Word: commissars
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When Yang Baibing took the podium before a committee of the National People's Congress, China's highest legislative body, the simple insignia on his olive- drab uniform gave no hint of his position as the army's top political commissar. But that will soon change. For Yang proposed restoring to the People's Liberation Army a system of military ranks once denounced by Maoists as "feudal, capitalist and revisionist...
...COMMISSAR...
...Soviet soldiers march into a Ukrainian village and, at their leader's heartless command, shoot down a deserter. Just another businesslike day in the life of Commissar Klavdia Vavilova (Nonna Mordukova). But even in a revolution that boasts of sexual equality, women will get pregnant. Vavilova must bear her child in the hovel of a Jewish tinsmith (Rolan Bykov) and his family. Their enforced intimacy sparks a cultural exchange: the commissar becomes feminized, and the tinsmith's wife (Raisa Nedashkovskaya) becomes a bit of a feminist. Outside, though, the Jew's children are taunted and tortured in a kind...
...handsome chiaroscuro and with an austere camera zest, this Russian film makes for a poignant humanist fable. So does the story of its making and suppression. Writer-Director Alexander Askoldov finished his film in 1967. But the Soviet authorities, accusing Askoldov of "promoting Zionism and . . . imperialist chauvinism," shelved Commissar, and Askoldov has never made another picture. Only last year, as glasnost was opening the door of artistic freedom, was the director able to free his kidnaped film. Commissar won a Silver Bear at the 1988 Berlin Film Festival, though the Soviet press neglected to mention it. A true movie hero...
...sensible, so . . . Phil Donahue -- and the sublimely silly uses to which he put them. Phrases like "Well, excuuuuuse me!" and "Naaaah!" became schoolyard mantras, and his concerts were eliciting rock-idol squeals. "He was performing to audiences of up to 20,000," recalls David Letterman, the late-night commissar of '80s comedy. "I think that's a record for a stand-up comedian in peacetime." In 1978 Martin recorded a gag disco tune called King Tut; it sold more than a million copies. The next year he published a slim volume of short stories, Cruel Shoes; it topped the best...