We’re baaaaack! After a few weeks of unexpected delays, Jeff and Steve are back with a variety of interesting films. In the past, it’s 1984’s “Red Dawn”, just in time for a remake coming out later this month. In theater’s it’s off to Silent Hill to find out if “Silent Hill Revelations” offers anything worth revealing. From there, it’s off to fairy tale land for a review of the trailer for “Jack the Giant Killer”. In movie news, we chat about a feature adaptation of “Animal Farm”, thoughts about trialer for the “Iron Man 3” trailer and we also cavort about the Disney/Lucasfilm deal. It’s the 127th reel of COL Movies… “Wolverines!!”

News:

Andy Serkis to Direct Animal Farm

A Trailer for a Trailer

The Disney Deal with Lucasfilm – Forbes

Recent Facebook Likes: Bruce Richardson

The Past: Red Dawn (1984)

Rotten Tomatoes 53% Rotten; 65% Audience

Director: John Milius

Starring: Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson

Trivia:

The script for Red Dawn was written by John Milius and Kevin Reynolds from a story by Reynolds. The original story, called Ten Soldiers, was more akin to Lord of the Flies, the classic novel about the aggressive nature of man, than to the action film it eventually became. Some of the changes included a shift in focus from conflict within the group to conflict between the teens and their oppressors, and the acceleration of the ages of some of the characters from early teens to high school age and beyond.

The first motion picture released with an MPAA PG-13 rating. (The Flamingo Kid, the first film to *get* a PG-13 rating, sat on the shelves for 5 months before release.)

The film made the Guinness Book of Records for having the most acts of violence of any film up to that time. According to their calculations, 134 acts of violence occur per hour, 2.23 per minute.

The cast underwent an intensive 8-week military training course before filming started.

The illustration of Genghis Khan in the high school classroom at the beginning of the film is a caricature of director John Milius.

Charlie Sheen’s feature film debut.

The original trailer, on the laserdisc release, includes a scene with a tank rolling up to a McDonald’s where enemy soldiers are eating. The scene does not appear in the final cut, and was likely removed due to a mass murder at a McDonald’s in San Ysidro, CA, weeks before the film opened.

The film’s replica Soviet T-72 tank was so precise that when it was transported to the studio, two CIA agents followed and wanted to know where it had come from.

The plot, a Soviet/Cuban invasion from Mexico, was based on CIA and War College studies of US weaknesses at the time.

While filming the invasion scene at the high school, five parachutists dressed as Soviet soldiers were blown up to a mile off course.

In the movie, the Wolverines bomb the invaders’ regional headquarters. On August 3, 2006, heavy thunderstorms destroyed the 107-year-old Center Block Building in Las Vegas, NM, where the scene was filmed.

An old Safeway grocery store in Las Vegas, NM, was converted to a sound stage and used for several scenes.

The submachine gun Strelnikov uses near the end of the film is a Finnish-made Jati-matic GG-95 PDW. About 400 were manufactured in the mid-1980s.

“Red Dawn” was the given code name of the military operation in Iraq that captured Saddam Hussein on December 13, 2003. John Milius felt honored by that.

The original movie tagline said, “In our time, no foreign army has ever occupied American soil.” Some historians believe that is historically inaccurate. British troops occupied American territory during the War of 1812. They occupied an area outside of New Orleans, and occupied and burned large parts of Washington, DC, including the White House, in 1814. Japanese forces occupied several islands off the coast of Alaska during World War II. However, the statement “In our time” (within a viewer’s lifetime) is technically[...]