After leaking details of the rich and interwoven themes he planned for the fifth installment of the Rambo cycle, auteur Sylvester Stallone was dismayed to pick up his internet and find Harry Knowles' Aintitcool readers comparing the planned film to of all things Universal Soldier. And unfavorably! And somehow getting it into their brains that Jonathan Rambo would fight robot soldiers in this latest installment.

But it got so bad that Stallone himself was forced to call the nerd king and leave a message roughly stating: You pathetic ignoramus. Forgive me for thinking you and your legions of imbeciles could grasp the complexity of my planned meta-text about the meaning of violence, and how within physical expressions of interior alienation, the signifier folds back upon the signified, forming an eternally comingled metaphor for destruction's interdependency. Somehow, I thought that was clear enough to everyone, but I suppose I'll have to hold your hand through every inch of this journey.

If you want to listen to the voicemail yoursel, Knowles has posted it on his site. Some excepts:

I appreciate you posting that but I think there's been one slight confusion because of all the talk back, I think the majority of these individuals misunderstood. It's not Universal Soldier; it's not me fighting some super solider. It's actually a feral beast. It's a thing. It's this amalgamation of fury and intelligence. And pure unadulterated rage. It's before men became human. This is when they were still inhuman, and so what he confronts is something that is one's virtual nightmare but in no sense of the world does he go against quote a Dolph Lundgren or Claude Van Damme, a Universal super soldier. He's going against a feral beast.

That's what makes it uniquely different. It's like man conscious fighting this dark, dangerous, uncontrollable subconscious.

I wish somehow you could take this message and give it to people that what they assume is Stallone or Rambo battling a squad of super-soldiers is just the opposite. It's your worst nightmare. You're battling your primitive self, which has a lot more cunning and power than you can ever imagine.

1. Picks his new traveling companion, Jaws.
2. Leaves LA, snazzy suits behind.
3. Signs up for Stallone movie. Sells out.

Yep.

Somehow we were imagining a more artful finish to his Oscar letdown. Maybe, he'd follow up The Wrestler with another heart-wrenching turn in a small indie film that cements his position as one of our Greatest Actors. Unfortunately, Iron Man 2 ins-and-outs aside, it looks like Rourke is going the sell-out route: joining up with Sylvester Stallone in his next action flick The Expendables, which has an all-star cast that's an odd consortium of A-List and D-List, including Dolph Lungdren, Ben Kingsley, and Jet Li.

The two were spotted in L.A. a few days after the Oscars having tea together, which seems sort of wrong. Mickey Rourke and Sylvester Stallone should be drinking Everclear straight out of the bottle and giving each other shots of Human Growth Hormone, not sipping tea.

Anyway, that's not the Stallone movie that makes us sad. (I should point out I have inexplicable reserves of love for Mickey, so Mickey if you're reading this, consider this tough love): It's the possibility that the wrestler will be slumming it in Rambo V.

We understand a man's gotta eat, but isn't it possible to star as a villain in something a bit cooler, like say a Bourne thriller, instead of Rambo? Or even a part in Rocky would be better. Oh, wait…

The film won over Wired, Vanity Fair, the Age, and the London Times. The creation story was optioned a while back, but it's been beaten to release by the upcoming cute but too-hip Son of Rambow, which is the same story in England with two Cockney kids. Here's the trailer for that:

In contrast, this BBC segment on Raiders shows some footage from the homemade remake:

In short, Raiders: Adaptation sounds less exhaustingly twee than Rambow or Rewind, and maybe even more fun than the new actual Indiana Jones. I'm still downloading it, but this is apparently a working Bittorrent file of the remake. (While the movie's been screened in several cities, it's never been officially released or even authorized by Spielberg and Lucas.) If you feel bad about stealing it, remember that the whole movie technically is stealing!

· In a reversal of the recent trend sweeping Hollywood's nontelevised awards shows, the Coen Brothers were able to take home the PGA's top honor for No Country for Old Men without any unfortunate heckling incidents. [Variety]
· AFTRA wants to sneak in and negotiate before SAG, telling the studios that they're ready to talk in March. [Variety]
· Universal finally selects Pushing Daisies' Anna Friel as Will Ferrell's Land of the Lost romantic interest, setting up the love triangle between the actress, Ferrell's "disgraced paleontologist," and the surprisingly seductive Chaka. [THR]

These incredibly brave people have found, kind of a voice, in a very odd way, in American cinema... They've actually used some of the film's quotes as rallying points," Stallone, 61, said in a telephone interview.

"That, to me, is the one of the proudest moments I've ever had in film."

