Tradecraft: U.S. Remake of French Series THE BUREAU in the Works

Deadline reports that an English language version of the international hit French spy series The Bureau (Le Bureau des Légendes) is in the works. Per the trade, Paris-based Federation Entertainment, the production company behind the series, "said that negations are underway for remakes of The Bureau in both the U.S. and South Korea." The original French version airs in America on cable network Sundance, and has found great success in markets all over the world. It stars Mathieu Kassovitz (Haywire, Munich), and Bond villain Mathieu Amalric (Quantum of Solace) came aboard in the fourth season.

Third Jean Dujardin OSS 117 Spy Comedy Begins Filming!

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A whole decade after the release of his second OSS 117 spy spoof, Lost in Rio (review here), Jean Dujardin (who picked up an Oscar for Best Actor in the interim) has at long last stepped back into the role that brought him international fame. Cameras began rolling this week on a third OSS 117 comedy, as announced by director Nicolas Bedos via video of a clapperboard on Instagram. OSS 117: Alerte rouge en Afrique noire (literally translated as OSS 117: Red Alert in Black Africa, which very much has the ring of a Jean Bruce novel title, but the ultimate English title is unlikely to be a direct translation of the French one) is scheduled to film in Paris and Kenya, with Bedos (La belle époque) taking the reins from Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist), who helmed the first two. Hazanavicius and Bedos both contributed to the controversial 2012 sex comedy portmanteau The Players, which also starred Dujardin. Jean-François Halin, who co-wrote the first two OSS 117 comedies with Hazanavicius and went on to create the very funny, Sixties-set comedic spy series Au service de la France (known as A Very Secret Service in America, where it streams on Netflix) handles solo scripting duties on this one. Pierre Niney (Yves Saint Laurent), Fatou N'Diaye (Spiral), and Wladimir Yordanoff (currently appearing with Dujardin in An Officer and a Spy) are also among the cast.

Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, code name OSS 117, began life long before Dujardin. The redoubtable secret agent was the brainchild of French author Jean Bruce, and starred in a series of 234 novels (of which only a handful have ever been translated into English) beginning in 1949 (and thus predating Ian Fleming's more famous superspy). The books are serious spy stories, and the character was initially treated seriously on screen, too, beginning in the 1950s, but most famously in a series of five exceptional Eurospy movies directed or produced by André Hunebelle (Fantomas) between 1963 and 1968. (Read my review of my favorite, OSS 117: Terror in Tokyo, which presaged many James Bond moments, here.) Once notoriously hard to track down in English-friendly versions, Kino Lorber has now, happily, released a set of those five films on DVD and Blu-ray. For a more in-depth history of the character and links to my reviews of all the films, see my post OSS 117: An Introduction.

In 2006, Michel Hazanavicius revived the character in the hilarious send-up OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (review here). That first spoof was set in the Fifties and brilliantly parodied the early Bond films (with Dujardin partly channeling young Sean Connery) and Alfred Hitchcock movies... along with the prevalent casual racism and sexism of that era. The 2009 sequel was set in the late Sixties, spoofing the Sixties Bond movies and Eurospy movies.

A third film has been mooted ever since, always intended to be set in Africa. At one point it was supposed to be set in the Seventies and parody blaxploitation movies, Jason King, and Jean-Paul Belmondo action flicks, as well as the Roger Moore Bond movies (and fashions) of that period. Now, presumably since so much time has passed, Premiere reports that OSS 117: Alerte roughe en Afrique noire will be set in the 1980s. While I'm sorry we won't see Dujardin sporting Peter Wyngarde-style fashions, the Eighties setting will still provide ample opportunity to spoof the Moore Bond films and Belmondo, whose own African spy epic The Professional was made in 1981.
Thanks to Jack for the red alert on this one!

Trailer: Spy Time

It's a big week for father/son spy duos. Hot on the heels of that Extraction trailer, check out the trailer for Spy Time, the new, big-budget Spanish language neo-Eurospy movie from Film Factory Entertainment. This looks great, so I really hope it gets a U.S. release! Here's the studio's synopsis:

This Christmas is going to become a living hell to Adolfo. Not only does his girlfriend leave him for being a guy with no ambition who works in a security company, but to top it off, he becomes the objective of a series of thugs led by Vázquez, a dangerous criminal who just escaped prison.
What did he do to get into such a mess?
It's then that he discovers taht his father has a double identity. He's not the sausage maker living out in the countryside on his farm that Adolfo always thought he was. He's Anacleto, a secret agent in a slump and the man who locked Vázquez away thirty years ago. Adolfo will have to venture out of his comfort zone and work with his father, the person he gets along with least in the world, in order to survive Vázquez's vengeance and to try to win his girlfriend back, all while making it through shootouts and chases.

