In much the same way, Stephen King hated Kubrick's 'The Shining' and  Graham Greene hated Carol Reed's 'The Third Man'.

You're talking about Frankenheimer in the context of 'Day of the Jackal' and no-one has mentioned his greatest film? You people need to play a little solitaire.

Michael Caine in his deadpan 'Harry Palmer' mode might have been quite good.

I was unclear - I meant the *films* of 'Man Hunt' and 'The Ministry of Fear' were tonally similar. Not really surprising since they were both directed by Fritz Lang and concerned secret nazi agents hunting a man in England who, for various reasons, cannot go to the authorities for help.

Yeah they are, however much you want to deny reality, fanboi, Slowly but with increasing speed, P&R is sinking into the toilet - and it's all because of your beloved Poehler. Poor you, eh?

So what? She still heads up the table writing. Get real, fanboi; she's fucking up her own show.

She heads up the table writing which 'processes' the script.

I don't know that book but I do know that 'Rogue Male' is very similar in tone to 'The Ministry of Fear' by Graham Greene, another wartime thriller shot during wartime. And again, directed by Fritz Lang. Both films - and both books - pretty much forgotten now.

Diane was a real buzzkill. After the two Tammies… this generic nobody with adorable moppets? Fuck her.

Especially when it's becoming evident that it's what the actors want, not the actual characters.

Good analysis. The problem with this show is the same problem 30 Rock had. The lead protagonist is played by the show's creator who, mid-series, becomes the executive producer and is so in love with their own character that everything else - support cast, environment, plots and initial comic premise - has to be…

And boring with it.

There is a kind of earlier version of this film called 'Manhunt' based on a searingly good thriller by Geoffery Household called 'Rogue Male'. It was written in 1939 - before the war even began - about a big game hunter who stalks Hitler. The attempted assassination takes place at the beginning of the book and the…

Is that the one where Pitt disguised himself as an actor?

The funny thing was, that vivid fright wig and the gay glasses made him the most noticeable thing in a crowd of a million.

Well, in the original book, the gunmaker makes it plain that he keeps a list of his clients in a separate location that goes to the authorities if anything happens to him.

That was a real quotation by Bastien Thierry. Wrong, as it turned out.

The Taking of Pelham 123 is probably the best example of the genre - which, like Charlie Varick - is about two opposing kinds of great professionals at war.

I don't think Fox is presented as a 'supervillain' at all. The film's strength - which is also that of the book - is that he is just one man, so ordinary as to be almost anonymous, who is supremely professional. And it's that professionalism  that gets him through the army surrounding De Gaulle. Forsythe and Zinneman…

Clinton, LBJ and Kennedy should be tried, you say?