list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Sneakers on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/Sneakers/31829/default.aspx Title: Sneakers
Year: 1992
Director: Phil Alden Robinson
Plot: In this tech-thriller from director Phil Alden Robinson, a group of five renegade computer hackers, led by Martin Bishop (Robert Redford), are hired by the government to steal a black box, containing a code-breaking machine, from the mathematician who invented the device. The government is able to persuade Martin to take the job by convincing him that they will drop a decades-old federal warrant for his involvement in computer fraud. Martin agrees and he takes his team on the mission, eventually taking the box. Shortly after the hackers have stolen the device, the mathematician turns up dead. Before long, the quintet realize that they've gotten themselves into more than they'd originally bargained for, as Bishop's old rival Cosmo (Ben Kingsley) enters into the fold. The eclectic ensemble also includes River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, David Strathairn, Mary McDonnell, and James Earl Jones. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 15
Number of Lists: 22
Number of blog posts: 2
Number of discussion threads: 1
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Tue, 12 May 2009 13:25:14 GMTSneakers1992Phil Alden RobinsonIn this tech-thriller from director <a href="/players/P___108562/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Phil Alden Robinson</a>, a group of five renegade computer hackers, led by Martin Bishop (<a href="/players/P___107758/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Robert Redford</a>), are hired by the government to steal a black box, containing a code-breaking machine, from the mathematician who invented the device. The government is able to persuade Martin to take the job by convincing him that they will drop a decades-old federal warrant for his involvement in computer fraud. Martin agrees and he takes his team on the mission, eventually taking the box. Shortly after the hackers have stolen the device, the mathematician turns up dead. Before long, the quintet realize that they've gotten themselves into more than they'd originally bargained for, as Bishop's old rival Cosmo (<a href="/players/P____38383/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Ben Kingsley</a>) enters into the fold. The eclectic ensemble also includes <a href="/players/P____56631/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>River Phoenix</a>, <a href="/players/P___106725/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Sidney Poitier</a>, <a href="/players/P____80282/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Dan Aykroyd</a>, <a href="/players/P____68638/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>David Strathairn</a>, <a href="/players/P____47297/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Mary McDonnell</a>, and <a href="/players/P____36131/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>James Earl Jones</a>. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide15Tag Target (>10)22213http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/u34952d4337.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Sneakers/31829/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/groups/FilmCouch/Re_Question_from_FilmCouch_97_Are_there_any_pur/302/37584/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: mciocco
Post To: FilmCouch
Post Date: 11/24/2008 1:58:27 PM
Body: Spy movies have definitely gotten away from the sort of glamorous travelogues that the original Bond movies kinda were. Most portray the life as being a tough, gritty one filled with betrayal, sacrifice and other depressing stuff. Even the "action" subgenre of spy films has that sort of thing (i.e. Bourne features all sorts of stuff about how being the spy eats up your life, etc...) So some examples of recent, less actiony spy flicks that you haven't mentioned in the podcast or in your post would include: Traitor (2008 - can't find it with the link to a movie tool thingy) - This is the recent movie starring Don Cheadle. There is some action and it's actually pretty cliched, but it's somewhat entertaining and it's much more focused on the psychology of terrorists than the spy aspect of it... The Good Shepherd - Again, not at all glamorous, but this seems to be a dry recounting of early CIA machinations. I didn't much care for this movie, but it's not an action oriented spy film and the one thing I did like was the sorta brinkmanship between Matt Damon's character and his Soviet counterpart. Syriana - Not glamorous and another movie I didn't particularly love, but it's got some interesting non-action spy stuff going on (mostly in the Cloony plotline - the others are not as spy oriented). It's too bad the plot is so intentionally obtuse. I got the feeling that Gaghan was attempting to play obscurity and for depth here. Three Days of the Condor - Ok, so this isn't anywhere close to recent, but it's a pretty good spy story told from a non-action-oriented standpoint. But I also agree with your inclusion of Spy Game, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Breach, all of which I rather enjoyed (er, more than the films I listed above) I also thought of the Tom Clancy movies (Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and yes, even The Sum of All Fears), but those might better be characterized as action movies (still, there's an inordinate amount of non-actiony stuff in those films that kinda works well). Another that jumped to mind was Sneakers, though I'm not sure you could really characterize that as a spy film... That's all for now, but I'm positive I'm leaving something out...
