Steve Coogan Shows Off His Bond Impressions on The Jonathan Ross Show

In The Trip, we saw Steve Coogan and Rob Bryden attempt to outdo each other with their hilarious Michael Caine impressions, and we saw Coogan do a terrific Roger Moore. On The Jonathan Ross Show last week, the British actor/comedian showed off his impressive impressions of other Bond actors. Coogan's Dalton leaves a lot to be desired (and sadly he doesn't do a Lazenby even though he claims to have every Bond actor but Craig in his repertoire), but his Moore and Brosnan are particularly spot-on. Check it out:



Coogan can currently be seen starring opposite former M actress Judi Dench in the Oscar-touted dramady Philomena. At one time he was linked (along with Ben Stiller) to play the Roger Moore role in a feature film remake of The Persuaders!, but sadly that never came to be. Coogan's career is littered with Bond reverence and references. His signature character Alan Partridge is obsessed with Roger Moore, and it's a running joke on the premiere of Coogan's first Partridge-centric series Knowing Me, Knowing You, that Moore fails to show up for an interview on Alan's chat show. In one of the most memorable episodes of the subsequent series, I'm Alan Partridge, Alan hilariously re-enacts the entirety of The Spy Who Loved Me for his friends when the VCR breaks.

See Bond Pitted Against Bond

Brad Hansen, co-host of that epic Bondathon last year and creator of the excellent time-lapse video chronicling it, has edited a very clever new video pitting all the Bond actors against one another. It's quickly gone viral (including hitting the front page of Yahoo!), and deservedly so. Take a look, and be sure to watch all the way to the end, which might be the most brilliant bit.

Sky Movies HD Promo Cuts All the Bonds Into One Spectacular Car Chase

This is just an ad for the UK's new Sky HD 007 satellite channel (which is, admittedly, a pretty cool thing, since it collects all the Bond movies in HD in the same place), but it's really well done. Sky's editors have cut together several classic Bond car chases to create one massive cliffside car chase involving all six official James Bonds! The opening Aston Martin chase from Quantum of Solace proved an especially good framework to cut the other pieces into since it itself was so nonsensically edited to begin with! I particularly like the exchange created between Brosnan and Moore:

See Every Bond Movie on the Big Screen in Los Angeles This Summer!

I've seen a lot of James Bond retrospectives at a lot of different Los Angeles area revival theaters over the years, but I've never seen one on this scale before! The American Cinematheque, in conjunction with BAFTA-LA, will celebrate the cinematic 007's 50th Anniversary by screening every single official Bond film this June between their Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood and Aero Theatre in Santa Monica. That's right: all 22 movies, from Dr. No to Quantum of Solace, will be projected on 35mm film prints! (Not a dreaded DCP to be found according to the Cinematheque's listings, thank goodness.) The movies will be spread out over ten nights and two theaters, parsed out in double and triple features. Tickets, which can be purchased on Fandango, are $11 for the general public or $7 for members. (That means that if you're planning to attend every screening, the savings almost pay for the membership.) While most of the Connery films screen fairly regularly at revival houses, some of these titles, like A View To A Kill and The World Is Not Enough seem unlikely to ever play except during a complete retrospective! The full schedule is:

Friday, June 8 Dr. No and From Russia With Love at the Egyptian, 7:30*

Saturday, June 9 Goldfinger and Thunderball at the Aero, 7:30

Sunday, June 10 You Only Live Twice and On Her Majesty's Secret Service at the Aero, 5:00

Thursday, June 14 Diamonds Are Forever and Live and Let Die at the Aero, 7:30

Friday, June 15 The Man With the Golden Gun/The Spy Who Loved Me/Moonraker at the Egyptian, 7:30

Saturday, June 16 For Your Eyes Only/Octopussy/A View To A Kill at the Egyptian, 7:30

Sunday, June 17 The Living Daylights and Licence To Kill at the Aero, 7:30

Friday, June 22 GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies at the Aero, 7:30

Saturday, June 23 The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day at the Egyptian, 7:30

Sunday, June 24 Casino Royale (2006) and Quantum of Solace at the Aero, 7:30

*Author Bill Desowitz will be signing his book James Bond Unmasked preceding this event.

New 007 Book: James Bond Unmasked

This year we'll see a whole lot of new non-fiction books looking behind the scenes of the James Bond films in honor of the series 50th anniversary and to tie in with Skyfall's fall premiere. (The fall titles I'm most looking forward to thus far are Roger Moore's Bond On Bond: The Ultimate Book on 50 Years of Bond Movies, George Lazenby's autobiography, Jon Burlingame's The Music of James Bond and Jon Gilbert's authorized, exhaustive limited edition Ian Fleming bibliography.) But the floodgates have already opened! Getting a jump on the rest of the pack is film journalist Bill Desowitz's James Bond Unmasked from Spies, publisher of Charles Helfenstein's truly remarkable tome The Making of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. While there have been dozens of books on the Bond phenomenon over the years, Desowitz managed to find a fresh and potentially fascinating approach: he interviews each of the six actors to have played 007 in the official series. I can't wait to read what they have to say!

