#.....tinker tailor conman spy

[fairyarmour]

2019/2019/2020

Wanted to put all the finished TPOH arts I made for fandom events in one place! First and third done for TPOH Telephone and the second for the fanzine.

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this Week # 147 (Year 3/Week 43):

Loro ("Them"), my 7th decadent film by Paolo Sorrentino, the breakneck, modern-day Fellini. An epic, outrageous, over-the-top look into the outlandish life of charismatic billionaire king Silvio Berlusconi. MTV-style music video of power, sex, ultimate corruption and unlimited money. A sprawling saga of a modern day Citizen Kane, promiscuous, charming and greedy. As well as a young pimp who runs an escort service, and supplies him with a harem of girls.

I love noticing chronological symmetry in movies, for example, at the exact middle of the movie (starting at 1:11), there’s this central, electrifying scene of a telephone sales pitch, even better than DiCaprio selling 40,000 penny stock shares at 'The wolf of Wall Street'. Between serving as a prime minister and serving time, Tony Servillo's Berlusconi, the greatest salesman in Italy, is in a funk, and he needs to find his groove again. So late at night he opens a telephone book at random and calls some old lady from a listing, and in 6 minutes, he sells her an overpriced apartment that have not even been built yet. I wish I could find an isolated clip of that scene somewhere. Bellissimo!

And just today, I read about the real Berlusconi’s need to accumulate, his vast, 25,000 item art collection!

🍿

"Fugayzi, fugazi. It's a whazy. It's a woozie. It's fairy dust..."

So - because of the scene above - I had to stop everything I do, and indulge, one more time with Scorsese's The wolf of Wall Street. A similarly decadent, excessive, cocaine-fueled roller coaster ride of money and addiction. With judge Fran Lebowitz, Spike Jonze as Dwayne, the broker above, and of course Palm Spring's Cristin Milioti as the first wife.

So far I’ve seen only about half of Scorsese’s 42 full features, so after ‘Flower moon’ I’m going to deep dive, and watch all the ones I’ve missed.

🍿

Another film I’ve been re-watching over and over, Paweł Pawlikowski's heartbreaking romance Cold War. When I saw it the first time, I thought it was very complex (maybe I was stoned), but it's actually extremely simple, accessible and direct. Joanna Kulig's ethereal beauty and the powerful life force of her character 'Zula' are unforgettable. 10/10.

[Waiting for his next film, The island, with Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara.]

🍿

John le Carré X 3:

🍿 Errol Morris's most recent documentary, The Pigeon Tunnel, a lengthy conversation with the fascinating writer le Carré. Based on his auto-biography of the same name. It's mostly about deceit and betrayals, as well as his tortured relationship with his larger-than-life conman father, "Ronnie". Lots of elaborate re-enactments, staged and fanciful. My best friend Danny (RIP) used to be an avid le Carré reader and fan.

🍿 First watch: The masterful The spy who came in from the cold. The first classic film adaptation and based on his spectacularly successful debut novel. Double and triple crossing in the dark days of the cold War. It was supposed to be the Anti-James Bond, and established a prolific genre of 'Flawed Spies', "a bunch of seedy squalid bastards like me, little men, drunkards, queers, henpecked husbands, civil servants playing 'Cowboys and Indians' to brighten their rotten little lives." Magnificent Richard Burton play.

[I also have to dig in and do a Martin Ritt marathon one day!]

🍿 Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy (the 2011 film, not the Alec Guinness TV series): A slow, melancholic and perfectly atmospheric thriller, with an all-star cast (Including a cameo of le Carré himself! Photo Above). Gary Oldman's vacant gaze got me to want watching his complete filmography. Also, it's funny how many movies open or end with Charles Trenet's La Mer!

Superb! 9/10.

🍿

2 horror films from British director Steve McQueen:

🍿 While waiting for his latest ‘Occupied City’, I caught his horrifying directorial debut Hunger from 2008. A re-telling of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, where 10 IRA volunteers starved themselves to death, as a protest against the British government. It is told from inside the prison cells. Very few films were able to transfer the horror and hopelessness of being abused by ruthless authorities like this one.

And in the middle of this gruesome narrative, there's an astounding scene, unbroken and shot with a static camera on Bobby Sands and a priest who came to see him, talking that lasts for 17 minutes. Simply amazing.

Best and most chilling film experience of the week.

Like Norm McDonald used to say (about Hitler): 'The more I learn about Margaret Thatcher, the more I don't care for her'.

🍿 Western Deep, a 2002 short, an near-abstract poem about the workers / slaves who work at the world's deepest gold mine in South Africa. Dark, jarring and claustrophobic. 1/10.

[Now that I've seen McQueen's 4 features, I have to move on to his 'Small Axe' television anthology.]

🍿

My first 2 films by Romanian Cristian Mungiu:

🍿 His latest contemplative drama R.M.N. is set in a backwater multi-ethnic village in Transylvania, where long-simmering tensions erupt over questions of national identity, globalization, prejudices and xenophobia. It opens with pig slaughtering, and ends with an old man who hangs himself in the forest. It's harsh, and coarse, and repressive. But it's told in a sublime style. And in the middle of all the ugliness and misogyny, a woman practices her cello by playing Yumeji's haunting theme from 'In the mood for love'. 9/10.

🍿 So I finally also saw his highly-acclaimed 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days from 2007, considered as 'one of the greatest films of the 21 century'. But the depressing story of a desperate young woman who's trying to obtain an illegal abortion in the last dark days of communist Romania, was as pleasant as a visit to Nicolae Ceaușescu's dungeon: Dingy, stressfully-ugly and miserable.

🍿

“…Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?…”

Airplane!, another re-watch of this classic evergreen - the No. 1 modern American comedy on most lists? With cameos by Ethel Merman, young Mike Ehrmantraut and James Howe, one of the most prolific character actors of all time, as a Japanese general committing Harakiri. Isn't it strange that the guy who played Ted Striker never had a career in Hollywood after that?

Maybe it's time for Edgar Wright to re-make 'Airplane 2024!'?

🍿

5 more by female directors:

🍿 Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky, a dark dialogue-rich, two-person crime drama about old friendship and betrayal over one long night in Philadelphia. John Cassavetes is a small-time hood with a contract out on his life. And Peter Falk is his lifelong friend who may or may not be trying to help him escape his fate. A nuanced portrayal of fragile masculinity.

🍿 The royal hotel, my second film by Australian Kitty Green, and also starring Julia Garner, playing another powerless young woman suffering male abuse and exploitation (after 'The Assistant'). Two young backpackers take a job at an outback bar, in "the middle of nowhere". A scary, ominous thriller with escalating threats and an uncomfortable sense of mortal danger. Too unpleasant for me - 4/10.

🍿 Bus Girl is the first film directed by Jessica Henwick, who plays the 2nd girl in 'The Royal Hotel'. A cute little culinary fantasy, shot entirely on a cell phone. 6/10.

🍿 Aurora’s Sunrise, my second Armenian film (after ‘The colour of pomegranates’). An adult animated feature about the Albanian genocide, through the eyes of a real life young woman, who survived the hellish years, and escaped to America, where she became celebrated Hollywood star in 1919, when she played herself in 'Carnival of souls'.

Ethnic cleansing, mass murder, exterminations, cruelty and hatred ... Armenians, Jews, Palestinians, Uygurs, American Indians, Tutsis... It's always the same fucking thing!

(Via).

🍿 Affairs of the Art, a British-Canadian craziness by Joanna Quinn, nominated in 2021 for best animated short. Spectacular and surrealistic visuals about a 59-year-old lady, a zany artist at heart, and her fully-eclectic family. Very Roald Dahl. 9/10.

