Wait…Variety‘s Todd McCarthy has panned Tropic Thunder? Something is funny or it isn’t, but wow…what a gulf. One man’s comedic delight is another’s torture chamber.

A geek dad in a monster outfit hanging with a toddler…right. A variation on the generic Comic-Con photo that runs in the N.Y. Times each and every year. I’m not putting the practice down. I would run this photo (or one like it) if I’d been asked to decide which photo would best go with this Michael Ceiply story about Frank Miller talking about directing The Spirit, which we all know will be trotting out the same Frank Miller routine — high-style CG noir mixed with tough talk, slinky dames and ripe sensuality.

I shared an observation about four or five years ago that I’m now going to repeat, to wit: this is one of the best movie endings of all time — right at the top of the list, I’d say. It’s great and mythic because (a) it explains exactly what the film has been about (i.e., the spreading U.S. paranoia about commies, UFOs and other usurpers of the American dream) without getting preachy, and (b) strongly hints that the worst of the bad stuff is yet to come. And then that hard-slamming Dimitri Tiomkin brass…brilliant!

The brilliant, avant-garde-ish Darren Aronofsky doing a Robocop film? Good God. The sensitive New York director of the brilliant Pi, the intensely druggy and degenerative Requiem for a Dream and the trippy-mystical The Fountain? Lo, how the mighty and gifted have fallen. Wait…The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke?
On the other hand there’s the relatively recent reality of Aronofsky becoming a dad, and the likelihood of his not wanting to be seen as the esoteric guy whose films don’t play to the mongrel popcorn crowd, and so what the hell…he takes a straight paycheck gig. The upside is that this will be the brainiest Robocop ever. The fact David Self (Thirteen Days, Road to Perdition) is doing the screenplay indicates something non-cheesy.

Big Picture columnist Patrick Goldstein has missed the big picture in his 7.25 article about screenwriter Peter Morgan‘s third and presumably final Tony Blair movie, the first two being The Deal and The Queen. Goldstein said that Morgan “envisions the script,” called The Special Relationship, as “an intimate portrait of Blair’s relationship with Clinton, circa 1997-2000.”

Peter Morgan, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, George Bush

Well and good, but what Goldstein doesn’t mention is that the script was first envisioned as a tragic tale of Blair’s downfall due to his misguided alliance with Bush over WMDs and the mounting of the Iraq War. Michael Sheen, who portrayed Blair in The Deal and The Queen, told me in the spring of ’07 about Morgan’s plan to eventually write a Blair-goes-down movie (and about his expectation that he would star in it).
On 10.1.07 Variety‘s Adam Dawtrey reported that the new movie will focus on Blair’s “reaction to the handover of power from Clinton, a natural liberal ally, to Bush, who came from the other end of the political spectrum, which Morgan sees as a pivotal moment when the special relationship between Britain and America changed.'”
What’s happened, in short, is that Morgan has gradually lost interest in the Bush-alliance downfall story and shifted focus to the lah-dee-dah Blair-Clinton relationship. It’s almost certain that whatever A Special Relationship turns out to be, Morgan will make it work and then some. He’s a very sharp writer. But I for one am disappointed. The Iraq War-downfall thing is about a smart guy going astray, drinking the Kool-Aid and screwing his career — clear and simple. What’s the Bush-Clinton story about? Two liberal-minded heads of state come to like each other during the ’90s and….what? I don’t see what it is.

N.Y.Press critic Armond White has delivered a blistering critique of Nanette Burstein‘s American Teen. As in, “If American Teen had smell-o-vision, the scent of bubble gum would be overpowered by crap.” I’m not posting this to signal agreement; I just enjoy White when he goes on a tear.
“Don’t fall for the capturing-real-life ruse,” White cautions. “That’s a Heisenberg Principle trap (asking us to excuse the filmmaker’s cynicism, since we already realize her presence). It’s no different from Christopher Nolan‘s cynicism in The Dark Knight: The graduating students of Warshaw High suggest suburban comics heroes: Zit Boy, Tramp Girl, Manic Twat, Texting Dork, Jock Dweeb. Without any emotional or historical context for these pathetic youth, Burstein merely offers a spectacle of chipmunky kiddie voices and garbled diction.”

Watchmen director Zack Snyder “is currently battling Warners over the ultimate running time of his film, which is three hours,” reports Variety‘s Anne Thompson from Comic-Con. “He’s trying to cut it down, but doesn’t want to lose a character like Hollis, a guy who gets murdered about half way through.

