The Dead Drop Files

I was previously unaware of The Moneypenny Diaries which is a short book series that tells James Bond adventures from the perspective of Miss Moneypenny (did anyone know her first name is apparently “Jane”?).

It doesn't seem like the series got too far, but there some short stories published in British magazine. One of them is entitled For Your Eyes Only, James which sounds vaguely like Bond and Moneypenny might have consummated their flirtation.

(I did some looking, but that particular installment seems to be hard to find. Several people are trying to find reprints of it.)

Seen in downtown Montreal.

Found this short Reddit video of a “briefcase gun” from the 1970s.

I read the James Bond novel Seafire while on a business trip. This is from 1994, which is late in the John Gardner era — he only wrote one more original Bond novel after this one.

It was…okay. I've never loved Gardner's work. Here’s my review.

The NY Times released The Top 50 Thrillers of the 21st Century. Slow Horses is #9. I enjoyed that — here’s my review from a few years back.

Reading Maps visually plots the geographic travels of various novels. As you can imagine, the James Bond novels are pretty active, in terms of globe-hopping. Here’s the entry for Casino Royale (the movie).

Chief of Station was a bit of a miss. It’s well-filmed, on-location in Budapest, and even has a bit part for a former Bond girl (Olga Kurylenko was Camilla Montes in Quantum of Solace). It opens with a nice scene of tradecraft, which makes up for a particularly uncomfortable torture scene later on (a la Syriana, but worse).

However, I just don’t think Aaron Eckhart is that great of an actor, and a lot of the story depends on him (apparently, Alec Baldwin was originally cast in the role). Plus, the writing was just kind of tired. Nothing interesting to see here, honestly.

Doug DeMuro reviews the Jaguar XKR from Die Another Day, currently on display in the Peterson Museum. Better yet, he drives it on Los Angeles city streets, complete with a mounted gatling gun in the back. (Spoiler: other than the body shell, it’s not a Jaguar at all…)

Though not technically a “spy,” The Thomas Crown Affair does lurk on the periphery. I loved the Pierce Brosnan version from 1999, and it looks like we’re getting a new one from Michael B. Jordan.

Supposedly, Radiohead’s “Man of War” was submitted to be a James Bond theme, but since it wasn’t written just for the movie, it wouldn’t have been eligible to win an Oscar, so it was declined. I get it though — it has the right vibe.

British author Jeffrey Archer supplied recommendations for “The Best Heist and Con Artist Books” novels over on Five Books named Goldfinger as the best heist novel. I find this interesting because, while the film version is wildly popular, I thought the novel was weaker.

(Speaking of Jeffrey Archer, I loved his novel “The Fourth Estate.”)

Letterboxd has published its Top 100 Spy Films. It’s a pretty good list. Happy to see two of Daniel Craig’s Bond films quite high (before any Connery film, notably), along with Rogue One (if it included TV, then Andor would no-doubt be up there too).

Thunderbolts seems like a really odd choice, but No Way Out is an absolute favorite of mine.

Really enjoyed the rest of The Agency, season 1. Good story, never slowed down.

It’s very heavy on tradecraft, which I liked. Lots of moral ambiguity in there too.

Interestingly, there’s a plot thread all through season one that essentially just sets up what will likely be a bigger thing in season two. Essentially, a character — unrelated to the main plot of season one — spends the entire season positioning herself for a larger plot thread. It would be boring except that you’re assuming it pays off in the future episodes.

The Agency is in its second season, but I don’t remember seeing it before. I saw ads for it in the Dallas airport, then it was recommended to me by Prime.

I watched the first episode. It’s a slow burn — very random and confusing for the first 30 minutes, but then it starts to clear up.

Michael Fassbender is “Martian,” a CIA spy recruiter recalled to London very suddenly after six years in Ethiopia. He leaves a romantic entanglement there that he can’t get out of his head. Additionally, an asset in Minsk gets arrested, which creates a problem.

It’s very realistic (I presume; how would I know?). Lots of tradecraft porn and political machinations.

I liked it. I’ll keep watching.

The Trap is the third installment of the Emma Makepeace series. It was fun and lightweight, like the first two — here’s my review. I did notice that the author has since written a novel outside that series, which I hope doesn’t mean she’s abandoned it.

I’d never heard of Intelligence before. It’s a British sitcom that I caught a few episodes on a flight.

It stars Nick Mohammed (one of the coaches from Ted Lasso; he's also the creator) as a hapless, low-level GCHQ employee, and David Schwimmer (Ross from Friends) as an equally hapless — but arrogant and self-important --NSA liaison.

It is genuinely very funny. Schwimmer is essentially playing an overboard version of Ross, which was nice to see again. It’s workplace comedy set against an espionage theme, which is a fun background juxtaposition in the first place.

It only ran for two short seasons totaling 13 episodes.

Haywire is fully 15 years old, back when Gina Carano was known only for MMA , hadn’t done Star Wars, and hadn’t made the tweets that got her canceled.

It’s not a bad movie at all. It’s directed by Steven Soderberg, and it shows. It’s very moody, very stylized. And the soundtrack is by the same guy who did Out of Sight and the Oceans series. It’s very much got the same vibe.

What’s amazing is the cast. It’s got some heavy hitters in supporting — and some very small — roles: Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor.

All throughout, I knew what was happening on a small scale, but I didn’t understand why. Carano was running, fighting, and shooting a lot, but… why, exactly? Turns out, I wasn’t just dumb, because the plot isn’t clearly explained until the last five minutes of the movie.

As for Carano, this was her first “real” movie, and I alternated thinking she was pretty stiff one minute, and thinking she wasn’t half bad the next. Well, it turns out a bunch of her lines were dubbed (by Laura San Giacomo, no less), so that might explain the uneven-ness of her performance.

Still, not a bad movie. Worth watching.

The Spy Lounge is a YouTube channel that publishes AI generated “spy music.” It’s exactly what the title promises: jazzy tunes with a classic espionage vibe. I can’t really explain it too well, so just listen to it. It’s good background music while you’re working.

Plus, I love what they do with the artwork and especially the titles. Every title is equal parts random and perfectly fitting, and just as inexplicably appropriate as the music itself.

Argylle was not a “good” film, but it’s inventive and amusing. It’s basically a big spy parody, with a pretty decent twist in the middle that I didn’t see coming. But it’s way, way too long, at two-and-a-half hours.

Also, it absolutely bombed at the box office. Made less than $100 million when it had to make about $500 million to be considered successful. We were supposed to get a crossover/shared universe with Kingsman, but that’s certainly not going to happen now.

Honestly, I like Henry Cavill in about anything spy related. He should of been Bond.

Jack Ryan, Ghost Wars was very “paint-by-numbers.” I enjoy John Krasinski in the role, but there was nothing in this film that was interesting. Even the action sequences were tired.

I liked the prior series format, because a plot could develop over eight full hours of story. This is only about 90 minutes, and the plot is about an inch deep. Even with that, honestly, I had a hard time figuring out what was shooting at who and why.

Not great.