I finally got around to seeing Tropic Thunder. I didn’t laugh as much as I was hoping to. Perhaps I read way too much about it beforehand. That’s one of the downsides to living in the information age. It’s difficult to be surprised. There is also the small problem of me being incapable of liking anything that Tom Cruise does. I don’t find him funny or charming. I find that his every performance and appearance seethes smugness and I just want to punch him square in his smug jaw (after kicking him in the smugnuts).
But one thing I knew I would LOVE was the “r****d” bit. Not because I think making fun of the mentally challenged is funny, but because I think actors playing mentally challenged characters for Oscar bait is horrible and someone needs to call it out. Mr. Show did a good job of it with their Dewey Awards/Bob Lamonta sketch but it wasn’t mainstream enough to make an impact. Ben Stiller, on the other hand, brought people to the theaters in droves to expose this disturbing Hollywood truth. Of course, there were a lot of people who still didn’t get it.
Ben Stiller and co. aren’t “making fun of r****ds”. They are making fun of the Hollywood construct of the mentally challenged. Characters like Sam, Radio, the sister that rode the bus and The Other Sister. There is actually no such thing as a “r*****d”. They are as real as the Unicorn, invented by Hollywood to teach us “valuable life lessons” and “the true meaning of love”. They are caricatures of real mentally challenged people with real problems. They don’t say the darnedest things. They aren’t God’s Little Angels. They attempt to live normal lives. They have jobs and relationships. They get angry and depressed and yes, they also laugh and have fun, but not ALL THE TIME. Why? Because they are human beings. You know which film actor’s portrayal of a mentally challenged character was the most realistic? Billy Bob Thornton’s in Sling Blade. That is pretty pathetic.
I’m not saying someone NEEDS to make a reasonable movie about a mentally challenged character to rectify this. I’m just saying that the ones we have warrant dissection and ridicule. Even the “half-r****d” movies like Forest Gump (a film with several offensive characters besides the protagonist) and Rain Man.
I’d also really like it if audiences would maybe think about the context of a scene, especially one in a satirical movie, and not just get all reactionary about a single word. People can be so r******d sometimes.
Hicks saw through all of it and had the balls to talk about it plainly. He did this because it troubled him and he wanted to bring these problems to light so that we wouldn’t destroy ourselves. He also threw some jokes in there. He was a furious fireball surrounding a big white light of hope. I get misty just typing these words. I hate to sound all 
Tarentino is a professional fan boy who has made a career out of copying all the stuff he likes. Fortunately for him, he likes kind of obscure movies so it is a rare bird who will recognize what he has borrowed from. That is probably why he decided to go from plagiarism to straight up remakes. 
Roth is the man who, in conjunction with the “SAW” franchise, helped popularize torture fetish films (Who needs character development or dialog when you can just bleed people slowly for an hour and a half?). Roth is as much of an actor as Tarentino himself. That is to say that he smirks his way through his lines while his more talented cast mates play around his high-school-drama caliber performance. I’m also sure there will be plenty of rambling monologues for everybody. Needless to say, I’m not so much looking forward to this one. 
According to a tip on AICN, Johnny Depp has been 
First up is the sad news that dear old John Waters has gone senile and 
And then there’s Heath. Once the trailers hit, I don’t think anybody doubted that he was going to nail the Joker role. The over-hyped talk of Oscar noms gave me pause. How could it not? It would be so cheap to give him a posthumous Oscar when a comic book film would never be considered for such things under ordinary circumstances. But he was a mean Joker in every sense of the word. He was simultaneously scary and hilarious. He embodied the character full stop. He made someone like the Joker a real-world possibility. He certainly gave Jack Nicholson a run for his money (not that such things are difficult, 
You know what though? The Watchmen trailer didn’t look…that…bad. I know. I couldn’t believe it either. Granted that Billy Corgan soundtrack was pretty atrocious and I couldn’t help but snicker when they billed it as being “from the visionary director of 300“. Visionary? Really? The man knows how to use a green screen and that freeze motion camera effect, I’ll give him that. But so do lots of people in Hollywood. Was 
No. It’s so little Guillermo can make more creatures. CREATURES! OMG! CREATURES! Look at them all! Goblins apparently come in all shapes and sizes. There are some flat-faced dudes too. And some small leachy things. And tumor babies. And this guy with big teeth and no eyes. And a big-assed Treebeard/Godzilla hybrid…and…and…Where was I? Oh yeah. In the middle of a movie. I guess we can have the bad guy battle Hellboy now. He’ll do all those flippy moves we saw him do earlier. But this time it will be against HELLBOY so it will feel fresh and new. 
OK, so it wasn’t ALL bad. There were a few shining moments. 
Jason Bateman, playing the aforementioned PR man, is also squandered. He is known for excelling in the awkward reaction shot arena. But here, they keep the camera far away from him during the moments that count and instead stick them into Will Smith’s constant “Whatchoo Talking About Willis” mug. 
So at the start of the film, after a fun little montage which catches us up to speed, we join Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) living a quiet life in Brazil, watching Portuguese Sesame Street and taking lessons on how to make your stomach concave. He has also taken a job in a GREEN soda bottling plant which primarily employs brutes and supermodels. All the while he is messengering with a scientist back home as they work on attempting to cure his affliction. His location is compromised when some of his blood gets into one of the sodas, thus poisoning Brazilian Soda enthusiast, Stan Lee. Bruce Banner is on the run again! Teaming up with his estranged girlfriend, Betty (Liv Tyler), Bruce must find his scientist friend and cure himself before Betty’s daddy gets a hold of him. 
Effed by the Wind 
