Super-Nerd Benedict Cumberbatch, Who Already Has a Geek Hat-Trick, May Star in Alan Turing Biopic

“A Great science fiction detective story” – Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine

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Days since the Centenary: 224

Days to the Bicentennial: 36,300

I was talking with my business partner Saul–who is the other half of IndieBookLauncher.com–the other day and we were speculating about which existing Star Trek villain might get reprised in the new movie, Star Trek Into Darkness.

Saul ventured that it was probably the great Khan Noonien Singh, played with awesome dignity and dangerousness by Ricardo Montalbán in the original series episode “Space Seed” and in the second ST movie (he is also a character in several ST novels and doubtless in some of the famous slash fiction that notoriously emerged from the series).

Benedict Cumberbatch: Khan or Khan’t?

I said I hoped he was right, because they’re almost certain to bring back Khan at some point, and if anyone can do the character justice it will be Benedict Cumberbatch, who is known to play the villain in the next movie (though the identity of the villain is, as I write this, still under wraps).

Then, yesterday, came the news that Cumberbatch appears poised to play Turing in the biopic that caused such a fuss last year when the screenplay sold for a large (though undisclosed) sum on the strength of Leonardo DiCaprio wanting to star. Some time ago DiCaprio dropped out, now it seems Cumberbatch is likely to take over.

Which is good news for Turing fans, because Cumberbatch is an awesome actor (although the A.V. Club alleges that he’s not an actor, in fact not even a human being, but rather a “complex script file that allows users to produce the most British person possible”). And Cumberbatch’s star power can only help in terms of actually getting the film made.

I want to pause, though, to consider just what a geeky conquest this is for the actor. In the headline I referred to this as a hat trick, because:

• Cumberbatch already plays Julian Assange in an upcoming biopic (see image below),
• he’s in the Hobbit trilogy (he plays a role and also voices Smaug the dragon), and
• he’s in the aforementioned Star Trek movie.

Now it appears he’ll play Turing, too. Maybe I should have said he’s scored a–well, whatever the hell the word is that’s like hat trick but means scoring four goals in one game instead of three (I am nerding out at the moment, so don’t ask me to recall sports things).

Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange in a still from The Fifth Estate

And, lest we forget, Cumberbatch already plays Sherlock Holmes, who is nothing if not the uber-nerd (though a coke-snorting nerd who’s good with his fists).

All of which is not even to mention that he’s signed on to star in the upcoming sort-of-Monty-Python movie, which involves four surviving Pythons. Nerd-gasm anyone?

This can only mean one thing: I look forward to his inevitable role as the newest character on The Big Bang Theory.

Turing’s Legacy – Art: Turing Inspires the Godfather of Pop Art

Days to Centenary: 251

On a Sunday (like today) most of us who can do so like to take a break from the workaday world and, if we’re really lucky, from other mundane quotidian concerns like cleaning and shopping, to engage with life’s larger context. Some people like to get out into nature, while others like to engage in spiritual contemplation. For me there’s nothing like allowing myself to be absorbed in the arts.

Whether I watch a film, immerse myself in a book, or visit a gallery or museum, it removes me from the pettier issues of day to day life and reminds me that life can be awesome, both in the slang sense of that word (really cool, like, say the movie Inception) and in the more traditional sense (inspiring genuine awe, for instance reading William Blake and lingering over his art), sometimes at the same time (the movie Lawrence of Arabia or T.E. Lawrence’s book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, take your pick).

All of which is a long way of bringing this blog back to the subject of Alan Turing and the arts. I’ve previously touched on the subject of sculpture, in a post on the Turing-inspired work in Guildford, and film, in the post that not only revealed (along with about a thousand tweets from everyone and their brother) that a script based on Turing’s life had been sold to Warner Brothers, but also reminded the world (on this point without any company that I’m aware of) that there was already a Turing-inspired movie with the title The Imitation Game, albeit one that is only eight minutes long (see the embedded video in the link above). And I’ll no doubt return to the arts given that there are more than 250 days left until the centenary and I still haven’t talked about the most prominent stage/screen adaptation of Turing’s life to date.

