So you remember “Red Dawn,” it was that 80’s flick about American kids arming themselves against a Soviet invasion.

I’ve seen it thirteen times, mainly because I’m a huge fan of C. Thomas Howell. And I’m lonely.

But that’s another story for another time. The film has since been remade, with the producers replacing the Russian bad guys with Chinese.

But now – According to the L.A. Times, China has become such a big market for Hollywood, MGM studios have decided to replace the Chinese with North Koreans.

Yep, in a first for Hollywood: filmmakers actually digitally erased Chinese flags and symbols and replaced dialogue… so now North Korea are the invaders.

Because, with that country, there’s nothing to be gained, financially. It’s as lucrative as a Kathy Griffin porn site.

Color me unsurprised.

Hollywood may be where dreams are made, but it’s also where wimps are cultivated.

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Keep in mind that this is MGM’s decision. The filmmakers have already made their film and went with the Chinese. I’m sure their frustration is off the charts and that it was rather scary when the MGM Suits took them into Room 101 to explain the situation. As Mark Krikorian at The Corner asks: “Haven’t we always been at war with Eastasia?”

So much for artistic freedom. And this is likely the wrong kind of artistic freedom to receive any kind of defense in the usual-usual entertainment press.

The L.A. Times:

China has become such an important market for U.S. entertainment companies that one studio has taken the extraordinary step of digitally altering a film to excise bad guys from the Communist nation lest the leadership in Beijing be offended. …

[P]otential distributors are nervous about becoming associated with the finished film, concerned that doing so would harm their ability to do business with the rising Asian superpower, one of the fastest-growing and potentially most lucrative markets for American movies, not to mention other U.S. products.

As a result, the filmmakers now are digitally erasing Chinese flags and military symbols from “Red Dawn,” substituting dialogue and altering the film to depict much of the invading force as being from North Korea, an isolated country where American media companies have no dollars at stake.

Wait. I’m confused. Hollywood bashes America constantly. Aren’t we “an important market for U.S. entertainment companies”? I guess some markets are more equal than others. (You’ll be glad to know that I’m now out of Orwell references.)

Back to the Corner, this time Daniel Foster, who points out the utter absurdity of portraying North Korea as any kind of threat to any country other than their own:

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Everyone of any political stripe knows that North Korea is one of the worst – if not the worst – dictatorship on the planet. For even as we have plenty of other hostile nations to choose from, extending from the overtly aggressive enemies of nations like Iran to the more subtle threat of Vladimir Putin in the questionably democratic Russia, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has ruled with such an iron fist and for so long that hardly anyone from the West ever gets to see inside the nation and no truly in-depth, legitimate footage or information of what life is like there ever seems to get out.

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But tonight through Thursday, anyone who is curious about what life is like in that insanely repressive regime can find a rare – literally one-of-a-kind – opportunity to see what goes on inside the borders of that nation, as LA’s Downtown Independent movie theater finishes a one-week-only run of “The Red Chapel,” a film that does not appear to be available on video in the United States. And better yet, the filmmakers behind this incredible film manage to do their expose in a way that blends the harrowing sadness of its citizens’ lives with staggeringly funny moments of outright satirical sabotage against the regime.

The fascinating and richly entertaining results parallel the work of “Borat” and “Bruno” mastermind Sacha Baron Cohen, but here the stakes are literally life and death if the filmmakers get caught. And the filmmakers pull off their achievement with taste rather than tastelessness, and do so in the service of a profound and daring mission: to shame the regime before the eyes of the free world.

In my nearly two years of reviewing films for Big Hollywood, I have never felt more compelled to encourage all those who love freedom to see a movie as much as I have this one. And due to the near-guerrilla nature of this film and the fact that the Downtown Independent is a nonprofit with almost no marketing budget, this film was hopelessly under-attended this weekend.

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The script of the upcoming remake of the infamous America-conquered-by-Commies movie Red Dawn (1984) raises an intriguing question – can Hollywood actually still produce a movie where it takes America’s side?  The answer is “Sort of.” 

“Wolverines!”

There are some welcome ideological surprises lurking within the script’s 104 pages.  Shockingly, Hollywood actually seems to accept the premise that if the Chinese and Russkies invade the United States we are justified in fighting back with hot lead instead of teach-ins and choruses of Kumbayah.  But the script also displays a bit of the moral illiteracy we’ve come to expect from the Hollywoodoids – naturally, the script has to imply that we kinda brought the invasion on ourselves and that resisting tyranny somehow means becoming just as bad as the tyrants.

The re-imagining of Red Dawn will be released later this year and does very little actual re-imagining of the original’s simple plot.  We first meet some all-American teenagers.  They play high school football, party, and talk and look like CW series cast members – not real bright, but pretty (the pretty part in the script).  For some reason, the Soviets (replaced here by the Chinese with a Russian assist) invade America and seize their hometown.  Their town’s tactical significance appears to be that invading it advances the plot.  Anyway, the teenagers go up into the mountains, score some of the firearms our prescient Founders ensured we’d always have the right to keep and bear despite the best efforts of those gun control-loving wusses, and launch a bloody guerrilla war against the invaders.  (more…)

Consider them the flowers of evil.  Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia are hybrid flowers crossbred to commemorate the North Korean dictators.  Evidently, personality cults have to get a little creative when they have already built imposing statuary in every public square.  Despite this flower fetish, the degree of social control exercised by the Communist state apparatus is reminiscent of 1984, but the ruling Kim dynasty added elements of random cruelty that arguably surpasses everything imagined in Orwell’s speculative novel.  Brave survivors of DPRK concentration camps give harrowing testimony of Kim Jong-il’s police state in N.C. Heiken’s remarkable documentary Kimjongilia, which opens today in New York City. 

