Tinker Tailor remake

& (verbiage overflow) ⋅ ⋅ Thu 15 September 2011 ⋅ RSS ⋅ Search ⋅ Subscribe

A friend has sent me this review (http://www.economist.com/node/21529004) of the new film of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a favorite book of mine.

I have misgivings. I have misgivings about seeing any film made of any book I really enjoyed — I'm afraid my own involved visualization will be supplanted by the film's. I turned off the Alec Guinness version six minutes in — all, all wrong, wrong. Louis Mazzini, Henry St. James, Col. Nicholson, yes; George Smiley, no.

Rarely does any movie come near reproducing sensations as complex as I have when I read a good book. Explicitness washes out subtlety; images wash out words.

The one temptation is the review's hint that there might be a new angle on the character of Mr. Smiley: "…there’s a sadistic side that Mr Oldman has brought carefully to the surface." Hm.

Clearly, if I had expected to avoid torment in this life my expectations were impossibly unrealistic.

All articles

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  2. John Holt on learning in mid-life and the role of the teacher (1978)
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  4. Self-segregation
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  6. The English Level of This Year's Principal Presidential Candidates
  7. Chao on Wenyan
  8. Face 面子
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  11. Transcribing Voice Recordings on OS X, 3 — another example
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  13. Transcribing Voice Recordings on OS X
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  16. “The Man Who Knew Infinity” — 2015 movie about Ramanujan
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  18. There is no ternary operator in Python
  19. Does Fortran have a two-way decision function?
  20. Debugging the Art Museum
  21. Learning to Throw Books Away
  22. About Me
  23. Walter Murch on Standing at Work
  24. “Our Kind of Story”
  25. Revisiting the Taiwan national anthem
  26. Review of Button, Phonetic Ambiguity in the Chinese Script
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  28. Two Git Accounts on One Computer
  29. Pytest parametrization — passing multiple data-items to a single test
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  31. Two Curious Things about screen.width and screen.height on Mobile Firefox and under iOS.
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  33. Progressing to the Next Level after Two Years at Hacker School
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  38. Automated Transcription of a Lyric’s Melody
  39. Quote-Unquote: Quick Python Conversion to and from URI Standard Format
  40. Literate Code in Crista Lopes’s Exercises in Programming Style
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  42. Richard Bellman on Multistage Decision Processes
  43. Contradictory Advice from Kenkō about Studying after Mid-life
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  70. Hacker School Sees “The Internet’s Own Boy”
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  86. Friedrich Gulda's Beethoven
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  92. Taking the larger view of frustrations with technology
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  95. Karl Popper on conflict between your basic assumptions and those of your interlocutor (1965)
  96. My Hacker School Pairing Interview
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  100. The Imperative Style in Commits and Docstrings
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  102. Two complaints and one word of praise about GitHub Flavored Markdown
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  104. Two bits of trivia from the Institute for Advanced Study
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  106. George Orwell on falsification of fact (1946)
  107. Loss of innocence for "ggg"
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  109. Library technology at the Institute for Advanced Study
  110. Richard Feynman on scientific integrity (1974)
  111. Richard Feynman on ignorance of science (1964)
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  116. A faster Python sort
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  118. Rendering a matrix as a linear array
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  120. Welsh bwg 'bogey': an alternate proposal about the origin of "computer bug"
  121. Using python str.format(*args) when the cardinality of *args is unknown
  122. Compelled by forces I can no longer resist…
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  125. Now filtering (> /dev/null) some spam before it reaches the Gmail Spam folder
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  130. The name "Hacker School"
  131. The benefits of Hacker School
  132. Another two subway rules of thumb illustrated
  133. Short-circuiting and (and ==) instead of if in Python
  134. Quintilian on time and study
  135. Kenkō on time and study
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  137. A bon mot of Quintilian on theory
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  140. The psychology of pairing and code review at Hacker School
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  142. Is Hacker School like graduate school?
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  144. Hacker School compared with studying computer science at City College
  145. Differences between code and natural language
  146. Hacker School after six weeks
  147. Pairing at Hacker School
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  149. Jerry Norman's Manchu dictionary has appeared
  150. Two things I am thinking about as Hacker School begins
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  163. First day of Android coding: two problems solved
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  174. Does Apple view an "iPhone" phone number as something different from a "mobile" phone number?
