of the Apes) does a good job with the difficult task of making Le Carré’s complex mystery and bureaucracy cinematic. While hardly action-packed, The Deadly Affair is never dull.

In one respect, Dehn even improves upon the novel, by integrating Ann fully into the story. In the book, Ann has already left Smiley, though she remains constantly on his mind. It would be difficult to depict the constant presence of an absent character on screen, so it makes sense for Dehn to write her back into the plot. He also works her directly into the central mystery in the very manner that le Carré himself will later use in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, so I'm guessing the author was to some degree influenced by this adaptation. Andersson (more than twenty years Mason's junior, unlike in the novel) is definitely not le Carré's well-bred English aristocrat Lady Ann Smiley (née Sercombe) but she still manages very ably to convey the essence of the author's enigmatic character who looms so large in Smiley's life. In fact, she somehow manages to embody exactly the Ann I picture reading the books, despite being too young and a Swede! Andersson and Mason build an entirely credible, if utterly dysfunctional, relationship between these unlikely partners.

Other changes from the novel left me less satisfied. Mendel's fate on film, for instance, is quite different from that in the text, and would not work well with the books that follow. Furthermore, that particular change seems completely unmotivated.

There are actually two mysteries unfolding in the movie: whether the traitor was actually Fennan or his wife (and who wrote the letter condemning Fennan to begin with), and the identity of their contact. The latter is rather obvious, but the former keeps the audience guessing right up to the final revelation. At the same time (and as much as he’d rather lose himself in his work–or drink–and forget it), Dobbs’ personal life remains hell, and his investigative talents come to hurt him in that arena when he can’t help but deduce that his wife’s latest lover is one of his oldest friends, an agent he ran during the war (Maximillian Schell). Mason does a first rate job as a man grasping desperately at a professional conundrum in order to ignore a personal one–only to discover it’s impossible.

The Deadly Affair is a highly enjoyable spy film, and a thoroughly gripping and generally faithful le Carré adaptation. James Mason makes a great Smiley (I know, I know... Dobbs), and it's too bad that his contribution to the filmic history of the character is often overlooked thanks to the long shadows of Alec Guinness’s later, definitive portrayal in two British miniseries, and Gary Oldman's Oscar-nominated turn in the new movie. Mason is even believable when provoked to uncharacteristic violence at the finale. A rarity when I first reviewd it several years ago, The Deadly Affair is now available on Region 2 DVD and as an MOD title in Region 1 as part of the Colombia Classics On Demand program. It's also available streaming through Amazon Instant Video. For le Carré fans or fans of Sixties spy cinema, it's well worth seeking out.

The Smiley Files
Part 1: George Smiley: An Introduction
Part 2: Movie Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Part 3: Book Review: Call for the Dead (1961)

Trailer: The Cold Light of Day

2012-01-31T01:24:00.000-08:00

Hm, this one seems to have slipped by me completely throughout the production process. Weird! Or maybe I did post a Tradecraft item about it at some point; the title sounds kind of familiar. And bad. Boy, is that a bad title: The Cold Light of Day? That said, the movie looks potentially cool, and I did like the director's previous film, JCVD. But the trailer's also frustrating. Can you really put Bruce Willis in a cool, actiony spy trailer and then pull the rug out from under us and tell us he's not the hero? And that, adding insult to injury, Henry Cavill is? I don't think Willis is so old yet that he has to assume the father role in action movies! Maybe Cavill won't be so bad; right now my assessment of him is based solely on the mostly awful Immortals. Hopefully he takes this opportunity to show that that one was a fluke. But those gripes aside (along with the minor gripe that Sigourney Weaver seems to be playing the exact same role that she played in Abduction and speaking the same lines, too), this looks to be a Takenesque spy movie set in Europe, and European locations always win me over. It does look pretty cool...

Bourne Legacy Filming

2012-01-30T00:31:00.000-08:00

Kees Stam of the Harry Palmer Movie Site pointed the way to this video of a Filipino news broadcast covering the first day of shooting on The Bourne Legacy in Manila. Stick with the broadcast for a few minutes, because you'll be rewarded with some brief glimpses of an action sequence with Rachel Weisz running from police. Even seen from news cameras, the sequence looks very Bourney indeed! (No sign of star Jeremy Renner, though.)

Chuck Ends Tonight

2012-01-27T16:53:00.000-08:00

It's the end of an era when NBC's comedic geek spy show Chuck airs its series finale tonight. That makes me realize how long I've been doing this blog... long enough that a new spy series has premiered, enjoyed a respectable five-season runs, and ended all in the time I've been blogging. I mean, it's one thing for flash-in-the-pan series like UnderCovers or CHAOS to come and go, but Chuck was for real. When I first reviewed the pilot after seeing it early at Comic-Con in 2007, I wasn't terribly impressed. I revised my opinion, however, after watching it again (in a slightly different cut) when it aired, and by the second episode I was a fan. Over its course Chuck has had a lot of ups and downs. By Season 3 I thought it was severely sagging, but former 007 Timothy Dalton proved to be exactly what the series needed to rebound in Season 4. Without Dalton, however, and owing to a fairly lame plot point involving Chuck's best friend Morgan gaining the superspy skills of the "Intersect," the fifth season has had its share of disappointments. It's probably time for Chuck to end, and I'm eager to see how the writers do that.

Throughout its five seasons (and despite surviving a long, momentum-sapping hiatus due to the writers' strike during its first season), Chuck has been a fixture of NBC's "bubble" each year, a show constantly in danger of cancellation. This danger proved to be a blessing in disguise, however, as it united the cult show's fans, who showed their support each year through various wacky means sometimes involving Subway sandwiches. Ultimately, the perpetually endangered Chuck even proved to be a reliable rock in NBC's increasingly troubled line-up. Reliable enough, in fact, that its final renewal was its most painless pick-up, and the producers had plenty of time to plan an actual ending rather than delivering an unsatisfying one due to cancellation.

The final 2-part episode airs tonight beginning at 8pm Eastern on NBC.

Lockout U.S. Trailer

2012-01-26T19:34:00.000-08:00

Luc Besson and his partners take their neo-Eurospy nonsense to outer space in Lockout. Yeah, I know; this is pretty much straight sci-fi, so what's it doing on a spy blog?

1. Because despite the outer space setting, the hero (played by Guy Pearce) is still a secret agent. And, better still, "He's the best there is... but he's a loose cannon."

2. Because it clearly embodies the same anything-goes gonzo enthusiasm as Besson's more down-to-earth neo-Eurospy movies, like From Paris With Love and the Transporter movies.

3. Because it looks utterly awesome.

We saw an extended trailerish featurette a few weeks ago here, and there's also this international trailer which contains some different one-liners from the American one:

Lockout opens April 20 in the United States.

Tradecraft: RKO Attempts New Saint Movies

2012-01-26T01:24:00.000-08:00

Following the frustrating collapse (yet again) of the latest attempt to bring Simon Templar back to the small screen, Variety reports that RKO will attempt a big screen revival for Leslie Charteris' famous modern-day Robin Hood. According to the trade, the studio has signed Eagle Eye co-writer Travis Wright to pen a remake of one of the 1930s or 40s RKO Saint films (exactly which one is unclear) for producer Rick Porras (The Lord of the Rings) with an eye toward a trilogy of Templar tentpoles. But according to all-around Saint expert Ian Dickerson (author of The Saint on TV and erstwhile co-producer of the stalled television revival), Wright will have his work cut out for him. "RKO have the rights to remake their old B&W films but they cannot change the dialogue and they cannot change the length of the picture," Dickerson posted on the CommanderBond.net forums, where he has been updating fans for some time on his own Saintly efforts. He adds that RKO's rights apply to movies only, not to television. Does this really mean that an RKO remake would have to be 69 minutes long with all the same lines spoken by Louis Hayward or George Sanders? Maybe... but maybe not. Remember, Kevin McClory was actually able to get pretty creative in Never Say Never Again, even though his rights were strictly limited to an exact remake of Thunderball. Granted, the individual cases could be quite different, and I'm certainly no expert on copyright law, but I'm betting RKO have some experts on their legal team working hard to find loopholes. But the prospect of a fairly faithful, period-set remake of The Saint in New York actually quite appeals to me! While I'm very eager for Dickerson and his colleagues to get a new TV Saint up and running, I'd be curious to see what RKO can come up with as well. The more Saintly irons in the fire the better, as far as I'm concerned. It just increases the odds of one of them actually coming to fruition, right? Fingers crossed, but (to paraphrase a CBn poster) breath not held.

Hayward, Sanders and Hugh Sinclair all played Simon Templar for RKO; in later movies he was played by Felix Marten, Jean Marais (who gets a bad rap, but I quite liked in the role) and Val Kilmer (who deserves his bad rap). Vincent Price was among the actors to voice the Saint on the radio, and on TV he's been played by Ian Ogilvy, Simon Dutton, Andrew Clarke and, most famously, of course, Roger Moore.

Tinker Tailor Nets Three Oscar Nominations

2012-01-24T16:42:00.000-08:00

Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (review here) netted three well-earned Academy Award nominations this morning, including Best Actor for Gary Oldman (portraying John Le Carré’s spymaster George Smiley), Best Original Score for Alberto Iglesias and Best Adapted Screenplay for the husband-and-wife team of Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan. Sadly, the recognition is a posthumous one for O'Connor, who succumbed to cancer before the film was released. But what better tribute for such a talented screenwriter? I'm glad that the film garnered these nominations, since it's been shockingly omitted from most of the year-end guild awards, but I'm still sorry that it didn't earn more. For my money, it should have also been up for Director, Supporting Actor (for John Hurt as Control), Art Direction, Costumes, Editing and Best Picture. The last one is particularly insulting, considering that only nine out of a possible ten films were chosen this year. Shockingly, this nomination is a long-overdue career first for the great Gary Oldman!

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was better recognized in its native land, where it earned 11 BAFTA nominations including Best Film and Outstanding British Film, Best Actor, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Original Score, Editing, Production Design, Costume Design and Sound.

Spy fans may also be pleased that four veterans of the fantastic OSS 117 parodies (reviews here and here) received Oscar nominations for their work on the wonderful awards front runner The Artist: Jean Dujardin and Bernice Bejo were both nominated for their acting, Ludovic Bource for his score and Michel Hazanavicius for directing and writing. It's great to see spy movie veterans go on to such acclaim, but I hope amidst all the Oscar buzz they don't forget their Eurospy spoof roots... because I still desperately want to see a third OSS 117 adventure! (It would likely see a much wider U.S. release following the visibility of The Artist.)

Congratulations to all the nominees from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Artist!

Haywire Movie Review

2012-01-21T02:31:00.000-08:00

Steven Soderbergh's action-packed, all-star spy movie Haywire opens this weekend, with a stellar cast featuring Gina Carano, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Antonio Bandaras, Michael Douglas, Channing Tatum and Bill Paxton. And it's pretty awesome. There are plenty of incredible action sequences sure to please Bourne fans, and Carano is a truly empowered female action star you can really believe could kick the asses of everyone whose ass she kicks in the movie in real life! (I thoroughly enjoyed Colombiana, but did you really believe that the rail-thin Zoe Saldana could win that final fight?) Read my full review of Haywire here. See the movie in theaters this weekend and chime in here with your thoughts.

Movie Review: Haywire (2012)

Archer Returns in a Big Way

2012-01-19T22:08:00.000-08:00

The jerkiest spy since The Adventurer returns tonight, when Archer begins its third season on FX. The network has released a number of cool stills and hilarious clips from the new season, and it looks just as promising as those that came before. (Both prior seasons have made my Best of the Year lists in television, here and here.) And the advertising, like the look off the show itself, is once again heavily Bond-inspired. Existing in a sort of never-never nebula where the Cold War never ended and classic From Russia With Love menswear never went out of style, Archer always provides as many nods to past pop culture as it does references to present pop culture. This year's poster art adds Cheryl's ocelot into the mix, which is itself a Honey West reference, and the TV spots all play Nancy Sinatra's theme song from The Last of the Secret Agents. The season premiere manages to name-check a pretty obscure Sixties spy movie, too... and in the process makes what I am certain is the best Operation C.I.A. joke ever made on a TV show!

Archer isn't just back on TV though. In addition to the Complete Season Two DVDs and Blu-rays that came out a few weeks ago, this week saw the release of a brand new book by Sterling Archer himself, How to Archer: The Ultimate Guide to Espionage and Style and Women and Also Cocktails Ever Written. The contents are very similar to Kingsley Amis's classic James Bond lifestyle bible The Book of Bond or Every Man His Own 007, providing all sorts of details on how to live the Archer lifestyle written in classic Archer deadpan, but the cover is something else. The cover itself is one of those great, obscure pop culture references that Archer excels at, perfectly recreating the look of a Sixties Annual. It's got hints of the James Bond annuals and a Danger Man one. I love it! You can sample the contents for yourself courtesy of publisher Harper Collins here.

Archer returns tonight, January 19, at 10pm Eastern on FX. The season premiere, guest starring Burt Reynolds, should continue to air throughout the weekend. Check your local listings, as they used to say.

New Spy DVDs Out Since Christmas

2012-01-19T15:25:00.000-08:00

I've gotten several weeks behind now on new spy DVDs, but there's been some great stuff coming out! So here's a massive post-Christmas catch-up.

Remember Age of Heroes, the movie we first heard about in 2010 about "Ian Fleming's Red Indians," the 30 Assault Unit commando team created by the future Bond author while he served in Naval Intelligence during WWII? It came out on Region 2 PAL DVD last June from Metrodome Distribution, and I had little hope of it ever showing up stateside. But this week, thanks to eOne Entertainment, it has, on both DVD and Blu-ray! The film stars former Bond baddie Sean Bean, and James D'Arcy plays Commander Fleming. A good old-fashioned war adventure, Age of Heroes depicts the incredible true story of how James Bond creator Ian Fleming oversaw the activities of an elite and supremely well-trained commando unit during World War II, following the members of the 30AU from defeat at Dunkirk to a chance to change the course of the war on a top secret mission in Norway. For more on Fleming's involvement with 30AU, check out Craig Cabell's books Ian Fleming's Secret War and The History of 30 Assault Unit: Ian Fleming's Red Indians.

Also out this week on DVD and Blu-ray, from Lions Gate, is Abduction, the teen spy movie starring simian Twilight heartthrob Taylor Lautner. This movie got terrible, terrible reviews when it came out theatrically last fall. And I won't say they're not deserved; it is, after all, a pretty terrible movie. But so are a lot of movies, and Abduction isn't any worse than most other bad movies, and is a whole lot more fun than most bad movies. So... okay, I will say that it didn't deserve quite the drubbing it took. Because if you have some friends over, pour some drinks, and put this on, you're all going to have a pretty good time. And while you're cracking jokes about Lautner's unbelievably terrible performance and wondering aloud what the likes of Sigourney Weaver, Jason Isaacs, Maria Bello, Alfred Molina and Michael Nyqvist are doing in this movie, you're also going to find yourself sucked in a bit by John Singleton's ridiculous action sequences and the overall absurdity of the script. It's bad, yes... but it's enjoyably bad! (And I have a sneaking suspicion that some people probably thought the teen spy movies of my youth were bad, like my own personal favorite If Looks Could Kill.) Extras on both versions include the featurettes "Abduction Chronicle: On-Camera Production Journal," "Initiation of an Action Hero: Taylor's Amazing Stunts" and "The Fight for The Truth: Making Abduction" as well as a gag reel. On top of that, the BD offers "an exclusive In-Film Experience with in-picture documentaries and exclusive behind the scenes interviews with cast and crew." If you care. Retail is $39.99 for the Blu-ray (which also comes with a digital copy) and $29.95 for the DVD, but of course they're both half those prices on Amazon.