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Kang Chol-hwan never learned what crime his grandfather supposedly committed, but he understood only too well what he was guilty of.  He was related to his grandfather.  Such is the nature of Kim Jong-il’s North Korea, where families of ostensive state enemies are purged to the third generation, as matter of course.  Even suicide is not an escape from the Communist North, because it is well understood all surviving relatives would be condemned to prison camps, which is tantamount to a death sentence in most cases. 

Though some might intellectually accept the closed nature of North Korean society and sneer at its inclusion in the “Axis of Evil,” the extent of Kim Jong-il’s oppression truly defies human comprehension.  Intellectual and artistic freedoms simply do not exist there.  It might sound like a sick joke, but concert pianist Kim Cheol-woong explains he had no choice but to cross the border into China once he had been overheard playing the work of Richard Clayderman, a French easy listening recording artist.  (more…)

President Obama has made the rehabilitation of the reputation of our country one of his top priorities. He wants to be the Sally Field of the international politics and know that other nations like us!  They really, really like us. To achieve that end he has apologized for just about every action of the Bush Administration and yet at the UN this past week several of the people the President has been trying to win over still seemed a bit distant. His new BFF Hugo Chavez did give him a nice “smells like hope” compliment, but several other still haven’t gotten the message.

President of all Iranians — both living and dead in the streets — Ahmadinejad still wants to build a few nukes even though Mr. Obama has told him not to. Colonel Qaddhafi, or Gaddahfi or Khaddafi, or Kaddafy or however you spell it, isn’t on board the love train either.

This has not deterred President Obama! Moving swiftly, he said he will name a new Apology Czar, rumored to be either Jimmy Carter or Maxine Waters and set a schedule for more apologies to settle all past wrongs of the United States. (more…)

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I don’t want to seem too preoccupied with the past.  I don’t want to dwell on old wrongs. I know we have all moved into the age of Obama where we will all cooperate, have bipartisan government and hold hands with Islamic terrorists, (I’m sorry, I meant to say with Islamic manufacturers of man-made disasters) — and the past is forgiven. Unless your name is Bush or Chaney, in which case you need to be made to pay for screwing up the reputation for weakness and capitulation Bill Clinton took eight long years to build.

Which brings me to my subject; did anyone besides me see the irony in sending Bill Clinton, perhaps the most famous serial philanderer of the past two centuries, to pick up two hot Asian girls in North Korea? Was it the ultimate in Asian carry out!

How did that go down? Was Bill sitting in his Laze-E-Boy while Hillary was talking on the phone to the North Koreans? She hangs up and says, “I got the release all worked out. Now ,if I could just find someone who wouldn’t mind sitting on a private jet for twelve hours with two hot Asian women.” Before you can say Paula Flowers, Bill is on his way to the airport with a blue suit and a bottle of Viagra. (more…)

Hollywood used to be the land of make-believe, but those days are fading fast.  Today, Scarlett Johansson offers debate counseling to Barack Obama (her e-mail pal), and A-listers come and go at the White House as if it’s the Beverly Hills Hotel East (if only they had a better pool scene)!  Now comes word it was Hollywood who staged the dramatic adventures of former President Bill Clinton and his trip to North Korea.

It all played out a little too perfect — a surprise last-minute swoop by Clinton into enemy territory to heroically stare down the world’s most blood-thirsty dictator and rescue two damsels in distress.  The press asked the White House how Bill Clinton became involved in the rescue of the two American women, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, trespassing into North Korea and sentenced to “10 years hard labor.”  They said they had no involvement.  Of course, Bill Clinton’s wife Hillary works for President Obama as Secretary of State; certainly, the press surmised, she must have been responsible.  The response from the State Department was that Bill Clinton was on a “private humanitarian mission.” How does one pull off such an extempore feat without government help?  Why, call a movie mogul — of course! (more…)

(Ringggggggggggggg.)

Todd, the assistant to the assistant of Ms. Clinton:

Mrs. Clinton? Mr. Clinton is on the phone for you.

Hillary:

That’s MS. Clinton. Give me that phone.

Hello…?

Bill: 

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA BWAAA HAHAHHAHHAHHAHHAHHAHHA! Ho ho ho HOOO HOOO BWAAAAAAAAH HAHA HA HA HA, uh Heee hee heeee………Ohhhhhh hey, Hun! (more…)

It has been six months since the Administration took office and the far left have taken complete control of the government.  Has our capitalist past been improved upon?  Or, is the socialism we have had thrust upon us making us worse off?  Has the foreign policy of appeasement and apology made the world a safer place?  To put it more simply, are you better off now than you were six months ago?  Unfortunately, the answer is not only “no,” but “much worse.” 

