Posts Tagged ‘The Wrestler’

Oscar night is fast approaching – this Sunday – to be exact. Will it be a victory for “Slumdog” or “Benjamin Button?” Which tough guy will win: Mickey or Sean? Which of our best actresses of today is it going to be: Kate or Meryl?

If you don’t have your scorecards filled out yet, here’s Positively Celebrity’s guide to help you out because we’re predicting who’s going to walk away a winner and who we think should really be one.

Best Picture

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

“Frost/Nixon”

“Milk”

“The Reader”

“Slumdog Millionaire”

Should and will win: With its nearly unstoppable wins at the Golden Globes, SAG, BAFTA and guild awards, look for “Slumdog Millionaire” to take home the biggest prize come Oscar night and deservedly so. This vibrant, inspirational, romantic, and energetic film will leave you feeling like a millionaire long after you leave the theater.

Best Actor

Richard Jenkins, “The Visitor”

Frank Langella, “Frost/Nixon”

Sean Penn, “Milk”

Brad Pitt, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

Mickey Rourke, “The Wrestler”

Should Win:  Langella has already won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Richard Nixon, and he deserves an Oscar too. He pulls off the enormous task of encapsulating the former president’s mannerisms and voice without coming off as a caricature. Just as challenging, he also makes the audience feel empathy for a man who went down in history cast off as a crook.

Will Win: This is close. It very well could be Penn, but I’ll give the edge to Rourke. Academy members love a comeback story and both Rourke and his character are the comeback kids of the year. He also showed us he’s got what it takes physically and emotionally by playing an emotionally complex wrestler with a heart.

Best Actress

Anne Hathaway, “Rachel Getting Married”

Angelina Jolie, “Changeling”

Melissa Leo, “Frozen River”

Meryl Streep, “Doubt”

Kate Winslet, “The Reader”

Should and will win: Winslet for her intricate, dark turn as a tram conductor-turned-Nazi prison guard. She gave heart and emotion to a remorseless woman who was involved in Nazi war crimes and seduced a teenager. It doesn’t hurt either that she’s been racking up awards left and right this season, has five previous Oscar nominations, and stars in a film with the Academy-favorite topic of the Holocaust.

Best Supporting Actor

Josh Brolin, “Milk”

Robert Downey Jr., “Tropic Thunder”

Philip Seymour Hoffman, “Doubt”

Heath Ledger, “The Dark Knight”

Michael Shannon, “Revolutionary Road”

Should and will win: Ledger for his dynamic, groundbreaking, and humorously creepy performance as the Joker. He stole the show from Batman by keeping our eyes glued to him whenever his chaos-loving sociopath came on screen. Unlike Jack Nicholson’s previous mediocre Joker, Ledger, with his smeared clown make-up, truly made for one darkly twisted clown.

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams, “Doubt”

Penélope Cruz, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”

Viola Davis, “Doubt”

Taraji P. Henson, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

Marisa Tomei, “The Wrestler”

Should win: Even though she was only in two scenes, Davis managed to bring a whole movie’s worth of character backstory, emotions, and desires into those few precious moments on screen. Plus, she more than held her own against heavyweight Meryl Streep, which is alone no easy task.

Will win: Now with Winslet out of the running (the Academy chose to nominate her in the leading category instead), Cruz will most likely win for her domineering, vivacious turn as an emotionally unstable, eccentric ex-wife. She also won a BAFTA Award last week, which is a good sign she might win at the Oscars.

Best Director

Danny Boyle, “Slumdog Millionaire”

Stephen Daldry, “The Reader”

David Fincher, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

Ron Howard, “Frost/Nixon”

Gus Van Sant, “Milk”

Should and will win: Boyle for delivering the beautifully crafted “Slumdog Millionaire.” He delivered intricate chase scenes, oversaw soaring camera shots over Mumbai, and brought out emotional performances from his young – and even younger, untrained – actors.

There’s a lot more to wrestlers than their crazy super hero names, shiny neon-colored tights and over-bulged muscles. Or at least there is to Randy the Ram Robinson, the emotionally complex “Wrestler.”

Randy’s a past-his-prime wrestler who hasn’t moved on. He visits the hair salon to maintain his shoulder length long blonde hair, basks in the fluorescent light of tanning beds to keep up his golden tan, and continues pulling on those neon green tights to keep going back in the ring. Just as the little plastic Randy the Ram action figure representing his glamorous alter ego doesn’t fit in with the old beat-up van that makes do as his home when he doesn’t make the payment on his trailer, Randy doesn’t fit into the real world. 

The only world he knows and loves is wrestling. While the matches are all coordinated in advance down to each minute step, it doesn’t mean the fighting’s not real – or brutal making for a few very hard-to-watch scenes. One sequence in particular involving staples and barbed wire is not for the faint of heart. Then again it turns out to be too much for Randy too who has a heart attack that forces him to give up wrestling.

At this point the film becomes more interesting and complex because we’re brought more into Randy’s life. We see he lives alone in a messy, out-dated trailer where he plops into his bed with his clothes on and places his hearing aides on the nightstand. His only entertainment is playing wrestling video games staring his own alter ego on the old-school Nintendo system from the ‘90s with the neighbor kid.

