I think when I initially saw the casting, I had hoped Cumberbatch would play Ricky Tarr or Percy -- like, he's fine being a smug prat that gets his comeuppance
― sarahell, Monday, 5 November 2018 19:18 (five years ago) link
joss ackland is so perfectly cast, and i'd watch him read the phonebook. not sure he'd have been able to sustain it for a miniseries of the honorable schoolboy though.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, 5 November 2018 19:20 (five years ago) link
it's year since i read honourable schoolboy -- bcz it's not very good -- but iirc westerby comes across quite a lot younger than someone ackland could reasonably play
(i think the character is written somewhat ambiguously agewise and lecarre felt he could spin him out into something where he definitively was younger)
― mark s, Monday, 5 November 2018 19:24 (five years ago) link
Jayston's performance has a great balance of competence and casual blending in with hidden wariness vs Cumberbatch's performance, which skews a little too far towards obvious fear and unpreparedness.
― omar little, Monday, 5 November 2018 19:27 (five years ago) link
Cumberbatch has a certain theatricality that he can't hide, he's too showy for the role of someone who is supposed to be trusted by everyone on every side at any given moment.
― omar little, Monday, 5 November 2018 19:29 (five years ago) link
xp - I enjoyed honourable schoolboy, but I remember next to nothing about it, so in retrospect it was probably not that great
― sarahell, Monday, 5 November 2018 19:30 (five years ago) link
Actually, I vaguely recall reading it and thinking it was something Len Deighton would have written better, but I could be confusing it with another forgettable le Carre
― sarahell, Monday, 5 November 2018 19:31 (five years ago) link
The Hon. Schoolboy is great!!
― mick signals, Monday, 5 November 2018 19:41 (five years ago) link
id declare firth over richardson i think
― lie back and think of englund (darraghmac), Monday, 5 November 2018 20:08 (five years ago) link
unfortunately firth is walking around with a huge giant pointy arrow sellotaped to his head say "obviously the mole is me"
― mark s, Monday, 5 November 2018 20:15 (five years ago) link
aye the fact that he's the best known actor of any of the suspects and is the only one that has much screen time surely signals that a bit too much (id seen the bbc miniseries before i saw the film so it's hard to tell).
― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Monday, 5 November 2018 20:19 (five years ago) link
aye the fact that he's the best known actor of any of the suspects and is the only one that has much screen time surely signals that a bit too much
yeah, that was one of the disappointing things about the movie
― sarahell, Monday, 5 November 2018 20:25 (five years ago) link
I wasn't familiar with the story before watching the film and I didn't twig that Firth was the mole, although to be fair the main flaw with the film is that it spectacularly bad at making you care who the mole is.
― Matt DC, Monday, 5 November 2018 20:25 (five years ago) link
ah its only the point in a very vague way
also toby tchoocallim has lots of screen time and has much more of a sign pointed at him
esterhazy is a dick on a few occasions and bland uh looks sinister in a few slo-mos so tbh it keeps it clean enough that way
― lie back and think of englund (darraghmac), Monday, 5 November 2018 20:34 (five years ago) link
films i had recently seen toby jones in (reverse order):captain america: the first avenger (arnim zola) st trinian's 2: the legend of fritton's gold (bursar) frost/nixon (swifty lazar) w. (karl rove) (!)
so i knew it couldn't be him
― mark s, Monday, 5 November 2018 20:48 (five years ago) link
(also i'd read the book abt 349852309457 times)
― mark s, Monday, 5 November 2018 20:51 (five years ago) link
My god Firth and Richardson tied? I adore Ian Richardson as Haydon. Also I do really like Hepton as Esterhase. Actually one of the performances that brings the most joy when watching! I love how he adopts an English accent in TTSS but loses it for something vaguely foreign in SP.
― chinavision!, Tuesday, 6 November 2018 16:14 (five years ago) link
And his insane shirts
― chinavision!, Tuesday, 6 November 2018 16:17 (five years ago) link
Esterhase also really shines in the Bern scenes in SP. We see how good he is at what he does.
― chinavision!, Tuesday, 6 November 2018 16:18 (five years ago) link
yeah hes a much better performance and role in sp
― lie back and think of englund (darraghmac), Tuesday, 6 November 2018 16:20 (five years ago) link
firth dies better than richardson
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 6 November 2018 16:52 (five years ago) link
i like richardson's weird broke-neck wriggle, even though it's totally unconvincing -- it sort of suits the stupid squalor of the situation (including the fact that the air and the charm go out of the character like a leaky balloon when he stops being an actor on a stage)
― mark s, Tuesday, 6 November 2018 16:56 (five years ago) link
Ok I really don’t really remember the broke neck wriggle. Have to rewatch.