When the President took office in January, the entire world was full of “Hope.”  The far left and moderates that put him there were hoping for “Change.”  Well, they got the change, but I do not think they were “hoping” to get the type of change they got.  (more…)

Our Heroes are everywhere.  They pass by us at the market. They work for us. They walk our streets. I’m talking about the men and women of our Armed Forces who serve and have served our country ably, courageously and without acclaim. We all know one such individual.  They don’t talk much about it, except with hesitation and humility.  And they believe that their unbelievably difficult sacrifices have been forgotten.

Letter of Appreciation [click to enlarge]

And they live across from us.   One such Hero is Adolph Arujo who served in the Korean war as a medic in the 2nd Infantry Division in the Punchbowl.  This area had some of the fiercest fighting of the war such as Heartbreak Ridge.

We have never spoken in detail about the War nor will we.  Courtesy of Hollywood movies, I can imagine the devastation of a friend’s horrible death at your side. I can imagine the onslaught of an attack and gut-bending fear that does not deter one from duty. I can imagine the alienation between a soldier and civilian life. But, of course, I’m still just imagining and not living this role. My words are wholly insufficient. Their valor, courage and service is far too incomprehensible in my experience. (more…)

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I’m sure many leftists will assume me a racist because of this one. I shan’t lie… I find Kim Jong Il’s accent incredibly funny, and won’t apologize for it. Also, before you start worrying about the legal ramifications, Lil KimJong signed a release allowing us to use this footage so it’s totally cool.

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Note: No Koreans were harmed during the making of this video… Unless you count South Koreans. Then there were probably thousands of them hurt through oppression and starvation. Bear witness, folks!

I often find myself thinking that if liberals didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all. 

For instance, consider the uproar from the left when Don Imus opened his silly yap about the black women on the Rutgers basketball team.  Now compare that to their response when David Letterman made his smarmy cracks about Sarah Palin and the governor’s 14-year-old daughter.  The liberals immediately sprang to his defense, pointing out that Letterman is nothing more than a TV personality and is therefore free to make offensive jokes without fear of censure.  So what do they think Don Imus is?  The secretary of state? 

Or consider how choleric those on the left become any time that Dick Cheney defends the former administration.  Well, if Obama and his cronies didn’t constantly attack Bush and Cheney and their policies, the chances are the ex-vice president wouldn’t feel compelled to set the record straight. Furthermore, Jimmy Carter never stopped bashing George Bush during the eight years he was the president, and yet nobody on the left ever suggested he shut up.  On the contrary, he was hailed at the 2004 Democratic convention, and even had the honor of being seated next to the patron saint of left-wingers, Michael Moore.  Speaking of Carter, how is it that he, who is always volunteering to monitor elections anywhere on earth, including the Westminster Dog Show, wasn’t in Iran, making sure that Ahmadinejad got 110% of the vote?  (more…)

I consider myself to be a man with my priorities in order.  That’s why I’m so satisfied with the mainstream media’s ability to cover all of the right affairs.  Let’s face it, Iran will always be a quagmire.  Let’s put them on the backburner and “bear witness.” North Korea? … Eh.  Perez Hilton getting punched in the face by the black guy from The Black-Eyed Peas?  There’s your cover story right there.

Note: No gratingly bitchy men were actually harmed during the making of this video.

You know, people, I really wish I knew what the story was regarding President Obama’s puzzling diplomatic approach to Islamist Iran. Inquiring Minds Want To Know. This ain’t no movie, and I really don’t like the storyline to date. Haven’t since 1979. So what’s the script? White House Productions seems to be holding the storyline in blackout mode, and at this point I’m ready to put former FOX reporter Roger Friedman on the job of rooting it out. He sure did a bang-up job on “Wolverine.”

To be fair, I actually gave the President credit in this March 26th opinion piece entitled “Is President Obama Turning The Tables on Iran?” See, it occurred to me that the President might be undertaking a very brilliant strategy toward the Islamic Republic. If the President offers the Iranian regime nothing but carrots and gets nothing but sticks in return, then the regime is exposed as the hard case it really is. Nobody could say the President hadn’t tried every means at his disposal to make peace. (more…)

We all know that Kim Jong-il is “buy-yourself-a-handgun” crazy.  It’s pretty much a given.  That begs the question however: why is anybody (particularly our president) even considering trying to tiptoe around this shady, marionette-looking character? Am I the only one who feels that something serious needs to be done here?

Any man who’s ever spent time in a schoolyard understands exactly what North Korea is trying to pull. They’re shoving us. They are flicking the jab outside by the monkey bars trying to see what we’re made of.  It’s the age-old “alpha male” ritual that every man has come to experience at some point in his life.  The peculiar thing is that North Korea isn’t even big or strong enough to be the schoolyard bully. North Korea is really just the kid who decided he’d be “all out crazy” hoping people would be scared off by the tirades and avoid stepping up to the plate.  The sad thing is it’s been working. Even sadder is that without the proper action, North Korea just might end up being “that kid” who shoots up the school. (more…)