🍿

On the fringe, a recent Spanish social drama with Penélope Cruz. Stressful and depressive story about folks that are being evicted from their homes. Focus on grey, marginalized and helpless people, ground up by bureaucracy, nickel and dimed by poverty, lack of time and resources is a tough watch. Especially when the story is not wrapped up with optimism or a happy end. 6/10.

🍿

“I’m glad we had this conversation…”

Viking, an alternative, "indie" science fiction allegory, scientifically naive, and featuring low-low tech and drama. An odd, simulated Canadian proximation. In spite of mirroring some scenes from '2001' and 'The Shining', it's not close to either one. Meh. 2/10.

🍿

"Kill the wabbit!"

Chuck Jones's What's Opera, Doc?, considered to be the greatest animated short film of all time. A 7 minutes riff on Wagner's Nibelung and Disney's Fantasia, and the first cartoon short to be selected for preservation for the National Film Registry. With Mel Blanc and Elmer Fudd.

🍿

... No fellow could ignore / The little girl next door / She sure looked sweet in her first evening gown / Now there's a charge for what she used to give for free ... 

"Today, I learned" that satirist & mathematician Tom Lehrer is still alive, at ninety five! He was extremely popular in the 60's and basically retired in 1972. Also, that [like Jonas Salk] he transferred all the songs he ever recorded to the public domain - "For the greater good!"

In 1967, he recorded his excellent Copenhagen concert for posterity. Delightful!

2 extras: I got it from Agnes (which is about the spread of VD), and Bergman's actor Lars Ekborg’s singing I Tom Lehrers vackra värld in Swedish.

🍿

The Insurrectionist next door, my first documentary by Alexandra Pelosi, Nancy's daughter. She was trying to humanize about a dozen individuals who participate in the January 6 attack, by befriending them and their their families, and by allowing all of them to explain that they were "just at the wrong place at the wrong time". In the end, it was just sad to see the poor children who had to cry goodbye when their father went to jail.

🍿

(My complete movie list is here)

[grigori77]

2020 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 3)

10.  WOLFWALKERS – eleven years ago, Irish director Tomm Moore exploded onto the animated cinema scene with The Secret of Kells, a spellbinding feature debut which captivated audiences the world over and even garnered an Oscar nomination.  Admittedly I didn’t actually even know about it until I discovered his work through his astonishing follow-up, Song of the Sea (another Academy Award nominee), in 2015, so when I finally caught it I was already a fan of Moore’s work.  It’s been a similarly long wait for his third feature, but he’s genuinely pulled off a hat-trick, delivering a third flawless film in a row which OF COURSE means that his latest feature is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, my top animated feature of 2020.  I could even be tempted to say it’s his best work to date … this is an ASTONISHING film, a work of such breath-taking, spell-binding beauty that I spent its entire hour and three-quarters glued to the screen, simple mesmerised by the wonder and majesty of this latest iteration of the characteristically stylised “Cartoon Saloon” look.  It’s also liberally steeped in Moore’s trademark Celtic vibe and atmosphere, once again delving deep into his homeland’s rich and evocative cultural history and mythology while also bringing us something far more original and personal – this time the titular supernatural beings are magical near-human beings whose own subconscious can assume the form of very real wolves.  Set in a particularly dark time in Irish history – namely 1650, when Oliver Cromwell was Lord Protector – the story follows Robyn (Honor Kneafsey, probably best known for the Christmas Prince films), the impetuous and spirited young daughter of English hunter Bill Goodfellowe (Sean Bean), brought in by the Protectorate to rid the city of Kilkenny of the wolves plaguing the area.  One day fate intervenes and Robyn meets Mebh Og MacTire (The Girl at the End of the Garden‘s Eve Whittaker), a wild girl living in the woods, whose accidental bite gives her strange dreams in which she becomes a wolf – turns out Mebh is a wolfwalker, and now so is Robyn … every aspect of this film is an utter triumph for Moore and co, who have crafted a work of living, breathing cinematic art that’s easily the equal to (if not even better than) the best that Disney, Dreamworks or any of the other animation studios could create.  Then there’s the excellent voice cast – Bean brings fatherly warmth and compassion to the role that belies his character’s intimidating size, while Kneafsey and Whittaker make for a sweet and sassy pair as they bond in spite of powerful cultural differences, and the masterful Simon McBurney (Harry Potter, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) brings cool, understated menace to the role of Cromwell himself.  This is a film with plenty of emotional heft to go with its marvels, and once again displays the welcome dark side which added particular spice to Moore’s previous films, but ultimately this is still a gentle and heartfelt work of wonder that makes for equally suitable viewing for children as for those who are still kids at heart – ultimately, then, this is another triumph for one of the most singularly original filmmakers working in animation today, and if Wolfwalkers doesn’t make it third time lucky come Oscars-time then there’s no justice in the world …

9.  WONDER WOMAN 1984 – probably the biggest change for 2020 compared to pretty much all of the past decade is how different the fortunes of superhero cinema turned out to be.  A year earlier the Marvel Cinematic Universe had dominated all, but the DC Extended Universe still got a good hit in with big surprise hit Shazam!  Fast-forward to now and things are VERY different – DC suddenly came out in the lead, but only because Marvel’s intended heavy-hitters (two MCU movies, the first Venom sequel and potential hot-shit new franchise starter Morbius: the Living Vampire) found themselves continuously pushed back thanks to (back then) unforeseen circumstances which continue to shit all over our theatre-going slate for the immediate future.  In the end DC’s only SERIOUS competition turned out to be NETFLIX … never mind, at least we got ONE big established superhero blockbuster into the cinemas before the end of the year that the whole family could enjoy, and who better to headline it than DC’s “newest” big screen megastar, Diana Prince? Back in 2017 Monster’s Ball director Patty Jenkins’ monumental DCEU standalone spectacularly realigned the trajectory of a cinematic franchise that was visibly flagging, redesigning the template for the series’ future which has since led to some (mostly) consistently impressive subsequent offerings.  Needless to say it was a damn tough act to follow, but Jenkins and co-writers Geoff Johns (Arrow and The Flash) and David Callaham (The Expendables, Zombieland: Double Tap, future MCU entry Shang-Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings) have risen to the challenge in fine style, delivering something which pretty much equals that spectacular franchise debut … as has Gal Gadot, who’s now OFFICIALLY made the role her own thanks to yet another showstopping and definitive performance as the unstoppable Amazonian goddess living amongst us.  She’s older and wiser than in the first film, but still hasn’t lost that forthright honesty and wonderfully pure heart we’ve come to love ever since her introduction in Zack Snyder’s troublesome but ultimately underrated Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (yes, that’s right, I said it!), and Gadot’s clear, overwhelming commitment to the role continues to pay off magnificently as she once again proves that Diana is THE VERY BEST superhero in the DCEU cinematic pantheon.  Although it takes place several decades after its predecessor, WW84 is, obviously, still very much a period piece, Jenkins and co this time perfectly capturing the sheer opulent and over-the-top tastelessness of the 1980s in all its big-haired, bad-suited, oversized shoulder-padded glory while telling a story that encapsulates the greedy excessiveness of the Reagan era, perfectly embodied in the film’s nominal villain, Max Lord (The Mandalorian himself, Pedro Pascal), a wishy-washy wannabe oil tycoon conman who chances upon a supercharged wish-rock and unleashes a devastating supernatural “monkey’s paw” upon the world. To say any more would give away a whole raft of spectacular twists and turns that deserve to be enjoyed good and cold, although they did spoil one major surprise in the trailer when they teased the return of Diana’s first love, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) … needless to say this is another big blockbuster bursting with big characters, big action and BIG IDEAS, just what we’ve come to expect after Wonder Woman’s first triumphant big screen adventure.  Interestingly, the film starts out feeling like it’s going to be a bubbly, light, frothy affair – after a particularly stunning all-action opening flashback to Diana’s childhood on Themyscira, the film proper kicks off with a bright and breezy atmosphere that feels a bit like the kind of Saturday morning cartoon action the consistently impressive set-pieces take such unfettered joy in parodying, but as the stakes are raised the tone grows darker and more emotionally potent, the storm clouds gathering for a spectacularly epic climax that, for once, doesn’t feel too overblown or weighed down by its visual effects, while the intelligent script has unfathomable hidden depths to it, making us think far more than these kinds of blockbusters usually do.  It’s really great to see Chris Pine return since he was one of the best things about the first movie, and his lovably childlike wide-eyed wonder at this brave new world perfectly echoes Diana’s own last time round; Kristen Wiig, meanwhile, is pretty phenomenal throughout as Dr Barbara Minerva, the initially geeky and timid nerd who discovers an impressive inner strength but ultimately turns into a superpowered apex predator as she becomes one of Wonder Woman’s most infamous foes, the Cheetah; Pascal, of course, is clearly having the time of his life hamming it up to the hilt as Lord, playing gloriously against his effortlessly cool, charismatic action hero image to deliver a compellingly troubling examination of the monstrous corrupting influence of absolute power.  Once again, though, the film truly belongs to Gadot – she looks amazing, acts her socks off magnificently, and totally rules the movie.  After this, a second sequel is a no-brainer, because Wonder Woman remains the one DC superhero who’s truly capable of bearing the weight of this particular cinematic franchise on her powerful shoulders – needless to say, it’s already been greenlit, and with both Jenkins and Gadot onboard, I’m happy to sign up for more too …

