1 Why didn't you watch The Guard this weekend?

2 And next up: "Hunger Games" plz

3 Holy words batman.  Did you review the hunger games yet??

4 TTSS would make for a great flick... when the Cold War was at it's apogee.

5

Sorry you had to waste your time on this..

 

6 As pointless and convuluted as a film can get.

It's a toss up between this and inception for which film wasted my time in the service of nothing more.

7 or maybe 5 years after the Cold War wound down, but no later

8 Barack Obama is a stuttering clusterf*ck of a miserable tyrant.

9 YES!!!  Epic Movie Review!

10 Daddy watches 'Sid & Nancy' over & over & over. He can't get enough of young Gary Oldman.

11 Barack Obama is a stuttering clusterfluke of a marvelous failure.

12 Dopey, Title, Ignore, Movie

13 Wow, nearly 1800 words on a movie I haven't even heard of.  Your college/law school professors must have loved  you.

14 I was wondering how much LeCarre's leftyism would be in it.  The impression I got was that it was supposed to convey the ambiguities between the two sides in their *espionage* and the agents who work that craft (which I get), not so much between the peoples the represent (to which I say, fuck off).

15

"But socialists are just so dreary and lifeless and gray."

 

Sanctimonious jackwagons who can't leave anyone be and continuously prattle on about their wonderfulness, and are terribly, terribly earnest in their pieties and public prayers generally are.

16 I always milk the climax.

17 I'll save anyone the trouble of renting this and actually spending 2+ hours watching it to find out:



Colin Firth is the mole.

18 Yeah, it was really slow.  I was able to follow it to the end and understood they were setting a trap--But I was lost at that point.  I didn't understand how the trap worked and how they caught him with it.

19 It's a toss up between this and inception for which film wasted my time in the service of nothing more.

I liked inception.  I have no plans to waste my money on this one, though.

20 I wish somebody competent would make a film version of McCarry's The Secret Lovers. An awesome book with an actual mystery in it. But it will never happen because it doesn't see the Cold Ware as being waged between moral equals.

21 How many Clangs do you give the movie?

22 Sounds like a spot-on adaption from the book. Been a while since I read -- or rather slogged through -- it, but I've always thought it was way, way overrated.

23 EC, I don't like the spoiler, but let me ask: Did you immediately say, "Oh, he's the biggest star and he plays nice guy roles; obviously it's him"?

24 It's a toss up between this and inception for which film wasted my time in the service of nothing more.

Inception at least looked cool.  But total nonsense otherwise.

 Dreams don't even work that way.  They constantly change.

25 As long as we're panning movies , don't waste your time with Young Adult with Charlize Theron. She plays a very unlikable narcisstic character and the movie ends with no change in her character. Wasted 4.99 on that crap.

26 I've been half way through it for three weeks so it must not be that good.

27 Watch the 1970s BBC adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It's long and slow-paced, but much easier to follow, and the audience is confused in the same places the characters are. And while Gary Oldman is a good actor, I have to prefer Alec Guinness.

28 >>>--But I was lost at that point. I didn't understand how the trap worked and how they caught him with it. I don't really get the trap myself, and I'm not sure where the parties were -- was Smiley upstairs at the place? Polyakov just happened to be in England at that very moment? This guy's spycraft tells him it's a good idea to speak about treason to a Russian spy in a house you know is wired for sound and watched by British intelligence?

29 Did you ever see the prior TTSS with Alec Guiness as George Smiley?

30 Thanks for the review, Ace.  I won't waste my time.  I'll stick with the Alec Guinness miniseries version from '79.  It's finally out on DVD and is definitely worth watching.

31 I've worked my way through my 5 episode backlog of Fringe, and my 4 episode back log of Justified, plus Wall-E and Despicable Me and I haven't made it back to finish TTSP.

32

Repeat = important.

That makes Obama's basketball  shots  pretty high up in importance.

33 But does it insist upon itself?

34 I fast-forwarded through the movie before I could read the review.  I saw a booby.

35 I haven't seen the latest version that Ace reviews, but it would be hard to top the first go-round with Alec Guinness as Smiley.

Yes friends-it's a remake.

36 >>>But does it insist upon itself? It does.

37 Clang!

38 "How many Clangs do you give the movie?"

I give the review three out of five Gasbags[\i]...

39 Yes friends-it's a remake.

Posted by: Sort-of-Mad Max at April 09, 2012 03:41 PM (VMcoS)

Damn near everything in movies other than Hunger games is these days.  Can't wait for the total recall remake..

40 I watched one episode of DIRK GENTLY. It was kooky and lovable.

41 Also The Sitter with Jonah Hill was a weak version of 1987's Adventures In Babysitting, which was a good flick.

42 Dang it

Gotta close tags.

43 my apologies to lolobama

44 Where was this review back when I needed it most: before I saw it?

45 Dreams don't even work that way. They constantly change.

Dude.  If that's your hang-up on Inception, you missed the point.

It's like a friend I have who hated A Knight's Tale because of the modern(ish) music and such.  He just hated the movie because "it wasn't true to the period," (yes, he is in the SCA, why do you ask?).

After I realized he wasn't kidding (and apologized for laughing at him) I explained that it wasn't supposed to be "true to the period."  It was supposed to be evocative of the emotions of the period.

Inception isn't about the dreams any more than Alien is about the Icarus, or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is about the Nautilus. 

46 I also recommend the DOC MARTIN series. And the newest Sherlock Holmes series.

47 Kate, Upton, Bunny, Video

48 25 EC,

I don't like the spoiler, but let me ask: Did you immediately say, "Oh, he's the biggest star and he plays nice guy roles; obviously it's him"?

Posted by: ace at April 09, 2012 03:36 PM (nj1bB)

Since you yourself said to skip this, and most of us sort of trust your word on these things, I didn't think it would really hurt anyone here.  I mean, come on....this isn't the crowd to go for movies like this.

Anyhow, to answer your other question:  yes.  When you have a movie like this filled with big name actors, you almost have to concede that one of them is going to be playing the antithesis of what they usually do.  Colin Firth's usually plays the nice guys, occasionally slipping into dick-ish characters (go rent St. Trinian's), so you kind of expect that maybe this is the one movie where he lets go of that kind of role and try the dark side for a change.  Ciaran Hinds has played many baddie roles before, so having him as the mole would be predictable and so the producers opted not to make it that easy for the audience.

49 the 70s adaptation was considerably better than the book.

50 David Cornwell was a good writer when sticking to the Cold War, but his ability seem to vanish when the CW did.  He really needed that 'grand backdrop' to make his plots work

"The Honorable Schoolboy" was very good, but was set in so many locations it will probably never be filmed.

He was a Lefty Oxbridge Brit Upper-Class Twit, but could turn a phrase...

51
Damn near everything in movies other than Hunger games is these days. Can't wait for the total recall remake..

Posted by: Hedgehog at April 09, 2012 03:41 PM (3jGS1)

Battle Royale

The Running Man

Not quite the 100% remake thing, but close enough.

52

Wish I'd seen your review first, Ace; I watched the whole movie in a state of confusion.

 

53 Clang! Are you reviewing Ace's review?

54 Dreams don't even work that way. They constantly change.>>

Yes sometimes Cristina wears the librarian glasses and sometimes she doesn't

55 Hope and Clang 2012

56 David Cornwell is  "Le Carre", if you're from Rio Linda or Eureka

57

That reminds me. I still have to review Predators and the last Muppet movie.

 

Thanks for not comparing this to Kirosawa or using the phrases "Black Swan" and "Overton Window."

58 Kate, Upton, Bunny, Video Posted by: The Mega Independent at April 09, 2012 03:42 PM (vHUZA) ---------------------------------------------------------- I give the video 10 turgid penises!

59 6 As pointless and convuluted as a film can get.

It's a toss up between this and inception for which film wasted my time in the service of nothing more.

Posted by: McLovin at April 09, 2012 03:28 PM (j0IcY)

**

At least Inception had the cool, trippy, CGI shit going for it and a few hot chicks. TTSP was just a confusing, miserable, dreary slog. It put my wife to sleep within 10 minutes and my dog walked out of the room. I desperatley wanted it to be good and coaxed myself thru the entire 2 hours. I've been hankering for a good spy flick for a long time now...Hollywood sucks.

 

60 Sinker, Sailor, Soldja Boy

61 Thus, moments after we first see Luke Skywalker, we hear his Aunt Beru call out to him, not once but twice: "Luke! LUUUKE!'

Thanks for pointing that out, I will remove that second "Luke" on the Blu-Ray anniversary Director's cut.

I can fix this movie yet.

