"The Wrestler" Thread-Mickey Rourke

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LastEdgeOnEarth

The Fly
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So this movie looks BRILLIANT. And Mickey Rourke's performance looks like one for the ages. Good for him. His life was in the toilet. He never lost his skills thats for sure.

"Then Curt Cobain had to come along and ruin everything". I love that line, not because of any hatred toward Nirvana or Cobain, I just like that line because he's defending the 80's...his glory days.
YouTube - The Wrestler Trailer (HQ)

My ONLY concern....

IS THIS RELEASED NATIONWIDE or just SELECT theaters??? It doesn't seem to be playing at my local Regal cinema.
 
Its first going to be released in LA and NYC, then nationwide in January. I can't wait to see it either. So far, its been given mostly positive reviews. :hyper:

Btw, Kurt is spelled with a K.
 
Its first going to be released in LA and NYC, then nationwide in January. I can't wait to see it either. So far, its been given mostly positive reviews. :hyper:

Btw, Kurt is spelled with a K.

January! That stinks. But thats ok. I'm just glad I'll get to see it. This movie kind of hits a personal note for me. I used to be a huge wrestling fan and I've seen the biz...I've been backstage and seen their world. They're glorified carnies alot of them..kind of what Rourke is portraying. An old carny hanging onto his glory days with everything he's got.

I'll never forget hanging out with The Living Legend, Larry Zybysko backstage at a smal indy show about 6 years ago and him asking me for pot 5 minutes after we met. I did run an errand for another wrestler though... bought him a case of beer. I was in college. I drank beer too.
 
Who else did you meet? Aside from being a huge U2 fan, I'm also a huge wrestling fan. I hope this movie wins an Oscar. People have been treating wrestling like a joke for years. I hope this movie enlightens the doubters in some way.
 
Who else did you meet? Aside from being a huge U2 fan, I'm also a huge wrestling fan. I hope this movie wins an Oscar. People have been treating wrestling like a joke for years. I hope this movie enlightens the doubters in some way.

I've met several over the years. These guys come to mind right away...

Spike Dudley. Nice guy. I asked him whose Powerbomb hurt more, Sid's or Mike Awesome's...he said Sid's because it nearly knocked him unconscious.

The Wall(dead now)-he told me he hated his life...we had a few beers at the bar.

As far as wrestling being a joke, I can't argue these days. It's nothing like it used to be. Once Vince bought Turner, everything went downhill. He had a chance to salvage it when he brought in the nWo bought he buried that in 6months. WWE programming has become worse than As The World Turns.

But I'm with you in that I hope the movie enlightens people on what a wrestler's life is like.
And the movie may not win the Oscar, but if Rourke don't, then thats just criminal.
 
I agree, that once Vince bought WCW (Turner no longer owned it by that time), it all went downhill after that. Hell, I can easily say that the NWO caused WCW to go straight in the toilet. But, that's a conversation for The Pro Wrestling Thread.

Btw, the NWO died because most of the NWO-ites either couldn't stay sober (Hall, Waltman) or healthy (Nash). Not because McMahon killed it.

I love pro wrestling, but I would never want to be a wrestler or even a manager. It's just too dangerous for the money they make. I would've loved to have been an announcer, but I wouldn't want McMahon in my ear the whole time.

I'm really psyched about this movie! I thought Rourke was great in Sin City. I'll have to wait until 2009 to see it though. :sad:
 
I agree, that once Vince bought WCW (Turner no longer owned it by that time), it all went downhill after that. Hell, I can easily say that the NWO caused WCW to go straight in the toilet. But, that's a conversation for The Pro Wrestling Thread.

Btw, the NWO died because most of the NWO-ites either couldn't stay sober (Hall, Waltman) or healthy (Nash). Not because McMahon killed it.

I love pro wrestling, but I would never want to be a wrestler or even a manager. It's just too dangerous for the money they make. I would've loved to have been an announcer, but I wouldn't want McMahon in my ear the whole time.

I'm really psyched about this movie! I thought Rourke was great in Sin City. I'll have to wait until 2009 to see it though. :sad:

I was the ring announcer at that show I met Zybysko. The promotrer, Dino Sanna, paid me 50 bucks, as much as the low card wrestlers. Zybysko told me funny stories about Scott "Last Call" Hall.
 
Holy shit, that's awesome! I'd love to do that! How many matches were on the card?

10 to 15 maybe. I think the dude I bought the beer for put in a good word. Plus I told them I was a dj at the campus radio station. So they figured I could handle it. Can't really remember. Most were just carnies man who've never even sniffed the WWE.
 
This is the first, less than rave review I have seen

perhaps one should lower their expections :shrug:

Mickey Rourke's performance is genuine, but the plot's machinations seem more contrived than pro wrestling itself.

By Kenneth Turan FILM CRITIC
December 17, 2008

"The Wrestler" doesn't add up. It's constructed with great care around a lead performance that is everything it could possibly be, but the picture itself is off-putting and disappointing. How can this be?

