North Korean haircuts acceptable to the Communist party, photographs of Madame Mao’s Cultural Revolution operas and ballet and songs dispelling Fascist threats and Communist lies. (via @WFMU and @HollyHunt913)
ChinaSmack has scans of of a 1950 propaganda comic predicting China’s future. “From the portrayal of working class hardship, to unaffordable housing, to foreigners behaving as they please in China, the problems of pre-liberation China seems to remain very much relevant even to this day.” (via @paleofuture)
Grady Hendrix reads London Free Press editor William C. Heine’s The Last Canadian, a plague-driven, apocalyptic pulp set in Montreal. Unfortunately, the protagonist’s citizenship papers haven’t come through before the plague hits. For Canadian pulp fiction featuring full Canadian citizens, check out Tales from the Vault, curated by own own Screen Editor Emeritus, Ian Driscoll.
A thorough and well-illustrated look at Soviet science fiction, from the 1920s through the 1980s. (via SF Signal)
The Belated Nerd looks back at the alien dragon menace, Fin Fang Foom.
“The only reason that we cannot make genre movies is the barrier that censorship sets.” Jia Zhangke says more here. Meanwhile a leaked diplomatic document gives some insight as to whose taste is being served in recent Chinese historical epics. Xi Jinping admires American World War II dramas: “Some Chinese moviemakers neglect values they should promote…America [...]
Mario is a hero of the Proletariat.
The Master and Margarita anime? That’s right, Russian animation in Japanese style at Catsuka!
Before the CIA there was The Pond, and it seems like something Warren Ellis made up: “The head of the Pond was Col. John V. Grombach, a radio producer, businessman and ex-Olympic boxer who kept a small black poodle under his desk.”
John Plotz re-watches Red Dawn and sees a different movie: “Red Dawn did not conjure up the chest-swelling patriotism I felt as a 14-year-old. Instead, it turned out to be disturbing in an entirely unexpected way.”
Get the skinny on spying with the International Spy Museum’s SpyCast. The Background Briefings about East Germany’s “Romeo agents” and “Spies of the Kaiser” are pretty neat, too.
“Giant Intelligent Commie Apes!” Just what it says.
What, it’s June already? I’m sure a I had a whole year here a minute ago. In any case, summer means humidity, allergies, and a sad lack of home AC. This year, it also means squirrels in the roof (don’t ask. No, really).
