Read my review of Acorn's Man in a Suitcase: Set 1 here.
Nov 30, 2011
Upcoming Spy DVDs: More Man in a Suitcase in January!
Read my review of Acorn's Man in a Suitcase: Set 1 here.
Nov 29, 2011
Upcoming Spy DVDs: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
UK online retailer Play.com is offering a couple of exclusive variations. There's a "steelbook" DVD/Blu-ray combo, and a really cool "limited edition pack" (pictured above) loaded with further, physical extras! Normally, I'm against stupid trinkets to inflate the cost of DVD sets (like the recent Region 1 It Takes A Thief box), but in this case, I actually think all these items look pretty neat. Best of all, though, is that awesome faux book (complete with a stylized theme reflecting Smiley's lighter, which is integral to the story) that houses them all! Inside the "book," you'll find the DVD and Blu-ray, the original soundtrack CD, le Carré's superb novel upon which the film is based, a bespoke notepad based on the moleskin one used by Smiley in the film, bespoke playing cards an exclusive set of Gary Oldman’s on-set photographs an exclusive film still (okay, that one is dumb) and a certain chess piece significant to the story.
Even if it turns out to be as bad as M:I-2 (which I really don't think it will be), Brad Bird's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol has already accomplished one mission for which I'm eternally grateful: its imminent theatrical release has spurned Paramount to finally put out the first season of the late Eighties incarnation of the Mission: Impossible TV show starring the great Peter Graves! Today, Mission: Impossible - The '88 TV Season (as they're calling this release) arrives just in time to quell the burning need for more Mission: Impossible that's been percolating in my heart since watching the original show's finale. While the Eighties version doesn't hold a candle to the Sixties/Seventies original, this release still holds a certain nostalgic value for me, as it was through the 1988-90 revival that I was first introduced to Jim Phelps and the IMF. Yes, the revival was created solely as a way for ABC to get around a writers' strike by remaking existing scripts from the original show (fortunately they didn't have to stick to episode remakes for very long, as the strike ended), but it's still got that unforgettable Lalo Schifrin theme music (along with surprisingly good incidental music by John E. Davis), it's still got that distinctive burning fuse, and, most importantly... it's still got Peter Graves. And any Mission: Impossible with Peter Graves (even old Peter Graves) is infinitely preferable to Mission: Impossible without Peter Graves. (Oh, don't look so hurt, Steven Hill. My slight is directed more in the direction of Jon Voight and Tom Cruise.)
Graves reprises his role as Jim Phelps, who the studio's copy very accurately describes as "the brilliant and charismatic leader of the Impossible Missions Force." Emerging from retirement to avenge the death of his friend and protege, Phelps puts together a new IMF team including Grant Collier, the son of original IMF agent Barney Collier, played by Phil Morris, the real-life son of original series star Greg Morris. (The elder Morris also turns up as Barney in one episode this season, and another two the following season.) It also includes several rough corollaries for the original team members, like a master of disguise, a tough guy (the term "strongman" wasn't so much in favor by the late Eighties) and a lady. (The lady actually changed part way through the series, and in a fairly spectacular fashion.) Besides Greg Morris, other notable guest stars included Lynda Day George, reprising her role as Casey from the later years of the original series, two-time Bond Girl Maud Adams, and Star Trek: The Next Generation's John de Lancie.
Mission: Impossible - The '88 TV Season, a 5-disc set (in different, slimmer packaging from the original series seasons), retails for just $39.98. It's even less than that, however, on Amazon. (Just $27.99 as of this writing, which can't be beat for a whole season's worth of Jim Phelps & Co.!) Now I just hope we don't have to wait for another Tom Cruise movie to get The '89 TV Season...
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Sixth TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Sixth TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Fourth TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Third TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Second TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The First TV Season here.
Nov 28, 2011
BMW Product Placement in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
I was no fan of James Bond driving German cars, but I did like the print and TV ads that accompanied the marque's tenure as Bond Car. People give spy movies (and especially the Bond films) a hard time for their product placement, but it's actually an aspect of the films I enjoy. Especially when it comes to vehicles. (The best thing about the Val Kilmer Saint movie was the Volvo tie-in, with those ads that treated the C70 as if it were a Bond car, complete with a wannabe Q.) BMW is a better fit for Ethan Hunt than 007 anyway, so I welcome the return of spy-themed Beemer ads we've been treated to on TV for the last week, spotlighting the expensive electric dream car that won't even see production until 2013 (the awkwardly named Vision EfficientDynamics) and the new 6 series coupe and convertable. Here are two "Mission to Drive" spots:
You can see more (and download wallpapers) on BMW's Mission: Impossible website.
Nov 25, 2011
Tradecraft: Q Returns in SkyFall!
Both The Hollywood Reporter and Variety are reporting that Q will return in the 23rd James Bond film, SkyFall! This confirmation makes me very happy. I loved Casino Royale, but the one aspect of the Daniel Craig-era Bond reboot that I haven't been happy with is the lack of regular supporting characters Q and Moneypenny. Rumors persist that Naomie Harris, whose character has only officially been identified as "Eve," will turn out to be the latter, and now we know who'll be the former: Ben Whishaw. Whishaw was announced in the SkyFall press conference (and his casting had been leaked long before that), but it hadn't previously been revealed who he'd be playing. (My own bet was on an Elvis-like creepy henchman, though, like Quantum of Solace's Elvis, he lacks the physicality to present a real threat to Craig.) I didn't suspect that he'd be Q, but now that his agent has confirmed that, it makes perfect sense. He will be a very different Q, in keeping with the different Bond and the different Felix of this new world order, but like both of them, the casting is pretty inspired.