Thanks to Bob for the heads up!

Watch Sundance's Deutschland 83 Series Premiere for Free on iTunes

Did you miss the premiere of Sundance's fantastic new Cold War spy series, Deutschland 83? Well, don't worry! You can download the series premiere for free on iTunes. And I definitely recommend doing so. This German import is something special, and I'll have my full review up in the next few days. In the meantime, here's the official synopsis from Kino Lorber:

A coming-of-age drama set against the culture wars and political events of Germany in the 1980s, Deutschland 83 was filmed across several locations in Berlin including the Berlin Stasi-Museum, located on the former grounds of the headquarters of the GDR Ministry for State Security

The series follows Martin Rauch (Jonas Nay) a 24-year-old East Germany native who is sent to the west as an undercover spy for the Stasi foreign service. Hiding in plain sight in the West German army, he must gather the secrets of NATO military strategy. Everything is new, nothing is quite what it seems and everyone he encounters is harboring secrets, both political and personal.

First Trailers for Cold War Spy Show Deutschland 83

Sundance Channel has started aggressively advertising for Deutschland 83, their Cold War miniseries event that will mark the first ever German-language program broadcast on American television that we first heard about in February. Set (naturally) in Germany in 1983, Deutschland 83 is a teen coming of age story mixed with an espionage drama unfolding against an ever-escalating Cold War as East and West came the closest to WWIII since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Filled with period-appropriate pop music, it should make an excellent counterpart to The Americans. It looks sort of like that show re-imagined for MTV Europe. Watch a cool teaser with no footage and a more traditional trailer on the Sundance website, or check out a tongue-in-cheek, narration-heavy trailer full of tradecraft below:



This looks pretty great! Deutschland 83 premieres next week, June 17, at 11/10c on Sundance.

Tradecraft: Sundance to Air German Period Spy Series Deutschland 83

The success of The Americans has now led to U.S. networks seeking foreign period spy series, which is a very exciting development! According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sundance TV has picked up an 8-part German language spy drama, Deutschland 83, at the Berlinale European Flim Market. It will air in the U.S. later this year (and sooner on the German network RTL), making it the first German language series to run on American TV according to the trade. As the title would indicate, the Cold War show is set in 1983. Here's the official synopsis from the Berlinale website:

A NATO exercise, the peace movement and German New Wave music – young and inexperienced spy Moritz Stamm is sent to the West by the East German secret services and finds himself caught between personal and ideological fronts.

I'm very excited to see this! That sounds like an ideal cultural mash-up to me. And Berlin-set spy tales are always my favorites. Furthermore, while there are many great ones set in the Sixties, I find the early Eighties a particularly fascinating period of the Cold War, when tensions rose again and Berlin became even more of a powder keg than it had been. Len Deighton's Samson novels capture this era nicely, but I've always found it under-explored on television. And it will be particularly interesting to see it from a German point of view. It sounds like the creative talent involved has been thoroughly detail-oriented. From the trade:

Deutschland 83 was shot mainly in and around Berlin with a special focus on an exact re-creation of West Germany in 1983, when the country was at the center of the Cold War. “Finding locations hasn’t been easy,” says [director] Jorg Winger, 45, who co-created the show with his American-born writer wife, Anna Winger, 44. “So much has changed since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there are almost no houses left in the East that look like they did back then.” The production team ... finally found a sleepy suburb to the east of Berlin and a house where the furniture, and even the wallpaper, hadn’t changed in decades. It plays stand-in for the family home of Moritz, a young East German man (newcomer Jonas Nay) who is recruited to infiltrate the West German military as a spy.

The idea of an East German spy in the West German military ranks comes from Jorg Winger's personal experience. He tells the Reporter that he spent a chilling Christmas during his military service for the West listening to a Russian radio broadcast in which the Soviet broadcaster wished all the men in his unit a Merry Christmas... by name. This event led them to realize that they had a spy in their midst.

All told, this sounds like it has the makings of a truly compelling Cold War spy show, and I'm so grateful that we Americans will finally have access to some of the cool spy television coming out of Europe.

