(Source: The Guardian)
Tag: The Wrestler
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‘The Wrestler’ wins big at the Indie Spirits
Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” walked away three trophies at today’s Independent Spirit Awards, including top honors for Best Actor (Mickey Rourke) and Best Feature.In his greatest acceptance speech of the season, Rourke seemed fully uninhibited, almost as if he said, “Screw it, ballots are in,” and he cut loose. The tough guy thing poked through here and there as well as a lot of humorous forgetfulness. (He thanked Searchlight honcho Peter Rice and Rice’s “boss, Jim Jimanopoulos, or something like that.” Of course he meant Fox studio chief Jim Gianopoulos). But mostly, it was expletive-laden (like the Spirits like), raunchy and overall, still strangely endearing.
Rourke briefly dedicated the award to recently deceased pet chihuahua Loki, of course, in a choked-up moment that seemed to beautifully contrast with the rest of the rant. He held the mic like a rock star might, pushing it away during the applause moments and bringing it back to his lips to finish his thoughts. He also dedicated a solid 60 seconds to his friend Eric Roberts. “Whatever he did 15, 20 years ago should be forgiven,” Rourke said. “Eric Roberts is the fucking man and he deserves a second chance. I wish there’d be one God damned filmmaker in this room that’d let him fly because the man is something else.”
Melissa Leo’s speech in acceptance of the lead actress award — not so much. She rambled, she seemed self-involved, overly dramatic, pompous…let’s just say it’s probably a good thing she hasn’t accepted too many awards publicly this year because I think it would have damaged her Oscar chances. That’s just me, but it’s a hell of a performance and justly rewarded tonight.
“Milk” won two trophies early on, James Franco taking down a win in the Best Supporting Actor category and Dustin Lance Black’s first screenplay award. “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” also secured a pair: Best Screenplay for Woody Allen and Best Supporting Actress for Penelope Cruz.
Tom McCarthy won the Best Director prize despite his film “The Visitor” not showing up in the Best Feature category, while Charlie Kaufman took home the Best First Feature prize for the exceptional “Synecdoche, New York,” which also won the pre-announced Robert Altman Award.
(More, plus the full list of winners after the jump.)
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You were right, I was wrong: Guy’s final predictions
(Expanded thoughts and reasonings on yesterday’s list of predictions.)It’s years like 2008 when I throw my hands up and admit (albeit with great reluctance) that my family and friends have been right for the last two decades. Carla, Tom, Kim, Auntie Mavis: I give up. I am insane to care as much as I do about the Oscars. They are stupid. They don’t matter, and I really should find something more important and rewarding to care about, like, oh, needlepoint classes or professional darts championships.
But who am I kidding? I will always care about the Oscars, even in years like this when the race is so dry, and its significance so questionable, that I take great care in not caring. In a year when so few of my personal favourites have cracked the contenders list, it has at least been interesting to sit back and watch the furore unfold over the Academy voters’ spectacularly self-sabotaging antics this year.
I’ve been wrong about a lot of things this year (Kris scoffed at my naive suggestion back in July that “Happy-Go-Lucky” could be a Best Picture nominee, and he was right to), and right about … well … “Milk’s” nomination for Best Costume Design. (Hey, let me salvage some glory from this year’s meagre spoils.) I don’t expect to be a hell of a lot more successful with the following predictions, but you never know. It’s still been a lot of fun riding out the season with you this year – here’s to a better slate of contenders (and a lot less grousing from me) in 12 months’ time.
