I feel like I’ve been writing the sentence, “I’m not sure whether the world was clamoring for a x remake…” and that’s probably more due to my utter lack of creativity than anything else. I’m sure most people in my generation, who have seen the original Red Dawn, already dislike the movie, so I feel the need to defend it somewhat, or at least point out some good things it does well. Though I’m more interested in whether John Milius, the writer/director of the original film, will hunt down and kill the makers of this film, not because it doesn’t do the original justice, but because his keen, feral senses no doubt have recognized them as competition, and to protect his domain, he must slaughter and eat any trespassers. And that would be an awesome movie. I already know who would play John Milius.

Anyway, Red Dawn. I’m not sure whether the world was clamoring for a Red Dawn remake, but this one is pretty entertaining. The Red Scare is all but over, and with Albania being the only place left to get furious communist thought, the baddies are transformed from the Russians into the North Koreans, which strangely works, as the higher-ups in North Korea seem like just the right kind of nuts to try something like invading the US.

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Some are calling it Escape From New York in space, while others are calling it not worth making a pop culture reference, but that isn’t stopping the upcoming FilmDistrict/Open Road film from Luc Besson, Lockout from hitting screens this coming Friday.

With that, and an overall panic that the film isn’t going to play as well as the studio is anticipating, Besson’s banner studio EuropaCorp has released the first five minutes of the film for free on YouTube, for those who may need more convincing to see the flick.

Sure, there are some pretty campy moments before the title card even pops up, like why they felt the need to give Guy Pierce a “futuristic” haircut, or why they thought an effective way of giving backstory to the film’s hero would be through flashbacks in an interrogation.

Regardless, the film certainly looks pretty cool, and it’s nice to see LOST star Maggie Grace and Misfits star Joseph Gilgun get some solid work in a big budget sci-fi picture. Take a look at the first five minutes of the film after the jump, and catch Lockout in theaters this Friday.

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Love Netflix but not always completely satisfied with the number of first run movies the service offers for streaming? Same here. Fortunately, it seems the company is taking steps to remedy the situation in the form of a new content partnership agreements.

Back in August, Netflix closed a deal with Epix, a a joint venture between Viacom, Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate. And now, as of yesterday, the company entered into another agreement with new partner with producer/distributor FilmDistrict. Under the terms of the deal Netflix will license movies from FilmDistrict during what’s knows as the “pay TV window,” or the period of time when the films would have normally appeared on premium cable TV channels such as HBO or Showtime.

The first two movies to come to Netflix as a result of this partnership will be Drive, starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan, and Lockout, starring Guy Pearce and Maggie Grace. Both films are set to be released early next year.

This is good news as other services like Google TV seem to be struggling a bit to make content deals. Netflix offers a good service for a decent price and I, for one, hope they can continue to do so. They do need more first run movies, however, and these deals do seems like steps in the right direction. Lets hope they can keep it going.

Click through for the full press release announcing this latest content deal.

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