I've long been a fan of Ben Whishaw. He really won me over as the creepy-yet-compelling protagonist of Tom Tykwer's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, but smaller parts in projects as diverse as the Chris Morris sitcom Nathan Barley, the unorthodox (and utterly brilliant) Todd Haynes Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There (in which he plays poet Arthur Rimbaud as an aspect of Dylan), the Brideshead Revisited remake (as Sebastian) and the Brian Jones drama Stoned (in which he plays Keith Richards) convinced me of his range. Previous spy roles include Tykwer's offbeat contribution to the neo-Eurospy movement The International (review here) and this year's BBC period drama The Hour, in which his character was an Ian Fleming fan. He's previously worked with Daniel Craig in Layer Cake, and he'll next be seen opposite another MI6 staff member, Rory Kinnear (Bill Tanner in the current films) in a BBC production of Richard II. But what will most immediately stand out about him to Bond fans unfamiliar with his work is his age: Whishaw is 31, which gets us back to that bit about being a very different Q from what we're used to. Desmond Llewellyn, who played the MI6 gadget guru in 17 films over 36 years, started out old in From Russia With Love and kept getting older. John Cleese, who took over the part in Die Another Day after being introduced as Llewellyn's assistant in The World Is Not Enough, was also pretty old. As was Alec McCowan when he essayed the role in Never Say Never Again (although he only had a few years on that movie's 007, Sean Connery). Dr. No's Peter Burton aside, Bond fans are used to an old Q. And now he'll be younger than Bond.
Age aside, though, I can totally picture Whishaw in the part. And I welcome the new spin his youth will lend the character. Presumably Bond's relationship with Q will change as dramatically as did his relationship with M when Judi Dench first took over (though that relationship's become kind of tired since that initial shake-up), and that should be fun to see. My one misgiving is that while Q has always been an old boffin in the Bond movies, his imitators are almost uniformly young, nerdy types, from Marshall on Alias to Simon Pegg in Mission: Impossible III to that guy on that show Fortune Hunter back in the 90s. I wouldn't want the new Q to come off as an imitator of the imitators, but with an actor of Whishaw's caliber in the part, I think it's safe to assume he'll provide his own unique take.
Mainly, I'm just thrilled that Q is coming back! I've missed him. While the character sat out Live And Let Die back in 1973, that's nothing compared to the entire decade he will have been off the screen between 2002's Die Another Day and 2012's SkyFall!
Nov 24, 2011
New Mission: Impossible Pictures
Nov 23, 2011
This Means War Poster
Here's the poster for McG's romantic spy comedy This Means War, which pits Future Jack Ryan against Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy's Ricki Tarr as rival spies using their CIA resources feud over a girl. It might be the biggest waste of Agency funds since Arnold Schwarzenegger's Harry Tasker spent a fortune to intimidate his wife's would-be suitor in True Lies, but the leads (Tom Hardy, Chris Pine and Reese Witherspoon) are appealing and McG has a good track record with this sort of lighter spy fare on TV in Chuck and Nikita. The trailer didn't really do much for me, but I have to admit, I think this 1-sheet is cool! Design-wise, at least. Hairstyle-wise? Not so much. What's on these guys heads? This real hair on Tom Hardy is even worse than his Tinker Tailor Seventies wig!
New Clip From Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
I like it! Nothing earth-shattering here, of course, except that we're seeing a whole scene between two IMF team members who are not Ethan Hunt, which in itself is a good thing because it's a sign that the rumors might be true; we might actually be getting more of a genuine team movie this time out, in keeping with the far superior TV series! But the scene also demonstrates what director Brad Bird told the LA Times last week: "It's a little more playful than the other Mission: Impossible films." I like the humor in this scene, and I particularly like that it provides a new spin on a very old M:I trope: the mission planning sequence. These scenes were always too serious on the show for any exchange of this sort, but can you imagine Willy or someone stopping Barney in the middle of a tech-heavy computer speech to question him the way Jeremy Renner does to Simon Pegg here? I think it would have made for a good moment back then, and it clearly does in the present.
Nov 22, 2011
Russian Spies Are Everywhere
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.
More New Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol Posters
Then there's also this crazy Japanese one which seems to portray Ethan Hunt as an anime character, complete with appropriate hair and goggles. Cruise's hair is usually a big part of M:I theatrical campaigns, as is his profile, but with that face-on hoodie image dominating American marketing, we have to look to Japan to maintain tradition:
Nov 21, 2011
Upcoming Spy DVDs: The Debt, Killer Elite and Mission: Impossible
The Debt (movie review here), coming to DVD and Blu-ray from Universal, will include the featurettes "A Look Inside The Debt," "Every Secret Has A Price: Helen Mirren In The Debt" and "The Berlin Affair: The Triangle At The Center Of The Debt," as well as an audio commentary with director John Madden and producer Kris Thykier on both formats. Retail is $29.98 for the DVD and $34.98 for the Blu-ray, though naturally both are substantially cheaper at all the usual online vendors.