BEST PICTURE
Apart from the fact that it is the most imaginative and entertaining of this year’s feeble clutch of nominees, the reason “Slumdog Millionaire” has a stranglehold on this category is because it’s the only one of the five that has any discernible relationship to contemporary cinema. The other four all feel to varying degrees like the finely-tooled Best Picture winners of decades past, but the younger, more curious Academy members have been moving away from such self-consciously packaged ‘prestige product’ in the past few years – even if they need a lot of pointing towards what to reward in its stead. -
2/20 Oscarweb Round-up
• Meeting The Oscar 11. [USA Today]• Jeff Wells begins spit-balling next year’s season. [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• Dave Karger wonders whether Amy Adams has enough fuel in the tank to pull off an upset. [Entertainment Weekly]
• Anne Thompson annotates Entertainment Weekly’s list of the 25 best working directors. [Thompson on Hollywood]
• For late night buffs, an interesting conversation doesn’t make the final cut. [Peter Bart]
• David Carr stretches his predictions post across three pages, gets mad hits. [The Carpetbagger]
• Sasha Stone begins building a chart of tech category predictions, a nice crash course. [Awards Daily]
• Some bad “Wrestler” press finally hits, just in time to not matter. But boy would this have been a bigger story (sadly) a month ago. [Associated Press]
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Penn’s performance for the ages
On a third viewing of “Milk”, one of the best films of they year and a major accomplishment for director Gus Van Sant, I was again struck, no, blown away by the brilliance, the joy, the remarkably loving work of Sean Penn as the doomed politician. Penn has been my pick for Best Actor since seeing the film last fall, and though I share the love for Mickey Rourke (and others do as well, judging by today’s sidebar poll), I still think Penn will take the Oscar on Sunday.This is a major performance, one destined to be discussed for decades to come from one of the greatest actors to ever grace the screen. What sets it apart from Rourke’s work is that Penn had less from his life to draw on, and both being method actors, this is why I believe that Penn’s is the greater accomplishment. Now saying that is right away going to get the folks in Mickey’s camp thinking I am dissing his work…NOT AT ALL. It is a brilliant performance that signals the return of a great actor.
It all begins with words on a page. The actor reads those words and begins to create his character, perhaps after discussing it with his director, perhaps not. And from those words come magic. There are no directions as to how a character is be be portrayed in any screenplays I have ever read. The actor brings that to the table, which makes some of the great acting works all the more impressive. Where did Johnny Depp find Captain Jack Sparrow? Where did Heath Ledger find the Joker? Where did Marlon Brando find Terry Malloy so long ago? They make decisions about how they are going to say a line, or take a beat, or a pause, and mesh these things together to create, and then throw that energy out at another actor and maybe the work gets better.
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Who almost starred in the season’s Oscar nominated films?
The folks at notstarring.com have put together a list of the year’s Oscar contenders and the stars who turned down opportunities to star in them. There is, of course, Nicolas Cage in “The Wrestler” and Russell Crowe in “Australia.” Heath Ledger is also mentioned for the latter (somehow I didn’t know that).“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” given its lengthy gestation period in Hollywood, had a slew of names attached: Steven Spielberg, Spike Jonze and Ron Howard in the director’s chair, Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Rachel Weisz in front of the camera.
Those of us who follow Batman casting decisions closely know all the names that pop up in the “Dark Knight” section, though somehow I never realized Linus Roache was going to reprise his role of Thomas Wayne in flashbacks. I feel like that would have worked and been a nice element to tie the film more closely to “Batman Begins.”
There are plenty others to read through, including Matt Damon and Chris Evans being considered for the roles that eventually went to Josh Brolin and James Franco respectively in “Milk.” There’s even a beefy section on “Wanted.” Go have a look.
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It’s all about the actors
Over at USA Today, Susan Wloszczyna has come to the conclusion that, in a fairly weak year for film with a less-than-competitive Best Picture slate to show for it, the performance categories are where it’s at this year:The real action this year is in the acting. Sets were chewed with delicious relish and scenes were snatched with delectable finesse, even if the films themselves have underwhelmed.
