DVD Round-Up: November 18, 2008

This week, learn (part of) the story behind the Wu-Tang Clan, meet an adorable trash compacting robot named Wall*E and laugh at Robert Downey Jr., Ben Stiller and the rest of the goofballs in Tropic Thunder.

Wu: The Story of the Wu-Tang Clan
Paramount
$22.99

The story of Wu-Tang Clan—a Staten Island-based group of rappers who blasted out of obscurity in the early ’90s to become one of the biggest pop-culture sensations of that decade—is fodder for a potentially great flick.  Sadly, this BET-backed documentary feels more like an overlong episode of VH1’s Behind the Music series.  Directed by Gerald Barclay, who knew the Wu-Tang guys before they hit it big and actually directed their first music video “Protect Your Neck,” Wu only skims the surface of the Clan’s fascinating (and occasionally troubled) history.

The doc is at its best in the first half-hour, when Barclay digs deep into the archives and digs up early footage of RZA, Method Man and the other core members laying down tracks for what would become the group’s seminal debut album: Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).  Once the group takes off though, Wu starts to fall apart.  Aside from a few references to internal tensions, Barclay mostly dances around the touchy subject of infighting within the Clan and keeps his focus on their extraordinary success at turning themselves into a franchise, complete with a clothing line and video games.  Part of the problem with this section of the film is that Barclay seems to have limited access to the present-day Clan.  RZA and Raekwon seem to be the only two founding members who agreed to be interviewed, which means the director mainly speaks to a lot of satellite guys about events they don’t necessarily have first-hand knowledge of.  His footage well also starts to run dry; despite repeated claims about how good Wu-Tang was live, the only significant concert footage we get is outtakes from a relatively listless performance in Hawaii.  Then in its final twenty minutes, Wu basically morphs into a tribute film to Ol’ Dirty Bastard, all but ignoring the Clan’s post-ODB career.  The doc also suffers from Barclay’s relentless self-promotion; at times, it almost feels like he’s using his association with Wu-Tang as resume fodder for his own career.  Ultimately, Wu only provides us with a few chapters in a much longer and far more interesting novel.

Extras: Barclay continues to hype himself in one of the disc’s five extended interviews, talking at length about his history with the group’s various members.  Also contributing additional thoughts are RZA, Raekwon and ODB’s widow, Icelene.  Best bonus feature?  The full version of “Protect Ya Neck,” the video that started it all.

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Wall*E
Disney
$39.99

I don’t know how they run things over at Pixar, but part of me thinks that this group of animation geniuses decides what film they’re going to make next by coming up with a list of seemingly impossible ideas and then assigning them to whatever foolhardy filmmaker volunteers.  How else do you explain a company producing movies about talking cars, a rat that cooks or, in the case of its new feature-length cartoon Wall*E, the last functional robot on a deserted Earth some 700 years in the future?  Director Andrew Stanton further ups the ante by keeping avoiding conventional dialogue for much of the film.  Instead these machines communicate to each other (and us) through digital squawks and programmed gestures. What’s marvelous about the movie—and one of the many things that makes it unlike any other film, animated or otherwise, in recent memory—is that we understand everything they’re saying and feeling without all the excess verbiage that pervades so many contemporary big-budget studio productions.  One of the movie’s subtle jokes is that these machines actually have more personality than their flesh and blood “masters” who, over the centuries, have devolved into fat, television-addicted blobs.  While the film’s social message comes through loud and clear, it never detracts from the heart of the picture, the unlikely romance between the title character and his robo-girlfriend EVE, who is the movie’s real star. She’s strong, smart and endlessly capable—it’s no wonder that Wall*E falls immediately under her spell. When you see these lovebirds dancing in the vacuum of space, your heart twirls and soars right along with them.

Extras: Stanton talks about the film’s long journey to the big screening in a fascinating commentary track that runs alongside the feature.  Also included on the first disc are two short cartoons, one of which stars a new robot named Burn*E.  Disc 2 houses the feature-length documentary The Pixar Story, the complete, official history of the best animation studio currently operating in Hollywood, as well as a number of making-of featurettes and interactive games for kiddie viewers.

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Tropic Thunder
Parmount
$39.99