First Skyfall Magazine Cover

It's begun! Empire has bragging rights for the first Skyfall magazine cover in what's sure to be a 50th Anniversary-fueled onslaught of Bondian hype. And I'll end up buying every magazine to slap 007 on its cover, as I always do... starting with this one. Here's what they say about the James Bond content inside on the Empire website:

Inside we have the fruit of several visits to the set of Skyfall, wherein we try to peer behind the veil of secrecy that covers the production (well, it is about a spy after all) and bring you all the news we can extract from the cast and crew. We also celebrate Bond's 50th anniversary with a look at some key moments in Bond history: there's a look at GoldenEye, Live and Let Die and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, as well as a chat with Timothy Dalton. You might say we have a licence to thrill! If you were into tired puns, anyway.

Hear that? Dalton interview! Awesome. This issue hits UK newsstands on Thursday, and will no doubt wash up Stateside shortly thereafter. Keep your eyes peeled!

New Spy DVDs Out This Week: Chuck: The Complete Fourth Season

This week sees the release from Warner Home Video of the Timothy Dalton-enhanced Chuck: The Complete Fourth Season on DVD and Blu-ray.  The penultimate season of the NBC spy comedy was reinvigorated with a very effective injection of Dalton. (Every flagging series could use that pick-me-up in its fourth season!)  The former James Bond star was a delight to watch in all six episodes he guest-starred in, but his presence as season-long villain Alexei Volkoff was felt even in those he didn't.  It was a great role for him, and he clearly relished it; the multi-faceted, tailor-made part afforded him the opportunities to play villainous and heroic, comedic and psychotic, to be by turns both quietly subtle (like his Bond) and scenery-chewingly over-the-top (like his Doctor Who role or his scene-stealing turn in Hot Fuzz).  Overall, the season is well worth watching for Dalton fans, even if they've never seen Chuck before.  And it's well worth watching for Chuck fans, too!  I suppose that goes without saying, but I thought this year marked a real improvement over the previous season.  Besides taking on Timothy Dalton, Chuck reunites with his possibly villainous/possibly good/definitely estranged mother (played by Linda Hamilton), proposes to his longtime love and spy handler, Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski), and loses and regains the powers of the Intersect a couple of times.  And Casey (Adam Baldwin) is Casey, which is always worth watching. 

Chuck: The Complete Fourth Season includes all twenty-four Season 4 episodes as well as the usual plethora of bonus features Chuck fans have become accustomed to. Extras on the DVD will include deleted scenes (sorry, "declassified scenes"), a gag reel, the featurettes "Chuck Versus Directing: Zachary Levi Takes Charge on 'Chuck Versus the Leftovers'" and "Operation Gomez: Spying on the Cast: Joshua Gomez Shows Off His Newfound Spy Skills," and "Chuck Versus the Webisodes: The Chronicles of Jeff and Lester's Quest for an Elusive Video Game." The Blu-ray will include all that as well as the exclusive "Top Secret Chuckapedia Interactive Experience," whatever that is. Retail for the Blu-ray is set at $69.97; the DVD is $59.98. (Of course, both are available for far less on Amazon.)

New Spy DVDs Out This Week: The Unknown Saint of Monte Carlo

I was going to lead this week's new DVD roundup with Warner Bros.' Unknown, but then the studio trumped themselves at the last minute by announcing a new collection of long-awaited Saint movies via The Warner Archive!  The George Sanders Saint Movies Collection includes all five of the RKO Saint films Sanders starred in between 1939 and '41: The Saint Strikes Back, The Saint in London, The Saint's Double Trouble, The Saint Takes Over and The Saint in Palm Springs.  The trouble with collecting Sanders' Saint outings is that it means omitting the four films starring Luis Hayward (my favorite of the RKO Saints) and Hugh Sinclair. And Hayward starred in the first of the Leslie Charteris adaptations, The Saint in New York. But hopefully those films will see release in a future collection. There's plenty of good news here to focus on!  Warner representatives promised way back in 2007 that all of the RKO Saint films would see release in 2008. That didn't happen, and it was about that time that the bottom fell out of the catalog DVD market entirely, so it seemed as if it would never happen.  Then the studio began its Warner Archive MOD program, producing DVD-Rs of classic films on demand, which started a trend and salvaged the catalog business.  It seemed inevitable that the Saint movies would pop up eventually as MODs, but even then the studio dragged its feet.  And now that these five have arrived, it seems like fans are actually better off for the delay. Instead of releasing each title individually for twenty bucks apiece, as they did with the Tarzan series, Warner are bundling five movies together for just $29.95.  That's a much better bargain!  (Very reasonable, actually.) I really hope that we see the remaining Saint titles (including the elusive final film in the RKO cycle, The Saint's Girl Friday, which was co-produced by Britain's Hammer Studios and saw Hayward return to the role he originated more than a decade later) soon in another such collection.  But for now, I'm very content to have these ones at long last!  So far The George Sanders Saint Movies Collection is available only directly through The Warner Archive, but it will assuredly pop up on Amazon and Deep Discount in a couple of months.