Earlier this month, Acorn released the second volume of the Sixties ITC spy series Man in a Suitcase, starring Richard Bradford as sacked CIA agent turned private operator McGill. These episodes from the second half of the show's single, super-sized season made their Region 1 DVD debut. (The entire series was released in single volumes in Britain and Australia.) Many of McGill's best adventures come in the second half, so this would be a welcome release and a must-buy for American ITC aficionados on that basis alone... but as it happens, there's even more reason. Man in a Suitcase: Set 2 also includes a very big bonus feature: the 69-minute interview with star Richard Bradford that first appeared on Network's Region 2 DVD release (but was not found on the Region 4 Umbrella set). Bradford was a perfectionist and a Method actor, which brought him into conflict with some members of the cast and crew and earned him a reputation for being "difficult." In this surprisingly candid interview from 2004, he speaks frankly and openly about those on-set clashes, as well as discussing his early days studying at Lee Strasberg's famous Actors Studio, working with his friend and fellow Method actor Marlon Brando, and more. If for some reason you needed further encouragement to buy the second and final collection of this top-notch Sixties spy show, this is it! Man in a Suitcase: Set 2 retails for $59.99, though it's considerably cheaper from the usual online vendors.

Read my review of Acorn's Man in a Suitcase: Set 1 here.

In the last week of 2011 (on my birthday, in fact), Fox snuck out one of the very best spy releases of the year, Archer: The Complete Season Two, on DVD and Blu-ray. The wildly irreverent, always inappropriate Archer remains one of my favorite spy shows on TV, and as I said in my post about the Best Spy Television of 2011, I find it very impressive that the writers managed to maintain the high level of quality in its second season. That's particularly tough for a parody series. The secret, of course, is that Archer is much more than a mere spy parody. It's a dysfunctional family comedy that happens to be set in a spy agency. As I said before, the extremely raunchy humor is definitely not for all tastes, but if it is to your liking, you'll no doubt appreciate the excellent animation and cool spy style on top of the gags. And even if I didn't love it already, a very obscure Magnum, P.I. reference in Season Two assured the show my allegiance forever! The Season Two discs contain some very good extras, including excerpts from last year's Comic-Con panel, which are hilarious (though I wish they'd included the 2010 panel, too, which featured less cutting up from the cast, but more legitimate answers about how the show is made and what influenced its creators), and several animated shorts. In one, Archer himself answers viewers' questions (and the writers get a whole lot of mileage out of a single set-up!), and in another he messes up the opportunity to give a shout-out to troops stationed overseas who love the show in a uniquely Archer way. These extras certainly make up for Season One's fake "unaired pilot" (which annoyed some fans), but they don't let that concept go, either. In fact, another funny short expands upon the main gag in that feature. The same day Season Two came out, Fox also made Archer: The Complete Season One widely available on Blu-ray for the first time. The high-def version was previously a Best Buy exclusive, and Archer's top-notch design and crisp animation make it one show that truly benefits from high-def presentation.

Finally, Universal released the Jason Statham/Clive Owen period assassin thriller Killer Elite on dual formats, DVD and DVD/Blu-ray combo. The only real bonus material on both versions is deleted scenes, which is too bad, because I would have liked some featurettes exploring the supposedly factual book on which the movie was based, The Feather Men, and how and why the film deviates from its source. Oh well. The combo version also includes a digital copy and an Ultraviolet copy (oooh!), which is something the studio wants you to be way more excited about than you no doubt are. Retail is $29.98 for the DVD and $34.98 for the combo, though of course both are considerably cheaper than that on Amazon right now. I really enjoyed Killer Elite. You can read my full review of the film here.

Tradecraft: Fox Teen Spy Show Gets Pilot

2012-01-19T14:37:00.000-08:00

It seems like all the spy TV pitches studios bought last fall are getting pilot orders this year! (Which is great news.) The latest one to get the go ahead, from Fox, is the Karyn Usher teen spy show we first heard about in October. According to Deadline, "The procedural thriller centers on the orphaned 17-year-old daughter of a CIA operative who is recruited to become an operative herself. She encounters a mysterious rogue agent/assassin who serves as both her surrogate father and professional mentor in the spy world." This one sounds like it's got a lot of promise to me. (I confess I have a soft spot for teen spies.) This is the second spy pilot Fox has ordered this week; a few days ago they ordered Josh Friedman's female spy drama The Asset. So the odds are looking good that we'll see at least one spy series on the Fox schedule next fall...

Book Review: Call For the Dead by John le Carré (1961)

2012-01-18T09:04:00.000-08:00

Book Review: Call For the Dead by John le Carré (1961)

Part 3 of an ongoing series, "The Smiley Files," examining the career of George Smiley in literature and film. Read my introduction to Smiley here.

When new readers pick up a John le Carré book, chances are they’ll opt for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, or one of the new ones. Few will automatically reach for the author’s first book, the far less famous Call for the Dead. And in some ways, perhaps, that’s wise. Tinker, Tailor is a much richer book, and more likely to hook a new reader for life on le Carré’s writing. But there are good reasons to consider Call for the Dead as well. In fact, while Tinker, Tailor stands pretty well on its own, I would strongly advise reading Call for the Dead before The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. At the very least, Call for the Dead makes an essential prequel to that more famous novel, which directly follows events in the author’s first book. But it’s actually much more than that. Call for the Dead is a terrific spy novel in its own right, and as confident a debut novel as I’ve ever read, laying bare the promise of the phenomenal career to come. At a slight 150 pages or so, it’s also a very quick read and a great primer on the serious side of the spy genre that won’t require a serious investment of time.

Call for the Dead opens with a chapter entitled “A Brief History of George Smiley,” and, indeed, it’s the most concise such biography we ever receive of the character in all eight books in which he features. Almost all the characteristics we’ll come to associate with Smiley are already in place right from the start. (I say “almost” because I don’t think he actually begins polishing his glasses with the “fat end” of his tie until Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.) The bad clothes, the weight problem, the myopia, the passion for Baroque-era German poetry, the equally-placed disdain for both Soviet Communism and British Bureaucracy, the perpetually straying wife and, above all, the brilliant mind—all present and accounted for. His wife, Ann, in fact, has already left him—for a Cuban race car driver, this time. As in most of the Smiley novels, she’s very much a presence throughout the book, constantly on his mind, but not actually physically present. Honestly, that’s too bad. I saw the 1966 film adaptation (which was retitled The Deadly Affair) long before I ever read this book, and it was a definite improvement on the part of screenwriter Paul Dehn (Goldfinger, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold) to integrate Ann and her wayward ways into the story. (There’s certainly evidence that le Carré thought so, too, as he eventually appropriated significant portions of Dehn’s Ann plotline into Tinker, Tailor.) Of course, it’s more possible to have a character weigh heavily on another character’s mind in a book than a film, and there’s no doubt in the novel as to how much she means to Smiley.

Call for the Dead opens with Smiley well past his wartime prime, toiling away in petty administrative duties in the vast bureaucracy of the Circus (le Carré slang for British Intelligence), reviewing the files of potential traitors and updating their security clearance. The Circus received an anonymous letter reporting that a Foreign Office employee named Samuel Fennan had been a member of the Communist Party in his pre-war University days. Smiley is obligated to follow up on this, and suggests to Fennan that they conduct their interview in the park so as not to cause Fennan any embarrassment by meeting in his office. The interview goes smoothly, Smiley finds himself liking Fennan, and he concludes that no action is necessary; after all, “half the Cabinet were in the Party in the thirties.” All seems well. Then that night he’s awakened with a call summoning him into the office at an ungodly hour for a meeting with his fastidious, incompetent, politically-fixated boss, Maston. (Maston is known officially as “the Adviser,” a title we later learn preceded Control as functional head of the service, but better known among rival departments as “Marlene Dietrich” owing to his drama queen tendencies.) Maston is panicked. Fennan is dead, and there’s a suicide note blaming Smiley and the Circus for harassing him.

Smiley can’t understand it. His report completely exonerated the man, and their meeting ended on a positive note. Was Fennan really a spy after all? Maston doesn’t care. He just wants Smiley to smooth over the whole thing before it comes back to reflect badly on the Circus at Whitehall. Smiley is duly dispatched to the home of Fennan’s widow, Elsie. She tells him a story completely at odds with his own impression of the previous day’s events, and says that her husband was a wreck when he came home that night, driven to that state by Smiley’s persecution. Smiley’s inclined to believe her and wondering how he could have been so wrong in his interpretation of the meeting with Fennan when the phone rings. Smiley answers, expecting it to be Maston. Instead, it’s a wake-up call from the telephone exchange (I guess that used to be a regular service?), ordered by Samuel Fennan: the titular call for the dead. Suddenly, the widow’s story doesn’t add up anymore. Why would a man planning to kill himself order a wake-up call for the next morning?

Smiley teams up with Mendel, a Special Branch detective on the verge of retirement who will recur throughout the series, to answer that question. The Adviser doesn’t want it answered. He wants the whole affair wrapped up as quickly as possible with minimal embarrassment for the Circus. Smiley is so outraged that he quits the Circus (the first of many such occasions), and decides to pursue the investigation on his own with the aid of Mendel and his former colleague, Peter Guillam (fated to be another recurring character), who provides crucial information from inside the secret service that Smiley’s no longer privy to. That innocuous phone call will lead this trio on a perilous quest involving East German spies, the London underworld, more murders, and specters from Smiley’s wartime past. It will also land Smiley in the hospital, the victim of a vicious attempt on his own life—and see him grappling in another brutal, life-or-death struggle atop his very own Reichenbach Falls. Yes, it's all a bit more physical and a bit more of an adventure than one might expect of George Smiley!

All of the characters are richly drawn, from Mendel to Elsie Fennan to bit parts like Adam Scarr, the polygamist chop shop owner who puts Smiley and his pals on the trail of the blond German spy Hans-Dieter Mundt, a sadistic figure who will play a much larger role in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. We care about these people. The characters ring so true, in fact, that le Carré doesn’t need to provide the intricate, twisting sort of plot that will characterize his future work—or the far-out sort of spectacle that Ian Fleming would dream up. Call for the Dead is a very down-to-earth spy story (though not without action), a procedural whose fascination lies in the wholly believable secret world it sheds light on and in the equally believable human beings who inhabit that world. It may be slight—both in scope and length—compared to the author’s later novels, but it nonetheless serves as a perfect introduction to George Smiley and his world—and to the wider oeuvre of John le Carré. If Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is the perfect Smiley hardback—a dense, challenging work to be read and pondered in a favorite armchair—I would call Call for the Dead the perfect Smiley paperback—a fast thriller to be consumed quickly on a long commute.

The Smiley Files
Part 1: George Smiley: An Introduction
Part 2: Movie Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Tradecraft: Fox Orders Pilot for The Asset

2012-01-17T22:57:00.000-08:00

Last August, we heard that Fox had bought a pitch from Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles producer Josh Friedman called The Asset. Now Deadline reports that Fox has ordered up a pilot. This is the next step along the road to your television sets, but certainly not the last. If the network likes the pilot, then hopefully they'll order it to series... and then you'll see it on TV next fall. All we know about the show is that it's described as "a character-driven drama set in the New York office of the CIA, which centers on a female agent." I still think The Asset is a great title, but I also still want to know what the cool twist is that differentiates this female-driven spy show from Covert Affairs and Alias! And I know there must be such a differentiating twist, or else Fox wouldn't have ordered the pilot and Josh Friedman wouldn't have pitched it to begin with. I would have thought it would behoove Fox to include whatever sets this show apart in their early press releases, but of course I'll be tuning in if this show makes it to the air no matter what...

More Details On Melissa George's BBC Spy Series, Nemesis

2012-01-17T13:06:00.000-08:00

The BBC has revealed more details about Nemesis, their new Melissa George spy series from Kudos (Spooks/MI-5) and Frank Spotnitz (producer of the American version of Strike Back) that we first heard about last fall. The 8-part series, which will air on BBC One in Britain and Cinemax in America, stars George as Sam, a top operative for an elite private intelligence contractor who learns that someone on her team wants her dead, but doesn't know who or why. Other cast members include Adam Rayner (Undercovers), Stephen Dillane (Spy Game), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Killer Elite, Strike Back), Lex Shrapnel (Captain America: The First Avenger), Uriel Emil (The Bourne Ultimatum), Patrick Malahide (The World Is Not Enough, The Long Kiss Goodnight) and Stephen Campbell Moore (The Bank Job, Johnny English Reborn). Location filming will take place in Scotland, London and Morocco. The usual Bourne comparisons are thrown around by the Beeb ("a complex and mysterious Bourne-style female spy unlike anyone we've seen on TV before"), but the such shorthand probably does the series a disservice. Spotnitz promises "huge story twists and turns, and intriguing characters who are both emotionally and morally complex." It sounds like a bit of a combination of Strike Back and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and if Spotnitz pulls that off, I'll be very pleased!

Tradecraft: New Team Invokes The Sigma Protocol

2012-01-16T22:53:00.000-08:00

We heard in mid-2008 that Iron Man scribes Art Marcum and Matt Holloway were tackling an adaptation of Robert Ludlum's final completed novel, The Sigma Protocol, for Universal and Strike Entertainment. But things have been quiet on that front for some time. Now, Deadline reports that the project is still in the works at Uni, but with new writers and new producers. According to the trade blog, legendary producer Irwin Winkler (Goodfellas, The Right Stuff, S*P*Y*S) has been tapped not only to co-produce (along with Captivate Entertainment's Jeffrey Weiner and Ben Smith, custodians of the Ludlum legacy), but also to co-write the film with Jose Ruisanchez. In his entire four-plus decade career, Winkler has only three writing credits (most recently for the 2006 Samuel L. Jackson drama Home of the Brave). Apparently his take involves going back to the book (kind of a radical approach to Ludlum after the last two Bourne films disappointingly abandoned the author's plots), after Marcum and Holloway's draft had drifted fairly far afield in an attempt to be topical with Wall Street themes. Ludlum's novel, which I haven't read, follows, an ordinary man on vacation in Europe who becomes entangled in international intrigue with a female rogue agent. “What we are really hoping to do is create a franchise around this ordinary guy,” Winkler told Deadline “Unlike Bourne, who is a trained assassin, this is an innocent guy traveling in Europe who gets in way over his head. And it has all the great Ludlum intrigue.” There are so many Ludlum movies in development; I just want to see some of them actually get made!

