Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to listen to Les Filles talk about spies and espionage in movies and TV.
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Writing spies:
Daniel Defoe.
Geoffrey Chaucer
Ian Fleming, and you can learn more in
The Man Who Would Be Bond
Russian Film: Seventeen Moments of Spring
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
(I just really like this picture)
The Avengers (The TV series, not the movies. Honestly.)
The Bourne Identity (et al)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
(now with bonus Anthony Mackie is a delight and a national treasure)
Unspoken but still important: one of Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s posthumous films is A Most Wanted Man.
We’ll be back next month, same spy-time, same spy channel!
A listener’s request episode?! Hurray! *throws confetti*
George Smiley has been added to my favorite group of iconic fictional characters with glasses, along with Edogawa Conan and Clark Kent.
I know that this may be off topic from this episode’s selection of awesomeness, but what do you guys think about The Hobbit’s title change for the latest (and last) movie?
(Also, YOU GUYS SOUND SO AWESOME π Keep up the Nerdfighting!)
Peter Jackson did what now? *checks Google*
I think his reasons are bullshit. “It didn’t fit”, “he’s already there”. Whatever, it’s a marketing grab because he’s afraid people won’t go to see it and he wants to convince them that it’ll be exciting. There’ll be five – FIVE! – whole armies. And fighting. Swords and stuff!
It’s absurd. It’s the sixth movie in the series, the people who are going to see it are already going to see it. Does he honestly think he can grab some sort of untapped new audience with a sixth movie?
Does Smaug count as a whole army in and of itself?
“I have an army.”
“I have swords for teeth and spears for claws!”
Here’s the IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2310332/?ref_=nv_sr_3
The site stubbornly holds onto the new and unimproved title as “Also Known As”, so maybe there’s still hope?
ETA after F5-ing: nope.
Oh, and even having finished reading the book, I still can’t figure out the five armies, are they:
1 The goblins (orcs)
2 The Men from Laketown
3 The elves from Mirkwood
4 The Dwarves from pretty much everywhere
5 The wolves (wargs)
?
But do the eagles count as an army as well? Or have I misremembered again?
Goblins and Orcs are two different species, dude :B
(Plus, the Orcs were with the Wargs, right?)
The eagles don’t come in because they can’t… (referencing back to the part in the book where Thorin & Co. are with the eagle king, they tell them that they can drop them off close to the dark lands, but not in them… They’re pretty much foreshadowing the spread of darkness / Sauron’s influence).
…??? But I’m not entirely sure. xD It’s been a year since I read the book.
“Thereβll be five β FIVE! β whole armies. And fighting. Swords and stuff!”
Having watched TDoS a couple of times, I’m happy that they would start the next film with Smaug wrecking havoc in Lake-town. That sequence would at least be 45 minutes long and I wonder if Bard would only be freed from his solitary cage because of Smaug’s destruction breaking everything in sight?
Really PJ, anyone who saw the cliffhanger ending last time would be coming for the death of the Fire Serpent alone.
Oh, no. Other groups of creatures form the five armies. Smaug is what they’re fighting against (plus a share of the treasure trove in the mountain).
Anyway, yeah, I agree with you. If There and Back Again was the title it would tie it all up together, but it’s apparently going to be used as the name for the trilogy box-set. >_> Obviously the dude fails at marketing… Thankfully, there’s a petition going around for him to change it back.
Alina’s thoughts are my thoughts. Honestly, PJ, “There and Back Again” had a finality to it and JUST STOP FOR GOD’S SAKE.
I mean, thank you for more hot dwarves and all, but still. Someday, you need to stop living in a hobbit hole.
That’s just &$%*ing stupid. Why ruin the one chance to present the “Full” title of the one book (The Hobbit or, There and Back Again) these three films are based on? I wish I can unremember this change and just be shocked when I go to a cinema. π
Oh and btw, great callback to your other podcast episode here, Reidan!
(Sorry for the spoiler, ol’ sport! xD)
*agrees to infinity and beyond*
The adaptations are still interesting to see, though xD
Hi Reiden, I just came back from your tumblr. I saw the picture you’d reblogged, of the utterly brilliant pencil doodle drawn by a Chinese maths student. I’m very puzzled at why you would comment that you’d just broken out in hives. The joke can be more easily appreciated if you know that the title “ε½ζ°ζ” translates to “(Mathematical) Functions Exercise”. There’s a convention since the 1950s from my home country that every school day at circa 10:00 AM, the students (from elementary school through middle school) would gather in the school courtyard and do a ten-minute synchronized series of stretching/relaxing exercise along with music. Not too dissimilar with the way the little stick figures were doing in that drawing. And in English I realize that we have a bonus pun in the title: Functions Exercise — the exercising little figures build up a maths exercise.
Just thought you’d like to know. π
Mostly it’s a joke because Math And I Do Not Get Along and trying to learn all of that in high school was years of agony and feeling like the stupidest person on the planet. And that graphic (which probably would have been helpful when I was in high school 20 years ago) just brought back all of that anxiety and stress and fear.
“Math And I Do Not Get Along”…
You and me both, sister! My maths literally did a landslide after I entered grade ten, I all but sobbed during term exams, but I couldn’t just give up because the three major courses in the world-infamous college entrance exams (Chinese, Math and English) are worth 150 points each, while the rest of the subjests amount to a collective 250. I really did break into hives during the preperation and after the exams ended. It was all over my left arm and I almost freaked out.
I ended up getting 101 points on maths, so I guess it was worth it. And now I’m studying in a major that does not include any maths subjects. Yay.
So I guess we’ll just have to admire the wisdom in a doodle without bringing back too many memories.
~*~
And I’m really excited to see all those new comments pop up here. Like lovely mushrooms.