Also out from Warner Home Video today, in much wider release on DVD and Blu-ray/DVD combo, is this year's Liam Neeson neo-Eurospy romp, Unknown. I never got around to reviewing Unknown when it was in theaters, but I really enjoyed it.  It's not just Taken in Berlin, as the advertising campaign tried so hard to make us believe.  That shorthand actually did the movie a disservice, because Unknown is a bit more cerebral than Taken.  (A bit!) It's not an out-and-out action movie, so those expecting Neeson to kick as much ass as he did in Taken were in for a bit of a letdown.  It is a pretty cool thriller in its own right, though!  The wintery Berlin locations are shown to maximum advantage, as is Diane Kruger, who ably makes the case that she deserves further consideration as a future Bond Girl.  There are also some cool car chases and crashes. The script, co-written by John Le Carré's son, Stephen Cornwell, plays fair with the audience, and I was surprised by a twist that was actually earned and managed quite well to explain a pretty preposterous set-up in a satisfying manner. (I have no idea how faithful it is to the novel by Didier van Cauwelaert upon which it's based.) Extras, unfortunately, are pretty scarce on both releases. The BD includes the featurettes "Unknown: What is Known?" and "Liam Neeson: Known Action Hero" as well as a digital copy of the film; to the undoubted ire of those without Blu-ray players, the DVD includes only the first featurette.  DVD buyers shouldn't worry, though.  They're really not missing out on anything.  Both EPK featurettes are extremely brief, and despite that brevity still manage to cover some of the same ground. Still, this movie is worthwhile even without good bonus material. If you missed Unknown in theaters, definitely give it a try on disc. I'll be posting a full review shortly. Own it on Blu-ray for $35.99 (or just $22.99 currently from Amazon) or DVD for $28.99 (or just $14.99 from Amazon right now).

Finally, Olive Films, who have licensed a lot of cool catalog titles from Paramount, bring us the 1986 WWII spy miniseries Monte Carlo on DVD today. Based on the novel by Stephen Sheppard, Monte Carlo follows the rich and famous as they mingle with international spies in the glamorous titular city during the months leading up to the second World War. Joan Collins stars as a cabaret singer who moonlights for British Intelligence; Peter Vaughn plays her German rival (rival spy, that is; not rival cabaret performer), Malcolm McDowell is no doubt someone shady, and George Hamilton is the American playboy novelist mixed up in the middle of it all. I have a secret soft spot for Eighties miniseries and an even more secret (and guilty) soft spot for the ageless Joan Collins, so I'm intrigued by this one. Retail for the 2-disc set is $39.99, but of course it can be had for slightly less on Amazon.

In addition to Monte Carlo, Olive has one more Joan Collins miniseries out today that might interest spy fans, though it's not itself a spy story. Sins, based on a Judith Gould novel, is notable here because it co-stars Timothy Dalton (immediately prior to becoming Bond) as Collins' unstable brother who's spent half his life in mental institutions. Lauren Hutton (who's also in Monte Carlo) and Gene Kelly (yes, Gene Kelly) also appear. Sins is also a 2-disc set with the same SRP of $39.99.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Chuck: The Complete Fourth Season

TV Shows On DVD reports that Warner Home Video will release the Timothy Dalton-enhanced Chuck: The Complete Fourth Season on DVD and Blu-ray on September 6.  The penultimate season of the NBC spy comedy was reinvigorated with a very effective injection of Dalton. (Every flagging series could use that pick-me-up in its fourth season!)  The former James Bond star was a delight to watch in all six episodes he guest-starred in, but his presence as season-long villain Alexei Volkoff was felt even in those he didn't.  It was a great role for him, and he clearly relished it; the multi-faceted, tailor-made part afforded him the opportunities to play villainous and heroic, comedic and psychotic, to be by turns both quietly subtle (like his Bond) and scenery-chewingly over-the-top (like his Doctor Who role or his scene-stealing turn in Hot Fuzz).  Overall, the season is well worth watching for Dalton fans, even if they've never seen Chuck before.  And it's well worth watching for Chuck fans, too... but that goes without saying.  Besides taking on Timothy Dalton, Chuck reunites with his possibly villainous/possibly good/definitely estranged mother (played by Linda Hamilton), proposes to his longtime love and spy handler, Sarah, and loses an regains the powers of the Intersect a couple of times.  And Casey (Adam Baldwin) is Casey, which is always worth watching. 

Chuck: The Complete Fourth Season includes all twenty-four Season 4 episodes as well as the usual plethora of bonus features Chuck fans have become accustomed to. Extras on the DVD will include deleted scenes (sorry, "declassified scenes"), a gag reel, the featurettes "Chuck Versus Directing: Zachary Levi Takes Charge on 'Chuck Versus the Leftovers'" and "Operation Gomez: Spying on the Cast: Joshua Gomez Shows Off His Newfound Spy Skills," and "Chuck Versus the Webisodes: The Chronicles of Jeff and Lester's Quest for an Elusive Video Game." The Blu-ray will include all that as well as the exclusive "Top Secret Chuckapedia Interactive Experience," whatever that is. Retail for the Blu-ray is set at $69.97; the DVD is $59.98. (Of course, both are already available to pre-order more cheaply on Amazon.)

