Wednesday 16 June 2010

Red Dawn remake

Yes, the opening bars of the Red Dawn main theme still give me shivers. I can't be the only one who, when seeing the movie back in the mid 80s around age 12, had moderately detailed plans of to where one ought bug out with the quad bike and hunting rifles should the time come.

The LA Times reports a remake has been filmed but that MGM has run into financing problems.
If we could wave a magic wand and do just one thing that would bring true happiness to the right-wing blogosphere, what would it be? Make sure Nancy Pelosi got tossed out as speaker of the House after the Democrats lose big in the November elections? Guarantee that the next Sean Penn movie would be a big bomb? Ensure that President Obama would be brutally skewered by Jon Stewart every night, just as he was Tuesday night?

Right now, if we could measure things on our trusty conservative ecstasy meter (which has just emerged from the repair shop after bursting into flames after Elton John performed at Rush Limbaugh's wedding), I'd say that the winner would be the news that Hollywood is about to release a remake of "Red Dawn," the 1984 John Milius Cold War fantasy-thriller about a courageous scrum of young patriots who fend off a Soviet invasion of America. The original film has long been a cult favorite among conservatives, who rarely find any movies to call their own coming off the liberal Hollywood assembly line.

So all across the conservative blogosphere, the word is out that -- miraculously -- Hollywood has made a $75-million movie about kicking Commie ass, with the Commies this time being of the Chinese variety.
...
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but I have grim news: "Red Dawn" isn't coming Nov. 24, as the conservative blogs have all promised. In fact, no one knows when the movie will ever be released. Although it sounds like yet another liberal Hollywood conspiracy, the movie (which was filmed in Detroit last year) is suffering from a far bigger problem: It was made by MGM, and MGM has run out of money. The troubled studio managed to make several movies recently, one that was already released ("Hot Tub Time Machine"), one that is being released next year by Sony ("The Zookeeper") and one, "Red Dawn," that is in the can but may stay there for quite a while, at least until someone buys MGM or provides the kind of big investment needed to market and distribute new films.
China? Can we even call them communist anymore? And what would motivate the invasion: are they foreclosing subsequent to an American debt default? If so, for whom ought we be cheering?

Some movies are best left in the can. Red Dawn was perfect for its time, but that time has thankfully passed.

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