Lockout Trailer

2012-01-13T14:03:00.000-08:00

Well, this isn't really really a trailer, per se, but AICN has posted this promotional video with plenty of footage providing us with our first look at the next Luc Besson-produced neo-Eurospy movie, Lockout (here billed under its infinitely inferior alternate title of MS One, a moniker no doubt intended to evoke Besson's French hit District B13). As we learned when it was first announced in 2010, Lockout is not a conventional neo-Eurospy movie along the lines of Besson's Taken, From Paris With Love or Transporter movies. Instead, it is what movies like Agent 3S3: Operation Atlantis or Mission Stardust were to the Sixties Eurospy movies: a genre hybrid that happily handpicks elements from spy and sci-fi and anything else that comes to mind, throws it all in a blender and damn the consequences. This one's about a disgraced government agent who has to save the President's daughter (all standard, typically formulaic Eurospy or neo-Eurospy stuff)... in space! I like the twist. The footage here definitely makes it seem more sci-fi than spy, but it's clear that the film has that same overall feel and attitude as Besson's other neo-Eurospy fare. And, as I expected him to, Guy Pearce seems to make an absolutely perfect hero for one of these movies. I love his one-liners in the video. And I love that he gets to do what Liam Neeson never did in Taken when his teenage daughter was whining like a ten-year-old: he shushes Maggie Grace. (Grace is said to have a much larger role in Taken 2, and I hope Lockout proves why. Even in the brief snippets of her performance we see here, it looks like a definite improvement over Taken.) Lockout opens in France next month; Film District will release it in the United States later this year. Take a look:

Watch the First Five Minutes of Haywire Online

2012-01-11T09:00:00.000-08:00

Relativity Media has put up the first five minutes of Steven Soderbergh's action-packed spy movie Haywire on Hulu. You can watch it here. Pretty cool, huh? Well, that only gives you a taste of all the action in this movie. And each fight scene is staged and shot differently, keeping things interesting. Haywire is a surprisingly good action movie, and I'm looking forward to seeing it again. Read my review of the film here.

Official James Bond 50th Anniversary "Golden Girl" Poster

2012-01-10T23:59:00.000-08:00

007.com has revealed the official "Golden Girl" James Bond 50th Anniversary poster that Michael G. Wilson alluded to in today's "Bond 50" Blu-ray press release. Quite stunning! I always liked that 25th Anniversary poster that simply showed all the 1-sheets, but this is better. And check out that SkyFall title treatment down there by the Golden Girl's nether region: it's pretty cool to see it in the context of all the others, isn't it?

More Bond Blu-rays Coming This Year

2012-01-10T17:19:00.000-08:00

Finally! At long last, the remaining nine James Bond movies will see release in high-definition on the Blu-ray format. Several waves came out in 2008 and 2009, but since then, we've seen nothing. Until now. Today at the Consumer Electronics Show, Fox and MGM announced that all 22 official 007 movies to date (that excludes rogue productions Never Say Never Again and Casino Royale '67, both of which are already available individually on Blu-ray from MGM) will be released on Blu-ray together in the massive "collectible box-set" Bond 50. It's the first time all the movies have been released together in the format, and marks the Blu-ray debut for You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever, The Spy Who Loved Me, Octopussy, A View to a Kill, The Living Daylights, GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies. In addition to the films, Bond 50 will boast "more than 130 hours of bonus features including some new and exclusive content." I'm really curious to see what that new and exclusive content is! All of the Blu-rays released so far have included the exact same special features as the DVD Special Editions, so does this new content mean that the missing titles will get new, additional extras? Or will there be a bonus disc (or discs)? I'm betting on the latter. SRP for this huge set (which marks the first time in recent memory that all of the films have been packaged together in any format in the U.S.) is a whopping $299.99, but it can already be pre-ordered on Amazon for substantially less: just $199.99. And that's not bad at all, as it works out to less than $10 a disc.

Of course the bad news here is that most fans likely already own the existing Blu-ray titles, and since no individual releases have been announced, they may feel compelled to shell out all over again for this complete set just to own the ones they don't already have. That's clearly the strategy here. And, personally, I have to admit it doesn't really bother me. Historically I've always upgraded to the latest release of Bond movies anyway, going all the way back to the days of VHS, so I'd probably buy this set even if the only upgrade was a new bonus disc. (I'm a sucker for new editions of James Bond and Evil Dead.) And for those who aren't completists like me (though I suspect a lot of readers are), I have no doubt that the missing titles will be released on their own sometime down the road.

The press release ends with a quote from Michael G. Wilson, promising that "We have a whole program of exciting activities planned for our 50th anniversary year, beginning with today’s announcement." This is an exciting beginning to 007's Golden Anniversary in the cinema. I can't wait to see the rest of the program EON's got planned! In the meantime, here's a trailer for the Blu-ray collection:

Ryan Reynolds Really Wants You to Think He's Jason Bourne

2012-01-10T12:45:00.000-08:00

This new poster for the upcoming Denzel Washington/Ryan Reynolds spy movie Safe House started popping up in movie theaters over the holiday season. While the teaser poster just showed Washington, this one adds Reynolds to the equation. And if your reaction was, "Hm, that looks really familiar..." here's why:

Clearly, the studio wants you to subconsciously say to yourself, "Oh, I know that movie, and I like that movie!" I don't know... Reynolds doesn't make that convincing a Bourne on that poster. Here's hoping Safe House is even a fraction as good as The Bourne Ultimatum...

Final Poster For Haywire Revealed

2012-01-09T17:54:00.000-08:00

Relativity Media has shared the final 1-sheet image for Steven Soderbergh's upcoming action spy thriller Haywire, starring Gina Carano, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor and Michael Douglas. It sticks with the same general aesthetic we've seen on the U.S. teaser poster (which still features prominently in the campaign, adorning busstops and construction sites throughout L.A.) and the UK quad, but finally gives audiences a decent glimpse at Carano's face. Remember that face, because with this film a new action heroine is born. We'll be seeing more of Gina Carano.

To find out why, read my full review of Haywire here.

Haywire opens nationwide on January 20.

First Photo of Renner as New Bourne

2012-01-09T09:26:00.000-08:00

USA Today (via Dark Horizons) has published what I believe is the first photo of Jeremy Renner as the new Bourne... or the non-Bourne star of the new Bourne movie, I should say, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. (I really wish Tony Gilroy had just had him step in as the same character Matt Damon played. It worked fine for James Bond!) Dark Horizons reports that Renner's secret agent is named Aaron Cross. Well, whatever he's called, I'm very excited to see Renner take over that franchise after he impressed me in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. And that picture certainly conveys a Bourne-like badass superspy. As previously reported, the new film co-stars Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Oscar Isaacs, Albert Finney and Joan Allen.

The Bourne Legacy opens August 4.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Does Well in North American Expansion

2012-01-09T02:47:00.000-08:00

Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, easily one of the best spy movies of recent years, expanded into more markets in North America this weekend, and entered the Top 10 at the box office at number 9... on just 809 screens, far fewer than any other film in the Top 10. That means it averaged an impressive $7,129 per screen (according to Box Office Mojo), the second highest per-screen average on the chart, well ahead of number 2 film Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. The Hollywood Reporter reports that "Tinker Tailor flourished in surburban markets--a theater in the surburbs north of Oklahama City was No. 5 in the country--as well as continuing to thrive in holdover art house locations." It's good to hear that there's demand for cerebral John le Carré adaptation outside of big cities, bearing out Roger Ebert's recent essay which pointed out things that should be obvious and partly blamed the 2011 box office slump on Hollywood's stupid misconception that "small-town moviegoers don't like 'art movies.'" I'm sure there's a lot more demand for the film in the markets it still hasn't opened in, too. Focus Features will continue to expand Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in the weeks ahead, so if it hasn't played in your town yet, just be patient. It will. And you've got something truly special to look forward to!

Read my review of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) here.
Read my introduction to George Smiley here.

Tradecraft: Rhona Mitra Joins Strike Back

2012-01-06T20:44:00.000-08:00

Deadline reports that British actress Rhona Mitra will join the cast of Cinemax's Strike Back next season. (If you haven't watched the first season yet, though, you might not want to click on that link, as the trade blog's story contains plot spoilers.) Mitra is probably most famous as the model for Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider videogames during the height of their popularity, though more recently she's starred in films like Doomsday and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans and the short-lived TV show The Gates. She's got some spy experience under her belt, too, having appeared in a small role in the Mark Wahlberg movie Shooter (review here), and in an episode of Barry Sonenfeld's flash-in-the-pan 2000 spy show Secret Agent Man (which was not a remake of ITC's Danger Man aka Secret Agent, despite sharing its theme song with that show's American title sequence). The new season of Strike Back starts shooting soon in South Africa.

Read my review of the Cinemax version of Strike Back here.
Read my review of the original UK version of Strike Back here.

Tradecraft: Seth Rogan Joins Disney Spy Comedy

2012-01-05T09:23:00.000-08:00

Variety reports that Seth Rogan has come aboard to produce, and likely star in, the Disney spy comedy The B-Team. The story, by Derek Gulley and David Scneiderman, follows a spy's tech support team who must rise to the occasion and spring into action themselves to rescue him when the top agent goes missing. The project has been in development for several years, but Rogan's involvement is likely to spark further movement.

Thomas Newman to Score SkyFall?

2012-01-04T23:56:00.000-08:00

MI6 is reporting that longtime Bond composer David Arnold (who is also the musical director of the London Olympics this year) will not score SkyFall (is the F capital? I'm not sure anymore), and longtime Sam Mendes collaborator Thomas Newman will. Hm. Well, that's... interesting. I'm a big Arnold fan myself, and I'll be sorry and nervous to see him step aside for a film (hopefully he'll return to the series in the future), but after five straight Arnold scores (another and he would have tied John Barry's longest streak, which he's already got beat in terms of years), I'm also curious to hear another take. There are just a lot of composers I would have been far more eager to see try their hand at 007 than Newman. Nothing against him, mind you. He's a great composer who's earned ten well-deserved Oscar nominations. I've just never heard him do anything that made me think he'd be appropriate for Bond. (Though I never thought that about Alexandre Desplat, either, until I heard his extremely Bondian Largo Winch music, so you never know.) But he's certainly got range, so I expect he'll deliver something thrilling and appropriate. He's got a few spy movies under his belt, too, though neither are remotely Bondian. In fact, I found his score for The Debt pretty underwhelming and fairly generic as modern spy music goes:

No, I don't want that sound. But his score for Steven Soderbergh's period spy movie The Good German (review here), while not remotely appropriate for 007, demonstrates clearly that Newman is more than capable of adapting to an existing style. In this case, it's a 1940s style:

And I'll admit I'm not super familiar with his whole oeuvre; he's not a composer I've ever followed that closely. When he's made an impression on me, it's usually been with dramatic scores that tug the heartstrings, like WALL*E or Mendes' American Beauty. But try nine minutes or twelve minutes into this Adjustment Bureau suite for some surprisingly atypical action music. I'm not saying that's what I'd want for Bond, but I am saying that it demonstrates a range not hinted at in some of his more purely romantic scores.

Of course, so far this is just a scoop on MI6 with no source credited. We won't know if he's on board for sure until there's some sort of official announcement. But given his history with the director, I'd say it's highly likely. Overall, as much as I like David Arnold's work, it's exciting to have a fresh take on Bond music again. Usually when John Barry stepped away from his semi-regular duties, the results were more dated scores like Bill Conti's For Your Eyes Only or Marvin Hamlisch's The Spy Who Loved Me, but dated or not, some of those non-Barry outings yielded spectacular results. (I'm particularly partial to George Martin's Live and Let Die, and Conti's music has grown on my over the years.) Other times, they've resulted in Eric Serra's GoldenEye. I'm hoping SkyFall proves to be more of the former... but most of all that it proves to be classic Bond.

Upcoming (Non-) Spy DVDs: Pierce Brosnan's U.S. Debut

2012-01-04T01:26:00.000-08:00

I've long wanted to see Pierce Brosnan's U.S. TV debut, the pre-Remington Steele miniseries The Manions of America... and very shortly, I'll be able to, thanks to eOne Entertainment. TV Shows On DVD reports that eOne will release the 286-minute 1981 miniseries about the Irish immigrant experience in America as a 2-DVD set on February 28. The SRP is $29.98, though it can currently be pre-ordered on Amazon for slightly less than that. Brosnan (around the time that Cubby Broccoli supposedly commented on the set of For Your Eyes Only that "if that man can speak with a British accent, he's our next James Bond" or something to that effect) co-stars with Kate Mulgrew (Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins), Linda Purl (Under Cover - hm, there's one I'd like to see on DVD) and Simon MacCorkindale (The Riddle of the Sands, Counterstrike - and there's another!).

Best of 2011: Television

2012-01-02T10:09:00.000-08:00

As with spy movies, 2011 was an excellent year for spy TV, too. There may not have been quite as many new spy series as last year (but then again, maybe there were), but the ones we got were pretty darn good for the most part. Additionally, the right shows from last year (Archer, Covert Affairs, Nikita) were renewed, and came back strong. (Well, the first two did, anyway. Nikita hasn't quite found its footing since the big shakeup at the end of Season 1.) Once again, there's such an embarrassment of riches that rather than just saying that Page Eight or Homeland are the best TV of the year, I can make individual categories, like the Emmies.

Best New Spy TV Show of 2011 - Homeland

I have to admit up front: I'm behind. I haven't yet seen the entire first season of Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa's Showtime drama Homeland. Perhaps it takes a 24-style dive in quality in the second half of the season. I hope not, though, and I don't expect it to based on the strength of the early episodes, which are compelling enough on their own for me to make this selection. Gordon and Gansa successfully dial down their frenetic 24 pacing to create a slow-build spy drama that devotes an entire season (and possibly an entire series) to the question of whether or not an American (in this case a rescued POW played by Damien Lewis) is an enemy agent. That's quite a feat after 24 raised and answered that question on an almost weekly basis (to the point of absurdity), its spy agency (CTU) more rife with moles than Kim Philby's MI6. When this cable show, a remake of an Israeli series, was first announced, I wondered how it could possibly perpetuate its Manchurian Candidate setup into an entire season, let alone an entire series, but Gordon and Gansa answered that question right off the bat in a truly terrific pilot: the way television should sustain a season, with rich, compelling characters. Lewis' Sgt. Nicholas Brody may well be a terrorist, but Gansa, Gordon and director Michael Cuesta still make us care about him and even identify with him. Would you have expected that from the producers of 24? Claire Danes' CIA agent Carrie Mathison, meanwhile, is so troubled she makes Queen & Country's Tara Chace seem well-adjusted. She's obsessive. She's on anti-psychotic medications, and hiding her condition from the Agency. She blames herself for 9/11. And, like many a fictional spy before her but in a much more pathetic light, she seeks refuge from her troubles in a parade of compulsive, anonymous sexual encounters. (She even wears a wedding ring to ward off potential relationship-seekers.) Danes compiles all of these severe character flaws into a character you can't take your eyes off of, the first TV spy tailor-made for cable. And those are just the leads. Virtually every character on screen is well-developed, with only David Harewood's Deputy CIA Director ringing a cliched note. Homeland is as compelling as television gets.

Honorable Mention

Cinemax's Strike Back (full review here), another cable show, may not be the intelligent action drama that its UK progenitor was, but it's thoroughly watchable in its own right, offering the opposite of what Homeland gives us: instead of well-rounded characters, we get mindless action, preposterous stunts and frequent nudity... and sometimes that's exactly what we want. Strike Back delivers it with style. I can't quite tell where I stand on CBS's Person of Interest, starring Jim Caviezel as a former CIA agent who pools his spy know-how with Michael Emerson's infinite resources to help New York's helpless, Equalizer-style. It's The Equalizer meets Batman, and that's a pretty cool combo. Some episodes are great. Others are quite terrible. It doesn't really deserve an honorable mention most of the time, but I wanted to say something about it and this seemed like the appropriate place.

