Fatcat thought he was going to the set of "Ice Cream Truckers."

“Ice Road Truckers” has been a success for History, as the channel has slowly moved away from its expansive Hitler coverage into the world of reality TV. I’ve never seen an episode, but as I understand it, it involves icy roads and trucks. Naturally, the next step is a movie. Directed by the guy who did Max Payne. In 3-D.

[John Moore and an unnamed writer are] hatching a plot around the storyline of the series, which covers a group of truckers who drive 18-wheelers over a 350-mile highway made of ice, as they haul equipment and supplies to diamond miners working in the tundra of Canada’s Northwest Territories. It’s a dangerous job given the brutal cold, breakdowns, crashes and melting ice on the remote roads are potentially fatal.  “It is very much a tough guy movie,” Moore said. “Here’s a bunch of characters who tackle problems by getting in there and getting things done. We’ll turn it into a mission movie that harkens back to Towering Inferno, Jaws, or The Guns of Navarone. You got a problem, go solve it.” [Deadline]

Wow, I wouldn’t have thought to compare Guns of Navarone and Jaws. But yeah, I guess Jaws was the Nazi artillery fortress of sharks. And both movies end with the title villain getting blown up. Oops, that’s a spoiler. Sorry, I don’t do spoiler alerts for classic movies that were in the theaters 30 to 50 years ago. Also, Bruce Willis was dead the whole time. Deal with it.

The History Channel (I have a problem calling it just “History”) has cast the main roles in its controversial 8-part scripted miniseries about the Kennedy administration, with Greg Kinnear and Katie Holmes set to star as the assassinated president and his glamorous Guinevere. It’s the first time the two have worked together since Katie’s brilliant work (NSFW) in The Gift. Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan, 61*) will play Robert F. Kennedy, and Tom Wilkinson will portray HMIC (head mick in charge) Joe Kennedy.

The basic cable network caused a storm back in December when it announced its first stab at a scripted miniseries, mostly because the Kennedy project hails from Joel Surnow — an outspoken conservative who hobnobs with Rush Limbaugh, blah, blah, blah… The miniseries’s screenwriter, Stephen Kronish, says he’s a liberal Democrat.

When the project came to light, a variety of historians who’d read an early version of the script reacted with varying degrees of knicker-knottedness, and a petition was making the rounds for people to sign, vowing not to watch the “right-wing character assassination masquerading as ‘history.’ ” The critics said the script contained factual errors — and, of course, that scene in which the president tells his brother Bobby that if he doesn’t have sex with unfamiliar women “every couple of days I get migraines.” [WaPo's Lisa de Moraes]

All things considered, I think this sounds okay. That’s a pretty solid cast for a basic cable miniseries, and who cares about anyone’s politics or whether the script is perfectly factual. At least it’s SOME kind of portrayal of historical events, which is all I really want from the HISTORY Channel. It’s a nice change of pace from “Ice Road Truckers.”

When it comes to TV, America excels at taking beloved British programming and making a degraded version that appeals to our dumber populace (meanwhile, the Brits are still jealous we made “The Wire”). Popular examples of this include “The Office” and Discovery’s “Life” being narrated by Oprah instead of accomplished naturalist David Attenborough. To that list we can now add “Top Gear,” BBC 2′s top-rated show that will be Americanized for History Channel this fall.

The network has made a 10-episode commitment to “Gear,” which showcases all things automotive: customization, stunts, reviews and auto-centric celebrity interviews. History’s “Gear” will be hosted by comedian and “Rescue Me” co-star Adam Ferrara, stunt driver Tanner Foust and racing analyst Rutledge Wood [pictured L-R]…

“The history of the automobile and the history of America are intimately intertwined — to celebrate one is to celebrate the other,” History president and GM Nancy Dubuc said. “We’ll stay true to the original format and add a sense of the American car culture.” [THR]

I know the cool thing to do is to put the original U.K. show on a pedestal and pooh-pooh the American version in advance, but this makes sense to me. “Top Gear” is an excellent show, but America has a much stronger car culture, better roads, and a lot more open highway. We invented the car, fer chrissakes. The car, and kicking England’s ass. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

History has never aired a reality competition before, but that will change next year now that the channel has ordered ten episodes of “Top Shot,” which will pit contestants against each other in a battle to determine the best sharpshooter. I was pretty skeptical until I read the description:

Each episode has contestants facing elimination challenges inspired by real-life events in history, from Wild West shootouts to sniper missions.

Ordinarily I’d say this would be boring, because as anyone who’s ever seen Olympic shooting can tell you, marksmanship is an exercise in patience and control, and it’s not really fun to watch unless the targets are people or filled with explosives. No matter what John Woo or the Wachowskis might have told you, it’s actually pretty damn impossible to hit a moving target with a pistol while doing a cartwheel. But this could be okay if the contestants have to do stuff like hit a moving cutout of JFK from the Book Depository. My other suggestion for an elimination challenge:

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If you follow Warming Glow on a regular basis, you know that I’ve been excited about the arrival of History’s “WWII in HD” for months. Well, the ten-hour, five-night event finally begins on Sunday night, and here, again, is the goosebump-inducing trailer, which gives you glimpses of the crystal-clear footage of a war only ever seen in grainy black-and-white. If that’s not enough to convince you to watch, check out the LA Times’s review:

I know film purists are supposed to eschew such tinkerings [with the original footage], but for the most part the various refurbs are almost disturbingly effective. Hitler never looked so human, Allied and Axis soldiers alike appear woefully young and grubby, and you’ve never seen a battleship blown up until you’ve seen it in HD.

F-CK AND YES. But wait! There’s more! After the jump I’ve got preview clips of the documentary miniseries’ coverage of Iwo Jima and Okinawa that are so good your brain will turn off the blinking function in your eyes. God I can’t wait for this.

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