Christopher East

When we brought Oslo* the new kitten home, he kind of stole the limelight from Cairo, our original awesome cat.  I thought it was time to give Cairo some blog-love.

Cairo is kind of a ‘fraidy-cat.  He tends to go into hiding when people come over.  The first time I flew out here to see Jenn he hid under the bed for a couple of days.  But eventually we cornered him in the back bathroom with a toy and spent some time convincing him to play with me.  Cairo seemed to warm up to me after that, and we’ve been friends ever since.

Cairo is still very much Jenn’s cat, while Oslo* the new guy has kind of latched on to me.  But Cairo and I have a very comfortable, relaxed friendship.  Here’s one of my favorite pics of us hanging out together:

* Name removed to prevent influencing the tag cloud.

Although not readily evident on my site — my current WordPress theme doesn’t display them — I add tags to all of my posts.  I just noticed the tags section on my site management page creates a tag cloud, and it makes for an interesting visual.

Based on my tag cloud, I have learned (if I didn’t know already):

• I seem to write about Castle more than I watch it.
• Amazingly I am now a bigger fan of the Los Angeles Kings than I am of the Buffalo Sabres.   There was a time when I never thought this would be possible.  (But the Sabres are still in my heart…)
• My favorite TV show is still Mission: Impossible, even after all these years.
• Oslo is getting more blog-attention than Cairo.  (Need to do something about that…)
• I’ve posted more about England than about the United States.  But I guess I’ve never taken a trip to the United States, so that makes sense.
• Dollhouse made me think, even when I didn’t like it.
• I love GarageBand!
• Looks like I’ve got a thing for Amy Acker…
• Looks like I’ve got a thing for…Fran Kranz?
• Most-mentioned authors:  Alan Furst, Nancy Kress, John LeCarre’, Maureen F. McHugh.
• What is this Futurismic thing?
• I am very interested in World War II history.
• You may never have heard of The Sandbaggers, but evidently that show is important to me.
• The largest tag by far:  Subnetworks.  It looks like I really do want to finish writing this novel.

And now, to tag this post, thereby reinforcing my tendencies…

I rented The Good German (2006) a couple years ago and it didn’t make a great impression on me at the time, so it was with some trepidation that I rewatched it for this project.  I liked it much better this time around, but I can also see why it didn’t entirely win me over at first.

It’s Berlin, in 1945, and the victorious Allied powers are gathering for the Potsdam Conference to determine Germany’s fate in the wake of World War II.  Military reporter Jake Geisman (George Clooney), on hand to cover the conference, finds himself “coincidentally” assigned a seedy motor pool aide named Tully (a distractingly miscast Tobey Maguire).  Tully just happens to have a German girlfriend named Lena (Cate Blanchett), a figure from Geisman’s past.  Within a few hours of arriving, Geisman’s wallet is stolen, and before he knows it he finds himself embroiled in a murder, a manhunt, and the complexities of post-war power politics.  Everyone seems to be searching for a man named Emil Brandt — American intelligence agents, the Russian military, the U.S. war crimes commission.  Geisman, motivated by his love for Lena and a desire for justice, allows himself to get caught up in the search, but who is Brandt, and why is everybody after him?

The Good German does a lot of things you want a good spy film to do, and the mystery here — while requiring some early patience — is quite compelling, in a conflict that comes down to a battle between those who want to see justice done, and those willing to compromise ethics in the name of political and military expediency.  The bomb-ravaged Berlin setting is beautifully and convincingly realized.  Clooney is in fine form, and Blanchett pulls off a convincingly exotic Marlene Dietrich-like leading lady.

But the film is hampered, I think, by its chief claim to fame; in order to recapture the feel of the old spy-noir films of yesteryear, director Steven Soderbergh (who is always interesting) limited himself to using the film-making technology of the 1940s era he was trying to recapture.  While this makes for an intriguing experiment, it’s also a bit distracting; the film is a little too self-conscious about its technique.  In a few places, Soderbergh forces visual comparisons to the films I suspect he’s paying homage to — chiefly The Third Man and Casablanca, classics that are awfully difficult to compete against.  The concept might have worked, but the film doesn’t entirely commit to its mission. Blanchett and Clooney do well recapturing the acting styles of the era, but other members of the cast don’t…and while the music is effectively retro, the language and violence feel too contemporary.  In the end, I suspect I would have enjoyed it more had it been entirely modern or entirely classic — as is, it’s got a foot in both camps, and the film-making seams are showing a bit much.  I suspect this is the main reason I didn’t care for the film the first time I saw it.

