Fox To Release S*P*Y*S In April

Fox Home Entertainment will release Irvin Kershner's 1974 comedy S*P*Y*S, which re-teamed Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould, on April 3. The DVD, which will retail for $19.98, will include the bonus features "Inside S*P*Y*S" and "Irvin Kershner: The Road To 'The Road Of 100 Days.'" I remember enjoying this movie when I was a kid, but I do have misgivings as to how it will hold up... Hopefully those misgivings are ill-founded! (Still, I wouldn't expect M*A*S*H...) That same day Fox will also (finally!) release the 1967 Dudley Moore/Peter Cook classic Bedazzled (which, for the spy connection, also featured Fathom star Raquel Welch as "Lilian Lust, the babe with the bust!") and Richard Lester's Royal Flash, starring Malcolm McDowell and based on the "Flashman" books by Octopussy screenwriter George Macdonald Fraser. McDowell will provide an audio commentary for that one.

New UK Return of the Saint DVD Details

Network have announced more details about their upcoming Return of the Saint complete series DVD, and released a cover image. In addition to every episode, the set will include an exclusive new documentary narrated by Sir Roger Moore called "The Saint Steps In... to the 70s" with interviews with star Ian Ogilvy, producer Robert S. Baker and others. There will also be four new, exclusive audio commentaries, a featurette called "The Saint at Elstree" (about Roger Moore receiving a plaque at the studio last month), PDF's of the 1979 and 1980 Return of the Saint annuals, and a PDF script gallery presenting original scripts plus meeting notes and changes. Fascinating! Best of all, an unproduced script will also be included, in which the Saint fights vampires! (I, for one, would love to read that.)

Network's set will also carry over a number of special features from Umbrella's Australian release, including the feature film version of "The Brave Goose" (two episodes strung together for European theaters), commercial break bumbers and textless material, image galleries, PDF's of original promotional materials and trade articles, storyboards for the title sequence and an alternate European title sequence with a horrible vocal theme called "Taking It Easy." All that and more. Phew!

Unfortunately, there will still be no definitive release of this show, because Network are apparantely not including the audio commentaries recorded for the Umbrella set. I really wish that different studios would license each others' commentary tracks so that fans wouldn't need to track down every version to hear different episode commentaries! (Well, not that this fan can afford to do that, but it would be nice.)

Return of the Saint is due on January 29, 2007.

More Casino Royale DVD Details

DVDActive is reporting an even earlier release date for Sony's Casino Royale DVD than The Digital Bits did yesterday: March 13, 2007. They also offer the first details on what special features to expect on the 2-disc collectors edition. According to the website, we can look forward to "a 'Becoming Bond' documentary that takes an intimate look at how Daniel Craig stepped into the role of the 6th James Bond, a 'James Bond: For Real' featurette that looks at the action and stunts, a 'Bond Girls are Forever' featurette that takes a closer look at Bond's leading ladies, a 'Death in Venice' featurtte, and the Chris Cornell ‘You Know My Name’ music video." The movie will be presented in anamorphic widescreen, naturally, and receive a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Retail is announced as $28.95, though it will surely be cheaper at most stores when it comes out. MI6.co.uk adds a few additional details, assigning a 30 minute running time to each of the above documentaries and adding "5 news wraps" to the list.

You can't really judge much about the ultimate features from the titles alone, but if one were to attempt to do so (which I will now attempt), then they don't sound too impressive right off the bat, to be honest. A whole half hour on the rather routine Venice stunt sequence, and nothing on the gambling scenes (which must have presented a vexing dilemma to the crew on how to pull of, whether you think they succeeded or not)? Nothing on the torture sequence, which must have seemed at first impossible to film? And, worst of all, apparently nothing on the adaptation process? I would really hope for a "page to screen" type featurette featuring Broccoli and Wilson, Purvis, and Haggis on the choices they made in bringing Ian Fleming's first Bond novel to life. Of course, additional features could still be TBA, and the existing ones might cover these aspects despite their titles. I hope so!

First Pictures Of Daniel Craig In The Golden Compass

Ain't It Cool News has scored the first pictures of Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel in the New Line fantasy movie The Golden Compass. The movie, based on the Phillip Pullman novel, is notable to spy fans because it reteams Craig with his Casino Royale costar Eva Green.

Spies On DVD In March

The Digital Bits reports that Sony will release Casino Royale on DVD (and Blue Ray, for those who care about such things) on March 31. Universal will also supposedly release The Good Shepherd around the same time.

Book Review: The Devil In Amber by Mark Gatiss

Review: The Devil In Amber

Mark Gatiss’s follow-up to his excellent spy debut The Vesuvius Club has been out for a while now in Britain, and just hit American stores this week. While The Vesuvius Club was a whole lot of fun, it ultimately lived up to its subtitle by being "A Bit of Fluff," just as it claimed. I loved every minute of reading it, but come the final chapter, I just wanted something more, and I wasn’t sure what. Gatiss did an excellent job of going through all the motions of a turn-of-the-century thriller, right down to the obligatory evil Chinaman, but that wasn’t quite enough. It was a dead-on pastiche, and I couldn’t fault it for that, but coming from one of the co-founders of The League of Gentlemen, I expected some sort of twist on the genre. (Well, some twist beyond the hero being bisexual, which I guess would have been quite a shock to Edwardian readers, but, coming from Gatiss, I pretty much expected.) In The Devil In Amber, Gatiss finds that missing ingredient and then some.

Gatiss once outlined his plan for a Lucifer Box trilogy (Box being the hero of Vesuvius and Amber). The first book was to be his take on Sherlock Holmes and Victorian/Edwardian adventure, the second was to be his 1920s/30s John Buchan-style thriller, and the third (forthcoming) to be Gatiss’s version of Ian Fleming, set in the early Fifties. Rather than doing a straightforward 39 Steps-style story, though, Gatiss has stepped outside the box, so to speak, and outside of the strict borders of the spy genre. Lucifer Box is very much still a secret agent "by appointment to His Majesty," but his struggle against would-be Facist dictator Olympus Mons in The Devil In Amber takes him into the realm of the supernatural. Mons’s objective? To summon the Devil himself, in the flesh. As, of course, a means to rule the world. (Note to would-be dictators: such plans rarely work out as you expect.)

Gatiss’s influences clearly extend beyond the obvious Doyle/Buchan/Fleming origins (all still very present) and into Hammer movies and their sources. (The League of Gentlemen also had homages aplenty to Hammer and Amicus, particularly in their Christmas Special.) Most obviously, he draws from two Christopher Lee movies: Hammer’s The Devil Rides Out (directed by Terrence Fisher) and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man. (Anyone familiar with that movie will spot where the plot is heading long before Box does, but the fun is in the journey!) The Devil Rides out was based on a novel by the prolific Dennis Wheatley, whose supernatural WWII-era spy thrillers are clearly a huge inspiration on Gatiss. He mixes all these ingredients, plus more (‘30s pulp fiction and comic strips, Marjery Allingham and her ilk, and a healthy dose of P.G. Wodehouse), adds his own, unique authorial touches and comes out with an expert blend of recycled pop culture every bit as skillful as Quentin Tarantino’s artful melanges of ‘70s film genres. Personally, I couldn’t be more pleased with the result. It’s as if someone (well, Mark Gatiss, to be specific) took all the entertainment I love most (James Bond! Hammer! Bertie Wooster!) and mixed them together into The Damn-Near Perfect Novel.

