Tradecraft: BBC and Sundance Channel Team on Spy Miniseries The Honourable Woman (UPDATED)

The Hollywood Reporter reports that a stellar ensemble has been assembled for The Honourable Woman, a new eight-part spy thriller co-produced by BBC2 and Sundance Channel. Maggy Gyllenhaal (The Dark Knight) plays the titular woman, Nessa Stein. She's joined by Stephen Rea (The Shadow Line), Janet McTeer (Parade's End), Tobias Menzies (Casino Royale), Lindsay Duncan (Spy, MI-5), Andrew Buchan (The Fixer), Katherine Parkinson (The IT Crowd) and Lubna Azabal (Body of Lies) in a cast said to include nearly 100 parts. The Honourable Woman is written by Hugo Blick, creator of the 2011 quasi-spy conspiracy thriller The Shadow Line. According to a previous Hollywood Reporter article, the story follows Nessa Stein, "daughter of a Zionist arms procurer who as a child witnessed his assassination. Now an adult, Nessa inherits her father's company and changes course from supplying arms to laying data cabling networks between Israel and the West Bank." The Independent takes up the synopsis, adding that Nessa "enters the House of Lords after years of charity work in the Middle East, only to become caught up in an international conspiracy with the secret service at her heels." The Honourable Woman is scheduled to be broadcast in the UK on BBC2 and in the U.S. on Sundance Channel in 2014.

UPDATE: Deadline has additional information on the spy roles some of these actors will be playing, plus further casting announcements. According to the trade blog, Rea co-stars as Hugh Hayden-Hoyle, "a top MI6 spy on the verge of retirement, digging deep into the family of Nessa Stein." Duncan plays Hugh's bitter ex-wife Anjelica. McTeer plays the head of MI6, Julia Walsh, "who has a personal hold over Hayden-Hoyle." Eve Best (another Shadow Line vet not previously announced) is Monica Chatwin, "a key MI6 agent from the Washington Bureau – spoiling for a fight with her UK counterparts." Buchan is Nessa's brother Ephra Stein ("seemingly overshadowed by his sister within the family business"), and Parkinson plays Ephra's "highly strung pregnant wife Rachel Stein."  Azabal plays Atika Halibi, "nanny to Ephra and Rachel Stein’s two young daughters and close friend to Nessa." Menzies (who also played Ian Fleming in Any Human Heart) plays "Nessa’s trusted personal body guard Nathaniel Bloom." Finally, Deadline adds that Genevieve O’Reilly (MI-5) plays "Nessa’s loyal personal assistant Frances" and Israeli actor Igal Naor (Green Zone) plays Shlomo Zahary, "a close long-time ally of the Stein family."

Thunderball Music Video

I had no idea there was ever a music video for Tom Jones' Thunderball title song! There wasn't one in the Sixties, but there was, apparently, in 1987. It seems to be a (lip-synched) clip from a live performance. Does anyone know if this is from one of the many Tom Jones DVDs available on Amazon? Whatever its origins, with leather-clad Bond Girls, an Aston Martin DB5 and Jones in a white dinner jacket (plus a healthy dose of 1980s cheese), it's well worth watching!

The Avengers Return to DVD in America!

Here's the news American spy fans have been longing to hear for years! After way too long out of print (and commanding super-steep prices in the second-hand market), the greatest spy show ever, The Avengers, is returning to DVD in Region 1. Well, some of it anyway. On October 8, A&E will reissue their Complete Emma Peel Megaset. While the 16 discs themselves appear to be identical to the previous incarnation of this set, the packaging is substantially slimmer (a major plus on any shelf buckling under the weight of too many spy shows) and the retail price substantially more affordable. According to TV Shows On DVD, the new release containing all 51 Avengers episodes featuring Diana Rigg will cost just $49.98. (The out of print edition currently goes for as much as ten times that price!) So that's the good news, and it's very good news indeed. Now for the inevitable gripes.

I had hoped that when The Avengers was eventually re-released Stateside, American fans might be treated to the same stellar remastered picture and fantastic extras that graced Optimum's Region 2 UK releases (though ideally without all the glitches that plagued those sets). While this set does indeed co-opt Optimum's attractive cover scheme (albeit slightly altered), it doesn't appear to port over the wonderful bonus features. Since the article makes no mention of bonus content at all, I suppose it's possible that I could be wrong (and in this case I'd be delighted to be proven so!), but basic math indicates otherwise. The two Optimum Emma Peel sets added up to a total of 14 discs (and didn't include Rigg's swan song, "The Forget Me Knot," which appeared on the R2 Tara King set), and this A&E set promises 16 discs, the same as were in the previous R1 Emma Peel Megaset. So I'd say it's likely that this is simply a repackaging of that collection. Still, it's excellent news that any seasons of The Avengers will be back in print in the USA! Hopefully this release will sell well and pave the way for a Complete Cathy Gale Megaset (incorporating what survives of the earlier material as well) and a Complete Tara King Collection and eventually a Complete New Avengers Megaset... and maybe even some Blu-rays down the road. (A&E reissued the same DVD set of The Prisoner in new packaging when they put out the feature-laden Blu-rays of that show, but in that case Network had already paved the high-def path in Britain.) Fingers crossed, anyway!

Bond 24 Officially Announced for 2015; Mendes Confirmed to Direct

Yesterday, EON Productions, MGM and Sony jointly announced the official release date and primary creative team for the next James Bond movie, the 24th in the official series. Bond 24 (utilizing the usual working title nomenclature for these films) will open in the United Kingdom on October 23, 2015, and in the USA on November 6. Once again, 007's homeland gets a significant advantage (two whole, unbearable weeks!) on America. As previously speculated, Skyfall director Sam Mendes will return to direct the next Bond adventure, becoming the first director to helm two in a row since John Glen departed the series following Licence to Kill in 1989. (We've known for a while that John Logan, who co-wrote Skyfall, is penning the script, and Daniel Craig will once again star.) Bringing Mendes back meant that EON and the studios had to work around his busy theatrical schedule. The result amounts to another longer than average break between Bond films: three years instead of the standard two. At least that's not as bad as the interminable four years separating Skyfall from Quantum of Solace, but it's still pretty vexing! And at this rate, Craig will be as old as Roger Moore got in the role by the time he's done! Oh well. I loved Skyfall, and I fully expect Mendes to once again deliver the goods. Here's hoping he recruits cinematographer Roger Deakins to retun as well! Deakins shot what may well have been the most beautiful looking Bond film ever in Skyfall, and I'd love to see what he does next with 007's world!