What the Future Holds For Chuck (Besides Marriage)

NBC confirmed at their upfront presentation in New York on Monday the good news already reported last week: that Chuck is, indeed, returning.  However, it will be moving to 8PM on Friday nights for a 13-episode final season. (That will put it in direct competition with The CW's recently renewed Nikita... but is that really an issue in this age of DVR and On Demand?) Additionally, according to Deadline, NBC Broadcast Chairman Bob Greenblatt said that the final season of Chuck will "go back to its roots" and "will be closer to was it was in Season 1."  Honestly, I didn't have any problems with what it had become in the past year, but I know a lot of fans did, so presumably they'll welcome that news.  I had a problem when Chuck first became a superspy, and stopped watching for a while, but when I returned this year I was happy to see that the new status quo was working well.  Guess that's all changing again.  (Perhaps that changes in this year's finale, which I have yet to watch. Perhaps Chuck doesn't even get married! You all probably know more than I do about that right now.)  I think it's great that the writers know up front that this will be the final season and how many episodes it will last.  This should enable them to plan a season accordingly and resolve everything at the appropriate time.

Upcoming Spy (And Dalton) DVDs: Eighties Miniseries Madness

TV Shows On DVD reports that Olive Films will release the Joan Collins WWII spy miniseries Monte Carlo on DVD this June. Based on the novel by Stephen Sheppard, Monte Carlo follows the rich and famous as they mingle with international spies in the glamorous titular city during the months leading up to the second World War. Joan Collins stars as a cabaret singer who moonlights for British Intelligence; Peter Vaughn plays her German rival (rival spy, that is; not rival cabaret performer), Malcolm McDowell is no doubt someone shady, and George Hamilton is the American playboy novelist mixed up in the middle of it all. I have a secret soft spot for Eighties miniseries and an even more secret (and guilty) soft spot for the ageless Joan Collins, so I'm intrigued by this one. Retail for the 2-disc set is $39.99, but of course it can be pre-ordered for less on Amazon.

Monte Carlo isn't the only Joan Collins miniseries coming from Olive on June 21. That same day, the company will also put out another miniseries of the same vintage which might also interest spy fans. 1986's Sins, based on a Judith Gould novel, is not a spy story, but it does co-star Timothy Dalton (immediately pre-Bond) as Collins' unstable brother who's spent half his life in mental institutions. Lauren Hutton (who's also in Monte Carlo) and Gene Kelly (yes, Gene Kelly) also appear. Sins is also a 2-disc set with the same SRP.

New, Vaguely Color-Coordinated Spy DVDs Out This Week

Spyder's Web

The most exciting new DVD release this week is a PAL Region 2 title from the UK's Network, out well ahead of its previously announced May 2 street date. I'm always eager to sample ITV spy shows I've never seen before, and that goes double when they're Avengers imitators from the late Sixties or early Seventies, as is the case with 1972's Spyder's Web! As with so many ITC shows of that vintage, TBC's Spyder's Web focuses on a top secret spy organization reporting directly to the highest levels of government who take on the assignments too hot or delicate or weird for the standard branches to handle. This secret organization, Web, uses a documentary unit called "Arachnid" as its cover. Some of the Avengers-like weirdness encountered by Web's top agents (Patricia Cutts, Anthony Ainley, Roger Lloyd-Pack and Veronica Carlson) includes a nursing home that can arrange almost anything, a romance tour company whose clients fall in love and then disappear, a mynah bird who relays orders to field agents (in an episode that also involves life-size puppets), a mad vicar waging a private war in the middle of Britain and a gadget that instantly ages humans to the point of skeletonizing them. Though the show was originally shot in color, only two episodes survive in that format; therefore the majority of the 13 episodes (that's the complete series) included on Network's 4-disc set exist only as black and white film recordings. Retail is £40.84 but the set is available now from Network's website for £35.74. I'm really looking forward to this one!

Sextette
Speaking of weirdness, that's really the only possible way to categorize the 1978 curiosity Sextette. Best known as Mae West's last film, Sextette is also one of Timothy Dalton's earliest spy roles, playing a British agent "even bigger than 007." ("I didn't get his measurements," replies West with an arched eyebrow.) That's actually intended as a surprise revelation, but it's also the critical bit for readers of this site... and this really isn't the sort of movie you can spoil. To call a spade a spade, it's an unwatchable mess... yet a compellingly watchable unwatchable mess for discerning viewers of a certain disposition.  (And if you can stomach it yourself, it's a great film to torture your friends with at a party—provided everyone's suitably inebriated.) Sextette comes to us from Ken Hughes, one of the many directors of another famous unwatchable mess that will be familiar to readers of this site, the 1967 spoof extravaganza Casino Royale. (In the interest of fairness, however, Hughes should also be credited with the wicked James Coburn spy movie The Internecine Project and episodes of the TV series Espionage, as well as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.)