Movie Review: The Man Nobody Knew (2011)
In The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby, William Colby’s son, filmmaker Carl Colby, seeks to better know his own father—and, in the process, share the senior Colby’s fascinating story with the world. And William Colby’s story is fascinating. It was on his watch as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) in the mid-Seventies that the ultra-secretive CIA opened up many of its most secret files to the public and adopted a new policy of (relative) transparency during the Senate’s Church Committee hearings. Not only did that lead to a new era of increased Congressional oversight for the Agency, but it also led directly to the publication of a slew of new books on a subject formerly difficult to glean much information on. Therefore, as someone who became interested in the CIA a little over a decade after the Church Committee (or United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, to use its lengthy official moniker), I came across William Colby’s name quite a lot in the library books I checked out in middle school. In fact, whenever you opened to the ten or fifteen pages of black and white photographs in the middle of any paperback about the CIA, there was a picture of Senator Frank Church holding up an electric CIA poison dart pistol that he asked Colby to identify and explain. As we can now ascertain via declassified information in books like Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton’s Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to Al-Qaeda, it wasn’t the sexiest of the CIA’s Cold War spy gadgets, but it was the one there was a picture of on the public record, and as such bound to turn up in any attempt to sensationalize the business of spying. In addition to playing a key role in many of the non-fiction books about the Agency published in the late Seventies and Eighties, Colby himself penned or introduced a few of them—and even lent his name to a computer game. (I never got the game, although I desperately wanted it.)
Around this time, Colby also marries his wife, Barbara (Carl’s mom), who serves as one of the story’s main narrators. Thus the two storylines are established of Colby’s private and professional lives. While the family would move with Colby when he was stationed in Rome and later Saigon, these two lives remain strictly separate. This is part of the reason that the spymaster’s son is only now managing to assemble a full portrait of his father. While growing up in far-flung locales, he knew as little about his dad’s job as anyone else. (He does have recollections of going on family picnics in Italy, from which his father would slip away to go meet someone and exchange brown envelopes or inconspicuous bags.) Colby’s wife reveals that she only found out he was working in Intelligence again (after a brief post-war career in the private sector) when a neighbor told her that her husband got out of his carpool each morning and hopped a bus to Langley!
The most interesting section of the documentary comes, not surprisingly, during those years. Following the dispiriting duration of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, the American people had lost faith in their government and become sick of covert action. A Nixon appointee, Colby displeased his boss when he refused to let the Agency take the blame for Watergate, which was a White House operation. Following Nixon’s resignation, the public pushed for more and more transparency from the CIA, and despite Senator Church’s outraged performance at his committee’s hearings, Colby gave them more answers than any other DCI likely would have—and more than President Ford would have liked. (He drew the line, however, at the Agency’s notorious “family jewels”—files so explosive he believed their exposure could ruin the CIA.) At every turn, Colby did what he truly believe was best for the Agency.
Personally, I’ve never been sure why Church and the American people were so mortified and surprised at the revelations that the CIA had engaged in illegal covert actions and attempted assassinations. Yes, the Agency has a spotty record (particularly in the 1950s) and many of their attempts to shape the political futures of other nations (Iran, Chile) directly created the mess the world's in today, but I’m not talking about the morality of their actions. I’m talking about the mere fact that they were happening. Today, we’d be pretty shocked if the CIA weren't trying to assassinate the likes of Bin Laden and his ilk! (And no one complained when their intelligence led to the JSOC operation that killed the Al Qaeda leader.) It’s easy to say it was a different time and people were more naïve, except that they really shouldn't have been! After all, as readers of this blog are well aware, the 1960s were chock-full of depictions of covert action in popular culture. Of course people knew that James Bond and Mission: Impossible were total fiction, but didn’t they guess that there was some kernel of truth at their heart? If Ian Fleming could dream up a license to kill and screenwriters could dream up exotic gadgets, and Bruce Gellar could dream up complicated plots to overthrow unfriendly governments, didn’t people guess that the real spooks could dream up similar things? I feel like the only shock registered by a senator at the existence of a secret dart gun should have been, “Why is it so big? James Bond’s fit into a cigarette!” instead of incredulity at its very existence. Senator Church’s reaction reminds me of Louis being “shocked… shocked!” to discover that gambling is going on in Rick’s establishment in Casablanca, right before he’s given his winnings. 
After the Church Committee hearings, Colby was eventually dismissed from his post. In interview footage in the film, he tells a reporter that the important thing is that his successor not be a partisan political figure, but someone whose first concern is always the good of the Agency. From this quote, the film cuts to a shot of George H. W. Bush being sworn into the post.
The Man Nobody Knew continues to roll out in a platform release across the country through mid-December. Check the film's website to learn when it will play in your area.