Upcoming Le Carre Blu-ray Titles

In the coming months, spy fans will be able to greatly expand their Blu-ray collections of John le Carré titles. In September, The Criterion Collection will issue The Spy Who Came In From the Cold on Blu, while this August Image will release The Tailor of Panama on BD and Acorn will release their long awaited Smiley's People Blu-ray.

Acorn's Blu-ray of the 1982 BBC miniseries starring Alec Guinness (in my opinion the finest le Carré adaptation yet produced—despite some really tough competition!) will not only mark the high-definition debut of Smiley's People in any region; it will also be the first time American viewers are able to see the additional hour of material cut from the original U.S. broadcast and all subsequent home video editions in this country! Like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy before it, Smiley's People was reconfigured from seven episodes (as broadcast in Britain) to six for transmission on PBS's Masterpiece Theater. Since it would have been impossible to just drop an entire episode of this highly-complex spy story, this was done by shedding footage here and there from every episode. In the case of Tinker, Tailor, I feel that the trims actually streamlined the storytelling and improved the miniseries. (I would actually recommend the U.S. version over the British one.) However, in the case of Smiley's People, I feel that essential material was excised (including some of the miniseries' best scenes), and strongly prefer the UK broadcast version. The Blu-ray will not reinstate the missing footage into the narrative, but it will include all 62 minutes of it as deleted scenes, which is almost as good. These are deleted scenes well worth watching, and a special feature which will truly enhance the viewing experience! The Blu-ray will also include all of the extras from Acorn's previous DVD edition: a 20-minute interview with le Carré and text-based features like production notes, biographies and a useful glossary of the author's sometimes confusing spy jargon. This all-star sequel finds George Smiley (the incomparable Alec Guinness) once again coming out of retirement to take on his old Soviet nemesis Karla (Patrick Stewart) in a final battle of wits spanning Europe. It was filmed on location in London, Paris, Hamburg, and Bern, and co-stars Bernard Hepton (The Contract), Vladek Sheybal (From Russia With Love), Eileen Atkins (the Avengers movie), Michael Gough (the real Avengers) Anthony Bate (Game, Set and Match), Ingrid Pitt (Jason King), Andy Bradford (Octopussy), Curd Jürgens (The Spy Who Loved Me) Michael Lonsdale (Moonraker), Michael Byrne (Saracen), Lucy Fleming (Cold Warrior—and, yes, that's Lucy Fleming as in niece of Ian, whose best scene can be found amongst that deleted material), and a scene-stealing Beryl Reid (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy). It's absolutely essential viewing, and this Blu-ray will be a requirement in any spy collection worth its salt! Retail is $59.99, but luckily Amazon has it for pre-order for much less. It streets on August 6.

Also out in August (August 20 to be precise) is Image's new Blu-ray of John Boorman's vastly underrated 2001 film of The Tailor of Panama starring Pierce Brosnan and Geoffrey Rush. The film mines unusually (though naturally dark) comedic territory for le Carré, and does a damn fine job of it. (It's really the author's variation on Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana.) It also features my favorite Pierce Brosnan performance ever. Really, he's unmissable in this, making it a must for Bond fans as well as le Carré fans. The Blu-ray from Image will carry over all of the special features from Columbia's DVD, including a Boorman commentary track, an alternate ending with optional commentary, theatrical trailers, and the featurette "The Perfect Fit: A Conversation with Pierce Brosnan and Geoffrey Rush." Unfortunately, the Blu-ray utilizes the same slapdash cover art as the DVD instead of the film's fantastic illustrated poster, but that's to be expected these days. Retail is just $17.97, and you can pre-order it from Amazon for even less.

Meanwhile, Criterion's Spy Who Came in from the Cold Blu-ray includes a new, high-definition digital restoration of Martin Ritt's seminal 1965 Richard Burton movie with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack along with all the excellent special features found on the existing DVD edition: a wide-ranging video interview with le Carré (thoroughly engrossing, but beware of spoilers for some of his other works), a selected-scene commentary featuring director of photography Oswald Morris, the 2000 BBC documentary The Secret Center: John le Carré (while essential viewing for fans, this is also a bit spoilery, as it contains extensive clips from the BBC le Carré productions Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Smiley's People [including the very end] and A Perfect Spy), a 1967 Richard Burton interview, an audio conversation from 1985 between director Martin Ritt and film historian Patrick McGilligan, a gallery of set designs, the trailer and a booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Sragow. The gritty, black and white adaptation of le Carré's most famous novel reunited Burton with his Look Back in Anger co-star Claire Bloom and featured Rupert Davies as the screen's first Smiley. The disc is out September 10 and retail is $39.95, though again it's significantly less to pre-order on Amazon.

Since as of now The Deadly Affair, The Looking Glass War and The Little Drummer Girl are only available as MOD discs, I can't envision any of them becoming available in high-def editions any time soon. But for the time being, these three new titles should make excellent additions to any le Carré Blu-ray collection, and look great alongside your Blu-rays of the two versions of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (BBC  and 2011 feature) and maybe your region-free import copy of The Constant Gardener.

Read my "Introduction to George Smiley" here.

Shout! Factory Slates Roger Moore and Michael Caine Blu-ray Rarities

This October, Shout! Factory will release two 1970s titles sure to be of interest to American spy fans: Roger Moore in the WWI-era African adventure Shout at the Devil and Michael Caine in the WWII spy saga The Eagle Has Landed. At this point UK readers are no doubt groaning, "What's the big deal?" as those titles have been available there on DVD and even Blu-ray for years in various editions. But surprisingly, neither one has ever even been available on DVD before in Region 1! To make up for that, the Shout! Factory releases will be DVD/Blu-ray combo sets, so those who haven't yet upgraded to high-def will still be able to enjoy these titles at home for the first time. I believe both of these titles come from the ITV library (I know The Eagle Has Landed does), and I hope their release portends further titles from that library in the U.S. for the first time. Particularly, I hope Shout! has another Moore and another Caine up their sleeves. Both Escape to Athena and The Fourth Protocol are long overdue in this country! There's no word yet on special features on the October releases, but I certainly hope that some of the special features from the UK DVDs make an appearance—and that both films materialize in their extended versions. The Eagle Has Landed (co-starring Donald Sutherland) lands on October 15 with a retail price of $24.97, while Shout at the Devil (co-starring Lee Marvin) arrives a week earlier, October 8, with the lower price point of $19.97. Both are available to pre-order for cheaper, of course, on Amazon.

