Comments on: A Wolverine is dead. Long live teh Wolverines.

By: killfile

killfile — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:59:58 +0000

This movie is still awesome. It’s amazing that anyone thought that the Cubans and Nicaraguans would invade through Mexico (and win!).

The movie is an unintentional but brilliant self-parody and it only gets better with time. They need to make more of these red-meat wingnut fantasies.

By: Parrotlover77

Parrotlover77 — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:28:34 +0000

When I was 14, I thought Red Dawn was Teh Awesome. But not because I thought it was some sort of conservative manesto. I didn’t learn that until last year. I liked it because it featured some dudes kicking some ass. Bad acting? Implausible plot? Who cares! It’s the same reason I liked Rambo when I was 14. In constrast, I watched part of it a few years ago. It really did suck. I mean it’s no Chuck Norris level of suckitude, but it’s definitely close.

By: liberalrob

liberalrob — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:52:30 +0000

Milius also did the screenplay for Clear and Present Danger. He does like his militaristic fantasies. It must have hurt a bit to reprise the Iran-Contra corruption, though. I respect Clancy for not shying away from honestly depicting Republican excesses. Although, I have to wonder if it’s more a case of his being like one of my friends who loves A Few Good Men because he thought Col. Jessep’s speech about “you can’t handle the truth” was admirable and true.

Conan was fun! And I was 18 in 1985, so Red Dawn hit me right when I was really into wargaming and role-playing; I could totally identify with that kind of hypothetical scenario. This was also during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan so it also struck that parallel, of the heroic, outgunned Mujahedeen fighting against the invader. The same Mujahedeen who are now the Taliban…sigh.

Growing up sucks. You learn the truth. Ignorance is bliss, maybe that’s why it’s so hard to get people to give up their ignorance and face the truth.

By: DragosaniBOB

DragosaniBOB — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:46:07 +0000

Growing up in Texas, in a HARDCORE rural wingnut, Christian household, I have to admit a bit of nostalgia for ‘Red Dawn’. Honestly though, I was ten at the time, so make what you will out of that. That movie was remembered as awesome, but on subsequent viewings later in life it sadly failed the test of time.
It might be more appropriate, in the wingnut ten-year-old-brain type context, to say “let’s honor Liam Neeson by prominently touting ‘Krull’. Another movie which seemed pretty ‘kewl’ at the time.
But, in the context of those times, that place, that “etcetera”, it was escapist fantasy. Fertile ground for a mind looking to rebel from the oppression and still did not know just where the oppression was coming from. Therefore, it translates well as a passion-play for the conservative base, as it perfectly caters to the GOP persecution complex and fear of the ever present, and usually brown, “other”.

Actual, Doctorb said it better, and a lot more simply, than I ever could:

Anyway, I liked Red Dawn, because I was about the right age for it when I saw it on TV. It’s like that bit in A Christmas Story where the kid is fantasizing about gunning down fleeing burglars with his BB gun, but lasting two hours.

And there is the core of it in a nutshell. The unspoken fantasy of every wingnut male, and probably more than a few of the females, that all the snooty liberals in power are going to get their “come-uppance” in the form of the big scary bad guys du jour, (Communists, terrorists, Nazis, Satanists, or any combination thereof) gunning them down in the middle of their misguided latte-sipping, hippy ways. (Point-in-case, the black teacher goes out to “negotiate” with the Communists and gets gunned down in cold blood! )
Meanwhile, the salt-of-the-earth rural boys (that no one expects) hunt, fish, and use guns, fighting back and surviving in ways the commies never anticipated!!!
-Cue Dramatic Trailer music here.-

Therefore, in conclusion, Red Dawn is to wingnuts what Citizen Kane is to Movie buffs. Or, more appropriately, what Mien Kampf is to Nazis.
Yeah, take that Godwin.

By: M. Emmet Walsh

M. Emmet Walsh — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:06:46 +0000

On the other hand, Harry Dean Stanton’s in it, so it has that going for it.

By: Esther Silbergorilla

Esther Silbergorilla — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:30:23 +0000

I resent the suggestion that we are worse than Hitler. I’ll have you know that no ape has ever killed more than five other apes.

