Thursday, August 23, 2007

Even more on "The Company"

Did anyone out there watch the final episode of "The Company"? All things considered, I thought it was pretty good (in B+ range). Having read the book, the hunt for the mole didn't have a ton of suspense for me, but it was still nicely done. I won't spoil any surprises for those of you who may not have watched the TV version and are considering reading the book (Note to Raphy: Do it! You'll thank me later.). I thought Rory Cochrane--last seen, at least by me, as one of the stoners in Dazed and Confused--was really good as Yevgeny/Eugene. He was also the only one of the younger actors who looked convincingly old at the end--as opposed to, say, O'Donnell, who looked like himself with a ton of makeup on. If you can imagine, Starik is a bit more creapy/disturbing in the book than he came off in the movie. And, though I said something similar the other day, I'll repeat that Michael Keaton was great as Angleton. I'll also repeat that it would have been nice to have seen the first episode, but the TNT programming people seem to be a bunch of nitwits.

Since we're on our favorite topic, I should note that I finished re-reading Charles McCarry's "Tears of Autumn" about a week ago. It's the first of McCarry's novels that I read and, after raving about it to various people over the last several years, I wanted to make sure that it was as good as I remembered. It was.

For spy-novel buffs, there's also a new Daniel Silva book out about badass Mossad agent Gabriel Allon. I'm only a few pages in, but it starts off very nicely.

In other literary news, apparently Paris Hilton is working on a new book. According to Gawker, "It's actually a strongly-argued polemic that defends cultural relativism against the anti-egalitarian attacks of conservative critics such as the late Allan Bloom." Wha? Oh, wait. It seems that they're kidding. Bummer, because I'd actually like to read that book.

Posted by jwb at 7:21 AM  · 6 Comments   

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Rhetorical question: Is there anything cuter than Golden puppies?



Posted by jwb at 5:28 PM  · 18 Comments   

More on "The Company"

Welcome back to the show.

So we sat down to watch the first two episodes of "The Company" on Monday and I find that, for reasons I won't delve into, our DVR has deleted the first episode. No problem, I think. Surely they'll repeat it several times during the following week so fans who missed the first showing can still catch up, right? This is a three week extravaganza, people are busy, DVRs sometimes screw up, etc. Alas, no. I check the TV listings, but no sign of episode 1. I then check "The Company" section of the TNT on-line forum and some spokesbot reveals that TNT is apparently run by a bunch of morons. The only encore presentation of any of the episodes is immediately following the first showing. The spokesbot reveals, as if she's doing us a favor, that the previously shown episodes are available in their entirety on TNT's website. Now, I know that You-tube is all the rage, but lets be serious: Watching a two-hour movie on your computer is about as pleasurable as getting waterboarded by Dick Cheney. This is madness.

Anyway, We finally broke down last night and watched episode two. As our readers know, I've read the book, and I found jumping right in like that less disorienting than I think Jenn did. My overall response is: Not bad, but a bit disapointing. I guess I was expecting better production values from a project that the Scott brothers were involved in. However, the scenes in Budapest--which we visited in 2004--were very cool. Chris O'Donnell is a bit bland considering he has far and away the most screen time. In contrast, Michael Keaton does a nice job making Angleton suitably smarmy--you're not supposed to like him but he's the ony one in the room making fucking sense. Also, I guess I can understand what he was aiming for, but Alfred Molina's loud, blustery Torriti doesn't really work for me. I'll no doubt have more to say about this later, but my provisional verdict is: Meh! (Is that how you spell that, Raphy?)

Posted by jwb at 7:07 AM  · 3 Comments   

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

The Company

We've been putting our house back together after a near-summer-long construction project, so we've been remiss in mentioning this, but the TNT adaptation of Robert Littell's "The Company" began on Sunday. (I mentioned it a while ago here.) Did anyone catch it? We, alas, did not, but the first episode is saved on our DVR and I hope to get to it later in the week. There are, I gather, two more episodes in the coming weeks.

As I've mentioned several times before, Littell's book is one of the better--if not the best--fictional takes on the CIA that I've read. It covers similar ground as Robert DeNiro's "The Good Shepherd''--Ivy League pinheads get recruited into the OSS (later the CIA); said pinheads swashbuckle around Europe killing people and breaking things; a character without much personality loosely based on CIA counterntelligence chief James Jesus Angleton thinks the agency is chock full of moles; everyone else thinks said character is nuts; said character turns out to to be right and his colleagues look like morons. You get the picture.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to watching this. It's got to be better than the DeNiro movie, which I think was a missed opportunity.

Posted by jwb at 10:35 AM  · 4 Comments