Tuesday
18Nov2008
New to Home Video: 'Wall-E,' 'Tropic Thunder,' Pants that Travel Again
Tuesday, November 18, 2008 at 5:28AM
There are some real heavy hitters on DVD this week, a
sign that holiday shopping is just around the corner. You know, usually, you'll
get one big DVD, and then a AAA player or two and then down into the lower rungs
of the minor league system. But this week, there are two $100 million flicks,
one of them a $200 million movie, and it comes just two or three weeks too late
to save Circuit City. Damn.
Wall-E
Tropic Thunder
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
Wall-EDVD sales will be muy importante to Wall-E, which cost Disney and Pixar $180 million. Though the year's best reviewed film is certainly profitable, the margins aren't where they usually are for a Pixar movie. To help make up that difference, we have a three-disc DVD chock full o' stuff.
You'll get the animated short Burn-E, a kind of spin-off of the film, plus the animated short Presto that preceded Wall-E in theaters. There are some great features and mini-docs for fans of Pixar's particular brand of filmmaking, focusing on the sound design, plus making of featurettes and The Pixar Story by Leslie Iwerks. That's worth a look. The third disc is the digital copy of the film, so you can watch the flick on your favorite portable device. We're going to see a lot of that from now on.
(Check out our review of Wall-E)
Tropic ThunderArguably the best comedy of the year and certainly the most successful, Tropic Thunder accomplished at least three things: It helped stabilize Ben Stiller's career after The Heartbreak Kid, it showed Tom Cruise could laugh at himself, and it continued the Robert Downey Lovefest, which began in May with Iron Man.
For your money, you'll get tons of bonus footage, including the tongue-in-cheek making of the film within the film documentary, Rain of Madness. On top of that are a few smaller featurettes like Designing the Thunder, The Hot LZ and Blowing S#!+ Up.
Watch it again, especially if you don't think a case could be made for Robert Downey Jr. getting an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
(Here's our review)
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2I'm really surprised this sequel didn't do better business, and I suspect I'm not the only one. After all, when the first Traveling Pants came out, Amber Tamblyn and Alexis Bledel were the big stars, but neither one of their TV shows were huge hits.
On the other hand, this past summer you had Ugly Betty and Serena van der Woodsen from Gossip Girl to deal with.
I mean, it did slightly better than the original, but wouldn't you think it would've made at least $10 million more? It just wasn't in the cards, and I believe that has something to do with the sequel not being as good or fulfilling as the first one.
(We reviewed it)
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. ThompsonGonzo is a so-so documentary about about a so-so artist. Don't get me wrong: When Hunter S. Thompson was on his game, he was one of the best, most original writers in America. The trouble is that for the last 30 years of his life, he was rarely on his game.
But that's not the real reason this is only so-so. It's hard to recommend it to anyone outside of Thompson's fans because it functions more as a tribute than a document. It's fine that Thompson did things his way, but he shouldn't necessarily be canonized for it on film, should he?
(Our review)
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