That performance, as all of Hollywood already knows, is Mickey Rourke's affecting work as Randy "the Ram" Robinson, a once great name in professional wrestling who has fallen on hard times, reduced to bouts in school gymnasiums to pay the rent on his bleak trailer. As the blues lyric says, if he didn't have bad luck, he wouldn't have no luck at all.

Rourke, who's had his own very public bouts with career disintegration, falls naturally into this role and makes it his own. The actor has said he hesitated to take it on "because it was a little too close," and that innate understanding of what his character is going through, combined with Rourke's ability, make this one of the performances of the year.

Rourke brings just the right amount of faded charisma to Robinson, a man whose face is so frozen he can only express emotion with his eyes. With his long, curly golden hair, his artificial tan, steroid-enhanced musculature and bloated face, the actor is not playing himself but rather a part powerfully informed by his past life.

Initially, at least, the rest of "The Wrestler" feels like a good fit with Rourke's work. As written by Robert Siegel, shot in vérité style by Maryse Alberti and directed by Darren Aronofsky, the film has captured the down-at-the-heels ambience of the lower rungs of professional wrestling, a subculture that was into performance art well before the high culture world heard of it.

Things start to fall apart when "The Wrestler's" determination to wallow in the pain of Robinson's bouts reveals itself. A certain amount of that is necessary, but this film pushes well beyond that, yearning for the excessive until it feels like Aronofsky and company are making a fetish of audience discomfort. When a wrestler is introduced whose trademark is using a staple gun on opponents, it becomes clear that these scenes are not about realism, they are about making us squirm for squirming's sake.

Review: 'The Wrestler' - Los Angeles Times
 
I just read a paragraph at the end of the article.

and got my expections elevated. :up:

( Marisa Tomei) who is his lap dancer of choice at a local club. Tomei's acting skill makes this a more interesting scenario than the father-daughter subplot, but it is hampered by one too many scenes of Cassidy's nude dancing that once again make "The Wrestler" exploitative just when it thinks it's being honest.
 
This fall has been so surprising to me, with films that I greatly looked forward to knowing next to nothing about them other than the premise and director like this and Slumdog, and loving the film-makers and being stunned when critics finally give them the respect they deserve, same goes for David Fincher (although I knew much more about that being a Fitzgerald fan). I've been agonizing waiting to see this one, and usually in Boston we get everything quickly, except for annoying releases in 2 theaters in LA and NYC, like this one and Gran Torino.
 
Mickey's one of my fav actors a living legend as far as I'm concerned. We used to be in bewilderment in the 80s why he never won an Oscar. Diner, the Pope, Angel Heart, Barfly.....class. What's going to suck is if the Oscars get cancelled because of the strike and he finally wins.
 
I just saw the movie last night. It was awesome! Mickey Rourke should definitely be nominated for an Oscar. Marisa Tomei was awesome too. Rourke completely gets into the role of Randy the Ram and you find yourself forgetting its actually him playing the character. Terrific stuff! :up:
 
I saw the film yesterday and it is awesome! Gritty, realistic, Mickey and Marisa's acting was superb, 80s rock soundtrack, great location to add to the overall mood of the film...and the Springsteen song is amazing!
 
Wow! Glad to see Mickey win for this movie as well as Bruce for best song. :applaud:Hopefully, they'll be in the mix come Oscar time! :wave:


:dancing::dancing::dancing::yippie::beer:
 
It's nowhere near me either, I've seen the trailer but still no movie yet. If he wins the Oscar it will probably get wide release if not before then. I'm rooting for him to win.
 
i wish they would put this movie in wide release cuz it's no where near my house..:sad:



Here is a list of the next US release dates. It's already been released in some US big cities and outside the US in the UK, Canada, Italy.

Friday, January 16th

Albany
Albuquerque
Atlanta
Baltimore
Boca Raton/West Palm Beach
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Columbus
Honolulu
Houston
Indianapolis
Kansas City
Las Vegas
Madison
Miami/Ft. Lauderdale
Milwaukee
Northampton/Springfield
Orlando
Portland
Rochester
Sacramento
Salt Lake City/Boise
St. Louis

Friday, January 23rd

Anchorage
Asheville
Baton Rouge
Birmingham
Buffalo
Champaign/Decatur/Springfield
Charlotte
Charlottesville
Colorado Springs
Corpus Christi
Dayton
Des Moines
Ft. Myers
Gainesville
Grand Rapids
Harrisburg, PA
Ithaca
Jacksonville
Knoxville
Lansing
Lexington
Lousiville
Memphis
Nashville
New Orleans
Norfolk/Newport News
Oklahoma City
Omaha
Pittsburgh
Portland, ME
Providence
Raleigh/Durham
Reno
Richmond
San Antonio
Santa Fe
Sarasota
Spokane
Syracuse
Tallahassee
Tampa/St. Petersburg
Tucson
Tulsa
 
I really enjoyed this, although I didn't believe for a second any red-blooded young male would turn down a lap dance from Marisa Tomei.

I especially liked the ending. It pissed me off at first because although his relations with the world had partly done it to him, he also did it to himself in not taking up the offer given him at the end.

Considering I always hated WWF Wrestling, it's shocking and sad to see the level to which the fans exploit these people in the name of "love".
 
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