“From Robert Downey Jr.‘s purposely racist embodiment of African-American anachronisms to Jack Black‘s scatological humor, everything in Tropic Thunder qualifies as satire, not spoof. It’s an important distinction. Pauline Kael once noted that ‘unlike satire, spoofing has no serious objectives; it doesn’t attack anything that anyone could take seriously; it has no cleansing power.’

“Thus, the movie opens with inane fake trailers to introduce its fictional stars, surpassing the ones in Grindhouse for espousing actual ideas. Director-cowriter and star Ben Stiller offers a catharsis for everyone overburdened by bombastic storytelling, but even when the movie becomes playfully self-reflexive, it remains a keenly layered narrative.
“He returns to the movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie metafilter so many times that the gimmick forces you to pay close attention and believe in the events as they transpire, without sacrificing the absurd edge of the equation. Jumping back and forth between Grossman’s office and the jungle, Tropic Thunder recalls the comical dread of Dr. Strangelove, where Stanley Kubrick cut between the war room and a nuke-wielding B-52. This one could have the subtitle How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blockbuster.” — from Eric Kohn‘s review on premiere.com, posted yesterday.

After hearing for years about Quentin Tarantino‘s affection for Enzo G. Castellari‘s The Inglorious Bastards (1978) and how it led to QT’s writing his own version, I was naturally into catching the just-out DVD of the 1978 original. I was presuming that something strange or kinky would pop out — some facsimile of that battlefield Sam Fuller vitality, strange freewheeling dialogue, servings of left-field perversity…something.

So I popped it into the player last night, and in less than 90 seconds I was faced with the inescapable fact that Quentin Tarantino‘s affection for ’60s and ’70s exploitation fare is essentially a con as far as people with actual taste in movies is concerned, and that The Inglorious Bastards was and is a waste of time, celluloid and general expenditure.
I want the minutes I spent watching this DVD last night back. I felt rooked, polluted, flim-flammed. It’s not one of those so-bad-it’s-kinda-good B pics that you can sort of get off on if you’re in a loose and joshing mood. It’s just third-rate crap in every way imaginable way. I’m talking lazy and sometimes ludicrously bad performances, unconvincing violence, way-too-bright lighting, dubbed dialogue, absurd haircuts, zero character involvement, careless plotting, and rifle fire that sounds like amplified cap guns.
Even the skinny-dipping scene with the SS girls in the country stream, which I was looking forward to, is ruined by being too hasty and over-before-you-blink. Why didn’t Castellari decide to have the “bastards” somehow melt the hearts and turn the allegiances of the SS women and have them all team up in a common effort? Why not? It’s just a stupid B movie anyway.
I was thinking that the two stars, Bo Svenson and Fred Williamson, might at least deliver a little warmth and comfort with their natural charisma, but they haven’t a chance against Castellari’s clunky story and fourth-rate Sgt. Rock dialogue.

I had picked up on maybe four or five of these, but seeing them all together… whoa. Not that this will have the slightest effect on the thinking of the McCain crowd or even the fence-sitters, for that matter.

The other night Pineapple Express star-co-writer Seth Rogen told Jon Stewart that he’s “26, but I look 50. I’ll probably die in three years. I had back hair at nine. I had ear hair at 13.” Another guy who doesn’t look his age is Philip Seymour Hoffman, 41, who was looking more or less his age in Capote but looked about 59 (white hair, beard, the usual paunch) when he was in Cannes last May to promote Synecdoche, New York. There needs to be at least one other guy in his 20s or 30s or early 40s who looks a good 15 years older. Just one more.

HE reader Nick Zayas informs that Hulu just put up Joseph Sargent‘s The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3. The whole thing, in other words, is now free and streamable in reasonably decent quality. With “limited commercial interruption,” of course.

A grayed-up, middle-agey Denzel Washginton during shooting of Tony Scott’s The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3. (Photo stolen from JustJared.)

The new Tony Scott version with Denzel Washington (in the Walter Matthau role) and John Travolta (“as” Robert Shaw and another villain) won’t be out until 7.31.09.

Fantasy Moguls’ Steve Mason is reporting that Pineapple Express took in only $6.25 million on Thursday, which represented a 50% drop from its first-day tally of $12.1 million. David Gordon Green‘s stoner comedy “may” take in $27 million over the weekend and reach $45 million by Sunday night.