62 I watched Cecil B. DeMill's "Ten Commandments" this weekend. Starring Charlton Heston. Thumbs up.

63 I desperatley wanted it to be good andcoaxed myself thru the entire 2 hours.

This after the travesty that was Sum of All Fears?

They managed to make a movie so bad that it killed the Jack Ryan movie franchise.

64 Ace, if you had to condense your review into 5 words, what would they be?

65 Pretty short for an Ace on Film post

Is that Ace's way of telling us he fell asleep during the movie and is only reviewing what he watched?

66 the Beeb   / BBC  made mini-series of most of his Cold War stuff.  They're on Netflix, I think.


probably on YouTube.   ---Lots of layering; layer upon layer.........


"Smiley's People" was a good read.   The Beeb mini-series which I saw or imagined I saw was okay

67

O/T: Huh.  Mittens and Bibi have been friends - GOOD friends since 1976.  Who knew?

http://is.gd/ucX1tK

68 If "Inception" was about giving me a headache while it bored me silly, then two thumbs-up

69 Let me explain.

No, there is too much.  We'll let you sum up, though.

70 I thought Clash of the Titans really sucked.  Nowhere as good as the original and the remake.

71
Ace, if you had to condense your review into 5 words, what would they be?

Posted by: Niedermeyer's Dead Horse at April 09, 2012 03:47 PM (piMMO)

King Ewok condense a film review post????? What's the fun in that?

72 They cut the scene where Valerie Plame and Anna Chapman are jello wrestling, so I'm skipping this one.

73 ... t put my wife to sleep within 10 minutes andmy dog walked out of the room. ...

That's because they didn't do it in 3D.
I've discovered if a movie is done in 3D, plots are pointless.

74 I watched this movie twice, trying to make sense of it.  Then I watched "Girl  With the Dragon Tattoo" and immediately thought;  ah,  much better.

75 >>>t's like a friend I have who hated A Knight's Tale because of the modern(ish) music and such. He just hated the movie because "it wasn't true to the period," (yes, he is in the SCA, why do you ask?). The director pointed out that orchestral score (which is what people would have wanted to be "true to period") would also be anachronistic, as that evolved 200 or more years later. "True to period" would have been lutes and people stamping on the ground in 2/2 time or something.

76 Spy movies like this are either slow and plodding or they're James Bond action and ninjas.  No middle ground!

77 I never had trouble understanding Mad Magazine's Spy vs Spy.  Even when I was 12.

78 39 Clang!
Posted by: ace review - cliff notes at April 09, 2012 03:41 PM

That's a great idea for an Ace movie metric, rather than stars, thumbs down, or tomatoes

Looks like he gives it 4 clangs

79 there's always a mole..............

always

80 Ace, if you had to condense your review into 5 words, what would they be?

I really can't stop typing...

81 Then I watched "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and immediately thought; ah, much better.

Posted by: Soona at April 09, 2012 03:49 PM (2Z3Hb)

She gets him good!  Does she ever!

82 "True to period" would have been lutes and people stamping on the ground in 2/2 time or something.

Yeah.  We both knew that.

Like I said: member of the SCA.

But, that said, you're right- doing "period" music would have confused (at best) most of the audience.  The 1960s/1970s music angle was much better, IMO.

83 "29 Watch the 1970s BBC adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It's long and slow-paced, but much easier to follow, and the audience is confused in the same places the characters are. And while Gary Oldman is a good actor, I have to prefer Alec Guinness." Yeah and judging from the review it would have given the plot enough time to register. It sounds like a Cliff's notes version of "Dune". "Polyakov just happened to be in England at that very moment? This guy's spycraft tells him it's a good idea to speak about treason to a Russian spy in a house you know is wired for sound and watched by British intelligence?"<< In the book, Polyakov is always in England. He's a permanent resident at the Soviet Embassy in London, and Circus knows he's KGB. Thing is, the Fifth Floor figures him as a dissident spy working as mailman for the Brits' spy, Source Merlin. To prevent any Brit from figuring this out, they fire all the Brits who want to investigate Polyakov. They don't tape him all the time, and they restrict access to the house and its tapes to the inner circle. Actually, Polyakov was loyal to Karla, Source Merlin was a fake, and the house the Circus setup just let the Mole and Karla's mailman meet in total security- because the Mole could control access to the tapes. That's why it was sense. In the book Smiley and Guilliam screwed them by sneaking into the house with higher authority, reversing the ON/OFF switch on the recorder, and tricking them into meeting.

84 It's like a friend I have who hated A Knight's Tale because of the modern(ish) music and such. He just hated the movie because "it wasn't true to the period," (yes, he is in the SCA, why do you ask?).Posted by: AllenG

I detest that chick from A Knight's Tale. The vocal fry voice and that irritating inability to close her mouth like that British potato Keira Knightely.

ARRGG! Close your damn mouth, woman! Are you going to drool next?

85 Now hiring: The IRS

http://bit.ly/HQk1vZ

86 a study published in the journal "Psychological Science" showed that children who score low on intelligence tests gravitate toward socially conservative political views in adulthood--perhaps because conservative ideologies stress "structure and order" that make it easier to understand a complicated world.

some conservative doozies:

"...just kill them all"
"...America #1"
-entertained by watching cars going round and round on racetrack 500 times
-no understanding of "unintended consequences" or "blowback" or "do unto others ..."
rejection of Science

this is why college professors are liberal..the smartest people in the USA are liberal

87 So basically there were no hot chicks with big cans?

88 84 "True to period" would have been lutes and people stamping on the ground in 2/2 time or something.

Yeah. We both knew that.

Like I said: member of the SCA.

But, that said, you're right- doing "period" music would have confused (at best) most of the audience. The 1960s/1970s music angle was much better, IMO.

Posted by: AllenG (Dedicated Tenther) SMOD 2012 at April 09, 2012 03:51 PM (8y9MW)

Haha...Role Models made fun of SCA peeps with the epic battle scene in the end.

89 Yes, but

Were. There. Boobehs?

90 "Ace, if you had to condense your review into 5 words, what would they be?"


Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy sucks.

91 >>>Is that Ace's way of telling us he fell asleep during the movie and is only reviewing what he watched? I didn't fall asleep. I wanted to like it It's up my alley in terms of genre. I like mysteries. I even like a good depressive/dreary tone. I love Gary Oldman. But the movie plays a dumb game. We, as the audience, should have the information that the main characters have. If they know that this character with the prominent skull is named "Peter Adeline," and they know John Hurt is dead, then we should know that. We should have to sit here guessing at this and that. We should know what they know, and be guessing at what they're guessing at -- the identity of the mole, not Colin Firth's character name and his position at the Circus. I knew what the circus was just from general background knowledge but they didn't spell that out. Also I had help: I knew right away that this was an echo of the Kim Philby matter, so I had a head's up, plotwise, at least as regards the basics of it.

92 There is a way of writing a movie review, particularly exposition (telling potential viewers what's going on). Now, this method is somewhat artificial, of course. But it is tried and true. It's called "Getting to the point, outlining the general content, assessing what's good and bad about the movie, and pointing out succinctly what was notable in terms of screenplay, acting, directing etc." Give it a shot. More readers might be able to stay awake until the end.

93

Forget this Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Shit movie:

Anyone ever watch the Comedy Central show called Workaholics?  I caught the first season on Netflix over the weekend..and it's pretty funny.

94 Was it better than "Cats"?

95 Slow spy films? Try ' Little Drummer Girl ' with Diane Keaton. Wasn't a total bust though.

96 Role Models made fun of SCA peeps with the epic battle scene in the end.

Never saw it.

I had fun with the SCA, frankly.  I was never a full member, but I went to a few events.  Whacking on each other with sticks (or, doing Light Fighting, with epee) is pretty fun.

97 walter he so smaaaart

98 Isn't there an unabridged review you can post, Ace?

99 A Knight's Tale? The movie with Martin Lawrence?

100 >>>There is a way of writing a movie review, particularly exposition (telling potential viewers what's going on). I just sort of assume you know what the movie is. I don't like summing up the plot.

101 76 I watched this movie twice, trying to make sense of it. Then I watched "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and immediately thought; ah, much better.

Posted by: Soona at April 09, 2012 03:49 PM (2Z3Hb)

--Which version?  I rented the original for $1 (Blockbuster express) and it was very good.  I have heard the re-make is good, too, and despite the expected lack of surprises I'd be ken to rent it if it has some Moron recommendations.

P.S.  I liked Rum Diary.  saw it last week.

102 >>>The movie seems less a movie than a manifesto -- we're not going to make a movie like other movies. We're not going to spoon-feed the audience basic information in the first twenty minutes so that they can follow things.