8.  LOVE & MONSTERS – with the cinemas continuing their frustrating habit of opening for a little while and then closing while the pandemic ebbed and flowed in the months after the summer season, it was starting to look like there might not have been ANY big budget blockbusters to enjoy before year’s end as heavyweights like Black Widow, No Time To Die and Dune pulled back to potentially more certain release slots into 2021 (with only WW84 remaining stubbornly in place for Christmas).  Then Paramount decided to throw us a bone, opting to release this post-apocalyptic horror comedy on-demand in October instead, thus giving me the perfect little present to tie me over during the darkening days of autumn. The end result was a stone-cold gem that came out of nowhere to completely blow critics away, a spectacular sleeper hit that ultimately proved one of the year’s biggest and most brilliant surprises.  Director Michael Matthews may only have had South African indie thriller Five Fingers for Marseilles under his belt prior to this, but he proves he’s definitely a solid talent to watch in the future, crafting a fun and effective thrill-ride that, like all the best horror comedies, is consistently as funny as it is scary, sharing much of the same DNA as this particular mash-up genre’s classics like Tremors and Zombieland and standing up impressively well to such comparisons.  The story, penned by rising star Brian Duffield (who has TWO other entries on this list, Underwater and Spontaneous) and Matthew Robinson (The Invention of Lying, Dora & the Lost City of Gold), is also pretty ingenious and surprisingly original – a meteorite strike has unleashed weird mutagenic pathogens that warp various creepy crawly critters into gigantic monstrosities that have slaughter most of the world’s human population, leaving only a beleaguered, dwindling few to eke out a precarious living in underground colonies. Living in one such makeshift community is Joel Dawson (The Maze Runner’s Dylan O’Brien), a smart and likeable geek who really isn’t very adventurous, is extremely awkward and uncoordinated, and has a problem with freezing if threatened … which makes it all the more inexplicable when he decides, entirely against the advice of everyone he knows, to venture onto the surface so he can make the incredibly dangerous week-long trek to the neighbouring colony where his girlfriend Aimee (Iron Fist’s Jessica Henwick) has ended up.  Joel is, without a doubt, the best role that O’Brien has EVER had, a total dork who’s completely unsuited to this kind of adventure and, in the real world, sure to be eaten alive in the first five minutes, but he’s also such a fantastically believable, fallible everyman that every one of us desperate, pathetic omega-males and females can instantly put ourselves in his place, making it elementarily easy to root for him.  He’s also hilariously funny, his winningly self-deprecating sass and pitch perfect talent for physical comedy making it all the more rewarding watching each gloriously anarchic life-and-death encounter mould him into the year’s most unlikely action hero.  Henwick, meanwhile, once again impresses in a well-written role where she’s able to make a big impression despite her decidedly short screen time, as do the legendary Michael Rooker and brilliant newcomer Ariana Greenblatt as Clyde and Minnow, the adorably jaded, seen-it-all-before pair of “professional survivors” Joel meets en-route, who teach him to survive on the surface.  The action is fast, frenetic and potently visceral, the impressively realistic digital creature effects bringing a motley crew of bloodthirsty beasties to suitably blood-curdling life for the film’s consistently terrifying set-pieces, while the world-building is intricately thought-out and skilfully executed.  Altogether, this was an absolute joy from start to finish, and a film I enthusiastically endorsed to everyone I knew was looking for something fun to enjoy during the frustrating lockdown nights-in.  One of the cinematic year’s best kept secrets then, and a compelling sign of things to come for its up-and-coming director.

7.  PARASITE – I’ve been a fan of master Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho ever since I stumbled across his deeply weird but also thoroughly brilliant breakthrough feature The Host, and it’s a love that’s deepened since thanks to truly magnificent sci-fi actioner Snowpiercer, so I was looking forward to his latest feature as much as any movie geek, but even I wasn’t prepared for just what a runaway juggernaut of a hit this one turned out to be, from the insane box office to all that award-season glory (especially that undeniable clean-sweep at the Oscars). I’ll just come out and say it, this film deserves it all.  It’s EASILY Bong’s best film to date (which is really saying something), a masterful social satire and jet black comedy that raises some genuinely intriguing questions before delivering deeply troubling answers.  Straddling the ever-widening gulf between a disaffected idle rich upper class and impoverished, struggling lower class in modern-day Seoul, it tells the story of the Kim family – father Ki-taek (Bong’s good luck charm, Song Kang-ho), mother Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin), son Ki-woo (Train to Busan’s Choi Woo-shik) and daughter Ki-jung (The Silenced’s Park So-dam) – a poor family living in a run-down basement apartment who live hand-to-mouth in minimum wage jobs and can barely rub two pennies together, until they’re presented with an intriguing opportunity.  Through happy chance, Ki-woon is hired as an English tutor for Park Da-hye (Jung Ji-so), the daughter of a wealthy family, which offers him the chance to recommend Ki-jung as an art tutor to the Parks’ troubled young son, Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun). Soon the rest of the Kims are getting in on the act, the kids contriving opportunities for their father to replace Mr Park’s chauffeur and their mother to oust the family’s long-serving housekeeper, Gook Moon-gwang (Lee Jung-eun), and before long their situation has improved dramatically.  But as they two families become more deeply entwined, cracks begin to show in their supposed blissful harmony as the natural prejudices of their respective classes start to take hold, and as events spiral out of control a terrible confrontation looms on the horizon.  This is social commentary at its most scathing, Bong drawing on personal experiences from his youth to inform the razor-sharp script (co-written by his production assistant Han Jin-won), while he weaves a palpable atmosphere of knife-edged tension throughout to add spice to the perfectly observed dark humour of the situation, all the while throwing intriguing twists and turns at us before suddenly dropping such a massive jaw-dropper of a gear-change that the film completely turns on its head to stunning effect.  The cast are all thoroughly astounding, Song once again dominating the film with a turn at once sloppy and dishevelled but also poignant and heartfelt, while there are particularly noteworthy turns from Lee Sun-kyun as the Parks’ self-absorbed patriarch Dong-ik and Choi Yeo-jeong (The Concubine) as his flighty, easily-led wife Choi Yeon-gyo, as well as a fantastically weird appearance in the latter half from Park Myung-hoon.  This is heady stuff, dangerously seductive even as it becomes increasingly uncomfortable viewing, so that even as the screws tighten and everything goes to hell it’s simply impossible to look away.  Bong Joon-ho really has surpassed himself this time, delivering an existential mind-scrambler that lingers long after the credits have rolled and might even have you questioning your place in society once you’ve thought about it some. It deserves every single award and every ounce of praise it’s been lavished with, and looks set to go down as one of the true cinematic greats of this new decade.  Trust me, if this was a purely critical best-of list it’d be RIGHT AT THE TOP …