As it must to all men, death came earlier this evening to legendary manager, producer, book author and mover & shaker Bernie Brillstein. A good man with a rich sense of humor (particularly those darkly ironic aspects), Brillstein helped me out with stories when I was writing for Entertainment Weekly and the L.A. Times Syndicate in the ’90s. Here‘s Nikki Finke‘s recollection piece.

I feel moderately relieved that I wasn’t too bad on The O’Reilly Factor earlier today, and at the same time somewhat depressed that I didn’t really kick out the jams either. I did everything I was told to do — write down what I wanted to say, decide which points were best to emphasize, and concentrate on being clear and concise. But halfway through the interview the clarity I had in my head started to feel mushy and imprecise. I was half making sense and half saying to myself, “What’s happening? Why isn’t this working out better?”

The Fox News interview set, located in the basement of the Fox buildigon Armacost, about 20 minutes before air-time.

Either I’m not just cut out to be a talking guest-head or I need to do more of these to sharpen my routine or O’Reilly intimidated me or something. My main intention was to be clear and reasonable in presenting my opinion, which is that it’s absurd of the right-wing hammers to accuse me of being a supporter of hypothetical liberal blacklisting. I’m sick of talking and thinking about this deranged subject as it has no relation on any recognizable reality I’m familiar with.
Over half of the e-mails that came in were from enraged or illiterate right-wingers calling me a “whacko commie pig” and such. It’s probably best to just concentrate on the positive reactions and take heart that I probably picked up some new readers.
“I saw you on the O”Reilly factor a second ago and I have to say that I respect you for coming on the program and saying what you believe to Mr. O’Reilly,” wrote a guy named Steve Klinck. “I happen to be a conservative and disagree with your statements but, as Bill said, you”re a stand-up guy, and I respect you for that.”
“I just watched your conversation with BR on The O”Reilly Factor,” wrote Paul Lyle of Plainview, Texas, “and until that moment I’d never heard of you, but I want to say how delightful and gracious you were, very open and credible. You are a very prepossessing gentlemen. BR made nothing off your forthrighness about having some reservation about what you had written regarding Jon Voight. I thought that was high drama. Welcome to my world. I’ll be watching and reading you.”
“When I heard your quote I was angry at you,” wrote Jim Lewallen,” but you did a nice job with Bill. I am a conservative[but] you made sense. You have your opinions on the blog. No one has to read this and you weren’t encouraging Hollywood to blacklist conservatives. You said it best when you said basically I’m just a guy with an opinion. Interesting interview.”

I spoke earlier today with Magnolia Pictures president Eammon Bowles about Man on Wire, which has been doing good business since opening on 7.25 because it’s been well reviewed, but mainly — and it really is this simple — because it delivers a genuine spiritual high. And when films that really and truly do this come along, people always pick up on this and go and tell their friends and then it builds and builds and builds.

This combination documentary, elegy and suspense film is opening around the country this weekend. It is absolutely essential to see it, and I don’t mean on DVD
When Sean Connery saw Man on Wire at the Edinburgh Film Festival a little more than a month ago he called it √¢‚Ǩ≈ìone of the best three films I have ever seen.√¢‚Ǩ¬ù (He wouldn’t say what the other two were.) At the Vicky Christina Barcelona party the other night people kept asking me what my favorite recent film is, and over and over I kept on saying Man on Wire. I hadn’t said this to myself in so many words, but I didn’t hesitate in saying it when asked.
Here’s an mp3 of the last two or three minutes of my conversation with Bowles in which I articulate the “spiritual high” high, and here’s an mp3 of our whole discussion.

Entertainment Weekly‘s Ben Svetkey: “If you could be any superhero, which superhero would you be?”
Barack Obama: “I was always into the Spider-Man/Batman model. The guys who have too many powers, like Superman, that always made me think they weren’t really earning their superhero status. It’s a little too easy. Whereas Spider-Man and Batman, they have some inner turmoil. They get knocked around a little bit.”
Svetkey: “For instance, who’s your favorite movie or TV president?”
Obama: You know who was a great movie president? Jeff Bridges in The Contender. That was a great movie president. He was charming and essentially an honorable person, but there was a rogue about him. The way he would order sandwiches — he was good at that.
Svetkey: Is that one of the things you’re looking forward to? Confounding the White House kitchen staff with obscure sandwich requests?
Obama: “Absolutely. I want to test them. I want to see if I can get any sandwich I want.” — from an interview posted on August 6th.