“‘I’m not ready for that yet,” Synder says. ‘If Dark Knight got two and a half hours, Watchmen should get fifteen minutes more. I’m trying to be reasonable.’
“Snyder is caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of the studio’s commercial demands and the fans who love the comics,” Thompson remarks. “A movie has to reach beyond the faithful, remaining accessible to mainstream moviegoers.”
This reminds for some reason of a 1994 Daily News headline that bannered an interview I did with Wyatt Earp director Larry Kasdan, to wit: “Draw At Count of Three, Wyatt….Hours!”
Today’s Watchmen presentation is the only Comic-Con thing I really wanted to see. But I wasn’t going drive all the way down to San Diego just to do that.

Cinemascope‘s Yair Raveh has passed along Barack Obama‘s handwritten prayer note, written on hotel stationery, that the Democratic presidential candidate slipped between the stones at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall during his visit to the site two days ago.

“Journalists then promptly stormed the wall and ransacked his note,” he writes. It turned up in today’s issue of Maariv, a popular Hebrew-language daily. “It’s a big faux pas from a Jewish traditional point of view to steal a written Wailing Wall prayer,” Raveh writes, “and I’m quite certain that if Obama were Jewish no mainstream reporter would’ve dared violate his privacy so bluntly.”

It’s icky to make news stories out of evidence that famous people are infidels, but every time I read one — example #1, example #2 — I feel mildly comforted on some level. I despise these stories and half-like them at the same time.
Recap: Slate‘s Mickey Kaus has printed yesterday morning’s memo from L.A. Times editor Tony Pierce which noted that “because the only source [on the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter affair] has been the National Enquirer, we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations, so I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified.” The Enquirer is apparently intending to publish photos of Edwards running away from photographers when they ambushed him at the Beverly Wilshire earlier this week.

Wall Street Journal reporter Elizabeth Holmes has obviously earned John McCain‘s ire. Here‘s an Iraq consensus piece she recently co-authored.

Why is the new Will Ferrell-John C. Reilly comedy called Step Brothers? I’ve known that stepbrothers is a single unhyphenated word since I took part in sixth-grade spelling bees. Is your mother’s mother your “grand mother” or “grandmother”? I hate how marketing guys always do it their own way, get it wrong, thumb their nose at civilization.

Step Brothers, in any event, is not funny. I sat there like an Easter Island statue. No chuckles; not even a smile. I need to say right now that anyone who goes this weekend and laughs uproariously is showing their colors. I’m not saying it’ll mark you as a mongrel for finding it amusing but if you laugh heartily and repeatedly it will say something about your level of refinement and your vistas. The movie is a wallow — a crew of actors sloshing around in a mocha-colored whipped-mud pit and going “who-hooaaa!…being covered in slop is friggin’ hilarious, so the more the funnier….yahhhh!”
I’ll admit that I found the premise — a couple of 40 year-olds (Ferrell, Reilly) still living with their respective single parents and being forced to share a domain when their parents decide to get married — amusing on the surface. But I realized early on that immaturity in and of itself isn’t funny. It never is or has been. Think back — when has a contemporary acting like an immature twit at any age ever been amusing? In your own life, I mean.
I’ll admit that some of what Ferrell and O’Reilly get into is mildly diverting if you’re a good-natured person who likes to be charitable (people were laughing at the screening I attended), but that’s neither here nor there.
The premise connects because the age of supposed maturity (attaining mellow emotionality, knowing how to tie your shoelaces, getting down to a career, etc.) has been taking longer and longer with each generation, and we all know this and probably want to laugh at it to alleviate our concerns.

Guys who came out of World War I felt compelled to get down to marriage and raising kids in their early 20s. Then again the F. Scott Fitzgerald/Ernest Hemingway “lost generation” of the 1920s was the first to put stuff off as they wallowed in personal issues. The Depression toughened the nation up and kept almost everyone (except for the Beats of the late 1940s and ’50s) on the straight and narrow until the mid ’60s when all cultural hell broke loose. It was nonetheless considered a mark of at least some shame in the ’70s for anyone to have delayed on Big Life Moves until their late 20s or early 30s.
The state of social devolution has continued unabated since the ’70s, to the point that it’s now considered totally normal for immature guys to kick around well into their 30s and sometimes into their early 40s. Ten or twenty years from now it’ll be considered almost normal for guys to start thinking about coming to grips with maturity when they hit 45 or 50.
The world is culturally devolving, disassembling and swirling down the toilet bowl. That’s why Step Brothers is a downer — it’s essentially a meditation about the end of the world. I’m kind of kidding, yes, but not altogether. Because the world is ending, in a sense. Mamma Mia! is another indicator. Ditto the red-state bumpkins who resent Barack Obama for wallowin’ around in Afghanistan and Europe instead of taking care of business back home.