Nov 19, 2011
The Other Avengers
Dark Horizons has pointed out some interesting Avegers tidbits. I'm not talking about the real Avengers here (like I was yesterday); I'm talking about those other ones, the Marvel Comics superhero all-star squad that also includes a sexy catsuited superspy. First, Marvel has unveiled a new banner showing S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Nick Fury, Black Widow and Hawkeye, the movie's three superheroes who are also superspies. Hawkeye's sleeveless male version of a spy catsuit is kind of stupid, but hopefully Jeremy Renner, the new spy star du jour (who's also appearing in Mission: Impossibe - Ghost Protocol and The Bourne Legacy) will manage to make that work. Scarlett Johansson looks great (again) as Natasha Romanov, and Samuel L. Jackson looks... like Samuel L. Jackson. But that doesn't mean he can't be a cool Nick Fury, too. After all, the Ultimate Universe version of Nick Fury in the comics looks and talks like Samuel L. Jackson, too. Here's what writer/director Joss Whedon had to say about Fury in a recent interview with Yahoo!:Yahoo!: Personally, I am excited for the movie just to see the character of Nick Fury come into his own, because we have just gotten these little glimpses of his function in this world. Did you want to keep that edge of mystery to him, or explore who he is underneath the patch?
Whedon: Well, he is not going to be talking about his childhood, and you do want to keep a certain mystery. Also -- and this is something that I was very pleased that Marvel actually mandated -- they were very interested in keeping him, not just in the sort of a mystery of how the organization operates, but a real moral gray area where you really have to decide, "Is Nick Fury the most manipulative guy in the world? Is he a good guy? Is he completely Machiavellian or is it a bit of both?" And that was really fun to tweak.
I felt that in the other movies, they had been cameos and he had been called upon to come in and be Sam Jackson and bluster a little bit. And I told Sam upfront that my big agenda was to see the weight on someone who is supposed to be in control of the most powerful beings on the planet. The weight on somebody who has to run the organization and the gravity of it. Not that we don't have any fun with Nick, but he definitely -- it's, I feel like a much more textured performance and at times really moving.
I like the sound of that. Whedon definitely seems to get the character (and he should; he wrote a mean Fury in his Astonishing X-Men comics), and I like the goal of prodding a Furious performance out of Jackson beyond just showing up and being Jackson. I've always loved the extreme Machiavellian side to Nick Fury. I like that the comic book character is more than just a James Bond clone for the four-color medium; he's a more ruthless version of George Smiley in James Bond's body. Now that's a superspy! One of my favorite takes on Fury is an alternate universe version by Neil Gaiman in his miniseries 1602, which envisions an Elizabethan version of the character mixed with healthy doses of Francis Walsingham who's delightfully Machiavellian. Perhaps Whedon will deliver an equally cool alternate universe version of Fury for the movies.
Nov 18, 2011
The TV Avengers in Comics
Here, beneath webmaster One-Ten's informative recap, you'll find my review (penned under my own name, Matthew Bradford), of the first Avengers comic in the magazine Diana (which wasn't named after Diana Rigg). These Diana strips were notable for fantastic artwork (mostly by Emilio Frejo), even if their kid-oriented plots tended to be lackluster.
Here, at the bottom again, is my review of the second Diana story.
And here you'll find my reviews of the comic stories drawn by the great John Bolton in the 1977 New Avengers Annual. I was a big fan of one of them, "Fangs For the Memories." Better still, you can actually read the whole story itself on the site! Be sure to poke around there for lots of great information on every comic book and comic strip incarnation of The Avengers.
I wonder if Boom!'s reprint rights extend to older material? It would be great to see these old Avengers comics collected someday...
Upcoming Spy DVDs: Frederick Forsyth Presents
Wow, I never thought we'd see a Region 1 release of the 1989-90 ITV series Frederick Forsyth Presents. But TV Shows On DVD reports we'll be getting exactly that for Valentine's Day, from Timeless Media Group! So much did I doubt this would ever happen that I just imported the Region 2 version from Amazon.co.uk this past summer. Now it turns out I could have saved a lot of money... but at least I got better cover art! Because this TMG budget release sports some truly awful Photoshopping. That cover isn't representative of the six classy TV movies contained on 3 discs within. These movies are based on novellas contained in Forsyth's book The Deceiver. Alan Howard (best known as the voice of the Ring in the Lord of the Rings movies) plays unorthodox spymaster Sam McCready, Forsyth's answer to George Smiley. McCready generally takes a backseat, however, to the people he's manipulating in each story. This formula enabled the producers to bring in a big guest star for each film, including Elizabeth Hurley, Lauren Bacall, Brian Dennehy, Beau Bridges, Chris Cooper, Phillip Michael Thomas, David Threlfall and Peter Egan. The ones I've watched are solid productions, and I'm not sure why this production isn't better known. It deserves a place beside other solid Forsyth adaptations like The Day of the Jackal (indeed, one of these stories concerns Carlos, the international terrorist the media dubbed "the Jackal" after Forsyth's book!), and especially the Pierce Brosnan and Michael Caine starrer The Fourth Protocol. (Now if only that would get a Region 1 DVD release!) This budget release, priced at just $14.98, will no doubt prove to be one of those nice little cheap gems for spy fans eager for more serious dramas in the serious vein of Le Carre. The set hits stores on February 14, so get it for your spy-loving sweetheart. You can already pre-order it on Amazon.