Bethlehem Trailer

American distributor Adopt Films have released an English language trailer (via Deadline) for Bethlehem, a stunning le Carré-esque spy movie set against the present day Israeli-Palestinian conflict that examines the psychological toll of espionage on its practitioners. Bethlehem, which already bagged six Ophir Awards (the Istraeli Academy Awards), was Israel's official submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, but shockingly didn't make the final cut. Directed by first-time helmer Yuval Adler and co-written by the Israeli Adler and Palestinian journalist Ali Wakad, Bethlehem tells a very Cold War type of spy story set in the titular city, about an agent of Israel's Shin Bet and his Palestinian asset torn between two masters and two worlds, the teenage brother of a wanted terrorist with ties to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and Hamas. And it's a truly fantastic movie, one of the best serious spy films in years. I saw a festival screening earlier this year, and in a Q&A afterwards the director cited le Carré as an inspiration - and when I say the influence was obvious, regular readers will know that I mean that as high praise indeed! U.S. spy fans should definitely check this one out when it's released in limited markets on February 21, 2014.

Movie Review: The Berlin File (2013)

The Berlin File may be confusing, but it’s also quite a good spy film. (The two have never been mutually exclusive, after all.) It’s a South Korean movie, but it’s set—and filmed—in Berlin. The location is more than just title fodder (in Korea the film is simply titled Berlin), too. The iconic city that played host to so many Communist-East-vs.-Capitalist-West spy movies during the Cold War makes an ideal backdrop for today’s most relevant Communist-vs.-Capitalist struggle, that of the two Koreas. Against such historic spy landmarks as the Brandenburg Gate, a North Korean and South Korean agent (and, true to the genre, quite a lot of other parties) hunt each other in a compelling game of cat and mouse as writer/director Ryu Seung-wan drops plenty of allusions to his Cold War-era forebears, from Bond to Bourne to le Carré to Deighton. (The recent Bourne movies are the most obvious inspirations.)

As the film opens, South Korean spooks monitor a meeting taking place in a Berlin hotel between a Russian arms dealer, an Arab terrorist and a North Korean agent so good he’s not in any database (a “ghost,” as they refer to him). Unsurprisingly, that many bad guys in one room is going to attract the attentions of other supposedly friendly governments as well. Although it’s unclear exactly who is who during the chaotic sequence itself, it eventually becomes clear that the CIA and the Mossad are also interested in this conference, as well as the primary South Korean agent’s support team. With that many lit fuses hovering this powder keg, it’s inevitable that things won’t go as planned. Sure enough, the meeting erupts into chaos, and gunfire, foot chases and hand-to-hand combat ensue. As the North Korean agent, Pyo Jong-Seong (Ha Jung-woo) attempts to escape via the hotel roof, he’s intercepted by South Korean agent Jeong Jin-soo (Han Suk-kyu). The two men have enough time to size up one another (the basis of any antagonists-bound-to-work-together framework) before Jin-soo gets the upper hand and makes his getaway.

Jin-soo has a wife at home, Ryeon Jung-hee, who feels neglected. Yet she herself is the pawn of Jin-soo’s boss, the North Korean ambassador. (This “ghost” reports directly to the ambassador.) Her job is to be his translator at a business meeting, but he requires her to go further and seduce a potential German business partner in order to get a market advantage and whatever intel she can pick up. The ambassador’s motives, in turn, are questioned by Pyongyang (or possibly by another faction within the North Korean government), and this casts aspersions on Jung-hee as well. I won’t even go into who’s bugging the meeting and why! It’s all so complicated as to be very hard to follow (even harder via subtitles), and it’s possible that the intricate web doesn’t really make any sense at all, but to me the web itself is more crucial to the success of this sort of spy story than the sense it makes. At any rate, Pyongyang sends a cleaner out to Berlin, Dong Myung-soo (Ryu Seong-beom) (introduced in an exciting fight aboard a train in further accord with genre traditions) to make sense of this situation and eliminate any loose ends. Myung-soo informs Jin-soo that his wife’s loyalty (and, by extension, his own) is in question, forcing him to choose between his wife and his country. Despite being a patriot, Jin-soo finds himself with no choice but to go on the run with Jung-hee, making their escape across Berlin rooftops and amidst much gunfire. If it seems like I’ve given away too much at this point, don’t worry; everything I’ve encapsulated up until now is merely the setup! I recount here it in so much detail because I relished the (possibly unnecessary) complexity.

The purpose of all this setup is to force Jin-soo to go rogue, and eventually team up with his North Korean counterpart, Jong-Seong, forming a classic action movie odd couple. This pairing creates ripples affecting various factions from the South and North alike, along with the Arabs from the beginning and the CIA. The actor playing Jong-Seong’s CIA ally is unfortunately kind of awful. Luckily, his white face is probably enough to make him convincing to Korean audiences for whom his English dialogue is no doubt subtitled anyway, but English speakers are forced to put up with enough bad line readings to wish the filmmakers had bothered to fly in an actual Hollywood character actor for the part. (Surely William Sadler is available for this kind of job?) Spy fans, however, will likely cut him some slack because he uses a le Carré paperback as a way to identify himself to his contacts!

