In Contention

Tag: The Wrestler

  • ‘Black Swan’ still the talk of the Lido

    Two days into the Venice Film Festival, and still the only film I consistently hear people talking about is “Black Swan” — even as the film accrues its share of detractors, it seems Venice fest director Marco Müller has broken the traditional curse of festival curtain-raisers, kicking off this year’s Lido activity with a film people actually give a damn about. (As Variety’s Justin Chang rather succinctly put it on Twitter: “In the battle of opening-night films: Venice 1, Cannes 0.”)

    Meanwhile, its kinship with Aronofsky’s previous feature, “The Wrestler,” has grown from an interesting side-note broken a few days ago into the most recurrent point of discussion around the film; Aronofsky addressed the matter directly in the film’s press conference yesterday, from which USA Today offers this quote:

    The more I looked into the world of ballet, I actually started to see all these similarities to the world of wrestling … They both have these performers that use their bodies in sort of extremely, intense physical ways. Their entire performance is based on intense physicality.

    (more…)

  • REVIEW: “Black Swan” (****)

    Venice Film Festival

    It’s the juvenilization of the term “fairy tale” that has led many people to associate them inextricably with happy endings. At their most literary, fairy tales can be moral and often very unhappy narratives of yearning, obsession and eventual redemption, even if it comes with rather a large sacrifice attached; Hans Christian Andersen specialized in compromised happy endings, notably in “The Little Mermaid” and “The Red Shoes,” that would have made Walt Disney wince.

    If you squint slightly at “Black Swan,” the boldly deranged and beautifully despairing new film from Darren Aronofsky, you can see that it is, when push comes to plié, a contemporary fairy tale of sorts: the story of a little girl, in the fierce grip of controlling adults, who wants nothing more than to dance, and learns that she must exchange part of herself for the opportunity.

    That much I can say without breaking the spell for those who have not seen it. For while “Black Swan” may reveal itself as a fairy tale, that’s only after it has successfully masqueraded as a taut, witty and wickedly kinky thriller that pulls off the tricky double-bluff of following precisely the narrative course one has mapped out for it, yet emerging as all the more surprising for that adherence.

    (more…)

  • Aronofsky’s ‘Black Swan’ and ‘Wrestler’ started as one movie

    It goes without saying one of the most anticipated films of the fall movie season is Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan.” Going by the trailer, we’re in for a slice of genre goodness that taps many of the muscles the director has flexed early in his career.

    In an interview with MTV, Aronofsky offers an intriguing bit of trivia: his latest film and 2008’s “The Wrestler” actually started out as one film.  It seems his 10-year-old original concept involved a professional wrestler falling in love with a professional ballet dancer.  The mind reels.

    I imagine it would have been fascinating territory to cover, but the germ split off into two separate films.  Eventually Aronofsky worked with Robert Siegel’s on an original screenplay and saved the ballet stuff for the film opening the Venice film festival in just two days.

    (more…)

  • Wahlberg talks up ‘The Fighter’

    When I remarked in a post yesterday that the upcoming awards season looks a little short on the high-profile biopic contenders so beloved of Academy voters, I had a feeling I was forgetting something obvious. And so I was: “The Fighter,” David O. Russell’s biopic of against-the-odds boxing champ “Irish” Micky Ward, starring Mark Wahlberg in the title role.

    In Friday’s episode of Oscar Talk, Kris expressed his high hopes for the film, singling out Christian Bale (as Ward’s half-brother and trainer Dicky Eklund) as a rumored standout. His faith is reflected in the updated predictions to your right, including potential bids in the two top races, as well as three acting categories. (Melissa Leo is currently tapped for Best Supporting Actress, but Amy Adams could be in the mix too.)

    Anne Thompson responded somewhat skeptically to Kris’s enthusiasm, suggesting that Russell’s film (should it turn out well, of course) is in a position to take some in the industry by surprise — always a good place to be from an awards-campaign standpoint. Meanwhile, it would appear that the film’s minders are opting not to build up buzz via the fall festival track: in this Collider interview, Wahlberg explains that they’ll likely skip Toronto and the rest, choosing instead to “go out and go big” with a December release.

