The Dead Drop

Thrilling Cities (1963)

Tue, 6 Oct 2026 00:00:00 -0500

I saw this on the shelf at Barnes and Noble in the “Travel” section. Thrilling Cities was a travelogue written by Ian Fleming in 1963.

He had been writing the Bond novels for a decade and the films had just become very popular. The Sunday Times flew Fleming around the world to visit 13 cities to write about them and play off the popularity of James Bond.

The Wikipedia page has very detailed history of the book and Fleming’s travels (which he reportedly hated).

James Bond Day

Mon, 5 Oct 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Did you know that October 5 is “James Bond Day”? I didn’t, until everyone started talking about it today on Reddit. Supposedly this because Dr. No premiered in London on October 5, 1962.

So, take the day off work, have a martini, and blow-up the lair of an international terrorist. You know, usual holiday stuff.

Alias, Season 1

Sun, 4 Oct 2026 00:00:00 -0500

I plowed through Season 1 of Alias in record time, aided by a European trip involving 20+ hours in planes.

Some notes:

I thought the Rambaldi plotline came later, but it’s actually central to the first season. It takes on kind of a mythological quality — like James Bond meets Indiana Jones. There’s lots of talk about “artifacts” and “prophecy.”
Every episode involves one or more “missions” with Sydney jetting off to some country trying to find something or do something that has some tangential relationship to the overall storyline. Honestly, I kept losing track of where she was and why. You eventually just let it wash over you and accept that she’s in some exotic location breaking into some subterranean fortress for some valid reason.
I still don’t like the martial arts. Sydney gets into a fistfight every episode, and her style is very “kicky and punchy,” opposed to the more practical, grappling style that came into vogue as MMA got popular (think Jason Bourne). I just don’t find it at all believable that a woman that tiny could reasonably do what she does, and it takes me out of the story every time.
I enjoyed the Bradley Cooper plotline. He’s a journalist trying to uncover the truth, while being Sydney’s friend and not knowing that she’s a central part of it. I understand he gets demoted to recurring character at some point, which is unfortunate, because his plot is the most interesting and he’s a naturally likeable guy.
Every scene bumper has the name of the upcoming location with one letter in a reverse font. For a while, I kept trying to figure out if there’s some secret code involving which letters were in reverse font, but if there is, I couldn’t figure it out.
There’s a strong theme of parenthood through the first season. Sydney’s relationship with her father is central to the story, and her mother pops up quite a bit too. Additionally, Sydney’s relationships with Sloane and Dixon have some parental vibes to them. Sydney is everyone’s daughter, it seems.
Jennifer Garner emotes a lot. I can’t count the number of scenes that end with a shot of Sydney’s face looking stunned or hurt or confused or amazed or bewildered. She does a lot of acting with facial expressions. (But, she was nominated for four Golden Globes — winning one — and four Emmys, so I can’t complain too much.)

On to Season 2…

I Can See You (2023)

Sat, 3 Oct 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Taylor Swift made a pretty decent spy-ish movie with her video for I Can See You back in 2023. In it, Joey King and Taylor Lautner break into some compound to free a captive Swift while Presley Cash handles electronics back in the van.

Supposedly the story is a metaphor for how Swift “rescued” her master recordings from Scooter Braun. King and Cash had appeared in another one of Swift’s videos, back in 2010. Swift and Lautner dated briefly.

Here it is on YouTube.

Roger Moore on Alias

Fri, 2 Oct 2026 00:00:00 -0500

To my surprise, Roger Moore showed up on an episode of Alias playing a spymaster named Poole… Edward Poole. He would have been 77 at the time and had last played Bond fully 20 years before.

In my imagination, he was still Bond, and still in the espionage game, just living under a different identity.

Bond-theme Connections Game

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

The New York Times Connections game had a Bond(-ish) theme today.

Here is the solution:

Starting with Month Abbreviations: Decent, Novelty, Octopussy, Septum

Securities: Bond, Future, Option, Stock

Gangster Movies: Bugsy, Casino, Donnie Brasco, Scarface

Things That Are Shaken (Not Stirred): Etch A Sketch, Martini, Spray Paint, Tambourine

Cloak and Dagger (1984)

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Cloak and Dagger is (supposedly; see below) a kids movie — it’s kind of a crossover into fantasy.

Henry Thomas (yes, the kid from E.T.) plays Davey, a kid who loves role-playing games, especially those starring his hero, Jack Flack. He also has a vidid fantasy life, imagining Jack in real-life. Jack is played by Dabney Coleman, who also plays Davey’s widower Dad.

