I hope you've been following our Brian Truitt by Twitter at the right side of the blog as he made his way to San Diego Wednesday. He  landed at Comic-Con, began dealing with  a massive crowd and hit two of the hottest screenings available all week, one for the  new J.J. Abrams TV drama Fringe and Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder. If you're fans of either, Brian's report is a must read.

"Dealing with the huge numbers here isn't easy — particularly the people who use their kids in strollers as weapons. One little girl even hit me with her blow-up He-Man sword!  But after a 90-minute wait to get my press badge, I was good to go and Preview Night started. Where to first? The exclusive pilot screening of J.J. Abrams' much-ballyhooed new Fox show, Fringe.

It's definitely interesting. The two-hour pilot, premiering Sept. 9, begins with something very, very bad happening on a plane. (Oceanic Flight 815 from that other Abrams show, Lost, gives way to Flight 267 here.) Homeland Security is brought in and puts together an inter-agency group to investigate, where we're introduced to an FBI special agent (newcomer Anna Torv) and her G-man boy toy (Mark Valley). Something else very, very bad (although not as bad as the plane incident) happens to her dude, so she enlists the help of a scientist (John Noble) who's been locked up in the nuthouse after a career of studying mind control, invisibility, reanimation and other "fringe" sciences. To do this, the Fed has to persuade the scientist's estranged, super-smart son (Joshua Jackson, aka Pacey from Dawson's Creek) to get the old man out of the asylum and on the case of helping her man with his — ahem — skin condition. Like Lost, there is some shady corporation involved with the strange stuff going on, but Fringe is more in tune with Abrams' superspy hit Alias, with all the government agents and betrayal and what-not. Then there's the whole X-Files-esque sci-fi element. That's where it could get old quick. Still, this is a J.J. Abrams world, where even the names of places become creative landmarks in the show's landscape, and the man doesn't miss very often. The audience seemed to enjoy it, and there was a long line for the second screening.

I liked Fringe but I loved the movie Tropic Thunder. It is the funniest movie I've seen all year. You've probably heard what it's about: When a Vietnam War movie begins production and starts to fail, the prima donna Hollywood stars are thrown into a real situation in Southeast Asia with a bunch of drug-manufacturing guerillas. Ben Stiller (who also directs and co-wrote the script) is the action hero whose best days are several sequels behind him. Jack Black is the drug-addicted funny man- a Chris Farley sprinkled with a little Eddie Murphy. And Robert Downey Jr. is the Russell Crowe type, an Oscar-winning Aussie who gets so into method acting that he undergoes a pigment operation to "play" the movie's African-American sergeant character. Downey really steals the whole movie and proves his brilliance yet again (between this and Iron Man, the guy is having a great 2008), and the cameos are priceless, including a certain A-lister playing a crass studio executive and displaying the most hilarious white man dancing ever put on film. Check out the trailer below."

(photo by Mark Ben Holzberg/FOX)