Comments on: Who’d invent a job like that?

By: Robin Sloan

Robin Sloan — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:10:33 +0000

Ooh. Hadn’t seen. Will check out. Thanks for the tip!

By: Kyle H

Kyle H — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:16:25 +0000

Coming in way late to reply to my own post:

Has anyone checked out the sneak preview AMC is running of their new show Rubicon? It’s basically set in Robert Redford’s Three Days of the Condor workplace.

The setting is deliberately vague, but apparently they look through both traditional intelligence (bank statements, satellite photos of missle sites, etc) and regular media for cyphers and other communication. And additionally they are kind of a New World Order-style “conspiracy generation” firm.

Anyway, seems really up your alley if you liked the initial premise of Three Days of the Condor.

By: Tim Carmody

Tim Carmody — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 00:22:16 +0000

Colin Dickey on Twitter reminded me of another movie that isn’t a spy movie, but has a similar feel to these smart, understated 70s thrillers — Zodiac, which I marvel at more and more as time goes by.

By: Howard Weaver

Howard Weaver — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 03:11:03 +0000

Whoever has rights to “This Is Not A Novel” and “Reader’s Block” most certainly should turn them into some kind of Shit David Markson Says on Twitter. He is the master of narrative in limited bites, and these are the masterpieces.

By: Robin Sloan

Robin Sloan — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 02:20:31 +0000

Yes! You’re right, I think The Informant is absolutely a modern heir to these movies (with a twist). Good call.

By: ToastyKen

ToastyKen — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 01:54:40 +0000

Haha great point with The Informant!. It’s the anti-Bourne. :)

By: ToastyKen

ToastyKen — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 01:52:14 +0000

I was also going to mention The Conversation, which actually seems quite appropriate for our modern over-analyzing society (though it perhaps bears most resemblance to the 60s movie Blowup.

Thanks for the list, Kyle. I haven’t seen most of those, and am going to add them to my ever-growing Netflix queue. :)

By: Matt Penniman

Matt Penniman — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 21:29:34 +0000

I feel like the conspiracy thriller has been too played out to be used straight in mainstream Hollywood (which may be why it’s ripe for re-discovery), but its successors frequently take a position resembling “never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity” — i.e., we no longer worry that the government is out to get us, because we realize how rare it is for the government to actually have something approaching reliable knowledge and control. Exhibit A: The Informant!, which starts off like a fairly serious thriller but gradually becomes more convoluted and preposterous.

On the subject of full bleed: we’re seeing that experience work its way into the desktop as well, and I agree that it’s tremendously valuable. I rarely watch video for more than a few minutes without going into full-screen mode, and the same goes for word processing. Email, research, and cross-referencing bricolage, though — for these tasks you need a workspace, somewhere you can keep ticklers out and accessible. Did you — could you — compose this blog post on an iPad?

By: Saheli

Saheli — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:54:11 +0000

Ha, everyone brought up The Conversation. Snark movie night?

Post script to that–Sneakers is sort of the Happy 80s end of that series; the hackers fix everything, freedom is preserved. The end of Cryptonomicon is similarly positive. Was that an illusion we let ourselves buy into?

By: Saheli

Saheli — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:51:56 +0000

Ah yes, I was going to chime in with the Parrallax View & The Conversation as must watches. I’m not sure why we stopped listening to them; the issues definitely didn’t go away.