>>>We're also going to avoid all that "drama" stuff, because, sure, that's fun and interesting and all, but we're above that sort of thing.

The fatal conceit of artists that folks actually liking your art is an irrelevant factor in its creation.

103
Never saw it.

I had fun with the SCA, frankly. I was never a full member, but I went to a few events. Whacking on each other with sticks (or, doing Light Fighting, with epee) is pretty fun.

Posted by: AllenG (Dedicated Tenther) SMOD 2012 at April 09, 2012 03:54 PM (8y9MW)

They make fun of SCA, but they don't do it in a malicious manner.  In fact, the kid from Superbad, McLovin, is in it as a hardcore SCA player who you actually have sympathy for and begin to understand why he escapes to fantasy battles as a coping mechanism.  The end battle is fucking hilarious as the two main characters and their child proteges enter themselves as a KISS-themed clan.

104 "Little Drummer Girl" was a good novel but a lousy movie.  I blame Diane Keaton


All of Le C's books after the first three ( after "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" ) are prolix, as ex-PFC Wintergreen says.  Convoluted plots where the author jerks you around--just because he can



Claire Bloom in "TSWCIFTC" was hot in a young Jewish librarian sort of way

105 The movie with Martin Lawrence?

*smack*

That's what you get for that.

No, the movie with Heath Ledger, et. al.

Twit.

106

The director pointed out that orchestral score (which is what people would have wanted to be "true to period") would also be anachronistic<<<

 

Whereas the cute chick blacksmith scribing a Nike "swoosh" on Sir Snortsalot's armor so he could win Lady Needletracks' hand was completely period correct.

 

And while many noblewomen may have been scrawny, unfuckable crackwhores with emaciated bodies, that doesn't mean I want to see THAT portrayed accurately while you give history The Minivan on everything else.

 

Only bright spot: Alan Tudyk.

107 >>>In the book, Polyakov is always in England. He's a permanent resident at the Soviet Embassy in London, oh right. in fairness, the movie did say he was an attache at the embassy. But I thought he traveled, physically, back to Russia, because, well, they said something about delivering information to Russia. I guess I shouldn't have assumed he physically traveled.

108 Proper moron spy fare is Get Smart.

109 88 a study published in the journal "Psychological Science" showed that
children who score low on intelligence tests gravitate toward socially conservative political views
in adulthood--perhaps because conservative ideologies stress "structure
and order" that make it easier to understand a complicated world.

some conservative doozies:

"...just kill them all"
"...America #1"
-entertained by watching cars going round and round on racetrack 500 times
-no understanding of "unintended consequences" or "blowback" or "do unto others ..."
rejection of Science

this is why college professors are liberal..the smartest people in the USA are liberal

Posted by: walter at April 09, 2012 03:51 PM (oA4y0)

--Troll, that's old news.

As for the study itself:  Look up "confirmation bias."

110
A Knight's Tale?

The movie with Martin Lawrence?

Posted by: soothsayer at April 09, 2012 03:55 PM (jUytm)

Heath Ledger, Chaucer and David Bowie

111

Thanks for the warning.  Gahk.  Glad I've been ignoring it.

 

 

It's a shame.  There are so many better spy stories out there.  If you want moral ambiguity there are better ways to tell the tale.  For example, I just heard an interesting story this last week end about a person working in that field.  The person himself, now long dead, had spoken with a relative of mine about his experience.  When that guy was first in a position to kill a person, he did it.  Not because it was necessary to the job, but because the could and he wanted to see what it felt like.  The person had a variety of other unseemly characteristics that made him suitable for ugly work.  The guy was evil, but working for our side.  One of our bastards, so to speak, employed to defend against their bastards. 

112 Kingdom of Kissmyanthia

113

The PBS version with Alec Guiness (OK, I guess it must have originally been the BBC version) of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was indeed most excellent.

One thing did John Le Carre did well was write spy novels.

114 came for the political sarcasm and all i got was this lousy filmmaking 101 class.

115 O/T: Huh. Mittens and Bibi have been friends - GOOD friends since 1976. Who knew?
http://is.gd/ucX1tK


****

Wow! I had no clue, but to think that two men who struck up a friendship over a business deal, 35 years ago, do (or are in line to) hold such incredibly powerful positions is astounding.

How do those odds compare to the mega millions?

116 #42

Did not know that existed. Downloading the set (pilot and three episodes to date) right now.

117 won rather than one?

118 112 Proper moron spy fare is Get Smart.

Posted by: Dr. Varno at April 09, 2012 03:58 PM (KUSaK)

 

I never understood the technology behind the Cone of Silence.

119 Martin Lawrence was in The Black Knight

120 Ace, do yourself a favor and go rent Taken if you haven't seen it.  That's a kickass spy-ish kind of movie with lots of smart action. 

121 Sir Alec Guiness played Smiley in a television mini-series version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy about 20(?) years ago.  There is really no reason to watch another version. Guiness is the definitive George Smiley.

122 I haven't seen it, but from your description i know exactly the type of movie you're talking about and that seems to be a problem in the entertainment industry as a whole, in music too. It used to be you had movies and music that managed to be just different enough that they could keep all the old familiar stuff that made you instantly like it, but now you pretty much have two camps, one side is the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy side that just refuses to keep any of the familiar things that make movies instantly likable and the other side is the superhero franchises that just stick solely to the tried and true without doing anything new or different. So you end up rarely being really entertained, it's either, well that was ok because i got everything i expected or it's well that sucked because they tried way too hard to be different.

123 Not craw -- Craw!

124 --Which version? I rented the original for $1 (Blockbuster express) and it was very good. I have heard the re-make is good, too, and despite the expected lack of surprises I'd be ken to rent it if it has some Moron recommendations.
P.S. I liked Rum Diary. saw it last week.

Posted by: logprof at April 09, 2012 03:56 PM (ykSKg)

 

----------------------------------------

 

I must have been the newer movie.  It was on the movie pay-channel.  I do have to say that  I liked it so much  I might go out and start buying the books.

125 If you like to watch people walk around in suits this is the movie for you. Oh look. Gary Oldman is finishing a scene and needs to walk to another scene. I've got at least five minutes to hit the bathroom.

126

Posted by: walter at April 09, 2012 03:51 PM (oA4y0)

**

Walter, your douch is showing.

127 /T: Huh. Mittens and Bibi have been friends - GOOD friends since 1976. Who knew?
http://is.gd/ucX1tK

Posted by: Teresa in Fort Worth, TX at April 09, 2012 03:47 PM (0xqzf)
----

That is nice but how does it impact all the Gentiles?

128 Wow! I had no clue, but to think that two men who struck up a friendship over a business deal, 35 years ago, do (or are in line to) hold such incredibly powerful positions is astounding.

How do those odds compare to the mega millions?

Posted by: Niedermeyer's Dead Horse at April 09, 2012 03:59 PM (piMMO)

--I think Mark Levin and Bibi were high school classmates for a year or two.

129 Proper moron spy fare is Get Smart.

Missed it by that much.

130 One of the better spy movies that isn't feud by action scenes us The Assignment with Aidan Quinn.

131 Sat and watched King of Kings Sunday with the Church Lady.

I didn't realize Judea was so clean 2000 years ago.

132 It's like a friend I have who hated A Knight's Tale because of the modern(ish) music and such. He just hated the movie because "it wasn't true to the period," (yes, he is in the SCA, why do you ask?).

Right problem, wrong criticism. The problem with the soundtrack to A Knight's Tale, (and Ladyhawke, while we're at it) is that the music dates the movie.

Once the music is no longer properly contextual, the movie dies from it. That's the main reason why you use orchestral music in most movies.

(Deliberate period pieces like Goodfellas are an exception -- the music is part of the period, so doesn't date the movie's production.)

133 Artists have this misconception that since they specialize in expression that somehow they are also given some sort of super human ability at insight when in reality they typically suck at it.

About 90% of your bad art can be attributed to an artist that thought they were being all sorts of insightful when in reality their depth resembles a parking lot puddle.

134 I must have been the newer movie. It was on the movie pay-channel. I do have to say that I liked it so much I might go out and start buying the books.

Posted by: Soona at April 09, 2012 04:02 PM (2Z3Hb)

--Does the new one take place in Sweden as well,or did they change the place to account for the different actors?

135 Is this a long way of saying it "insists upon itself?"

136 Anyone ever watch the Comedy Central show called Workaholics? I caught the first season on Netflix over the weekend..and it's pretty funny.


****

Yes. LMAO.

The first time I watched it I wasn't to sure about it, then it hit me that it's really this generation's stoner vids, We had our own back in the day.

Have you ever tried to go back and watch a Cheech and Chong movie? It's simply unbearable.