Putting that criticism aside, though, there’s a good, involving espionage yarn on display in The Good German, and if you can get past the distraction of the visual look, it’s definitely attractively shot and distinctive.  With reservations, perhaps, but recommended.

It’s that time again — more imaginary theme songs for imaginary television shows that only exist in the imagination of…the imaginer.  (Ten points if you got that reference.)  Look forward to your pitches in the comments, should you be so inclined.  Hope you like these, and have a great weekend everybody!

Murdocke & Scorch

Robot Makes Five

Area 54

High Security

Lately, reading spy novels makes me want to write my own, so in order to stay motivated for my current project I turned directly from Stella Rimmington to Charles Cumming.  Cumming’s first book, A Spy By Nature (here’s my review), truly had the feel of a momentous debut, so I was anxious to see if its follow-up The Hidden Man (2003) lived up to that promise.  Ultimately, I think it really does, although it’s a much different book, and perhaps not quite as polished structurally.

The “hidden man” of the title is Christopher Keen, a retired MI6 spook now in the private sector, whose intelligence career tore apart his family — destoying his marriage, and leaving his two sons, Ben and Mark, with hard feelings toward their father.  As the novel begins, Keen has reappeared in their lives and is trying to reconcile things.  His efforts are meeting with mixed results, however.  Mark, who happens to work for an international company Keen was gathering information on in his new job, is intrigued, and rebuilding the shattered relationship.  But Ben, a headstrong artist struggling to hold together a touchy marriage with his wife Alice (an ambitious journalist), is a much tougher sell.  The family dramas, of which there are many, are only complicated by the gradual intrusion of MI5; Mark’s employer is under investigation for possible ties to the Russian mafia and money-laundering.  An MI5 officer named Taploe has seized on the old hand Keen as a potential agent in his investigation, which eventually drags the entire family into the mix, with drastic consequences.

Like Cumming’s first novel, The Hidden Man is a smooth and flowingly written book populated by believable, distinctive characters.  But where A Spy By Nature is a mostly focused, first-person narrative telling one person’s story, The Hidden Man is a much different animal.  Told in third-person omniscient, the story ricochets in and out of its vast cast of characters’ viewpoints, telling a broader, more complicated tale, and splits its focus between a complex spy plot and an intricate web of family relationship issues.  Cumming clearly enjoys drawing parallels between the life of the spy and the lives of “regular people,” and he works that theme very well again here, as espionage bleeds into the day-to-day realities of his well drawn characters.  And of course there’s plenty of classic tradecraft, mystery, and adventure to be had, as the British secret world collides with international commerce, the Russian crime scene, and dredged up memories of western intelligence work in 1980s Afghanistan.

I’m not a big fan of the omniscient viewpoint, and I think it leads to a somewhat scattered feel to this novel (although I can see why he deployed the technique).  The novel also relies on a couple of big expository scenes to resolve itself in the latter stages.  But I still found it quite satisfying on the whole, and in my book Cumming is easily in the top rank of working spy novelists.  A Spy By Nature was clearly no fluke.

This weekend our close friends Steven and Erin got married, and Jenn and I were both in the wedding party.  It was a great ceremony and a wonderful time with a number of good friends, and we came away with some rare evidence of what we look like all spiffed up for a formal occasion:

Thanks to our good friend Bill for the photo (great to see you, Bill!) and best wishes to Erin and Steven!

It’s been a busy few weeks, slowing my usually rampant listening, reading, and viewing efforts, but I have been able to check out a few things now and then…

• Said goodbye to Dollhouse…and finding I’m not particularly missing it.  I think it was a weird, interesting show with moments of brilliance, but overall was kind of a mess.  The only thing I will truly miss is the versatile genius of Enver Gjokaj (Victor)…and, to a less degree, Amy Acker (Dr. Saunders) and Fran Kranz (whose character, Topher Brink, eventually became one of the show’s most intriguing characters).  One has to wonder how this one would have turned out if they hadn’t been handcuffed by network execs.  As always, looking forward to Joss Whedon’s next project!
• Started catching up on 24.  It’s one of the shows that got me hooked on TV-DVDs, but the press of time has squeezed it out of my schedule, and I’m three seasons behind.  Recently I started in on season six, but I think it’s pretty weak — a bit too obvious, a bit too predictable, and the CTU team has never been blander.  The completist in me is still slugging through it, slowly, but it feels kind of shark-jumpy.  I’m hoping it rebounds.
• Checked out the pilot for Caprica.  Beautiful-looking, well produced, and some interesting SF focus on AI, VR, etc.  An attractive cast and nicely acted.  But I found it kind of dull, and the later episodes are gathering figurative dust in our DVR queue.  It occurred to me while watching it that I would have liked to see a show like it not set in the BSG universe.
• Downloaded album Pocket Fulla Nasty by Doug Johns, an impressive funk bassist.  Lately, funk and funk-jazz tends to make a great first impression upon me, and then kind of get less interesting the more I listen to it.  The same holds true here, I think.  So I’m not sure the album will be on my heavy rotation, but there’s a lot of great songs and impressive bass-playing on it that I’ll be happy to have pop up on my iTunes DJ now and then.
• Mostly keeping up with some casually watched shows:  Leverage (loving it), The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, Castle and White Collar (which isn’t quite living up to its early promise, but is still kind of okay).