    (more…)

  • Steve Pond on Oscar’s “broken” song category

    Kate Hudson in NineThe Best Original Song race gets an awful lot of stick for its wonky voting system and sometimes questionable musical judgment — problems that have lately converged to scupper the hopes of many well-regarded contenders, with last year’s snub of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Wrestler” raising particularly widespread ire.

    I’ll start, however, by saying a few words in the category’s favor. The odd egregious snub aside, the standard of competition has improved notably in recent years — some have complained that the Academy no longer recognizes familiar chart hits with the regularity that they did in the 1980s, but their musical range has expanded. The last decade has seen them embrace hip-hop, world music and folk, including several numbers that were imaginatively integrated into the cinematic fabric of certain films.

    Do they still nominate the occasional stinker? Sure. But by and large, we’re in a better, more adventurous place than we were 10 years ago, when dreary MOR balladeering from the likes of Phil Collins, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston ruled the race.

    (more…)

  • Grammy nods for ‘Basterds,’ Giacchino… and Steve Martin

    UpI’m always interested to see what cinematic musical achievements the Grammy Awards single out for recognition each year, largely because their pop sensibilities are so different (and their eligibility criteria so much looser) from those of the Oscars that they may as well exist on different planets.

    Last year, for example, they selected “The Dark Knight” as the year’s best score, though it didn’t manage a nomination from the Academy. A similar shaming shows up this year, as the Grammys show the respect for Bruce Springsteen’s “The Wrestler” theme that the Academy’s music branch did not.

    An earlier cut-off date means a few late-2008 titles show up here, including “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Milk,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Cadillac Records” — a song from the latter counting for one of Beyonce’s field-leading 10 nominations, incidentally. (I won’t even say anything about the non film-related categories.)

    (more…)

  • THE LONG SHOT: Post early for Christmas

    Jeremy Renner in The Hurt LockerLondon is in the midst of a postal strike. No mail, be it far-flung postcard or electricity bill, has popped through my front door for over a month. I recently had to stroll into Soho to pick up my London Film Festival accreditation pack by hand. And rather discouragingly, my local post office today put a hastily scrawled sign in the window: “Post NOW for delivery by Christmas.”

    If you’re wondering why I’ve started this week’s column with this fascinating tidbit from my domestic life – apart from the fact that, as Kris noted, the crickets are chirping in awardsville this week – it’s because, as I stared disbelievingly at the sign, it occurred to me that a similar memo should be sent to several specialty studios hoping for a stake in this awards season. (Yes, my mind works in curious ways.)

    In short: you have a little package that needs to deliver in time for Oscar consideration? Don’t wait until December. Send it out now.

    This may seem like crazy advice given Oscar voters’ ever-growing love affair with winter releases. Just last year, no pre-November release made the Best Picture cut. And Harvey Weinstein has proved time and again that substantial rewards can be reaped if you spring a film upon the Academy without giving them too much time to think about it – from “The Cider House Rules” to “Chocolat” to “The Reader,” he knows which films won’t survive a few months of critical and industry scrutiny.

    (more…)

  • An evening with Clint Mansell

    Clint MansellIt has been a very long time since I sat myself down in a wooden pew, but I think it’s safe to say that the last church recital I attended didn’t begin with a speech by a rebel auteur from Brooklyn, didn’t involve any electric guitars, and it certainly wasn’t accompanied by video imagery of Mickey Rourke. But then, the last church recital I attended wasn’t by Clint Mansell.

    A short stroll from my home in quiet North London, the Union Chapel is a converted (but still active) Victorian church that moonlights as an alternative music venue — perhaps the city’s loveliest — and tonight it played home to the extraordinary film composer and his musical cohorts.

    A cosy, candle-lit suburban chapel may seem a slightly odd setting for an evening that was largely devoted to the considerably harsher screen worlds of Darren Aronofsky, whose Mansell-penned film scores formed the bulk of the evening’s program, but it quickly proved a comfortable one.