Octogenarian West plays a serial matrimonist whose titular, all-star harem includes Tony Curtis, George Hamilton and Ringo Starr as well as Dalton. For good measure, Keith Moon, Alice Cooper and Regis Philbin also show up. And it's a musical. It really has to be seen to be believed, and now, thanks to Scorpion Releasing, you can. (Sextette was previously available on Rhino, but that version has long been out of print.  Now I kind of wish I'd taken advantage of that duration to unload my Rhino copy when they were commanding prices  $60-$100!) New extras on the remastered Scorpion version include a long interview with West's vocal coach and the original theatrical trailer. Retail is $19.95, but Amazon's got it for $13.49.

DVD Review: Agatha Christie's Marple: The Geraldine McEwan Collection
Featuring one of Timothy Dalton's best TV roles!

Miss Marple is in the news right now thanks to a new project at Disney that apparently recasts the famous spinster detective as, well, Jennifer Garner. I’m not sure if the message to take from that is that 38 is actually Hollywood’s current idea of “old,” or that Disney is shelling out a huge amount of money to the Christie estate in order to buy a brand that younger audiences have zero awareness of and then alter it in such a significant way so as to completely alienate the older audiences who do know the character. The former is depressing and the latter seems just ludicrous, yet it’s still the more logical conclusion. Personally, I’m kind of curious. I’ve been a big fan of Garner since Alias and of screenwriter Mark Frost since his fantastic novel The List of 7 back in the 90s, so I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and at least see where this goes, even if I’m scratching my head as to why they didn’t just set Garner up with a different female investigator more appropriate to her age and image. (Honey West, perhaps?) Anyway, in the face of a contemporary, thirty-something American version of the character, surely Christie purists must be reconsidering their outcry over the comparatively subtle changes enacted upon Miss Marple for the current ITV series!

ITV’s latest take on Agatha Christie’s evergreen sleuth might annoy such purists with the way it shakes things up a bit, but if you’ve always responded to Christie’s pulpier sensibilities, as I have, then you’ll probably enjoy it. Marple (as its simply called), starring Geraldine McEwan (in its 2004-2007 seasons anyway; she was later replaced by Julia McKenzie), takes Christie’s least pulpy detective, the aged Jane Marple, plays up the most lurid and sensational aspects of her cases and then (and here’s the genius bit) doesn’t have Miss Marple bat an eye at any of it. In any version, Miss Marple was always pretty unflappable when it came to the dead bodies that always seemed to pop up in her life (even when they were charred beyond recognition), so why should she raise an eyebrow at some of the more lurid liberties this series takes? The murderous pair of illicit lovers from one story, for example, are transformed from heterosexual adulterers into lusty lesbians. Would the Grand Dame of mystery fiction have written it that way? No (not at the time when she was writing, anyway), but that doesn’t mean that such a twist isn’t right at home within the plot of her novel!

Miss Marple herself remains the prim and proper picture of post-war British class and manners, yet she still gets her hands dirty by investigating murders–an act in itself a most inappropriate breach of accepted behavior. Likewise, Christie’s mid-century readership could satisfy their own literary bloodlust by tucking into the adventures of such a lady in pages written by a bona fide Dame! Yet all this lip service to decorum hid a thirst for the macabre and the sensational just as insatiable as that of American readers devouring the works of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, which didn’t bother to disguise their lurid, pulpy roots. Indeed, Christie’s books barely disguised them themselves. The covers may not share the spattered blood, drawn guns and heaving breasts of American pulp magazines, but they did share the fonts–and at least the hint of blood. Each episode of this 21st Century Marple series also shares those fonts. The 1950s typefaces (ripped straight off a paperback!) that open each feature-length mystery set the tone for the adaptations to follow. They may change the details and they may sex things up, but they’re true to one aspect of Christie: they appeal to their audience’s basest instincts.

As in any British mystery series, espionage elements are bound to pop up in the odd episode of Marple. But more of what makes this series of interest to spy fans will be the guest stars. Practically every episode is packed full of familiar faces from the worlds of James Bond, The Avengers, Spooks, The Saint and other series well known to readers of this site. The debut episode in Acorn’s box set, “Murder At the Vicarage,” offers both spy stars and spy plot elements. (Though with Christie, it’s always possible such elements could prove red herrings.) Herbert Lom, for example (certainly no stranger to Sixties spy fans; he even issues a very Drefuss-like wheeze at one point that you expect to be accompanied by an eye tick and the exclamation, “Clouseau!”) plays a character named Augustin Dufosse who was a French resistance fighter during WWII, as was his grandson. (Unlike the eternal pre-war setting of Poirot, Marple is situated to great effect in post-war Britain.) Furthermore, another character turns out to have been an SOE operative engaged to that grandson. The Colonel who gets killed (and that’s no spoiler; Colonels are always getting killed in this sort of thing) commanded a desk in London during the war and saw to it that a supply drop meant for them went instead to his confederate so they could split the proceeds after the war. That background provides Lom and his confederate with suitable motives to murder him, but of course the intrepid Miss Marple (more frequently referred to in this series as "Jane") soon discovers that practically everyone had a motive for murder, so that’s really not much help. I’m just illustrating some of the spy connections. Other spy celebrities in the cast include Lucifer Box creator Mark Gatiss as a suspect assistant vicar, Saint veteran Jane Asher, Hannay star Robert Powell as a doctor, Spooks’ Tim McInnerny as the head vicar and Diana Rigg’s daughter, Rachael Stirling, as his wife.