Davey accidentally witnesses a real-life murder, the victim of which hands him a video game cartridge and a mysterious number. Now Davey is running from actual spies, but no one will believe him, except the fantasy version of Jack, who appears and coaches him through life-or-death situations.

This was released to theaters at the same time as The Last Starfighter. They apparently played in a double-feature. A prominent plot point of the movie is a video game called Cloak and Dagger. It was an arcade title at the time, but in the movie it appears to run on the Atari 5200.

For a kids’ movie, there’s a lot of wanton killing. And it’s not even implied — lots of people just straight-up get shot on-screen. Also, there’s a disturbing monologue by the main villain explaining to Davey all the different ways he’s going to shoot him to watch him die slowly.

I was kind of fuzzy on the “rules” of the magic. Jack is in Davey’s imagination… except for one time, when he’s not. And Davey’s Dad escapes from a certain-death situation, which makes me wonder if he was Jack all along?

Maybe I’m reading too much into this. But, again, the tone of the movie and the violence in it really seemed to be at odds. Still, it was a cute premise, and the opening scene with Jack on a mission is a laugh riot of spy cliches which ends with a pair of giant D12 dice rolling towards him.

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Three Days of the Condor is commonly cited as one of the best spy films ever made. I watched on a flight back from Germany, and I’ll concede that the reputation is well-deserved.

Robert Redford plays Joe Turner. He works for the CIA in New York under the cover of a “literary historical society” that reads books all day, and feeds them into a computer to determine trends and possible terrorist plots.

One day, he goes out to pick up lunch, and when he comes back, everyone has been shot dead. From then on, he’s on the run, trying to figure out why. He abducts Faye Dunaway’s character to get out of a tough spot, and she becomes an accomplice and lover along the way.

In classic spy fashion, Turner has no idea who he can trust, and no idea if his former employees are actually trying to kill him. He gets double-crossed a few times, and racks his brain to put together the pieces of what he was working on that might have threatened the wrong person.

The ending is quite good, with Turner thinking that he’s found a clean way out, but the last scene and dialog making you wonder if he’s just kidding himself and the apparatus that set him up might still be able to take him down.

It’s adapted from a novel published the year before (interestingly called Six Days of the Condor). There was also a 2018 TV series that ran for two seasons and 20 episodes.

The Man with One Red Shoe (1985)

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

This is a comedy, but not a spoof. Spy, that I watched last week, was a spoof. It was character-driven — really just an excuse for Melissa McCarthy to be (very) funny. You could have dropped her into anything else and it would have worked the same.

But The Man with One Red Shoe is a comedy, driven far more by story than characters. The spy angle of the plot is what makes it work.

It’s an early role for Tom Hanks. He plays a violinist from Washington DC who’s mistakenly identified as a witness who will testify against Dabney Coleman’s corrupt CIA executive. Coleman’s team of spies is trying to investigate and neutralize him, while another team is trying to protect him. Both sides are working against each other, while Hanks’s character stays largely oblivious (he’s not actually what anyone thinks he is).

There are some great performances here, but it’s a genuinely inventive and interesting story that results in some unique situations. There’s also a funny subplot involving Jim Belushi going slightly crazy after unwittingly witnessing several espionage-related events.

And, of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the line that has for some reason become iconic in a circle of me and a couple friends:

Does anyone here remember how to kill a man?

I don’t know why that’s funny. It just is.

Spy vs Spy

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

I was reminded today of Spy vs. Spy, the comic series in MAD Magazine.

I was a little surprised to find it dates all the way back to 1961 by a Cuban cartoonist living in exile. It’s been published continually since then. The original cartoonist retired from the strip in 1987, when he passed it on to several others. In addition to MAD Magazine, there was a Sunday comic strip for a period of time, and there have been book compilations, a cartoon or two, and lots of cosplay.

The two spies are black and white, but there’s no indication of which one is the good guy and which one is the bad guy. Apparently, in 1968, there was some note in a strip about the black spy being from the “east,” but that’s about it.

Considering the early start, this strip might have contributed to the “trenchcoat and fedora” cliche of the spy. Through the 40s and 50s, that fashion was mostly associated with detectives, not spies.

Spy (2015)

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Here’s the fun things about spoofs: they can embrace cliches. If a “serious” movie tries to be too much like something else, then it’s considered derivative. But a spoof has license to do exactly that — that’s the actual point.