    (more…)

  • Clint Mansell on growing up through film music

    Clint MansellIt’s no secret around these parts that I’m a pretty committed disciple of composer Clint Mansell.  I was absolutely beside myself — livid — when his work on Darren Aronofsky’s “The Fountain,” potentially the best score of the decade, was unceremoniously snubbed by the Academy two years ago.  So it was delightful to read through this Pete Paphides piece in The Times of London, an interview with Mansell charting his course from pop rock star to serious film music collaborator as he prepares to take to the stage at London’s Union Chapel Monday with his Los Angeles string ensemble, Sonus Quartet.  The group will be playing selections from Mansell’s film score catalog.

    Much of the article (which has sporadic, fleeting quotes, a style that drives me mad) details Mansell’s collaboration with Aronofsky.  The two met in New York over a decade ago when Aronofsky was fresh out of film school looking to produce his black-and-white mind-bender “Pi.”  But there is also finally comes around to Mansell’s collaboration with filmmaker Duncan Jones on “Moon,” which eschewed the composers typical stylistic particulars in favor of a more traditional approach (that is no less atmospheric and of a piece with the film’s expert craftsmanship).

    (more…)

  • Aronofsky at Edinburgh

    Darren AronofskyAs someone who prefers watching movies to listening to others talk about them, I probably haven’t attended as many of the In Person Q&A sessions at this year’s Edinburgh festival as I should have. Sam Mendes lost out in my priority scale to “The Red Shoes,” while the likes of Bill Forsyth and Brenda Blethyn (whose award-caliber work in “London River” I discussed yesterday) passed me by.

    I did, however, catch Darren Aronofsky’s career discussion earlier this week, and a most entertaining couple of hours it was. It wasn’t quite clear why Aronofsky was at the festival, given that he had nothing new to present – perhaps he also simply fancied a chance to kick back and watch a few movies in a picturesque town. (Earlier in the day, I had found myself seated behind him at the “Antichrist” screening – he didn’t look quite as impressed as I was.)

    As with the last time I saw Aronofsky speak, when presenting “The Wrestler” in London, the filmmaker’s interview style is largely too chatty and anecdotal to relate in writing – for the most part, I simply dropped my notepad and enjoyed the patter. The interviewer (whose name, I’m embarrassed to admit, escapes me at this moment, though I can confirm she was both gracious and very well-versed) reasoned that “The Wrestler” was still fairly fresh in the audience’s mind, so the conversation mainly flowed around Aronofsky’s first three features.

    (more…)

  • 6/8 Web Round-up

    Cover of Batman and Robin #1• The “Oh yeah, what happened to her?” blurb of the week. [Associated Press]

    • Yours truly covers Grant Morrison’s latest monthly, “Batman and Robin.” [Batman on Film]

    • David Poland analyzes the brave new world of media ad buys. [The Hot Blog]

    • Tom O’Neil on Geoffrey Rush’s new acting triple crown with last night’s lead actor Tony. [Gold Derby]

    • Marcia Gay Harden won lead actress from “God of Carnage,” by the way, while the film won best play.  “Billy Elliot” cleaned up, though. [TonyAwards.com]

    • With “Brüno” on the way, Michael Deacon digs into the elusive Sacha Baron Cohen. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Mickey Rourke works “The Wrestler” across the pond. [The Guardian]

    • Out-of-the-blue story of the day: motorcycles big on the big screen have retailers hopeful. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Glenn Kenny sees no grain in the “Dr. Strangelove” Blu-ray release, thank you very much. [Some Came Running]

  • I don’t want my MTV

    Anne Hathaway in Bride WarsWhat do Paramore, The Rock and Kate Winslet have in common? Why, they’re all nominees for the 2009 MTV Movie Awards, of course. Like, duh.

    I have no idea what the MTV Movie Awards are for. Nobody knows or cares who wins them. (Who took Best Actor laurels last year? I doubt Will Smith could tell you — and he won, for Chrissake.)

    Subject to public vote, they serve largely as a popularity contest along the lines of People’s Choice honours — but then they taint the purity of such a credo by throwing in a mention for something incongruously credible like “Milk.” (In the prestigious Best Kiss category, to boot — how honoured Gus Van Sant must feel.)