]]>Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:58:27 GMTmcioccoFilmCouch11/24/2008 1:58:27 PMSpy movies have definitely gotten away from the sort of glamorous travelogues that the original Bond movies kinda were. Most portray the life as being a tough, gritty one filled with betrayal, sacrifice and other depressing stuff. Even the "action" subgenre of spy films has that sort of thing (i.e. Bourne features all sorts of stuff about how being the spy eats up your life, etc...) So some examples of recent, less actiony spy flicks that you haven't mentioned in the podcast or in your post would include: Traitor (2008 - can't find it with the link to a movie tool thingy) - This is the recent movie starring Don Cheadle. There is some action and it's actually pretty cliched, but it's somewhat entertaining and it's much more focused on the psychology of terrorists than the spy aspect of it... The Good Shepherd - Again, not at all glamorous, but this seems to be a dry recounting of early CIA machinations. I didn't much care for this movie, but it's not an action oriented spy film and the one thing I did like was the sorta brinkmanship between Matt Damon's character and his Soviet counterpart. Syriana - Not glamorous and another movie I didn't particularly love, but it's got some interesting non-action spy stuff going on (mostly in the Cloony plotline - the others are not as spy oriented). It's too bad the plot is so intentionally obtuse. I got the feeling that Gaghan was attempting to play obscurity and for depth here. Three Days of the Condor - Ok, so this isn't anywhere close to recent, but it's a pretty good spy story told from a non-action-oriented standpoint. But I also agree with your inclusion of Spy Game, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Breach, all of which I rather enjoyed (er, more than the films I listed above) I also thought of the Tom Clancy movies (Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and yes, even The Sum of All Fears), but those might better be characterized as action movies (still, there's an inordinate amount of non-actiony stuff in those films that kinda works well). Another that jumped to mind was Sneakers, though I'm not sure you could really characterize that as a spy film... That's all for now, but I'm positive I'm leaving something out... http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/10/22/36573.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 10/22/2008 11:01:21 AM
Body: Every week Kevin Kelly will look at different writers whose books should be turned into films, films that were much better as books, or books that should never be turned into films upon pain of death. We’ll also talk about book to movie trends and deals if anything interesting happens. My first introduction to Stephenson came back in the mid 90s when I was working at a bookstore in Austin, Texas. I’d read everything William Gibson had written, and was hungry for more when a coworker suggested Snow Crash. It’s a very Gibson-esque book that is probably one of Stephenson’s most cinematic works, meaning that it would probably require the smallest amount of effort to take it from the page to the screen in terms of putting a screenplay together. Snow Crash is about a sword-wielding, pizza-delivering hacker who is trying to stop the spread of a computer virus that only affects computer programmers, along with the help of a young female courier who travels around on a high-tech skateboard using a magnetic harpoon to slalom through traffic. Sounds like a movie, right? Hollywood thought so too, since it was optioned by Touchstone Pictures and several drafts were written before it was abandoned due to budget concerns. Neal Stephenson has been writing books since 1984, on subjects spanning the ecology, cyberpunk, steampunk, cryptography, artificial intelligence, information trafficking, historical fiction, and speculative fiction. However, none of his works has yet been turned into a movie. If you take a glance at Cryptonomicon or any of the three books in The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, The Confusion, or The System of the World, you’ll see why: these are massive tomes that average about about 800 pages in length, and those four titles could take up an entire shelf on their own. Snow Crash, Zodiac, and The Big U are all “normal” sized books, so why haven’t they been smacked onto celluloid? The closest thing we’ve had to a cinematic adaptation of Stephenson was the announcement, almost two years ago, that the Sci Fi Channel was turning The Diamond Age into a miniseries, with George Clooney and partner Grant Heslov producing while Stephenson himself was going to write the screenplay.The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer is Stephenson’s foray into both steampunk and cyberpunk; it involves a Victorian culture clashing with the nanobyte technology of the future. As part of a massive project, a lone engineer puts together an artificially intelligent book that is meant to bond with a young girl and stay with her through adulthood. He tries to sneak a copy out for his own daughter, but it winds up in the hands of a poor girl and changes her life. Science fiction with strong women in the lead roles? There’s your movie right there. However, I’ve tried contacting both the Sci Fi Channel and Clooney’s Smoke House production company, and they’ve both told me they have “nothing to report.” That it’s been two years with no new word about this project is worrisome. Cryptonomicon combines the storylines of Allies in WWII trying to capture the German Enigma machine while deciphering their codes with a present-day company trying to set up a data haven for electronic information while searching for buried treasure. Granted, this book is a lot bigger than anything