The elaborate spy scenario is, of course, all basically a clotheshorse on which to hang a number of action setpieces, just like in an American movie. When such setpieces take place against a Berlin backdrop, I tend to be satisfied. (It also helps that, with the exception of some dodgy CGI fire, most of them are quite well executed—but that’s almost secondary for me to the locale.) The action is fairly violent, especially in the finale, and there is a particularly brutal torture scene. But even squeamish spy fans will still find plenty to like in The Berlin File. Its themes of divided loyalties and betrayals both personal and professional, along with its gleefully labyrinthine plot, are enough to make you believe it could be a product of the Cold War. And when it comes to spy movies, that’s a very good thing indeed. The Berlin File is a thoroughly entertaining throwback that updates classic themes and a classic setting to suit the very current geopolitical conflicts of today.

New, Longer Trailer for The Berlin File

There's a new, longer trailer for the Korean spy film I blogged about last week, The Berlin File. I was already sold on the movie, but this trailer manages to make it look even better! The Berlin File opens February 15 in select U.S. cities.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: The Great Spy Chase (aka Les Barbouzes)

Olive Films will release the 1964 Eurospy classic The Great Spy Chase (aka Les Barbouzes - French slang for "secret agents" as Frederick Forsyth readers are no doubt aware) on Region 1 DVD and Blu-ray on February 26. If you're familiar with the film, let that sink in a moment. Did you ever think you'd see an official American release? If you're not familiar with it, start getting really excited! Les Barbouzes, directed by George Lautner, is one of the all-time great Eurospy movies. And I don't mean that in the way that in an insular way, like it's one of those low-budget slices of cheese that we fans of the genre enjoy so much, but which your average modern movie viewer might scoff at. No, Les Barbouzes is the rare Eurospy film that you can show to your film snob friends and impress them with, too. It's a genuinely great satirical comedy, irrespective of its genre. It's also, unlike a lot of terrific Eurospy movies, not a James Bond imitator. If anything, Les Barbouzes plays more like a parody of the Dr. Mabuse movies, or of the espionage genre as a whole. Full disclosure here: it is a black and white, French language film that takes place mostly in one big house. (Well, a chateau.) While those elements might not sound like the ingredients for a top-shelf Sixties spy spoof, let me assure you that they all gel perfectly. (And just because it's set mainly in one location doesn't mean there isn't any gadgetry or kung-fu fighting!) The premise finds spies of all nations descending (under preposterous covers) on the home of a recent widow who inherited the patent to a new, top secret weapon when her scientist husband died suddenly. Each secret agent wants to secure the weapon for his own nation, and all are pretty much aware of who their competitors really are. Soon people in the house are dying at an alarming rate, frequently in rather hilarious ways. It's a great send-up not only of the spy genre, but also of Cold War politics at large—and America's role in a rapidly changing Europe. Lino Ventura leads the cast as the French agent vying for the widow's affections. Olive's DVD and Blu-ray will present the film in its original 1.66:1 aspect ratio, in French with English subtitles. It's hard to tell from the Amazon listing whether Olive will also include subtitled versions of the bonus material that appeared on the French DVD (including a half-hour documentary and a Lautner commentary), but that's probably unlikely. And if they're not there, I won't be griping. Because the amazing thing is that we're seeing any American release at all of this overlooked gem! Retail is $24.95 for the DVD and $29.95 for the Blu-ray. Both are available for pre-order on Amazon for slightly less.

That same day, Olive will also release on DVD and Blu-ray an earlier Lautner/Ventura collaboration, Monsieur Gangster (aka Les Tontons Flingueurs), which spoofs the gangster genre and laid the groundwork for Les Barbouzes. (I haven't seen that one.) I'm glad that Olive's release slate is starting to really expand, because between Les Barbouzes and the previously announced Innocent Bystanders (as well as the David Niven Euro-caper The Brain, released last year), they're really becoming a savior for spy fans fearing that some of their favorite obscure movies would never see DVD release in the U.S. I hope they've got more Eurospy titles up their sleeves!

Trailer: The Berlin File

Here's a very cool looking spy movie opening next month in America that I wasn't even aware of until I saw this trailer this weekend at a Koreatown movie theater. Like Istanbul, I'm a sucker for just about any Berlin-set spy movie, but this one actually looks particularly good. According to Deadline, The Berlin File opens in Korea at the end of January and in select cities in the U.S. on February 15.