Best Spy TV Movie or Miniseries - Page Eight

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, one of my two picks for Best Spy Film of the Year, didn't have a monopoly on all-star casts among serious British spy dramas this year. An almost equally all-star ensemble could be seen on TV (on BBC in England, and on PBS's Masterpiece Contemporary in America) in David Hare's adult drama Page Eight, including Bill Nighy, Michael Gambon, Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Judy Davis and Ewen Bremner. Nighy stars as a senior MI5 analyst Johnny Worricker whose life is thrown upside down when his boss gives him a secret document whose eighth page contains a bombshell big enough to bring down the government and then dies before instructing him on what, exactly, he wanted him to do with this intelligence. Simultaneously to these events, he's just met the perfect woman in his next door neighbor, played by Weisz. But Worricker's been in the spy game too long to believe in coincidences. Is he right to be suspicious? Or will paranoia rob him of the best thing he's ever stumbled into? This is espionage of the serious, slow-moving school at it's very best. The action plays out deliberately on the faces of these veteran thespians in the form of sidelong glances that say more than monologues instead of in car chases and gunfights. And we get plenty of that class-conscious in-fighting and office politics that I love in this sort of British desk spy story. Page Eight is that rare class of TV movie that just as easily could have been theatrical, and fans of John le Carré and Len Deighton should eat it up.

Best Returning Spy TV Show - Archer

There's not much new that I can say about Archer that I didn't say when I picked it as last year's best new show, but I do find it impressive that the writers managed to maintain the high level of quality in its second season. That's particularly tough for a parody series. The secret, of course, is that Archer is much more than a mere spy parody. It's a dysfunctional family comedy that happens to be set in a spy agency. As I said before, the extremely raunchy humor is definitely not for all tastes, but if it is to your liking, you'll no doubt appreciate the excellent animation and cool spy style on top of the gags. As for the parody side, there are a lot of great pop culture parodies (yes, actual, clever parodies and not mere Family Guy-style references), and not just to spy movies. As a life-long Magnum, P.I. fan, my head nearly exploded when one episode, "Placebo Effect," ended with a lengthy, nearly line-for-line recreation of one of the most memorable Magnum endings. "Did You See the Sun Rise" is classic television that deserves much more of a place in the history of the medium than it gets, but unlike some of the more famous Miami Vice moments, doesn't seem to be that well known outside of a core group of Magnum fans. For those that do know it, though, that Archer reference will blow your mind. What other show would even greenlight such a thing? Of course, the end of "Placebo Effect" works just fine for viewers who aren't familiar with the Magnum episode. As it should, in any good parody. I just happen to be a Magnum fan, but I'm sure I'm probably missing other, equally obscure references on Archer. But I don't feel like I'm losing out, because the show is so consistently funny no matter what level you appreciate it on.

Honorable Mention

Covert Affairs also came back strong. But I'm about to talk about that below...

Best Spy TV Episode - Covert Affairs - "Uberlin"

There were a lot of good episodes of spy television this year, but the Berlin-set second season episode of Covert Affairs demonstrated why that USA show deserves to be taken seriously as spy TV. Writer Erica Shelton offered everything spy fans could ask for from a good spy show, or even movie: real Berlin locations, Cold War intrigue, assets with dubious loyalties, and even some action in the form of a pretty cool car chase. I love the way that this show uses actual foreign locations—and uses them well. Producer Doug Liman (director of The Bourne Identity) told a Comic-Con crowd this year that it's frequently just him and a camera on these foreign shoots, shooting guerrilla style, but in the case of "Uberlin" episode director Jonathan Glassner clearly deserves at least some of the credit. I don't know how much of the episode was actually shot in the German capital, but Glassner uses whatever bits were to clearly create the impression that it all was. Plus, the episode made full use of the show's most undervalued asset: Peter Gallagher. The plot found his CIA honcho forced back into the field for one assignment alongside Annie Walker (Piper Perabo).

Honorable Mention

As I said, there were a lot of good episodes this year. The second season premiere of Archer was a standout in a series that nearly always delivers the goods, showcasing both the show's raunchy humor and stylish animated action in a hilarious episode that combined alpine spyjinks like snowmobile chases and ski chalets with a running gag about an underage celebutante throwing herself at Archer. The pilot of Homeland, as I mentioned above, was also stellar. It did everything a pilot should, clearly establishing the show's characters and making the audience care about them in only an hour while at the same time putting into motion a complex ongoing plot. Nikita also deserves mention for its penultimate Season 1 episode, "Betrayal," which perfectly paid off a season's worth of plot threads in an exciting build-up to a final confrontation between Nikita and division. The actual finale, unfortunately, didn't quite deliver on the promise of "Betrayal," as it scrambled to get its ducks in a row for Season 2. It's ironic, but had the series been cancelled after a single season it might have delivered a more satisfying finale.

Worst of 2011

As with all of this year's spy movies, this TV season was really good enough to avoid any real Worst Of contenders. The worst script I read was for the pilot of Fox's Exit Strategy, but that didn't make it to air. (And, I have to admit, the actual filmed pilot marked an improvement on the script... though it still didn't merit a pickup.) ABC's Sixties-set spying stewardess series Pan-Am didn't compel me to tune in beyond the first few episodes, but it didn't outright stink either. Mainly, the non-spy elements weren't that compelling to me. So with no Under Covers on the schedule, I'm going to give the networks a pass as well and not anoint a Worst Series this year. (If we venture slightly outside the spy perimeters, though, that revival of Charlie's Angels was the worst television I've seen in years! Luckily, I've already forgotten it.)

Still to come: the best and worst spy DVDs of 2011... and a look ahead at the coming year. Check back soon!

Best of 2011: Movies

2012-01-01T16:37:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

2011 has been a truly banner year for spy entertainment across the board. In movies alone, I think we've had more of them in 2011 than in any other year since I started this blog in 2006. But it wasn't just quantity; it was an overall year of quality, too. Some years, the pickings have been fairly slim in choosing a best spy movie of the year, but 2011 has offered an embarrassment of riches for fans of the genre. There have been enough good ones that in another year, something like Hanna or X-Men: First Class might have easily grabbed the top honors. But not this year. I could probably even make a Top 10 list rather than choosing a single winner. And, as it happens, I'm not choosing a single winner. It's a tie.

Best Spy Movies of 2011: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

Since it was first announced over two years ago, director Tomas Alfredson's feature film adaptation of the classic John le Carré novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (previously made as an excellent 1979 BBC miniseries) has flown high on my radar. I've breathlessly followed the lengthy casting process, which packed the film with star after star, and barely contained my anticipation as Europeans had the chance to see the film months ahead of its U.S. release. Reviews out of the UK were stellar, as expected. As a serious contender for Best Picture, overall, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy seemed almost preordained to achieve the top spot on a list of best spy films of the year. But it was never a given. Alfredson was adapting my favorite novel of all time, a dense and complex work that had previously barely been contained in a 7-hour miniseries, into a 2-hour feature. Could he possibly satisfy dedicated fans of the novel? Yes he did—thrillingly. (Read my full review here.) We couldn't have hoped for a better film version of the story, and now all my hopes turn towards further Smiley films from the same team.
Far less preordained was that I'd be equally thrilled by the fourth film in the Tom Cruise-starring Mission: Impossible franchise. I absolutely love the TV show upon which these films are ostensibly based, but I haven't loved any of the previous films in the series. Upon its initial release, I hated the first one (though I've since come round on it a bit), and the second was even worse. I did like the third one, but not enough to expect to enjoy the fourth anywhere near as much as I did. Sure, the casting was promising, but then there was that ridiculous title. Yet Brad Bird (The Incredibles), in his first live-action feature, delivered the most sheer fun in any spy film this year. Prior entries in this franchise have owed more to James Bond than the series whose theme music they share. Ghost Protocol, however, not only incorporates more aspects intrinsic to Mission: Impossible than the previous movies (including quite a few sly in-jokes for fans of the TV show), but also finally succeeds in out-Bonding Bond—at least for the moment. It delivers all the huge, larger-than-life, world-at-stake spy action that Quantum of Solace failed to. The much-hyped sequence with Cruise mountaineering about outside the tallest building in the world is itself worth the price of admission. I've seen it twice so far, and I can't wait to see it again. It's great stuff. (Watch for a full review soon.)

The fact that both of these spy movies were opening in the U.S. in the same month has fascinated me, since they perfectly represent the polar extremes of the spy genre. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a realistic, tightly-plotted, character-driven period thriller about loyalty, betrayal and office politics set mostly in the smoke-filled confines of a government bureaucracy, whereas Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is a silly, way over-the-top action movie filled with spectacularly improbable gadgets and deliriously impossible stunts. About all they have in common, interestingly, is that both movies begin with a mission going wrong in Budapest. But they're both undeniably spy movies, and together they represent just about everything I love about the genre—on both extremes. I kept trying to suss out which one I liked more, and finally realized it was a tie. A perfect tie. I couldn't be more satisfied.

Honorable Mention

As I mentioned above, either Joe Wright's stylish teen assassin movie Hanna or Matthew Vaughn's equally stylish paen to Sixties spy movies with superheroes, X-Men: First Class (review here), could have taken top honors in another, less crowded year. Both deserve to be seen. Neither Colombiana (review here) nor Killer Elite (review here) ever would have had a shot at the title, but both delivered exactly what I wanted from them in their respective corners of the genre. 2011 really was a very good year for spy films.

Worst of 2011

It was so good, in fact, that I don't actually have a pick for the Worst of the Year. The actual worst spy film of the year, qualitatively, was probably the Taylor Lautner vehicle Abduction, but even that was enough fun that I'd feel pretty churlish to actually saddle it with that demonstrative. The most disappointing spy movie of the year, for me, was probably The Debt. While I had no expectations whatsoever for Abduction, I had high hopes for The Debt (review here), since its pedigree included writers of both X-Men: First Class and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It fell seriously short of my expectations, but was by no means the worst of anything. So I'm not picking a worst spy film of 2011!

Stay tuned for a look at the best and worst spy television of the year...

Merry Christmas From the Double O Section!

2011-12-25T00:23:00.000-08:00

H0 H0 HO7! Here's wishing all my readers a happy holiday, no matter which one you celebrate, filed with Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Man, dry eggnog martinis, and lots of spy gifts under the tree. I also hope you're able to tune in to the EPIX all-day James Bond marathon for at least a brief taste of 007, and if you're especially lucky, maybe able to make it out to a theater tonight to see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. I'm traveling for the holidays, myself, and on a somewhat hectic schedule. (Hectic enough to be behind on reviews during a spy-filled movie season and to have missed my annual gift guide altogether this year, for which I'm sorry.) Since I didn't have time to think up a clever new Christmas post for 2011, instead I'll direct you to my 2006 Christmas post, from my very first year blogging, which offers some evergreen suggestions for holiday-themed spy viewing. And on top of that, I'll reprint this episode review from the Scarecrow and Mrs. King holiday episode “The Long Christmas Eve,” excerpted from my full review of that show's first season:

“The Long Christmas Eve” finds Amanda (Kate Jackson) trying out her homespun housewife wisdom on the KGB as well as the Agency, and her speech about the holiday spirit gets CIA and KGB agents to spend Christmas Eve together in a remote cabin in the woods and call a truce from trying to kill each other. Good thing, too, because WWIII seems about to break out with a whole unit of Russian soldiers on U.S. attacking American agents! Scarecrow's (Bruce Boxleitner) reaction to waking up to find Amanda serving hot chocolate to his enemy is priceless. This episode also gets points for another moment of Avengers-like weirdness when an assassin dressed in a Santa suit blows up a phone booth.

Happy Christmas to all!

Acorn's Man in a Suitcase: Set 2 to Include Richard Bradford Interview

2011-12-20T17:42:00.000-08:00

Great news for American ITC fans! Acorn's previously announced second set of Man in a Suitcase will include a very big bonus feature: the 69-minute interview with star Richard Bradford that first appeared on Network's Region 2 DVD release (but was not found on the Region 4 Umbrella set). Bradford, who played the cool-as-ice burned spy turned private eye McGill in the 1967-68 series, was a perfectionist and a Method actor, which brought him into conflict with some members of the cast and crew and earned him a reputation for being "difficult." In this surprisingly candid interview from 2004, he speaks frankly and openly about those on-set clashes, as well as discussing his early days studying at Lee Strasberg's famous Actors Studio, working with his friend and fellow Method actor Marlon Brando, and more. If for some reason you needed further encouragement to buy the second and final collection of this top-notch Sixties spy show, this is it!

Read my review of Acorn's Man in a Suitcase: Set 1 here.

Movie Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

2011-12-20T01:09:00.000-08:00

Movie Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Part 2 of an ongoing series, "The Smiley Files," examining the career of George Smiley in literature and film. Read my introduction to Smiley here.

Tomas Alfredson and screenwriters Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan have done the impossible: they’ve boiled down John le Carré’s complex, nuanced, and epic 400-page novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy into a sleek feature film running just over two hours that still manages to retain the nuance and most of the complexity of the book. And, amazingly, they’ve done it in such a way that it moves at a brisk enough clip to never feel slow, but still allows the story enough breathing room that it never seems rushed, either. On top of all that, through some sort of unknowable alchemy, they’ve managed to retain all the most important plot points and nearly all the characters from the dense novel! Le Carré compared the process to turning a cow into an Oxo (bouillon) cube. The cube I'd compare this film to is a small box that somehow manages to hold an astounding amount of stuff inside. A box that, once unpacked, you can’t fathom how it possibly contained all those individual items, and you’re fairly sure you could never re-pack it so economically. That must have been what the process felt like for the writers and director. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is, quite simply, a master class in the art of successfully adapting one medium to another.

Additionally, placed for comparison next to the 1979 BBC miniseries adaptation of the same material (as its makers must have known it inevitably would be), the new version serves as an example of how the same material can be faithfully—and successfully—adapted in very different ways. John Irvin’s 7-hour miniseries, penned by Arthur Hopcraft, meticulously reproduced the novel almost chapter for chapter. Scenes in the miniseries played out almost exactly how they did in the book, yet it still managed to leave out enough things to distress die-hard fans of the novel, or to devote too little time to scenes that this reader thought should have been drawn-out, Hitchcockian setpieces (like Peter Guillam’s illicit retrieval of a secret file from the Circus library). The new film takes the opposite approach. The adapters alter almost every scene, some drastically, and restructure the entire plot so that it unfolds in a completely different (generally more chronological) order... yet still manage to retain the essence of the novel in, I would say, an even purer form. This time, there were no scenes from the novel whose absence I seriously lamented, and Alfredson highlighted every moment I wanted to see highlighted—including Guillam’s sneaky file snatch.

In a nutshell, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the story of a mole hunt in 1970s British Intelligence, an organization known colloquially to its lifelong employees as “the Circus.” A new regime takes over following a disastrous mission in Budapest (Czechoslovakia in the book) that results in the disgraceful ouster of the Service’s longtime chief, known only as Control (John Hurt, The Osterman Weekend), and his paladin George Smiley (Gary Oldman, The Dark Knight). The new chief is scowling Scotsman Percy Alleline (Toby Jones, Captain America) and his trusted lieutenants are Toby Esterhase (David Dencik, both versions of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), Bill Haydon (Colin Firth, Another Country) and Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds, Munich). When an errant “scalphunter” (slang for an itinerant field man who’s sent to do dirty work in trouble spots) named Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy, Inception) contacts the Circus’s cabinet overseer, Oliver Lacon (Simon McBurney, Body of Lies) claiming to have evidence that one of these top men is a Soviet agent, Lacon hauls Smiley out of retirement to investigate Tarr’s claims. With the aid of scalphunter boss Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock), Smiley unravels an exceptionally cunning and devious, multi-layered plot orchestrated by his unseen opposite number in Moscow Center, the mysterious Karla. What he finds will not only take a terrible toll on the Circus itself, but also on Smiley’s personal life and wellbeing.

