Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011)

When I heard that Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was to be remade as a feature movie, I was intrigued. I had picked up A Perfect Spy years ago, but could not really get into it. At the time, I was more into the Tom Clancy style of spy-thriller.

Reading all the hype surrounding the new movie, and the talk about the book and the old TV series with Alec Guinness, I decided would see what the fuss was about. I read the three books of the Karla Trilogy in quick succession. And then watched the TV series, and its sequel Smiley’s People, in a week.

One of the defining qualities of the TV series was how ordinary everything was. There was hardly any background music to give emotional cues, cinematography was plain, giving a pedestrian’s eye view, no big explosions, no fancy technology. And the Circus, the spy headquarters where Smiley worked, was a dull, poorly lit bureaucracy. Guinness' Smiley was placid. There were no "fireworks" to demonstrate his genius to the audience. I thought this was very faithful to the books. One never got a sense of the complexity of Smiley's thought until close to the end.

The books and the corresponding TV series were brilliant. For someone who loves puzzles and mysteries, the slow exposition of the plot built up tension perfectly. As the pieces came together, I found my heart racing towards the end of the books. The TV series, mini-series really, worked as well.

Coming from that, I found the new movie a little disappointing. Of course, many changes had to be made given the length of the film. Small side plots had to be pruned, or simplified. I think all that was done very well. It was the feel that I did not like as much, especially the depiction of the Circus. The devil was, as usual, in the details. The Circus felt too slick, though I did very much like the isolated meeting room. It felt "modern retro", the deliberate work of a designer, rather than a bureacracy accreting bits and pieces after WWII into the Cold War.

My biggest beef was Control's use of the chess pieces. It was hokey. No organized investigator would do that sort of thing: it's pointless. It doesn't serve the purpose of organizing information to aid discovery.

I didn't mind as much the sweeping exterior shots. Very picturesque. I did mind the very modern way of filming, where the camera is always moving, giving action even when all the characters are doing are standing around talking.

Another minor point was the change of Peter Guillam into a gay character. It seemed a calculated point to accentuate the gay characters: Gerald himself, Jim Prideaux, and Peter Guillam. There were also incidental bits of action in the party scenes to, what, show how many gay spies there were in the Circus? It didn't affect the plot, but it felt forced, to me. And it also means that should there be sequels, there would have to be adjustments made to Guillam.

A larger point is that given the amount of time available, we never got a good feel for the suspects, Alleline et al. One got glances of their faces, and a few words from each.

As for Gary Oldman, he was a very different Smiley. Still calm, though a little less meek, and giving off a hint of a threat of violence. A little menace under the surface. I liked his performance, though he hardly felt like a central character in the movie. There was less of a sense of the milieu revolving around him than there was in the books and TV series.

 

 

HUMANWINE, Jake von Slatt, and Make:TV

This is the first of a series of photo backlog-clearing posts…

First, a little background. PBS is shooting a TV series based on Make Magazine, called Make:TV. It’s all about techie DIY, and empowering ordinary people to void their warranties. ;)

So, for the pilot episode, they feature Jake von Slatt of Steampunk Workshop. Besides being a DIYer who makes steampunkish things, he had donated a bunch of stuff to Holly and M@ of HUMANWINE, who have converted a bus to biodiesel and in which they will live and tour with the rest of the band. HUMANWINE played a small show with a few other bands (which I didn’t stay for, it being a Sunday evening) at the old warehouse complex that Pan9 used to be in. Here are the pix. (Click on them to see the fullsize, and get to the rest of the set.) Jake also blogged about this, and put a video up at Google Video:

Technorati Tags: allston, gig, humanwine, music, photography, steampunk, tv

Salvador Dali on TV

Followup to the John Cage post, here’s Salvador Dali on What’s My Line?, a classic game show.

Here’s more of him, this time appearing in commercials. See the related videos.

Technorati Tags: advertising, dali, what's my line, game show, television

Mah na mah na

Remember “Man na mah na”, the musical sketch from Sesame Street (or was it The Muppet Show)? Well, apparently, that song was composed for a Swedish porn flick.

Live action “Simpsons” opening sequence

“The Simpsons” had a new opening sequence filmed in Bromley, England. It was live action. Google has a download link, too.

Technorati Tags: bromley, live action, simpsons

LIGO video

The project that I did my PhD in, Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), has, with the National Science Foundation (NSF), produced a 20 minute video entitled “Einstein’s Messengers” targeted towards the general public. It’s a NOVA-style program. You can watch a streaming version online.

Technorati Tags: gravitational physics, LIGO, physics, science, television, video

Cory Doctorow speaks about an unencumbered net

Or, really, how corporate bigwigs are trying to cripple the fundamental openness of the net. Listen
here.

Listening to ITC-Web2.0-CoryDoctorow-2004.10.07 by Search is a Platform (Web 2.0)

Eminem’s Mosh

So, MTV will be playing Eminem’s new activist video Mosh in medium rotation, according to this post (pointing to this blog entry at GNN by the director of said video). You can vote for it to show on TRL, if so inclined. The video is pretty inspiring. Download it at the link above, or my stashed copy here (47 MB).