Russian Spies Are Everywhere

Irina didn't rate a poster of her own in the UK, but actress Svetlana Khodchenkova is big enough in Russia (where she's posed for the cover of Playboy) to get her own character poster in the same style as those that were used elsewhere in Europe earlier this year for most of the movie's male characters. (Courtesy of the Imp Awards.) She also gets her face right next to Smiley's on the Russian quad (a significant promotion given the relatively small role her character plays in the novel). Speaking of which, isn't it weird to see a John Le Carré movie promoted in Karla's language? I suspect George Smiley would be delighted.

Meanwhile, as a further testament to the promotional power of casting global stars in Hollywood movies, Russian actor Vladimir Mashkov (Alias) merits his own character poster in his home country (complete with a Kremlin background) for Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, in the same style as the U.S. bus stop designs. So does French actress Léa Seydoux (Inglourious Basterds), making a nearly complete set. No doubt Anil Kapoor (24) will feature prominently in the Indian campaign, and Michael Nyqvist (The Girl Who Played With Fire) in Swedish advertisements.

Tradecraft: Jean Dujardin Spies For Real

Tradecraft: Jean Dujardin Spies For Real

Well, not for real... but, you know, not for funny, either. For real in a movie. Variety reports that OSS 117 star Jean Dujardin (now generating serious Oscar buzz for his performance in The Artist, a re-teaming with director Michel Hazanavicius) will play a spy again, but a serious one this time as opposed to his brilliant send-up of James Bond and Sixties Eurospies in OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies and OSS 117: Lost in Rio. Will audiences be able to take Dujardin seriously in such a role? I think he's a wonderful actor, but I'm afraid I'll automatically crack up if he ever raises an eyebrow, so well did he do his job in those French spy parodies! According to the trade, Dujardin will play "an experienced spy tracking a powerful oligarch suspected of laundering money through his bank" in Eric Rochant's romantic, contemporary, Monte Carlo-set high finance thriller Mobius. Cecile de France (Mesrine, Hereafter) will co-star as "a bright young trader." Luc Besson's EuropaCorp will distribute the film in France and is currently shopping the project to U.S. distributors at the American Film Market. While the trade claims that the film will feature an "international cast," there's no word on whether it will be in French or English. I'd assume French, though EuropaCorp has had a lot of worldwide success with English-language thrillers like Taken and the Transporter films, so you never know. Mobius is slated for delivery in winter 2012.

Tradecraft: Anil Kapoor is the New Jack Bauer (UPDATED)

Tradecraft: Anil Kapoor is the New Jack Bauer (UPDATED)

24 is coming back! On Indian TV. With Bollywood star Anil Kapoor (who played President Omar Hassan on Season 8 of the original series) starring as the Indian version of Jack Bauer. Wow. I would be really interested in seeing that, but it seems decidedly unlikely that we'll ever get a subtitled DVD set. Deadline reports that the Slumdog Millionaire star has secured the rights from 20th Century Fox and will produce and star in the remake, with pre-production beginning mid-2012. How awesome is that? “It will be a great honor for me to play Jack Bauer,” Kapoor told the trade blog. “Kiefer has created an iconic character which has inspired me to bring the franchise to India. This will be my first foray to Indian television and I look forward to duplicating the standard of excellence Fox has so successfully created.” The big question, of course, is will the Bollywood version incorporate colorful song-and-dance numbers amidst the relentless torture? Kapoor can next be seen in one of the season's most anticipated spy movies—Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol.

UPDATE: The Hollywood Reporter, which appears to have originated this story, adds that 24 producer Howard Gordon (now working on Showtime's Homeland) insisted that Kapoor star in the Indian iteration of his show (currently referred to internally as 24: India) as a condition of his consent. The trade also reports that "although no other international deals have been struck for the series, [20th Century Fox] has been approached about local productions in Japan and the Middle East." So we could conceivably see Jack Bauers popping up all over the world, just like David Brents did.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Carlos (2010)

The Criterion Collection has announced DVD and Blu-ray editions of Olivier Assayas' 2010 epic Carlos. If you were annoyed that the Matt Damon films of Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne novels omitted the notorious real-life terrorist who served as Bourne's primary antagonist in the books, this 339-minute opus is sure to deliver all the Ilich Ramírez Sanchez action you could possibly desire. Carlos tracks the man better known as Carlos the Jackal (a nickname given by the press and inspired by another spy novel, Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal) in what Criterion's copy describes as "an intensely detailed account of the life of the infamous international terrorist."

One of the twentieth century’s most-wanted fugitives, Carlos was committed to violent left-wing activism throughout the seventies and eighties, orchestrating bombings, kidnappings, and hijackings in Europe and the Middle East. Assayas portrays him not as a criminal mastermind but as a symbol of seismic political shifts around the world, and the magnetic Édgar Ramírez [who, oddly, did appear as an antagonist in The Bourne Ultimatum, just not Carlos] brilliantly embodies him as a swaggering global gangster. Criterion presents the complete, uncut, director-approved, five-and-a-half-hour version of Carlos.