― chinavision!, Tuesday, 6 November 2018 17:37 (five years ago) link
binged little drummer girl over three nights and thought it was good
the absence of actual british government agents until the last act made the one representative character take on an air of imperial cynicism that you miss out in some of the other le carre adaptations because everything's coated in that cynicism from the get-go
― mh, Thursday, 29 November 2018 19:14 (five years ago) link
Ricki Tarr, one of fiction’s great dirtbags
― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Friday, 18 January 2019 04:09 (five years ago) link
Why did Alfredson's The Snowman get such terrible reviews? I thought it was okay--standard serial-killer stuff that at least looked good and maintained a kind of desolate mood.
― clemenza, Monday, 4 March 2019 12:50 (five years ago) link
(Val Kilmer's pretty bad, I should add--and almost unrecognizable at first.)
― clemenza, Monday, 4 March 2019 12:53 (five years ago) link
According to le Carré, The Ink Factory now plans to do new television adaptations of all the novels featuring Cold War spy George Smiley — this time in chronological order. “That means that if you actually go back to the first big conspiracies in ‘The Spy Who Came In From the Cold’ you’ve got to consider how Smiley ages and how young he was at that time,” le Carré says. That would mean finding an actor who can play younger than the Smiley incarnated by Gary Oldman in the film version of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” Le Carré says that his sons are interested in casting the British actor Jared Harris, whose performance they all admired in the recent TV mini-series “Chernobyl.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/books/john-le-carre-agent-running-in-the-field.html
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Sunday, 13 October 2019 03:24 (four years ago) link
Shit, Harris would be a really good pick
― omar little, Sunday, 13 October 2019 04:07 (four years ago) link
Yeah I'd be down for sure.
― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 13 October 2019 04:20 (four years ago) link
omg yes plz
― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 13 October 2019 04:24 (four years ago) link
Understandable if interesting that he mentions Cold since a full series sweep would have to start with Call For the Dead.
― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 13 October 2019 04:33 (four years ago) link
tbh if you're really gonna do this why not cast multiple actors a la The Crown
― Simon H., Sunday, 13 October 2019 04:43 (four years ago) link
Understandable if interesting that he mentions /Cold/ since a full series sweep would have to start with /Call For the Dead/.
― Fizzles, Sunday, 13 October 2019 06:49 (four years ago) link
― NEWS Giant penis frog didn’t have a giant penis after all (bizarro gazzara), Sunday, 13 October 2019 07:18 (four years ago) link
geraldine mcewan as the smiley in a murder of quality plz
― mark s, Sunday, 13 October 2019 12:59 (four years ago) link
she's only a bit dead
tought to improve on Spy Who Came In From the Cold film
just as the TTSS movie did nothing. noooooothing.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 13 October 2019 14:39 (four years ago) link
Just read The Traitor and the Spy. I’m told this is about as good as non fiction about espionage gets, and it was good! (but still nowhere near TTSS).
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, 13 April 2020 15:30 (four years ago) link
i just got gifted that last week! cant wait to read
― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 13 April 2020 16:05 (four years ago) link
I’ve probably already said this but Spy / Counterspy is tremendous and while almost certainly not completely true it’s totally gripping and “non-fiction” in a, uh broader sense.
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Monday, 13 April 2020 16:26 (four years ago) link
The Deadly Affair is unfortunately fairly weak. Don't bother with it.
― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Monday, 15 August 2011 20:27 (eight years ago) bookmarkflaglink
this is fair advice
some nice supporting turns but they absolutely butchered smiley/anne and shouldve really left that whole strand out
― steer calmer (darraghmac), Saturday, 18 April 2020 22:36 (four years ago) link
Currently listening to the audiobook of a perfect spy, read fantastically by David jayston (Peter Guillam from the tv series)
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, 24 June 2020 05:21 (four years ago) link
Oh I forgot to updateI finished The Traitor & The Spy and it was remarkable. I had to keep reminding myself that it was true, it was so unbelievably tense and (sometimes completely absurd!) it truly felt like a novel. Incredible stuff, highly HIGHLY recommend.
― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 24 June 2020 05:45 (four years ago) link
Truly a ripping yarn!
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, 24 June 2020 06:00 (four years ago) link
not read it but when it was book of the week on R4 a couple of years it caught my attention, because normally their books of the week are quite dull and this was not!
― calzino, Wednesday, 24 June 2020 06:38 (four years ago) link
years back
As great as was, I was even more spellbound by, earlier Kim Philby book.
Ben Macintyre's true spy storytelling is better than almost any spy fiction. Right up there with The Traitor & The Spy, I'd recommend his Kim Philby book, A Spy Among Friends and Double Cross: the True Story of D-Day Spies.
― punning display, Wednesday, 24 June 2020 20:42 (four years ago) link
― punning display, Wednesday, 24 June 2020 20:43 (four years ago) link
If you can find a copy (it's probably out of print), I really recommend Take Nine Spies by Fitzroy Maclean. It's got a great chapter about Kim Philby and another really good one about Operation Mincemeat.
― Greetings from CHAZbury Park (Lily Dale), Wednesday, 24 June 2020 21:05 (four years ago) link