Such is the case with the reductively named Spy. This is a Melissa McCarthy send up that puts her in Europe working as a CIA agent to… you know what… It doesn’t matter. The plot has something to do with a nuclear bomb, but who cares? The movie is basically a vehicle for McCarthy to be funny, and it absolutely succeeds at that, even if it falls short at pure storytelling.

Enjoying this will necessarily depend on how funny you find McCarthy (I personally find her hilarious), but there are supporting characters that contribute just as much. Rose Byrne is a self-absorbed femme fatale who steals every scene she’s in, and Jason Statham does a pitch-perfect parody of, well, himself, as a fellow agent who claims to have undergone some of the most inventive ordeals.

He’s worth quoting at length (read this as Statham yelling across a conference room; I know you can hear it…):

Nothing kills me. I'm immune to 179 different types of poison. I know because I ingested them all at once when I was deep undercover in an underground poison-ingesting crime ring… I once used defibrillators on myself… I put shards of glass in my fuckin' eye… I've jumped from a high-rise building using only a raincoat as a parachute and broke both legs upon landing and I still had to pretend I was in a fucking Cirque du Soleil show… I've swallowed enough microchips and shit them back out again to make a computer… During the threat of an assassination attempt, I appeared convincingly in front of congress as Barack Obama… I watched the woman I love get tossed from a plane and hit by another plane mid-air… I drove a car off a freeway on top of a train while it was on fire. Not the car, I was on fire.

This is not a sophisticated movie, but the humor isn’t entirely juvenile either. It walks the line pretty well.

There are some fun gags like the increasingly dowdy cover identities and names McCarthy’s character is given (cat lady Carol Jenkins; “I look like someone's homophobic aunt”), and a fantastic scene with Michael McDonald as a deadpan “Q”-type gadgeteer who issues McCarthy a series of gadgets under increasingly embarrassing guises (hemorrhoid pads spiked with chloroform and a poison antidote in a bottle labeled as a stool softener).

I watched this film on a flight to Frankfurt, and I’ll admit to laughing out loud a couple of times to the point where I became self-conscious that people were staring at me.

Alias (2001 - 2006)

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

I’ve begun making my way through Alias. This was the show that made Jennifer Garner famous back in 2005. Up until the pilot, she had just done some bit parts in Felicity and Pearl Harbor. The show ran for five seasons and 100+ episodes.

Sydney Bristow is a UCLA graduate student recruited by a secret branch of the CIA. I remember the series being the classic format of a relatively self-contained episode in service of a larger story. The larger story here is whether the “secret branch” of the CIA is actually that, or if it’s a shadowy organization actually working against the CIA.

Sydney’s father Jack is played by Victor Garber. He’s part of the same organization… or is he? The pilot sets up all sorts of plot threads. What happened to Sydney’s mother? Why is she so angry with her father? How will she stay undercover after the agency inflicts tragedy on her? Will there romance between her and her journalist friend Will (an early role for Bradley Cooper) or the handsome CIA agent introduced in the ending of the episode?

There’s so much going on here that the second episode opens with a full minute of voiceover from Garner re-hashing all the exposition bundled into the 90-minute pilot.

If I thought too hard about it, I could probably find some plot holes big enough to drive a truck through. And I never quite accepted Garner as an action hero — watching her do martial arts just never struck me as genuine. Also, I remember that later in the series, the storyline got weirder, having to do with some mystical artifact or machine (the “Rambaldi” story arc).

But, for now, it’s a fun spy caper. It will take me a bit to get through the first season (for which I paid $24.99 on Prime Video), so expect an update then.

BMW Films

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Back in 2001, BMW made a series of short films that they released to the web. They starred a then-unknown Clive Owen as “the driver.” He was a guy who drove BMWs and… did stuff. Some of this was spy stuff, some of it was private detective stuff, but all of it was very cool.

The films were five minutes or so, and they got some named directors for this: I remember John Frankenheimer, Ang Lee, and Guy Ritchie (along with his then-wife Madonnna). Production values were sky-high — each film was a little action movie in its own right.

Given the rotating directors, all the films had a different vibe. There are straight-up actions films, some surreal drug-trippy films, a tender romance-ish film, a mystical film, etc. They all held complete stories, and it was fun to see how a director would tell the story.

I remember these leading to a lot of discussion about how Owen would have made a fine James Bond.

Here are two of them. They’re all scattered around YouTube somewhere.

No Way Out (1987)

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

I’ve long-felt that No Way Out is one of the great overlooked spy films. Released in 1987, it was was early starring role for Kevin Costner.