I like the way director Charles Palmer (Doctor Who) handles the reveal as Miss Marple pieces together what actually happened at the episode’s conclusion: a montage of pans against a great, swelling bit of score as all the right images whirl around in her head. This sequence sets the tone for the very stylish series to follow. Every aspect of the production, from the direction to the opulent set design to the sweeping score to the lush cinematography is flashy, which might at first seem inappropriate for Miss Marple, but which really livens things up for modern audiences while at the same time serving to accentuate her overriding ordinariness amidst all this flash. And, similar to George Smiley, it is this apparent ordinariness, this unassuming quality, that enables Jane Marple to quietly unravel the most tangled murder mysteries to everyone else’s amazement.

“The Body in the Library” introduces former Avenger Joanna Lumley as Dolly Bantry, Miss Marple’s Watsonish sidekick. She returns to the series much later (after Julia McKenzie has inherited the role from McEwan), but her repartee with Jane is so good that I found myself wishing she were in all of them. As long as you’re shaking things up from the books this much, why not introduce a permanent television sidekick, like Captain Hastings in the early seasons of Poirot?

Here, Lumley is decidedly more Edina than Purdey, but she’s fantastic, and her New Avengers fans will enjoy her nonetheless. James Fox and Ian Richardson lend further gravitas to the formidable guest cast, and the tight Christie mystery plot (complete with her signature misdirection) remains intact even if the culprit or culprits themselves are slightly altered. McEwan’s Miss Marple is shown to be more knowingly worldly than the usual portrayal (wherein she at least pretends to be less so, for the sake of propriety), and things that might have shocked more classic incarnations of this sleuth roll right off of the Teflon-coated McEwan. (Um, but she’s still not a thirty-something American!)

There really isn’t a bad episode in the lot here, but far and away the highlight for spy fans has to be “The Sittaford Mystery.” (Despite the fact that Christie’s novel of that name didn’t even feature Miss Marple as a character, she’s been worked into the plot reasonably enough for the sake of television.) Personally, I was sold from the very beginning when we’re treated to a title reading “Egypt, 1927” over an image of Timothy Dalton in khakis and a pith helmet. And a mustache! In an Egyptian tomb! Even if you’re not a fan of Agatha Christie (in fact, possibly moreso if you’re not), if that’s the sort of thing that excites you, you need to track down this episode!

After some thoroughly satisfying archeological shenanigans, we cut to twenty-five years later, when Dalton’s character, Clive Trevelyan, is a successful politician meeting in consultation with none other than Winston Churchill (not a character in Christie’s novel, but played here by Robert Hardy… of course). We learn that Trevelyan is very likely his successor as Prime Minister… so long as nobody murders him, of course. Lots of newspaper headlines and newsreel footage stylishly fill us in on the character’s career in the interceding years as an Olympic skiier, adventurer, war hero and now politician.

As you might surmise from its sensational tomb-raiding beginning, “The Sittaford Mystery” plays up the pulpiness of the story more than any other. The direction goes overboard (in the best possible way) right from the start with canted angles galore. I honestly don’t think there’s a single level camera shot in the entire episode. It might get a little annoying, but at the same time it serves to appropriately sensationalize the proceedings and up the pulp ante that comes automatically with a story that begins with a mustachioed Timothy Dalton in an ancient tomb! The same gleefully over-the-top approach goes for the art direction and costumes and cinematography. We’re treated to great pulpy colors and purposefully studio-bound sets, like a taxi that Dalton and McEwan share in a snowstorm which doesn’t actually move. Only the camera does (canted, of course), in a motion to suggest movement of the stationary, studio-bound cab as artificial snow whirls all around.

Even though it’s stylized in a BBC-style, digital sort of stylized, “The Sittaford Mystery” still resembles nothing so much as a Hammer Gothic. And if Hammer and Miss Marple previously didn’t go together and still don’t sit well with some fans, well I’m sorry; I never knew it, but apparently that’s exactly what I wanted to see! (Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll say the same thing about Jennifer Garner playing Miss Marple.) Director Paul Unwin plays up the Gothic side of the story further by having Dalton brood alone in his study in his castle (Oh yes! Dalton lives in a castle. A snowbound castle, no less! How cool!), haunted very literally by the ghosts of his past, presented in the flesh (so to speak) in stark white video effects. The implication is certainly there, even, that these ghosts are literal, but Christie purists can easily choose to view them as figments of Trevelyan’s imagination, too. Besides living in a castle and talking to ghosts, Dalton goes for walks “out on the moor” to think (even Christie’s novel, which also features an escaped convict, owed a debt to The Hound of the Baskervilles—a connection the filmmakers waste no opportunity to drive home) and keeps a falcon.

