Red Dawn (2012)

Y'know it probably isn't a good idea to remake a bumptious xenophobic anti-communist "classic" with a cast seeded with all too pretty Australians. I mean you haven't heard sheer irony in a flat mid pacific accent until your hear Chris "Thor" Hemsworth inspire his scrappy band of American guerillas with a cataract of Patriotic sentiments. I mean sheee-it can't the commies invade and occupy Canberra for once? Then maybe some American actors can stumble into some work... *** The problem with "Red Dawn" (2012) is plain and simple it is a famously anti-appeasement plotline, alas the people who made this misbegotten mess chickened out completely and went the Munich route digitally reconfiguring the film in post production to excise the original Chinese invaders and replacing them with...North Koreans. Oh and the big McGuffin in this script, Chris Hemsworth's scrappy rebels have to steal North Korea's unhackable walkie-talkie system. *** It seems The People's Republic of China is a biii-ig export market for US Films so everyone had nice Neville Chamberlainish second thoughts about offending the Middle Kingdom to say nothing of awakening their terrible wrath. You can't denounce appeasement by...appeasing, that sort of cognitive dissonance is strictly Mitt Romney in form and content. *** The current version suffers from the angst of Modern Conservatism, sans communism to denounce & exploit today's wingnuttery are reduced to pumping hot air into the ruptured envelope of Muslim Extremism, North Korean Irredentism etc, all pale shadows of the original Red Threat. Hell the original anticommunist films of the 1940's & 50's are counter cultural classics compared to this bilge..."The Red Threat" (1948), "My Son John" (1952) or the utterly demented "Red Planet Mars" well worth screening in revival. Not so "Red Dawn", cowardice fairly leaks off the screen, what would R. Emmett Tyrell & Bill Safire say about such truckling before Peking?? Anyway NORTH KOREA??? Give me a break the Minuteman Council of the Boy Scouts of America could take them down in a week who are these mooks kidding???

May the Mouse be With You...

Lucasfilm has sold out completely to Disney, netting George Lucas a four billion dollar windfall. My first impressions of the acquisition were entirely venal and sarcastic "George Lucas loves Money like a Hog Loves Slop" to paraphrase the late lamented Earl K. Long. Of course I resent the "corporatization of fantasy", but I then again I truly wonder what a Star Wars movie with worthwhile dialogue would entail.... Shee-it if The Mouse has any brains they will coproduce the new franchise with Pixar...that might be a Star Wars worth anticipating at long last.

"The Man with the Iron Fists" (2012)

Y'know, I wanna believe that RZA can produce, direct and star in a successful revival of the classic formula chop-socky epics of the 1970s...Honestly I am pulling for him to be the next Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan....even the next Alexander Lo Rei. And the film has it's merits, good pacing, akin to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" sans all that lovey-dovey stuff. And his CAST! Ricky Yune, David Bautista (who has future in the movies IMHO),Lucy Liu and Russell Crowe at his most dissolute and cameos from Gordon Liu &Pam Grier as well! And it isn't like RZA doesn't have the best sort of an education to be a martial arts movie star, like me he clearly watched a lot of "Ocean Shores Video LTD" titles on VHS back in the day.

Alas though, the man just doesn't have the acting skills or the physical props to carry an all up Wu Shu movie, I admire his moxie, I hope he perseveres in his efforts to revive the genre but this film was a bit of a glorious well intentioned misfire. I think RZA needs to direct and write and find someone to act as his on camera muse...exactly who that person would be I cannot say, but Gina Carana is surely at loose ends she might do some business goin' forward.

Y'know...

THIS is a good book! Why? Edgar Rice Burroughs just communed with his audience, it wasn't enough to send Tarzan to a land of prehistoric monsters and cave people, oh no he had to throw in reptile men, man-apes, a Zeppelin, a sexy cave princess and of course, 17th Century Pirates! The man practically invented "Fan Service"....