137 ...dog walked out of the room. ha

138 If they wanted, they could make any of the Jack Ryan movies into a good spy movie- as opposed to the meh Alec Baldwin "Hunt for Red October," the pretty good (but not spy movie) action flicks with Harrison Ford, or the positively terrible "can't decide if I'm an action flick or spy movie, oh, and I'm going to screw up the plot, too" "Sum of All Fears".

139 So we had Raykon troll the Hammond organ thread, and now 'walter' trolls a movie review. These scientifically proves these people have no lives.

140 this is why college professors are liberal..the smartest people in the USA are liberal

Posted by: walter at April 09, 2012 03:51 PM (oA4y0)

 

------------------------

 

LOL.  Who are you trying to fool?  You mean the ones who have yet to figure out that communism doesn't work?  Or thing Obama is a great orator?  Or believe we can spend our way to properity, Nancy Pelosi is a voice of wisdom, guns cause crime, destroying the family is a great way to improve society, and that man's industry is warming the Earth?  Libs are so full of unreason that it truly does qualify as a mental disorder. 

 

 

College professors are indeed largely Liberal - unless they teach something that means something in the real world like math, science, engineering, etc.  Libtardedness is much less common there.  Alas - there are so many idiots in academia that it's plunging the US into ruin.  The abundance of libtards in public ed are the entire reason that system is such a failure.

 

 

141 his first two books, "A Call for the Dead" and "A Murder of Quality" are shorter and not plot-crappy. 


I think there are movie versions of both  ( I either saw them or imagined them ).    --------Both good ( if actually real )


when the movie version of "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" was released ,  LeC  got famous.  Writing became wankish, but still often good.
 --( twice as long with the same amount of good writing )

142 Ace, do yourself a favor and go rent Taken if you haven't seen it. That's a kickass spy-ish kind of movie with lots of smart action.


*****

I second that. Fantastic and intense movie.

143 Was it better than, say, "Spies Like Us"?

144 I second that. Fantastic and intense movie.

Posted by: Niedermeyer's Dead Horse at April 09, 2012 04:07 PM (piMMO)

I had no idea that Liam Neeson could kick so much ass.  Literally.

145 Thus, moments after we first see Luke Skywalker, we hear his Aunt Beru call out to him, not once but twice: "Luke! LUUUKE!'

Shoot !!   Everybody knows that it was Grandpa Amos McCoy who said "Luke, the barn !  Luke, the barn !"

146 Once the music is no longer properly contextual, the movie dies from it. That's the main reason why you use orchestral music in most movies.

Yeah, but orchestral music will never do what the score from A Knight's Tale did- impart the "pop-culture."

In the Director's commentary (I think) for the movie, the Director said he specifically chose the stuff from Queen, and David Bowie, and such, because it helped audiences today relate to the emotions and "atmosphere," of what people then would have been feeling.  To some extent- by the time you had jousting circuits- jousting was the NASCAR of Europe.  He wanted to get that across.

The score has to help with that, and orchestral music wouldn't have done it as well.

147 148 Was it better than, say, "Spies Like Us"? Nothing is better than Spies Like Us, Paul McCartney did the theme song so you know it's good.

148 I second that. Fantastic and intense movie.

Posted by: Niedermeyer's Dead Horse at April 09, 2012 04:07 PM (piMMO)

 

 

 

Yep.  Pure righteous-wrath pron.  Two thumbs up.

149 Taken was a five star movie except for the fact they insisted on putting in an A-Team scene.

150

 Was it better than, say, "Spies Like Us"?

 

 

Heh.   Hardly possible.   

151 Was it better than, say, "Spies Like Us"?

That would be hard.  Spies Like Us was awesome.

152 154 Taken was a five star movie except for the fact they insisted on putting in an A-Team scene.

Posted by: polynikes at April 09, 2012 04:10 PM (eKmTe)

You mean his buddies?  They really didn't do much.  It was pretty much Neeson's character touching down in France and then he's on his own.

153 The only film that is akin to this type of storytelling and editing is JFK.

JFK is a masterpiece of storytelling and editing, TTSP is garbage.

Do not even try analyzing this film it's impervious to it.

154 #93

That reminds me of a Tim Powers novel called 'Declare.' Powers is amazing at finding the secret history behind real events. (For instance, what the battle at the Gates of Vienna was really for, in 'The Drawing of the Dark.)

In 'Declare' we learn about the supernatural forces, many left over from being awakened during WWII, that were the main weapons in the hot bits of the Cold War. The problem is the narrator, telling of his time from the end of WWII up to the Soviet collapse, treats you like a colleague who knows exactly what he is vaguely describing. By the time some bits of vital info are dribbled out, you either have to mentally review the book to realize what all of those events really meant or go back and read it over.

That isn't necessarily a bad thing. It takes three or four readings of 'Watchmen' to understand everything happening. But that was due to it being so rich. Everything was there to see. It was just too much to process all at once. 'Declare' doesn't feel that way. It's more like Tim wanted to treat large portions of the story as still need to know and you don't need to know.

But I'm the guy paying for this, so  yeah, I do need to know. It is still a Tim Powers book, so worth reading but not his best. I'd be annoyed if I'd forked out for the hardcover.

155 No I'm talking about the car chase scene at the construction site.

156 That would be hard. Spies Like Us was awesome.

Posted by: AllenG (Dedicated Tenther) SMOD 2012 at April 09, 2012 04:11 PM (8y9MW)

"Doctor...doctor...doctor...doctor...doctor...doctor...and doctor."

157 Anyone ever watch the Comedy Central show called Workaholics? I caught
the first season on Netflix over the weekend..and it's pretty funny.

There's a BBC show on Netflix called The IT Crowd.  It's flat out hilarious.  Check it out if you get a chance.

158 Does it insist upon itself?

159

Well this arfer of a movie (as in 5 arfs, it's a bow wow of a movie) has been out for a while.  So why the delya in reviewing it.  I already wasted my money on tickets for it three or four months ago.

In fairness to Le Carre (and it's hard being fair to that worthless lefty of an author) his George Smiley books involved an awful lot of interior monologue on the character's part.  That sort of novel does not translate well to the movie screen. 

When they did Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October, they had a similar problem.  A good part of that novel was in the interior of the Russian submarine commander's mind--why was this Hero of the Soviet Union and scion of the Communist aristocracy  defecting with the Russkie's new Boomer?  Sean Connery played the Russky captain and did a pretty good job--all things considered.  [And yes folks--the reference to the Communist "aristrocracy" was not a typo.  In the Soviet Union of old some pigs were much more equal than others.]

But getting back to Lefty LeCarre.  In his last book The Constant Gardener he had to invent a lead character who was getting cheated on by his hot and horny young wife--who met her just fate at the hands of a bunch of the natives--and then the villian became Big Pharma.  Once these lefty bozos can't write about Nazis anymore (all the remaining Nazis checked into old folks homes with Alzheimers 25 years ago) or Russky spies (oops the Cold War sorta ended 23 years ago) they have to find new villains.

Wonder when LeCarre will come out with a novel calling for a boycott of Rush Limbaugh?  On a bookrack near you--coming soon!

160 On the other hand, I could probably save myself some time by seeing this movie instead of reading the review.

161 148 Was it better than, say, "Spies Like Us"?

Posted by: Dr. Varno at April 09, 2012 04:07 PM (KUSaK)

I doubt that it had "Soul Finger" by the The Bar-Kays.

162 Also when I wrote that I forgot that Nesson actually starred in the A-Team.

163 Posted by: EC at April 09, 2012 04:12 PM (GQ8sn)

"First we will.... {Duck under table, read furiously, stand}... clean the incision site..."

164 SOURCE PROGRAMMABLE GUIDANCE!!!!

165 #136

But besides that, what have the Romans ever done for us?

166 --Does the new one take place in Sweden as well,or did they change the place to account for the different actors?

Posted by: logprof at April 09, 2012 04:04 PM (ykSKg)

 

----------------------------------------

 

It's about a rich/prominent German family  that live in seperate houses on an island owned by that family.   Although some  of the movie was  definitely  set  in Germany.

167 Without my orchestral music, the world would have been deprived of The Lone Ranger and Quaker Puffed Wheat and Rice.

168 "What's this?"
"You don't want it!"
"No thanks!" (throws live grenade back to soviet soldiers)

169 *coughs furiously while looking at AllenG's test paper*

170 Yeah, but orchestral music will never do what the score from A Knight's Tale did- impart the "pop-culture."

I don't know about "never", but it would have been harder.

Look, I'm not seriously criticizing A Knight's Tale -- as far as I can tell, it was made knowing it would have a shelf-life; that it had no pretension to be a "classic".