Tradecraft: Soderbergh Cries Uncle to Warner Bros. on U.N.C.L.E. Feature
Tradecraft: Soderbergh Cries Uncle to Warner Bros. on U.N.C.L.E. Feature
This isn't one bit surprising, and it certainly looked like the direction things were heading with all the trouble Steven Soderbergh had casting a leading man. Now, sadly, The Hollywood Reporter reports that the director has exited Warner Bros.' attempted big screen reboot of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Personally, I see this as bad news. I was excited to see a Soderbergh-directed U.N.C.L.E. movie, and I was really happy that he and his collaborator screenwriter Sott Z. Burns had decided to set their U.N.C.L.E. movie in the Sixties. I really want to see a serious Sixties-set spy movie! It seems unlikely to me that any other director would attempt something so bold, so I fear we've lost that approach with Soderbergh. The whole future of the movie seems up in the air now. Though without Soderbergh, I'm not sure I want to see it happen anyway. (Unless they can attach another really exciting director.) The trade credits The Playlist with breaking the story, and that website has more information on the long chain of events that led to this collapse. I'm sorry I ever doubted the initial George Clooney casting, because at this point a Clooney/Soderbergh pairing seems like it would have been the best scenario. This disappointment is only the latest in a long history of failed attempts to bring The Man From U.N.C.L.E. to the screen. Quentin Tarantino, Matthew Vaughn and David Dobkin had been involved in previous attempts.
This isn't one bit surprising, and it certainly looked like the direction things were heading with all the trouble Steven Soderbergh had casting a leading man. Now, sadly, The Hollywood Reporter reports that the director has exited Warner Bros.' attempted big screen reboot of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Personally, I see this as bad news. I was excited to see a Soderbergh-directed U.N.C.L.E. movie, and I was really happy that he and his collaborator screenwriter Sott Z. Burns had decided to set their U.N.C.L.E. movie in the Sixties. I really want to see a serious Sixties-set spy movie! It seems unlikely to me that any other director would attempt something so bold, so I fear we've lost that approach with Soderbergh. The whole future of the movie seems up in the air now. Though without Soderbergh, I'm not sure I want to see it happen anyway. (Unless they can attach another really exciting director.) The trade credits The Playlist with breaking the story, and that website has more information on the long chain of events that led to this collapse. I'm sorry I ever doubted the initial George Clooney casting, because at this point a Clooney/Soderbergh pairing seems like it would have been the best scenario. This disappointment is only the latest in a long history of failed attempts to bring The Man From U.N.C.L.E. to the screen. Quentin Tarantino, Matthew Vaughn and David Dobkin had been involved in previous attempts.
Nov 17, 2011
New Spy DVDs Out This Week and Last
UPDATE:
New Spy DVDs Out This Week and Last
It Takes A Thief
Finally! It feels like we've been waiting years for It Takes a Thief! And I don't just mean the year-plus that it's been since the title was first announced as forthcoming by eOne Entertianment. I mean that this Sixties spy classic is long overdue on DVD in Region 1, and as one of the last major spy shows of that decade to be released, it's sort of hard to believe that it's finally here. (Now we just need Amos Burke, Secret Agent and T.H.E. Cat...) But it is, and in its three-season entirety all at once, no less!
eOne's 18-disc set contains all 66 episodes of the 1968-70 ABC series starring Robert Wagner (The Pink Panther, Austin Powers) as master cat burglar Alexander Mundy, who's caught and pressed into service by SIA agent Noah Bain (Malachi Throne) to use his considerable skills for Uncle Sam as a thief-cum-spy. ("Let me get this straight.... You want me to steal?" clarifies a bemused Mundy when Throne makes his proposal.) The great Fred Astaire plays his dad (also a gentleman thief) on a handful of episodes during the third season, and guest stars include Senta Berger (Otley, The Quiller Memorandum), Adolfo Celi (Thunderball, Operation Kid Brother), Joseph Cotton (The Third Man), Bette Davis (Madame Sin) and even Peter Sellers (Casino Royale) in dual roles. Extras on the discs include new (separate) half-hour interviews with Wagner and writer/producer Glen A. Larson, and the feature film version of the pilot episode, entitled Magnificent Thief, which runs almost 40 minutes longer than the TV version (which is also included). There's also a booklet with informative liner notes by Cinema Retro's Dean Brierly (who also curates the great Sixties Crime Films blog).
That's the good news. Now the bad. For starters, the retail price on this puppy is a heart attack-inducing $199.98. Luckily, that one's easily enough overcome since the set is available for half price at a number of online retailers including Deep Discount, WalMart and Amazon. (You can now support this blog again by buying things from my Amazon links; Amazon made peace with California, fortunately.) Not so easily overcome is the astoundingly atrocious packaging! Seriously, I think this is the worst packaging I've ever seen for a DVD set, even worse than that annoying box for The Wild Wild West: The Complete Series. I'm not a fan of unnecessarily bulky packaging to begin with, because I have a lot of DVDs and shelf space is always at a premium. But, unfortunately for people like me, the studios always put complete series sets in unnecessarily bulky long-boxes or cubes because they want them to take up a lot of shelf space at big box stores in the weeks leading up to Christmas. They also feel that their size should reflect the steep prices they like to charge for them, because they think consumers feel that way. Maybe some consumers do. I don't. But understanding all that, this one is still worse than most. At this excessive price point, the nearest comparison spy fans have are Time-Life's gift set releases of the complete series of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Get Smart. Both were clunky, but they were also clever (the former was shaped like an attache case and the latter mimicked the many doors leading into Control) and (the attache case's handle notwithstanding), for the most part, sturdy. The cube encasing these It Takes A Thief discs is neither clever nor sturdy. It's made out of the flimsiest cardboard I've ever seen used on a DVD box set. If you pick it up the wrong way, you'll crush it. On top of that, it's massively inefficient. When you open the box, you find a lot of empty space taken up by a cardboard placeholder and stupid trinkets like a set of four It Takes A Thief coasters (coasters!) and a "limited edition senitype." Senitypes are those individually numbered cardboard dealies with a little piece of 35mm film stuck into them. It's not even from an original print; it's a reproduction. They're the stupidest kind of artificial collectible I can think of... except maybe coasters. Is there really any demand for Robert Wagner coasters? It's almost insulting to think that eOne thought these cheapo items would justify such an excessive price point. But it's not the trinkets that really bother me. It's the fact that they take up so much space in the box... and yet not all of the space!