Yes, I loved this book that much. The Devil In Amber was just about the most pure enjoyment I’ve gotten out of any book in a long time. Even as I raced through the pages, I didn’t want it to end. And now I can’t wait for the third volume, presumably due late this year.

The Devil In Amber is set some time after The Vesuvius Club, although once again Gatiss makes it hard to pin down an exact year. Lucifer Box is older, and constantly feeling his age (especially with a hotshot younger agent biting at his heels), but he’s still just as full of himself as ever. As a narrator, he never misses an opportunity to inform us of just how handsome or... generally great... he is. And he’s still just as amoral, too. He’s a cad, through and through, and impossible to dislike for it. He’s like the polar opposite of Adam Adamant (of whom Gatiss makes no secret of his admiration, popping up all over the DVD’s special features!) While Adamant represents all the virtues of the perfect Edwardian gentleman, Box is all the sin and vice of that era wrapped up in a devilish smile.

The humor in The Devil In Amber, like Vesuvius, comes mainly in the narration, and in the organically funny predicaments Box finds himself in over the course of his adventure, amidst all of his near-death escapes. Despite what you might expect from a TV comedian, these books aren’t parodies, but pure pastiche. They are stright-up adventure stories, with humor. Like his fellow veterans of British comedy, Charlie Higson and Hugh Laurie, as an author Mark Gatiss takes his spy/adventure stories very seriously.

If you’re a spy fan, do not pass up this book because it draws outside the lines of the genre. It’s still a spy novel, albeit one with a Brimstone threat instead of a nuclear one. There’s intrigue aplenty within Box’s agency, and within an embryonic American counterpart agency as well. The addition of the supernatural Macguffin gives it the feel of an Indiana Jones movie (always a good thing, if you ask me), and I would absolutely LOVE to see this book filmed. Unfortunately, given the fact that the hero is as apt to jump into bed with a man as a woman, that’s probably unlikely to happen in Hollywood. Box’s bisexuality is really not nearly as central to the story as it was in The Vesuvius Club, but I doubt Gatiss would allow a studio to excise it entirely. So I can’t imagine a movie coming any time soon, which is a shame. In the mean time, I certainly hope there’s a graphic novel adaptation once again, as there was for The Vesuvius Club. (Like that book, the British edition of Amber features occasional full-page illustrations, complete with dialogue captions. It’s a different artist, with a style more appropriate to the 1930s.)

I can’t recommend this book enough.

Caprice Coming To DVD This Month

Fox will release the 1967 Doris Day spy movie Caprice on January 30, 2007. It will be part of their "Cinema Classics" line (like their recent "Classic Spy Collection") and, like all those releases, will contain some nice bonus material. Featurettes include "Decoding Doris Day," "The Caprice Look: Coversations with William Creber," and, best of all, "Double-Oh Doris." The disc also boasts a restoration comparison and trailers. Doris goes undercover as an industrial spy at a cosmetics company and then gets caught up in bigger intrigue than she bargained for when she discovers the company isn't all it seems. Richard Harris plays the spy who loves her. I've been wanting to see this for a while, so I'm glad it's coming out.

Happy 2(007) From the Double O Section!

I just wanted to wish everyone a happy new year. Hope it's better than mine, stuck, sick, on the wrong coast. Have fun, but stay safe and don’t forget to call a cab if you’ve had too much Bollinger or one too many vodka martinis as you welcome the year of Double O Seven, even if you did so at the Bond-themed ‘007 New Year’s Eve Party at the W Hotel in Los Angeles. After all, you don’t want to start the year off by wrapping the old Aston around a telephone poll!

2006 turned out to be a truly great year for spies on film, with a trio of great spy movies to close the year (Casino Royale, The Good Shepherd and The Good German). There were also a lot of essential (and, in some cases, long-awaited) spy DVD releases, like the newly-remastered James Bond sets, the first seasons of The Wild Wild West and Mission: Impossible, the final volume of A&E’s complete release of every surviving Avengers episode (containing the earliest Cathy Gale episodes, as well as some Venus Smith and Dr. Martin King... and Steed’s whippet, Sheeba!), the final season of Alias, the complete surviving series of Adam Adamant Lives! (at last!), Honey West, Operation Crossbow, The Quiller Memorandum, The Ultimate Flint Collection, Ring Around the World and Special Mission Lady Chaplin!

‘007 looks to be just as exciting on the DVD front with new seasons of Wild Wild West and Mission: Impossible, the consumer release of all seasons of Get Smart, an extended edition of The Good Shepherd, The Kommissar X Collection, the Espionage In Tangiers/Assassination In Rome double feature, and, of course, Casino Royale (2006). Fingers crossed for Warner Bros. and Anchor Bay untangling the Man From UNCLE rights situation in ‘007, too! In theaters, we’ve got a new Bourne movie on the way, as well as the Get Smart movie with Steve Carrell. Why the Broccolis didn’t arrange for there to be a Bond movie coming out in this of all years is a mystery to me. The marketing guys could have gone home; all their work would be done for them! What’s better advertising than an entire year named after your product??? Oh, well. Happy 2007, everyone!

2-007 New Year’s Celebration in Los Angeles

Still don’t have your plans figured out for New Year’s Eve? Live in the Los Angeles area? Want an excuse to put on your dinner jacket or evening gown? Willing to drop a hundred bucks a head or more just to get in? The W Hotel in Westwood is planning a Bond-themed party to celebrate the year of 007. See all the info here. If you go, send me pictures for the Double O Section!

Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown?

Merry Christmas and Season's Greetings from the Double O Section! I hope everyone reading this has a freshly unwrapped Mission: Impossible Season One or Alias Rambaldi Cube or one of the James Bond sets to dig into. Or that the area you live in is one of the select cities where The Good Shepherd or The Good German open today. If not, here are a few suggestions for Christmas spy viewing.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service
(Available on The James Bond Collection Volume 3)
The only Holiday-themed Bond movie to date, and the best one to boot! (Best Bond movie, that is, not best Holiday-themed Bond movie...) Features Nina singing John Barry and Hal David's infectious original carol "Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown," which is available on the soundtrack CD.

The Avengers - "Too Many Christmas Trees"
(Available in the Emma Peel Megaset)
A holiday clssic! It's not my favorite Avengers Episode (though it is a very good one), but it's probably the one I've seen the most since I put it in the player every Christmas. Black and white Emma Peel with Rigg and Macnee both at their very best. Their fantastic chemistry together simply radiates when Emma muses about a four-poster bed that "I've always fancied myself in one of these." Steed gets that incorrigible gleam in his eye and replies, "So have I." You also can't beat "Too Many Christmas Trees" for creepy, psychidelic Santa imagery. The whole psychic spy plotline doesn't come together that tightly in the end, but who cares when the episode's this much fun?

Billion Dollar Brain
(Availabe from MGM)
No Christmas trees per se, but plenty of chilly, wintry landscapes and beautiful cold imagery (and Pagan imagery, appropriate for the winter solstice!) in Ken Russell's ethereal Scandinavian-set Harry Palmer movie. What could be more season-appropriate than Michael Caine in a big fur hat?

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold
(Available from Paramount)
...if you want to warm up. Best watched with loved ones in front of a gently dying fire as a way to come down from the excesses of Christmas dinner.