Smiley’s investigation consists largely of interviewing different people involved in the botched Budapest mission. While le Carré tends to have characters speak in circles around the most crucial facts in their story (leaving it to the deceptively sharp Smiley to pinpoint the pertinent details, or trap his interviewees into revealing them), the encounters in the movie are generally much more straightforward. And yet the overall plot is complex enough (yes, you will have to devote your full attention to this one) that the sheer number of stories and witnesses, and the mystery of their direct relation to the central question of the identity of the mole, adds up to the same air of practiced deception as the book, where nothing is quite as it seems because all of the characters have been trained to obscure facts by second nature, to cling to secrets—often without even realizing it. So that isn’t lost, and neither is Smiley’s impressive perception, since we witness it on a more macro level as he puts all the pieces together. (You barely even notice him assembling the larger pieces when reading the book, since you’re so engrossed in the smaller minutiae.)

In the movie, things happen differently, but really just more economically. Sure, as a fan of the novel (in fact I’d probably rate it as my favorite book ever), I miss Sam Collins (whose part is given to Jerry Westerby, another character from the novel) and Fawn (whose role is mostly rolled in with Mendel’s), and I really wish that Stephen Fry had had an opportunity to play Roddy Martindale (as far as I know that was never actually mooted; I just would have liked to see it!), but it’s fairly obvious to see why those small characters were cut. Impressively, the vast majority of the book’s very large cast do make it into the movie—even some you wouldn’t expect. There’s Roach, still keeping watch for his favorite teacher, and even former Special Branch detective Mendel’s bees make an appearance. Quite a lengthy one, in fact, which was unexpected but rewarding. When Smiley and Guillam collect Mendel (Roger Lloyd-Pack) to join their team, they all pile into a small car together along with one of the bees. Alfredson holds the wordless scene for a surprisingly long time, as the bee buzzes around the car’s interior, much to Guillem’s annoyance, before finally making its way out a window that Smiley cracks for it. That little moment may seem like an odd one to dwell in, but it’s representative of how Alfredson lets his film breathe even with so much material to pack into a relatively short running time. The buzzing bee provides not only a moment of levity, but also nicely physicalizes the tension of the situation. There are plenty such moments in Alfredson’s film.

Other new scenes added just for the film serve similar purposes. We’re now treated to flashbacks of a Circus Christmas party, for example, which not only provides further moments of humor (many courtesy of John Hurt, whose Control gets nearly as riled up by the weakness of the punch as he does later about the traitor in his organization), but also ably stands in by itself for dozens of other flashbacks in the book which establish the key relationships between all the main players in happier times. Additionally, the Christmas party scene rewards die hard spy fans with a cameo from le Carré himself and, remarkably, a musical reference to a very obscure Eurospy film! I honestly never, ever thought I’d see George Smiley and Bill Haydon and Connie Sachs and Control singing boisterously along with Sammy Davis Jr.’s tongue-in-cheek theme song from Lindsay Shonteff’s The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World! (Writer Straughan revealed at a Q&A following the screening I attended that the idea for a Circus Christmas party came from le Carré’s recollections of real MI5 office Christmas parties that got out of hand.)

Alfredson and his team meticulously recreate Seventies London from its dire fashions and hair to the cars to the smoke-filled conference rooms of the ramshackle Circus headquarters. The movie never goes for obvious, beat-you-over-the-head Seventies pop culture shorthand, either (which is to say, we don’t see Smiley shuffling past a group of platform shoed Ziggy Stardust wannabes or see Guillam rocking a Brett Sinclair ascot—though he does kind of sport the real world equivalent), but instead focuses on the every day mundanity of the era. Alfredson’s Seventies isn’t the Seventies we see on ITC shows of the era, which were desperate to celebrate their times with the most outrageous fashions and furniture; it’s the Seventies of middle-aged civil servants who probably had zero awareness of any cultural shift going on around them as they focused on the geopolitical shifts instead, and worried about their under-heated offices or weak coffee.

The actors embody those middle-aged civil servants pretty uniformly perfectly. John Hurt makes the most of his limited scenes, capturing not only the intense paranoia and monomania of his character, but also imbuing Control with an irascible sense of humor not found in the books. Toby Jones also earns some good laughs (much needed, to relieve the overall tension—which is as palpable as the clouds of cigarette smoke that fill the Circus’s soundproof conference room) as Alleline. More than anyone else, he is leCarré’s character sprung to life from the pages of the book. Ciaran Hinds probably makes a wonderful Roy Bland, too, but it’s kind of hard to tell. It’s pretty clear that most of his scenes must have ended up on the cutting room floor, which is too bad. Colin Firth delivers his usual reliable performance as the sort of upper-class, Oxbridge Englishman he could no doubt play in his sleep, but adds a lecherous touch one might not expect of Mr. Darcy or that stuttering King. David Dencik offers a very different—but equally valid—interpretation of Hungarian “Lamplighter” Toby Esterhase (the Circus’s resident expert in spy tradecraft) from the miniseries’ Bernard Hepton. In an effort to get out of the stuffy interiors that dominate Smiley’s world in the books, Alfredson relocates Smiley’s tense interview with Esterhase to an airstrip, adding an unmistakable air of menace and making for one of the movie’s best scenes.

Smiley in any incarnation is capable of such ruthless, menacing tactics when they’re called for, but Gary Oldman wears his ruthless streak on his sleeve a bit more than his predecessors. His Smiley is quiet and still put-upon, but he’s more obviously in command of most situations than Alec Guinness or James Mason. In the past, Smiley’s vulnerability has been at the forefront, making the bursts of ruthlessness surprising. With the reverse true, here, Oldman makes the most of a surprising moment of vulnerability. When he relates to Guillam the story of his first and only meeting with Karla, his lifelong nemesis, Alfredson doesn’t cut to a flashback the way the miniseries did. Instead, he moves his camera in close on Oldman, and lets the actor deliver a lengthy monologue uninterrupted. It’s not often that we watch an actor tell a story like this for such a long time on screen, and Oldman relishes the opportunity. Without the camera to do it for him, he alone must convey all the nuances of that long ago confrontation in which Smiley lost a prized cigarette lighter, inscribed to him by his wife Ann with all her love, to Karla. It’s his relationship with Ann that exposes Smiley at his most vulnerable and most human in every version of the character, and since we never see Ann’s face in this movie (like Karla), it falls to Oldman to express that himself, which he does very successfully. Alec Guinness has had too many years in which to own the role of Smiley to ever be robbed of that claim, but Oldman certainly gives him a good run for his money in a mesmerizing and Oscar-worthy performance. Like Guinness, he utterly disappears into the role. On occasion, when I deliberately took myself out of the thoroughly engaging movie in order to evaluate it as it progressed, I had to remind myself that that was Gary Oldman on screen. When you lose yourself to the film, you only see Smiley.

The younger stars also hold their ground ably against such formidable veterans. Benedict Cumberbatch makes a fine Peter Guillam, and the extra-textual irony of TV’s current Sherlock Holmes playing Smiley’s Watson is enjoyable as well. Unlike the character of the books and previous screen versions, this Peter Guillam is gay. That seems, out of context, to be one of the movie’s most major departures from the source material, but like all the changes it actually makes sense in the context of the film. Like so many seemingly questionable changes to the source material, it proves to be a helpful shorthand, in this case to portray the dear personal price this character pays for his career in one scene what took le Carré many vignettes in the book. Tom Hardy, too, delivers a particularly impressive performance as Ricki Tarr, a rogue in love. (Plus, he looks better in his semi-hilarious Seventies wig than he does with his current real haircut!)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is not only a near-perfect adaptation; it’s also a near-perfect spy movie. Alfredson and his team have successfully interpreted John le Carré’s dense text into a movie that retains all of the book’s twists and turns, all of its themes, and nearly all of its rich and memorable characters into a film that stands on its own merits. Even if the book had never existed, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy would be a prime example of what the serious side of the spy genre can be at its best. In the Sixties, slower-paced, more adult, more cerebral spy movies like this coexisted peacefully with the action-packed Bond movies and their imitators. Today, possibly thanks to the end of the Cold War, the Bond and Bourne side of the genre (which Alfredson acknowledges not only with his tongue-in-cheek appropriation of the Sammy Davis Jr. song, but also by arming Smiley with a Walther PPK in the movie’s climax) thrives, but the serious spy movie has languished. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (as well as TV’s Page 8) proves that it doesn’t have to. I hope this film is successful and leads not only to subsequent Smiley adaptations starring Gary Oldman, but also to a resurgence of smart, complex spy films for adult audiences—and of Cold War period pieces, for that matter. The Cold War was never the raison d'être for the books of le Carré, Len Deighton, Graham Greene, Anthony Price and countless others; it was an expedient (and, then, timely) dramatic device through which to explore universal themes of loyalty and betrayal. And as Alfredson’s film proves, it still is.

The Smiley Files
Read my introduction to the character of George Smiley here.

Original Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Comes to Blu-ray Next Year

2011-12-19T22:09:00.000-08:00

In 2012, Acorn will release the classic 1979 BBC miniseries version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, starring the incomparable Alec Guinness, on Blu-ray in the USA. It will mark the seminal John le Carré adaptation's debut in the high-def format. Not only that, but it will also include a brand new interview with director John Irvin. This Blu-ray release will stick to the six-part version of the series that American viewers are familiar with (and which Acorn reckon works better... and they may have a point there), but there's a good possibility that the cut scenes from the longer UK version will be included as bonus material, affording fans the vest of both worlds. Full details will come in the New Year, but this is definitely a release to be excited about!

Read my introduction to the character of George Smiley here.

New Spy Books Out This Week: Another With Clancy's Name On It

2011-12-14T18:34:00.000-08:00

When Tom Clancy emerged from his years-long hibernation last Christmas with Dead or Alive, I was excited. Clancy was one of the best spy writers of the Eighties and Nineties, too long absent from the scene. When he delivered a new Jack Ryan novel six months later, Against All Enemies, I was even more excited. But neither book lived up to its potential. Both were written with co-writers (something he'd never done before for his flagship Ryan series before), but I'm hesitant to blame the co-writers. I think Clancy himself bears the brunt of the blame for the product he puts his name on. And today, there's another new book out out with Tom Clancy's name on the cover in great big letters. It's called Locked On, and it's got Jack Ryan and all the characters you used to love who go with him: John Clark, Ding Chavez, etcetera. The little tiny name underneath Clancy's is actually that of a successful spy novelist in his own right, Mark Greaney, creator of the Gray Man series (the first book of which is being developed as a potential star vehicle for Brad Pitt). I'm in the midst of his first novel, The Gray Man, right now... and so far I'm not terribly impressed. With early reports indicating that Clancy's phoned it in again, I guess I'm just going to have to turn to the movies instead and hope that Paramount delivers the Jack Ryan I want whenever they finally get this forever-in-the-works Chris Pine reboot off the ground. But here's hoping I'm wrong, and someone can tell me that Locked On is first-rate Clancy. I'd be happy to eat my words.

Tradecraft: The Equalizer Returns

2011-12-13T23:58:00.000-08:00

After a series of stops and starts with various directors, various studios and various stars attached (I think Russell Crowe was the last name I heard), Variety reports that the long-in-the-works, on again off again big screen version of the Eighties spy show The Equalizer is back on. This time the studio is Sony, and the star is Denzel Washington. Richard Wenk (who wrote the Jason Statham Mechanic remake and contributed to the Expendables 2 script) will write the script which, according to the trade, "revolves around a former secret agent who offers his investigative services in order to atone for his past sins..." exactly like the TV show. The 1985-89 show starred the great Edward Woodward as McCall, the former spook who lent his services to people with the odds against them and nowhere else to turn. The intertextual thing going on there was that Woodward had played a moody government assassin years earlier on Callan (which happens to be one of the best spy shows of all time). Callan had to do some terrible things that weighed heavily on his conscience, and McCall easily could have been what he became a few decades later. It's too bad that Washington doesn't bring the same ex-spy extratextual baggage that, say, Timothy Dalton would have... but then he has the clout to get a movie greenlit. And I think Washington will be good. Done right, this should do for him what Taken did for Liam Neeson. McCall is the epitome of the old guy who can kick your ass. Most of all, though, I hope the movie gets the remaining seasons of the show released on DVD. Universal put out Season One a few years ago, and then dropped the ball. Denzel Washington will next be seen playing a secret agent in Safe House.

Austin Powers Returns... On Broadway?

2011-12-13T18:39:00.000-08:00

The New York Post reports (via MI6) that, presumably having witnessed the success of his Shrek character on stage, Mike Meyers is in negotiations to bring Austin Powers to the Great White Way. "Myers, who [co-]wrote and starred in the three wildly popular movies, now hopes to turn groovy 1960s-era secret agent Powers into an all-singing, all-dancing theatrical production," according to the paper. Meyers himself would not star, but is expected to be "highly involved in writing the show." Rumors flared up earlier this year (as they do from time to time) that Myers is also hard at work on another Powers movie, which would be unrelated to the stage version. Personally, I enjoyed the heck out of the first movie, but found the sequels to be increasingly awful and the ubiquitous public imitations (brilliantly sent up by Ricky Gervais on the original Office) endlessly annoying. What started out as a really funny character was quickly done in by the worst sort of over-exposure, and I can't see a Broadway show (or another movie, for that matter), doing anything to rectify that problem. But maybe it will spur the studios to dig into their vaults and release more Sixties spy movies on DVD! If so, then I'm all for it. (Fox issued Modesty Blaise, Fathom and the Flint films for the first time to coincide with the theatrical release of Austin Powers in Goldmember.)

DVD Review: The Four Just Men

2011-12-13T01:04:00.000-08:00

DVD Review: The Four Just Men

The Four Just Men was one ofITC’s earliest stabs at a contemporary adventure series. As such, its primaryinterest for fans of the genre will be a historical one. While not all theusual suspects had a hand in the scripts and direction (Brian Clemens’ name isnoticeably absent from any credits), this series (which ran from 1959-60)clearly established the regular episodic formula that would form the foundationof all of ITC’s Sixties output. As I’ve written many times before, thecompany’s usual setup is following a man with a slightly unusual job (antiques dealer, import/export agent, photojournalist, playboy, etc.), and then ignoringwhatever that job is and instead thrusting him into spy plots week after weekin exotic locations via stock footage and studio backlots. This being beforethe advent of Bondmania sparked by Dr. No and, perhaps even more relevantly,before the British TV spy craze launched by Danger Man and The Avengers wellbefore Sean Connery ever gulped down his first on-screen vodka martini, more ofthe plots are standard-issue mysteries (reflecting the private eye genreprevalent in the previous decade)–but a surprising percentage of them are stillespionage-related. It was the Cold War,after all. If you were telling adventure stories, you simply couldn’t escapesuch plots.

Anyway, the slight twist on theregular formula with The Four Just Men is that instead of following a single hero, we follow four of them–individually. After a pilot that serves as anorigin story and shows our four heroes all meeting in WWII–and later beingreunited in tragic circumstances and signing a pact to uphold justice in theirown ways–the leads rotate, and only one of them carries each story. Contrary towhat I’d read about this series prior to its DVD release, however, that’s notto say that they never interact. At least one other Just Man (generally the onefrom the week prior or the one who will take center stage the following week) popsup in every episode–usually only via telephone, though. Several episodes feature all four Just Mencontributing from their respective home bases in London, Paris, New York andRome. This practice certainly adds tothe series’ continuity and makes it feel more whole, and not just like ananthology show.