Costner is Tom Farrell, a Navy officer working in the Pentagon. He’s sleeping with Susan, who also happens to be sleeping with the Secretary of Defense.

One night, the Secretary accidentally kills her during an argument about her other lover (who he doesn’t know is Farrell). He concocts a plan to find the other lover and frame him as “Yuri,” a rumored Soviet deep cover agent that has been operating in DC for years. The CIA can then kill him and resolve Susan’s death without the Secretary’s involvement ever being known.

The Secretary assigns Farrell to find the other lover… which puts him in the problematic position of running a manhunt of which he is the target.

You might think I’ve revealed too much, but I haven’t. It’s a tightly-wound thriller with great performances from Costner, Gene Hackman as the Secretary, and a young Will Patton as his scheming assistant who has an agenda of his own.

Top it off with a head-snapping twist at the end, and you end up with an amazing thriller that never quite got the renown that it should have.

Bond Intro in LEGO

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

This guy spent a lot of time recreating the Bond “gunbarrel” intro in LEGO. Some amazing ingenuity here.

Gardner Novel Set

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

I finally got around to finishing my collection of John Gardner’s original Bond novels. He wrote 13 original novels and two movie novelizations between 1981 and 1996.

I've never been a huge fan of Gardner, but I stumbled on Seafire in a used bookstore a couple of months ago, then realized I was just three novels away from having the set. It took a few eBay orders, but I finally got it completed.

(And you can call it sacrilege, but I highly approve of Gardner putting Bond in a Saab 9000 Turbo. I've always had a thing for them.)

Eyes (2005)

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

If you blinked back in 2005, you might have missed Eyes which didn’t even last a full month. ABC filmed 12 episodes, but only aired five before yanking it off the air.

It was an hour-long drama about Judd Risk Management, a private investigation firm. So, it wasn’t espionage in the classic sense, but there was a lot of sneaking around.

It was an ensemble show. Tim Daly was Harlan Judd, who owned the firm, but he was surrounded by 7-8 other players with their own dramas, and a central plot point around how the troubled firm was going to survive and who was maneuvering for power over whom. It reminded me of a legal drama where ownership and partnership are the chess pieces.

But there were some neat spy-ish bits in the pilot episode: lots of surveillance, reconstruction of shredded documents, and general skullduggery.

I remember watching it on network TV when it came out and being surprised at how little it was marketed. Production values were sky-high, so I’m sure the show cost a fortune to make, but there was very little promotion of it — it just kind of appeared suddenly, and then disappeared just as quickly.

Probably for the best, honestly, because the pilot made it seem like it was heading into soap opera territory pretty quickly.

The episode is on YouTube, but is frustratingly missing the last two minutes of audio (which I remember being a montage over David Bowie’s Under Pressure… which, now that I think about it, is probably why it was removed).

Cover Up (1984 - 1985)

Sun, 13 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Cover Up lasted for a single season back in 1984, but it’s most well-known for how one of its stars died mid-season.

Danielle Reynolds is a New York fashion photographer. She’s married to Mark, an embassy functionary (but really a CIA agent) in La Costa, a fictional country south of the border. When Mark is killed in a car bombing, Danielle finds an ex-special forces soldier named Mac who just happens to be handsome enough to pose as a model, and they travel to La Costa to investigate. At the end of the episode, it’s decided that they will take Mark’s place doing missions for the CIA using their photographer/model cover story.

Mac was the centerpiece of the show — it was kind of a reverse Charlie’s Angels, in that respect. He was played by newcomer Jon Erik Hexum, and in addition to his impossibly good looks, he had a genuinely compelling screen presence.

Tragically, during the filming of episode seven, he was playing on-set with a handgun loaded with blanks. He put it against his head and pulled the trigger, not realizing that even though a blank doesn’t propel a slug, there’s still a short range explosion of propellant. The resulting brain damage left him in a coma and he was removed from life support six days later.

He was replaced with another hero, and the show finished out a 22-episode season, but it just didn’t have the ratings to get renewed.

The CIA boss is played by Richard Anderson, who was Oscar Goldman in the Six Million Dollar Man. And the main villain in the pilot is Louis Jourdan, who had played Kamal Kahn in Octopussy just a year before. The theme song was Holding Out for a Hero (RIP Bonnie Tyler) sung by Hexum’s girlfriend at the time.

Someone has posted the entire series on YouTube. As with most 80s TV transferred to digital, the quality is rough.