James Bond Covers Video Watchdog

Agent 007 makes another cover appearance on the latest issue of Tim Lucas's Video Watchdog, the best DVD review magazine out there. Issue 174 features a Skyfall cover, and a review inside of the MGM Blu-ray. You can read a short preview here. The issue also features an article of the fascinating and prolific Spanish director Jess Franco, who dabbled in the Eurospy genre (with contributions including Two Undercover Angels and Attack of the Robots)—presumably an obituary (depending on the lead time required before printing), as Franco sadly recently passed away. Bond and Eurospies? And Hammer to boot! I'll definitely be picking up this issue! James Bond has graced the cover of occasional past issues of Video Watchdog, always promising a highly insightful article within. I'm sure this one will be no exception.

First Fleming Teaser

Sky Atlantic has released the first teaser trailer for their upcoming miniseries Fleming, starring Dominic West as James Bond creator Ian Fleming. They've also released some images. The stills look good. The teaser... well, it's not really fair to draw to many conclusions from a 30 second teaser, but I'm going to go ahead and do it nonetheless. The imagery will look awfully familiar if you've seen Skyfall, and that's hardly surprising. They'd be crazy not to capitalize on the biggest Bond film ever! But I'm hoping this is some sort of fantasy sequence. Because if there's actually a scene like this in the miniseries, then it looks like it will be another along the lines of the 90s TV movies about Fleming, presenting the author as a stand-in for 007 himself allowing the filmmakers to tell a Bond-style story. And of course there's really nothing wrong with that. Except that it wouldn't be accurate, and Fleming's real life story is far more interesting, I think, than that approach. I'm still hoping this miniseries will attempt to tell the true story. Anyway, here's the teaser:

Tradecraft: Cinemax's Hunted Continuation Takes Shape

We heard last November that the hit Cinemax/BBC spy series Hunted (a hit on Cinemax, that is, but not on the Beeb), would return to the U.S. cable network in a slightly different format after being formally cancelled in Britain by BBC One. In March, it looked like that new format would be a series of 2-hour TV movies. Now it looks like Melissa George's tough spy-for-hire character will instead live on in an eponymous spinoff series entitled Sam Hunter. Deadline reports that "Cinemax is planning to launch Sam Hunter as a four-hour miniseries," with Hunted creator Frank Spotnitz (Strike Back) and UK company Kudos (MI-5/Spooks) remaining on board as producers. "Doing the new series by itself," the trade blog reports, "would give Cinemax greater creative control and allow ... Spotnitz to push the boundaries on storytelling, tailoring the show to a pay cable network [meaning Cinemax] vs. a public broadcaster [meaning BBC]." I think what all that translates to is roughly "more nudity." (That seems to be Cinemax's hallmark.) Hunted earned weak reviews in the UK, but strong ones in the U.S. I don't get Cinemax, so I didn't see it when it aired. I'd been waiting and waiting for a Region 1 DVD release (which finally looks set to happen next month, but as an expensive MOD title from Warner Archive), but finally broke down and imported the R2 discs. I've only watched the pilot so far, but from that I find myself siding with my countrymen; I'm hooked! And I'm glad that there will be more Sam Hunter on the horizon.

Tradecraft: Neeson Signs On for Taken 3

Deadline reports that Liam Neeson "is closing a deal in the vicinity of $20 million" to reprise his role as Bryan Mills, the former CIA agent hero of Taken and Taken 2 in a third film. That will be his biggest payday ever for the unlikely action star at the age of 61. Neeson was originally reluctant to return for a second outing of neo-Eurospy mayhem, but when the sequel grossed a staggering $376 million, a third entry seemed inevitable. (Indeed, Part 2 left the door decidedly open for another follow-up.) I loved the first film. The second wasn't nearly as good, but I still found it quite entertaining. It would be great if Luc Besson's EuropaCorp could lure the first film's director, Pierre Morel, back for the third entry, but his commitment to giving Sean Penn's career its own Taken-style neo-Eurospy jolt in The Gunman probably precludes that possibility. Deadline suggests that Olivier Megaton, who helmed the sequel (as well as the third Transporter movie), is a likely candidate for the third one, too, but no deal is yet in place. Besson and Robert Mark Kamen are once again penning the script, as they did for the first two entries in the series.

Movie Review: Erased aka The Expatriate (2012)

The latest neo-Eurospy movie to hit American screens barely hit them at all; Erased (which came out in other territories last year as The Expatriate) was unceremoniously dumped in a handful of theaters with zero advertising by The Weinstein Company. And it’s a bit of a shame, too, because it’s a decent flick that might have done some decent business if given half a chance. When it comes to the neo-Eurospy subgenre, it’s no Taken, but it’s definitely better than Taken 2. It’s also a far sight better than star Aaron Eckhart’s last action movie, Olympus Has Fallen, and that managed to do impressive business. Of course, Eckhart shared the bill there with Gerard Butler. But despite being most famous for supporting turns (like The Dark Knight), he’s got the chops to carry a film and does well in a spy role here.

Eckhart plays Ben Logan, a former CIA agent who specialized in, well, killing people. He was drummed out of the Agency—and America—when terms like “kill squads” went out of favor, apparently—though I’m not completely sure that particular term was ever in favor. Isn’t that why euphemisms like “wetworks” and “black ops” were invented? Unable to return home, the titular (in Europe, anyway) expatriate now works for a private security firm in Antwerp, Belgium. He’s also trying to form a relationship with his estranged teenage daughter, Amy (Liana Liberato), who resents having to leave her school in Connecticut to come live with a dad she barely knows after losing her mom—Ben’s ex-wife—to cancer. The dialogue between father and daughter may be a little bit on the cheesy side (though nowhere near as egregious as in the first Taken), but Eckhart and Liberato have excellent chemistry and they sell the strained relationship easily.