In other words, its "closest comparable" might be Men In Tights.

171 It's about a rich/prominent German family that live in seperate houses on an island owned by that family. Although some of the movie was definitely set in Germany.

Posted by: Soona at April 09, 2012 04:15 PM (2Z3Hb)

--Ah, not much geographical difference.  I may have to check it out; I like Daniel Craig enough anyways.

172 >>>this is why college professors are liberal..the smartest people in the USA are liberal

Walter. I agree. Smart people do tend to go liberal a little more often than conservative, because liberalism has one central tenant.

1. Smart people should run everyone's lives.

It turns out, ask most folks if they want to be a petty tyrant and they will say yes.
It also turns out, most smart folks think they are better than everyone else because they are smart. Even more of a tendency to be a petty tyrant.

By the way I'm smarter than you so you can respond if you want, but you'll just embarrass yourself.

173 You won't get shit out of me. I've been constipated all week!

174 New Post.

Now with 100% Political Content.

Well, 80% anyway.

I could go as low as 50%...

175 I read the book when it came out years ago.  Great book.
The movie was too convoluted, too hard to follow.  It sucked.

176 So Bill Gates wants to take raw sewage and turn it into something suitable for human consumption. YouÂ’d think heÂ’d have learned his lesson after Vista.

177 Thanks ace, glad I didn't watch this. Sounds like the Hudson Hawk of spy movies. Hudson Hawk, worst movie ever 

178 178 You won't get shit out of me. I've been constipated all week!

Posted by: Hollis P. Wood at April 09, 2012 04:19 PM (e8kgV)

 

I've been a little bound up myself lately.  However, should have a good supply of worms in a week or so.

179 this is why college professors are liberal..the smartest people in the USA are liberal

Posted by: walter at April 09, 2012 03:51 PM (oA4y0)

 

When I'm king, psychologists and AGW "scientists" will be required to wear wizard hats.

180 I had no idea that Liam Neeson could kick so much ass. Literally.


****

It was like experiencing Harrison Ford as an adventurer for the first time as Indiana Jones. It was so unexpected because he didn't have the "look" one might expect. Neesom's skill is that he can play it all (although I wouldn't bet on any of it being done with a foreign accent) so he's the tender father one moment and the machine the next.

When he walked into the house, alone, with all those men sitting around the table, I almost peed my pants.

181 Oh one more thing you forgot Ace...eveyone is the gaaaay...Bristish prep schoools I guess.

182 There are some jokes around these parts that never get old. The "Ace writes long movie reviews" joke ain't one of them.

183 By the way, what was in the silver case in "Ronin""?

184 #181

Putting words in other people's mouths and stealing from Treacher simultaneously. That is low.

Plus it was pretty dumb when Treacher wrote it to fill a slow news cycle.

185 Did anyone actually read that?

186 That bad,  huh?  Maybe you should cleanse your pallet with Ghost Rider 2: Spirit of Vengeance.  Worst.  Movie.  Ever.  Johnny Mnemonic looks like Citizen Kane compared to this miscarriage.  Wait,  Citizen Kane kinda sucked.

187 #188

Same stuff in the Chevy Malibu's trunk in 'Repo Man' and the case retrieved by Vincent and Julius in 'Pulp Fiction.'

188

#182.

Wrong. The Jackel..also with Willis. anda smoldering Gere

189 Does it insist upon itself? Posted by: Minuteman


It puts the lotion on its skin.

190 The review did not crack 2000 words. Ace is slipping.

191

This story was done on British TV back around 1980 or so. George Smiley was played by Alec Guiness. It was superb.

 

Can be watched on YouTube.

192 #185

Depends. If you still think of him as 'Darkman,' then nothing he does can surprise you.

Plus, he did Excalibur and Krull. That has to leave a mark.

193 #182.
Wrong. The Jackel..also with Willis. anda smoldering Gere Posted by: Formula92


But getting to see Jack Black murdered raised the whole movie off the floor for about a minute.

194 19 I'll save anyone the trouble of renting this and actually spending 2+ hours watching it to find out: Colin Firth is the mole. Posted by: EC at April 09, 2012 03:35 PM (GQ8sn) DANG IT EC!!!

195

Dang,

After I posted I meant to add that was the one shining all to brief moment in the film. I think I will youtube it and smile

196

"Inception at least looked cool. But total nonsense otherwise.

Dreams don't even work that way. They constantly change."

 

Inception was complete nonsense, indeed.  Everybody knows that once humans learn how to "pre-program" dreams, this ability won't be used for corporate takeovers and theft of intellectual property.

 

It will be used for rutting.  Epic rutting.

 

"Inception" is to "future dream tech" what "Hackers" and "The Net" was to the actual Internet.

197

Ace, I think you're spot-on with the review (although paradoxically, the Brit reviewers seem to have found the Guiness version perplexing and loved this one.)  I'm pretty sure, though, that the bit you cite about Smiley interviewing Karla and implying a moral equivalence between the West and the Soviet bloc is purely from the script for this adaptation, not the book.   If I remember correctly, in the book Smiley remembers how frustrating and ultimately unsuccessful his recruitment attempt with Karla proved to be, as well as the fact that Karla steals his cigarette lighter in the course of it (which arguably puts Karla onto Smiley's relationship with Anne, the weak spot that is so effectively deployed against him later, and also provides a neat motif for rounding out the whole affair in Smiley's People) but doesn't recall much in the way of dialogue.

Not that I'm disagreeing with your assessment of Cornwell's leanings - he seems to have despised both sides of the Cold War with equal fervor, and had a special hatred for the United States that only moderated briefly by the time of his later work (see, for example, The Night Manager) but returned with full force with the outbreak of the Iraq War.

Contrary to one of the comments above, though, he wasn't a typical product of the British upper classes - Cornwell was barely in the ranks of the middle class, and that only due to the machinations of a father was who was a life-long conman and swindler who frequently left the family in poverty and constantly dogged by the stigma of his latest crime.  While he managed to attend many of the so-called "right" schools, it was more by virtue of talent and (occasionally) the illicit funds his father sometimes provided.  The guy has a tremendous dislike for the British caste system and is the very definition of "father issues" - plus, the few times he's ever dished on his own experience in the Intelligence world, Cornwell has painted it as a lurid farce full of disappointing, shabby wannabes rather than the high-stakes drama of Smiley's milieu, so there's that to consider as well.

198 The BBC (Guinness, etc.) version had such excellent music. Even the little dolls-within-dolls graphics at the start of every episode drew ones mind back into the murky world of the story. I did not dislike the new version, as I was aware from its running time that it was never going to tell the story as well as the serialized version. Ricky Tar was a disappointment in the new one. I disliked seeing Ricky's girl get popped, and I don't recall her being finalized in the serial version. She was better as just disappeared, a thread not ended worked better there, as a nagging question in the mind.

199 And geez, I promise my comment above at #202 had line breaks and an actual coherent structure when I hit "post."  Oh, well....

200 It's a mystery movie so great, even the character's names are a mystery.  Awesome!

201 Thought the movie was good, albeit I had read the book and recently saw the BBC series on You Tube. Your points are well taken, this would have been difficult to follow with out that knowledge. I have always disliked the 'moral equivelence" crap that LeCaree had in most of his books.

202 LOL, Spies Like Us.

[in Pashto] If you let me go free, you may keep my friend's head for polo.

203 192 #188

Same stuff in the Chevy Malibu's trunk in 'Repo Man' and the case retrieved by Vincent and Julius in 'Pulp Fiction.'

Posted by: epobirs at April 09, 2012 04:30 PM (kcfmt)

 

We know what was in J. Frank Parnell's trunk in "Repo Man", a neutron bomb.  And pie!

 

So let's get sushi.

 

And not pay. 

 

204 "Was it better than, say, "Spies Like Us"?

That would be hard. Spies Like Us was awesome."

Won't you gentlemen have a Pepsi?

205 We know what was in J. Frank Parnell's trunk in "Repo Man", a neutron bomb. And pie!

Aliens?

206 Obama is a stuttering clusterf*ck of a miserable failure.

207 149 I second that. Fantastic and intense movie.


Posted by: Niedermeyer's Dead Horse at April 09, 2012 04:07 PM (piMMO)

I had no idea that Liam Neeson could kick so much ass. Literally.

Posted by: EC at April 09, 2012 04:08 PM (GQ8sn)

That movie really freaks out any father with a young daughter.  I didn't want to let my daughter out of my sight for a few days after watching that.

208 I always preferred Frederick Forsyth to le Carre (and Ken Follett to either).

209 One of the more amusing - in retrospect - passages in "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" is when the East German population is outraged, outraged by the killing of a Border Guard.

