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…)

There’s no hiding that Avatar is a politically correct piece of semi-coherent agit-prop lurking behind a lot of over-praised CGI effects.  While the fanboys hype it as the next great leap forward in filmmaking, it actually takes a huge step backward by employing one of the oldest and lamest of clichés – the white guy hero representing Western civilization who comes along and saves the natives while embracing their simple yet wise ways.

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This “noble savage” archetype, embraced by the romantic primativists of the past and today by those who stopped their intellectual development as UC Berkeley sophomores, has been around for centuries.  In Avatar, James Cameron substitutes his blue-skinned Na’vi aliens for American Indians and it’s off to the races with Seen That Before taking an early lead and Gimme A Break a close second. 

Now, the purpose of this cliché is to critique Western culture by comparing the culture of the children-of-the-Earth, in-touch-with-nature, “authentic” natives with the hero’s repressed, emotionally-stunted, alienated-from-nature, technology-obsessed Western culture.  This cliché requires that the natives be portrayed as paragons of moral and physical perfection – and that those of the hero’s culture be shown as just the opposite.  (more…)

In a world of Starland Vocal Bands, Lady GaGas, Bon Jovis, Snoop Doggs and 1910 Fruitgum Companies, it takes real talent to write a song so unbelievably horrible that it transcends mere awfulness and crosses the frontier into a whole new realm of sheer crappiness.  An artistic, musical and philosophical failure of staggering proportions, John Lennon’s “Imagine” is the worst song of all time.

Many feel this ballad is a touching hymn that gives voice to man’s yearning for a better world.  They are wrong.  “Imagine” is a cloying, boggy, sonic swamp of numb-skulled sentiments that sound like they were recycled from a bong-fueled, 2 a.m. bull session between a couple of pampered, credulous UC Berkeley lit majors.  It’s the national anthem of the hopey/changey crowd — all at once pretentious, smug, tiresome and intellectually bankrupt.  (more…)

I’ve got to admit that I set out to create this video expecting the finished product to be nothing more than tomfoolery as per usual. When I sat down to review the final version however, I realized just how sad/scary this is. These people are our future. They’ll be building our airplanes, teaching in our schools and possibly… running our country. I can honestly say that I wouldn’t trust 90% of these kids with a pair of scissors.  All of this begs the question: how did they get into Berkeley?  More importantly, what the heck are they teaching over there?

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