This release is the full 339-minute version that aired as a mini-series on European and American television (and is available to view on Netflix streaming), not the cut-down theatrical version released in some movie theaters. Besides Criterion's usual high-definition digital transfer (supervised by cinematographers Denis Lenoir and Yorick Le Saux), the DVD and Blu-ray editions include new video interviews with Assayas, Ramírez, and Lenoir, selected-scene commentary from Lenoir, the hour-long documentary on the terrorist's real-life career "Carlos: Terrorist Without Borders," an archival interview with Carlos associate Hans-Joachim Klein, a feature-length documentary on a Carlos bombing not included in the film called "Maison de France," a twenty-minute making-of documentary on the film’s OPEC raid scene, the original theatrical trailer and a booklet featuring essays by critics Colin MacCabe and Greil Marcus, as well as a timeline of Carlos’s life and biographies of selected figures portrayed in the film, written by Carlos’s historical adviser, Stephen Smith. That's a heck of a lot of extras!

Mission: Impossible Trailer Leaked

The trailer for Brad Bird's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (aka Mission: Impossible 4) will debut later this week on prints of Transformers 3. No doubt it will also be officially posted on the web even sooner - maybe even tonight or tomorrow - in a pristine high-def English language version. But if you're anything like me and you absolutely can't wait for that to happen, then head on over right away (before it gets removed) to the French language WhiteBlog (via AICN) and check out a low quality, cammed version of the French trailer for "Mission: Impossibel: Protocole Fantôme." Tom Cruise and Tom Wilkinson (I don't think I even realized he was in it) and Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg and that cool BMW hybrid are all dubbed in French, so unless you speak the language, you won't know what's going on, but the good news is... it does look cool! Like all the movies in the series (as opposed to the TV show that spawned them), the emphasis is definitely on action over intrigue, but it looks like Brad Bird has captured the same spy atmosphere that Brian DePalma tapped into in the first film. There's some wretched music, but overall it looks very good. I can't wait to see the official English language version, which you can bet I'll post here as soon as it goes up.

Canadian Spy Sitcom InSecurity Renewed For Season 2

TV-eh reports (via The Medium is Not Enough) that the Canadian spy sitcom we heard about earlier this year, InSecurity, has been picked up by CBC for a second season—despite some pretty negative reviews.  Production begins next month for a fall airing.  According to the press release, "In Season 2 of InSecurity, NISA agent Alex Cranston and her team of spies juggle dates, terrorists, parents and security threats. It’s tough being a spy when your worst enemy is yourself. Season 2 hits that funny, messy and unpredictable intersection between the spy world and everyday life."  In the meantime, the first season will be repeated this summer.  There's been no DVD announcement yet, which is too bad, because despite the negative buzz I want to be able to give this series a try!

Tradecraft: TWC Picks Up Newest Movie From OSS 117 Team

The Artist is not a spy movie, but it's one I'm very eager to see!  This is the next movie from the director/star team of Michel Hazanavicius and Jean Dujardin, a duo who should be very familiar to spy fans from their two OSS 117 spoof movies.  I love those movies and, in my book, these guys can do no wrong!  Looks like The Weinstein Company feels the same way, because Deadline reports that they've snatched up this silent, black and white dramady in the first big acquisition deal of this year's Cannes Film Festival.  They must be pretty confident in it, too, because besides shelling out a seven-figure minimum guarantee, TWC plans to release The Artist during Oscar season this fall!  According to the trade blog, the film takes place in 1927 Hollywood and "focuses on a silent movie star whose career seems about to be ended because of the arrival of the talkies. At the same time, a pretty young extra sees the new format as an opportunity to launch her star."  Dujardin's OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies co-star (and Hazanavicius' wife) Bernice Bejo co-stars, along with John Goodman, James Cromwell, Missi Pyle and Penelope Ann Miller.  I've been looking forward to this since I first heard about it last summer, and I'm so glad to know that it's got a US distributor lined up!  Dujardin is not only a master of comic timing, but also of exaggerated facial expressions, so I expect he'll shine in a silent movie.  Plus, it's a good way for the French-speaker to make a big splash with international audiences.

Read my film review of OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies here.
Read my DVD review of OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies here.
Read my film review of OSS 117: Lost in Rio here.

Read my DVD review of OSS 117: Lost in Rio here.

