the groundhog day project

For a movie that hinges on some rather exciting sequences, Iron Eagle starts out with some really slow, boringly scored footage of jets flying. Like we were all going to get off just seeing jets flying... which maybe we were in 1986. I know there were these books in our school library that were basically just visual and technical guides to military vehicles and it was like pro-America propaganda and war porn wrapped up in a series of... I guess they were Time Life books, but I was never as into them as a couple friends of mine were. But, give me a good action movie with Americans taking on Communists or Arabs for, you know, whatever reason, and surely I cheered like anyone else did in the theater. Iron Eagle was, of course, one of a string of jingoistic action movies in the 80s that offered an extra bit of fun for a kid--the protagonist was not some stuffy adult, was not some guy who follows all the rules (And, how was it so fucking common for protagonists in so many 80s films,...

Let's talk about war. Let's talk about America. As if those were two different topics. I don't know if Rambo had an effect on military recruitment, but Top Gun definitely did. Enlistment spiked after Top Gun was released--BLANK estimates BLAH BLAH--and recruitment tables were even set up outside movie theaters to answer inquiries from young men who had just seen a feature-length, blockbuster commercial for the Navy. The Washington Post reports: During production, the Pentagon worked hand-in-hand with the filmmakers, reportedly charging Paramount Pictures just $1.8 million for the use of its warplanes and aircraft carriers. But that taxpayer-subsidized discount came at a price--the filmmakers were required to submit their script to Pentagon brass for meticulous line edits aimed at casing the military in the most positive light. (Sirota, 2011, August 26) Salon --same author, actually--quotes "public relations expert" Nancy Snow: "Propaganda is most ef...

I really wanted to have some fun and write about the homoerotic subtext in Commando for Day 7, but as I was readying to start the movie, I turned on that Siskel and Ebert special I mentioned the other day . (You can watch it in four parts on YouTube starting here .) And, I was reminded of my research for my Rambo speeches a few years back... (fall 2010, I think). One of the things I watched while putting together my two speeches on Rambo was an episode or two of Rambo: The Force of Freedom , Rambo's cartoon that aired in 1986--between Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rambo III . I'll get into Rambo more in the next week (i.e. I'm watching Rambo next for this month of 80s action movies), so I won't get into too much detail there (yet). But, as I'm looking into some information about this special--I do scholarly writing so I like to know the specific citation for my sources (even if, for this blog at least, I sometimes let a hyperlink suffice)--and I find reference ...