6.  THE OLD GUARD – Netflix’ undisputable TOP OFFERING of the summer came damn close to bagging the whole season, and I can’t help thinking that even if some of the stiffer competition had still been present it may well have still finished this high. Gina Prince-Blythewood (Love & Basketball, the Secret Life of Bees) directs comics legend Greg Rucka’s adaptation of his own popular series with uncanny skill and laser-focused visual flair considering there’s nothing on her previous CV to suggest she’d be THIS good at mounting a stomping great ultraviolent action thriller, ushering in a thoroughly engrossing tale of four ancient, invulnerable immortal warriors – Andy AKA Andromache of Scythia (Charlize Theron), Booker AKA Sebastian de Livre (Matthias Schoenaerts), Joe AKA Yusuf Al-Kaysani (Wolf’s Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky AKA Niccolo di Ginova (Trust’s Luca Marinelli) – who’ve been around forever, hiring out their services as mercenaries for righteous causes while jealously guarding their identities for fear of horrific experimentation and exploitation should their true natures ever be discovered.  Their anonymity is threatened, however, when they’re uncovered by former CIA operative James Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who’s working for the decidedly dodgy pharmaceutical conglomerate run by sociopathic billionaire Steven Merrick (Harry Melling, formerly Dudley in the Harry Potter movies), who want to capture these immortals so they can patent whatever it is that makes them keep on ticking … just as a fifth immortal, US Marine Nile Freeman (If Beale Street Could Talk’s KiKi Layne), awakens after being “killed” on deployment in Afghanistan.  The supporting players are excellent, particularly Ejiofor, smart and driven but ultimately principled and deeply conflicted about what he’s doing, even if he does have the best of intentions, and Melling, the kind of loathsome, reptilian scumbag you just love to hate, but the film REALLY DOES belong to the Old Guard themselves – Schoenaerts is a master brooder, spot-on casting as the group’s relative newcomer, only immortal since the Napoleonic Wars but clearly one seriously old soul who’s already VERY tired of the lifestyle, while Joe and Nicky (who met on opposing sides of the Crusades) are simply ADORABLE, an unapologetically matter-of-fact gay couple who are sweet, sassy and incredibly kind, the absolute emotional heart of the film; it’s the ladies, however, that are most memorable here.  Layne is exceptional, investing Nile with a steely intensity that puts her in good stead as her new existence threatens to overwhelm her and MORE THAN qualified to bust heads alongside her elders … but it’s ancient Greek warrior Andy who steals the film, Theron building on the astounding work she did in Atomic Blonde to prove, once and for all, that there’s no woman on Earth who looks better kicking arse than her (as Booker puts it, “that woman has forgotten more ways to kill than entire armies will ever learn”); in her hands, Andy truly is a goddess of death, tough as tungsten alloy and unflappable even in the face of hell itself, but underneath it all she hides a heart as big as any of her friends’.  They’re an impossibly lovable bunch and you feel you could follow them on another TEN adventures like this one, which is just as well, because Prince-Blythewood and Rucka certainly put them through their paces here – the drama is high (but frequently laced with a gentle, knowing sense of humour, particularly whenever Joe and Nicky are onscreen), as are the stakes, and the frequent action sequences are top-notch, executed with rare skill and bone-crunching zest, but also ALWAYS in service to the story.  Altogether this is an astounding film, a genuine victory for its makers and, it seems, for Netflix themselves – it’s become one of the platform’s biggest hits to date, earning well-deserved critical acclaim and great respect and genuine geek love from the fanbase at large.  After this, a sequel is not only inevitable, it’s ESSENTIAL …

5.  MANK – it’s always nice when David Fincher, one of my TOP FIVE ALL TIME FAVOURITE DIRECTORS, drops a new movie, because it can be GUARANTEED to place good and high in my rundown for that year.  The man is a frickin’ GENIUS, a true master of the craft, genuinely one of the auteur’s auteurs.  I’ve NEVER seen him deliver a bad film – even a misfiring Fincher (see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button or Alien 3) is still capable of creating GREAT CINEMA.  How? Why?  It’s because he genuinely LOVES the art form, it’s been his obsession all his life, and he’s spent every day of it becoming the best possible filmmaker he can be.  Who better to tell the story of the creation of one of the ULTIMATE cinematic masterpieces, then?  Benjamin Ross’ acclaimed biopic RKO 281 covered similar ground, presenting a compelling look into the making Citizen Kane, the timeless masterpiece of Hollywood’s ULTIMATE auteur, Orson Welles, but Fincher’s film is more interested in the original inspiration for the story, how it was written and, most importantly, the man who wrote it – Herman J. Mankiewicz, known to his friends as Mank. One of my favourite actors of all time, Gary Oldman, delivers yet another of his career best performances in the lead role, once a man of vision and incredible storytelling skill whose talents have largely been squandered through professional difficulties and personal vices, a burned out one-time great fallen on hard times whom Welles picks up out of the trash, dusts off and offers a chance to create something truly great again.  The only catch?  The subject of their film (albeit dressed up in the guise of fictional newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane) is to be real-life publisher, politico and tycoon William Randolph Hurst (Charles Dance), once Mank’s friend and patron before they had a very public and messy falling out which partly led to his current circumstances.  As he toils away in seclusion on what is destined to become his true masterwork, flashbacks reveal to us the fascinating, moving and ultimately tragic tale of his rise and fall from grace in the movie business, set against the backdrop of one of the most tumultuous periods in American history.  Shooting a script that his own journalist and screenwriter father, Jack, crafted and then failed to bring to the screen himself before his death in 2003, Fincher has been working for almost a quarter century to make this film, and all that passion and drive is writ large on the screen – this is a glorious film ABOUT film, the art of it, the creation of it, and all the dirty little secrets of what the industry itself has always really been like, especially in that most glamorous and illusory of times.  The fact that Fincher shot in black and white and intentionally made it look like it was made in the early 1940s (the “golden age of the Silver Screen”, if you will) may seem like a gimmick, but instead it’s a very shrewd choice that expertly captures the gloss and moodiness of the age, almost looking like a contemporary companion piece to Kane itself, and it’s the perfect way to frame all the sharp-witted observation, subtly subversive character development and murky behind-the-scenes machinations that tell the story.  Oldman is in every way the star here, holding the screen with all the consummate skill and flair we’ve come to expect from him, but there’s no denying the uniformly excellent supporting cast are equal to the task here – Dance is at his regal, charismatic best as Hearst, while Amanda Seyfried is icily classy on the surface but mischievous and lovably grounded underneath as Hearst’s mistress, Marion Davies, who formed the basis for Kane’s most controversial character, Arliss Howard (Full Metal Jacket, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Moneyball) brings nuance and complexity to the role of MGM founder Louis B. Mayer, Tom Pelphrey (Banshee, Ozark) is understated but compelling as Mank’s younger screenwriter brother Joseph, and Lily Collins and Tuppence Middleton exude class and long-suffering stubbornness as the two main women in Mank’s life (his secretary and platonic muse, Rita Alexander, and his wife, Sara), while The Musketeers’ Tom Burke’s periodic but potent appearances as Orson Welles help to drive the story in the “present”.  Another Netflix release which I was (thankfully) able to catch on the big screen during one of the brief lulls between British lockdowns, this was a decidedly meta cinematic experience that perfectly encapsulated not only what is truly required for the creation of a screen epic, but also the latest pinnacle in the career of one of the greatest filmmakers working in the business today, powerful, stirring, intriguing and surprising in equal measure. Certainly it’s one of the most important films ABOUT so far film this century, but is it as good as Citizen Kane?  Boy, that’s a tough one …