Die Hard
(available from Fox)
Not a spy movie, but the epitome of Christmas action!

The World Is Not Enough
(Available in The James Bond Collection Vol. 1)
Er, well... It's not a Christmas movie, and it's one of the worst of the Bond series, but it does feature a character named "Christmas Jones." (For some reason.) It doesn't even sound like a proper Bond Girl name, but the name turns out to merely be a set-up for a rather lame double entendre at the end: "Christmas came early this year!" Har har. And she's played by Denise Richards. So... yeah. But my friend Josh keeps urging me to give this one another shot, so maybe Christmas is the time to do it. If you're not feeling seasonably charitable, though, you might be better served if you...

GO SEE CASINO ROYALE AGAIN IN THE THEATER!
What could be a better way to celebrate Christmas than that?

007 Days of Christmas Again On Spike

Once again, Spike TV continues the tradition started eons ago by TBS. They’ll be running oodles of Bond movies back-to-back (sure to be sporadically interrupted by wrestling, as always) during their "007 Days of Christmas" marathon event. They’re always on in the background throughout the festivities at my house, even though I own them all on DVD and VHS... many times over, now. It’s a blessing and a curse because as good as it is to walk into the den and catch a few minutes of blissful Bond action while you digest your turkey, some cousin always pops in during one of the more embarrassing bits of Moonraker and reaffirms their professed hatred of 007 for another year. Oh, well. Their loss!

Spike won’t be showing the ‘67 Casino Royale this year, because BBC America currently holds those cable rights and plays it all the time. They do have Never Say Never Again, however, which, being a renegade, didn’t make any of the recent DVD boxsets, and I think they’ve got most of the Brosnans now, too, which weren’t all part of the initial package when they bought it. They won’t have the ‘06 Casino Roayale any time soon (like in the next five years), though, because USA Network recently plunked down $20 million for that privilege!

UPDATE: Looks like they don't have the Brosnans anymore after all. And the movies aren't just interrupted by wrestling this year, either! Spike is continuing to air their regularly scheduled CSI repeats, so the Bonds will be unusually staggered this Christmas.

Book Review: THE MONEYPENNY DIARIES: SECRET SERVANT by Kate Westbrook (2006)

Review: The Moneypenny Diaries: Secret Servant

Samantha Weinberg’s second James Bond novel (writing as Kate Westbrook), The Moneypenny Diaries Vol. 2: Secret Servant, is even more fun than her first. Yes, despite that misleading cover that doesn’t even mention the main commercial attraction, this is a Bond novel. 007 just doesn’t happen to be the main character. Instead, as with the first volume, Ms. Weinberg uses the supporting character of Miss Moneypenny to examine the world of Bond’s Secret Service, and how M, Bond, Tanner and the others weathered the spy scandals that rocked real life England in the early Sixties.

I really like the way Weinberg has integrated real, historical events into Fleming’s world. Obviously, he couldn’t deal with issues so contemporary and scandalous when he was writing the books, but by placing Bond in a historical context (a good decision on the part of the new regime at IFP), Weinberg can. And forty-odd years later, she has access to information that Fleming couldn’t possibly have known, and a historical perspective. (In one retrospectively embarrassing attempt at injecting current events into his fiction, in the short story "Quantum of Solace," Fleming had 007 aiding Castro’s Cuban rebels against Batista! Who knew where that would lead?) It’s fascinating to see M and his team (usually glimpsed only in a single chapter of each Fleming book) grapple with these events. After all, a Soviet mole in the heart of British Intelligence poses a much greater threat to a man like M than a madman sending missiles off course from his private island! (And, lest one think that Soviet moles could never penetrate M’s Secret Service they way they did the real one, remember that Fleming himself mentions Burgess and Maclean in From Russia With Love, in which Bond is assigned to a Committee of Inquiry on the matter!)

While the first novel dealt with the Cuban Missile Crisis, this one revolves around Kim Philby’s defection. It works better, because the Cambridge spy ring was an espionage event that involved MI6 much more directly than the Cuban Missile Crisis. Possibly because of that, Weinberg also works Moneypenny (or Jane, to use the first name she’s given her), into the action much more organically. The first book’s greatest weakness was the barely credible way Moneypenny ended up in Cuba with James Bond. The way she gets caught up in the Philby affair is far more convincing. Really, how could she not? The secretary to the head of MI6 at the time would have been right in the thick of it all. It’s still impossible to believe that M would risk sending someone with as many secrets as Moneypenny into the heart of the Evil Empire–Moscow–for any reason, but the reason Weinberg comes up with is the most plausible I can think of. And it’s never been a requirement for any Bond novel to be entirely grounded in realism.

Secret Servant also revisits a particularly interesting period in Bond’s own fictional history. It begins following the events of Fleming’s You Only Live Twice, when Bond is presumed dead, and continues through his dramatic return in the opening of The Man With the Golden Gun. (For those a bit rusty on their Fleming, an amnesiac Bond comes back brainwashed by the KGB and attempts to assassinate his boss!) Witnessing these events through Moneypenny’s eyes gives us a unique perspective on a unique situation in the Bond canon, and allows Weinberg to fill in a few gaps from Fleming’s final novel, which he never had a chance to fully finish. (Bond’s "de-programming" is fleshed out somewhat more, for one thing.) Secret Servant ends just about where TMWTGG does, so the third (and supposedly final) Moneypenny Diary will give Weinberg quite a bit more freedom in how she uses 007 himself as a character.*

Fleming never gave us much detail at all on Moneypenny. She rated a few sentences in most of the books, but managed to make enough of an impression that the filmmakers, and actress Lois Maxwell, were able to turn her into the iconic figure she is today. Weinberg goes even further, though, fortunately. Her Moneypenny is a fully realized character, very occasionally in contradiction with Fleming’s version, but that’s excusable since she really belongs to Weinberg now. (That sentence may shock purists, but it’s true. Moneypenny is the main character of these books, and for their sake the author has the right to tweak a date here or there if it serves her version of the character better.) I found myself really caring about the character, and eager to get back to Moneypenny’s world, not Bond’s, while reading the books. Furthermore, since reading the first Moneypenny Diaries, I’ve enjoyed her brief appearances in the Fleming books even more as I’ve been re-reading them!

The novel isn’t perfect. The character of Bond still seems just a little off, but that’s really hard to judge since both Moneypenny Diaries have presented him in very difficult and uncharacteristic stages of his life (dealing with the death of his wife, recovering from KGB brainwashing). Still, there’s no excusing his incredibly forced interplay with Moneypenny, which is even worse than some of the scenes written for Brosnan and Samantha Bond (who took on the role in the last four films)! On his way to Casablanca, James says, "Come with me, Penny, please. We could make whoopee in the sand dunes." Ugh! Luckily, that’s about the worst line in the book and not representative of Ms. Weinberg’s generally top-notch prose.

The storytelling itself is also first rate. The Moneypenny Diaries are told on two levels. There are the "diaries" themselves, a narrative taking place in the early Sixties. Then there are the chapters at the beginning of each diary month featuring "Kate Westbrook," the supposed author/editor of the books, who is actually a character/narrator herself, and Moneypenny’s niece. In the first books these served mainly to contextualize the events in the diary, and reinforce the ridiculous conceit that the books were real. In Secret Servant, Kate Westbrook becomes more of an active character as she follows in her aunts footsteps, attempting to solve the decades-old mystery of another, undiscovered mole at MI6. She does this by following "clues left in her diaries... some unwitting... Others, I believe, she deliberately hid within her words, wary as always of the possibility that her secret diaries might someday be read." Unless they turn out to be red herrings, the clues seem rather obvious. Still, though, the mystery is left unsolved at the end of this book, and Westbrook begins receiving threats on her own life if she continues her digging. It’s an exciting cliffhanger in the framing story (even as the Philby story in the diaries is neatly wrapped up) that leaves me eager for the final volume next year.