The leads themselves belie abygone era in television, when programs were targeted at adults, and not kids. Inother words, they’re all old, each one whiter and more Establishment than theone before. There was no room in ITC’s 1959 stable for Jason King’s bouffant orBrett Sinclair’s shaggy do and hip, trendy (maybe?) duds. The four leads areall past-it movie stars–some more past it than others. There’s British war filmstalwart Jack Hawkins as Ben Manfred, a member of Parliament based (quitenaturally) in London. There’s Italian arthouse darling Vittorio de Sica(!!!) aspartisan resistance fighter-turned-hotelier Ricco Poccari, who operates out ofRome. Then there are the two Americans,ubiquitous film noir face Richard Conte as New York-based lawyer Jeff Ryder,and veteran Hollywood actor Dan Dailey (who has the sort of lumpy,hard-drinking face that could only become famous on black and white Forties filmstock) as Tim Collier, a hotshot journalist who works out of Paris. Each onehas a regular assistant, but the only interesting ones are Andrew Kier as Jock,Manfred’s Scottish manservant, and–particularly!–Honor Blackman as Nicole, Tim’slovely French secretary. (Conte and de Sica are assigned more standard-issuecentral casting beauties who leave no impression.) Blackman, looking amazinglyyoung, makes the most of her limited role. She is a secretary and a Girl Fridayand a love interest for Tim (although I honestly can’t imagine what she sees inhim), but she’s got a quick wit and she imbues the character with anindependent spark that prefigures her defining role as Cathy Gale on TheAvengers. Don’t get me wrong; Nicole is no Cathy Gale (and never gets to usejudo), but she is more than just a pretty face–thanks as much to what theactress brings as what’s on the page.

The men’s careers–and moreso their locations–define thesorts of adventures they have to a certain degree, but of course in ITC Landanyone can happen upon kidnappers or spies or blackmailers at any time. I foundManfred’s episodes to generally have the most interesting plots–and the mostespionage-heavy. Tim also gets some good ones as a reporter and as an Americanin Paris. Poccari’s are a mixed bag; they’re either very cool (like taking onCharles Grey as an Arab slaver or solving one of those classic “someoneoverpaid for a bad painting because it contained hidden secrets” cases) or verylame (usually involving orphans or urchins or some variation thereupon). Ineither case, he definitely brings something slightly different to the table,being noticeably older than the others. He rarely relies on fisticuffs(although he does rather brutally poke a henchman’s eye out with his cane!) orgunplay, instead using his charm and keen intellect to unravel his monthlythirty-minute mysteries. Richard Conte is not a bad performer (in fact, hemakes a more appealing lead than Dan Dailey), but his character gets all themost boring cases. Perhaps it’s just because I live in America that I find theAmerican setting (mainly New York, but he also frequently travels to Small TownUSA) fairly boring compared to Rome or London or Paris, but I don’t think so. Hislegal profession also tends to lead to these boring cases, shoehorning hisstories into a genre I could care less about. They play out like the worst ofFifties American television; of the Conte episodes I watched, I can’t recommenda single one. (Jeff gets involved in things like defending the pretty outsideraccused of poisoning from the close-knit-community-turned-angry-mob-riled-up-by-respected-community-leaderphysically as well as in court, and prison riots, and New York race wars rightout of West Side Story. Boooring.)

The most problematic aspect of the premise of The Four JustMen is determining which causes, exactly, are “just.” In the pilot (ostensiblybased on an Edgar Wallace book which had already spawned two feature films), themen’s Justice-obsessed wartime commanding officer kicks the bucket and theexecutor of his estate summons the four men to his castle, where he reads awill bequeathing them a vast fund to spend towards forwarding the cause ofJustice. He also leaves it up to them to determine what constitutes “Justice.” TheFour Just Men are famous world-wide, and generally respected. Local policewherever they go have no problems with turning over their cases to famousvigilantes and look on in awe when the Just Men–who report to no one but eachother–flout the word of the law in the name of the more intangible concept ofJustice. And, honestly, their idea of Justice is not really anyone’s but old,white, rich dudes of the 1950s. For example, Manfred readily agrees to hush upa dying Peer’s involvement in art theft (is that really Justice?), but just asreadily runs down a “rough-looking” (read: lower class) sod who seems out of placeat a snooty art auction. (This not being boundary-pushing television, therough-looking sod turns out to actually be involved, and not just a redherring.) Tim is always ready to help a beautiful, wealthy blackmail victim,even if she’s being blackmailed for something utterly reprehensible like her partin a deadly hit-and-run accident. And, in the most egregious example ofquestionable Justice, Tim decides to aid a philandering politician not only inextricating himself from a blackmail plot, but also in covering up hisaffair!

That episode is “Les Beatniques,” and it typifies not onlythe show’s loose ideas of Justice at their worst, but also its complete lack ofunderstanding its potential young audience. A senator, played by future FelixLeiter Cec Linder, wrote love letters to a fading actress that a trio ofleather-clad, Abe Lincoln beard-wearing, French beatniks (or “beatniques”)have stolen for blackmail.

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” exclaims the actress.

“Not unless I can find the Martians before six o’clock,”says Tim, his face grave.

“Martians?” queries the senator.

“Well that’s what we’re up against,” lectures Tim. “A wholegeneration of weird kids that might as well come from Mars or any other planetfor all you’ll understand about them.” He manages to look really weird himself–notto mention old and out of it–as he delivers those lines. Comparing this encounter with the Mission:Impossible episode less than a decade later in which series star Leonard Nimoypretends to be one of those weird kids is demonstrative of the change that thetelevision industry would undergo in the Sixties. By the end of the decade, thenetworks in both Britain and America would realize that their most profitableaudience was the younger generation—the “martians.”

Tim wouldn’t be able to pass himself off as a beatnik (notthat Nimoy pulled it off, but at least he tried), though he does earn thecompliment from a beatnick girl that he doesn’t dance too badly for a square! Atthe end of the episode (lesson time), he puts on his thick, professorialglasses and reads some of the beats’ poetry, quickly dismissing it as “suicidenotes” and accusing them of writing off the world in their words.

One beat defends his position, arguing, “There are noanswers.”

“Well how would you know?” asks Tim sanguinely. “You’venever bothered to ask any questions.” Oh, snap! Apparently in his effort toquell the percolating youth rebellion, Tim just inadvertently started the wholequestion-asking beatnik movement! He’s much less appealing when Honor Blackman’snot at his side to mitigate his unrelenting curmudgeonliness.

Of course, Justice isn’t always so grey; sometimes it’sblack and white and clear-cut. But even then it can be hard to suss out thetruth. Manfred is forced to ask some tough questions in “The Survivor,” inwhich future Blofeld Donald Pleasence is either a concentration camp survivorwith a list of Nazis in hiding, or else he’s a neo-Nazi agent with a list meantto discredit innocent people and former resistance fighters. It’s up to Manfredto determine which in a pretty compelling tale of terrorism and genocide thatgoes to pretty Callan-y dark places for a Fifties show.

Another future Blofeld, Charles Grey, shows up twice on thisseries, most memorably as an Arab sheik running the North African slave tradefrom Rome in “The Slaver.” That’s a pretty brutal episode, with unrepentantlynasty villains—and not in a Blofeld way, but in a gritty, ugly way. Right offthe bat, a slaver shoots three black kidnap victims and dumps them in the water,pondering, “I wonder if the sharks like black meat?” As the chief slaver, Grey evensmacks around his pretty girlfriend. The slavers in question are unscrupuloustravel agents who book passage to the Holy City on pilgrimages, then insteadkidnap their passengers and sell them as cargo.

“Doesn’t anybody care?” demands an incredulous (white)policeman

“They’re primitive people. Their families just write themoff.” explains Poccari with a dismissive wave of his hand, regrettably recalling(to modern viewers) General Westmorland’s infamous Hearts and Minds claim that “theOriental” doesn’t value life the same way Westerners do. It’s a good thing theold white Just Men care, since the black victims’ “primitive” families don’t!At least Just Man Poccari is well-meaning, even if he’s racist, too, in his ownway. He deals these brutal villains a taste of their own medicine; this is theepisode in which he pokes a henchman in the eye with his cane through an arras.It looks quite painful!

Poccari seems to specialize in the most clichéd plots, but Iguess it bears remembering that they weren’t quite so clichéd back then. Somaybe the glass-half-full way to view them is that he starred in more templatesfor future ITC episodes than anyone else! “The Crying Jester” is the one wherePoccari buys a terrible painting he was never meant to buy and finds himselfchased by various parties willing to kill for it. Since it can’t be itsartistic merit, obviously it’s the secrets it conceals that attract the would-bebuyers. It’s trite, sure, but it’s also one of the series’ more entertainingepisodes! “Night of the Precious Stones” is the one where a rich dowager hasher jewels stolen at a swanky function at one of Poccari’s hotels and the gangis all rounded up, except for their mastermind. It couldn’t possibly be awoman, could it? And certainly not a woman with whom Poccari is wellacquainted? I'll never say…

Manfred has his share of pre-cliché classics as well, buthis still tend to be my favorite episodes, for the most part. In “The Deserter,”Manfred finds himself defending a soldier accused of desertion despite the factthat the man has confessed. Only Manfred is convinced of his innocence. Who ishe protecting? And why is he so confident in the face of a firing squad? Theanswer is a pretty good twist, but the real reason this one’s notable is forits guest cast. The young soldier accused of desertion is none other thanRichard Johnson, who was not only a candidate for the role of James Bond, butlater proved himself to be among the best of the Bond imitators playing aSixties version of Bulldog Drummond in my favorite Eurospy movie, Deadlier Thanthe Male, and its sequel, Some Girls Do. TV's Sherlock Holmes, Ronald Howard,also appears. Manfred gets the art forgery case, too, in “National Treasure,”and it’s a pretty good one, even if he does display his skewed sense ofelitist justice.

For a modern-day muckraker who stumbled upon it, the factthat the wife of the American Ambassador was involved in a horrible hit-and-runand then covered it up would be a major news story. Not for Tim Collier. She’spart of the Establishment, and therefore deserves his protection. He’ll reservehis Justice instead for the person who dares to blackmail her about herculpability in “The Man in the Road.” When he’s not protecting guilty politicosand their consorts, though, Tim gets the fun stuff like chasing a radioactivecapsule around rural France in “The Deadly Capsule” and preventing politicalassassinations. In one of his better episodes, “The Prime Minister,” HonorBlackman gets to take on a meatier role, ably assisting Tim by doing spy duties(like staking out a posh hotel lobby and then taking initiative on her own andfollowing a suspect) as he sets out to stop one such assassination.

“Village of Shame” is both “the one with the whole villagefull of people with a secret colluding against the one Just Man interloping intheir midst (Manfred) and “the one about a wartime collaborator who betrayedhis resistance comrades and eluded justice for decades following.” The formeris a good enough ITC plot (and possibly even original at this particularvintage) that it makes up for the hackneyed latter, which is especially overused in this series.

The “wartime traitor” trope gets trotted out yet again in “TheRietti Group.” This time it’s Poccari, who attends a reunion dinner of his oldpartisan compatriots (including Geoffrey Keen) and of course ends up exposingone of them as the traitor who cost them the life of a beloved comrade decadesprior. Then the group gets to sentence him to death without the involvement ofany courts or anything, because that’s the kind of bonds old resistancefighters share. Yes, ITC, we get it. There were lots of heroes in the war andthey still can’t get over the fact that there were also some traitors, eventwenty-some years later. We get it! Unbelievably, this plotline would still rear its boring head every couple of weeks on ITC shows throughout the Sixties,proving that England just couldn’t let go of WWII, her greatest glory, as theEmpire faded in the postwar world.

While it’s got some fun episodes (as well as somecringe-inducing ones), The Four Just Men is overall most interesting to modernITC aficionados as a historical artifact. Along with Interpol Calling, it’s a fascinating glimpse at the brief “missinglink” era that bridged the gap from Fifties detective procedurals to swingingSixties spy shows. The heroes are still the stuffy old men of the previousgeneration, but some of their adventures encompass the globetrotting plotlinesthat would fuel the Jet Age. ITC would still get a lot of mileage out of someof these plots in future iterations on The Saint, Man in a Suitcase and othershows. The Four Just Men may not be as exciting or even as politically correct(and that’s saying something) as the shows it inspired, but it sets thetemplate, nonetheless. Casual spy fans can easily go on living their liveswithout ever seeing an episode of The Four Just Men and sleep perfectlysoundly. But armchair scholars and television archaeologists who want to tracethe origins of their favorite Sixties ITC adventure shows (as well as rabidHonor Blackman fans!) will enjoy seeing their nascent forms in this series. Andfor that reason, I’m highly grateful to Network for unearthing it.

If you are interested in this show, act fast! Network’s Region2 PAL online exclusive goes on moratorium at the end of the month (Friday, December 30,2011). After that, you’ll be at themercy of Ebay vendors.

Read my reviews of some other ITC shows:
Danger Man (aka Secret Agent)
Man in a Suitcase
The Baron
Sentimental Agent

Eurospy Title Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Rescheduled For This Month

2011-12-12T13:37:00.000-08:00

A few months ago we heard that Wild East (primarily a Spaghetti Western distributor) had another Eurospy movie on the schedule: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a very silly spoof that turns up as the second half of a Giuliano Gemma double feature with the Spaghetti Western Alive or Preferably Dead. The set is called Spies, Fast Guns, and the Spaghetti West. Gemma is better known for his Spaghetti Westerns than this rare foray into Eurospydom. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a particularly daffy Italian spy spoof. Your enjoyment of it will depend on your tolerance for that uniquely Italian brand of silliness, but it's very Sixties and definitely lots of fun to look at throughout, at least, so genre aficionados will likely find something to enjoy. Of course so few Eurospy movies get official releases that most fans (like me) will jump at anything. Especially when it promises a 16x9 anamorphic widescreen transfer! According to Wild East, this will be the first ever English language release of this title. (Officially, anyway.) Spies, Fast Guns and the Spaghetti West, which also features the films' theatrical trailers, was originally slated for a November 8 release. It didn't make that one and was biefly slotted for December 6, but is now listed for a December 20 street date—just in time for Christmas! A glitch on the Wild East website made the title originally appear to be sold out before it was even available, but that was not actually the case. Wild East's editions are strictly limited and they do go out of print, so you shouldn't hold off on buying if you're interested... but as of now it is definitely still available! Also, the price has dropped since the original announcement. It was first listed for $19.95, but now you can grab this bargain for just $16.28 by pre-ordering through the Wild East website!

Ghost Protocol Droid

2011-12-12T12:55:00.000-08:00

George Smiley: An Introduction

2011-12-11T04:25:00.000-08:00

The Humanist Spy

To coincide with the U.S. roll-out of Tomas Alfredson’s fantastic new feature film adaptation of John Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, I’ll be examining Le Carré and his Smiley novels—and the movies and TV shows based on them—in depth throughout December and January in a feature I call “The Smiley Files.” As with my exploration of Jean Bruce’s spy hero Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, aka OSS 117, it seems prudent to begin this series with an introduction to the character. There’s no doubt that George Smiley, who appeared in eight novels and has been played on screen by five different actors, is far better known than OSS 117 (and deservedly so), but in a genre where different readers’ tastes run in radically different directions (some to Bond, some to Smiley; some to Bourne, some to Samson), it’s safe to assume that not everyone may be familiar with Le Carré’s masterful creation. Hopefully the new film will get a whole new generation of readers interested in this Cold War character, and they’ll no doubt be wondering where to start.

