Works In Progress |
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|  | | McHale's Navy - Cast Reunion After 45 Years! |  | Watch a couple of clips from the upcoming DVD set! |  | | | | Sonic The Hedgehog - Embracing the Fans |  | Upcoming DVD includes fan created art!! We have a small sampling here just to whet your taste buds. The DVD will include a whole bunch more. | | | | | | DVD Pick of the Moment |
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 | | | Perry Mason (50th Anniversary Edition) | | The perfect compliment to Shout's stunning Ironside box sets is this 4-DVD set of another Raymond Burr hit, the classic Perry Mason. | | |
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I Like to Watch |
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 | | | Live For Nothing; Die For…Rambo? | C’mon, we all knew that vow to write something new each week was never gonna work out, right? If it makes you feel any better, I had topic after topic lined up, but it seems like every time I was about to sit down to write, I’d come up with something else I wanted to write about. First, it was the experience of seeing the midnight screening of Cloverfield. Then, it was the revival of The American Gladiators. Then, it was…something else. I can’t remember. Anyway… Onto bigger and better things, yeah?
How ‘bout world politics and the movies that potentially kick start rebellions?
Turns out that Myanmar authorities aren’t too fond of Sly’s new chapter in the life of John J. Rambo. And why should they be? For starters, the team behind Rambo doesn’t even call the country by its correct name; instead choosing to live in denial that Myanmar ever officially changed its English moniker from Burma—in 1989. Secondly, Stallone portrays the Myanmar government, run by a military junta—a committee of military leaders—, as the villain in the new film.
It’s actually not an unreasonable characterization of the situation in Myanmar. Since a military coup d'état in 1962 and another in 1988, the country has largely been at unrest, ruled by a government that’s powered by the country’s high production and worldwide distribution of opium and would rather imprison, torture, and even slaughter dissidents than give up control. No one—including the United Nations—has been able to successfully handle the situation in Myanmar.
Until now.
While Myanmar authorities are trying to suppress the message of the new feature film, John Rambo’s first appearance on the big screen since 1988’s laughable Rambo III, by refusing to allow the ultra-violent movie into the country, reports have surfaced that the Myanmar citizens have obtained bootleg copies of the film and are using one of the movie’s more melodramatic quotes (of which there are many), “live for nothing; die for something”, as a rallying cry against the reigning military junta.
This isn’t the first time a movie has rekindled or, in this case, fueled a revolution. In 1995, Mel Gibson’s Robin Hood-esque tale of Sir William Wallace, Braveheart, further sparked the desire for Scotland’s freedom(!) from Great Britain, who continues to loosely rule to this day—despite the film’s final line of narration which suggests that Scotland won its independence from England shortly after Wallace’s execution. Sorry to disillusion you movie lovers, but while Scotland does have a lot more freedom now—they even have their own Parliament—, its head of state is still the monarch of the United Kingdom.
Still, if you’re going to take cues to overthrow a military that’s ruled your people for over 40 years, are you really going to take them from a guy that disintegrates a man in the front seat of a Jeep and then blows cartoonishly large holes (even for a .50 caliber machine gun) through people, while unable to defeat a stupid comedy like Meet the Spartans in its first weekend at the box office? Do you really wanna take those cues from Ray Tango? Marion “Cobra” Cobretti? Judge Dredd? The guy from The Party at Kitty and Stud’s (later re-titled Italian Stallion)?! Okay, maybe from Judge Dredd. It would be cool to see the Myanmar people stage another coup d'état, shouting, “put down your weapons and prepare to be judged!”
You know it would be. |
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