Ben works late one night after discovering a patent discrepancy in one of his company’s security devices, and then, ignoring the friendly security guard’s advice to go home and hit the hay, makes a predictably late entrance to Amy’s school presentation. In an attempt to mollify his understandably angry (and hungry) daughter, he offers her some food, not realizing that she has a peanut allergy. They end up spending the night in the hospital, and she has no choice but to accompany him on a stop at his office the next morning. But the office is gone. All the furniture and equipment have been cleared out, and there’s no sign of any of the people. When Ben calls the corporate headquarters in Brussels, he’s informed that the company has no Antwerp office.

He runs into a coworker, but rather than collaborating to solve this mystery, his former colleague carjacks Ben and Amy at gunpoint. Ben’s spy instincts kick in, and he ends up in close-quarters combat with the colleague-turned-assassin as the car careens dangerously along the highway. Amy looks on in terror as the fight results in a spectacular wreck, the death of the assassin who might have been able to give them some answers, and ultimately father and daughter on the run from the local law enforcement.

Ben has no choice but to bring Amy along on his quest to find answers, and he teaches her some handy Jason Bourne-style tradecraft along the way. (Like how to blend in in a crowd.) That relationship is really the best part of Erased. When I first reported the logline way back in 2010, I somewhat snarkily remarked that it sounded like a cross between the Liam Neeson movies Taken and Unknown. But the daughter storyline in Erased is very different from that in Taken. Whereas in Taken father and daughter are separated and Neeson’s Bryan Mills demonstrates he’ll do anything to find his daughter, in Erased they are together. And that’s a twist I haven’t seen before in this sort of spy movie: an agent on the run with his daughter, bonding and bickering with her as he dispatches cadres of enemies.

The Ludlumesque setup isn’t as Unknown as it sounds, either. In fact, a disturbing trip to the morgue confirms to Ben that it’s much more of a Three Days of the Condor situation; the rest of his co-workers are all dead, as he would have been had he gone home that night (as the security guard suggested) instead of to the hospital. Ben’s investigation into this scenario takes him and Amy from Antwerp to Brussels, affording the audience some very nice European travelogue shots, and into contact with spy veterans Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace, Hitman) and Garrick Hagpn (The Adventurer, The Spy Who Loved Me). Kurylenko plays Ben’s former CIA controller, Anna Brandt, though her present loyalties are decidedly in question. I’ve been a fan of hers since before she was a Bond Girl, and I’m always happy to see her in a spy movie. But honestly her role here is somewhat limited; I would have liked to see more of her. Still, she’s good in the scenes she has, and her presence automatically elevates any spy movie! Hagon plays the enigmatic and somewhat sinister CEO of the company Ben believed himself to be working for. There’s also the friendly security guard from his old job to contend with, who proves himself to in fact not be very friendly, but a psychotic and seemingly unstoppable killer. The violent fight between Ben and him in a hospital is the film’s action highlight, easily rivaling the similar sequence in The Bourne Legacy. Late in the film, we’re also introduced to an even more unstoppable French “cleaner” played by Jean Reno lookalike Eric Godon. The role would have had more impact had the producers been able to secure Reno himself.

Erased has all the right ingredients: good actors, good action, good locations, and an intriguing premise. But somehow they don’t gel quite right. The pacing is off, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. The plot moves along from one turning point to another at more or less the right intervals, and the action scenes come in good succession. Nevertheless, it still manages to feel much longer than its actual 100-minute runtime. Overall, though, the good elements outweigh the bad. I can put up with slow pacing in exchange for engaging performances from likable stars and a good neo-Eurospy plot. Erased deserved a wider theatrical release with some real advertising behind it. It’s a more rewarding viewing experience than the last neo-Eurospy release, Taken 2, and that one managed to rack up a whopping $376 million worldwide! So this one deserved a shot. Well, hopefully viewers will discover it on demand (where it can currently be seen), or on DVD and Blu-ray come July. At least then it can justifiably put Liberato on the map; her performance here promises a career worth watching. And Eckhart’s shows he has what it takes to be an action star; let’s hope he gets another chance in a bigger movie.

Tradecraft: Colin Firth Joins the Secret Service in A Foreign Country

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy's Colin Firth is looking to renew his spy vows in two very different sorts of spy movies. The actor is in talks to star in both Matthew Vaughn's action comedy The Secret Service, based on the comic book by Vaughn, Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, and A Foreign Country, based on the 2012 thriller by acclaimed spy novelist Charles Cumming. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Firth is in talks to play the co-lead in The Secret Service. The Secret Service is a teen spy movie (a subgenre I'd love to see rejuvenated) about a rowdy street kid recruited into the secret service by his James Bond-ish superspy uncle (the character Firth would play) in order to save him from a life of crime. He doesn't exactly hit it off with his posh public school fellow students at the spy academy, but is able to hold his own thanks to his rough background. Like Millar's Kick-Ass, it's all very over-the-top, with flying spy cars and the like.

Meanwhile, Screen Daily reports that Firth's new production company, Raindog Films, is partnering with Zurich financier Silver Reel Partners on a $30 million adaptation of Cumming's A Foreign Country, a much more down-to-earth spy story. The book won the 2012 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for Best Thriller, and is the first novel of a projected trilogy, making it a potential screen franchise. Firth would play disgraced former MI6 operative Thomas Kell, who is tasked with finding Amelia Levene, a fellow spook who disappears on the eve of taking over as MI6's first female director. Locations include Paris, Egypt and Tunisia, where, according to the book jacket, "he uncovers a shocking secret and a conspiracy that could have unimaginable repercussions for Britain and its allies." I'll have to take their word on that, because I haven't gotten to the unimaginable repercussions yet. I'm actually in the middle of this book right now, and thoroughly enjoying it, so I'm excited at the prospect of a film! Interestingly, Firth starred in a (sort of) spy movie at the very beginning of his career with the similar title Another Country (about the formative years of Cambridge spy Guy Burgess).