4.  ENOLA HOLMES – ultimately, my top film for the autumn/winter movie season was also the film which finally topped my Netflix Original features list, as well as beating all other streaming offerings for the entire year (which is saying something, as you should know by now).  Had things been different, this would have been one of Warner Bros’ BIGGEST releases for the year in the cinema, of that I have no doubt, a surprise sleeper hit which would have taken the world by storm – as it is it’s STILL become a sensation, albeit in a much more mid-pandemic, lockdown home-viewing kind of way.  Before you start crying oh God no, not another Sherlock Holmes adaptation, this is a very different beast from either the Guy Ritchie take or the modernized BBC show, instead side-lining the great literary sleuth in favour of a delicious new AU version, based on The Case of the Missing Marquess, the first novel in the Enola Holmes Mysteries literary series from American YA author Nancy Springer.  Positing that Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill) and his elder brother Mycroft (Sam Claflin) had an equally ingenious and precocious baby sister, the film introduces us to Enola (Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown), who’s been raised at home by their strong-willed mother Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter) to be just as intelligent, well-read and intellectually skilled as her far more advantageously masculine elder siblings.  Then, on the morning of her sixteenth birthday, Enola awakens to find her mother has vanished, putting her in a pretty pickle since this leaves her a ward of Mycroft, a self-absorbed social peacock who finds her to be wilfully free-spirited and completely ill equipped to face the world, concluding that the only solution is sending her to boarding school where she’ll learn to become a proper lady.  Needless to say she’s horrified by the prospect, deciding to run away and search for her mother instead … this is about as perfect a family adventure film as you could wish for, following a vital, capable and compelling teen detective-in-the-making as she embarks on her very first investigation, as well as winding up tangled in a second to boot involving a young runaway noble, Viscount Tewkesbury, the Marquess of Basilwether (Medici’s Louis Partridge), and the film is a breezy, swift-paced and rewardingly entertaining romp that feels like a welcome breath of fresh air for a literary property which, beloved as it may be, has been adapted to death over the years.  Enola Holmes a brilliant young hero who’s perfectly crafted to carry the franchise forward in fresh new directions, and Brown brings her to life with effervescent charm, boisterous energy and mischievous irreverence that are entirely irresistible; Cavill and Claflin, meanwhile, are perfectly cast as the two very different brothers – this Sherlock is much less louche and world-weary than most previous versions, still razor sharp and intellectually restless but with a comfortable ease and a youthful spring in his step that perfectly suits the actor, while Mycroft is as superior and arrogant as ever, a preening arse we derive huge enjoyment watching Enola consistently get the best of; Bonham Carter doesn’t get a lot of screen-time but as we’d expect she does a lot with what she has to make the practical, eccentric and unapologetically modern Eudoria thoroughly memorable, while Partridge is carefree and likeable as the naïve but irresistible Tewkesbury, and there are strong supporting turns from Frances de la Tour as his stately grandmother, the Dowager, Susie Wokoma (Crazyhead, Truth Seekers) as Emily, a feisty suffragette who runs a jujitsu studio, Burn Gorman as dastardly thug-for-hire Linthorn, and Four Lions’ Adeel Akhtar as a particularly scuzzy Inspector Lestrade.  Seasoned TV director Harry Bradbeer (Fleabag, Killing Eve) makes his feature debut with an impressive splash, unfolding the action at a brisk pace while keeping the narrative firmly focused on an intricate mystery plot that throws in plenty of ingenious twists and turns before a suitably atmospheric climax and pleasing denouement which nonetheless artfully sets up more to come in the future, while screenwriter Jack Thorne (His Dark Materials, The Scouting Book for Boys, Wonder) delivers strong character work and liberally peppers the dialogue with a veritable cavalcade of witty zingers.  Boisterous, compelling, amusing, affecting and exciting in equal measure, this is a spirited and appealing slice of cinematic escapism that flatters its viewers and never talks down to them, a perfect little period adventure for a cosy Sunday afternoon.  Obviously there’s plenty of potential for more, and with further books to adapt there’s more than enough material for a pile of sequels – Neflix would be barmy indeed to turn their nose up at this opportunity …

3.  1917 – it’s a rare thing for a film to leave me truly shell-shocked by its sheer awesomeness, for me to walk out of a cinema in a genuine daze, unable to talk or even really think about much of anything for a few hours because I’m simply marvelling at what I’ve just witnessed.  Needless to say, when I do find a film like that (Fight Club, Inception, Mad Max: Fury Road) it usually earns a place very close to my heart indeed.  The latest tour-de-force from Sam Mendes is one of those films – an epic World War I thriller that plays out ENTIRELY in one shot, which doesn’t simply feel like a glorified gimmick or stunt but instead is a genuine MASTERPIECE of film, a mesmerising journey of emotion and imagination in a shockingly real environment that’s impossible to tear your eyes away from.  Sure, Mendes has impressed us before – his first film, American Beauty, is a GREAT movie, one of the most impressive feature debuts of the 2000s, while Skyfall is, in my opinion, quite simply THE BEST BOND FILM EVER MADE – but this is in a whole other league.  It’s an astounding achievement, made all the more impressive when you realise that there’s very little trickery at play here, no clever digital magic (just some augmentation here and there), it’s all real locations and sets, filmed in long, elaborately choreographed takes blended together with clever edits to make it as seamless as possible – it’s not the first film to try to do this (remember Birdman? Bushwick?), but I’ve never seen it done better, or with greater skill. But it’s not just a clever cinematic exercise, there’s a genuine story here, told with guts and urgency, and populated by real flesh and blood characters – the heart of the film is True History of the Kelly Gang’s George MacKay and Dean Chapman (probably best known as Tommen Baratheon in Game of Thrones) as Lance Corporals Will Schofield and Tom Blake, the two young tommies sent out across enemy territory on a desperate mission to stop a British regiment from rushing headlong into a German trap (Tom himself has a personal stake in this because his brother is an officer in the attack).  They’re a likeable pair, very human and relatable throughout, brave and true but never so overtly heroic that they stretch credibility, so when tragedy strikes along the way it’s particularly devastating; both deliver exceptional performances that effortlessly carry us through the film, and they’re given sterling support from a selection of top-drawer British talent, from Sherlock stars Andrew Scott and Benedict Cumberbatch to Mark Strong and Colin Firth, each delivering magnificently in small but potent cameos.  That said, the cinematography and art department are the BIGGEST stars here, masterful veteran DOP Roger Deakins (The Shawshank Redemption, Blade Runner 2049 and pretty much the Coen Brothers’ entire back catalogue among MANY others) making every frame sing with beauty, horror, tension or tragedy as the need arises, and the environments are SO REAL it feels less like production design than that someone simply sent the cast and crew back in time to film in the real Northern France circa 1917 – from a nightmarish trek across No Man’s Land to a desperate chase through a ruined French village lit only by dancing flare-light in the darkness before dawn, every scene is utterly immersive and simply STUNNING.  I don’t think it’s possible for Mendes to make a film better than this, but I sure hope he gives it a go all the same.  Either way, this was the most incredible, exhausting, truly AWESOME experience I had at the cinema all year – it’s a film that DESERVES to be seen on the big screen, and I feel truly sorry for those who missed the chance …