There's a tremendous amount of wasted, empty space inside this stupid box. And to make matters worse, the stuff that goes in it (including the actual discs, housed in square wallets, as well as the trinkets) don't all fit comfortably inside. It should be a simple matter of spacial logic, but it's not. One season's folder is awkwardly packed in sideways, because the others, which are stacked, don't fit snugly enough without that one wedged in there. But because the discs are in wallets and not Amrays, you can't really display them on their own without the packaging... so you're stuck with this chunky, inefficient cube. (Definitely hang onto that cardboard space-filler. You can use it to creatively rekajigger the arrangement as seen below for something that almost fits...) If these things matter to you, you really might be better off waiting and hoping that eOne releases more conveniently packaged individual seasons down the line. (That happened with Get Smart.)
However, the show itself is a lot of fun and a must in any Sixties spy fan's library. And from the brief bit I've sampled so far, the picture looks awfully good. [Scratch that! See below.] So while this box and its dumb trinkets are definitely not worth $200, the three seasons of the series itself are easily worth Amazon's $98.99. So put it on your Christmas list after all. Even if the packaging sucks, the actual content won't disappoint. Because it's a great thing to finally have It Takes A Thief on DVD.
UPDATE: I've watched a few more episodes now and I take back what I said about the picture looking good. The first episodes I sampled were all from Season One, and that does, indeed, look pretty good. Today I checked out some Season Three episodes, and the quality is horrible! Horrible enough to warrant this edit. I'm really not a stickler for top quality, either. A lot of the Eurospy titles I'm into are so obscure that you have to take what you can get, and I'm used to that. I'm okay with it, even. If those are all the elements available, we have to make do. But I cannot believe for a second that these discs from eOne represent the best elements available from a major American network series like It Takes A Thief! Were the original masters lost in that Universal fire a few years ago? I find it impossible to believe that the studio can't provide better elements otherwise. As is, these discs offer no improvement from the bootlegs die-hard fans likely already have. eOne claims on the packaging that they're "remastered," but they must have been remastered from an ancient video source by the look of it. They are definitely not restored in any way. Some people have complained about Warner Archives' non-remastered Girl From U.N.C.L.E. discs, but that's only because they were spoiled by Time-Life's beautifully restored Man From U.N.C.L.E. set. Girl looks fantastic compared to It Takes A Thief. I still believe that any It Takes A Thief is better than no It Takes A Thief, but at this steep price point, I can't really recommend upgrading if you've got episodes taped off TV. It's a real shame.
New Spy DVDs Out This Week and Last
It Takes A Thief
Finally! It feels like we've been waiting years for It Takes a Thief! And I don't just mean the year-plus that it's been since the title was first announced as forthcoming by eOne Entertianment. I mean that this Sixties spy classic is long overdue on DVD in Region 1, and as one of the last major spy shows of that decade to be released, it's sort of hard to believe that it's finally here. (Now we just need Amos Burke, Secret Agent and T.H.E. Cat...) But it is, and in its three-season entirety all at once, no less!
eOne's 18-disc set contains all 66 episodes of the 1968-70 ABC series starring Robert Wagner (The Pink Panther, Austin Powers) as master cat burglar Alexander Mundy, who's caught and pressed into service by SIA agent Noah Bain (Malachi Throne) to use his considerable skills for Uncle Sam as a thief-cum-spy. ("Let me get this straight.... You want me to steal?" clarifies a bemused Mundy when Throne makes his proposal.) The great Fred Astaire plays his dad (also a gentleman thief) on a handful of episodes during the third season, and guest stars include Senta Berger (Otley, The Quiller Memorandum), Adolfo Celi (Thunderball, Operation Kid Brother), Joseph Cotton (The Third Man), Bette Davis (Madame Sin) and even Peter Sellers (Casino Royale) in dual roles. Extras on the discs include new (separate) half-hour interviews with Wagner and writer/producer Glen A. Larson, and the feature film version of the pilot episode, entitled Magnificent Thief, which runs almost 40 minutes longer than the TV version (which is also included). There's also a booklet with informative liner notes by Cinema Retro's Dean Brierly (who also curates the great Sixties Crime Films blog).
