Tradecraft: Paul Rudd to Play Moe Berg

Variety reports that Paul Rudd (Captain America: Civil War) will play the legendary baseball player/spy (more legendary as the former than the latter) Moe Berg in The Catcher Was a Spy for Palmstar Media. Since it has the same title, I'm assuming this film will be based on Nicholas Davidoff's 1995 book, and I honestly can't believe it's taken so long for that to make it to the screen. There have been many books on Berg, however (ESPN calls him "the only utility player to be the subject of three biographies"), so it's possible that the movie has other source material. Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan) wrote the screenplay and Ben Lewin (The Sessions) will direct.

Berg was perhaps the ultimate Renaissance man. With degrees from Princeton and Columbia Law (as well as studying at the Sorbonne), he was a polyglot and an athlete. During a fifteen-year career in the major league he bounced around between multiple teams including the Chicago White Sox, the Washington Senators and the Boston Red Sox. An undistinguished record didn't stop him from accompanying the likes of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig to Japan in the years before WWII, where he covertly photographed Tokyo for the U.S. government, taking films that were supposedly used in planning the Doolittle raid. He went on to serve in the OSS and the CIA, taking on numerous perilous wartime assignments.

Breath Control: Bond Girl On Ice

Spies are everywhere—even at the Olympics!  South Korean figure skater Kim Yu-Na (Kim Yuna) took the lead in the women's short program with a "Bond Girl"-inspired routine to the sounds of John Barry's distinctive 007 music (with assists from Monty Norman and David Arnold).  Most mainstream news reports erroneously say she skated to "The James Bond Theme," but Bond fans know differently.  It was definitely a medley of Bond music, beginning with what sounded to me like some of the underwater cues from Thunderball before going into bits of From Russia With Love and (maybe?) You Only Live Twice and concluding with some David Arnold music and an Arnold-era verison of the Bond theme.  (If anyone identified the exact tracks, please comment below!)  Sadly, she didn't work in any of Bill Conti's score from For Your Eyes Only, in which ice skating features in the plot.  Oh well; Conti's music wouldn't have fit in very smoothly with the more classic stuff.  The 19-year-old sensation incorporated the Bond mystique into her routine as well, pulling off a convincing "Bond Girl" look with her choice of costume and ending up in a gun pose after "firing" at the audience—or the competition. See this real-life Bibi Dahl for yourself on YouTube.

Yu-Na is not the first skater to perform a routine to Bond music; I remember Brian Boitano doing a similar program (I think in Lillehammer) and even ending it with a traditional gun barrell pose.  French skater Eric Millot and Russian Tatiana Rachkova have also used Bond music.  Personally, I'm not that into figure skating, but I am into that music, and I'll always root for anyone who chooses it!