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!!”
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The Past: Red Dawn (1984)
Rotten Tomatoes 53% Rotten; 65% Audience
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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 correct. No viewer was alive during the War of 1812, and Alaska was still a territory when Japan invaded; it become a state in 1959.
- The original title of the script was “Ten Soldiers”.
- Though the story takes place in Colorado, it was mostly filmed in Las Vegas, NM. In the short montage of destroyed Soviet vehicles that have been tagged with Wolverines graffiti, a highway sign in the background (with a large fish on it) advertises Storrie Lake, a New Mexico state park about 5 miles north of Las Vegas.
- The classroom flag at the start of the movie is a 48 star flag. This was the flag of World War II, and a symbolic reference for a movie portraying the start of World War III.
- When Erica finds the Lt. Col., she tries to ascertain his nationality by asking him to identify the capital of Texas. When he says Austin, Erica incorrectly says Houston. The incorrect answer is an in-joke; Powers Boothe is a Texas native, and Patrick Swayze was from Houston.
- The sprocket wheel on all modern tanks is in the rear. The replica Soviet equipment was mostly American M-48 tanks. Driving the tanks backward and adding a fiberglass turret gave the replicas a more authentic look.
- The Russian leader of the invaders is Strelnikov. In the 1965 movie Doctor Zhivago, schoolteacher Pasha Antipov (Tom Courtenay) assumes the name Strelnikov when he becomes a leader of the Red Partisans during the Russian Revolution.
- When the kids listen to the radio, one message heard is “John has a large mustache”. During WWII, Radio Londres issued coded messages to the resistance in France, the most famous being “Jean has a long mustache”.
- The Soviet Mi-24 Hind helicopters featured in this film are modified Sud-Aviation SA 330 Pumas fitted with bolt-on wings like the actual Hind helicopters. Similarly-modified Pumas also appeared as Soviet Hind helicopters in Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rambo III.
- The upbeat epilogue of Partisan Rock, with the voice-over explaining that the Americans eventually won the war, was added at the studio’s insistence.
Talking Points:
- Don’t really know what to say…
What We Learned:
- Eating beans each day doesn’t make you tough
- Never swallow the bug!
- If you’re going to die, die standing up!
- If you have the option of toilet paper or leaves, get the toilet paper
- “Far better it is to dare mighty things, than to take rank with those poor, timid spirits who know neither victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt
Trailer:
Recommendations:
Jeff: I’ve always liked this movie. It’s a war movie, a story about putting teenagers in to these type of situations. Very interesting experiment and well done I think. Not high on my list of favorite movies but definitely worth a watch.
Steve: I always loved this movie to the core. Since seeing it as a kid OVER and OVER, I wished I was with the Wolverines in the woods – although I may not have realized exactly why at the time – ah hem. Totally worth seeing before running out to the theater to see what they do with the remake version.
The Present: Silent Hill: Revelation
Rotten Tomatoes 5% Rotten; 49% Audience
Director: Michael J. Bassett
Starring: Adelaide Clemens, Kit Harington, Sean Bean
Trivia:
- Production was delayed when a freak snowstorm hit the set in Cambridge, Ontario on 23 March 2011.
- Roger Avary was originally set to write the film and had actually begun writing a draft when he was sent to jail for gross vehicular manslaughter and two felony counts of causing bodily injury while intoxicated. The film was then delayed until the studio hired Michael J. Bassett in Fall 2010 to write and direct.
- In the school corridor in the trailer, just after Heather bumps into Vincent, on the wall behind them is a poster for a graphics class with a picture of a girl with a butterfly/moth over her face. Moths/butterflies are used often as imagery in the video games and represent Sharon’s “change” into Heather.
- At Jack’s Inn, there is a red high-heel shoe on the headboard. In the game, Silent Hill 3, Heather uses such an object to solve a puzzle in the amusement park.
- When it came time to work with Carrie-Anne Moss, an unexpected dynamic occurred on set between her and the lead Adelaide Clemens. At base camp, Moss was pleasant in her conversations with Clemens, but once they both arrived on set, Moss changed. As Adelaide Clemens describes, “She ceased any contact and kept a two meter distance from me. I did not fully realize this distancing until we started shooting; she came over and put her hand on my chin and I’ve never felt a more intense invasion of personal space. I just shuddered. It was fascinating and powerful.”
- The last scene of the movie when Heather and Vincent are leaving Silent Hill, the truck driver who pick them up is Travis, who is the main character of Silent Hill: Origins, a prequel game. Also the bus with two police car escorting is tribute to another Silent Hill game, Silent Hill: Downpour.
- In the ‘nurse attack’ scene, the x-rays on the wall clearly show a skull with blades in it, much like the “missionary” creature seen later on in the trailer/film.
- In 2009, video game artist Masahiro Ito, who participated in the development of multiple installments of the Silent Hill series of video games, was asked to design the creatures and the look of the “Otherworld” dimension featured in the film, but declined the offer because of other obligations
- Prior to the start of Silent Hill: Revelation 3D’s filming, Bassett expressed in his official blog his openness to fans’ suggestions of whom to cast as main protagonist Heather Mason, provided that the actress would provide a realistic portrayal of an eighteen-year-old and that she would be “known”, with the existence of a page on her on the website Internet Movie Database also cited as a requirement
- IGN gave it a rating of 4.5/10, saying “Silent Hill Revelation 3D is an inferior sequel in every way, shape and form, a horror sequel that fails to either intrigue or scare, and one that just might have killed the franchise cold-dead.”
- Metacritic’s aggregated score based on ten professional reviews is 16/100, with one critic saying “Silent Hill: Revelation fundamentally misunderstands the appeal of its source material.”
Talking Points:
- The plot
- The creatures
- Do we care?
Critic Notes:
- Positives: Not one positive review from Top Critics…and no positive comments
- Negatives: Boring and baffling; Ends up being a 3-D spectacle of things being poked at the audience; The trailers ahead of the movie were better than the movie you paid to see; An ugly & assaultive collection of jump scares; Ultimately, don’t go to Silent Hill.
What We Learned:
- Be very, very quiet around the nurses.
- Never give the bad guy your part of the amulet.
- Just don’t go to Silent Hill. No good can come of it.
Trailer:
Recommendations :
Jeff: Wow, this was one of the most boring “scary” films I’ve seen. No wonder why it’s a 5% rotten rating. It wasn’t bad but I kept looking at my watch. Claudia v Guardian was awesome though.
Steve: Plot and acting aside, it looked awesome. The new minions and battles between them looked very cool, but it’s really just a style over substance movie. Not being a huge Silent Hill fan (besides playing the original PlayStation version), I just may not have gotten it.
The Future: Jack The Giant Killer
Release: March 1, 2013
Director: Bryan Singer
Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Stanley Tucci, Ewan McGregor
Summary:
A modern day fairy tale in which the long-standing peace between men and giants is threatened, as a young farmer leads an expedition into the giants’ kingdom in hopes of rescuing a kidnapped princess.
Talking Points:
- Another fairy tale movie…?
- Bryan Singer
- Fairy Tale Movies in Development
Trailer:
Excitement:
Jeff: Yey, another take on a fairy tale. I think this will probably go along the lines of Red Riding Hood. Okay, but wait for DVD. Hansel and Gretel, now that’s another story.
Steve: I can accept the tale as a big screen adaptation, but I’m just not sure that it grabs me like something more epic like “The Hobbit”. I’m wondering if this will actually grab the attention of American audiences because it seems to be coming out toward the end of the “fairy tale” boom in movies and TV.
The Past: Snatch
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The Present: The Man With The Iron Fists
The Future: Iron Man 3
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