E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

The first time I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark , I had recently turned 15. I had lined up at 7 am in the morning, outside The Imperial cinema, in Montreal's East End, with my best friend of the time, Timmy. It was June, 1981, and we knew nothing of the movie, its many plot twists, its future classic status.  We only knew it starred Harrison Ford , who we had loved as Hans Solo, and was created by George Lucas and Spielberg . There was, of course, no Internet back then, no social media, so buzz was from radio and newspapers, and, as we were young teens, from school gossip.  There had been a big pr push, some billboards, but we were rather innocent.  We entered the cinema around noon, about 33 years ago, to see the first showing in Quebec, bought our popcorn and soda pop, and then quickly became amazed. I watched Raiders again last night on TV, for the first time in maybe ten years - hell, maybe 20.  I've seen the sequels a few times since, as well.  I rec...

Eyewear is a blog that values the rule of law, within reason.  While, a week or so ago, the blog began featuring poems by poets writing on - and often in praise of - the American spy and whistleblower, Edward Snowden , at no time has the editorial policy been to praise or condone illegal activity, even if by a member of the intelligence community.  Indeed, the initial sense that Snowden was a hero has been somewhat dampened by his extraordinary personal flight, from Hong Kong, to Russia, then Cuba, and on to Venezuela, aided by China and Russia along the way. Friends of human rights should take pause at that odd list of allies, for when an agent of espionage is supported by enemies of America, suspicions must be raised.  What is Snowden up to?  Evading punishment, for one thing - but when Eyewear first praised the man, again, before he had been charged with a crime by the US authorities, he seemed to be stepping forward, as Socrates , and Christ , and Mandela did...

Alan Turing is one of Eyewear 's great heroes - arguably one of the most important people of the 20th century - and who else can lay claim to shortening World War Two by years and basically inventing the computer as we know it - so, an intellectual superman who was also, tragically, almost unrecognised in his lifetime for wartime secrets reasons, and then forced into chemical castration simply for being gay.  As I have said before, no other genius of the last 100 years was treated so shabbily, making him the scientific equivalent of a Van Gogh - a splendid one-off mind, whose time had no real way of appreciating him fully.  Now on his 100th birthday, the BBC reports he may not have committed suicide after all, but died from a bungled cianide experiment in one of his rooms.  Careless with cianide, or tired with life, Turing gave far more to the world than he received in return, and it is so good to see him iconic, and loved, now.

Episode 11, Carrie is distraught Yes, that's right, the new telly sexy star of the moment in Blighty is Claire Danes , playing the bipolar CIA intelligence expert who loves Jazz, lives alone, and doesn't want there to be another terror attack on US soil on her watch.  She replaces Ms. Lund, the dour Scandinavian police detective of the infamous jumper.  Poor Carrie, in episode 11 of season 1 of Homeland , has gone all mental without her pills after a bomb-trauma.   This is good for mental health sympathy.  This is good TV.  But is it propaganda?  Who cares.  Bring it on.   Eyewear like Obama loves the show. Claire Danes in Homeland

Eyewear could hardly have asked for a better film.  The Le Carre adaptation, best known as the vintage Alec Guinness slow-burner from television, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy , divides its times (before and after John Hurt as Control) simply by the glasses that Smiley ( Gary Oldman ) wears - the past is more owlish and horn-rimmed, the present (1970s Wimpys-era Britain) Bakelite rims. The director, Tomas Alfredson , is an emerging master of mood and nuance - his masterwork was Let The Right One In , the subtle vampire story.  Perhaps because Oldman has played Dracula, he seemed right for the part.  Smiley is a sort of husk, a prematurely stooped, stiff, pale, bespectacled spook.  Oldman is hidden in the role, a sort of mole inside his own character.  A few flashes of his eyes, a few small gestures.  He barely moves.  He is the spy as spider, waiting for the fly. The film is ravishingly retro, a Larkin -landscape of all that was crummy about ...

Philip Noyce directed one of my favourite films, Dead Calm , an utterly thrilling (and romantic) movie about a bereaved couple and a handsome madman on an isolated yacht (based on an idea by Orson Welles for a movie).  Then he directed a lot of big-budget thrillers based on Tom Clancy , some a little hit and miss.   Angelina Jolie , who stars in his new film, Salt , is a curious actor - although world-famous - she has been in relatively few good films - and, more interestingly - alternates between action blockbusters like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Wanted , and more intelligent worthy dramas like The Changeling , A Mighty Heart and fusions of the two like Beyond Borders .  She worked with Noyce last century in The Bone Collector , so they have a history.  Salt wants to be a franchise like the Bourne trilogy - that most influential of all genre movies of the 00s, reshaping Bond and the style of all subsequent thrillers.  It has a good shot at this aim. It...

Eyewear has been biting its tongue, biding its time, and being mum, on the topic of the American-Russian spy scandal that has gripped certain sections of the media and public this past week.  Given the relative ineptitude of these Rocky and Bullwinkle -style spooks, and the lack of any atom-smashing-secrets purloined, the focus of the story has increasingly been on the pneumatic young Russian, Anna Chapman , pictured, formerly married to a British chap, who described her as the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on.  This red-haired 21st Century Fox, with her Wonder Woman physique (described in the Guardian , tactlessly, as "bowling balls") - or, as one paper gushed, "Victoria's Secret figure" - seems to have raised eyebrows merely by fulfilling a casting couch need for a Russian Spy - in short, she is a Central Casting wet dream. But drop those arched brows, lads and ladettes - and stop licking thy lips.  Many -perhaps most - women are attractive, ...

Good news. One of Eyewear 's favourite authors - British spy-book Thirties genius Eric Ambler - is back in print, after a decade in the wilderness. 28 June marks the start of his centenary birth year, and Penguin's done a good job on five of the books . Pity they haven't reprinted his first - the spy spoof The Dark Frontier , which I think is one of his best. I loved Ambler almost more than Greene . His books made great noir films, too - The Mask of Dimitrios , with Peter Lorre , was one of my boyhood faves, and inspired one my earliest poems (in an Audenesque style). We often think of the Thirties landscape as ambiguous amoral territory, with debates between fascists and socialists, in a crumbling Europe, as mapped by Auden or Greene, but Ambler is the third part of that imaginary triumvirate, I think (well, one might want to add Orwell ). Speaking of which, Orson Welles (there is a weird name echo there) quasi-directed the Ambler classic Journey Into Fear , and made it...