“I look at my ballot and see all these amazing actors,” says an overwhelmed Donna Gigliotti, a producer on The Reader and a trophy winner for 1998’s Shakespeare in Love. “It’s just staggering. That role was a game changer for Anne Hathaway, nothing that anyone expected from her. And Melissa Leo in Frozen River? What is she, 48? Her nomination just made me want to stand up and cheer. Richard Jenkins is such a fabulous actor. And Taraji P. Henson is the soul of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.“
I’m inclined to agree. Though I still think the Academy dropped the ball in some areas (Best Actress, in particular, could have been a far richer and more diverse race had the likes of Sally Hawkins and Kristin Scott Thomas been invited), it’s true that, while 2008 hasn’t been as rewarding for auteur works as some previous years, we’ve seen a lot of films either wholly constructed around their performances (“The Wrestler” being a prime example) or saved by them (for my money, Anne Hathaway and Rosemarie DeWitt are the most focused elements of “Rachel Getting Married”).
The result is, I think, that people seem a lot more invested in this year’s acting races than the ones for Picture or Director — and it’s not just because the latter two are foregone conclusions. (Let’s face it, there’s not much more suspense in some of the acting categories, and I think you know what I’m referring to.) It seems to me that the performances of 2008 have been more complete, complex and adventurous than the films — in some cases, the very films in which they appear.
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Penn and Rourke thank Boston critics for their “indecisiveness”
I saw this over at Awards Daily and just had to post it:
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Penn to Rourke: “It’s your time, brother.”
Not to be all Rourke all the time, but I’ve been sitting here watching/listening to the Charlie Rose interview finally and around the 35:00 mark, Rose pops the big question about the year’s Oscar season: “How does it feel to be in this competition with Sean Penn?”Rourke took it right along in stride, like everything else in the interview (it really is a grand slam one-on-one). I don’t know if this tid-bit has popped up elsewhere this season — it very well may have. But apparently Penn talked to Rourke when “The Wrestler” was making the rounds in Toronto and he sensed a major awards circuit on the horizon, so he sat him down and essentially coached him through what was sure to be a heady process for the formerly disgraced actor.
Here’s Rourke:
I love him like a brother. I’ve known him for over 20 years. He’s definitely the best actor of his generation. He’s somebody that I respect because he works so hard at what he does and he does it really well and he’s smart. He’s his own man.
When we did this movie we didn’t have a distributor. We won an award in Venice and then we were in Toronto. Sean and I saw each other and he gave me a big smile. I went over to his table, we hugged and he told me, ‘Listen, this is what’s going to go down.’ I had no clue about this campaign thing. He said, ‘Do this, do this, don’t do that, don’t do that.’ He was supporting me and he says, ‘It’s your time, brother.’
Rourke also talks more in-depth about that letter he wrote to Bruce Springsteen, how he now had “access to change,” etc., which of course led The Boss to pen an amazing track that would ultimately get the AMPAS shaft. And I’m glad he got into “gigging,” too, which he told me about when we spoke a few months back and I’m sure he addressed elsewhere, too. But I haven’t seen him address it in a video format yet.
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That Mickey/Rose interview
In lieu of an embed to the full interview (which you can view here), I did stumble across this 50 second clip of the actor discussing his role in “The Wrestler” with Charlie Rose:
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Oh Mickey, you’re so fine
I regretfully haven’t had time today to check out Mickey Rourke’s in-depth interview with Charlie Rose that aired last night, but I hear that it’s all kind of special. Jeff Wells, for one, was thoroughly melted by it:
I’ve felt admiration and grudging respect for Rourke before but I fell in love with him last night, as far as that’s feasible or possible from an electronic remove. I don’t care if it was an act, I loved it anyway … His calm determination that no matter what goes down there’s no stopping him, no quitting now. His saying that if Penn wins he’ll stand up and cheer because he’s great and a brother and maybe he’ll have his turn a year or two down the road. That quiet, settled, almost-dweeby quality he showed with those black horn-rim glasses…man!
Someone has to grab that interview and put it out there right away. It was important, landmark, for the ages…please.
