Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (novel, miniseries, and forthcoming film to be directed by Tomas Alfredson)

i am going to be charitable and acknowledge that i am not the target audience for this film

altho wdn't it be funny to acquire the rights to one of Le Carre's books and do that to it?

I honestly thought at first that it was a reboot of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

hopefully mark strong and colin firth will have a healthier relationship in this flick than in ttss

They had the healthiest relationship in TTSS! and, in the end, the most honest one.

would be great if the kid turned out to be a total jackass

or bill haydon

exactly.

i dont get why people are so negative these days i get you want good entertainment but wait till the reviews and the movie ACTUALLY come out smh.... people are just tooo negative its the trailer not every trailers does the movie justice it could be a lot better than expected truth be told the only thing to me that could bring the movie down would an over done cheesy romance that came out the blue im not a fan of those anymore they drag the story down but other than that give it a chance. i know its all opinion and subjective but it seems it could be good.

^^^ pvmic

I watched this on an airplane

Then I read the wiki plot summary when I landed

Which was probably the best way to go tbh

now the bbc series

It's good? Yeah?

incredible

every winter I break out the DVD set of the bbc series and just work through it. so great.

Probably my most rewatched series DVD.

Is the BBC series of a Perfect Spy any good?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZgTRl3lj78

if you find that this type of thing is the type of thing you like etc

if anyone is looking for an "american version" of TTSS, david quammen's "the soul of viktor tronko" is a fictionalized version of the yuri nosenko defection and very good and readable in a le carre kind of way

also i re-read the looking glass war and i take back it being boring. i mean its boring in the way le carre is boring, and its very overdramatic at the end, too much oh the humanity as people complain about upthread, but it gets the dilapidated upper middle class bureaucrats stuff really well

watched movie again, thread was too harsh on it imo

liked it a lot; but haven't read book or seen series so most of thread discussion on it = ?, shrug

seven part BBC series.

go on, now. I'll wait.

ok. hold on, shdn't take me long

uh that was three minutes ago you were told

watched the movie again too. have seen it half a dozen times now i think. if i have nits to pick it's only because it is less good than the novel or TV series - it's fine as a movie tho. weirdly the pace of it feels a lot faster now than when i saw it in the cinema, lot of abrupt scene jumps

yeah agreed on rewatch.

...brb...

getting ready for my annual rescreen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCm3IrscqH8

Tom Hardy wishes he was Hywel Bennett every day of his life

watched the bbc series of this for the first time y'day mainly due to the praise given to it by dmac and NV. my word it was a terrific way to spend a saturday. halfway through smiley's people today. good work guys.

It's awesome to me that there are still people experiencing this 36 year old tv miniseries for the first time. Glad you enjoyed it!

Rah but iirc it was this thread and NV pointed me the way of the BBC version also

It is so brilliant, one of the most perfectly conceived tv series in history. But no way does Ricki Tarr turn into early 90's Shelley :(

mini series is so classic and i think also the least sexualized piece of art ever produced

Watched episode six today, opens with Smiley meeting Jerry Westerby (Joss Ackland) - who had voiced suspicions a year earlier - at the bar. Smiley brings them back up. Anyway, there's something almost unbearably great about these meetings in TTSP - people feeling out each other, or rather people feeling out Smiley, playing at jolly old fellows, stuck up sceptics - soon enough opening up and giving him what he wants, or at least some honest truth. There's talk, nervous ticks and smiles - and at the end you're nearly almost left with the feeling you watched the performance of some thoroughly lonely, hollowed thing, grasping for any companionship. And you chuckle and you tear up. And Ackland does so much here in just the first few minutes.

Yeah Auckland really males an impression in his few scenes

anyone watching the night manager?

something with both Tom Hiddleston + Hugh Laurie in it? I'd end putting my head through the television.

o nice gon check it out

The Night Manager recap: episode one – as sexy and sumptuous as TV gets

It’s got revolution, respectful sex and a hospitality professional who looks set to thwart international arms dealing without even dislodging his tie pin. No wonder it’s the spy thrillers that get the big budgets

yeah surprisingly into it

will watch any le carre adaptation

I watched the movie for the first time, and while I really liked it, one thing bugged me a lot... I haven't read the book, so maybe it's better explained there? What I'm talking about is how Smiley figures out what the whole Polyakov/Witchcraft thing really is (a setup by Karla) and what it's ultimate goal is (to feed false intel to Americans that gets "confirmed" as genuine by MI6). He seems confident enough in his theory to get angry at the minister (his superior) who still believes in Witchcraft, yet we never see him discovering any evidence that would make him suspect Polyakov is anything else than what Alleline thinks he is. Sure, once he finds out the mole has been in contact with Polyakov, it becomes evident that Polyakov is a triple agent, because otherwise the mole would've informed on him to Karla, and the whole Witchcraft operation would've ended. But Smiley makes his grand statement to the minister before the scene where we find out all four mole suspects know who Polyakov is and are in regular contact with him. (Previously it was implied only Alleline knew who was behind Witchcraft; if Smiley presumed that this was the case, and Alleline wasn't the mole, then the mole wouldn't have been able to burn Polyakov.)

loved NGHTMGR

Yeah it was great despite a couple of plotting clangers that can probably be attributed to Le Carre not really understanding modern technology.

Even allowing for the alarm system, it was a bit weird that Roper kept his top secret arms documents in an unlocked desk drawer when he was fully capable of getting a safe.

no cameras anywhere in mallorca either, but hey

So I watched the BBC series, and liked it immensely, though it didn't really answer the question I asked above: how does Smiley figure out what Witchcraft really is? We never really see him uncovering any evidence towards that, so I guess we're supposed to think it's an educated guess, but it seems he's taking a huge risk based on that guess, making the Circus leaders + the Minister + anyone else who believed in Witchcraft look like fools.

There's one little detail that bugged me in the TV series: the small oil painting at Smiley's house. When Haydon visits Smiley's home, he comments that the painting wasn't there before, and Smiley says he bought it recently, and Haydon says he likes it a lot. And then in the final episode, when it's all over, there's a scene where Smiley is looking at the painting pensively. It seems to me the painting was some kind of signifier for the Smiley/Haydon/Ann triangle drama, but was the more than that to it? I couldn't quite see what the painting depicted (some kind of a pastoral scene?), is it a well-known image or something?

It was a painting of witchcraft being a setup

Lol!

did haydon paint the painting