To Catch a Thief (1955)

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

I read somewhere that 1955’s To Catch a Thief was fairly spy-adjacent. I watched it this morning.

It’s got about everything you need: a very debonair hero in Cary Grant (he was 51 at the time), a beautiful girl in Grace Kelly (she was just 26), amazing locations on the French Rivera, elegant galas, classic sports cars, and intrigue around stolen jewels.

Grant is John Robie, a former jewel thief nicknamed “The Cat” who broke out of prison during World War II and joined the French Resistance. He became a hero and earned parole, then went straight. But 15 years later, someone has started robbing the idle rich in Nice and Cannes using John’s old techniques. He has to catch the real thief before the police come for him.

It’s probably as close to a Bond film as you can get without actually being about espionage. The love affair between Grant and Kelly is a little weird when you consider their ages, but it’s handled in typically vague fashion for the 1950s.

Parts of it were filmed on location, and the scenery is gorgeous. But I almost forgot it was a Hitchcock movie — it just doesn’t have that Hitchcockian vibe to it.

Code Name: Emperor (2022)

Tue, 8 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

I watched Code Name: Emperor on Netflix. (That’s the English title, anyway — it’s a Spanish film. I watched it with English subtitles.)

It stars Luis Tosar, who is apparently one of the most popular actors in Spain (the only other thing I’ve seen him in is as the Big Boss in the Miami Vice movie). He plays Juan, some kind of intelligence agent — only once does someone refer to “The Agency.”

There’s are two plot threads, which confused me. A German couple is smuggling radioactive material, and Juan has been asked to find kompromat on a young politician. Those are two separate things, it turned out, but both of them play into a crisis of conscience that Juan is struggling with, which culminates in a monologue by a General about how military control and blackmail helps maintain the political order.

In retrospect, it was a little confusing. But it was compelling while I was watching it. There’s a romantic subplot which is genuinely touching, and Tosar does a great job embodying a weary agent who is questioning what side of the fence he’s actually on.

The Drunken Witness

Mon, 7 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

I was reminded of the bit player from three consecutive James Bond movies who witnesses something surreal and subsequently questions his sobriety. He was uncredited, but IMDb lists him as “Man with Bottle” twice and “Man with Wine Glass” once.

The official YouTube channel compiled all three clips into this short video.

One hopes that he’s stopped drinking by now.

Masquerade (1983)

Mon, 7 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Masquerade was an attempt to bring the Love Boat/Fantasy Island format to espionage. It didn’t even last a full season back in 1983.

Rod Taylor, Greg Evigan, and Kirstie Alley were the three constants. Taylor was the head of “Operation Masquerade,” which was a program to use civilians in spy operations, ostensibly because the Soviets knew all about the “real” spies. Evigan and Alley played his lieutenants.

Then, in each episode, there were a crew of guest stars recruited for that episode only (you can see the Love Boat angle, right?). For example, the pilot movie has Earnest Borgnine, Cybil Shepard, Richard Roundtree, Rue McClanahan, and others. Each of them bring their own little subplots and conflicts, as well as some special skill that was critical to that week’s antics.

The plot of the pilot was a far-fetched plan to discredit a Soviet spy stationed in Paris so that he wouldn’t be selected as the new head of the KGB. The entire thing was absurd and more played for laughs than drama. (For example, at one point, Borgnine’s plumber replaces the water in the Soviet’s shower with gin, to make him appear to be an alcoholic. That’s why they needed a plumber on the team, naturally.)

Someone has posted the entire pilot movie on YouTube. It’s just over an hour, which means it must have been 90-minutes with commercials. The quality is horrible, but you can get the idea.

As a bonus, here’s a 30-second bumper promo for the next episode which shows Walter Gotell (General Gogol from the Bond films) doing his best Soviet accent (he was actually German).

Also, check out the opening credits and theme song. It’s an orgy of espionage cliches.

Red Sparrow (2013)

Sat, 5 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

I got stuck in Boston due to weather, so I asked AI to recommend a spy novel. It came up with Red Sparrow, which was the 2013 basis for the movie starring Jennifer Lawrence.

I tore through the book in about 24 hours. It was spectacular, and I’m currently nursing a “narrative hangover” from it.

Here is my full review.

Minox Camera Book

Fri, 4 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

I spent some time with an book devoted to the history and specification of the Minox camera. This is the tiny camera that you activate by squeezing it together. It’s a staple of Cold War spy movies.

It was a quirky book — one of those things that I’m glad exists, but that I don’t quite understand.