Marvel to Reissue Steranko S.H.I.E.L.D. Comics to Coincide With Joss Whedon's New TV Series

I was hoping that we'd see some reissues of classic Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. comics to tie in with the debut this fall of Joss Whedon's new Marvel/ABC TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.... and it looks like we will! While there's still no sign of an Essential Nick Fury volume (something I would love to see, ideally compiling his guest appearances in other books as well as his own issues), the very best S.H.I.E.L.D. comics ever—those by acclaimed artist (and often writer as well) Jim Steranko—will be collected for the first time in a single volume. S.H.I.E.L.D. by Jim Steranko: The Complete Collection, a mammoth, 352-page trade paperback, will hit shelves on September 24, just in time to coincide with the TV show. While all of Steranko's Nick Fury material has been reprinted before, this new all-in-one edition will serve as a handy opportunity to have it in one spot, and make for the perfect introduction to Nick Fury and his secret spy network for new readers. Essentially, it will supersede the out-of-print collections Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Nick Fury: Who Is Scorpio? I hope all sorts of new readers discover Steranko's groundbreaking, psychedelic pop spy art because they watch the TV show and then buy this book. I also hope that the show takes some inspiration from these classic Sixties comics.

Retail for the hefty tome is $34.99, but Amazon has it available for pre-order at a significant discount. A few weeks later, Marvel will also release a new trade paperback collection of the 1980s miniseries Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D., most recently available only in hardcover. The new, 304-page paperback edition will retail for $29.99, but it's also discounted on Amazon. S.H.I.E.L.D. completists will still want to own the three hardcover volumes of Marvel Masterworks: Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. They're pricey, but between them they reprint every single issue of Fury's appearances in Strange Tales and his own 1960s series (not just the Steranko material; Frank Springer contributed some fantastic artwork to Nick Fury as well, and rarely gets enough credit for it because he worked in Steranko's shadow), as well as copious bonus content like Fury appearances from Fantastic 4 and The Avengers, and his 1976 issue of Marvel Spotlight drawn by Howard Chaykin.

To learn more about Marvel's spy agency and its top agent, read my extensive S.H.I.E.L.D. primer here.

Tradecraft: Robert Rodriguez and Roberto Orci Team Up For Bondian Latino Spy Series

Sin City and Spy Kids director Robert Rodriguez recently founded El Rey, a new English language cable network targeting young Latino audiences in partnership with Univision and Comcast. It's scheduled to launch at the end of the year. Deadline reports that one of the network's inaugural series will be an action spy series the trade blog describes as a "Latino James Bond" created by Roberto Orci (Alias, Mission: Impossible III) and Rodriguez, with the former penning the pilot and the latter directing it. Orci and Alex Kurtzman's K/O Paper Products (Hawaii Five-0) will produce. According to Deadline, "the K/O series is a big-budget adventure drama that is Latino James Bond in tone, but with more of a levity than the recent Bond movies. It centers on a super-star soccer player and notorious playboy who doubles as a highly-skilled spy, carrying out covert missions for a special branch of the CIA." Well now, Mr. Rodriguez... that's how you launch a network! I can't wait to see this! With Burn Notice coming to an end (the final season begins tonight), we'll be in need of a new Bondian cable spy series. (Though we're lucky enough to have an embarrassment of riches on the serious side of genre these days.) And I like that the tone will be somewhat on the lighter side. Rodriguez has said before that his first three Spy Kids movies were inspired by the Roger Moore Bonds, so he's clearly a fan of that tone. And I've always wanted to see him tackle adult spies! A 13-episode order is expected for the first season, with a budget north of $40 million. (And Rodriguez can do a lot with a little, so he'll no doubt find ways to stretch that even further.)

First Trailer for John le Carre's A Most Wanted Man

What a great surprise! I wasn't expecting to see anything from Anton Corbijn's A Most Wanted Man (adapted from the 2008 John le Carré novel of the same title) for a while yet. But thanks to Bleeding Cool, here we've got a lengthy trailer! (Perhaps too lengthy; there are snippets of some crucial scenes from the book here, but if you haven't read it you're unlikely to pick up on them anyway.) This is one of the remaining 2013 releases I'm most excited for. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe, Nina Hoss and Robin Wright star.

UPDATE: That video has been taken down, but the trailer can still be found on YouTube.

Tradecraft: Javier Bardem Signs Up for More Spy Villainy

Javier Bardem is following in the footsteps of Adolfo Celi, going from Bond Villain to (neo-) Eurospy villain. Deadline reports that the Skyfall heavy has signed on to butt heads with Sean Penn in Taken director Piere Morel's international assassin thriller The Gunman (formerly known as Prone Gunman, and based on the existential French novel of that name). Penn vs. Bardem? Cool! Yet another reason to be excited for this movie, which comes from the producing team behind Unknown.

Paranoia Trailer

The first trailer is finally out for Paranoia, the corporate espionage thriller we first heard about last spring starring Liam Hemsworth (that's the other one), Harrison Ford (Patriot Games), Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), Josh Holloway (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol) and Julian McMahon (RED) based on the novel by Joseph Finder. And it looks good! I can't wait to see Jack Ryan facing off against George Smiley... again. (Ford and Oldman previously crossed swords in Air Force One.) In that office scene, I keep waiting for Ford to yell at Oldman to get off his chair!

Burn Notice to End with This Season

It's a sad but inevitable day for Burn Notice fans. The final season draws nigh. USA confirmed that this would be the last year for the popular spy series earlier this month (on Deadline), and today they've released this bittersweet image of Michael Westen and the gang walking off into the sunset. I hope the season lives up to that image! The final season of Burn Notice begins next week, on Thursday, June 6. Read my original review of the pilot, from when Burn Notice debuted in 2007, here.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Wonder Women

BayView Entertainment (controllers of the Retromedia catalog) will release the rare 1973 spy movie Wonder Women on DVD (a widescreen special edition, no less!) on June 18. Shot on the cheap in the Philippines, Wonder Women is way more entertaining than it has any right to be! It unfolds like a Eurospy movie (and I mean that in the best way possible) and truly makes the most of its nonexistent budget. (There's a wonderful car chase through Manila that simply has to be seen to be believed. And you know these stunts were all done for real! And probably not insured.) While it sports plenty of genre tropes (and trumps Bond by implementing a particular plot device the year before it's done in The Man With the Golden Gun), Wonder Women is the only spy movie I know of whose plot is set into motion by a kidnapped jai-alai star. That plot? Here's the official copy:

When top level athletes start to disappear, the insurance giant Lloyd’s of London hires slick investigator Mike Harber (Ross Hagen) to unravel the mystery. What Mike discovers is an island in the Philippines controlled by the evil Dr. Tsu (Nancy Kwan) where she and her sidekick (Sid Haig) run an organ transplant operation with the help of a deadly, all-girl army.

