Upcoming Spy DVDs: Who?

You do! What? Remind me of the babe. What babe?  No!  Sorry; I'm being silly.  Forget all that.  I'm talking about something else altogether.  And not Doctor Who either, just Who?, with a question mark.  (Not to be confused with What?, an alternate title of Mario Bava's The Whip and the Body, or Don't, Edgar Wright's fake trailer in Grindhouse...)  We first heard about a DVD release of Who? from Code Red two years ago, but that never happened.  Now, DVD Drive-In reports that the 1974 Cold War spy-fi movie starring Elliott Gould and Trevor Howard is finally coming to DVD–next week!–from Scorpion Releasing. (Which I believe is in some way affiliated with Code Red.) The plot mixes espionage and robots–but in a very gritty, serious, Seventies way, not a Sixties Casino Royale/Some Girls Do Way, if you can believe it. Scorpion's DVD will contain a plethora of bonus features, including separate audio commentaries with director Jack Gold and star Elliott Gould, an interview with co-star Edward Grover and a brand new 16x9 (1.78:1) widescreen transfer. Retail is $19.95, though it can be pre-ordered for less on Amazon.

Tradecraft: Enjoy ECHELON On Your TV

Ever since the NSA's massive eavesdropping apparatus ECHELON went online, it's fascinated film and television writers as much as it's fascinated privacy advocates.  ECHELON, which aggregates all the various data signals flying through the ether for intelligence analysis, featured heavily on later seasons of Alias (around the time Terry O'Quinn came into the picture, if memory serves) and inspired thrillers like The Echelon Vendetta (a novel by David Stone, currently being adapted into a movie), Echelon Conspiracy (a Jonathan Pryce thriller more memorable for its hilarious "talk to ECHELON" website) and Eagle Eye.  Now it's getting its own TV show, which is probably a first for a SIGINT program.  According to The Hollywood Reporter, 300 writer Michael Gordon has sold a drama to NBC called ECHELON.  But it's not a straightforward spy show.  The trade reports that there's a supernatural twist: "The show will center on a fictional team called G.H.O.S.T. (Global Hierarchical Observation Strategy Taskforce) whose assignment it is to investigate [the] paranormal data [that sometimes turns up on ECHELON]." Huh.  Spooky spooks.  As if an all-knowing computer program spying on our every phone call and email isn't scary enough already!