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  176. One more rule of thumb for the New York subway
  177. Two further rules of thumb for the New York subway
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  179. Alternate ways to say "pop" and "push" in computer science
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  182. Proofreading poorly OCRed material
  183. New York State redistricting maps on line at CUNY's Center for Urban Research
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  185. The SEC on the utility of Python as a secure and accessible tool for generating official reports (2010)
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  188. Images (figures) on facing pages in a LaTeX document
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  192. Jerry Norman (1936–2012)
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  195. "Neither side took prisoners" — Japanese and American atrocities in the Pacific theater of World War II
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  199. Accommodating the Chinese hunger for official seals on official documents.
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  205. Lǔ Xùn 魯迅 (1881–1936) on the truth behind Confucian morality (1918)
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  217. Elia Kazan and questions of betrayal
  218. Advice on preparing herring
  219. Two limitations of call-forwarding on Google Voice
  220. Student protests in Montréal and thoughts about tuition
  221. Call-screening in Google Voice has a problem
  222. Cortlandt Alley's Chinese name
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  236. Ubuntu 12.04LTS (Precise Pangolin) on VirtualBox
  237. Recordings for Classical Chinese
  238. Arthur Luehrmann on "computer literacy" (1972)
  239. The origin of the symbol Θ (big theta) in asymptotic notation
  240. Being censored in China
  241. The experience of learning vim commands
  242. How should I rate this movie on Netflix?
  243. Netflix miscalculation — Hugo
  244. Curious vim behavior: treats date range as subtraction
  245. Alexandra Lord on the myth of the academic career (2012)
  246. Elia Kazan on getting along in society (1974)
  247. ssh unavailable over Amtrak's wifi network
  248. Tricked again by Python's mutable objects
  249. Is blocking ads theft of service?
  250. A poor analogy on intellectual property rights
  251. A mutton chop at Keen's Steakhouse
  252. An anecdote about William Hung (Hóng Yè 洪業, 1893-1980)
  253. Sorting a list of Unicode strings in Python, case-insensitively and ignoring diacritics
  254. Avoid deleting the contents of a file in Python through sloppy use of "write" mode
  255. Reloading a Python module after modifying it
  256. Frank Mittelbach on documentation (2006)
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  258. Frank Mittelbach's "moral obligation" license for the LaTeX multicol package
  259. Keith Whalen records scales and patterns from the Slonimsky Thesaurus
  260. Calligraphy in Chinatown
  261. Manchu dictionary done
  262. Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) on the damage done by immaturity in politics
  263. Gotham breakneck to Chinatown
  264. Calculus III progresses
  265. Some Western recipe-names as transformed by the Taiwanese linguistic experience
  266. Class war against the banking and financial industry
  267. Avoiding the Emailyama
  268. Adblock Plus is the most useful piece of shareware I've ever had
  269. A less painful way to install Adblock Plus filter-subscriptions in Firefox
  270. Tales from Calculus III
  271. Jack Cheng on "the technology I grew up with" (2012)
  272. Distribution of fonts: competing models are coexisting
  273. MoinMoin for notebook-wiki (and WordPress, you are trying the patience of my affections)
  274. generate native MATLAB code from finished figures, for study
  275. Quintilian on laziness and difficulty in one's studies
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  278. Origins of the Mandarin Phonetic Symbols (注音符號/ㄅㄆㄇㄈ)
  279. Installing UCC certificate for multiple domain names hosted virtually on a single server
  280. QuickTime Pro easily concatenates .m4v video files
  281. Columbia to Chinatown walk, 20120122
  282. A local custom without the corresponding exotic saying in rural Taiwan
  283. HTTPS being rejected at Yahoo hosting
  284. Classical Chinese syllabus posted; using Landslide for markdown-to-HTML5
  285. Phonosymbolism, etymology, and the nebulous Chinese word family
  286. Simple meal at Shui Mei Café (嘎嘎叫, 67A East Broadway, NYC), formerly So Go Café)
  287. Are cell phones and bananas radioactive?
  288. LaTeX and electronic documents
  289. New definition of “algorithm”
  290. Materials used in paper bank statements
  291. Finally making progress with Vim
  292. Kenneth S. Wherry on American influence in China (1940)
  293. Propagation of a meme and a metameme
  294. Against the single time zone
  295. Hamish Milne on transcriptions of Bach (2005)
  296. Choosing a suitable site for fieldwork, and working with illiterate informants in China
  297. Yuen Ren Chao (1892–1982) urging Americans to resist Chinese telephantasmia (1921)
  298. The brown German flour of Przasnysz
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  300. Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) on doing good work (1978)
  301. Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) on the "dictatorship of technology" (1978)
  302. Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) on ideological enslavement (1978)
  303. Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) on law (1978)
  304. Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) on responsibility and a "post-democratic" system (1978)
  305. Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) on "opposition" and "dissident" (1978)
  306. Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) on ideology (1978)
  307. 'Factorial' in Chinese (jiēchéng 階乘/阶乘)
  308. Leibniz’s theodicy, dynamic programming, and strategies for learning
  309. Emanuel Derman and Paul Wilmott on mathematical models and self-delusion (2009)