Yep, it's another one of those insurance-investigator-as-surrogate-secret-agent movies! A surprisingly stylish Sid Haig (sporting his own personal funky theme music) and Greedo from Star Wars also star. (Some may be surprised to learn that it was actually a sexy woman inside that costume.) I'm thrilled that Wonder Women is finally coming to DVD at all, but elated that it's going to be a feature-laden special edition! From the press release:

This terrific slice of 1970’s exploitation movie making comes to DVD sporting an all-new widescreen transfer from 35mm film materials plus extensive bonus materials: audio commentary track with director Robert V. O'Neill, on-set Super 8mm home movies, radio spots, TV spots, theatrical trailers, missing scenes from the European version, video interview with stuntman Erik Cord, still photo gallery from original color slides & negatives, media gallery, and scenes from the uncompleted sequel, Warrior Women.

Scenes from an unfinished sequel?! Wow! I can't wait for this disc! It hits shelves June 18 and retails for $19.99, though it can be pre-ordered from Amazon at a substantial discount.
Read my review of Wonder Women here.

Thanks to Bob for the heads-up on this!

Tradecraft: Henry Cavill Is the Latest Actor Mooted for Napoleon Solo

Man of Steel star Henry Cavill, who screentested for the role of James Bond in 2005, is the latest actor to be linked to the role of Napoleon Solo in Warner Bros.' Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie, Deadline reports. Tom Cruise exited the project, which is being directed by Guy Ritchie, last week. Armie Hammer (The Lone Ranger, The Social Network) is still attached to play Illya Kuryakin. Robert Vaughn and David McCallum originated the roles of Solo and Kuryakin on the Sixties TV show. Before you become too attached to the idea of Cavill (The Cold Light of Day) as Solo, however, consider how many actors have been linked to this part over the past few years whose deals never came to fruition. Cavill certainly seems more age-appropriate to the role as portrayed on TV, however! Man, I just want to see this movie get made....

Who Will Direct the Next Bond Movie?

There have been a lot of rumors swirling around who will direct Bond 24 over the past week or so. Last week, The Daily Mail's Baz Bamigboye got the ball rolling by reporting that producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson were meeting with Christopher Nolan. While any rumors originating from UK tabloids can (and should) usually be taken with an enormous grain of salt, Mr. Bamigboye seems to be the exception. He's got an excellent track record when it comes to spy movies in particular, and has in the past scooped the trades with items that proved to be true on productions like Skyfall, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Page 8. Personally, I've got faith in him. But furthermore, what he's reporting in this case is basically a no-brainer: simply that the producers are meeting with Nolan. That seems natural. Frankly, they'd be crazy not to! Nolan, one of the most successful directors working, wears his Bond fandom on his sleeve (many of his movies, including The Dark Knight and Inception, contain direct allusions to 007), and has stated his desire to direct a Bond on many occasions. But his dance card is also full for the immediate future, directing the sci-fi adventure Interstellar.

Today two trades owned by the same company are reporting conflicting stories about a Bond 24 director. Variety insists that Skyfall director Sam Mendes has officially passed on the project, which he himself reiterated frequently a few months ago. That trade reports that the Bond producers have been in talks with (or at least considering) Nicholas Wending Refn (Drive), Ang Lee (Life of Pi, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Tom Hooper (Les Miserables, The King's Speech), David Yates (State of Play, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) and Shane Black (Iron Man Three, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang). Yates feels like the most traditional Bondian fit of that batch (and his miniseries State of Play remains among the best television of this century), but any of them would be interesting. Les Miserables was my second favorite movie of last year after Skyfall, but I'm not sure I can picture Hooper directing 007 though. My own top choice remains Tom Tykwer, but his name isn't coming up on these lists despite his frequent collaborations with the current Q!

Deadline, meanwhile, reports that Mendes is back in the mix. In fact, the trade blog makes him sound like the frontrunner. He seems to have gotten over his post-Skyfall exhaustion (when he claimed he couldn't even think about plunging into another all-consuming Bond production), so the main remaining hurdles were his theater commitments (to a musical version of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and a new production of "King Lear") and, according to Deadline, Broccoli and Wilson have "decided to wait for him to work through those other commitments, and he’s now making a deal to start production probably next year." Well, I'm okay with waiting until early next year. But I don't know if I can take another 4-year gap between Bond films! So hopefully they get things moving quickly. As previously reported, Skyfall co-writer John Logan is penning the script for Bond 24.

Tradecraft: More Transporter Movies Coming!

It was EuropaCorp's Transporter movies starring Jason Statham that ushered in the whole Neo-Eurospy Age. From their success came further mid-budget action movies with European locations (and money) and Hollywood stars with careers in need of reviving, including From Paris With Love, Lockout, Erased and, of course, the mega-hit Taken movies. But now it looks like the original is coming back! Variety reports (via Dark Horizons) that Luc Besson's EuropaCorp has struck a deal with China's Fundamental Films to co-produce not one but three more entries in the Transporter series! What's not known right now, unfortunately, is whether or not star Jason Statham will reprise his role as Frank Martin. (Frank Martin is not a spy, but a professional "transporter," yet he manages to have adventures filled with enough daffy action to rival Roger Moore's James Bond.) Since 2008's Transporter 3 (review here), Chris Vance (Burn Notice) has stepped into the role for a TV version of the character. The show has already aired in Europe (and is on DVD there), but has yet to be seen on Cinemax here in the United States. So will the new trilogy star Statham, Vance, or someone else? That remains to be seen.