2.  BIRDS OF PREY & THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN – the only reason 1917 isn’t at number two is because Warner Bros.’ cinematic DC Extended Universe project FINALLY got round to bringing my favourite DC Comics title to the big screen.  It was been the biggest pleasure of my cinematic year getting to see my top DC superheroines brought to life on the big screen, and it was done in high style, in my opinion THE BEST of the DCEU films to date (yup, I loved it EVEN MORE than the Wonder Woman movies).  It was also great seeing Harley Quinn return after her show-stealing turn in David Ayer’s clunky but ultimately still hugely enjoyable Suicide Squad, better still that they got her SPOT ON this time – this is the Harley I’ve always loved in the comics, unpredictable, irreverent and entirely without regard for what anyone else thinks of her, as well as one talented psychiatrist.  Margot Robbie once more excels in the role she was basically BORN to play, clearly relishing the chance to finally do Harley TRUE justice, and she’s a total riot from start to finish, infectiously lovable no matter what crazy, sometimes downright REPRIHENSIBLE antics she gets up to.  Needless to say she’s the nominal star here, her latest ill-advised adventure driving the story – finally done with the Joker and itching to make her emancipation official, Harley publicly announces their breakup by blowing up Ace Chemicals (their love spot, basically), inadvertently painting a target on her back in the process since she’s no longer under the assumed protection of Gotham’s feared Clown Prince of Crime – but that doesn’t mean she eclipses the other main players the movie’s REALLY supposed to be about.  Each member of the Birds of Prey is beautifully written and brought to vivid, arse-kicking life by what had to be 2020’s most exciting cast – Helena Bertinelli, the Huntress, is the perfect character for Mary Elizabeth Winstead to finally pay off on that action hero potential she showed in Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, but this is a MUCH more enjoyable role outside of the fight choreography because while Helena may be a world-class dark avenger, socially she’s a total dork, which just makes her thoroughly adorable; Rosie Perez is similarly perfect casting as Renee Montoya, the uncompromising pint-sized Gotham PD detective who kicks against the corrupt system no matter what kind of trouble it gets her into, and just gets angrier all the time, paradoxically making us like her even more; and then there’s the film’s major controversy, at least as far as the fans are concerned, namely one Cassandra Cain.  Sure, this take is VERY different from the comics’ version (a nearly mute master assassin who went on to become the second woman to wear the mask of Batgirl before assuming her own crime-fighting mantle as Black Bat and now Orphan), but personally I like to think this is simply Cass at THE VERY START of her origin story, leaving plenty of time for her to discover her warrior origins when the DCEU finally gets around to introducing her mum, Lady Shiva (personally I want Michelle Yeoh to play her, but that’s just me) – anyways, here she’s a skilled child pickpocket whose latest theft inadvertently sets off the larger central plot, and newcomer Ella Jay Basco brings a fantastic pre-teen irreverence and spiky charm to the role, beautifully playing against Robbie’s mercurial energy.  My favourite here BY FAR, however, is Dinah Lance, aka the Black Canary (not only my favourite Bird of Prey but my very favourite DC superheroine PERIOD), the choice of up-and-comer Jurnee Smollet-Bell (Friday Night Lights, Underground) proving to be the film’s most inspired casting – a club singer with the metahuman ability to emit piercing supersonic screams, she’s also a ferocious martial artist (in the comics she’s one of the very best fighters IN THE WORLD), as well as a wonderfully pure soul you just can’t help loving, and it made me SO UNBELIEVABLY HAPPY that they got my Canary EXACTLY RIGHT.  Altogether they’re a fantastic bunch of badass ladies, basically my perfect superhero team, and the way they’re all brought together (along with Harley, of course) is beautifully thought out and perfectly executed … they’ve also got one hell of a threat to overcome, namely Gotham crime boss Roman Sionis, the Black Mask, one of the Joker’s chief rivals – Ewan McGregor brings his A-game in a frustratingly rare villainous turn (my number one bad guy for the movie year), a monstrously narcissistic, woman-hating control freak with a penchant for peeling off the faces of those who displease him, sharing some exquisitely creepy chemistry with Chris Messina (The Mindy Project) as Sionis’ nihilistic lieutenant Victor Zsasz.  This is about as good as superhero cinema gets, a perfect example of the sheer brilliance you get when you switch up the formula to create something new, an ultra-violent, unapologetically R-rated middle finger to the classic tropes, a fantastic black comedy thrill ride that’s got to be the most full-on feminist blockbuster ever made – it’s helmed by a woman (Dead Pigs director Cathy Yan), written by a woman (Bumblebee’s Christina Hodson), produced by more women and ABOUT a bunch of badass women magnificently triumphing over toxic masculinity in all its forms.  It’s also simply BRILLIANT – the cast are all clearly having a blast, the action sequences are first rate (the spectacular GCPD evidence room fight in which Harley gets to REALLY cut loose is the undisputable highlight), it has a gleefully anarchic sense of humour and is simply BURSTING with phenomenal homages, references and in-jokes for the fans (Bruce the hyena! Stuffed beaver! Roller derby!).  It’s also got a killer soundtrack, populated almost exclusively by numbers from female artists.  Altogether, then, this is the VERY BEST the DCEU has to offer to date, and VERY NEARLY my absolute FAVOURITE film of 2020.  Give it all the love you can, it sure as hell deserves it.