That's the good news. Now the bad. For starters, the retail price on this puppy is a heart attack-inducing $199.98. Luckily, that one's easily enough overcome since the set is available for half price at a number of online retailers including Deep Discount, WalMart and Amazon. (You can now support this blog again by buying things from my Amazon links; Amazon made peace with California, fortunately.) Not so easily overcome is the astoundingly atrocious packaging! Seriously, I think this is the worst packaging I've ever seen for a DVD set, even worse than that annoying box for The Wild Wild West: The Complete Series. I'm not a fan of unnecessarily bulky packaging to begin with, because I have a lot of DVDs and shelf space is always at a premium. But, unfortunately for people like me, the studios always put complete series sets in unnecessarily bulky long-boxes or cubes because they want them to take up a lot of shelf space at big box stores in the weeks leading up to Christmas. They also feel that their size should reflect the steep prices they like to charge for them, because they think consumers feel that way. Maybe some consumers do. I don't. But understanding all that, this one is still worse than most. At this excessive price point, the nearest comparison spy fans have are Time-Life's gift set releases of the complete series of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Get Smart. Both were clunky, but they were also clever (the former was shaped like an attache case and the latter mimicked the many doors leading into Control) and (the attache case's handle notwithstanding), for the most part, sturdy. The cube encasing these It Takes A Thief discs is neither clever nor sturdy. It's made out of the flimsiest cardboard I've ever seen used on a DVD box set. If you pick it up the wrong way, you'll crush it. On top of that, it's massively inefficient. When you open the box, you find a lot of empty space taken up by a cardboard placeholder and stupid trinkets like a set of four It Takes A Thief coasters (coasters!) and a "limited edition senitype." Senitypes are those individually numbered cardboard dealies with a little piece of 35mm film stuck into them. It's not even from an original print; it's a reproduction. They're the stupidest kind of artificial collectible I can think of... except maybe coasters. Is there really any demand for Robert Wagner coasters? It's almost insulting to think that eOne thought these cheapo items would justify such an excessive price point. But it's not the trinkets that really bother me. It's the fact that they take up so much space in the box... and yet not all of the space!
UPDATE: I've watched a few more episodes now and I take back what I said about the picture looking good. The first episodes I sampled were all from Season One, and that does, indeed, look pretty good. Today I checked out some Season Three episodes, and the quality is horrible! Horrible enough to warrant this edit. I'm really not a stickler for top quality, either. A lot of the Eurospy titles I'm into are so obscure that you have to take what you can get, and I'm used to that. I'm okay with it, even. If those are all the elements available, we have to make do. But I cannot believe for a second that these discs from eOne represent the best elements available from a major American network series like It Takes A Thief! Were the original masters lost in that Universal fire a few years ago? I find it impossible to believe that the studio can't provide better elements otherwise. As is, these discs offer no improvement from the bootlegs die-hard fans likely already have. eOne claims on the packaging that they're "remastered," but they must have been remastered from an ancient video source by the look of it. They are definitely not restored in any way. Some people have complained about Warner Archives' non-remastered Girl From U.N.C.L.E. discs, but that's only because they were spoiled by Time-Life's beautifully restored Man From U.N.C.L.E. set. Girl looks fantastic compared to It Takes A Thief. I still believe that any It Takes A Thief is better than no It Takes A Thief, but at this steep price point, I can't really recommend upgrading if you've got episodes taped off TV. It's a real shame.
Last week saw the release from PBS of David Hare's elegant, adult BBC spy thriller Page Eight, which recently aired on PBS' Masterpiece Contemporary. This serious spy drama boasts an all-star cast to equal that of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, including Bill Nighy, Rachel Weisz, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon, Ewan Bremner and Judy Davis. And it's really, really good. Hopefully I'll have a full review up soon. Nighy plays veteran MI5 officer Johnny Worricker. When his boss and best friend Benedict Baron (Gambon) dies suddenly, he leaves behind an inexplicable file, threatening the stability of the organization and the government itself. Johnny's colleagues and the Prime Minister (Fiennes, playing a PM so evil he could only be described as Voldemort in a tuxedo) all scramble to use the file to their own ends, but how will Johnny use it? Meanwhile, a seemingly chance encounter with his striking next-door neighbour and political activist Nancy Pierpan (Weisz) seems too good to be true, so he has her vetted by a former colleague (Bremner). Johnny is forced to take some extreme measures to find out the truth. Set in London and Cambridge, Page Eight is, PBS puts it in their disc copy, "a contemporary spy film for the BBC, which addresses intelligence issues and moral dilemmas peculiar to the new century." It's also the closest thing on television right now to the serious spy series of the late Seventies and early Eighties like the original Tinker, Tailor and Smiley's People, as well as Game, Set and Match and Mr. Palfrey of Westminster. In other words, if you're looking for 24, look elsewhere. But if you're looking for intelligent, adult, thought-provoking spy drama, definitely give this disc a look. SRP is $24.99 for the DVD and $29.99 for the Blu-ray, though both are available for less from the usual online retailers. Unfortunately, there don't appear to be any features on this Region 1 release; at least the Region 2 DVD featured cast and crew interviews.