What is known, according to the trade, is that "one of the three installments will likely lens in China, qualifying it as a French-Chinese co-production." Together, Luc Besson's EuropaCorp and Fundamental will finance the new films, each of which "will be budgeted in the $30 million to $40 million range." Fundamental will distribute in China. Fox, who distributed the first two pictures in most territories, has a first-look option on the new trilogy, while Lionsgate, who handled the third one, has a second-look. No director has been hired yet. Personally, with the Chinese connection, I would like to see Hong Kong director Corey Yuen, who co-directed the first film with Louis Leterrier and choreographed the first two, return to the fold. (His Hong Kong spy flick So Close is tremendous fun.) But the most essential ingredient is undoubtedly Statham! I hope they get him signed ASAP.

Tradecraft: Cruise Quits U.N.C.L.E.

I can't believe Deadline actually labels this story as a "shocker." Given the development history of this movie version of the Sixties TV classic, it pretty much seemed preordained. But the trade blog reports that Tom Cruise has dropped out of Guy Ritchie's The Man From U.N.C.L.E. He's the latest in a parade of high-profile actors seeking to fill the shoes of Robert Vaughn to either leave the project (like George Clooney), pass on it (Matt Damon, Bradley Cooper), or be passed over by the studio despite the director's wishes (Channing Tatum, Joel Kinnaman). I can't help but picture the massive bodybuilder Ingo from "The Alexander the Greater Affair" picking up each of these would-be Solos and carrying them bodily out of the room as he does to Vaughn in that episode.

Just last week we were hearing that Cruise might shoot both the U.N.C.L.E. movie and a fifth Mission: Impossible movie back-to-back this year. But, crucially, despite extended negotiations, it had never been announced by Warner Bros. nor Cruise's camp that the actor had actually, officially signed onto the project. (Whereas Paramount issued a press release earlier this month touting his commitment to M:I-5.) And therein lies the rub, according to The Hollywood Reporter, who report that Cruise was able to drop out because "his deal never closed." Both trades lay the blame on the tight scheduling of the two Sixties TV-based tentpoles. While it would have been conceivable to shoot both movies back-to-back were he simply starring, Deadline reports that Cruise has been very active behind the scenes on the Mission: Impossible films (which he also produces), and he likely wanted time to prepare elaborate stunt sequences to rival the awe-inspiring Burj Khalifa sequence in Ghost Protocol.

Where does this leave The Man From U.N.C.L.E.? The Hollywood Reporter asserts that Armie Hammer remains firmly attached to play Illya Kuryakin (the role originated by David McCallum on the TV show), and that Swedish actress Alicia Vikander remains in talks to play the female lead. Deadline claims that Warner will now "go hard" looking for another A-lister to take Cruise's place. Go hard? Gee, I thought that's what they'd been doing for the past several years! But I'm glad that for now the project appears to be holding together. I hope they secure a new lead quickly, lest it all fall apart again. I still want to see this movie happen! Cruise didn't seem like a good fit to me for Napoleon Solo, and it seemed unfair that he topline two different series derived from revered Sixties spy shows. But I did appreciate that his attachment guaranteed a start date. I'd be thrilled if director Guy Ritchie ends up roping in his Sherlock Holmes star Robert Downey Jr., as Downey has conquered most genres by this point but still doesn't have a spy movie under his belt. Or perhaps someone will finally realize that it's been Jon Hamm they should have gone to all along... Hopefully we'll hear something soon, because Deadline reports that the studio is still aiming to start shooting by the fall.

Movie Review: Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die (1966)

Harry Levin and Arduino Maiuri’s Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die (produced by the prolific Dino De Laurentiis) is another one of those Eurospy movies like Deadlier Than the Male or Hammerhead with a slightly higher budget than usual, making it a good stepping stone from the glossy world of James Bond into the decidedly less polished (but no less entertaining) world of European Bond knock-offs. (It was one of the first ones I ever saw, the bootleg being relatively easy to come by.) It’s even got a hero likely to be familiar to American TV viewers: Joe Mannix himself, Mike “Touch” Connors. Connors makes a great spy hero, in fact, and it’s a shame he didn’t play the role more often. Adding to his likability here, as CIA agent Kelly (“Just ‘Kelly’”), is his amusing affinity for bananas. Kelly helps himself to the tasty fruit at every opportunity, stealing one off the back of a truck that picks him up, pocketing another from a fruit bowl at an embassy function, and helping himself to another from the room of a beautiful woman he’s just saved from death by scorpion sting. He even manages to use the peel from one in the film’s climactic battle!

But bananas or not, this isn’t Connors’ film alone. Adding to its appeal is a top-notch ensemble cast. All-American beauty Dorothy Provine (One Spy Too Many) might seem like an odd choice to play British secret agent Susan Fleming, but her appeal in the role is undeniable. Scene-stealing Raf Vallone is fantastic as the smooth villain Ardonian. This script affords him lots more opportunities to chew scenery than he had in The Italian Job, and here he seizes all of them! But even he doesn’t walk away with the movie. No, the most memorable part turns out to belong to Terry-Thomas, who steals the show as Provine’s unflappable stiff-upper-lip chauffeur, James, whose duties include a bit more than just driving. (Confusingly, Thomas also plays another, smaller role in the film, that of Lord Aldric, who dies in the opening scene.)

Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die also features what might well be the best gadget car of the Sixties spy cycle this side of 007’s DB5. The Rolls Royce that James drives our heroes around in offers every possible amenity. It has shields that slide into place protecting someone in the rear driver’s side seat from someone in the rear passenger side seat. It has a GPS tracker... from the days before GPS was a thing. It has a built-in drinks station that swivels into place at tea time with an already-steaming pot for Susan. When Kelly says he’d prefer a Scotch, James presses a button and a minibar appears, Scotch poured. It even adds a spritzer of soda. But when Kelly sips it, he chastises, “James, this is whiskey!” To which a flummoxed James responds, “Really, sir? I’ll have to speak to the mechanic about that!” But the car’s best surprise is its elaborate camouflage system, which I don’t dare spoil as it’s one of the delights of watching the film to discover it in action. All told, it’s no wonder that James spends as much time polishing this impressive vehicle as he does. (“How long does it take to turn out a chauffeur like you?” Ardonian asks him, to which the driver replies, “Oh, not long, sir. Just four to five generations.”) Or that, when Kelly parks his own clunky jalopy next to it, James gives him a withering look prompting Kelly to quip, “Your car doesn't object to being next to my car, does it?” (“Have you had it inoculated?” demands Thomas.) It’s a truly great spy car.