And then, my gosh, after 1990 it turned out they didn't love their Grenztruppen after all.

210 A Pendragon, thanks, interesting. Re: Taken I like Taken okay but Taken is an action movie romp. I like action movie romps, like the James Bond films, but they're not the same as a more plausible spycraft drama. The two are entirely different genres.

211

In a world...

...where spies spy on spies.

One spy must spy upon truth in order to see the mystery of why spies spy.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy:  A mystery so deep, you'll leave wondering if you even saw a movie at all...

212 this is why college professors are liberal..

Liberals gravitate to jobs without measurable outputs.

213 I watched Unknown last night, btw.  WTF.

214 Although I enjoyed the film more than you seemed to, Ace, I agree with everything in your review.

Had to backtrack to the dead guy in the hospital bed and still wasn't sure at first whether or not it was Control. The head was angled back in a way that made it hard to tell if it was John Hurt.

Also felt a little pissed off when I realized the trip to the optometrist for new glasses frames was a device to give the viewer a signal about flashbacks. Then I kept getting distracted because I kept checking out Smiley's specs to figure out whether it was present or past.

215 Ace, the five hour energy shit?  Just drink one not ten.  Your heart needs a rest.

216 >>>Also felt a little pissed off when I realized the trip to the optometrist for new glasses frames was a device to give the viewer a signal about flashbacks. Then I kept getting distracted because I kept checking out Smiley's specs to figure out whether it was present or past. I missed that, what was the key? what did he do with his glasses to indicate it was a flashback?

217 Yes, I read a few LaCarre novels and found them distasteful. he seems pretty fond of Soviet life, disdainful at best of England, and has nothing but throbbing continuous hatred for spies and espionage by the English. Every book has several characters who do nothing but shower hate on the English way of life and the very concept of espionage. I did not like them at all.

218 If you liked Taken, watch From Paris with Love. The scene where Travolta caps a girl out of the blue was worth the price of admission on its own.

219 Typical LeCarre fare = a bunch of shit happens, and then he kills the main character.  The end.

220 spawl

221

LeCarre is a douche, but the Smiley books are fine writing.

I enjoyed the movie, but I read the books back in the 80s and still remember most of them.

If you didn't read the books, you may have missed some of the spycraft, such as Smiley leaving a matchstick stuck between the door and frame.

As a period piece, it was impressive. I'd forgotten about that song (and movie) "The Second Best Secret Agent".

The technology (encrypted telex machine, operater actuated wiretap) was perfect.

222 Wait, Citizen Kane kinda sucked.

******

THANK YOU!!!!!

223 I remember watching the TTSS mini series as a kid, during the Cold War. I'm sure the writing was better.

224 #208

Parnell talked about neutron bombs in one scene but there is nothing to indicate such an item in the trunk. The manifested effects, vaporization of unfriendlies limited to an extremely local range and a flying car, are not exactly in the advertised feature set of nuclear weapons.

225 79 I never had trouble understanding Mad Magazine's Spy vs Spy. Even when I was 12. Posted by: Cicero at April 09, 2012 03:50 PM (QKKT0) I could never tell which was the protagonist.

226 I saw this when it was in theatres. My only comment at the end was, "I've never been less thrilled while watching a spy thriller."

227

The book was an early effort by Le Carre.  I know he is now an out and out hater of everything Western now, but Tinker, Tailor and Smiley's People are both great books.  (It is actually a trilogy, but the middle one, The Honorable School Boy, is too confusing and long plus Smiley is more of a minor character.)

There is a British miniseries of both books with Alec Guiness as Smiley that is also quite good.  I have not seen the movie.   

 

228

I agree this movie sucked.

 

The BBC version, which I watched on Youtube (one of those uploads that could disappear at any time), is really quite good.

 

So is the BBC sequel, Smiley's People.  Actually, that may be more entertaining than Tinker Tailor.

 

Having read those two books, and a couple of others by Le Carre, yeah the dude was a leftist/communist sympathizer, but I find that's really downplayed and non-obnoxious, at least in the Smiley books -- perhaps because Smiley is clearly a political conservative.  Also, I gather that Le Carre really does *not* like the US... that his attitude towards the US as a Cold War political player is probably not too far from that of the Circus mole in Tinker Tailor (as explained by the mole after he's captured).

 

It's interesting, in an article by or interview with Le Carre (I can't recall which), he makes the moral equivalency argument that Smiley (and the Circus) was just as bad as Karla (and the KGB) (particularly with respect to the events in Smiley's People).

 

Although that's what he believed as an author, that was definitely not my take-away as a reader (or viewer) of Tinker Tailor or Smiley's People.  So I give Le Carre some credit for not engaging in hamfisted polemics.  Of the Le Carre books I've read, the only place I felt the heavy hand of the author pushing his ideology was in the last few pages of The Honorable Schoolboy (literally just the last few pages).  And I'll also add, although I disagree with his politics, Le Carre is a very, very good writer.  A damn good writer.  Far more skilled and talented than most purveyors of blockbuster fiction.

229 I pretty much agree with Ace on this one. The film is a dud. However, I really enjoyed the Alec Guinness miniseries, which is definitely worth a look. If you are interested in the genre, the British series "The Sandbaggers" is highly recommended. It is the story of the special section at SIS that deals with covert actions. The plots are believable and the cast is first rate - and the hero is a patriot for a change.

230

The fact that this review is accurate is the main (and highly impressive) accomplishment of the movie.

The author writes in the same kind of obnoxious, i think you said obscurantist way. Well put. Anyway, le Carre will give you pages of disjointed ramblings that consist of a characters thoughts, with a line here or there about place or dialogue. Then it's back to the swirling perfidies of the character's mind.

 

without fail, you know nothing of what's going on in a le Carre book until about a third of the way in. but he's British, so if he weren't a pompous ass he would be a fraud.

 

anyway, once the plot starts to emerge from the spongy bog of wasted pages I always start getting a twitch in my literature cock and i start reading late into the night and drinking scotch and shaving with a safety razor and generally opening myself up to the mockery of my room mate, a timid soul who lacks the strength of character to plumb his own depths in fiction. By the last fifty pages i still don't know much about the characters but i *know* the characters and i flip pages with the hand that's not working my turgidity and when the story takes the inevitable step in the direction of "oh yes, le Carre, you're a wise and tortured and fatalistic artist, aren't you?" i immediately lose my book bone and swear that the next one will be Ludlum.

 

But i always gravitate back to le Carre.

 

This movie was able to create the irritating feel of le Carre's literary experience. It pisses you off, intrigues you, disgusts you at the end, and leaves you ever more grateful for Nathan Hale, whose other regret, if those bastards had given him more time to think, would be that he wouldn't live to see the day when Britain's most laudable non-SAS export was snobbery.

231

I kind of liked the movie in some ways. I thought Gary Oldman was brilliant, and there were a number of other great performances. I like reading about spies and I like movies about spying ("The Company" with Michael Keaton is good).

You have a great point about the way the story was presented. The subject is interesting because there have been top level moles that have played havouc with intelligence, but the movie presented things in a VERY obtuse and indirect way. I was disappointed in that, definitely. My husband had the same complaint you did when we watched it, Ace, and was frustrated. Having read a bit on the intelligence community, I put things together a bit faster than he did, but I didn't like spending so many cycles trying to put it all together when I should have been able to spend more time just enjoying the movie.

I have read the book, and it is a bit obtuse as well, and since Le Carre had a hand in the both I think that explains why. Too bad, really. Been waiting for a good, pro-West spy movie for what seems like ages.

 

232

Posted by: EC at April 09, 2012 03:42 PM (GQ8sn)

I thought it was probably Firth because he seemed intent on portraying himself as this womanizer and dandy, ergo someone frivolous and not to be taken seriously. Therefore, I assumed that was a cover as many people would tend to overlook him.

 

233 spot on review. it sucked.

234

Posted by: logprof at April 09, 2012 03:56 PM (ykSKg)

Re: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Steig Larssen was an avowed socialist though, wasn't he?

 

235 Patrick O'Brian wrote better spy novels, and he was writing about Napoleonic sea warfare.

236

>So he has his Mary Sue, George Smiley, say something to a Soviet agent he's trying to persuade to come over to the West: "When did you realize the society you live in was just as corrupt and without merit as the one I live in?" And he means it.<

 

Here is how that moment reads in the book:

 

" ' Look... we're getting to be old men, and we've spent our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another's systems. I can see through Eastern values just as you can through our Western ones...'

 

Guillam: 'Did Karla ever really think of staying?'...