*For better or for worse, she appears to be ignoring the events of Kingsley Amis’s 1968 follow-up novel, Colonel Sun. She makes reference in Secret Servant to M’s guardians the Hammonds being alive and well years after they were murdered in that book. Bond continuation authors have always had the option to use or ignore what they chose from the others who came before them (and after Fleming). Raymond Benson dispensed with a lot of the changes that John Gardner had made in the organization of the Secret Service (Gardner had done away with the Double O Section and had Bond reporting to a committee by his next-to-last novel, SeaFire) and 007's choice of weapon, but at least made a concession to continuity nuts by trying to explain things like how Marc-Ange Draco could be alive again after Gardner had killed him off. Now that the clock’s been reset on the literary James Bond back to the Cold War, it stands to reason that everything from the 80s and beyond (Gardner and Benson) would be out of the picture. Personally, though, I do wish that Colonel Sun was still regarded as in-continuity, since it was written so shortly after Fleming’s adventures. Charlie Higson’s Young Bond books do appear to fall within the Weinberg continuity. Of course, Bond’s all fiction anyway, and the only books that really count are those by Ian Fleming, so all of this is me just being a nerdy, nitpicky fan. The fact that Weinberg doesn’t adhere to Amis’s or John Pearson’s Bond chronology certainly doesn’t affect my enjoyment of her books one little bit.

Review: THE GOOD SHEPHERD (2006)

Review: The Good Shepherd
The Good Shepherd is certainly not a perfect movie, but it's a real treat for spy afficionados. If you know anything about CIA history, you'll be rewarded with lots of nods to actual people and events, and if you don't, you'll probably be inspired to learn more. The film chronicles the history of the CIA from the formation of the OSS at the outbreak of WWII to the Bay of Pigs disaster.

Despite its length (nearly 3 hours), I remained fascinated the whole time. Director Robert De Niro's pacing was mostly spot-on, and the flashback structure he and writer Eric Roth employ works well to continue driving the narrative forward even though the story takes place over a long period of time.

The framing story, about the aftermath of the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, takes place in 1961, and is a fairly conventional spy thriller. (Of the Le Carre variety, not the Fleming sort.) The flashback story--and the heart of the movie--is not a thriller, but a sprawling, historical family drama. Even in these segments, though, De Niro skillfully uses many of the trappings and visual tropes of the spy thriller to keep the plot moving along quickly and maintain a tone in keeping with his subject matter. Master cinematographer Bob Richardson (Kill Bill) aids the cause by making sure the movie looks like a spy movie, lighting the men in hats lurking in dark alleyways with impressivly moody effect. The brooding score by Marcelo Zarvos and Bruce Fowler also helps.

What we end up with is a successfull combination of the two plotlines: a family drama that looks and feels like a spy thriller. In this respect (and in the main character's journey), the movie echoes The Godfather, which was a family drama disguised as a crime movie. (Not that The Good Shepherd is in the same league as The Godfather... although it is produced by Francis Ford Coppola.) By the time the flashback storyline has caught up with the framing story, both are very successfully melded as one leading to an exciting and emotional climax.

Matt Damon is quite good as a spy of a very different sort from Jason Bourne, but at times he seems almost too introspective under De Niro's direction. His character, Henry Wilson, displays very little outward emotion, due to the nature of his business.

Damon is a good actor and has the ability to convey a lot in a brief expression, but since he never breaks down (outwardly, at least), it’s difficult to feel like we ever truly get to know the character. Which is the idea, of course, but it’s a bit frustrating. Going the Brokeback Mountain way rather than risking the appalling old age make-up of A Beautiful Mind, no real attempt is made to age Damon, so make sure you pay attention to the helpful captions letting you know what year a given scene is set in. Angelina Jolie, on the other hand, they do manage to age, and very convincingly.

Jolie does a great job cast against type as a long-suffering and unloved CIA wife. Michael Gambon and John Turturro are both excellent, as always, in supporting roles. Alec Baldwin, who's become one of the most reliable supporting actors working, does what he can to spruce up a very small role, but for once he doesn’t end up stealing the show since there’s just not enough there for him to work with. William Hurt, like Damon, plays his spook character as a cypher, delivering every line as if he’s speaking in code. Again, I would have liked to get behind that facade just once. Billy Crudup is horribly miscast as the British agent Arch Cummings (a Kim Philby analogue, originally called "Kip Wiley" by Roth). I can’t tell if his accent itself was actually bad (although I suspect it was), but every time he opened his mouth it was distracting to hear him speaking that way. Why not just cast a British actor?

Speaking of Philby, all of the historical figures referenced in The Good Shepherd are fictionalized. Damon’s Edward Wilson is based on several figures, but most recognizably James Jesus Angleton. (The character’s different enough, though, that I’d still love to see a straightforward Angleton biopic one day!) The legendary founder of the OSS, William "Wild Bill" Donovan has become William Sullivan, played by De Niro. You’ll recognize a slew of other real life personalities peering through their fictionalized analogues, as well. On the one hand, it’s fun to slowly realize who’s supposed to be who, but on the other, I found myself occasionally frustrated when the fictional version didn’t turn out to be as interesting as the real thing, as in Donovan’s case. (Of course, fictionalizing these characters enables Roth to use them to serve his story, and not get bogged down in being factually true to the historical personages.)

The first cut of The Good Shepherd reportedly clocked in at over four hours (and the script was even longer), so it’s understandable that the movie occasionally feels like it’s been cut down from a mini-series. What’s surprising is how little it feels like that. Key moments have obviously been cut out of Crudup’s storyline and out of Wilson's son's storyline, leading to some confusion. But overall, the movie is still coherent. (A longer cut is planned for DVD.) Apparently a subplot involving the brother of Jolie’s character was cut out, probably wisely because it doesn’t seem missed. It’s surprising that a scene with Joe Pesci was left in the movie instead of some of the aforementioned bits that would have clarified story points. It may be because De Niro didn’t want to cut his old Goodfellas buddy out of the picture, but it’s also probably because it’s one of the only times Wilson clearly states his motivations. For a movie that usually veers toward being overly subtle, having a character outright state his convictions like that is remarkably unsubtle, and also unnecessary. The scene could have easily been discarded.

The Good Shepherd has enough problems to likely prevent it from winning any Oscars, but overall manages the momentous task of packing a huge amount of history into a digestible storyline. It’s certainly an unmissable movie for spy fans, and likely to spark an interest in the subject in casual viewers, especially coming as it does amidst all sorts of real life spy drama going on in the world.

You'll Be Seeing The Prisoner Remade On TV

The oft-mooted TV remake of the classic Patrick McGoohan series The Prisoner is at long last actually happening, according to Variety. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but the original is such a sacred text that I'm going to remain steadfastly pessimistic until a see a reason not to be. (But I do hope they give me such a reason!) I don't think it can't be done; I just think it will be very, very difficult to do right.