Other than that, just following the Los Angeles Kings and (now with the NHL freeze) enjoying some of the Winter Olympics.  Any shows I’m missing that I shouldn’t be?

During the course of the past week, I read through the existing chapters of Subnetworks, making minor cosmetic tweaks as I went.  I printed out the draft along the way, to try to get a sense of how far along the story has advanced.  I’m planning to do that chapter-by-chapter, to give myself a sense of tangible progress, and also something to mark up when the whole thing is finished.

Now comes the scary part…writing new stuff.  That starts today.  Yikes!

I reviewed Burn After Reading (2008) here at the site just over a year ago.  But in the true spirit of the enterprise — in other words, because I’m kind of an obsessive geek — I just watched it again for Spy 100.

My previous review didn’t include a synopsis, so briefly:  the story kicks off when a self-important CIA analyst named Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) gets run out of the service and quits in a huff.  He writes a memoir of his work experience, the text of which finds its way onto a CD, thanks to his dissatisfied, divorce-seeking wife (Tilda Swinton).  When the CD is mistakenly left in the locker room of a gym, it falls into the wrong hands:  those of shallow, aging physical trainer Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), and her young, even simpler pal Chad (Brad Pitt).  Chad is just smart enough to identify the material as sensitive — but not much else — so he entices Linda to contact Cox about returning the disc for a “reward.”  Linda, desperate for a series of cosmetic surgeries her insurance refuses to cover, ultimately agrees to play along.  Tied into everything is Treasury man Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a philandering idiot whose slowly mounting paranoia helps Linda’s scheme escalate into accidental blackmail, leaving the intelligence world bureaucrats scratching their heads trying to follow the mess.

I think my original review still covers most of the bases.  Burn After Reading does an exceptional job both replicating and satirizing the tropes, plot points, atmosphere, and action of the paranoid spy thriller.  If anything, I found it even funnier on a second viewing — steeped in the genre as this project has made me, the quirky jokes and sight gags of the film seemed even more spot-on than I remembered.  One thing I failed to mention in the first review was the powerfully sad performance of Richard Jenkins (who plays Linda’s boss at the gym).  And I was less unhappy with the ending this time around.  Other than that, my impression didn’t change much, and I felt it was well worth a second look.

I found Stella Rimington’s first novel (At Risk, reviewed here) promising, and I’m now happy to report that its sequel, Secret Asset (2006), continues to fulfill that promise.  With three more novels after this one, Rimington looks to be a reliable source of engaging, intelligent spy thrillers for a while, and I’m looking forward to following the series as it unfolds.

After a leave of absence, MI5 counterterrorist agent Liz Carlyle returns to the fold just as one of her former agents, codenamed Marzipan, delivers intelligence that suggests that an imminent terrorist threat may be developing at the Islamic bookstore where he works.  But Liz doesn’t have much time to concern herself with this, as she is reassigned to a low-profile internal investigation; it’s suspected there may be a mole in Thames House, planted years ago by the IRA.  The mole, who may never have been activated by his handlers, is believed to have been recruited at Oxford, which gives Liz and her young assistant Peggy Kinsolving (seconded from MI6) a narrow list of suspects to vet.  But as the investigation continues, it becomes apparent that Liz’s mole-hunt and Marzipan’s intelligence may well be connected, and Liz once again finds herself spearheading an MI5 effort to thwart an impending terrorist attack.

Rimington does a fine job spinning a good old fashioned mole-hunt, and I think Secret Asset is a somewhat smoother, more satisfying read than At Risk.  I’m not sure exactly why, as it’s not all that significantly better; perhaps it’s just that it’s more streamlined and self contained, and moves at a brisker pace.  It’s another understated, realistic glimpse at espionage from someone who knows the world, where careful analysis and investigative legwork trump convoluted endgames, gadgetry, and violent derring-do — more Sandbaggers than 24, in other words.  As a fan of the first book, I found even more to like here.  Good stuff.