 

' I'm sure it never crossed his mind,' said Smiley with disgust. 'I behaved like a soft fool. The very archetype of a flabby Western liberal. But I would rather be my kind of fool than his for all that.' "

 

In short, in the book, Smiley uses something like a moral equivalency argument to try to persuade Karla to flip.  It's slightly ambiguous, but the passage is written in a way that suggests Smiley himself doesn't buy the argument (he prefaces it by saying, "I took the line of kinship," after having tried and failed with several other lines of argument).

 

Certainly, Le Carre never has Smiley say such a flatly ideological line as "When did you realize the society you live in was just as corrupt and without merit as the one I live in?"

237

John at 241 - you nailed it!  At best, the passage suggests Smiley using an interrogation technique that works in a lot of contexts, not least with your local constabulary:  "Look, I understand you.  You understand me.  There's common ground here.  Let's build on that."  It can even work on committed ideologues and fanatics, as the FBI and CIA interrogation teams have demonstrated against a number of Al Qaeda insurgents - even KSM was roped in to a degree, although a little extra persuasion before clearly didn't hurt. 

 

 

Just not against Karla.  And the yob nicked Smiley's lighter, on top of everything else!

238 okay I'll chalk that one up the screenwriter, and it is possible Smiley meant it in that "we're much alike" way anyway.

239 I watched this movie and found it to be a dreary, Masterpiece Theater type of mess. But then, I found the whole thing soooo boring there was something erotic about it. It was like some weird attraction with a really boring and quiet librarian who is actually quite homely but she has an unusually fantastic derriere (part Colombian?) and you're bored (and she's available). So I watched Tinker a handful of time in the 3-4 day period that I had it. Mining all the boredom and trying to figure out why my betters think it to be this brilliant piece of work.

Of course, I think for myself, so after repeated viewing I still found it dull as fuck and pointless. There's something about watching Gary Oldman -- who you know can be a crazy bastard -- just be completely still and do nothing. That's why I was so fascinated: how is he able to just sit there and do nothing and occasionally move his facial muscles ever so softly?? It's bizarre. Gard Oldman would be the equivalent of the dull librarian's amazing ass. It's just mysical and I'm just staring at it over and over and over.

All of Ace's observations are on point.

Contrast it to, say, The Wire, which was not viewer friendly and required the watcher to pay attention (as opposed to distracting the viewer by making them fill in gaps).

Somehow this was a spy movie with intrigue that was surprisingly unintriguing.

Make sure to check out Keef Olbermann's youtube clip where he waxes poetic about how much he genuinely loved the story and owned the box set of the original BBC series. He actually breaks down a scene or two on his special comment.

240

One more Le Carre/Cornwell bit, and I promise I'll cease and desist - it's just that everything about it fits perfectly in my (admittedly, minor-league) academic wheelhouse, not to mention being someone with a deep and abiding affection for the Brits that doesn't blind me to their foibles then or now, but especially then, when Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy rolled off the presses.

 

There's no question, as I and so many others, first of all Ace, have suggested, that Cornwell has a special loathing for Americans, in particular those he associates with the JFK, LBJ, and Nixon years.  Until the Night Manager came out (shortly following the marriage of one of Cornwell's children to an American spouse, providing him with American grandchildren over whom he doted) anyone with U.S. on their passport in one of his works was a grotesquely exaggerated cartoon.  This was complicated, however,by his equally vehement loathing for the privileged upper classes and their excesses, which is a consistent feature in all his works, and by his falling into the 'Lawrence of Arabia" cult of romanticizing the plights of the Arab peoples and making him a prime convert for Edward Said's brand of rhetoric.  (This last would eventually lead him to his celebrated exchange with Salman Rushdie, where Cornwell basically argued that Rushdie knew what was coming if you dared malign the Prophet and had no room to complain about the death fatwa - some of you may remember that was when Hitchens took up Rushdie's cause and tore Cornwell to ribbons in the press.) 

 

As for his leftism, it's practically infused with mother's milk in many portions of the British Isles, and Cornwell's is arguably milder than some.  In many respects he can be, when he's at his best, a less talented version of Orwell, if Orwell had ever opted to write byzantine thrillers about the game of espionage as it was played at the sunset of the British Empire. Remember too that it goes hand-in-glove with his visceral dislike of the upper caste, who in Cornwell's early youth and adulthood did not distinguish themselves (and leave a lot to be desired now, frankly).  In an England where Minstrel Shows were regularly aired as entertainment up into the 1970s, where Gollywogs were openly marketed to children, and where birth still counted for so much of everything, a young Cornwell could look around and see a surprising number of the Peers of the Realm acting like an alliance with Hitler might not be such a bad thing, with the Duke of Windsor actually trying to work out a power-sharing arrangement with Adolph that would allow him to take the throne.  The excesses he would have seen going on with the crown colonies and dominions, the attitudes of those who had returned "back home" that would have made ardent Southern segregationsists over here speechless.....

 

 

Well, the point is that Cornwell, early on, came to see the overlords of Britannia in light not dissimilar to that perceived by our early Founders - if not for the adulterating effect of Socialism, he might have taken a very different path indeed. 

 

Still, he produced some of the true modern classics of the espionage genre, and it's difficuilt, even today, to put down one of his works, even when the propgandizing and moralziing are laid on extra thick....

241 I think the director was trying to make the big reveal not about who the spy was, but that he was gay. It also seems to me that the director was trying too hard to make a "British" film, something he clearly does not get. Hence the muted, dry, repressed relationships between Smiley and his sometimes wife and between Bill Haydon (Colin Firth) and Jim Prideaux (some actor who is about 50 million movies and who looks like another more famous one). I would say the most annoying part of the movie is the part where we get to watch Smiley think for something like 5 minutes (it was 5 minutes of film, but we were to think of him sitting and thinking really, really hard for several hours, like he was tabulating all the data and would shortly be spitting out some ticker tape with the answer). It made the whole plot seem underpant gnomish. 1. Discovery of mystery of top level spy 2. Investigation 3. ??? (Just show Gary Oldman's big noggin sitting there like an old 486 calculating without any blinky lights) 4. Resolution!

242 Wow, that was really long, Ace. Let's compress it: Le Carre sucked, and was a parlor Communist. His writing sucked and in a grey, grim depressing way, highlighted just how bad communism sucked, then and still does.
Gary Oldman? Great actor, socialist by choice. Actor's Equity card must say so.

We won (Le Carre hates that.), They lost (Le Carre mourns that.). Typical middling British Socialist infatuated crap. Written or filmed, still crap.

Avoid the books, the movies, the freaking parking spot, the mere thought of this all around abortion. Le Carre was a anus. His writing reflects him being that anus.

Avoid this like a hooker with syphilis.

There, done. Lots of words saved. You're welcome.

243 Gosh, there are so many crappy movies being made these days that I'll never watch... I can hardly keep track of them all... When does the latest crappy comic book character film come out? ( I grew up reading comics and love the characters, I just haven't enjoyed any of the movies made... at least not enough to actually purchase the movie... which is another way of saying the damn movies aren't going to be watched in 20 or 30 years and considered classics) Or the latest sequel to something that made money at the box office for no known reason? (Fast and Furious/Transformers etc...) Bad dialogue. Check. No plot to speak of. Check. Actors that have a hard time acting. Check. Massive amounts of CGI and special effects. Check. Dumbed down Profit! Are there any good films in the last ten years or so that have come out? ( movies that don't have throw away lines ripping on republicans or businessmen or Christians etc are most appreciated.) I really would like some suggestions as I love movies and have a couple hundred on dvd...watch a classic with good plot and dialogue and never be disappointed I guess...

244 Next. And Alec Guniess was a peter puffer and all around nancy boy. His Smiley probably spent time feeling up drunks in London's Men's Rooms.

Soldier, Sailor, Drag Queen, Sword Swallower.

New version will star the talents of  George Michael...

245 I had to just force myself to finish this damn movie.

horrible, horrible piece of film making.

246

Okay, just one more bit and then no more - if you want a good take on the real-life individual on whom Alec Guiness based his characterization of George Smiley, check out Maurice Oldfield.  The look, the mannerisms, the mode of speech, it's all there.

 

If you want to see who Cornwell had in mind when creating Smiley, google up John Bingham and the Reverend Vivan Green.  As for Control, I've always envisioned him as Stewart Menzies, although a lot of people suggest instead one of his successors as "C" of MI6/SIS, Sir Dick White.

247 Great to see so many Anglophiles here. Yes, most of the Brits play the skin flute, but they are the modern masters of the language. Anthony Burgess, C.P. Snow, LeCarre. In the US we have Cormac McCarthy, Martin Cruz Smith and .....