1.  TENET – granted, the streaming platforms (particularly Netflix and Amazon) certainly saved our cinematic summer, but I’m still IMMEASURABLY glad that my ultimate top-spot winner FOR THE WHOLE YEAR was one I got to experience on THE BIG SCREEN. You gotta hand it to Christopher Nolan, he sure hung in there, stubbornly determined that his latest cinematic masterpiece WOULD be released in cinemas in the summer (albeit ultimately landing JUST inside the line in the final week of August and ultimately taking the bite at the box office because of the still shaky atmosphere), and it was worth all the fuss because, for me, this was THE PERFECT MOVIE for me to get return to cinemas with.  I mean, okay, in the end it WASN’T the FIRST new movie I saw after the first reopening, that honour went to Unhinged, but THIS was my first real Saturday night-out big screen EXPERIENCE since March.  Needless to say, Nolan didn’t disappoint this time any more than he has on any of his consistently spectacular previous releases, delivering another twisted, mind-boggling headfuck of a full-blooded experiential sensory overload that comes perilously close to toppling his long-standing auteur-peak, Inception (itself second only by fractions to The Dark Knight as far as I’m concerned). To say much at all about the plot would give away major spoilers – personally I’d recommend just going in as cold as possible, indeed you really should just stop reading this right now and just GO SEE IT.  Still with us?  Okay … the VERY abridged version is that it’s about a secret war being waged between the present and the future by people capable of “inverting” time in substances, objects, people, whatever, into which the Protagonist (BlacKkKlansman’s John David Washington), an unnamed CIA agent, has been dispatched in order to prevent a potential coming apocalypse. Washington is once again on top form, crafting a robust and compelling morally complex heroic lead who’s just as comfortable negotiating the minefields of black market intrigue as he is breaking into places or dispatching heavies, Kenneth Branagh delivers one of his most interesting and memorable performances in years as brutal Russian oligarch Andrei Sator, a genuinely nasty piece of work who was ALMOST the year’s very best screen villain, Elizabeth Debicki (The Night Manager, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Widows) brings strength, poise and wounded integrity to the role of Sator’s estranged wife, Kat, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson gets to use his own accent for once as tough-as-nails British Intelligence officer Ives, while there are brief but consistently notable supporting turns and cameos from Martin Donovan, Yesterday’s Himesh Patel, Dirk Gently’s Fiona Dourif and, of course, Nolan’s good luck charm, Michael Caine.  The cast’s biggest surprise, however, is Robert Pattinson, truly a revelation in what has to be, HANDS DOWN, his best role to date, Neil, the Protagonist’s mysterious handler – he’s by turns cheeky, slick, duplicitous and thoroughly badass, delivering an enjoyably multi-layered, chameleonic performance which proves what I’ve long maintained, that the former Twilight star is actually a fucking amazing actor, and on the basis of this, even if that amazing new teaser trailer wasn’t making the rounds, I think the debate about whether or not he’s the right choice for the new Batman is now academic.  As we’ve come to expect from Nolan, this is a TRUE tour-de-force experience, a visual triumph and an endlessly engrossing head-scratcher, Nolan’s screenplay bringing in seriously big ideas and throwing us some major narrative knots and loopholes, constantly wrong-footing the viewer while also setting up truly revelatory payoffs from seemingly low-key, unimportant beginnings – this is a film you need to be awake and attentive for or you could miss something pretty vital. The action sequences are, as ever, second to none, some of the year’s very best set-pieces coming thick and fast and executed with some of the most accomplished skill in the business, while Nolan-regular cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (Interstellar and Dunkirk, as well as the heady likes of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, SPECTRE and Ad Astra) once again shows he’s one of the best camera-wizards in the business today by delivering some absolutely mesmerising visuals.  Notably, Nolan’s other regular collaborator, composer Hans Zimmer, is absent here (although he had good reason, since he was working on his dream project at the time, the fast-approaching screen adaptation of Dune), but Ludwig Göransson (best known for his collaborations with Ryan Coogler Fruitvale Station, Creed and Black Panther, as well as career-best work on The Mandalorian) is a fine replacement, crafting an intriguingly internalised, post-modern musical landscape that thrums and pulses in time with the story and emotions of the characters rather than the action itself. Interestingly it’s on the subject of sound that some of the film’s rare detractions have been levelled, and I can see some of the points – the soundtrack mix is an all-encompassing thing, and there are times when the dialogue can be overwhelmed, but in Nolan’s defence this film is a heady, immersive experience, something you really need to concentrate on, so these potential flaws are easily forgiven.  As a work of filmmaking art, this is another flawless wonder from one of the true masters of the craft working in cinema today, but it’s art with palpable substance, a rewarding whole that proved truly unbeatable in 2020 …

[brotheralyosha]

John le Carré, who forged thrillers from equal parts of adventure, moral courage and literary flair, has died aged 89.

Le Carré explored the gap between the west’s high-flown rhetoric of freedom and the gritty reality of defending it, in novels such as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Night Manager, which gained him critical acclaim and made him a bestseller around the world.

On Sunday, his family confirmed he had died of pneumonia at the Royal Cornwall Hospital on Saturday night. “We all deeply grieve his passing,” they wrote in a statement.

His longtime agent Jonny Geller described him as “an undisputed giant of English literature. He defined the cold war era and fearlessly spoke truth to power in the decades that followed … I have lost a mentor, an inspiration and most importantly, a friend. We will not see his like again.”

His peers lined up to pay tribute. Stephen King wrote: “This terrible year has claimed a literary giant and a humanitarian spirit.” Robert Harris said the news had left him “very distressed… one of the great postwar British novelists, and an unforgettable, unique character.” Adrian McKinty described Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as “quite simply the greatest spy novel ever written”, while bestselling crime author Richard Osman called him “the finest, wisest storyteller we had. What an extraordinary career.”

Born as David Cornwell in 1931, Le Carré began working for the secret services while studying German in Switzerland at the end of the 1940s. After teaching at Eton he joined the British Foreign Service as an intelligence officer, recruiting, running and looking after spies behind the Iron Curtain from a back office at the MI5 building on London’s Curzon Street. Inspired by his MI5 colleague, the novelist John Bingham, he began publishing thrillers under the pseudonym of John le Carré – despite his publisher’s advice that he opt for two Anglo-Saxon monosyllables such as “Chunk-Smith”.

A spy modelled on Bingham, who was “breathtakingly ordinary … short, fat, and of a quiet disposition”, outwits an East German agent in Le Carré’s 1961 debut, Call for the Dead, the first appearance of his most enduring character, George Smiley. A second novel, 1962’s A Murder of Quality, saw Smiley investigating a killing at a public school and was reviewed positively. (“Very complex, superior whodunnit,” was the Observer’s conclusion.) But a year later, when his third thriller was published, Le Carré’s career surged to a whole new level.

Smiley is only a minor figure in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, but this story of a mission to confront East German intelligence is filled with his world-weary cynicism. According to Alec Leamas, the fiftysomething agent who is sent to East Berlin, spies are just “a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors, too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives”. Graham Greene hailed it as “the best spy story I have ever read.”

According to Le Carré, the novel’s runaway success left him at first astonished and then conflicted. His manuscript had been approved by the secret service because it was “sheer fiction from start to finish”, he explained in 2013, and so couldn’t possibly represent a breach in security. “This was not, however, the view taken by the world’s press, which with one voice decided that the book was not merely authentic but some kind of revelatory Message From The Other Side, leaving me with nothing to do but sit tight and watch, in a kind of frozen awe, as it climbed the bestseller list and stuck there, while pundit after pundit heralded it as the real thing.”

Smiley moved centre stage in three novels Le Carré published in the 1970s, charting the contest between the portly British agent and his Soviet nemesis, Karla. In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, he unmasks a mole in the highest echelons of the British secret service, while in The Honourable Schoolboy he goes after a money laundering operation in Asia, before piecing together Karla’s Swiss connections in Smiley’s People. The world of “ferrets” and “lamplighters”, “wranglers” and “pavement artists” was so convincingly drawn that his former colleagues at MI5 and MI6 began to adopt Le Carré’s invented jargon as their own.

As the cold war came to a close, friends would stop him in the street and ask: “Whatever are you going to write now?” But Le Carré’s concerns were always broader than the confrontation between east and west, and he had little patience for the idea that the fall of the Berlin Wall signalled any kind of end either for history or the espionage that greased its mechanisms. He tackled the arms trade in 1993 with The Night Manager, big pharma in 2001 with The Constant Gardener and the war on terror in 2004 with Absolute Friends.

Meanwhile, a steady stream of his creations made their way from page to screen. Actors including Richard Burton, Alec Guinness, Ralph Fiennes and Gary Oldman relished the subtleties of his characterisation even as audiences applauded the deftness of his plotting.

Le Carré returned to Smiley for the last time in 2017, closing the circle of his career in A Legacy of Spies, which revisits the botched operation at the heart of the novel that made his name. Writing in the Guardian, John Banville hailed his ingenuity and skill, declaring that “not since The Spy has Le Carré exercised his gift as a storyteller so powerfully and to such thrilling effect”.

After decades of being painted as a shadowy, mysterious figure, mainly for his uninterest in publicity or joining the festival circuit, Le Carré surprised the world in 2016 by releasing a memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel. Detailing his fractured relationship with an abusive, conman father and a lonely upbringing after his mother abandoned him aged five, Le Carré detailed the strange life of a spy-turned-author, being asked to lunches by Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch. Having spent four decades living in Cornwall, married twice and raising a son, Nicholas, who would write novels himself under the name Nick Harkaway, Le Carré conceeded: “I have been neither a model husband nor a model father, and am not interested in appearing that way.”

The consistent love of his life was writing, “scribbling away like a man in hiding at a poky desk”.