    Anyway, this year’s nominees are a typically ill-thought and ill-fitting bunch. “Twilight” leads the race, closely followed by “Slumdog Millionaire,” which should tell you pretty much everything you need to know about the awards. They claim that the nominations were also determined by the public, though I have a hard time believing that the same people who decreed Vin Diesel a Best Actor contender for “Fast & Furious” also voted Kate Winslet in for “The Reader.”

    Speaking of which, there’s a delicious hint of Bizarro World in the Best Actress category, which finds Anne Hathaway repeating her nomination success at the Academy Awards — except, wait, it’s for “Bride Wars,” not “Rachel Getting Married.” Riiight. Angelina Jolie, meanwhile, finds herself in the race for “Wanted” rather than “Changeling” — though that’s a preference I heartily endorse.

    One thing is worth noting, however: even the bloody MTV Awards could be bothered to nominate Bruce Springsteen’s “The Wrestler” theme. The Academy will never live that one down. (Check out the MTV nods here, if you dare.)

  • Off to The Boss

    I’m catching Bruce Springsteen tonight and tomorrow night over at the Sports Arena here in Los Angeles.  He hasn’t played my favorite tune on the tour yet — “Spirit in the Night” — so here’s hoping for a pleasant surprise.  “The Wrestler” has been a regular feature, however, and I’m sure he’ll play it either tonight or tomorrow.  I’ll try to grab a video of the performance with my still camera if he rocks it out.

    Gone for the rest of the night.  Call this an open thread if you have anything on your mind (though it’s been a pretty sleepy week).

  • Rourke ringside at WrestleMania

    Ricky SteamboatYeah, I shelled out the cash this evening to see WrestleMania 25, which might mark some skewed end to the 2008 Oscar season with Best Actor nominee Mickey Rourke’s decision to participate after all (news reported last month).  First pay-per-view in a decade.  Guilty.

    Anyway, I haven’t been keeping up with the WWE so forgive me if you have and are very much up on the story, but it seems the whole thing has been spun into a pretty good (as sports entertainment angles go) Chris Jericho versus the legends of wrestling kind of thing.  Tonight Jericho finds himself in a one against three handicap match with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat and “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka.  Three dudes who wear their nicknames on their sleeves.  Jericho is valiant.

    Rick Flair is in their corner, by the way.

    So Rourke is at ringside.  He gave a few hugs to the vets on their way to the ring but he looked a bit agitated with the whole scene right before that.  Maybe a run-in was in the cards…

    Piper and Snuka were eliminated pretty fast.  But Ricky Steamboat held in there, which to an old fan of these shenanigans (and as a guy who grew up in North Carolina where Steamboat is kind of the shit), was kind of cool to see.  But Jericho won out in the end, fair and square.  Flair, of course, ran in to avenge his buddies but was also made short order of.

    On cue, Jericho grabbed a mic, mouthed off to the audience about “erasing the Hall of Fame wash-ups forever” and called out Mickey Rourke point blank.  Well, he demanded an apology, which he didn’t get.  Further mouthing got Rourke out of his seat and into the ring.  The old boxing stuff came out and Rourke got a few quick pops to start before landing a left hook that decked Jericho and…

    …that was it.  Flair hopped into the ring, raised Rourke’s s hand, Jericho slumped off and that’s the victory lap on this performance I guess.

    (Oh, and Rey Mysterio Jr. came out with a mask and face paint in homage to Heath Ledger’s Joker from “The Dark Knight.”)

  • Stay cool

    Over a month after Sean Penn defeated Mickey Rourke in what was possibly the tightest acting race in recent memory, Cinematical’s Jeffrey Anderson has come up with an interesting take on how the outcome may actually benefit Rourke, and indeed “The Wrestler.” In short, he says, losing the Oscar allows them to retain their edge:

    The Wrestler is just a couple of months old now, but it has already gained a certain type of following. It has actual fans; people love this movie rather than just admire it. Milk has become a good movie for students to watch in school, but The Wrestler is a film that they will choose to watch, in their free time. It’s a cult film now. And cult films don’t win Oscars. It automatically disqualifies them from cult status. A cult film is something that people discover on their own. If the Academy acknowledges it, then it has been plucked away and turned into something official. It has a stamp of approval, and cult films are all about not being approved.