248 Love you, Ace--really do. But on Tinker Tailor? Fiddlesticks.

249 Another alternative: The Lives of Others. Story of East Germany's Stasi and how they monitored fucking everyone, radicalizing even some favored "artists".

250 RE: I missed that, what was the key? what did he do with his glasses to indicate it was a flashback?

He didn't actually do anything with the glasses, he got new ones. The old ones were kind of roundish and orangey-tortoise shell and the new ones were squarish and grayish.

251 The Lives of Others. Story of East Germany's Stasi and how they monitored fucking everyone, radicalizing even some favored "artists".

Posted by: PJ at April 09, 2012 10:07 PM (DQHjw)

Lives of Others was really good.

252

@ Ace:

 

1) Check out the BBC version of Smiley's People, or the first episode, anyway, to see if it's your cup of meat.  It's very good, imho.

 

2) I would be curious to hear your take on Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within (2010), currently on Netflix instant view.

253 Le Carre always had that half-irritating, half-soporific, all-dreary effect on me in print. Never bothered with the movies.

That he's a pinko isn't a surprise. (Now, that's a word we ought to bring back: PINKO.)

254 But Ace, the most important thing is whether or not George W. Bush got blamed for everything that happened.  Well... did he?

255 A Pendragon, Interesting, again, and I read it all. Honestly, I just threw that bit about socialism in at the end as an afterthought. My real objection is that the film's set-up was inherently pretty straightforward (not much more complex than the information-dense opening of an Agatha Christie movie) and yet they chose to avoid the usual tricks used to make exposition stick in the mind. So there was a sort of lock-out for the viewer (unless he already knew the story and hence had no need of exposition). I did want to like it. It's my sort of movie and I'm a fan of Oldman. And the basic story is very neat -- spying on the overlords of British intelligence to find a murderous (by indirect action) traitor. Why does "elevated" have to mean boring and deliberately obscurantist? The basic set-up is emphatically NOT all that complicated. Why pretend it is? So it seems smarter than it is?

256 I understand A. Christie movies are lighthearted but they have to communicate a lot of names and motives and relationships quickly. True, a comic tone allows you do this more quickly, as you can freely resort to things like stereotype, but it's not rocket science. People have been writing exposition in dialogue at least since Shakespeare. This movie really seemed to take the position that to make the beginning situation clear to the viewer would be a kind of cheating, or pandering. I just wanted to know who was named what. In a film where characters are frequently referred to off-screen, you sort of have to know which face goes with which name.

257 I may check out the Guinness version.

258 I understand Ace's complaints about the movie.  When I saw it I knew that if you hadn't read the book first, the movie would be pretty incomprehensible.  I disagree with almost everything that Cornwall (LeCarre) believes, but I like his stories, which are all slow burns since they're all about the characters much more so than plot -- even though the plots are usually complex.  Addressing Ace's point about John Hurt's character being dead in the opening credits -- that's the author's style.  All of his stories open after some major event has already taken place, and about half the book is backstory to that.

I agree with SantaRosaStan (#52) that The Honourable Schoolboy would be a good movie, but way too cumbersome to film due to the number of locations.  My choice would be for a movie version of The Night Manager, but that would be difficult for the same reason.  Excellent story, though.

Cornwall has a knack for prescience about what will be the world's next hot spot, but his conclusions are usually, in my opinion, horribly, horribly wrong.  The creepiest example of that is Our Game.

259 The big problem I had with this movie was the supposed motivation behind The Spy's betrayal.

He claimed it to be an aesthetic as well as a moral choice...to betray his country to a foreign power intent on putting all of us in the ground.  A statement to which George Smiley offers no real response.  Totally disgusting.

I can almost forgive someone whose love of communism stems from ignorance.  They are a fool of course, but they need not be evil.

It is quite another thing for someone whose job it is to study and understand the Soviet Union so as to protect Britain from that evil empire to find their evil ways more appealing.  Such a person isn't worthy of the quick death this character received in the end. 

While watching this movie, I was quite convinced for some time that it was a Cambridge Five scenario in which there was more than one spy.  It was kind of a disappointment that in the end it just the one guy.

The clumsy flashback and sideways-flash business was truly irritating.  It wasn't till Smiley showed up at Mark Strong's school that I was completely sure Strong was still alive and that this was not some other strange flash-back whose relevance would be later revealed.

Not the worst movie ever, but severely flawed.

260 I thought I would die of boredom when I caught a 15-minute slice of the old version back in the day.  I dare not risk this one.

261

264 "The big problem I had with this movie was the supposed motivation behind The Spy's betrayal."

But isn't the motivation essentially the same (to the extent we know it) that Kim Philby had in real life?

 

>They just rig a simple trap for him (which, by the way, they could have rigged in the first hour of the film-- they gained no new information later which was necessary for the simple trap) and he shows up.<

 

Although I agree the current version is rubbish, I think at a minimum Smiley required the cooperation of Toby Esterhase (who manages the safe house) to rig the trap, which he was not in a position to demand in the first hour (at that stage, Esterhase is a legitimate suspect for being the mole; but after Smiley interrogates Westerby and Prideaux, he learns enough to leverage Esterhase's somewhat reluctant cooperation).

 

There are also, iirc, several other, substantial and quite plausible obstacles made clear in the book and BBC version (including, not least, the "lateralism" re-arrangement of the Circus following the ouster of Control, which makes any setting of traps using Circus tools - such as a Circus-controlled safe house - virtually impossible).

262

Ace, I agree with your take on the film (and it's a pretty good critique of Le Carre/Cornwell's writing as well).  I was just trying to bring out some aspects of Cornwell that I believe influenced a lot of his early and some of his later work - he's not untypical of his generation in having a major problem with the class structure as it prevailed during his youth (look at the guys in Monty Python for example, in both their comedic work and a lot of their public statements) and that drives a lot of Tinker, Tailor.  The way that Brits "read" each other and automatically make assumptions about their social standing and how that will govern any interactions is a major theme of both the book and the two film versions - in a sense Cornwell is doing a novel of manners as much as spy fiction.  Flavored, of course, with that uniquely British passive-aggressive verbal flair - think of how often in the Oldman film, for example, the word "actually" is employed to devastating effect to put someone in their place, remind them of their station, or display dominance.

 

Factor that in with his messed-up childhood and resentment over Britain's decline relative to American ascendancy, and I believe that's Cornwell (and a lot of his generation) in a nutshell.  He even recognizes this to an extent, when he has Connie Sachs (in the book) describe Bill Haydon as an "Empire Baby."  He was born to a life of privilege in which Britain was a world-bestriding Colossus, and saw all of that taken away - Dominion Over Palm and Pine replaced by those upstart Yanks, and traditional class privilege rendered hollow and all but meaningless.  Britain had the sheer effrontery to disappoint Haydon and confound his expectations, so he betrayed it right back, and switched over to what he saw as the next most congenial team.  That Haydon does this without any regard for the human costs of his actions is the measure of what a moral monster he is, and I think a hint of some self-awareness on Cornwell's part of his own prejudices.

 

And with that, I'll step away from the thread.  Thanks for a first-rate review and for tolerating me babbling away here. 

263 I saw this flick.

This movie watches like a John LeCarre novel reads.

Hank Hill: "Yep."

264

I wonder if there is anyone commenting here that was born before 1980.

Yes the movied plods...just like Cornwell's novels of which I've read over half a dozen.  It could have been shot and edited differently which would have made it easier to understand for the 21st century brain.

Loved "The Spy who came in from the Cold" book and movie with Richard Burton, "Russia House" with Sean Connery, "The Tailor of Panama" with Geoffrey Rush and Peirce Brosnan and is the right title "Ordinary Gardner" with Ralph Fiennes.  Point is you have to make the movies somewhat like the books are written because that is the whole point of Cornwell.  If you don't you could tell the story in 100 pages instead of 300 and the movie would last 30 minutes.

I thought the latest movie was set up all wrong by starting with the CONTROL/Smiley/Botched mission stuff instead of the way the book started by introducing Prideaux as the mysterious school master with the hidden past and obvious disabling injuries from something bad that happened in a second world nation.

Was it PC to really play down the sexual relationship between Prideaux and Haydon?  When I read the book it was pretty clear that the motive for Prideaux's "revenge" was not because he had been sold out while on a mission by a colleague...but by his lover.

I think a couple of the best examples of the movie genre are Gorky Park and Munich which are better than this movie.

265 Well said, A. Pendragon. I half watched the original TV series and was struck by just how waspishly effeminate English public schoolboys are, even if they're not actually gay. Severe penis envy concerning Yanks, I reckon.

266 I was going to bitch about the review, but then saw the Kim Philby mention in a later comment. It was the first thing that popped in my mind when the movie started.