If you’re thinking al this (plus a golden scorpion purloined from that Egyptian tomb said to carry a curse) surely foretells a bad death in a mystery of this ilk, then you’re right… but the good news for Dalton fans is that it doesn’t come until more than halfway through the story, and even then Trevelyan is still very much a presence via flashbacks. Despite a reliable ensemble (including a pre-Education Carey Mulligan), this is truly Dalton’s show here, and he makes the most of it!

If “The Sittaford Mystery” has a downside, it’s just that Miss Marple herself doesn’t really have that much to do in it—certainly not until the second half, at least. Instead, beautiful potential couple Charles Burnaby (Chaos' James Murray) and Emily Trefusis (Sherlock’s Zoe Telford, who is excellent) lead the on-site investigation, belying this story’s origin as a non-Marple novel. (The couple are the only detectives in the book.) But what it lacks in Marple herself, it makes up for in trains, castles, snowstorms, Lagondas, deaths foretold on Ouija Boards, Evil Dead-style zoom-ins on creepy cuckoo clocks at canted angles and Winston Churchill to boot! It’s all more Hammer than Christie (driven home by the controversial final shot), which might drive the great Dame’s fans a bit nuts, but is frankly fine with me. (And maybe after contemplating Jennifer Garner as their heroine, it will seem fine to them in retrospect, too.) I’ve seen and read enough Christie in my time to appreciate a slightly atypical take on the material, and for Timothy Dalton fans like myself, “The Sittaford Mystery” really can’t be beat.

While nobody can beat T-Dalt, there are still more spy stars to turn up in Marple. Other episodes include Live and Let Die’s Jane Seymour (in a meaty role), Keeley Hawes, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Richard Armitage. All in all, there’s a lot to like in Marple: The Complete Geraldine McEwan Collection, and it certainly proves that you don’t have to be entirely faithful to the text to make good entertainment. With that in mind, I think I’ll remain cautiously optimistic about the next incarnation of the character to feature a TV spy—Ms. Garner.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: The Tourist

DVD Active reports that Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will release The Tourist on DVD, Blu-ray and Blu-ray/DVD Comboon March 22nd. Extras on the DVD will include a commentary with director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the featurettes "A Gala Affair" and "Bringing Glamour Back" and an outtake reel. The really interesting sounding featurettes, unfortunately, are reserved exclusively for the Blu-ray releases, which will include all that other stuff as well as the additional featurettes "Canal Chats," "Action in Venice" and "Tourist Destination - Travel the Canals of Venice." Venice was the real star of the movie (well, excepting Timothy Dalton, that is, who's the real star of anything he's in), so it's a pity you have to own a Blu-ray player to learn more about it. Retail is $28.95 for the DVD, $34.95 for the BDand $38.96 for the combo, but of course they're all available to pre-order much cheaper than that on Amazon and other sites.

Dalton Spies Again On The Big Screen: First Photos Of T-Dalt In The Tourist

It's a good year for Timothy Dalton.  Following a small screen return to the world of spies on Chuck, the former James Bond actor makes a big screen return to that genre in Florian von Henckel Donnersmarck's The Tourist. (Watch the trailer here.) I've been very excited for this role since it was announced, and now AllMoviePhotos.com (via Dark Horizons) has our first pictures of Dalton in action (as well as lots of other cool new stills from the film), playing Interpol agent "Jones."  Awesome!  Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, the director of The Lives of Others, and one of the screen's best James Bonds all together.  I can't wait for this movie!  And after a long and twisted production history, it's finally almost here.  The Touist opens December December 11.

New Spy-Related DVDs And Games Out This Week

No straight-shooting spy titles out this week, but quite a few spy-ish DVDs.  Plus, of course, a few videogames that have a lot of Bond fans excited. 

First up, from MGM Home Entertainment, is the1968 film musical adaptation of Ian Fleming's children's book, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, on Blu-ray/DVD and DVD/Blu-ray combo packs.  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was produced by 007 producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, scripted by You Only Live Twice screenwriter Roald Dahl and counts Bond alums Desmond Llewelyn and Gert Frobe among its cast. Dick Van Dyke stars as inventor Caractacus Potts, and Sally Ann Howes plays the Bond Girlishly-named Truly Scrumptuous. The new combo release comes in two configurations: a BD/DVD combo pack in a Blu-ray size case, and a DVD/BD combo in a more kids' section-friendly standard DVD Amray case.  All of the special features are on the Blu-ray.  The only new ones (besides the high-def transfer, of course, and newly upgraded 7.1 audio) are kid-oriented (“Toot Sweet Symphony melody maker – the Toot Sweet Toots Musical Maestro" and “Chitty's Bang Bang Driving Game”), but happily all of the interviews and vintage promotional material from the last DVD edition is ported over, including "Remembering Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with Dick Van Dyke," the featurette “A Fantasmagorical Motorcar” (about the actual car used in the film and its current owner, if memory serves), the original Sherman Brothers demos of the film’s most popular songs, vintage featurettes including “The Ditchling Tinkerer,” “Dick Van Dyke Press Interview,” and “The Potts Children's Featurette,” a photo gallery and a vintage advertising gallery including English and French versions of the theatrical trailer and several television spots. There's also a sing-a-long version of the film for the tots. Both combo variations retail for $34.99, but are available considerably cheaper from Amazon and other online vendors.