    I tend to agree, and this encapsulates why the Oscars tend to be antithetical to “cult” status — films seeking the former aim for a majority vote, while films seeking the latter tend to build on minority appeal. You only need look back to, say, “American Beauty” to see how the Academy’s endorsement can temper a once-venerated film’s cinéaste cache, while an also-ran like “The Insider” only gains in critical stature.

    (more…)

  • Mickey Rourke will be at WrestleMania after all?

    Cover of The Wrestler DVDI knew this would happen.  Back in January and February, the buzz was that Mickey Rourke would be spring-boarding from his success in Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” to the real squared circle at the WWE’s WrestleMania on April 5.  But some shrewd publicist told Rourke to can it and, indeed, the denials started flowing soon after.  Pete Hammond got Rourke to admit he was coerced away from the gig at the Santa Barbara Film Festival in February.  After all, who’s going to win an Oscar when you’re about to lace up the boots and get in the ring for real?

    Well, sadly, Rourke didn’t win the Oscar after all, but now Elizabeth Snead is reporting he’ll be at the big event after all.  And my guess is he was going to be a part of it all along but had to zip it up as he did the song and dance Oscar campaign stuff.  From The Dish Rag:

    Despite recent reports of award-winning “The Wrestler” actor Mickey Rourke focusing on his film career, he will definitely be in Houston at WrestleMania 25 on April 5.

    At least that’s what I was just told by a publicist for Wrestlemania.

    But will Mickey jump in the ring? Or will he be dragged in?

    One never knows.

    I might just order my first pro wrestling pay-per-view since Sting squared off with Hollywood Hogan at 1998’s Starcade!  Here’s a clip of Chris Jericho talking smack to Rourke on Larry King Live, which really kicked things into high gear on this story.  You can tell he wants to get out of that seat and rip Jericho’s face off, but little gold men were dancing in his head at the time:

    (By the way, what do you guys think of the “Wrestler” DVD cover art, pictured above? Some days I like it, some days I don’t.)

  • Mike Leigh on Hollywood, Mickey and losing an Oscar

    Mike LeighIf, like yours truly, you’re one of those who believe that British auteur Mike Leigh was robbed on Sunday night, you’ll thoroughly enjoy his Oscar diary. Ever the Hollywood outsider, Leigh attended the Academy Awards with his two adult sons as his guests, and he reflects on the ensuing madness with all the droll, dry humour present in so many of his films.

    As you would expect, he’s not all that bothered about losing the Original Screenplay award for “Happy-Go-Lucky,” not least because he learned shortly before the ceremony that the bookies had him as a 54-1 outsider. (He mordantly notes that his son Toby then placed £20 on him, “just in case.”) In any case, he professes to liking “Milk” a great deal, and rather enjoyed the ceremony as a whole, describing it with typical British reserve as “far less tacky and schmaltzy than usual.” What I really liked, however, is his candour on the awards themselves:

    The truth is, you only get the loser’s hump about the winners if you think that they’re crap, and tonight I get a real buzz out of nearly all the awards. Chuffed for jolly Michael O’Connor (best costumes, The Duchess), who assisted Lindy Hemming on Topsy-Turvy, and delighted that Benjamin Button got only technical awards!

    Wanted Mickey Rourke to win best actor (I voted for him) and, no disrespect to Kate and the other girls, I desperately miss Sally (Hawkins). I genuinely can’t see how any of their performances are as original, creative, profound, witty or versatile as hers. But there you go.

    Sure, most directors would probably say that about their leading ladies, but in this case, he happens to be right. I’m also interested to hear that he’s on Team Rourke — I recall sitting behind Leigh at “The Wrestler’s” first London screening back in October and observing his evident enthusiasm for the film then.

    (more…)

  • Mickey’s Spirit speech

    That’s seriously the manliest near cry I’ve ever seen in my life.