New Spy DVDs Out This Week and Last

Farewell
I was very curious about this fact-based French spy film when it got limited theatrical release late last year, but I didn't have the opportunity to see it.  I look forward to rectifying that now that it's available on DVD and Blu-ray from Terra. Director Christian (Joyeux Noël) Carion's film traces the true story of a KGB defector who enlisted the unwitting aid of a French engineer working in the Soviet Union during the 1980s to smuggle secrets (including ones pertaining to American national security) out of the country to French intelligence. The DVD retails for $24.98 and the Blu-ray for $34.98, though both are significantly cheaper on Amazon, as usual.

Arabesque
Moving from harrowing true spy stories to fluffy ones of the most escapist variety, we come to the mod, ultra-Sixties confection Arabesque. Though it's been available for some time as part of the boxed set The Gregory Peck Collection, Stanley Donen's 1966 follow-up to Charade was finally issued on its own last week (along with a Peck mystery of similar vintage, Mirage). Try as it might, Arabesque doesn't quite recapture Charade's particular magic, but Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren make charming and attractive stand-ins for Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, and the story of a college professor caught up in psychedelic intrigue involving a beautiful spy and Middle Eastern politics is still plenty of fun. And "psychedelic" is the operative word, even if you wouldn't expect it to be used in the same sentence as "Gregory Peck." Donen gleefully taps into the zeitgeist of the moment, and that wonderfully dated view of Swinging London is a big part of what makes the film so appealing today. (You can see plenty of examples in this article on SpyVibe.) Universal's single-disc release of Arabesque (on DVD only) is a steal at the MSRP of just $14.98... but it's even cheaper than that on Amazon.

Thanks to Collin for the heads-up on that one... and I'm sorry I took so many weeks to finally act on it!

Any Human Heart
Any Human Heart based on the acclaimed novel by William Boyd, is only partially a spy story, but it does involve James Bond creator Ian Fleming as a character.  The miniseries, which recently aired in American on PBS' Masterpiece, follows a writer named Logan Mountstuart as his life intersects with a number of famous figures, including Fleming (played by Casino Royale's Tobias Menzies), Ernest Hemingway (Foyle's War's Julian Ovenden), Wallis Simpson (Johnny English Reborn's Gillian Anderson) and her husband the Duke of Windsor (Hanna's Tom Hollander). Mountstuart is played at different points during his life by Sam Claflin, Spooks/MI-5's Matthew Macfadyen and Jim Broadbent.  Hayley Atwell (one of the few highlights of the 2009 Prisoner remake) also stars.  Menzies' Fleming only appears in a couple of scenes, though one is a key moment when, as assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence, he assigns Macfadyen's Mountstuart to a wartime spy mission involving Wallis and Edward. The DVD, from PBS, contains all four episodes as they originally aired in the UK, not the re-edited 3-episode configuration seen on American TV. It also includes a wealth of special features, including interviews with Boyd and the actors, an On Set featurette, and deleted scenes. Retail is $29.99, though it can currently be had for half that on Amazon.

Callan: Wet Job
The most exciting spy release of the last few weeks, however, has to be the 1981 Callan reunion telefilm "Wet Job," which is finally available on DVD! (In the UK, anyway, as a PAL Region 2 release from Network.) It didn't get included as a bonus feature in Network's Callan: The Colour Years, but now it sees its first ever legitimate home video release as a standalone.  Despite being scripted by series creator James Mitchell, "Wet Job" doesn't have a very good reputation.  (Even Edward Woodward disparaged it in his commentary on the Acorn release Callan: Set 2.) That said, fans of the series (and, really, any spy fan should be a fan of this amazing series) will still rejoice to be able at last to own this elusive postscript to one of the best serious spy shows of all time.  Retail is £14.99, but it's currently much cheaper on Amazon.co.uk. Bear in mind, though, that next Ocotober the company will issue Callan: The Definitive Collection, a 12-disc megaset collecting every surviving black and white episode from seasons 1 and 2, every color episode from seasons 3 and 4, the original Armchair Theatre pilot play, "A Magnum For Schneider," "Wet Job," a brand new Callan documentary and a definitive book on the series by Andrew Pixley. That will retail for £99.99 (though it's currently available to pre-order for £69.99). It's great that Callan will finally get Network's usual special feature treatment, but at the same time no doubt annoying to fans who have already purchased The Monochrome Years and The Colour Years on their own. Hopefully the company will make the documentary available individually as well, as they have done in the past with their Prisoner and Saint documentaries. Fingers crossed! In the meantime, I'm absolutely thrilled that I'll finally be able to see "Wet Job," even if I know it won't be up to the standards of the show itself. This is the spy release of the spring!

