Review: ‘Tropic Thunder’
Movies about movie making can be filled with inside jokes that lose the audience or use the miniature world of a set to tell a dramatic story. Then there’s [[[Tropic Thunder]]], a broad comedy poking fun at multiple Hollywood types in one stroke.
Ben Stiller, aided and abetted by Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen, wrote a movie about a stereotypical misfit cast that is making a war story but find themselves in a real jungle battle. Not the most original of ideas, but as handled by the ensemble, it’s remarkably refreshing and entertaining. When the film opened in August, it was like a tonic to the explosive super-heroic fare and lackluster comedies.
The movie sends up Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, and other modern day war dramas, not just in structure, but in the way scenes are staged, lit, and performed. There’s affection here, respecting the source material but using it as a launch point for some strong satire.
Stiller is joined by Jack Black, Robert Downey, Jr., Steve Coogan, Jay Baruchel and Danny McBride as the actors who are either over the hill, uninsurable or so full of themselves that there’s a wonder how the studio green lit the project in the first place. First-time director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) is in over his head with the uncontrollable cast and mounting budget issues. He’s supported by his dancing producer is played with delicious irony by Tom Cruise under pounds of latex and steals every scene he’s in.
Everyone else has heaped superlatives on Downey as playing an actor who turns himself black to play an African-American character so I’ll skip him and note that Baruchel, McBride, Coogan and Brandon Jackson are relatively new to me and rise to the occasion, not letting themselves get overshadowed by the more recognizable names. Nick Nolte has a small role and seems interested in spoofing his career.
The film is clearly not for everyone but film aficionados will enjoy it along with fans of Stiller, Black and Downey. The Director’s Cut is 13 minutes longer and the only version included in the two-disc set. In most cases, scenes are a little longer. One key addition is a party sequence that spotlights the actors before they begin shooting the troubled film.
The fun continues in the second disc filled with features. Divvied up into bite sized chunks, you can see how the film was conceived, designed, shot and edited. Extended and deleted scenes come with some good commentary and an alternate ending shows they made the right choice. The cast each get a profile and there’s a fun mockumentary, [[[Dispatches from the Edge of Madness]]], satirizing documentaries the Eiropean host goes in search of Cockburn during the troubled production. There are other features to round out the disc and are the usual assortment we’ve come to expect.
The eagerly anticipated [[[Batman: Cacophony]]] #1 finally hit shelves this month, and, on many levels, it did not disappoint. The three-issue series is authored by famous screenwriter/director Kevin Smith, and his signature style is evident. Smith, as always, manages to weave in a healthy dose of crude, sexual humor, and it is surprisingly successful coming out of The Joker’s mouth. The tone of the book, however, is not as dark as one would think. The atmosphere created by the creative minds at work is more a cartoonish, brightly colored Pulp Fiction than the noir-esque Batman of years past. A color palette of burnt oranges, yellows, and primary colors adorn the pages in the book, and this tone nicely compliments Kevin Smith’s clever, quick witted humor. 
Pixar movies are the kind of family movie you can enjoy without the family. There’s something there for the adults and the themes tend to be universal ones. Pixar’s creators understand how to think and laugh like a kid and tailor their movies for the broadest possible audience without feeling the need to dumb down the content or characterization. Instead, their movies are smart and funny and usually heartwarming.
2007 was a pretty big year for television, bringing us great shows such as [[[Pushing Daisies]]], [[[Californication]]], and [[[Chuck]]], and some duds like [[[Cavemen]]], [[[Bionic Woman]]], and [[[Aliens in America]]]. One gem that seemed to slip through the cracks you can now catch on DVD, in the ABC Studios and The CW’s [[[Reaper]]].
The Baby-Sitters Club Graphix #4: Claudia and Mean Janine
This is a first. I’ve been living with the story for [[[Hellboy II: The Golden Army]]] since last Thanksgiving, when I accepted the assignment to write the novelization. However, given personal circumstances, I missed its release and am only now finally seeing it, nearly a year later, on DVD. As a result, I’m looking at the film from some fairly unique angles.
Since his debut in [[[Batman: The Animated Series]]], Warner Animation has seen to it Batman gets freshened every now and then. Animators swoop in, streamline the look and adjust the stories as time and tastes change. The most recent Batman series was perhaps the worst as it veered further and further away from its comic book source material so we suddenly had a Rastafarian Joker who knew martial arts. That incarnation has been mercifully retired and in its place we have [[[Batman: The Brave and the Bold]]].
By 1935, [[[Popeye the Sailor Man] was considered more popular than Mickey Mouse and his animated exploits thrilled theater goers year after year as the Fleischer Studios continued to churn them out almost monthly. When they began running on television, the animated exploits delighted a new generation of viewers and keeping the character viable long after his comic strip passed its peak.
I know way too much about comics. Far more than is healthy. But there are, understandably, a few characters here and there that I either know very little about, either because I never really came across them or I did but found them terribly uninteresting and so dismissed them, soon forgetting what I had learned.