It all starts with David Cornwell, who began publishing spy novels while still himself in the employ of MI6, having transferred there from MI5. Because he was an active officer, he couldn’t publish under his own name, and adopted the name John Le Carré under which to pen his novels. By 1964, he’d left the cloak and dagger world behind to pursue a full-time writing career. He’s intimated that his spy career effectively ended, anyway, when he was “blown” to the Russians by the notorious traitor Kim Philby.

The Character

Le Carré has written many books over the course of five decades, and George Smiley appears in eight of them. He is the principal character in some of those, the unseen puppet master in others, and even occasionally a minor character. He is the undisputed protagonist of Le Carré’s debut novel, Call for the Dead, which also sees him retiring for the first time. This will become a theme. Smiley is nearly always called out of retirement at the beginning of each novel, and very often forced back into it by the end.

Le Carré begins his first novel with a chapter entitled “A Brief History of George Smiley,” and sure enough, it fills in the crucial backstory. Smiley is a quiet man of academic pursuits. When he’s overcome by the stress of his job or his marriage, he likes to retreat into the works of obscure German poets. Clearly establishing from the start that this fictional spy is quite the opposite of James Bond—and a reaction to Fleming’s creation, which Le Carré hated—the author offers a fairly unflattering description of his hero: “Short, fat, and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad.”

Later, in the second novel, A Murder of Quality, this description is reiterated and expanded upon:

Watching him, Miss Brimley wondered what impression he made on those who did not know him well. She used to think of him as the most forgettable man she had ever met; short and plump, with heavy spectacles and thinning hair, he was at first sight the very prototype of an unsuccessful middle-aged bachelor in a sedentary occupation. His natural diffidence in most practical matters was reflected in his clothes, which were costly and unsuitable, for he was clay in the hands of his tailor, who robbed him.

While Le Carré is quick to point out his character’s faults, he never condescends to him. Instead, these faults endear the character to us, and imbue him with a rich humanity in a genre not widely regarded for the humanity of its characters.

Returning, though, to that introductory chapter in Call for the Dead, we also learn that Smiley attended an “unimpressive Oxford College” before WWII, where his tutor, Jebedee, recruited him into the Secret Service. In A Murder of Quality, one character asserts that Smiley “had a very nasty war. Very nasty indeed.” Le Carré never gives us too much information about that nasty war, but we do learn up front that Smiley worked alongside academics-turned-spies Jebedee, Fielding, and Steed-Asprey, and that he worked behind enemy lines, living as an in Germany where he used his cover as a professor to run networks and recruit agents. It terrified him, and in the field he honed the skills which would also make him an excellent—and rare—desk man later in his career.

We’re also introduced, in this chapter, to Smiley’s errant wife, Ann—a character seldom glimpsed throughout the novels, but always on Smiley’s mind. Through the often absent Ann, Le Carré defines Smiley’s humanity. She strays—again and again throughout the series—but he remains hopelessly in love with her. It’s this crucial contradiction that makes Smiley such a compelling character. As has been pointed out time and again by critics, he is a brilliant spymaster who can move men like pawns across a great board matching wits with the best of Soviet intelligence, capable of unexpected ruthlessness when necessary—and yet he can’t keep his wife or his diet. He’s staggeringly human, and that humanity proves his undoing on more than one occasion. During his greatest operational successes, he has to shut out that humanity—and doing so drains him. He can shut it out, but he can’t ignore it, and his conscience won’t let him ever be at peace when he’s doing what he’s so good at, just as his heart won’t ever let him break free of the perpetually philandering Ann.

After Ann leaves him for the first time (for a Cuban race driver) in Call for the Dead, Le Carré reveals for the first time that “that part of Smiley which survived was as incongruous to his appearance as love, or a taste for unrecognized poets: it was his profession, which was that of intelligence officer. It was a profession he enjoyed, and which mercifully provided him with colleagues equally obscure in character and origin. It also provided him with what he had once loved best in life: academic excursions into the mystery of human behavior, disciplined by the practical application of his own deductions.”

Unlike Bond, Bourne or de la Bath, Smiley is first and foremost a cerebral spy. (“Looks like a frog, dresses like a bookie, and has a brain I’d give my eyes for,” notes one character with undisguised jealousy in A Murder of Quality.) Yet it’s a common mistake among pundits and casual dabblers in the spy genre to assume that Smiley’s intellect and his less than remarkable physique render him incapable of action. Smiley gets into physical confrontations with enemy agents twice in his debut novel—one of them a fight to the death that obliquely recalls another great literary brain’s confrontation with his nemesis atop the Reichenbach Falls. Even in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which is as cerebral a spy thriller as you’ll ever come by (yet at the same time as a spy thriller as you’ll ever come by, too), Smiley eventually arms himself with a pistol for his final confrontation with a traitor in the Service. Smiley’s People even finds the pension-aged Smiley back in the field, traipsing across Europe on false passports mere steps ahead of KGB assassins. Smiley’s world may be more realistic than James Bond’s, but it is still filled with danger.

Le Carré has acknowledged largely basing Smiley on two men who shaped his own life: the Reverend Vivian Green, chaplain at one of the many schools the author attended and his tutor in Modern Languages (from whom Smiley inherited “strength of intellect and spirit” and thick spectacles) and author, spy and bona fide Baron John Bingham. In his introduction to a 2000 reprint of Bingham’s novel Five Roundabouts to Heaven (which, incidentally, was adapted into the film Married Life in 2008, starring Pierce Brosnan and reviewed here), Le Carré wrote:

“When I came to write Smiley, I tried to give him the same faint air of loss that John carried around with him. Smiley, like John, I felt, was fighting to preserve a country that survived only in his head, and was clinging to standards long abandoned by the world around him. There was something quixotic as well as shrewd about John. Like Smiley, he was the perfect parish priest of the Old Faith. He was a superb listener. He was profoundly orthodox, but with a nice dash of heresy. He exuded stability and common sense and inspired his agents with his own gentle, old-fashioned zeal. His humanity was never put on.”

Le Carré admired Bingham’s quixotic loyalty to a dead empire, but he didn’t share his point of view. (A fact that sadly led to a falling out between the former colleagues.) Nor does he always share Smiley’s. Le Carré recalls that Bingham used to tell the agents he ran that they would be hated and distrusted by neighbors as “fire-breathing Reds,” and that they’d have to put up with all sorts of hardships…

‘But the Service will be with you. We’ll be walking at your side even when you can’t see us. We’ll be worrying about you day and night.’ And they believed him—for as long as upstarts like le Carré didn’t tell them otherwise. But le Carré had seen more of the new verities than John had, and far fewer of the old ones. He had not fought John’s war, he had never enjoyed the conviction that he was opposing pure evil, a rare privilege conferred by the 1939-45 war, but much harder to sustain in the war between capitalism and socialism, both gone off the rails…. And Le Carré turned Bingham the preacher of certainties into Smiley the disciple of doubt.

For as much as he believes in those old ideals, and as much as he feels—truly feels—for every single one of his agents in the field, Smiley is also a pragmatist, dragged down by the ever increasing weight of a world caught up in an unending confrontation between two ideologies gone, as Le Carré puts it, “off the rails.” While both may be at fault, though, for Smiley communism is clearly the greater threat, and he fights it because he believes that it must be beaten. I suspect that there was a part of Le Carré that wanted to hate communism as much as Smiley did. The author certain had no sympathy for Communists (clearly evidenced in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold), but the hypocrisy he saw in the Capitalist West preventing him from subscribing to any ideological absolutes. Smiley, however, found his own reasons.

As David Monaghan writes in his book Smiley's Circus: A Guide to the Secret World of John Le Carré, “for [Smiley] the essential flaw in communism is its rootedness in the notion that the whole is more important than the individual. Closer to home he despises bureaucrats such as Maston [the Advisor, his superior in Call For the Dead], because they put their faith in policy rather than experience, and the Press, advertising and television because they focus on the mass rather than the individual.” Monaghan argues that Smiley’s target “is now communism which, in the post-war world, poses the single largest threat to his intense commitment to the individual. The problem for Smiley is that, in pursuit of his goal, he has to do things that are antithetical to it.... Smiley’s only reward for living so completely is that he remains intensely human.”

Smiley’s humanity is challenged again and again throughout the canon, but he refuses to part with it, which is what sets him apart from so many others in his profession—and what ultimately assures that he will never come out on top of political squabbles within his own Service. And when he does part with that humanity, even for a moment, he pays dearly. Even when he ostensibly wins, things rarely end happily for poor George Smiley.

The Books

1961’s Call for the Dead is an excellent spy novel—and a quick read at a mere 150 pages. It’s definitely not the best of the Smiley novels, but it’s a good place to start. A Murder of Quality, from the following year, isn’t a spy novel at all. It’s a murder mystery, and Smiley is a private citizen throughout that novel, never called out of his retirement by his Service, for once. Extra-textually, and with the benefit of hindsight, the exercise of inserting Smiley into a plot that could have worked just as well for Poirot or Campion serves to expose that that is Le Carré’s standard formula, and not a divergence. Each of the Smiley books are structured as classical mysteries—and in the cases of Call for the Dead and Smiley’s People, they are literal murder mysteries whose solutions just happen to lie in the murky world of international espionage. But the mystery formula served the author well in his spy novels, and proved the perfect vehicle for an intellectual hero like Smiley. So similar is the structure to the other books that A Murder of Quality doesn’t really stand apart from them, but very tellingly among them. It exposes Smiley as a detective at heart, and perhaps more at home in that school of fiction. He’s a detective who uses his deductive skills to unravel mysteries affecting the balance of power between nations—but here he proves equally adept here working on a much smaller scale. A Murder of Quality isn’t essential Le Carré, but it's instructive Le Carré... and the more Smiley novels you read the more you’ll want to spend time with the character, and he remains on center stage for the duration of the novel.

The same cannot be said of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), Le Carré’s third novel, in which Smiley’s role proves crucial to the story, yet his actual presence is limited to just a few pages. There is no doubt that Spy is one of the great works of the genre, and essential reading for its fans, but I would recommend reading Call for the Dead first. In many ways, Spy is actually a direct sequel to that novel, even if the protagonist is different. If you haven’t read Call for the Dead, in fact, you might easily miss out altogether on just how big a role George Smiley plays in the story. Smiley plays another pivotal but limited role in The Looking Glass War (1965), though while he might get a few more pages than he did in Spy, he isn’t a major motivating force in the plot the way he is in that book.

Smiley’s next starring role came in 1974 in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Many contend that The Spy Who came in from the Cold is Le Carré’s masterpiece, and while there’s no denying that is a great novel and an essential cornerstone of the genre, I would strongly posit that the author’s true masterpiece is Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. This is the greatest spy novel ever written. And it hinges on George Smiley. If you only read one Smiley novel or one Le Carré novel, this is the one.

Le Carré tweaked his character slightly for the Seventies, retconning his past to make him just a bit younger than he was in the earlier books. (Just a bit—really as a way of keeping him the same age in the early Seventies that he was in the early Sixties.) Other supporting characters, like Peter Guillam, get a makeover as well. In the earlier novels Guillam is a colleague of Smiley’s, and presumably of a similar vintage. Now he’s younger—a protégé rather than a peer; a Watson to Smiley’s Holmes. The tweaks are minor, however, and Smiley remains, as ever, short, plump, adorned in bad clothes, and always cleaning his thick glasses with the fat end of his tie. The new status quo is incredibly rich, though, and Le Carré’s “Circus” (as MI6 is known in these books) is a fascinating milieu for the so-called “Karla Trilogy” (named after Smiley’s opposite number at Moscow Center), which begins with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Smiley takes a backseat again in the trilogy’s second novel, 1977's The Honourable Schoolboy, (though being in the backseat doesn't mean that Smiley's not in control; after all, Le Carré himself in a DVD interview described Smiley as “somebodywho, from the back seat, was driving the car”), but the book is thick enough that taking a backseat still gives him more pages than he got as the star of Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality put together! (Should the producers of the new Tinker wish to film Schoolboy, it could easily be adapted so as to make Smiley the main character.) It isn’t so much Smiley’s face time (or lack thereof) that makes him a secondary character in this one; it’s the fact that we as readers are never privy to his thoughts. While we enjoyed full access to Smiley’s inner monologues in Tinker, in Schoolboy he remains inscrutable and the readers are left with Peter Guillam as a frustrated surrogate—very much fulfilling that Holmes and Watson relationship. Smiley never clues Guillam into his overall plan, but Guillam’s afraid that his mentor might not be seeing the whole picture. The primary protagonist of The Honourable Schoolboy, however, isn’t either of them; it’s Jerry Westerby, who played a small part in the previous novel. Just because Smiley isn’t in the driver’s seat doesn’t mean that readers should skip this book the way the BBC did when adapting them. The middle chapter in the Karla Trilogy is essential to Smiley’s overall arc throughout the series—and it’s a fantastic novel in its own right, one of the author’s best.

Of course, all three books in the Karla Trilogy are among his best. Smiley's People (1979) wraps it up with the fastest moving, most crowd-pleasing entry, one which takes Smiley himself back into the field chasing spies across Europe. Its end is conceived with such finality that it came as somewhat of a surprise (albeit a most welcome one!) when Le Carré trotted out old George one last time in The Secret Pilgrim in 1990. Somewhat frustratingly, Smiley wasn't the central figure in this epitaph for the Cold War and its secret warriors, but he certainly figures prominently and, perhaps more than ever, serves as the author's mouthpiece. With the collapse of the Berlin Wall, their opinions are perhaps more aligned. It's a pity John Bingham wasn't around to bear witness. To date, The Secret Pilgrim remains the final literary appearance of George Smiley. But that could always change. Le Carré has gone on record saying that Alec Guinness's portrayal of Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy inspired him in the writing of Smiley's People. Perhaps he'll find inspiration anew in Gary Oldman's performance and decided to offer us another glimpse back into Smiley's Cold War career!

The Films

Smiley first appeared on screen in the person of Rupert Davies (an actor at one time touted to play Doctor Who) in Martin Ritt's 1965 film of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Although the Smiley role is beefed up a little bit from the book, the character is in no way explored, and Davies fails to make much of an impression. (The film itself, though, is an undeniable classic of the genre.) At least he's got the glasses, and more or less fits Le Carré's description—except for the presence of a mustache.

Both of the screen's first two Smiley's were inexplicably mustachioed, in fact. James Mason also wears a mustache in the 1966 film The Deadly Affair, adapted by Paul Dehn (who also co-wrote The Spy Who Came in from the Cold—and Goldfinger!) from Call for the Dead and directed by Sidney Lumet. Besides both having mustaches, both of these two early Smileys also fit the bill physically. Later Smileys will all be a little too svelte. Besides having a mustache, Mason's Smiley forgoes the character's trademark glasses. That's kind of acceptable, though... because the character isn't actually called "Smiley." The name Smiley was owned by Paramount, thanks to their brief use of the character in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which meant that in Columbia's film of a book in which Smiley is actually the main character, they were forced to change his name to Charles Dobbs. No matter what he's called, Mason makes an excellent, if unconventional, Smiley in a surprisingly strong film relegated unfairly to the shadow of its more illustrious predecessor. Interestingly, Mason later starred in a TV adaptation of Le Carré's short story "Dare I Weep, Dare I Mourn"

When Smiley next appeared, it was on television, in his most famous incarnation to date. But despite being on television, he was played by one of the world's most distinguished film actors: Sir Alec Guinness. Guinness starred in the 1979 BBC adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which devoted seven hours to the novel's complex plot. He completely disappeared into the character, instantly making it his own. So much did Guinness become Smiley, in fact, that Le Carré pictured him while writing the final draft of Smiley's People, and tailored the story to the actor. The Beeb sadly bypassed The Honourable Schoolboy because of the production costs associated with filming in the Far East, but Guinness reprised the role in an excellent six-part 1982 miniseries of Smiley's People.