Today I want to direct your attention to the visual arts and the work of Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, who produced a series of eight images based upon or relating to the life of Alan Turing. These aren’t illustrations as such, but Turing-inspired works of imagination in a somewhat schematic pop art style (schematic here being descriptive, not pejorative), which is not surprising considering that Paolozzi is widely considered the godfather of pop art and created an image that is acknowledged to be the first true example of that form, I Was a Rich Man’s Plaything (which actually incorporates the word “pop”), below.

I Was a Rich Man's Plaything, Eduardo Paolozzi (1952), Collage mounted on card support: 359 x 238 mm, Tate Collection

Paolozzi was also a founding member of the Independent Group, an assortment of artists (in various media) and critics who, among other things, are sometimes credited with introducing mass cultural objects into high art, although I would say they expanded rather than introduced this trend, given earlier work by Dadaists and Surrealists.

Paolozzi’s Turing images incorporate brightly coloured shapes, some distinguishable as objects and some not (and some seeming to be at first, but turning out on closer inspection not to be), surrounded in the border by text that appears to be from Turing’s own work. Here are two examples.

Turing Image by Paolozzi

Turing Image by Paolozzi

As you can see, the images range from the relatively rectilinear and mechanical (first image) to flowing shapes reminiscent of Peter Max and the animations in Yellow Submarine (the second image).

Here is an instance — as has arisen many times before and surely will many times again — where an artist has been drawn into Turing’s world. A combination of scientific genius, inestimable military service (that happens also to serve the better instincts of humanity by assisting in a victory over an evil ideology), and human drama will do that to you.

You can find commentary on the Paolozzi images on this page from Andrew Hodges’ excellent site. If you’re of a mind to, you can buy prints of thePaolozzi Turing images from Print Editions here.)

Turing’s Legacy — Art: Turing Goes to Hollywood!

Days to Centenary: 255

Nikki Finke‘s very reliable blog Deadline Hollywood announced yesterday that Warner Brothers has bought Graham Moore’s spec script The Imitation Game, based on the life of Alan Turing, for an unspecified amount in the seven figures. The report is here.

Why the high price tag for a first-time screenwriter’s script about a figure who, after all, is relatively unknown outside science geek circles?  WB reportedly outbid several independent studios because some guy named Leornardo DiCaprio is desperate to star in the movie, hoping that it might finally help launch the career he’s always dreamed of. Also Ron Howard,who has directed several science-related films including Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind (the latter about mathematician John Nash) is interested in directing.

I smell Oscar bait!  (A Beautiful Mind won four Oscars, including Best Picture, Ron Howard has two, and that DiCaprio guy was nominated for three, although he hasn’t won any yet.)

The ghost of Alan Turing adjusts to life in Hollywood after learning of a biopic to be based on his life.

First-time producers Nora Grossman and Ido Ostrowsky own the rights to Andrew Hodges’ definitive biography Alan Turing: The Enigma and Finke reports that they “worked with Moore for more than a year to get the script just right.”

Finke’s bottom line on the script?  She hasn’t read it but says that:

“[p]eople I trust tell me The Imitation Game is the best script they’ve read in years — and they read a lot of scripts.”

Now, scripts are known to fly around Hollywood in a fairly uncontrolled fashion, and occasionally to escape into the wilds of the internet.  If anyone has found a copy of the script for The Imitation Game, please send it to me immediately at nas@homoartificialis.com.  If I can find a copy I’ll update this post with some details.  (I’ll attempt to keep it spoiler-free, although what constitutes a “spoiler” in a movie based on the well-documented life of a man who’s been dead since 1954 is an open question.)

What isn’t noted in Finke’s report is that there is already a film called The Imitation Game (IMDB link here) related to Turing.  It’s a science fiction short film (running time: 8:00) by director Calvin Swaim about two scientists who test a synthetic human they’ve built — a homo artificialis — to determine whether or not it can pass the Turing test.  It’s a fun little film, so enjoy!