Six, tops.

I’m assuming you lot still use the term “ape” to mean “non-human ape”, which I won’t even go into.

By: J Neo Marvin

J Neo Marvin — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 03:04:05 +0000

WaPo Patrick Swayze Obit Gets to His Drag-Queen Movie Before ‘Red Dawn’

Yeesh, the poor guy’s not even cold yet. Why humiliate him needlessly?

By: Doctorb

Doctorb — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:46:10 +0000

a completely shocking product coming out of a Hollywood: a movie about American teens fighting a resistance against a Soviet invasion of the United States.

Wait — there are other Hollywoods?

Aside from Bollywood, that is (also, did that change to “Mollywood” or something? I would also include Dollywood, but that’s actually a theme park and not a metonym for a whole bunch of movie studios).

Anyway, I liked Red Dawn, because I was about the right age for it when I saw it on TV. It’s like that bit in A Christmas Story where the kid is fantasizing about gunning down fleeing burglars with his BB gun, but lasting two hours.

By: Dan Someone

Dan Someone — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:14:43 +0000

Nobody puts Swayze in the coroner’s.

What, too soon?

By: The Tragically Flip

The Tragically Flip — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:49:13 +0000

Also amusing. Red Dawn gets its highest (yet still mediocre) marks from males under 18, and females over 45. Somehow I don't think the women over 45 are voting based on their hatred of communism.

By: The Tragically Flip

The Tragically Flip — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:44:28 +0000

5.8/10 14,651 votes Down 14% in popularity this week. Epic. Masterpiece.

By: Big Bad Bald Bastard

Big Bad Bald Bastard — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:37:12 +0000

Hey, I thought Conan the Barbarian was a very fun film.
It’s not a very good adaptation of the source material, but there’s plenty of good films that are bad adaptations

You go to the movies with the barbarian film you have, not the barbarian film you wish you had.

CROM! Milius is a Stygian dog.

By: Brandi

Brandi — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 22:59:20 +0000

Hey, I thought Conan the Barbarian was a very fun film.

It’s not a very good adaptation of the source material, but there’s plenty of good films that are bad adaptations (most film versions of Dracula and Frankenstein, the 1935 version of The Black Cat, Kubrick’s version of The Shining).

By: Bitter Scribe

Bitter Scribe — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 22:04:30 +0000

I have seen “Red Dawn.” It is a sucky film that is only appealing to sucky film-watchers.

That doesn’t begin to describe its reeking awfulness. I had to sit through the fucking thing because it came out during the 15 minutes of my life I was a movie reviewer. The experience made me realize why some critics get so cranky over bad movies. It wasn’t a script so much as a collection of bumper stickers. (There’s a scene of a wingnut’s gun literally being pried from his cold, dead fingers.)

By: Face Reader

Face Reader — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:40:24 +0000

Why does a picture of Hugo Chavez accompany this post?

By: actor212

actor212 — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:43:36 +0000

I dunno, Lesley. It makes me gag every so often and I’m native.

By: Lesley

Lesley — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:42:24 +0000

Stale urine wouldn’t bother those bottom feeders.

By: N__B

N__B — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:33:10 +0000

The scent of stale urine!

Please, use the correct term: Eau de Bronx.

By: actor212

actor212 — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:26:26 +0000

Perhaps have a panhandler and maybe some street construction going on, and they’ll quiver in their boots.

The scent of stale urine! This is great! This would be like shark repellent!

And if we bought a cropduster and kept spraying across the country, I bet we could corrall them in Alaska or someplace like that!

By: g

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:20:18 +0000

He was in a car with all protesters and when the train stopped and the lights briefly went out (a not uncommon occurrence), people on the train actually started shouting that it was an Obama conspiracy. The President had stopped the train so that they could not make it to the Capitol to fight for “their” America.

Well, that may be the way to counteract them. Just allow them to experience everyday occurances of normal urban life, and they’ll slink back to their gated lairs to cower behind their security systems.

Perhaps have a panhandler and maybe some street construction going on, and they’ll quiver in their boots.