Newly-available emails show that when Claire Danes first visited CIA headquarters, she did so in very low-key fashion after a friendly CIA agent got her in. This confirms that the Agency have been involved in the production of Homeland since the first season, and shows how even their liaisons with the entertainment industry are sometimes done very quietly.
This week I joined Pearse to talk about the beginning of the new season of Homeland, and how it isn't quite what we expected. The entire 6th season is set between the US presidential election and inauguration day and while the president-elect is female, she is no Hitlery Clinton. Instead she is a peacenik who wants to withdraw from Syria, and believes the domestic terrorist threat is overblown.
Sterling Hayden's life encompassed many important events and periods of the 20th century. A lifelong seaman he joined the Marine Corps and the OSS during World War 2, running smuggling operations to support anti-fascist partisans in Yugoslavia. He was also a movie star, famously appearing in The Godfather and in two Stanley Kubrick films - The Killing and Dr Strangelove.
Sterling Hayden is perhaps best-known for playing Jack D Ripper but his life and career make for fascinating reading. After a time working as a mate on various ships his near 2-metre frame, grizelled good looks and shock of blonde hair saw him move into print modelling and then into Hollywood. Hayden then joined the Marine Corps and from there the Office of the Co-ordinator of Information, which became the OSS.
By Kristoffer Larsson | CounterPunch | October 18, 2007 Ever heard of a roundabout-dog? They are artificial dogs which started appearing in roundabouts in Sweden last year. Most likely meant as a joke, a Swedish cartoonist figured this phenomenon could be used in a funny way to provoke Muslims anger. The Swedish artist Lars Vilks […]
Unreal is a gripping and brutal satire of reality TV but it is much more than that. While this might sound like a drama about a trivial subject, the content of Unreal makes it one of the most serious and important TV series of recent years. It follows two female producers as they make a romance-themed reality show, highlighting the degree to which they're willing to manipulate the contestants in order to produce 'good TV'.
Recently made available by Cryptome this NSA report originally appeared in an issue of their publication Cryptolog in 1992. It examines the role that signals intelligence (SIGINT) plays in the storylines of several John le Carré novels and considers whether the inaccuracies and limitations in these portrayals are of benefit to the NSA.
The FBI's file on James Marshall Hendrix aka Jimi Hendrix is a brief but entertaining example of the Bureau having too much time on their hands and not enough to do. After Hendrix was arrested in Toronto in 1969 'after a quantity of marijuana was found in his shaving kit' the Canadian authorities asked the FBI for help finding an excuse to deport him. Hoover's men duly obliged, though they found virtually nothing. (Read more...)
In this month's podcast for patreon subscribers I review Rogue One: A Star Wars Cash-In. The film is a spy movie/war movie about the rebellion stealing the plans for the Death Star and has a much darker tone and grittier visuals than most Star Wars films. The problems arise mostly in the lack of characterisation, which the producers tried to compensate for by jamming in as many visual references to the existing films as they could.