Residents in Yangon told Reuters this week that police had given strict orders to DVD hawkers to not stock the movie — named simply "Rambo". Locals said fans had "gone crazy" over lines in the hero's brusque dialog such as: "Live for nothing. Die for something."

Heartened that his Burmese target audience had adopted that stirring rallying cry over Rambo's ambivalent, but equally as catchy, "Fuck the world!" dismissal of his heroic mission in the film's first act, Stallone has offered to travel to the region and confront the junta personally:

"I'm only hoping that the Burmese military, because they take such incredible offence to this, would call it lies and scurrilous propaganda. Why don't you invite me over?" he said.

"Let me take a tour of your country without someone pointing a gun at my head and we'll show you where all the bodies are buried... Or let's go debate in Washington in front of a congressional hearing... But I doubt that's going to happen."

Even though it's unlikely that officials from the country will take him up on his Congressional challenge, Stallone should have further opportunities to champion the cause; expect him to accept the invitation of some Myanmar ex-pats to host another protest screening in Singapore like the one that took place on Sunday, where the star can distribute official Rambo "Live for Nothing, Die for Something" t-shirts to replace the homemade "We pursue peace, justice and democracy for Burma" garments that less stirringly communicate the heart of their struggle.

• INTERVIEW-Stallone challenges Myanmar junta, eyes "Rambo 5" [Reuters]
• Myanmar expats raise Rambo battle-cry in Singapore [Reuters]

• My Rambo Review [YouTube via BWE]

1. Meet The Spartans - $18.725 million
2. Rambo - $18.150 million
America, it seems, has let Sylvester Stallone down. He gives and he gives, even a good twenty years past his cinematic prime, by offering up an exhausting 236 kills in a taut, blink-and-you-missed-the-slaughter- of-half-the-Burmese-army 93 minutes and still he's subjected to the indignity of finishing behind a third-rate spoof flick.

Still, Rambo performed well enough that executive producer Harvey Weinstein is already making noise about adding another chapter to the franchise, perhaps one in which the monosyllabic, mom-jeans-wearing killing machine plies his brutal trade back in the States, tripling his staggering Myanmar body count in an utterly punishing 68 minutes in an attempt to reclaim his rightful place atop the domestic box office.

3. 27 Dresses - $13.6 million
Meanwhile, in screenings of Rambo all over the country, guys found themselves powerless to stop the dates they'd cajoled into an evening of watching their favorite semi-retired vigilante blow holes the size of cannon balls into the midsections of his swarming, rape-crazed enemies from storming out of the theater, then seeking out the warm, comforting embrace of Katherine Heigl for a second time.

4. Cloverfield - $12.7 million
With a 68% drop-off from its January-record-shattering· opening weekend, we're forced to conclude that widespread reports about Cloverfield Barf Syndrome kept the weak of stomach far from the film and its vertigo-inducing camerawork.

5. Untraceable- $11.2 million
We realize that torture porn is a dying genre, but perhaps the Untraceable's debut performance would've been stronger if the studio had more fully embraced its sensational, gruesome-murder-by-online-video premise by titling it SnuffTube.

• WEEKEND BOX OFFICE January 25-27, 2008 [BoxOfficeMojo.com]

"Blowing heads off and slicing abdomens is man's work...the movie does have its own kind of blockheaded poetry," says a quote we've shamelessly strung together from two disconnected paragraphs by the NY Times' A.O. Scott in an attempt to pump up the head-exploding, critical-outrage action of this round-up. It should go without saying that these reviews have only served to make us more excited for our Rambo outing this weekend, with our moviegoing plans now expanded to include our shirtless, bandoliered attendance at all five of the ArcLight's Saturday screenings, brandishing the (inoperable—come on, we're not crazy) rocket-launcher we plan to pick up at Supply Sergeant before we head over to the theater.

• Rambo [Rotten Tomatoes]
• Previously: New 'Rambo' Promises The Franchise's Most Impressive Body Count To Date [Defamer]

• Dead and Deader [WOW Report]
• Dead and Deader [LAT]

The trailer for that movie, now streamlined to the far less unwieldy Rambo, will precede screenings of Saw IV. But for those who wish not to subject themselves to yet another 90-minutes of Rube Goldbergesque killing contraptions, we feature it for you here, completely free of charge, save for the part of your cherished childhood that will evaporate watching a hero of your past embark on a desperate hunt for former action-movie glory. That said, those machine guns and cobras do kind of look wicked-cool.

• Rambo [IMDB]
• RAMBO eviscerates all that watches his 1st Official Trailer!!! [AICN]