Stephenson had written before, and probably couldn’t be condensed into a single film at all. However, this would make an amazing HBO series: breaking it down to an incredibly simple level, think Band of Brothers meets Loot meets U-571 meets Sneakers. Or something along those lines. Stephenson’s newest book Anathem, just published last month, is his first work of pure science fiction. It takes place on another planet called Arbre, although that planet happens to be a lot like Earth. The history of Anathem is very similar to our own, which gives Stephenson the ability for relevant social commentary while writing speculative fiction. In this world, however, mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers live within a protected sanctuary to avoid outside influence, and eventually those two worlds clash. It’s just as massive as his previous works, and on face value it probably doesn’t sound particularly filmic. However, the publishers created a trailer just for the book: You can read a 12 page excerpt from Anathem right here, and decide if it’s something you’d like to dive into. If you’re still not sold, you can listen to Stephenson discussing the book at this year’s Book Expo America, or even watch as he reads the first chapter from the book here. While I’m not the biggest fan of trying to cram every book ever written into a movie, Stephenson has a very impressive library of work, and some of those would make very interesting films. There are obvious challenges. He’s definitely a cerebral writer who is sometimes in need of a more stringent editor (Cryptonomicon has a segment that is several pages long about the best way to eat breakfast cereal with an invented milk-spoon delivery system), and his prose also tends to be dense and full of dry humor. But whether they are set in the past, present or future, all of his novels are extremely appealing. So where are the movies? Top image courtesy of cactusthesaint. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:01:21 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com10/22/2008 11:01:21 AM Every week Kevin Kelly will look at different writers whose books should be turned into films, films that were much better as books, or books that should never be turned into films upon pain of death. We’ll also talk about book to movie trends and deals if anything interesting happens. My first introduction to Stephenson came back in the mid 90s when I was working at a bookstore in Austin, Texas. I’d read everything William Gibson had written, and was hungry for more when a coworker suggested Snow Crash. It’s a very Gibson-esque book that is probably one of Stephenson’s most cinematic works, meaning that it would probably require the smallest amount of effort to take it from the page to the screen in terms of putting a screenplay together. Snow Crash is about a sword-wielding, pizza-delivering hacker who is trying to stop the spread of a computer virus that only affects computer programmers, along with the help of a young female courier who travels around on a high-tech skateboard using a magnetic harpoon to slalom through traffic. Sounds like a movie, right? Hollywood thought so too, since it was optioned by Touchstone Pictures and several drafts were written before it was abandoned due to budget concerns. Neal Stephenson has been writing books since 1984, on subjects spanning the ecology, cyberpunk, steampunk, cryptography, artificial intelligence, information trafficking, historical fiction, and speculative fiction. However, none of his works has yet been turned into a movie. If you take a glance at Cryptonomicon or any of the three books in The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, The Confusion, or The System of the World, you’ll see why: these are massive tomes that average about about 800 pages in length, and those four titles could take up an entire shelf on their own. Snow Crash, Zodiac, and The Big U are all “normal” sized books, so why haven’t they been smacked onto celluloid? The closest thing we’ve had to a cinematic adaptation of Stephenson was the announcement, almost two years ago, that the Sci Fi Channel was turning The Diamond Age into a miniseries, with George Clooney and partner Grant Heslov producing while Stephenson himself was going to write the screenplay.The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer is Stephenson’s foray into both steampunk and cyberpunk; it involves a Victorian culture clashing with the nanobyte technology of the future. As part of a massive project, a lone engineer puts together an artificially intelligent book that is meant to bond with a young girl and stay with her through adulthood. He tries to sneak a copy out for his own daughter, but it winds up in the hands of a poor girl and changes her life. Science fiction with strong women in the lead roles? There’s your movie right there. However, I’ve tried contacting both the Sci Fi Channel and Clooney’s Smoke House production company, and they’ve both told me they have “nothing to report.” That it’s been two years with no new word about this project is worrisome. Cryptonomicon combines the storylines of Allies in WWII trying to capture the German Enigma machine while deciphering their codes with a present-day company trying to set up a data haven for electronic information while searching for buried treasure. Granted, this book is a lot bigger than anything Stephenson had written before, and probably couldn’t be condensed into a single film at all. However, this would make an amazing HBO series: breaking it down to an incredibly simple level, think Band of Brothers meets Loot meets U-571 meets Sneakers. Or something along those lines. Stephenson’s newest book Anathem, just published last month, is his first work of pure science fiction. It takes place on another