According to the Variety story, the new series is being co-produced by Sky One in Britain and AMC in the US, along with Granada International. The mastermind behind the new version is Bill Gallagher. I'm not familiar with any of his work, but apparently his biggest splash to date is a UK show called Conviction. The trade calls it "a modern-day reimagining of the TV series classic" and says that "production will begin next spring for a debut in both the U.S. and the U.K. in January 2008." AMC has committed for "at least" six episodes.

This TV series has nothing to do with the movie remake that Universal is planning (announced last summer), to be written by Twelve Monkeys scribed David and Janet Peoples and directed by Christopher Nolan as a follow-up to his upcoming Batman sequel.

That's right, both projects are currently moving forward. There's been some speculation as to whether the movie announcement meant that the rumored series was off the books, but that's not the case as it turns out. Apparently, Universal has the film rights while Granada has the TV rights to the original.

What can we expect from the TV series?

Variety says: "AMC execs were tightlipped regarding details of the updated version but said it will similarly involve themes of paranoia and deal with sociopolitical issues. What the new show won't be is an exact replica of the original. 'The show isn't just a re-creation,' said Rob Sorcher, AMC exec veep of programming and production. 'What we're doing is an entirely new reinterpretation that stays true to the components of the McGoohan's vision.'"

So it looks like we'll be getting more Number 6 on the large and small screens, even though he only lasted seventeen episodes when the show originally debuted almost 40 years ago. Wow. But what is Number 6 without Patrick McGoohan? How does he feel about these new versions? If one of these productions gets him aboard in some creative capacity, then that's the horse to back. Right now, I have to say that I'm more interested in Nolan's version, since he did a great job reinventing Batman and made a fascinating movie in The Prestige. We shall see...

And if, for some reason, you haven't seen the original (not only one of the best spy shows of all time, but one of the very, very best TV shows of all time period!), I implore you to do so before the remakes attack!

Review: Alias: The Complete Fifth Season

It’s unfortunate that my first Alias review on this blog is of its stumbling final season rather than its infinitely grander beginning, but the latest DVD release is indeed Alias: The Complete Fifth Season. And it’s not as bad on DVD as it was on TV. In fact, it’s a serviceable collection of entertaining episodes. Definitely not the thing to buy if you’ve never seen Alias before, but still an integral part of any fan’s collection.

One of the major problems with the fifth season was that Jennifer Garner’s pregnancy meant that she would be out of action for a while, so new characters had to be written in to solve the ensuing fight deficit. Unfortunately, none of the three new regulars had enough time to be developed into interesting characters. (Well, actually Angel veteran Amy Acker managed to make an impression as Kelly Peyton, but she was a villain, not a good guy.) Luckily, on DVD you can easily fast forward through all of Balthazar Getty’s plotline as Tom Grace, knowing in retrospect that it ultimately goes nowhere. (And if you didn’t know that, I’m telling you now: there’s no payoff, so don’t bother.) Rachel Nichols’ character annoyed me while watching the show on TV, but on second viewing on DVD her character definitely improves. She actually does have an arc during the season, even if it’s essentially the same one Sidney went through in Season 1.

The other major problem with the final season actually started to hinder the show as early as Season 3. Milo Rambaldi, a DaVinci-esque Italian alchemist, wrote Nostrodamus-like predictions and created fantastic bio-weapons centuries ahead of their time, then hid the pieces around the world. These inventions made great Macguffins to be sought by nearly all of Alias’s characters, but sadly Season 5 is what happens when Macguffins run amok. What started out as a great premise that drove the first few seasons turned into a burden when it became clear that the writers hadn’t planned out what to do with it. Rambaldi’s much talked about "Endgame" changed so many times that it no longer made a lick of sense and, frankly, it’s hard to care about it too much. My solution? Don’t.

Watching the show on TV I was eager for the arc to play out and disappointed that it didn’t. Re-watching on DVD, I was able to just watch the episodes on their own and found nearly all of them thoroughly enjoyable. When it comes down to it, Alias is a fun show, not a serious one. Even though some of Rambaldi’s inventions recalled the sci-fi trappings of The Prisoner, a much better Sixties comparison for Alias is The Saint. Certainly not high art, but each episode is just a lot of fun. And there are many days when I’d rather watch a Saint than a Prisoner. Same goes for Alias. Season 5 works just as well as any of the others if you just decide you’re in the mood for an Alias and watch a single episode rather than trying to follow the whole arc.

"Bob" stands out as a particularly great stand-alone episode, and makes the best use of Rachel Nichols’ newbie spy when she sleeps with recurring villain Sark (David Anders) only to learn later that he’s a bad guy. There are a lot of humorous moments, the best of which has to be super-serious Victor Garber’s deadpan delivery of the line "thong."

The Alias humor is on display throughout the season. The Joe Friday-esque agents/babysitters in "There’s Only One Sydney Bristow" are hilarious, and seem to have walked right out of a Joss Whedon show. ("Oh, no, ma’am. The mother/child bond is impossible to replicate, even by Agent Dalton and myself.") That episode (the series’ hundredth) also serves up some great Alias action and the return of old favorites Will Tippin (Bradley Cooper) and Anna Espinosa (Gina Torres). It also uses the same device (literally) as series creator J.J. Abrams’ M:i:III when a tiny bomb is inserted in someone’s head. (Unfortunately that episode aired just a week before the movie came out.)

The finale, "All the Time In the World" (nice Bond reference!), doesn’t wrap up the Rambaldi plot with any satisfaction, but it’s still a good episode. The fate of series villain Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin) is priceless, and provides Garber’s Jack Bristow with a final badass moment to rival any of Jack Bauer’s. ("You may have beaten death, Arvin, but you can’t beat me!")

Alias: The Complete Fifth Season comes packaged in a bottom-loading plastic slipcase that’s too loose so that the cardboard gatefold that holds the discs falls out when you pull it off the shelf. It’s a bad design. The four single-sided DVDs are double stacked in the gatefold.

Disc 4 houses all the extras except the commentaries. First up are several forced trailers for other Disney products that have nothing to do with Alias like Apocalypto, Pirates and that Mark Wahlberg football movie. You can also access some more appropriate trailers from the main menu for things like the Alias "Rambaldi Cube" that houses the complete series and J.J. Abrams’ other (even better) show, Lost: Season 2.

The first legitimate extra is called "The Legend of Rambaldi." I was expecting nothing more than a clip montage and pleasantly surprised at what I got instead. It begins like a History Channel special on a real alchemist. This bit is very well-done, with a pitch-perfect narrator (probably a veteran of many such specials), nice motion control shots of Rambaldi artifacts from the show, and good B-roll of the Italian city where the inventor was supposedly born and old paintings of historical figures who apparently interacted with Rambaldi. I don’t remember if we once saw bits of this on the series, but if it was originally produced for this DVD, then it shows that a lot of time and effort was put into these extras.

The featurette nicely segues (via Marshall) into Abrams talking about Rambaldi and admitting that he’s nothing more than a Macguffin. Then we get a peak inside the "Rambaldi vault" where the show’s prop guy talks about all the various devices they had to make. Pretty neat. Spliced in is Rachel Nichols (who’s all over these DVD features) talking about "her favorite Rambaldi artifact" which doesn’t make much sense. Michael Vartan puts it well when he says "Fuck Rambaldi." (It’s bleeped.) Less convincing is the story editor, who tries to tell us that Rambaldi has become a spiritual underpinning for the series, although Ron (Sloane) Rifkin makes sense when he says it’s "purely religious." Abrams pretty much negates all that hokum by saying Rambaldi himself is far less important than what he did to motivate our characters and move our story. True, and I'm glad to see them admit it. Still, they could have had the courtesy to their audience to wrap it all up in a way that made sense!

