First I'm not a RED apologist, and I'm not going to deny that there can be problems with RED cameras. But I also would like to clarify what I know about those two shoots.
First, I was the RED specialist (which included both workflow and camera) on S.Darko and I can tell you exactly what the issues were on that shoot. There were two issues that were causing unexpected shutdowns of the cameras, both of which were fixed once we figured out what was going on. The camera did NOT have a mind of it's own, once we identified the issues workarounds were instituted and the remaining shoot went very smoothly. And also for the record, there were only a small handful of times when a camera shutdown actually caused a delay, usually it happened while other things on set were being done and the reboot did not cause an actual delay in filming
The first issue was simply a loose battery mount, this was a problem that RED has admitted and has already replaced everybody's mounts. Basically if you jarred the camera just right it would lose connection with the battery and shut off. The updated mount has new guides that hold the battery in place much more solidly and they increased the size of the conductor pins as well. Since we received our free fix, our camera has never shut down unexpectedly. Our temporary fix on Darko was to tape the battery to the mount. Problem solved.
The second issue was a bit harder to figure out, but it was OUR mistake not the cameras. We were using two lens motors on this shoot, one for focus the other for iris. And we were powering both motors from the d-tap on the RED battery, which has a limit of 70 watts. Upon close examination, both motors combined exceeded the 70 watt limit. And what was happening was sometimes the focus motor would reach the edge of the focus range and stop hard, when this happened, it drew more current from the battery than it could supply and thus the camera would get starved for power and shut off. Once we had figured this out, we re-routed the power when possible and the problem was solved.
Also for the record, both the DP and Line Producer from S.Dark have gone on to use the RED camera in movies since then and reported back to me that the cameras have worked very well.
I wasn't on the Utah Film Commission shoot (never figured out why I wasn't invited since I had the most experience of anybody in Utah), but from what I understand, the camera was shutting down when they shot directly into the sun. This turned out to be a documented bug with a particular beta firmware build. Basically if too much of the picture "clipped out" the camera had an overflow problem and didn't deal with it well. This has long since been fixed and only occurred in that one build. Unfortunately that was probably the build they were using on that shoot. Had they had an experienced RED operator on set, he/she would have likely found the solution which was to go back one firmware release. I always keep a CF card handy with several of the last builds, just in case something like this comes up. So far I've never had to back up to an older version, but it's good to be prepared and knowledgeable.
In both cases I think because the camera was so new and had had so much pre-hype, people were looking for reasons to drag it down from it's pedestal. I've been on plenty of other shoots where cameras have had issues, and I don't think that the frequency of issues on RED were significantly higher than normal. After all we certainly didn't have any film jams, or bad white balance or hairs in the gate, etc.
For reference, I was also on the set of National Lampoon's: The Legend of Maximus Awesomest. Several months after S.Darko wrapped. It was a three camera RED shoot (often times all three cameras going at the same time) and that shoot went virtually flawlessly as far as the RED cameras were concerned. I wasn't aware of a single unexpected shutdown or camera glitch, and the footage is utterly stunning.
Just last month I was involved in a 3 camera corporate presentation RED shoot, where we had all three cameras rolling for nearly 8 hours a day. We didn't have a single camera issue.
Look, I'll be the first to admit that there were some bumps in the road for the first year of the camera's existence, even RED themselves cautioned folks to be careful and didn't consider it out of "beta" until later in the year. But with the latest builds of the camera firmware and the free camera hardware improvements, I can with confidence say that shooting on RED is as safe as shooting on any other camera on the market. And your final result will be SO much more amazing.
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