“Out of the secret world I once knew I have tried to make a theatre for the larger worlds we inhabit,” he wrote. “First comes the imagining, then the search for reality. Then back to the imagining, and to the desk where I’m sitting now.”

[davidfosterwallaceandgromit]

Favorite books read in 2019

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis - [Stefon voice] This book has everything. Historians. Linguistics. Time travel. Immunology. Theology. Bells. Real talk this book destroyed me. Can’t recommend it enough.  

Middlemarch by George Eliot - Long and intense, up there with War and Peace as far as long, well-built studies of families in a certain place and time just living their lives, growing, changing, marrying, dying. The difference is that the main marriages happen early and end up horribly wrong, and you watch them deteriorate and it’s gutting. 

Going Postal by Terry Pratchett - Fantasy conman becomes fantasy postmaster, fantasy hijinks ensue, absolutely delightful book with the most wonderful character names.

The Code Book by Simon Singh - (Nonfiction) Cryptography throughout history, how it works, who used it and how, with in-depth explanations of the codes & ciphers themselves! Fascinating, esp if you want to try your hand at breaking/writing ciphers. 

The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World by Maya Jasanoff - (Nonfiction) Excellent study of how a writer’s life informs their work, super accessible and fascinating with all the context you need to understand Joseph Conrad and his very interesting era. 

A Perfect Spy by John le Carré - After Tinker Tailor & Smiley’s People, definitely my favorite book I’ve read by him. Based in part on John’s own childhood with a crazy con man dad, and in part on Kim Philby. More of a character study than a spy novel, but what a character.

The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante - Absolutely fantastic, can’t hype these up enough. Story of two girls growing up in a neighborhood in Naples, Italy mid-20th century, and their relationship. Only read 1-2 so far (out of 4), but the level of psychological detail is dazzling, never read anything like this by&for a female writer before. 

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado - (Short story collection) Also lives up to the hype. 

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby & the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre - (Nonfiction) This dude writes the best spy nonfiction, it reads like a thriller and you can’t believe that it’s real. But it is! I cannot believe the audacity of this bitch (Philby).

The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman (Book of Dust Vol. 2) - Set post-Amber Spyglass, lots of fascinating new elements to the Lyra-verse, incl Dust and dæmons, just the kind of metaphysical fantasy that I love from Philip. Also, just a really great book about being 20 years old.

[believerindaydreams]

musing on what books you save, at the end of your world (and an awful lot of digression)

Have been reading unused Raymond Chandler novel titles. I quite like “The Corpse Came in Person”. And “Law Is Where You Buy It”. And “They Only Murdered Him Once,” and “Deceased When Last Seen”...

I figure I can justify one of those showing up in Jack’s acquisitions (Jack probably thinks that Chandler counts as high art, doesn’t he). Along with the gant-coloured, leather-bound edition of “Sackett” which exists in real life and weirded me out. And a Zane Grey paperback. Two. 

But what else might have come along? How do I decide? Realistically, it can’t be more than a dozen or so books...

...this is why I didn’t get too specific in “The List”. Too many agonising choices! Plus they’ve got to be filtered through a not-particularly-bookish conman’s idea of what an engineering-happy spy would like, which is a very peculiar set of requirements. 

(putting in a cut now so I can ponder at length. Worldbuilding is a lovely art, to be cherished for its own sake.)

Nevil Shute! I bet Mac *loves* Nevil Shute. Except for “On the Beach”, which is a little uncharacteristic and doesn’t really demonstrate the author’s strength of making his readers love engineering as much as he does. Mac’s fondest of the autobiography, “Slide Rule”; Jack instead brings along “Round the Bend”, about aircraft engineer Connie Shaklin (why so many Connies? There’s Pete’s wife in MacGyver, and Connie dear in “Tinker Tailor”....)

Anyway, Connie is so amazingly innocent that he literally sparks off a new religion, revolving around the merits of kindness and really awesome engineering. Jack remembered the title because Mac was alternating between chortling and blushing very hard while reading it.

Is it too metafictional having Jack be a fan of Flashman? Probably. Can i just imagine that he brought it along without anyone saying so in the text? Yeah, that works. “Flashman at the Charge”, I think. Because that’s the one where Flashman gets to be Brave, by pure accident, and Jack probably sympathises with that a little bit. 

(Of course, in the FL ‘verse Fraser would be writing Alt History AUs about that most common of all AU subjects - what a British Empire *without* a Fallen London would have been like.

Oh god, do not think of what Harry Turtledove is writing in FL ‘verse. That way madness lies.)

...now I find myself wondering, would Jack read mysteries, or thrillers, or anything? “The Haunting of Hill House” would be a stupid book to bring along on its literary merits, but I feel like it’d belong on his list. The one really solid fact we have about Mac’s hometown is that a lot of kids his age seem to have gone bonkers and ended up in the most colourful professions and places they could find that didn’t involve being anywhere near Minnesota. (The ones who didn’t go bonkers are still there.) Look at Jack, look at Zoe Ryan, look at Ellen Jericho, look at Mac himself...they all seem to have been thinking “Christ, whatever craziness I get into in my life, at least I’ve got out of dull and pleasant Mission City!”

...where was I? Oh yes, “The Haunting of Hill House,” aside from it having come out at precisely the right point to freak out a Baby Boomer, is mostly an extended meditation on what happens when somebody gets out of a situation like that, thinks they’re going to be a special someone, and then realises they aren’t and they’re going right back home again. The horror stuff is not actually the theme of the thing, or rather the horror comes from the gradual, imperceptible reinforcing of that theme.

Which is Jack’s secret weapon against Neath craziness: nothing that happens to him down there can possibly be as bad as being stuck in Minnesota forever. Doesn’t work quite so well for Mac, who has a sentimental streak a mile wide. Plus he’s working solo until Jack gets there, which is exponentially harder. 

We were talking about books at some point, as I recall. Ian Fleming, for a joke. Extra joke is that Jack’s purchased “The Spy Who Loved Me”, which has lots of loving and not much spying. 

Hmm. The way this list is coming out, I’m forced to the sad conclusion that Jack didn’t take his book-picking nearly as seriously as he did his music selection. Figures. 

That leaves four slots open. To be filled in as needed, then. 

(Though he brings along one more book; while arranging to buy camels to lug all this junk, Jack went browsing in a Kabulstan market and bought something labelled, ahem, Romantic Literature sight unseen. To his disgust it turned out to be a battered copy of Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer”. To his delight, it turned out that “Tropic of Cancer” actually is very rude after all.

He also bought the disco-themed soundtrack of an Indian film, sung in a language he doesn’t understand. Why? No flippin’ reason except that it sounded good on the proprietor’s tape deck, so he bargained for that as well.

The memory of that afternoon, blazing hot sunlight and warm sleepiness and slow relaxed voices, and the knowledge that he’s done everything that there is to be done, is one of the Unrepentant Smuggler’s fondest memories of the Surface in later years.)

Of course, the Innocent Spy didn’t show up entirely empty-handed on the book front; buried at the bottom of his crate is a copy of Paul Linebarger’s “Psychological Warfare”. Not exactly work reading. Adjacent to work reading, perhaps. 

(When he wasn’t working in intelligence, Linebarger was a writer named Cordwainer Smith, and wrote some of the best science fiction in the business.)

(His wife Genevieve wrote a story under his penname, which is named “Down to a Sunless Sea” and begins thusly: “High, oh, high, oh, they jingle in the sky oh! Bright how bright the light of those twin moons of Xanadu, Xanadu the lost, Xanadu the lovely, Xanadu the seat of pleasure. Pleasure of the senses, body, mind, soul. Soul? Who said anything about soul?”)

See, it all comes back around again, if you’re patient enough...