In 1991 Thames Television produced an adaptation of A Murder of Quality starring Denholm Elliott as Smiley. Despite being a bit too thin, he very much looked the part and did a good job in a story whose slightness is particularly conspicuous when compared to the dense Guinness miniseries.

Twenty years passed before George Smiley returned to the screen, when Gary Oldman took on the role and, like Alec Guinness before him, completely disappeared into it, in Tomas Alfredson's 2011 film adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Working Title are keen to produce a follow-up. I would personally love to see Oldman star in The Honourable Schoolboy, since that novel's sadly never been filmed, but screenwriter Peter Straughan indicates that the most likely scenario will be a single film that combines elements from Schoolboy and Smiley's People.

Tradecraft: Guy Ritchie Ponders U.N.C.L.E.

2011-12-09T13:18:00.001-08:00

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie at Warner Bros. might not be dead yet, despite Steven Soderbergh recently exiting the project. Deadline reports that the studio is in talks with their Sherlock Holmes director/producer team of Guy Ritchie and Lonel Wigram to come aboard the feature adaptation of the classic Sixties spy series. The trade blog seems to indicate that Scott Z. Burns' script (developed with Soderbergh) is still in play, so it's just possible that we might yet see a Sixties-set U.N.C.L.E. movie. (I'd expected the period element to go out the window with Soderbergh.) I could see Ritchie applying the same sort of period makeover on the Cold War that he did to Victorian times with Sherlock Holmes. In fact, I suspect the result might resemble the Sixties as Steranko portrayed it at the time in the pages of his Nick Fury comic... and that would not be a bad thing at all. It definitely won't be the same as Soderbergh would have done it, but I believe Ritchie capable of delivering a cool Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie. Here's hoping! Of course, the big question goes back to casting, the issue that ultimately stalled Soderbergh's take. With Ritchie and Wigram involved, the obvious frontrunner would seem to be Robert Downey Jr. He's definitely overexposed these days, but he's actually a much better choice for Napoleon Solo than some of the other names we heard bandied about recently...

New Spy DVDs Out This Week

2011-12-08T13:47:00.000-08:00

This week sees the release of The Debt (movie review here) on DVD and Blu-ray from Universal. The Debt follows a team of Mossad agents hunting a Nazi war criminal in Sixties East Berlin... and then dealing with the consequences of their Cold War actions decades later. Both formats include the featurettes "A Look Inside The Debt," "Every Secret Has A Price: Helen Mirren In The Debt" and "The Berlin Affair: The Triangle At The Center Of The Debt," as well as an audio commentary with director John Madden and producer Kris Thykier. Retail is $29.98 for the DVD and $34.98 for the Blu-ray, though naturally both are substantially cheaper at all the usual online vendors.

The Mission: Impossible "Extreme Trilogy" comes on both Blu-ray and DVD, too, though most people who want to no doubt already own the DVDs. I'm not really sure what qualifies these three feature films spun out of the classic TV series as "extreme" (dangling, I guess? They're not xXx!), but I do know that one of the reasons why I love Peter Graves is because he was never extreme. (Though some of his shirts and coats were.) Extreme or not, the cover art is actually pretty cool, and this set certainly makes for a good way to accumulate the first three movies at a very reasonable price just in time for the new fourth entry from director Brad Bird. The Mission: Impossibe Extreme Blu-ray Trilogy retails for $39.99 (though it's currently under thirty bucks on Amazon), and the Mission: Impossible Extreme DVD Trilogy is priced at just $26.98 ($19.99 on Amazon right now).

From Music Box Films comes (at last) the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy: Extended Edition on both Blu-ray and DVD. While the first film in the Swedish trilogy based on Stieg Larsson's bestselling novels, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, is a murder mystery (and required viewing in the overall saga), the two subsequent entries (The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) are both spy movies. To reveal exactly how is to give too much away, but they involve a ruthless Cold War defector and the Swedish security service the Säpo. Essentially, the plot progresses from Agatha Christie territory to Robert Ludlum's realm over the course of the three films. "Films," however, is a slightly misleading term. While the first one was always intended for theatrical release, the other two were made as a miniseries for Swedish TV, then cut down into features for international distribution. That means that the versions seen in American theaters (and previously available on DVD) were truncated. This release marks the first time that all three "films" have been available here in their entirety. Tying this release with the one discussed above, Swedish star Michael Nyqvist (whose role Daniel Craig takes on in the upcoming David Fincher version) plays a villain in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol.

Finally, from Criterion we have the high-def debut of an Alfred Hitchcock spy classic with The Lady Vanishes Blu-ray Blu-ray. This disc contains all the same special features as the excellent DVD version from 2007 (discussed in my review here), as well as a new HD transfer of the film. A special bonus among those features is the inclusion of an entire second movie, 1941's Crooks' Tour, starring Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne reprising their Lady Vanishes roles as the oh-so-British, cricket-obsessed overgrown schoolboys Charters and Caldicott. Charters and Caldicott also turned up in Carol Reed's 1940 spy movie Night Train to Munich (from the same writers as The Lady Vanishes), which is also available on DVD from Criterion. (Review here.)

International Trailer For This Means War

2011-12-07T11:35:00.001-08:00

The just-released international trailer for McG's spy romcom This Means War is far superior to the U.S. one we saw a few months ago. It's too bad this wasn't the public's first glimpse of this movie. It's still got problems and the leads (much as I like them both) still have weird hair, but the emphasis is on the action, which looks like fun. I like McG and I very much liked co-writer Simon Kinberg's last foray into a spy/romance blend, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, so I'm remaining hopeful about this one...

Upcoming Spy Blu-rays: Casino Royale '67

2011-12-07T00:12:00.000-08:00

At long last, more Bond is coming to Blu... but not, I'm afraid, the titles that many fans have long been hoping for, like The Spy Who Loved Me, You Only Live Twice or On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Instead, The Digital Bits reports that MGM will make the 1967 spoof version of Casino Royale widely available. The title was previously available in the high-def format only as a Best Buy exclusive. Casino Royale '67, starring David Niven, Woody Allen, Peter Sellers and Orson Welles (among many others), will be available everywhere (including Amazon) on February 7, 2012. The SRP is $19.99, and the disc will include the same extras available on the last DVD edition: an audio commentary with Bond historians Steven Jay Rubin and John Cork, the original theatrical trailer, and a five-part documentary produced by Rubin on the unbelievable behind-the-scenes shenanigans that went on during the making of Casino Royale.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Mission Impossible: The '89 TV Season

2011-12-06T15:24:00.000-08:00

More good news for Mission: Impossible fans! Presumably timed to coincide with the DVD release of the latest Tom Cruise theatrical film (although that does seem awfully fast, even in this age of ever-decreasing theatrical windows), the second season of the 1988-90 revival series of Mission: Impossible will hit DVD in Februrary! TV Shows On DVD reports that the final season of Mission: Impossible TV episodes containing the final appearances of Peter Graves as the real Jim Phelps will be available on DVD on February 28, 2012. It's hard to believe that the first theatrical Mission (in which Jon Voight played a very different character named Phelps) came just five years after this DVD set leaves off. The two incarnations of the brand seem worlds apart. This 4-disc set (containing all 16 episodes of the revival's final season) represents my own preference. These episodes aren't as good as the Sixties and Seventies ones, but they're still highly enjoyable and, for me, more fun than the movies. I just hope that CBS/Paramount puts a little more effort into remastering this batch of episodes than they did into The '88 TV Season. Some of the episodes in that set look little better than off-air recordings, which is a surprising come-down from the top-notch quality of the original series DVDs. Speaking of that original series, one of its stars, Greg Morris, returns to the revival once more reprising his role as Barney Collier in the two-part season premiere, "The Golden Serpent." (Those episodes, incidentally, are directed by old ITC hand Don Chaffey, who helmed his share of spy fare like The Prisoner, The Avengers, The Baron and more back in the Sixties.) Morris' son, Phil, is a regular on the revival, playing Barney's son Grant. The other regulars this season are Tony Hamilton, Jane Badler and Thaao Penghlis.

Retail on Mission: Impossible: The '89 TV Season is $39.98, but Amazon's already got it available for pre-order at just $27.99. That same day will see the release of a 2-pack, Mission: Impossible: The '88 and '89 TV Seasons, which bundles the entire revival series together for just $69.98 (or $48.99 on Amazon). No extras have been announced, and since none of the Mission: Impossible seasons to date have ever boasted extras, it seems unlikely that any will be, but I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for that 1997 Diagnosis Murder episode "Discards" to truly complete fans' Mission: Impossible TV libraries. Barbara Bain reprised her Cinammon Carter role from Mission's earliest seasons on that, and Phil Morris (confusingly) appeared in a role other than Grant Collier. Ex-spies Robert Culp, Patrick Macnee and Robert Vaughn rounded out the guest cast, making the episode a bit of a Holy Grail for Sixties spy fans. The Diagnosis Murder DVD releases petered out after just a few seasons, so "Discards" remains elusive. Since the episode in which Mike Connors reprised his Mannix role was included (at least in excerpts) as an extra on the first season of that CBS/Paramount series, I was hoping that this one would turn up on a Mission: Impossible release at some point... and this one marks the last chance for that to happen.

Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Seventh TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Sixth TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Fifth TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Fourth TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Third TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Second TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The First TV Season here.

Tradecraft: 24 Movie Back On Track?

2011-12-05T18:32:00.001-08:00

Deadline reports that the hot-and-cold, long in development feature film version of 24 is running hot again, which is great news for Jack Bauer fans. The trade blog reports that Live Free or Die Hard writer Mark Bomback is expected to turn in a new script by year's end and Fox and Imagine Entertainment are keen to begin production in April when Kiefer Sutherland's schedule frees up. (The actor is currently filming a new Fox series, Touch.) Apparently neither Breach's Billy Ray nor Spy Game's Tony Scott remain attached; the studio has a short list of five directors it's considering. Some fans aren't keen on the prospect of a movie after watching the TV show sag in its later seasons, but, personally, I'm all for it! I think Jack Bauer is a great character, and there are plenty more opportunities for him once freed from the confines of the strictly structured real-time series.

New Haywire Poster

2011-12-05T18:28:00.001-08:00

The UK quad for Steven Soderbergh's upcoming aciton-packed spy movie Haywire (courtesy of the Imp Awards) follows the general aesthetic established by the American poster and still doesn't offer a clear glimpse of star Gina Carano's face (for some reason), but it does show the rest of the cast pretty clearly, including red-hot Michael Fassbender.

Haywire opens in North America in January. Read my review of it here.

25 Days of 007 on EPIX

2011-12-05T12:20:00.000-08:00

I always used to love the "007 Days of Christmas" James Bond marathons on TBS. Back then, in the Nineties, Bond airings were still special. The movies didn't play all the time the way they do now (it seems like MGM pimps the Bond package out to every cable network from AMC to Bravo), and there was something about a holiday marathon that compelled me to tune in and watch panned and scanned, edited versions (Mrs. Bell's profanity in Live and Let Die was silenced, and occasional nipples flashed in Maurice Binder's title sequences blurred out) of my favorite movies even though I owned them all on VHS. Plus, TBS's promotions were always cool. The ads for the marathon itself that ran at every commercial break were worth watching for alone. So perhaps it's that nostalgia that makes the December Bond marathon "25 Days of Bond" on cable channel EPIX stand apart for me from all the other airings these movies get every month. That, and the fact that some of these films (like On Her Majesty's Secret Service and The Spy Who Loved Me) can be seen in high-def on EPIX HD even though Blu-rays for them have yet to materialize.

I'm afraid I'm a few days late in reporting this. The Advent celebration of the most extraordinary gentleman spy in all fiction kicked off on December 1 with the Barry Nelson Casino Royale (which I imagine pissed off a few viewers expecting to tune into Daniel Craig), and continues with a movie a night through Christmas Eve. Then, on Christmas Day, the network will show Bond movies all day long, with 007's only Christmas adventure, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, airing smack in the middle of the day at 1:15. Isn't that the best? It's so refreshing to quietly duck away from holiday crowds and festive family gatherings to absorb even just a few random minutes of James Bond on Christmas! I should note, however, that the 25 Days of Bond don't quite add up the way you might expect. All 22 official EON productions to date plus the two earlier Casino Royales and Never Say Never Again would indeed make for 25 glorious nights, but the '67 Casino doesn't seem to be part of the equation and EPIX doesn't have the rights to the newest films (from Die Another Day on), so they make up for that by showing Goldfinger and, weirdly, The World is Not Enough twice each and slotting in Maryam D'Abo's interesting documentary Bond Girls Are Forever on the 23rd. Still, that's what I call solid holiday programming!

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Scarecrow and Mrs. King: The Complete Third Season

2011-12-05T00:53:00.000-08:00

Whew! They're sticking to a yearly schedule, but I always get nervous around this time that Warner Bros. will abandon the traditional DVD format for the next season of Scarecrow and Mrs. King and decide to finish it as an MOD title at the Warner Archive. I've certainly got nothing against Archive titles, but the collector's nature in me doesn't want the format to change in the middle of a series. So I breathed a sigh of relief when TV Shows On DVD reported last week that Scarecrow and Mrs. King: The Complete Third Season would see a regular DVD release on March 20, 2012. The 5-disc set will retail for $39.98—though of course it will be available for less through the usual online outlets.

Scarecrow and Mrs. King, which was really the only bona fide hit spy series of the 1980s on American television, pairs professional secret agent Lee Stetson (Bruce Boxleitner), codename "Scarecrow," with perky Washington housewife Amanda King (Kate Jackson). It's light and played for laughs and romance over thrills, but at it's best it sometimes evokes the spirit of The Avengers, were that classic transplanted to Reagan-era American suburbia. Read my review of Scarecrow and Mrs. King: The Complete First Season here.

Roger Moore Returns to Television TONIGHT!

2011-12-03T02:47:00.001-08:00

In the United States, Bonded Templar Sir Roger Moore returns to television tonight on the Hallmark Channel, where he stars in the family holiday movie A Princess For Christmas (formerly known as Christmas at Castlebury Hall). Katie McGrath and Charlotte Salt co-star. According to the L.A. Times, Sir Roger plays the "fabulously wealthy" and "Scrooge-like" Duke of Castlebury, whose "heart begins to melt" upon the arrival of his estranged young American niece, nephew and their aunt to his castle in the snowy countryside of a fictional European kingdom. Most of those phrases would normally put me off of a movie like this, but the appeal of the former 007 star is too much to ignore. The 84-year-old Moore rarely acts these days, devoting the bulk of his time to his UNICEF duties. He made headlines earlier this year when he was injured filming this movie in Romania.

The big question, of course, is which dignitary of a fictional European country is more curmudgeonly: Moore's Castlebury, or Timothy Dalton's Boris Pochenko from The Beautician and the Beast? Dedicated fans can find out soon, because A Princess For Christmas airs tonight (Saturday, December 3) at 8/7c on the Hallmark Channel. Or, if you want to save time, this extra-long trailer seems to condense the entire movie. (It also reveals that, in true Brett Sinclair fashion, Moore dons a cravat.) Watch till the end and you'll even see the Grinchy Duke's heart grow three sizes that Christmas.