"THE SAINT, STEED, CALLAN, DICK BARTON... now the most unlikely super hero of them all comes to your screen!" blared ITV's announcement of their latest spy(ish) series, Bognor, in a February 1981 TV Times. Now Network reworks that hyperbole in their copy for its DVD release: "John Steed, Simon Templar, Dick Barton… and Simon Bognor. Following in the footsteps of some illustrious predecessors, the principal agent of the Special Investigations Department of the Board of Trade ventures forth to take on wrongdoers wherever they may lurk!" Since the odds are most people have never heard of him, obviously Bognor (played by David Horovitch) didn't really make it in such lofty company. But I'm intrigued by anyone who tries, so I'm curious to give this humorous take on the secret agent format a chance--especially since it does actually have a connection to one of those aforementioned TV heroes. Bognor is based on a series of novels by Tim Heald, author of John Steed: An Authorized Biography: Volume One - Jealous in Honour. That was a fictional biography of the famous Avenger, (in the vein of John Pearson's James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007) which also featured an unauthorized cameo from Bond. (Read more about it here.) Only one edition was ever printed and it's become quite hard to find, but it's worth tracking down for Avengers fans. It's good enough to inspire interest in Bognor. Here's the rest of Network's copy: "In [the serial] 'Unbecoming Habits,' [Bognor] poses as a CID officer to investigate a friary suspected of passing agricultural secrets to the Soviets; 'Deadline' sees him lowering journalistic standards as he goes undercover to probe the murder of a gossip columnist; in 'Let Sleeping Dogs Die' he trails ruthless pedigree dog smugglers; 'Just Desserts' finds him uncovering deadly intrigue in the world of haute cuisine. But will the assignments throw up more clues than Bognor can handle?" Network's 4-disc Region 2 PAL DVD set includes all 21 episodes of the series, which originally ran from 1981-82. The set is a web exclusive, available only from Network's website for £35.00. While you're there, you can also check out a video of the show's entertaining opening credits, which gleefully send up the title sequences of Sixties spy series.
Finally, another Network web exclusive came out last week that isn't principally a spy show, but still has enough Cold War-themed episodes to interest fans of British spy TV. Don Henderson stars in his third TV show playing the same part, classics-quoting detective George Bulman (previously seen in The XYY Man and Strangers, as well as the first series of Bulman), now retired from the police force, but still taking cases on a private basis--and taking unofficial assignments from Secret Service mandarin William Dugdale (Thorley Walters). It's a detective show, but like most UK detective shows of that era, detection and espionage often intersect. Ingrid Pitt, Robert Hardy and Iain Cuthbertson also appear. The 2-disc set (PAL, Region 2) containing all 6 episodes of Series 2 is available exclusively from Network's website for £15.00.
It's worth noting that Network's web exclusives are now available for a limited time only. Both Bognor and Bullman: The Complete Second Series will be discontinued on November 4, 2012.
Tradecraft: Paul Greengrass Boards Fox Series About Intelligence Community
Tradecraft: Paul Greengrass Boards Fox Series About Intelligence Community
Deadline reports that two-time Bourne director Paul Greengrass has come aboard former CIA officer Joe Weisberg's untitled drama about the U.S. Intelligence Community that we first heard about a few weeks ago. Greengrass will executive produce alongside Weisberg and Brian Grazer (24), and it's possible he might also direct the pilot. That prospect excites me. I praised Doug Liman for bringing his put-you-in-the-middle-of-it Bourne sensibilities to the cramped conference rooms and cubicles of Langley in the more realistic spy movie Fair Game (review here). I'll equally welcome Greengrass's signature style applied to a similarly realistic scenario, which is what it sounds like Weisberg is developing. The trade blog describes this new series, from Fox Television, as "a high-stakes character-based drama centering on the young assistants of high-ranking officers in the U.S. Intelligence community. The show takes place within the walls of the CIA, as well as the DIA, NSA, FBI and the intelligence components at the White House." If it turns out to be a West Wing of the spy world with Greengrass's urgent camera work rushing us from crisis to crisis amidst petty office politics and inter-agency in-fighting, then I will be very happy to watch! I haven't read Weisberg's novel An Ordinary Spy, but I ordered it from Amazon (where it's super cheap) after first learning about this series, and I'm looking forward to reading it. I'm very keen to see how this one develops. While I detest most of Greengrass's imitators, I enjoy his own spy movies immensely, particularly The Bourne Ultimatum (review here) and Green Zone (review here).
Deadline reports that two-time Bourne director Paul Greengrass has come aboard former CIA officer Joe Weisberg's untitled drama about the U.S. Intelligence Community that we first heard about a few weeks ago. Greengrass will executive produce alongside Weisberg and Brian Grazer (24), and it's possible he might also direct the pilot. That prospect excites me. I praised Doug Liman for bringing his put-you-in-the-middle-of-it Bourne sensibilities to the cramped conference rooms and cubicles of Langley in the more realistic spy movie Fair Game (review here). I'll equally welcome Greengrass's signature style applied to a similarly realistic scenario, which is what it sounds like Weisberg is developing. The trade blog describes this new series, from Fox Television, as "a high-stakes character-based drama centering on the young assistants of high-ranking officers in the U.S. Intelligence community. The show takes place within the walls of the CIA, as well as the DIA, NSA, FBI and the intelligence components at the White House." If it turns out to be a West Wing of the spy world with Greengrass's urgent camera work rushing us from crisis to crisis amidst petty office politics and inter-agency in-fighting, then I will be very happy to watch! I haven't read Weisberg's novel An Ordinary Spy, but I ordered it from Amazon (where it's super cheap) after first learning about this series, and I'm looking forward to reading it. I'm very keen to see how this one develops. While I detest most of Greengrass's imitators, I enjoy his own spy movies immensely, particularly The Bourne Ultimatum (review here) and Green Zone (review here).
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