Pajiba

I was always kind of tickled that I share the same last name as another famous TV detective, though I never watched the show.

Cannon?

Well, my namesake was hanged for treason. You win.

You don't like Alec Guinness or Poirot????

For how many years now have I been investing my emotions in an Overlord who turns out to be all just fuzzy bits behind the curtain?

Of course this puts that Ryan Reynolds worship into perspective. Poirot doesn't have abs (but he's not cross-eyed).

But Holy God! Have you ever seen Bridge on the River Kwai? or the Ealing Comedies?

He's more machine now than man.

Yeah because Guiness is such an amateur... compared to... compared to...
whom?

....compared to RyRey.

This reminds me of that one time I strangled a hooker in Roppongi. No more Chu-Hi's for me!

Seriously, this was the most boring and pointless post in recent Pajiba history. A fucking Poirot knockoff?!

Let me know when this horrendous piece of recycled dogshit hits the theaters so I can ignore the everloving bejesus out of it.

But Poirot is not really about the plot these days (remember when Poirot and Miss Marple were written these were ingenious plots that hadn't been over-used a million times). The beauty of David Suchet's Poirot is that they infuse the production with the petty vices, vanities and irritations that permeate families and little villages.

Besides, the women wear hats and everyone lives in beautiful houses. No sub-divisions in Poirot!

If Mrs. Pajiba-hyphenate ever needs a break, she can lounge on my sofa and soak up period mysteries all day long. I'll serve Pimms and cucumber sandwiches.

No PaddyDog, a different famous inspector. From Oxford.

No, but I do love beer.

Dammit! Took too long researching my post and now the jig is up!

I'd still change my name to Snath Steele. All your dreams would come true.

Snath Steele: "Suck my dick, stranger!"
Stranger: "Yes sir!"

Snath Steele: "Gimme that goddamned sandwich!"
Man with sandwich: "Here you go!"

Snath Steele: "Jump in front of that bus!"
Spencer Pratt: "Okey-dokey!"

See?

Dude. He should totally be Snath Hammer.

Sigh. Le Carre is fricken great. Especially when you're a book hound and all you've got is the massive flea market collection of an elderly old man who is searching for the post-Bond sweet spot.

Out of about five hundred books read, Le Carre's were the only ones I kept for my collection. I never saw the series though.

I think George Smiley will be a hard sell though - an older, portly, fastidious, 'retired' guy is called back to the fray - a very dense, detailed, intriguing network of spycraft, code words and secret politics. A lot of it is George Smiley sorting sh*t out and finding the rat 'cause he's smart, but at least it is interspersed with action pieces and character studies and yea drama. He's a British priss though, albeit nice and scathing. The best comparison would be like the modern 'M', only male.

The hard sell would be all the cold war stuff - it isn't playing so well to today's youth obsessed culture...although if you cast the right supporting characters it might do. In fact, if you 'hot' it up and do a Daniel Craig level on the casting it'd be like Ocean's Eleven for smart people.

SPOILER>>
I also think he's got a wealth of great material to make a franchise out of previously ruined adaptations. Tailor of Panama, for example, is the only story I've read that spends so much time on a total hoax and still makes for an excellent read.
spoiler end>>

It's all about casting then. I dunno if this guy has the pull to make a big deal out of it all, but if he can do one thing right, I say give him another chance with under-utilized source material.

I find it really depressing how many comments it took for Le Carre's name to even get mentioned. He is the absolute master - if any of his work makes for an imperfect adaptation, the fault lies with the adapters.

a fucking Poirot knock-off?

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy has nothing to do with murder mysteries. It has nothing to do with Poirot. Please disassociate these two entities in your mind. They were only connected by DR and need to be unconnected now.

And Claire, I would have to respectfully disagree and say that the miniseries is fucking brilliantly cast, with two masters, Alec Guinness and Ian Richardson, as George Smiley and Bill Hayden. Guinness brings subtlety and a sense of unknowable, hidden depth of mind to the role which is exactly what Smiley should have. i can't put into words how plain fucking great this series is, and even if you're pretending to be a populist who hates 'smartpeoplestuff' like DR, you should definitely watch it.

That said, I bet the movie's going to suck the sweaty balls of Michael Bay. At least, that's what I'm telling myself.

I'm going with the "My expectations are so low anything's an improvement" school of Hollywood Movie Survival.

@Claire
I haven't actually seen Constant Gardner, but maybe I'll give it a go now.
Who would be your ideal Smiley if not Guinness?

You have to agree though that Peter Guillam and Ricky Tarr were both excellently acted.

Whoa, why so much Poirot talk when it's a Le Carre remake?

The book is pretty satisfying, all in all. I find Le Carre an awfully enjoyable novelist, and he steers clear, for the most part, of being either formulaic or overwrought, the two big pitfalls in genre fiction like that. I don't love the miniseries--Guinness is fine, but the whole thing was kinda forgettable--but the book is good stuff. Le Carre's spies are almost always more bureaucrats than supermen, and so his best stories are a good, slow burn rather than a bunch of chase scenes loosely strung together.

But I will echo the recommendation of Constant Gardener--both the book and the movie, honestly.

Aaaaaaand by "shoutouts" I of course mean "shootouts". Oy.