The next featurette is on the 100th episode and contains a lot of behind-the-scenes footage on set. It’s got interviews with the prodigal Bradley Cooper (who says Will’s back "to get tortured some more") and the ubiquitous Rachel Nichols. Finally, there’s some party footage hosted by her, in which we see just about everyone who’s ever been on the show milling about. Even J.J. Abrams, who by all accounts abandoned his series outright during it’s final season, drops in, although he doesn’t seem to know a lot of the crew. The highlight is Victor Garber and Ron Rifkin clowning around, in stark contrast to their dour characters.

"The Music of Alias" puts the spotlight on the amazing scoring of Michael Giacchino, but unfortunately isn’t nearly as in-depth as the similar feature on Sean Callery on the latest 24 DVD set. It’s mostly lots of people saying nice things about Giacchino and each pronouncing his name slightly differently. More interesting is some footage of a scoring session intercut with clips of the finished scene they’re working on. Giacchino himself is interviewed, and reveals that "Alias at the beginning relied a lot on these techno rhythms that were layered on top of an orchestral track, but as the show progressed it became more about these people, it needed to be more emotional... And so I found myself, over time, using that techno less and less. Now it’s a completely orchestral show." Fascinating. I didn’t really notice the change! Whatever the style, his music has been the most consistently fantastic element of the show from start to finish.

There’s a blooper reel cut in with a silly, newly shot "recreation" of the first phone call from J.J. to Jennifer full of irony. The reel puts the funniest bit up front, with Michael Vartan being chased out of an ice cave by a pink Yeti, then descends into humor of the Balthazarr Getty talking on a banana phone variety. Har, har! Also in here, for some reason, is a short clip reel of Sidney in skimpy clothes, which certainly makes pleasant viewing.

Things wrap up with "The New Recruit: On Set With Rachel Nichols," which turns out to be a lot more interesting than I was anticipating. It’s mostly behind the scenes of "Bob" (in which the Renaissance Hotel at Hollywood & Highland sat in for Brazil), and contains funny bits of Nichols and Anders cutting up during their sex scene.

Nichols and Anders also contribute the best of the season’s four commentaries on that episode, along with writers Monica Breen and Alison Schapker. The track is jokey, but also informative, and covers all aspects of the episode from writing to production. Everything a good commentary should be. It’s much better than the more testosterone-laden track on series premiere "Prophet 5" by Victor Garber (who is funny) and producers Jeff Pinkner and Ken Olin (who really seems like a dick, even though he didn’t on previous seasons’ commentaries). The other commentaries are on "Horizon" and "There’s Only One Sidney Bristow," with the latter being by former production assistants who present a slightly different view of the show. They’re pretty frank. When one marvels how amazing it is that the staff keeps coming up with new, original ideas, another cuts in and says, "What do you mean?" She goes on to point out how Prophet 5 is exactly like The Covenant and K Directorate and all the other Evil Organizations led by Councils of varying numbers that have popped up on the show in the past.

If you’re a fan of the show and on the fence about buying this season because it was sub-par, I’d say go for it. It’s not a satisfying conclusion to a series viewers have invested a lot in, but it is a collection of above average TV episodes that are each enjoyable in their own right. And the extras are pretty good. Again, this isn’t the place to start if you’re new to the show, but it’s definitely worth having for dedicated followers of Sydney Bristow. (And it’s pretty cheap compared to the other seasons!)

Los Angeles Bond Screenings Coming Up

The American Cinematheque will be holding a Bond tribute in January at their Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, and possibly at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood as well. There are no details yet on how many movies (or which ones) they will show, or if there will be any special speakers. Expect that information closer to the end of the month. I just hope "tribute" means there will be some movies by Bonds other than Connery. Yeah, he's the best, but Goldfinger plays like four times a year in LA theatres! How about something else??? The Cinematheque is known for showing pristine 35mm prints acquired directly from the studios, and often having directors or actors speak after their screenings. About five years ago I saw an abolutely gorgeous dye-transfer technicolor print of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and it was the best I've ever seen that movie look, including the new DVDs. So I hope for more revelations from this upcoming series!

More U.N.C.L.E. Music On CD

Following their recent release of Lalo Schifrin's score to The Liquidator, Film Score Monthly is staying in the spy game by releasing a compilation of music from the Man From U.N.C.L.E. movies (1965-68). Titled "The Spy With My Face," the collection will feature music from that movie as well as To Trap A Spy, One Spy Too Many, One of Our Spies Is Missing, The Spy In the Green Hat, The Karate Killers, The Helicoper Spies and How To Steal the World. While all of these "feature movies" are really just two episodes of the series edited together for European markets, some of them featured original score music by such composers as Jerry Goldsmith, Lalo Schifrin, Gerald Fried, Nelson Riddle and others. It is this music that the compilation will focus on. It will also contain some of the original series music from the movies, but will not heavily duplicate what's already been released on FSM's previous four volumes of music from the series. You can hear clips from the new CD here.

Mr. Moto Returns

According to DVDActive, Fox Home Entertainment will release Volume 2 of their Mr. Moto collection on February 13. Mr. Moto, like Charlie Chan, is an Asian (Japanese this time) hero played by a white guy (the incomparable Peter Lorre), in a series of 1930s B mysteries. Unlike Chan (and based on the few movies in the series that I’ve seen), Moto isn’t an offensive caricature (other than the whole "played by a white guy" thing), but a highly competent, martial arts-trained man of action. Also unlike Chan, Moto is more of an adventurer than a detective, and his adventures are often borderline spy thrillers. But what really justifies this news item on a spy blog is that this collection also includes the 1965 Return of Mr. Moto, starring Henry Silva, in which Moto was re-conceived for the Bond Age. Once again (as with the barely tolerable but still-great-to-finally-have Flint TV movie) Fox has included an obscure spy curiosity that otherwise would have remained unseen as a bonus feature with a box set.

Site News... and More Royale

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve updated. It’s been a slow week for fictional spy news (though a fascinating, if sad, week for the real stuff...), but I’ll try to make it up to you this week with lots of new reviews. Keep checking back this week and next for reviews of Alias: Season 5, the Daniel Craig vehicle Archangel (not to be confused with the Alex Rider adventure of more or less the same name!), Volume 2 of Kate Westbrook’s Moneypenny Diaries series, and, hopefully, The Good Shepherd.

Bond collectors should also keep their eyes peeled, because I’ll be posting a lengthy third Casino Royale Magazine Roundup shortly!

Speaking of Casino Royale, I saw it a fifth time this past weekend, and it really holds up. Die Another Day got worse each time I saw it (which was only twice in the theater); Casino Royale, thankfully, gets better. I first saw DAD at the premiere, with Pierce and Halle and Michael and Barbara in attendance (yeah, I did it. I used first names. That’s just the kind of experience it was!), with a million dollar afterparty that converted the Shrine Auditorium into an ice palace complete with ice sculptures, Bond Girl go-go dancers, open bars and more. I’ll admit, the spectacle of the evening did make me see the movie through slightly rose-colored glasses the first time. (Although even at the party, I was conceding to my friend that we had slipped dangerously into Moonraker territory.) It could only be downhill from there, and with that particular movie, it was a treacherous, icy slope... if you'll forgive the pun.