More than anything, a win for Mickey Rourke is what I want to see next Sunday evening. I love Sean Penn, I truly do. He’s my favourite actor of this generation. But there’s something about Rourke’s performance in “The Wrestler” that makes me choke up a little every time I even think about it — and he sure knows how to carry that pathos into an interview context. I look forward to watching this. I don’t think it’s been uploaded yet, but it should appear soon here.
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2/12 Oscarweb Round-up
(Kind of quiet out there…)• David Carr addresses the “some stars won’t walk the red carpet” talk, slams fashionistas as being “pilot fish on a big whale.” Ooooooohhhhh. [The Carpetbagger]
• Rebecca Ascher-Walsh talks to double nominee Kate Winslet. [The Envelope]
• Dave Karger says it’s Harvey vs. Miramax in the ladies’ acting fields. [Entertainment Weekly]
• Sasha Stone goes deep with “WALL-E” helmer Andrew Stanton. [Awards Daily]
• David S. Cohen writes up “The Wrestler”‘s unsung hero: trainer Afa “the Wild Samoan.” [Variety]
• Patrick Goldstein responds to the week’s “Reader” slams. [The Big Picture]
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Is this a new strategy?
I’ve been flipping back and forth between Leno and Letterman and so far I’ve seen four Oscar TV spots: two for “The Reader,” one for “Slumdog Millionaire” and one for “The Wrestler.” Instead of the usual 30 second trailers, there is interview footage edited in. Rourke from “The Wrestler,” Boyle from “Slumdog” and besting the lot, Daldry, Winslet AND Hare (dropping the names of Pollack and Minghella) for “The Reader.”
Is this a new strategy? I can’t seem to recall late night television buys in recent Oscar past, but I certainly don’t recall commercials such as this, bringing the talent out in the open so formally. It’s kind of brilliant, really. Now instead of watching Amy Adams giggle about how unprepared she is for her wedding, you’ll be treated to other interviews during the advertising break that you weren’t expecting at all.
Adams is a good call for this moment, especially being in a race some perceive as wide open and others say is ripe for her taking. But all things considered, Rourke could have brought it all home with an appearance here instead of in late December for the film’s release.
Or does it all…really not matter?
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Best Actor race — shades of ’74 and ’02
The 1974 Academy Award nominees for Best Actor were Jack Nicholson in “Chinatown,” Al Pacino in “The Godfather, Part II,” Albert Finney in “Murder on the Orient Express,” Art Carney in “Harry and Tonto” and Dustin Hoffman in “Lenny.” There had been some mild surprise that Gene Hackman had been passed over for his work in “The Conversation” and Richard Dreyfuss in”The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,” but other than those minor quibbles, it was a strong field of contenders.Essentially it was a two-man race. The frontrunners were clearly Nicholson and Pacino, both nominated the previous year for their work in “The Last Detail” and “Serpico,” respectively. For his sly, slick portrayal of Los Angeles private detective JJ Gittes, Nicholson had again displayed his extraordinary range and ability to slip easily inside a character to the delight of audiences. Pacino, meanwhle, again portrayed Michael Corleone in the sequel to “The Godfather,” moving farther down the path of power, corrupting himself totally, eventually ordering the execution of his own brother.
Of the two actors, Nicholson had the inside track, having won the Golden Globe and the New York Film Critics Circle award, but there was a lot of Pacino love, too.
On Oscar night, many jaws hit the ground when the winner was television veteran Art Carney for his performance in “Harry and Tonto,” a nice little film about an old man and his cat traveling across America looking for a home. Carney was terrific in the role, no argument, but it was hardly a performance for the ages. The likely scenario, some thought, was that Nicholson and Pacino split the vote.
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“It’s such a pleasure to be here, back out of the darkness.”
If you didn’t catch Mickey Rourke’s marvellous BAFTA acceptance speech, here it is in all its (bleeped) glory. For me, it’s moments like this that awards season is all about. (And I love the Richard Harris dedication — from one rebel talent to another.)