Clearly, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die has a sense of humor. (When Kelly discovers that Susan is also an agent, they engage in their own miniature arms race, revealing gadget after gadget on their persons.) It’s also got the requisite sense of the absurd for this subgenre. The villain’s plan is ambitious enough for Moonraker’s Hugo Drax (or perhaps screenwriter Christopher Wood) to later copy, but even he leaves out the best part—the motivation. Like Drax, Ardonian plots to launch toxins derived from a rare orchid at Earth from outer space, thus rendering all the men on Earth sterile. While Drax plans to repopulate the planet with a race of supermen, Ardonian hopes to repopulate the planet himself! He will be the only potent man left in the world, and he’s frozen a cadre of beautiful women in suspended animation for him to breed with. (His relationship with the female sex is complex and unhealthy, to say the least.)

Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die takes place entirely in Brazil, and as in any Brazil-set Eurospy movie worth its salt (there were quite a few of them, for some reason*), Rio’s famous statue of Christ the Redeemer makes its presence known. But it’s not just seen in grainy stock footage aerials here. No, Kelly actually has a fight scene inside and on top of the statue, before climbing from the Savior’s head onto a waiting helicopter!

My only real complaint about the film is the ending. For the most part, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die manages to function as both a spoof and an action movie the viewer is legitimately invested in, a feat not even the Flint films managed to pull off. But in the final moments, the directors make a decision to play up the comedy at the expense of the story, and a deus ex machina played for laughs sadly undermines all the actual suspense they've managed to build. Still, that one small oversight aside, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die offers pretty much everything you could ask for from a first-rate Eurospy movie (once you get past the silly and somewhat incongruous opening): exotic locations, thrilling action, beautiful ladies aplenty (including genre stalwart Margaret Lee, unfortunately wasted in a bit part), killer piranha, deadly scorpions, genuine comic relief, fantastic gadgets, outlandish mod attire, an appealing hero, a dastardly villain, and lots of bananas. And I bet you never even realized that you craved bananas in your Eurospy formula, did you? Watch Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die and you’ll see why.

Sadly, that’s easier said than done. This title has yet to turn up on DVD, and that kind of surprises me. With the well-known star, well-known producer and relatively high production values, I would have expected it to be one of the more likely Eurospy titles to get released—if not on DVD, then at least as a made-on-demand disc. If Columbia still controls the rights, then they need to release a nice, widescreen print as part of their MOD program ASAP. (They’ve done a good job with their Sixties spy catalog for the most part.) And if someone else owns the rights now (De Laurentiis’ company?), then they need to strike a deal with Redemption or Severin or Scorpion or one of those specialty labels. This is one of a couple of Eurospy movies that can boast Quentin Tarantino having called it his favorite, which should make nice copy for the front cover further enticing someone to put it out. Until then, unless they get the rare opportunity to see it in a revival theater, spy fans are stuck with a low quality bootleg.

*Perhaps the country offered good tax incentives. Whatever the case, other Eurospy movies set in Brazil include OSS 117: Furia a Bahia (review), Dick Smart 2.007, That Man From Rio and Ring Around the World (review). All of them lent inspiration to the 2009 genre spoof OSS 117: Lost in Rio (review).

R.I.P. Steve Forrest

Steve Forrest, the two-fisted, square-jawed star of ITC's The Baron, has passed away. He was 87. Forrest was one of the American actors imported to star on Sixties adventure shows for Lew Grade's UK production company ITC in order to make the series more appealing to the U.S. market. (To some degree, that worked; The Baron aired on ABC in the United States.) While he never seemed completely comfortable in the role of urbane antiques dealer-cum-sometime secret agent John Mannering, Forrest (who was the brother of film noir and Eurospy star Dana Andrews) used his American-ness to full advantage to stand out in the crowded ITC stable that included suave stars like Roger Moore, Patrick McGoohan and Peter Wyngarde. As the Baron, he also got to drive one of the cooler cars on an ITC series, a snazzy Jensen CV8 MkII. Forrest had the distinction of being one of the few TV spy stars to cross over between the UK's televised espionage factory ITC and the American spy shows of the era when he guest starred on a memorable sixth season episode of Mission: Impossible and on the episode of Burke's Law that introduced Honey West, America's answer to Cathy Gale. In most circles, he was probably more famous for his non-spy roles, including appearances in The Longest Day (with Sean Connery), The Manions of America (with Pierce Brosnan), Dallas and, most notably, as the star of the 1975-76 ABC cop show S.W.A.T. (His final screen appearance was a cameo in the 2003 movie version of that series, starring Samuel L. Jackson.) But he returned to the spy genre in the Eighties as General Sline in the Chevy Chase send-up Spies Like Us. The Baron also spawned a movie in certain territories, The Man in the Looking Glass, but it was simply a two-parter from the TV show spliced together for theatrical release, a common ITC practice. For spy fans, however, Steve Forrest will always be remembered as a genuine ITC hero--The Baron. He will be missed.

Read my review of The Baron here.

Tradecraft: Olga Kurylenko Signs Up For Even More Spying

The girl can't stop spying! Hot on the heels of joining Pierce Brosnan in The November Man, former Bond Girl Olga Kurylenko has attached herself to another spy movie as well. And this one also features a male star with James Bond connections. Screen Daily reports (via Dark Horizons) that Kurylenko will star in the Cold War spy thriller Despite The Falling Snow alongside German TV star Maria Furtwangler and the great Charles Dance, who has played both a Bond baddie (in For Your Eyes Only), and 007 creator Ian Fleming (in Goldeneye: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming). According to the trade, "Kurylenko is set to play an enigmatic female spy who falls in love with an idealistic politician. The action will move between 1950s and present day Moscow and London." As she did on her first feature, The World Unseen, Shamim Sarif will adapt her own novel and direct. Morten Søborg, who recently shot Brosnan in the the beautifully filmed Love is All You Need (a much better movie than its generic title would have you believe, by the way) will serve as Director of Photography. Shooting is expected to begin mid-October. Olga Kurylenko can currently be seen spying in Erased opposite Aaron Eckhart.