planet called Arbre, although that planet happens to be a lot like Earth. The history of Anathem is very similar to our own, which gives Stephenson the ability for relevant social commentary while writing speculative fiction. In this world, however, mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers live within a protected sanctuary to avoid outside influence, and eventually those two worlds clash. It’s just as massive as his previous works, and on face value it probably doesn’t sound particularly filmic. However, the publishers created a trailer just for the book: You can read a 12 page excerpt from Anathem right here, and decide if it’s something you’d like to dive into. If you’re still not sold, you can listen to Stephenson discussing the book at this year’s Book Expo America, or even watch as he reads the first chapter from the book here. While I’m not the biggest fan of trying to cram every book ever written into a movie, Stephenson has a very impressive library of work, and some of those would make very interesting films. There are obvious challenges. He’s definitely a cerebral writer who is sometimes in need of a more stringent editor (Cryptonomicon has a segment that is several pages long about the best way to eat breakfast cereal with an invented milk-spoon delivery system), and his prose also tends to be dense and full of dry humor. But whether they are set in the past, present or future, all of his novels are extremely appealing. So where are the movies? Top image courtesy of cactusthesaint. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/minerwerks/archive/2008/5/27/30059.aspx Post By: minerwerks
Post To: minerwerks Blog
Post Date: 5/27/2008 11:27:38 PM
Body: Nothing like a tragic loss in the film world to remind me how broad the art of film can be and how many worthy films are out there that I have yet to view. Earlier this year, when reviewing the Oscar nominees for Best Picture, I singled out Sydney Pollack's performance in 'Michael Clayton' as being particularly good. In the later part of his career - the part most familar to myself as a relative youngster - Pollack was best known as a producer and actor. While I knew of him as a director, it turns out I have been ridiculously neglectful of the man's filmography. Of course, most people have seen 'Tootsie,' the 1982 comedy that starred a cross-dressing Dustin Hoffman. But other than this blockbuster, the only Pollack-directred film I've actually seen is 'The Firm' (not a bad film, if I may say). But Pollack, we should not forget, was an Oscar-winner. He directed 'Out of Africa,' starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, two of the cinema's most likable performers. And though Redford has been in some of my favorite films ('All the President's Men,' 'Sneakers'), I haven't seen a single one of Pollack's films starring Mr. Sundance himself. There's the political thriller 'Three Days of the Condor,' the prototypical romance 'The Way We Were,' and the western drama 'Jeremiah Johnson,' among others (seven in total). In the later years, I had seen and admired Pollack's acting in 'Eyes Wide Shut' and 'Changing Lanes,' and I had expected to see his directorial effort 'The Interpreter' when it was released, but it just didn't happen. And of all the films in Pollack's filmography, why on earth have I never seen 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They?' Thankfully, we have a rich filmography as a director, actor and producer to enjoy for years to come, but it's a shame that Mr. Pollack had to depart this Earth while he still had vibrancy and talent to offer the film industry. He will be missed.
]]>Wed, 28 May 2008 03:27:38 GMTminerwerksminerwerks Blog5/27/2008 11:27:38 PMNothing like a tragic loss in the film world to remind me how broad the art of film can be and how many worthy films are out there that I have yet to view. Earlier this year, when reviewing the Oscar nominees for Best Picture, I singled out Sydney Pollack's performance in 'Michael Clayton' as being particularly good. In the later part of his career - the part most familar to myself as a relative youngster - Pollack was best known as a producer and actor. While I knew of him as a director, it turns out I have been ridiculously neglectful of the man's filmography. Of course, most people have seen 'Tootsie,' the 1982 comedy that starred a cross-dressing Dustin Hoffman. But other than this blockbuster, the only Pollack-directred film I've actually seen is 'The Firm' (not a bad film, if I may say). But Pollack, we should not forget, was an Oscar-winner. He directed 'Out of Africa,' starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, two of the cinema's most likable performers. And though Redford has been in some of my favorite films ('All the President's Men,' 'Sneakers'), I haven't seen a single one of Pollack's films starring Mr. Sundance himself. There's the political thriller 'Three Days of the Condor,' the prototypical romance 'The Way We Were,' and the western drama 'Jeremiah Johnson,' among others (seven in total). In the later years, I had seen and admired Pollack's acting in 'Eyes Wide Shut' and 'Changing Lanes,' and I had expected to see his directorial effort 'The Interpreter' when it was released, but it just didn't happen. And of all the films in Pollack's filmography, why on earth have I never seen 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They?' Thankfully, we have a rich filmography as a director, actor and producer to enjoy for years to come, but it's a shame that Mr. Pollack had to depart this Earth while he still had vibrancy and talent to offer the film industry. He will be missed. http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/funny/MemberTagFilms.aspxfunny
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