  310. Y. R. Chao and Henry Sheffer added to the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  311. Two more rules of thumb for the New York subway
  312. Math in the Movies
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  314. Richard Feynman on practical applications of the theory of gravitation (1964)
  315. Karl Popper on understanding a problem (1963)
  316. Galileo on "reason conquering sense" (1632)
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  318. Literacy book finally out
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  320. Doctoral pedigrees
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  324. Code-switching between comfortable cognitive aptitudes and the main aptitudes used in math and coding
  325. Wishes for the Orthodox Nativity Season (began 15 November this year)
  326. Two rules of thumb about transportation in New York
  327. Pípá yā 琵琶鴨 (Frisbee Duck)
  328. Testing the reliability of the Python priority queue
  329. Edsger Dijkstra on programming as an intellectual discipline (2001)
  330. Edsger Dijkstra on the name of the field Computer Science (2001)
  331. Edsger Dijkstra on anthropomorphizing computers (2001)
  332. Edsger Dijkstra on mastery of one's native tongue as a vital programming skill (2001)
  333. Edsger Dijkstra on the origin of his shortest path algorithm (2001)
  334. Efrem Podgaits's New York Mass (2001)
  335. Anecdotal report on experimenting with creatine as a study aid
  336. "Suppose" for math proofs, in LaTeX
  337. A rule of thumb in teaching
  338. Graphing flowcharts and automata in LaTeX
  339. Perception of time and suspension of finality (studying math)
  340. Suddenly perceiving the cantus firmus in a Bach chorus
  341. Two of Elvira's arias from Don Giovanni
  342. Identifying robots among human beings
  343. Apparent misspelling in LaTeX command set: \guillemotleft and \guillemotright
  344. Table of contents in a LaTeX book: make the TOC entry different from the actual chapter headings in the text
  345. Competition and sharing in academia
  346. Kuhn and Popper
  347. Herb Gross's calculus lectures
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  349. Clyde Haberman on validating one's authenticity as a New Yorker (2011)
  350. The era of lost words
  351. Never odd or even
  352. William Deresiewicz on multitasking and solitude (2009)
  353. Bjarne Stroustrup's advice to up-and-coming programmers (2008)
  354. Chet Ramey's advice to up-and-coming programmers (2008)
  355. Bjarne Stroustrup on the name C++ and common criticisms of the language
  356. Steve Bourne, advice to up-and-coming programmers (2009)
  357. Alfred Aho on the origins of awk (2008)
  358. Leslie Lamport on thinking first and on commenting code (2007)
  359. Pens of choice for linguistic fieldwork
  360. How I learned LaTeX
  361. Some bons mots from Edsger Dijkstra (1984)
  362. Non-paean to Steve Jobs
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  364. John McCarthy on "Generality in Artificial Intelligence" (1987)
  365. Brian Kernighan's summary thoughts on scripting languages
  366. Changes to the inventory of IPython magic commands (v. 0.10 to 0.11)
  367. One man's calm reflection on Java-think in Python
  368. mdfind as a substitute for locate on Mac OS X
  369. Reconsider P. T. Barnum's reputation
  370. LaTeX macro for circling answers on math problem sets
  371. View of the Mariana Trench
  372. Simulating private variables in Python
  373. Choice of formats for basic code documentation
  374. Dennis Ritchie on Computer Science and Commerce (1984)
  375. Inconsistent results of the same seed in random.seed() on different Python installations
  376. An opinion on vi configuration
  377. The virtue of Vim (or: why I do not remap copy and paste)
  378. Shark fin and the economics of Chinese "face"
  379. Two funerary practices and the end of a good story
  380. An important skill for instructors
  381. p::c
  382. Twice-a-day mail delivery
  383. Portmanteau characters in Chinese (abstract)
  384. A math professor I enjoyed
  385. The state of my Netflix patronage
  386. Longevity vs. versatility of code
  387. A new kind of noise in the subway
  388. Router VI is dead
  389. Tinker Tailor remake
  390. Automated upward pricing spiral
  391. Break-in?
  392. Telephantasmia, one of the great gifts of Chinese culture
  393. September 11th sensations
  394. Whether to take a small loss or consent to the devaluation of the US dollar
  395. City checkpoint chaos
  396. Continuing opportunity for techno-elitism
  397. A worry of Donald Knuth's
  398. An opinion of TeX
  399. Advice on teaching English in China if you lack a TEFL degree
  400. "The Highline" Park
  401. Plutarch on the sensitivity and versatility of the human mind
  402. Plutarch's praise of the "fox" temperament
  403. Unagi hitsumabushi 鰻櫃まぶし
  404. My mother and me, at work on the Early China index, 20110526
  405. juémíngzǐ 決明子 tisane
  406. Brillat-Savarin on the pleasures of the fast
  407. University of Maryland, (College Park) general education rated D in a national survey
  408. The EMACS meta key and the standing desk
  409. A rule of thumb in choosing one's tools
  410. Dr. Johnson on the "fox" temperament
  411. Carl Elliott reviews Ginsberg, Fall of the Faculty (WSJ)
  412. Hard copy vs. electronic copy
  413. Deborah Ball's article on the opposition to standardizing the Romansh language (WSJ)
  414. Boris Veytsman's review of Kottwitz, LaTeX Beginner's Guide
  415. Why even 212 phone numbers calling in-area have to dial 212 first
  416. Dr. Johnson on keeping a diary
  417. Against object-oriented design (except in scripting languages)
  418. Worrying about inadequate memory to hold program and debugger (1973)
  419. Consequences of a compiler defect
  420. The Internet and scripting languages
  421. Newton's own suffering at math
  422. Fresh turmeric-root tea
  423. Appreciation of awk
  424. "Computer Science, Modern Languages Most Gender-Polarized Majors"
  425. Food issues during the Siege of Leningrad
  426. Starting a blog