An old woman detective may not seem very spy-like at all, but there's actually plenty in Agatha Christie's Marple: The Geraldine McEwan Collection, from Acorn Media, to interest spy fans.  First and foremost, there's Timothy Dalton (in The Sittaford Mystery), who leads a pack of spy-friendly guest stars that also includes Joanna Lumley, Jane Seymour, Keeley Hawes, Herbert Lom, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Richard Armitage, Jane Asher, Robert Powell, Tim McInnerny, Mark Gatiss and many, many more.  (Besides being an actor, Gatiss is the co-creator of the BBC's new Sherlock series and author of the wonderful Lucifer Box spy novels.) This set includes all 12 feature-length mysteries that McEwan starred in on 12 DVDs, plus plentiful extras including an hour-long "backstage" documentary with cast and crew interviews, behind-the-scenes featurettes, a history of Miss Marple adaptations (that sounds fun!), photo galleries, an Agatha Christie biography, and cast filmographies. Retail is $99.99.

It's a good week for Timothy Dalton fans, because in addition to his debut on Chuck, we also get the aforementioned Marple DVD set and Toy Story 3, in which he voiced the adorable stuffed hedgehog with delusions of Shakespearean grandeur, Mr. Pricklepants.  It's not a huge part, but it's great to hear a hedgehog talking like Timothy Dalton.  Plus, Toy Story 3 is an amazing movie.  I think it's my favorite of the Pixar trilogy, and one of my favorite movies of the year.  It's available on standard DVD, Blu-ray and a 4-disc Blu-ray/DVD Special Edition Combo pack. For the huge Disney fans out there, it's also available as part of the massive, 10-disc Toy Story Trilogy Blu-ray/DVD combo set. That one will cost you dearly, though, so you might want to save it for Santa.

There are also two new James Bond videogames out today: James Bond 007: Bloodstone and GoldenEye 007, the latter a remake of the classic N64 first-person shooter of over a decade ago (though not from the same makers).  I don't really cover videogames here simply because I don't play them.  I'm no good at them.  I kind of wish I was, though (and that I had the hours required to devote to them, but I'm afraid this blog takes up all of those!), because these games both look pretty neat based on the trailers.  Both star Daniel Craig, which in the case of GoldenEye is pretty weird, since Pierce Brosnan, of course, starred in the movie. 

The new GoldenEye 007 should actually hold interest for Bond music fans as well as Bond gamers, because David Arnold composed the score.  I'm really curious to hear it.  The movie GoldenEye has one of the worst Bond scores, by Eric Serra, and I've often fantasized about what an Arnold score might have been like for it since he did all the other Brosnan Bonds.  Now I guess we can find out!  I really hope that the score is released in some format, be it on CD (unlikely, I guess) or at least as a digital download.  The one part we can hear so far struck me as a tad disappointing.  Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger steps in for Tina Turner to cover the movie's original title song, penned by U2's Bono and the Edge.  With David Arnold producing the cover, I was hoping for something along the lines of his fantastic 1997 Bond covers CD, Shaken and Stirred, which paired classic songs with unexpected performers for uniformly impressive results.  Unfortunately, instead of an indie artist of the caliber of Aimee Mann or Natacha Atlas, we get a Pussycat Doll.  And Scherzinger simply doesn't have the vocal chops to deliver an interesting or worthy rendition.  Too bad.  I did like the orchestration, but was a bit taken aback at how familiar it sounded.  Based on Shaken and Stirred, I'd expected a more radical reinvention.  Oh well.  I hope the score is good, and for people who are into first person shooters, I hope the game is good too!  Let me know. 

GoldenEye 007 retails for $49.99 for the Wii, $29.99 for the Nintendo DS and $69.99 for a special edition of the Wii version that comes with a special Golden Gun controller.  James Bond 007: Bloodstone retails for $59.99 for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 versions, and $49.99 for PC.

Timothy Dalton Interview In EW

Entertainment Weekly's Popwatch blog has an interview with Timothy Dalton in honor of his debut as a recurring character on tonight's Chuck. I definitely recommend checking it out.  Dalton opens up more about his tenure as Bond–and specifically about comparisons between his gritty, character-driven take on playing the superspy and Daniel Craig's–than I've seen him do in the past.  He also talks about his Chuck role as cardigan-wearing MI6 paper pusher Gregory Tuttle (who may prove to be more than meets the eye) and his upcoming part in The Tourist as a policeman.  That's the first I've heard about the nature of his role in the Johnny Depp/Angelina Jolie thriller. Unsurprisingly, he reveals that it was admiration for director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck that led him to take the job!  The EW interviewer, Christian Blauvelt, seems to be a Bond geek after my own heart, barely containing his inner fanboy as he reminds Dalton how The Living Daylights begins, reciting the yacht girl's line about wanting to meet a "real man."  It's very funy–and informative.  Check it out. 
(Via CBn Forums)