You can’t talk about Tropic Thunder without talking about Robert Downey Jr. and that’s not just because he’s the funniest thing in this big, broad spoof of war movies. The newly minted box-office superhero plays Kirk Lazarus, an acclaimed Aussie method actor with piercing blue eyes and five Oscars on his shelf.  For his latest role, Lazarus has been cast in a big-budget Vietnam War flick opposite action superstar Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller, who also serves as Thunder’s director and co-writer), obese comedian Jeff “Fats” Portnoy (Jack Black) and rapper-turned-actor Alpha Chino (Brandon T. Jackson).  But here’s the twist that will really have everyone buzzing: Lazarus, who is white, is playing an African-American character.  As if that’s not enough, he’s undergone a radical pigmentation procedure to have his skin darkened.  So, in essence, Downey Jr. is doing his role in blackface.  And he’s not the only actor who takes a walk on the provocative side in Thunder. There’s also Simple Jack, a mentally challenged farm boy played by Stiller’s Speedman character in another film-within-the-film.  Seen out of context, I can understand why these characters would put off some viewers, but the reason the film works is because all of the actors are willing to go big and broad in their performances, even when they risk looking foolish or, worse, like a bunch of ignorant assholes.  In its best moments, the movie generates the same kind of delirious laughter that greeted Blazing Saddles, another film that used outrageous comedy to explode conventional definitions of “good taste.”  I don’t mean to put Thunder in the same category as Mel Brooks’ comic masterpiece because it can’t sustain itself for its nearly two-hour running time.  Still, the movie deserves to be seen solely for Downey Jr.’s brilliant one-man show, which, in a perfect world, would be recognized by Oscar voters come January.

Extras: Disc 1 comes with two commentary tracks, one featuring the filmmaking team (including Stiller, co-writer Justin Theroux and cinematographer John Toll) and the other with the above-the-title trio of Stiller, Black and Downey Jr.  Guess which one is funnier?  Over on Disc 2, you’ll find a number of behind-the-scenes featurettes, which cover the film’s special effects, production design and script.  It’s a little disconcerting to hear all these folks talk so seriously about their comedy though, which is why the disc’s highlight has to be Rain of Madness, a fake making-of documentary filmed by a fictional German documentary filmmaker (played by Theroux) that documents the behind-the-scenes troubles of the film-within-the-film.  This doc runs a half-hour and is followed by an additional 20 minutes worth of deleted scenes.  Additional deleted and extended scenes (from the actual film) are also included, along with a not particularly funny alternate ending.  Rounding out the set is a skit from this year’s MTV Movie Awards, video rehearsals and unedited takes that give you the chance to see how much improvisation went on during filming.

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Also on DVD

Arguably the most influential comedy group of the second half of the 20th century, Monty Python exploded conventional notions of what you could and couldn’t do on television through their revolutionary late-’60s series Monty Python’s Flying Circus.  In the process, they birthed a whole generation of absurdist comedians who have done their best to live up to the examples set by John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam.  Still frequently seen in syndication, Flying Circus has been well represented on DVD by A&E, which has put out several box sets to date, including the comprehensive 16-Ton Megaset collection released in 2005.  So if you already own the latter release, is Monty Python’s Flying Circus: Collector’s Edition (A&E, $159.95) worth the upgrade?  Ported over from the Megaset are all five seasons of Flying Circus, two concert films (Live at the Hollywood Bowl and Live in Apsen), an episode originally taped for German television, a glossary and several featurettes.  Not included on that earlier version—but previously available separately—are six “Personal Best” clip reels that highlight the best work of the six individual Pythons.  New stuff includes two previously unseen documentaries, Before the Flying Circus and Monty Python Conquers America, both of which are filled with rare archival footage and priceless memories from surviving Pythons Cleese, Idle, Palin, Jones and Gilliam.  These docs make this collector’s set a no-brainer for Python addicts and neophytes, but more casual fans shouldn’t feel obligated to trade in their earlier editions…although it is handy to have all this stuff in one place.

I’ve been down on Harmony Korine ever he tried to pass himself off as the voice of ’90s youth in Kids (the less said about Gummo and Julien Donkey Boy the better) but I have to admit that I dug his third directorial effort, Mister Lonely (IFC, $24.95).  Set on a commune populated by celebrity impersonators, the film follows a faux-Michael Jackson (brilliantly played by Diego Luna) as he comes between Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton, also excellent) and her husband, Charlie Chaplin (Denis Lavant).  Every now and then, German filmmaker (and Korine’s mentor) Werner Herzog turns up as a priest who discovers a team of skydiving nuns that literally defy gravity.  The DVD comes with deleted scenes and a making-of featurette that doesn’t even attempt to explain what this odd, but enjoyable flick is about.  From the title, it’s not too difficult to figure out the story of The Zombie Diaries (Dimension Extreme, $19.97), a Cloverfield-style Brit flick in which the walking dead take over London.  Where’s Shaun of the Dead when you need him?

In TV news, Star Trek: The Complete Third Season (Paramount, $99.99) boldly goes onto DVD, with all 24 remastered episodes from the final season of the original Trek series, plus a bunch of bonus goodies, including commentary tracks, featurettes and deleted scenes.  Sci-fi fans should also make plans to pick up Dr. Who: The Complete Fourth Series (BBC, $99.98), a six-disc set of the British show’s stellar four year and the last full season starring current Doctor, David Tennant, who’ll be handing over the keys to the TARDIS before the series returns full-time in 2010.  Finally, history buffs will have a field day with two new A&E releases, Secrets of the Civil War (A&E, $34.95)—a collection of little known facts about the bloodiest conflict in America’s history—and Surviving History (A&E, $34.95), a competitive reality show in which craftsmen have to re-build old inventions using period materials.  Take that Survivor!