While I missed out on the spectacle of a Casino Royale premiere, it was exhilarating sneaking my way into a press screening and seeing it in advance, so I was still mistrustful of my own first impressions. Luckily, subsequent viewings over the next two consecutive evenings allayed my fears, and I still stand by the review I wrote at that point. Having seen it twice more still, each time with at least a week in between screenings, if anything it’s getting better. The gripes I had then no longer bother me so much. Casino Royale is a damn good Bond movie, and Daniel Craig is a damn good Bond.

I’ll aim to see the movie at least twice more in the theater.

It’s holding up at the Box Office, too. While it’s a shame CR never got to enjoy a weekend atop the chart, it consistently hit Number 1 on weeknights during its first three weeks. (And even on one Friday, right after Thanksgiving!) It may not have opened quite as strongly as DAD in America, but it’s holding on better. CR has shown less weekly erosion than its predecessor, and managed to hold the #4 spot despite the onslaught of four new major releases this past weekend. It’s a long shot, but it just may yet equal or overtake DAD at the American Box Office if it manages to stick around long enough. And internationally, it remains the movie to beat. (Yes, even those pesky penguins can't touch it overseas!)

Review: Mission: Impossible Season 1 DVD

Tomorrow one of the glaring omissions in many a spy DVD library will finally be corrected. Tomorrow, CBS/Paramount at long last issues the first season of Mission: Impossible on DVD! (Now if only somebody would do something about The Man From UNCLE...)

When J.J. Abrams said during the press tour for M:I:III that Mission: Impossible was his favorite TV show, he wasn’t just saying that to pimp his new movie. Watching Season 1 on DVD, it’s clear that Abrams’ Alias owed more than a small debt to the original M:I. Basically, what wasn’t borrowed from Bond in Alias comes directly from Mission: Impossible. Both shows were essentially heist or con shows masquerading as spy shows in order to justify the heists, to make the heroes good guys. (If you’re stealing from the East... or from some cryptic enemy organization, then it’s okay!) Both featured teams of uniquely qualified individuals who came together week after week to extract some enemy-held Macguffin from an exotic location. And both were structured similarly, beginning with mission briefings in which the team were assigned their roles. So if you’re a fan of Alias, you’d do well to check out M:I.

Outside of James Bond, Mission: Impossible is probably the most iconic spy title in any medium. Even if you’ve never seen the show, you know its distinctive theme music, you’re aware of its famous "lit fuse" opening titles, and you’re familiar with the phrase, "Your mission, should you choose to accept it..." Mission: Impossible contributed all of these vital elements to the modern spy lexicon. All are present and accounted for in the first season (1966-67).

More or less, Mission: Impossible seems to have been fully formed from inception, unlike some shows which take a season or two to find their true identities. (Like The Avengers.) The "less" comes only from the absence of staid series lead, Jim Phelps (silver-haired Peter Graves, also iconic), who wouldn’t come aboard until Season 2. The team leader in the first season is Dan Briggs, played unremarkably by Steven Hill. He’s a pretty boring leader, but that doesn’t really matter because this series really belongs (in this season, anyway) to Martin Landau, who is fantastic. (Strangely, Landau is billed as a guest star or "special appearance" week after week, even though he’s in every episode.) Barbara Bain (as Cinnamon Carter) and Greg Morris (as Barney Collier) also manage to find more screen time than Hill, and use it well. Including strong man Willie Armitage (Peter Lupus), the whole team is in place except for its leader. And the episodes are mostly really great, so I’m glad that Paramount had the courage to begin with Season 1 rather than starting with the debut of the more famous lead, as some shows do. (The Avengers and Dark Shadows come to mind, though both have since gone back to the beginning.)

From the few episodes of Mission: Impossible I’d caught in syndication over the years, I had the impression that the show was rather dour and slow-moving. I’m not sure why I thought that; I guess I must have just caught some sub-par episodes. I’m happy to report that M:I is actually lots of fun. While it’s certainly not as light as The Avengers could be, it’s far from humorless. But any humor comes from the likeable characters rather than bizarre or surreal situations. And far from being slow-moving, most episodes are tightly-plotted and exciting. (That music sure helps, too, every time it kicks in.) Compared to Sixties spy shows already available on DVD, I’d say Mission: Impossible is closest in tone to Patrick McGoohan’s Danger Man (aka Secret Agent). However, being a team show rather than following a solitary agent, it is obviously a much different program.

Scenarios in the first season tend to be down-to-earth and realistic. A number of missions involve discrediting or removing left-leaning leaders from foreign countries, and we know the CIA did its share of that during the Cold War! Other plotlines hinge on protecting American overseas industrial interests, including oil. It’s interesting that these stories could be played unironically back then, without a hint of murkiness or moral dilemma. Sixties audiences must have been more willing to buy into blind patriotism.

Speaking of the Cold War, I’m surprised at how good life in Communist countries is presented! I would have expected a more propagandist (or at least realistic!) approach, showing miserable living conditions and tiny dwellings. Instead, every time the team goes behind the Iron Curtain (which is frequently), it looks just like America. In one episode ("A Spool There Was"), Cinnamon goes to the house of a typical, poor Communist family and it’s a huge, luxurious two-storey affair decorated just like an American house. (It’s probably the set from a CBS family sitcom, but surely there were other, smaller sets available!) And the lakeside town in which this family lives is full of vacationers having a good time, and balloons... lots of balloons. It looks like Wisconsin’s Lake Geneva with secret police. Overall, Communism looks pretty fun. (That comes in handy, however, in the ubiquitous episode in which the team infiltrates a fake "American" town in the middle of the Eastern Bloc where foreign agents are Americanized, like John Travolta in The Experts.)

Unlike so many spy movies and TV shows at the height of Bondmania, Mission: Impossible doesn’t play like a 007 ripoff. In fact, it’s different enough that you definitely notice when they do their "Bond episode;" that one doesn’t just feel like one of the others. It’s well done, though, and probably my favorite of the first season. "Odds On Evil" borrows its plot from Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, and after watching Bond play poker in the new movie of that title, it’s nice to see baccarat played in M:I, as it was in Fleming’s book. And cool to see Martin Landau in a tux, "being Bond!" The Le Chiffre-surrogate villain our heroes need to defeat at the gaming tables is a cross between Monaco’s Prince Ranier and Saddam Hussein. He is the leader of a tiny European principality whose primary revenue comes from their famous high stakes casino who plans to invade his oil-rich neighbor. And just in case you haven’t already figured out they’re tipping their hat to James Bond, the producers even throw in a snazzy red Aston Martin DB5 near the end! (Amazingly, all five IMF team members manage to pack themselves into it, rather uncomfortably.)

