W&W Morning Run: South Park on Broadway

Prepping for the debut of "The Book of Mormon," Trey Parker and Matt Stone are offering free tickets to Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney, two 2012 GOP prospects and Utahans and the most likely to be asked about the irreverent new work of the "South Park" creators, reports ABC News. But while everyone's expecting the musical to be blasphemous, but early word LDS members who have seen previews is that it is "sweet." There is no mention of Prop 8 and "Big Love," or polygamy. Per USA Today, the church itself issued a rather neutral statement about the production, which opens on March 24. "The production may attempt to entertain audiences for an evening, but the Book of Mormon as a volume of scripture will change people's lives forever by bringing them closer to Christ." (ABC News, USA Today).

HBO for Labor: Variety's Brian Lowry says that HBO "provides perhaps the strongest media foothold that labor has going for it at this tenuous moment." He cites its latest documentatary on the Triangle factory fire in 1911 and a previous project on the garment industry. What surely helps is that it's a pay service and not a public broadcaster.

The Red China "Red Dawn": Jason Apuzzo of Libertas Film Magazine got a look at MGM's remake of "Red Dawn" --- but the one in which the Chinese are the invading force and not the North Koreans. The Los Angeles Times reported earlier this week that the film is being reedited so that the primary villains are from North Korea, something that Apuzzo sees as a "whitewashing" of the Chinese regime. (Imagine if the original "Red Dawn" was re-edited so the invading force was from Cuba, not the Soviet Union).

He writes, "It’s a shame that MGM is now going to tamper with it for political reasons – and turn the villains into the North Koreans, Guatemalans, Saskatchewans, or whoever else they have in mind. Hell, why not have the Oakland Raiders invade? I’d find that more believable than the starving, impoverished prison state of North Korea invading us right now." (Libertas)