Pop links: Halloween coundowns begin! The comics Wertham didn't want us to see!

It's the time of year when seemingly everyone finds an interesting way to blog their way to Halloween (including PCS!). Cool-Mo-Dee is doing so with a trailer for a different Halloween horror flick each day. Today's entry: "The Bride of Frankenstein"!

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In belated observation of Banned Books Week (last week), here's a selection of 1950s funny books cited for causing juvenile delinquency by the infamous anti-comics crusader Frederic Wertham.

Halloween with Hitchcock Month: More paperback covers









Video find: High Numbers (aka The Who) live 1964

Never realized this early footage existed!









Pop links: Philip K. Dick flick! J.J. Abrams' new spy show! Spector freed! K-9 teaser! The Ray!

A film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's "The Adjustment Bureau" will star Matt Damon, Daniel Dae Kim ("Lost") and John Slattery ("Mad Men").

Damon plays a rising congressman who meets a beautiful ballet dancer (Emily Blunt) only to discover that a strange organization is keeping them apart.

Kim plays a mysterious staffer at the Bureau of Adjustments, and Slattery a high-ranking bureau executive. Michael Kelly ("Law Abiding Citizen") has also joined the cast, as Damon's best friend and campaign manager.


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A husband-and-wife spy drama created by "Lost" creator J.J. Abrams will air on NBC.

The show, which revolves around two spies working together who also are husband and wife, returns Abrams to the spy arena, which he mined with his ABC series "Alias."

It marks Abrams' first collaboration with NBC where the potential series could join the spy dramedy "Chuck," also from WBTV.


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Phil Spector's in the slammer, but his recorded output will soon be released again.

Phil Spector's Philles Records catalog will now be issued by Sony Music Entertainment's Legacy Recordings label, which was home or such artists as Ronettes, the Crystals, Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans, and Lenny Bruce.

...Plans for the Legacy/Spector reissue project will include digital and physical (including CDs and vinyl 12" and 7" with replica artwork) release of titles drawn from the original albums and singles (and b-sides) in the Philles catalog. There will be new compilations and facsimile reproductions of original singles and albums are under development under the new agreement.

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Here's a new teaser for the Doctor Who "K-9" spin-off series.



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See some golden age comics featuring The Ray, with art by Lou Fine, Reed Crandall and Bob Fujitani.

Teaser for Syfy's The Phantom

Fans of the comic strip may want to think twice about clicking the play button:

Hitchcock for Halloween Month: Hitchcock paperback covers

Throughout October, PCS will be showcasing various Hitch-related ephemera, starting off with a few paperback covers of Hitchcock-endorsed horror tales.







Pop links: Green Hornet pics! Beatles cross Abbey Road!

Here's a first look at Seth Rogen as the Green Hornet!



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Take a detailed look at the Beatles' Abbey Road photo session.



PBS to air "How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin"

Check for this next month on your local PBS station:

NEW YORK- On November 9th, WNET.ORG will air a special one-hour documentary about The Beatles to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin tells the extraordinary and untold story of how the Beatles punctured the Iron Curtain. In a personal journey through Russia by award-winning director Leslie Woodhead, he tells in first-person accounts the story of a secret revolution which contributed to the fall of communism.

How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin is a production of WNET.ORG - one of America’s most prolific and respected public media providers, in association with Blakeway Productions of London.

On August 1962, director Leslie Woodhead made a two-minute film in Liverpool's Cavern Club with a raw and unrecorded group of unknown rockers- the Beatles. Twenty-five years later, while making a series of films in Russia, Woodhead would learn just how powerful Beatlemania was. Even though they were never to play in the Soviet Union, the Beatles' music and their rebellious style had soaked into the lives of a generation of kids.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the story of how the moptops conquered the world,” said filmmaker Leslie Woodhead. “And since I’ve made a series of documentaries in the former Evil Empire over the past 30 years, I have a special taste for this film. “

This film introduces the world to the Russian Beatles generation and hears personal stories about how the Fab Four changed their lives, gave them hope, and helped to undermine the foundations of the Soviet system. The film showcases archival Soviet-era footage, laced with interviews with Soviet Beatles fans that reflect – and reveal – just how they managed to listen to the outlawed music of the Fab Four.

Art Troitsky, Russia’s leading rock music writer and self-proclaimed “radical young man” during the Beatles era, describes just how important the band was, behind the Iron Curtain. “In the big bad West,” he says, “they’ve had whole huge institutions which spent millions of dollars for undermining the Soviet system. And I’m sure that the impact of all those stupid Cold War institutions has been much, much smaller than the impact of the Beatles.”

"How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin" is a one-hour documentary produced, directed and narrated by Leslie Woodhead, an award-winning documentary filmmaker. The program features interviews with Kolya Vasin, a Beatles “super fan” from St. Petersburg who built a “Temple of Peace and Love” to John Lennon; Sergei Ivanov, Russia’s Deputy Premier, who insisted that he learned English from smuggled Beatles records; rock commentator Artemy Troitsky; and numerous Soviet Beatles cover bands, including bandmates Yury Pelyushonok, Yuri Yakovlev and Anatoly Chernuchevich who reunited for this film, writing and performing a new song called “Kruschev Era Rock.”

To coincide with the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, WNET.ORG will premiere the documentary on Monday, November 9th at 10:00 p.m. (EST, check local listings) to be shown nationally throughout the PBS network.

More Beatles stuff at our sister site, Beatles Blog Daily!