New Spy DVDs Out This Week

Wow!  On the second-to-last Tuesday before Christmas, it's a huge day for spy releases.  Let's get right into it.

I found 24: Season 8 to be a real return to form for the gritty real-time spy series–and a fitting swan song.  Today, Fox releases the complete final season on DVD and Blu-ray.  Extras include the show's usual assortment of deleted scenes and featurettes.  Retail is $59.98 for the 6-disc DVD set and $69.99 for the 4-disc Blu-ray set, though of course both are available for much less at various online retailers.   

Also out from Fox today is 24: The Complete Series.  This mammoth 56-disc set (eight days' worth of real-time watching!) includes every episode from all eight seasons, plus the feature-length TV movie 24: Redemption (review here) that bridged the lengthy gap between the show's sixth and seventh seasons.  On top of including all the copious extras that were originally released with each season (commentaries, featurettes, deleted scenes and more), 24: The Complete Series will also boast an exclusive bonus disc with all new extras.  According to TVShowsOnDVD, that disc includes the featurettes "Chloe's Arrest" and "Comic-Con 2009 Panel," a "Season 8 Wrap Party Reel," and a 4-segment doumentary called "Eight Days.". (The segments are called "Jack Bauer: Evolution of a Hero," "Presidents Friends and Villains," "Memories and Moments" and "Goodbye.") 24: The Complete Series retails for $349.98, but right now Amazon's got it for way less than half that: just $139.99!  If you're determined to have this set, I'd jump on that deal quickly, because it might even just be for the day.

Ever wonder what a Jean-Pierre Jeunet-directed Mission: Impossible would be like?  Wonder no more.  The amazing French director answers that question in his newest movie, known here in America simply as Micmacs and available today from Sony Classics on both DVD and Blu-ray. Micmacs is not a spy movie, but it really is a very whimsical episode of Mission: Impossible, about a strange team of "specialists" (a contortionist, a human cannonball, an inventor, etcetera–all people Jim Phelps might very well have pulled out of his folder in the early days of Mission!) who pull a series of intricate, Rube Goldberg-inspired heists and cons on two rival arms dealers.  It's all very much in Jeunet's trademark style, and while it's not on the level of Delicatessen or A Very Long Engagement (one of my very favorite movies of all time), it is a whole lot of fun and likely to entertain fans of the Mission: Impossible TV show. Extras include a commentary by Jeunet, a conversation with the director and actress Julie Ferrier, a Making-Of featurette and more. Retail is $38.96 (how do they pick these numbers?) for the Blu-ray and $28.95 for the DVD, but obviously you can find it cheaper.

Yes, Joe Carnahan's feature version of the Eighties action staple The A-Team is a spy movie, with Watchmen's Patrick Wilson and an un-billed Jon Hamm as CIA agents–and it, too, is available today from Fox on DVD and Blu-ray. Liam Neeson steps into George Peppard's shoes as the leader of an elite special forces squad who gets set up by Blackwater-like mercenaries and goes rogue to prove their innocence.  This movie has loads of problems (like two long beginnings–one utterly superfluous–before it really starts up), but it's also pretty fun.  I particularly liked Jessica Biel in it, and she's never really impressed me before. But there's a scene midway through where our guys are plunging out of the sky in a tank with a parachute, and start shooting at the ground to direct their trajectory.  Someone on Biel's military detail asks if they're trying to hit anything, and Biel, as the only female in the movie with a substantial part, rolls her eyes with her best "stupid boys!" look and says, "No, they're trying to fly the tank."  She's not surprised, and she delivers the line as the sole voice of reason in the film.  I really loved the tone that scene set.  Both the DVD and Blu-ray feature two versions of the film (theatrical and extended) and a director commentary, but most of the extras seem to be BD exclusives, including deleted scenes, a gag reel, a documentary called "The Devil's in the Details: Inside the Action with Joe Carnahan" and the featurettes "Plan of Attack," "Character Chronicles" and "Visual Effects Before and After."  Retail is $29.98 for the DVD and $39.99 for the Blu-ray; you know the drill.

Finally, we have Hawaii Five-O: The 10th Season from CBS/Paramount, which features two Bond Girls among its guest star line-up–Maud Adams and Luciana Paluzzi–and a return to espionage and international terrorism-themed plots.  McGarrett's nemesis, Chinese master spy Wo Fat (Khigh Deigh), sits this season out... but wasn't it cool to see him turn up (in the person of Mark Dascascos) on last night's episode of the new Hawaii Five-O?  Blasts from the past aside, the original series is way better than the current incarnation, so check it out if you only know the new hit.  Jack Lord, the first Felix Leiter, is and always will be the real Steve McGarrett.