Here’s my review.

Movie Scene Map

Wed, 2 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

On the heels of Reading Maps, we have Movie Scene Maps, which appears to locate both plot locations and filming locations. The Bond movies never disappoint in terms of globe-hopping: here’s the locations for Casino Royale.

True Lies (1994)

Tue, 1 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

True Lies came to the historic theater in our local downtown. I last watched it in the theater fully 32 years ago when it originally released.

I still remember seeing “Tom Arnold” in the opening credits and thinking, “Aw, this is going to suck…” But his character turned out to be one of the best things in the movie.

I’ve always liked the intersection of action and human stories. The marriage angle is kind of fascinating, and the ending is fulfilling. And Bill Paxton does a great job playing a slimy used car salesman trying to bed Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wife, played by Jamie Lee Curtis.

The entire film holds up really well. The sound, in particular, was absolutely incredible. There was supposed to be a sequel, but terrorism was a problematic subject after 9/11, and then Arnold was elected governor of California in 2003. Apparently a TV series was written, cast, picked up… and then ultimate canceled.

My wife even liked it, which I did not expect.

The Ipcress File (1965)

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 -0500

I watched The Ipcress File from 1965. It was based on Len Deighton’s first novel and was released at the height of mid-60s “Bond-mania” as kind of an anti-Bond.

Michael Caine is Harry Palmer, an Army officer working for the Ministry of Defence. He’s insolent and insubordinate and has some criminal charges in his background. Harry’s world is one of dreary offices, gloomy London streets, condescending bosses, and rote paperwork.

He’s assigned to a unit that’s trying to recover a missing scientist and discover why several other scientists have seemingly become incapable of doing critical research.

There are lots of Bond alumni here: Harry Saltzman produces, Ken Adams built the sets, and John Barry delivers one of the most classic 60s spy soundtracks you’re ever going to find (the sound you hear over and over is a cimbalom). The film direction is artistic — lots and lots of shots through some foreground object to the main action behind it.

It's a solid movie. It has a good mystery, a great climax, and Caine is fantastic in the title role.

There were a few more Harry Palmer films, both in theaters and on television, though none of them are considered as good as Ipcress. There was also a limited series in 2022 on British television which is streaming on multiple services.

Mission Impossible Prague Locations

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 -0500

I’ve always loved the opening scene of the original Mission Impossible. It was set in Prague, and it was the perfect mix of action and intrigue.

As luck would have it, I found myself in Prague a couple years ago, and I spent an entire day tracking down all the shooting locations I could find. (I thought this was novel and original, but it turns out a lot of people have done it.)

I put my pics, and the corresponding frame from the movie, into this Google Doc.

Red Storm Rising

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 -0500

I picked up Red Storm Rising yesterday, and quickly got completely engrossed in it. I have read it, but I was in high school, close to 40 years ago. It was published in 1986.

The first section of the book (I’m 150 pages in) is an absolute masterclass of intelligence gathering. Bob Toland and others in the U.S. intelligence community put together a series of clues that indicate the Soviets are about to launch an attack on West Germany. The awareness comes about slowly and methodically, as they put the puzzle together, piece by piece.

Clancy does great job of zooming in and out, from huge geopolitical machinations down to very human stories. Soviet armies and navies assemble for a surprise attack… but then one man doesn’t look both ways before crossing the street, and a piece of paper he was carrying causes the U.S. to go to DEFCON 2.

I’m absolutely hooked, which is weird considering I know how the book plays out. It’s also inconvenient when the target of an addiction is a 638-page novel. There go my evenings for a while.

Gene Hackman’s Dual Identity

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:00:00 -0500

There’s a fan theory that says Gene Hackman was playing the same character in two espionage thrillers, released 24 years apart.

Hackman starred as Harry Caul in The Conversation in 1974. Then he played Edward “Brill” Lyle in Enemy of the State in 1998.

A theory has been floated that these two characters are the same person. From the Wikipedia page for The Conversation:

Hackman's character Edward Lyle in Enemy of the State closely resembles Caul: he dons the same translucent raincoat, and his workshop is nearly identical to Caul's. Also, the photograph used for Lyle in his NSA file is actually a photograph of Caul. Enemy of the State also includes a scene which is very similar to The Conversation's opening surveillance scene in San Francisco's Union Square.

If this is unintended as an actual plot device, then it has to be an Easter Egg or an inside joke — using the photo of Caul from the first movie for the photo of Lyle in the second movie is hard to deny.