Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Casina Royale trailer, now in English, and some other stuff

Here's the trailer, this time in English. And, yes, just as giddy.

This prompted some random super-secret-agent thoughts (based on my reading on the wee hours of the night):

1. I've been roaring through the first four of Daniel Silva's books about Mossad agent Gabriel Allon (there are five, with another one coming out in July). They are really quite amazing--highly recommended. However, they may be a little too political for Hollywood--lots of heavy stuff about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as well as the sordid history of the Catholic Church and the Nazis during and after World War II. Check 'em out.

2. The best of all the espionage books, of course, are by Alan Furst, featuring various protagonists, dealing with international intrigue and espionage during World War II. They are astonishingly good, superior in my mind to LeCarre (who seems to be the one that everyone gets compared to--for good or ill). Among the best are The Polish Officer, Night Soldiers, and Dark Star. His newest, The Foreign Correspondent, is due in May. Again, in the rights hands, these would make amazing movies, though Hollywood never seems to do justice to these kinds of things.

3. If you like the kind of stuff Furst does--lots of history, very dense, highly skilled description, great characters, harrowing plots--Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy (available in one volume, about a police detective in Berlin during World War II) and the J. Robert Janes series about St. Cyr and Kohler (about the unlikely pairing of an inspector from the Surete--like Clouseau, come to think of it--and a Gestapo detective) are also highly recommended.

That's all for now.

P.S. There's lots of good Bond geekery in the comments to the last several Bond posts--from Bram and Marty. Maybe Raphy will chime in. He's actually read all (or most of) the Fleming books, and thus has a black belt in Bond geekery.

Posted by jwb at 10:23 AM   

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