As I mentioned, Landau is thoroughly fantastic as the team’s "man of 1000 faces." Even though that’s initially his speciality, he quickly becomes more of an all-around spy character. Greg Morris is charismatic and likeable as the serious-minded electronics expert (who sometimes plays M:I’s version of Q, and is also capable of MacGuyver-like feats such as rigging a perfume bottle into an I.V.). Barbara Bain does a good job as the team’s honeytrap, ex-model Cinnamon Carter. It’s a good thing she’s a fine actress, though, because, frankly, Bain looks a bit past it to play a believable sexpot. She was already 35 in the first season, and looks even older with her yellowed smoker’s teeth. (She smokes pretty constantly throughout the season.) Physically, it’s hard to buy her as an ingenue (who’s consistently referred to as a "young woman" and sometimes called upon to go-go dance!), but her performance is engaging enough that she somehow pulls it off.

The seven single-sided discs are divided among four double slimpacks housed in an attractive outer box, very similar to CBS/Paramount’s Wild Wild West packaging. The cover art may be of the Photoshop montage school, but it’s a well done one. And it’s shiny, too, so points for that! The font makes no sense, though; I don’t know why they didn’t use the show’s famous title treatment.

Unfortunately, there are no extras on this set. That’s a little disappointing after the wonderful array of commentaries and introductions on The Wild Wild West. I hope Paramount will offer some of that with the next season, once Peter Graves comes aboard. Sound and picture, however, are exemplary. The show looks great, exactly how a Sixties spy show should, full of vibrant colors but never looking "old." It’s also (surprisingly) been remixed in 5.1 surround sound, though the original mono track is also present for purists and Luddites.

Watching these episodes makes me want to watch the original DePalma movie again. I never realized how many homages to the series it contained. Besides the incredible credits sequence, there are some bits that are taken directly from the show. In the second episode, "Memory," for example, the IMF team fake a fire at a prison. They then go in disguised as firemen. Sound familiar? Tom Cruise’s buddies do the same thing to break into CIA headquarters in the film.

Mission: Impossible may be long overdue on DVD, but it’s finally here and it’s one of the essential purchases of the year for spy fans. Season 1 is a great set, and I can’t wait for the next batch!

UK Spy DVD Release Dates

Network's Region 2 Return of the Saint DVDs I mentioned earlier are due out January 29, 2007 in England. Network will also release the third season of The Sandbaggers on January 15, the Julie Andrews spy movie The Tamarind Seed on March 12, and the complete series of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) on March 26.

James Bond Ultimate Edition DVDs Vols. 3 and 4

The final two volumes of the Region 1 Ultimate Edition James Bond DVDs come out December 12. The packaging is identical to the first two volumes, but in red and silver. Again, the discs are in slimcases (which I like), saving room on your shelf. They are housed in "magazine holder" cardboard sleeves which slide into the outer boxes. If you don't appreciate the slimcases or the weird grouping MGM has chosen to collect these in, then you can always hold out for the individual single discs coming in February!

New Jarvis Cocker Album!

This item is an anomoly because it's not spy-related at all (well, if pressed, I guess I could make a connection or two...), but Pulp's former frontman Jarvis Cocker has a new self-titled solo album out and that is great news indeed. It definitely sounds different from a Pulp record (far fewer guitars, for one thing!) but it's brilliant in its own right. I just love Pulp and Jarvis so much that I had to mention that, even if it's utterly irrelevant to the topic at hand!

Review: The Good German

Now that Casino Royale has opened, we have two big spy movies remaining to look forward to this year, with very similar titles: The Good German and The Good Shepherd. (Put them together and one might say you’ve got a damn good pooch, but not even Groucho would stoop so low.) I’ve yet to see the latter, but the former is quite a treat, and one of the best films of 2006.
The Good German is Steven Soderberg’s best movie in years, probably since The Limey. Some might balk at calling it a spy movie, since none of the main characters are actually spies, but that’s exactly what it is. It’s about the origins of the Cold War, it features suspenseful intrigue and double-crosses and betrayals, and it takes place in that favorite spy movie city, Berlin. George Clooney stars as an American military journalist assigned to cover the Potsdam Peace Conference after Germany’s surrender in 1945. Toby Maguire is his driver, and the incomparable Cate Blanchett is the woman they’re both obsessed with. And so are American and Russian Intelligence, for some reason. Clooney tries to discover why–and who’s pulling the strings–and finds himself caught between Nazis, Nazi hunters, atom scientists, and the American and Russian armies.

The movie deals with subject matter I’m hesitant to reveal, because each new revelation is part of the enjoyment. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t very familiar with the subject, and I found it fascinating.

Equally fascinating is Soderbergh’s directorial style. He chooses to shoot it in black and white, emulating movies of its period, most obviously Casablanca. (Just take a look at the wonderfully evocative poster!) At a Q&A following the screening I saw, he revealed that he forced himself to shoot it as Casablanca director Michael Curtiz would have. For one thing, that meant not leaving LA (Potsdam is in Pasadena!), which certainly surprised me. Even though there’s evident stock footage of the bombed-out city, I assumed they had done at least some location work in Berlin. For another, it meant using only the five camera lenses that Curtiz used, according to his continuity scripts in the Warner Bros. archives. Evidently Soderbergh is used to using a lot more. Finally, it meant a different acting style than we’re used to seeing today.

Soderbergh said he had his actors study films like Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon and Mildred Pierce to get an idea of the style he wanted. He forced them to "externalize" their performances, as opposed to the "internalized" performances prevalent today. No method acting allowed. The results are somewhat mixed, but fascinating to observe. Tobey Maguire is the least successful of the three leads, though he appears to be channeling a young James Cagney. George Clooney is basically George Clooney, and that’s exactly what the role calls for. I can’t imaging he changed his usual performance style too much; he already emulates Carey Grant. Clooney is in some ways the last genuine, Golden Age movie star, two generations removed from his time. That’s perfect for this film. But the movie belongs to Cate Blanchett, in a tour-de-force performance (and a black wig) containing more than a hint of Marlene Dietrich. Her character is the most complex, and she conveys more with a single look than most actors manage in a monologue. The Good German should easily earn her another Oscar nomination.

But the movie is no mere pastiche. It’s power lies in the one way (actually, there are two ways*) in which it deviates from Soderbergh’s "shoot like Michael Curtiz" ground rules. Unlike Curtiz, Soderbergh is not bound by the Hayes Code, the censor of the time.

This means that Soderbergh is able to deliver a modern, R-rated adult drama in the trappings of a more innocent era of film. The "of film" is important, because the era itself was far from innocent. Since my generation’s main frame of reference for the 1940s is black and white Hollywood product, that tends to color my perception of the era. Sure, I know it wasn’t really like that, but logic won’t stop me from picturing it that way. Therefore, strong language and brutal, bloody violence have more impact in a black and white film that lulls your expectations into Casablanca territory. Soderbergh and screenwriter Paul Attanasio are also able to be more frank about the atrocities of the Holocaust than an actual 1945 movie could have been, and that too gives the film more impact. The decision to shoot in the style of that period isn’t just to be cute (although it does make it more fun for movie buffs); I don’t think The Good German would be nearly as powerful were it presented as just another modern, color film set in the past.

*Even though Soderbergh had intended to use old-fashioned rear screen projection for the driving scenes, he abandoned that idea when he found out how complicated and time-consuming the process was. Therefore, the rear projection is faked with modern greenscreen technology instead. In order to key the green, that meant shooting in color. The color was de-saturated in post and printed on black and white stock, but looks just as rich as the most high contrast film noir. Even though Soderbergh didn’t discuss it, it was also clear that he’d primarily used greenscreen instead of matte painting, most notably in a direct homage to Casablanca’s most famous matte.