See a clip from Age of Heroes

James D'Arcy as Ian Fleming

The Film Shaft website has an “exclusive clip” from the upcoming movie Age of Heroes, the World War II story of the British 30 Commando unit, which was founded, back in the day, by our pal Ian Fleming. (James D’Arcy plays the future 007 chronicler in the film.)

Aside from the obvious interest to James Bond fans, the picture looks to be a old-school World War II adventure, harkening back to the 1960s commando actioners like Where Eagles Dare and The Guns of Navarone. Alastair McLean and Ian Fleming stories seem to go rather hand-in-hand anyhow — fans of one tend to like the other — and those movies certainly share a certain style and attitude with the Bond series.

Sadly, the film’s marketing people didn’t exactly have their thinking caps on, as the clip they supplied is a nighttime outdoor scene — not exactly prime viewing material for your computer screen. At any rate, you can see it, and read the entertainingly-written accompanying article RIGHT HERE. Tell ’em HMSS sent you!

Jeffery Deaver provides WSJ with tips about spying

Carte Blanche author Jeffery Deaver has an article in the June 4 Wall Street Journal about what he learned about espionage while researching the new 007 novel.

Here’s one sample:

To be a spy, you don’t need to break into top-secret facilities, climb through air ducts and make your way through laser beam fields. Yes, agents do some of that acrobatic stuff, as well as sit in front of really neat high-def monitors, a la Jack Bauer in “24,” while vacuuming up cellphone calls and emails. But a huge amount of “product,” as intelligence is called, comes from open sources, information available to everyone, found in newspapers, on TV, in unclassified government, corporate and nonprofit reports and from observations in public. You can be sure that somebody in Russia’s SVR, one of the KGB’s successor agencies, is jotting down notes about this article even as you read it.

To read the entire article, JUST CLICK HERE. In the print edition, the story appears on page 3 of the Review section.