The only people in his life he cares about are the luke-warm stripper he tries to befriend and his long-lost daughter. He’s come to know Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) from frequenting the strip club she works at, but she never quite warms up to him all the way. She distances herself not wanting to date a customer, but they’re brought together because Cassidy is past her prime too. She wants to move on to a better life with her young son but is stuck in the strip club being passed over for the much younger girls. “’90s suck!” they shout while dancing over the more familiar ‘80s music of their glory days.

One who has a harder time warming up is his daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood). They have the potential to make up and start new again – beautifully symbolized by them strolling through the old, torn-down buildings along the New Jersey shoreline they used to visit years ago. It’s a little hard to fully understand their relationship, however, because the film doesn’t go into their background. Why hasn’t he been around her so long? What did he do to hurt her so badly? In a poignant and sorrowful scene, he tells her he’s “a broken-down piece of meat” and doesn’t deserve her. But why?

Eventually, his self-destructive ways give in and he ends up hurting Cassidy and Stephanie once he starts connecting with them. Is that just the way he is – a narcissist who’s just absorbed in his own little world of wrestling? Or was he pushed there to his isolated world by the apathetic people around him that don’t reciprocate his feelings?

After all, we do see how he gets pushed to the breaking point from a series of rude customers at the deli he must work at to make ends meet after he had to quit wrestling. At first Randy doesn’t seem like he’s going to acclimate to his new deduced job. Depicted very cleverly, the camera tracks Randy from behind as he walks down the hall to the deli amid the familiar sounds of the roars and cheers of the wrestling crowd as he’s about to enter a match. Just as he would rip the curtain open to step into the match, he rips open the curtain into the deli – only now the rooting and cheering abruptly stops. This is Randy’s new life whether he likes it or not.

To much surprise, Randy does come to like it. He’s cutely content calling off the numbers of the customers waiting in queue, serving up their half pounds of potato salad and pieces of chicken breast, and making friendly, cheeky conversations with his customers. Yet, just as his wrestling days came to a halt, so did his deli days because of a couple of annoying, cluelessly rude customers who pushed him to his limits.

On the one hand, we want to tell Randy to grow up and to move on. Especially, in the sad scene where he gathers with some other washed up D-List celebrities in a local community building to sign autographs for a few sole fans, sell worthless memorabilia, to snap pictures with fans on junky Polaroid cameras.

But then again, Randy’s only happy wrestling and his life revolves around it. In fact, for much of the film’s opening the camera tracks Randy from behind as if his whole life is a lead-up into a match. And why shouldn’t it be? Life just rejects him, and he’s forced to just reject it right back. Even when people call him Robin, his real name, he adamantly rejects it by taking on the new name he gave himself for the wrestling world. It’s a constant tug of war between the real world rejecting him and him rejecting the real world. But, as he tells Cassidy, the only place he gets hurt is outside of the ring. So “The Wrestler” tells us that basically you’re on your own in this world so just do what makes you happy.

The Wrestler is a powerful drama dealing with several pressing issues in the life of aging pro wrestler Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson. It is a part played brilliantly by Mickey Rourke. If Rourke manages to edge out Sean Penn for an Oscar, there’s sure to be plenty of talk along the lines of: “But he’s just playing himself.”

30 RoI can’t renounce that claim as one that’s untrue, but it diminishes the value of his performance. There is something within the subtleties of Rourke’s characterization that is downright touching and deeply moving.

This film immediately made me recollect “Million Dollar Baby.” They are both powerful dramas staged in the realm of sports. The difference here is that The Wrestler presents a unique behind-the-scenes-like look into the world of wrestling experienced firsthand by Randy ‘The Ram.’ We are struck by the savagery of the sport; if this is just acting, as we have been led to believe, then why do the actors go to such extremes to make it appear painful and real? “Million Dollar Baby,” on the other hand, presented its sport (women’s boxing) merely as a backdrop for the dilemmas its two protagonists were confronted with along the way.

Not in this case. Wrestling is much more than that here; it literally defines Mickey Rourke’s character. He is (as stated in the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen’s title song) a “one-trick pony” through and through. He wrestles initially for glory; twenty years later he wrestles simply because it is who he is. He’s been reduced to eking out an existence between the ropes in his own words as a “broken down piece of meat.”

But that living has come to define him now; and if you were confronted with the prospect of dying alone, no loved ones by your side, as ‘The Ram’ is, can you really fault him for wanting it to happen between the ropes?

The nominees for this year’s 81st annual Academy Awards were announced Thursday with not too many surprises. The top two films slugging it out are “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” which leads the pack with 13 nominations, and “Slumdog Millionaire,” which won Best Picture at the Golden Globes and has 10 nominations.

What about the snubs? “The Dark Knight” didn’t get a Best Picture nomination, Clint Eastwood and his film, “Gran Torino,” got shut out, “Revolutionary Road” got no noms including its stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, Bruce Springsteen’s song from “The Wrestler” didn’t get nominated even after it won the Golden Globe, and Sally Hawkins didn’t get a Best Actress nom fresh off her Best Actress Golden Globe win.

But the biggest surprise? Who would have ever thought Robert Downey, Jr. would get a nomination for his role as “a dude playing a dude, disguised as another dude”? 

Find out who wins on Feb. 22 at 8 pm EST on ABC, and in the meantime the nominees are:

Best Picture

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Frost/Nixon

Milk

The Reader

Slumdog Millionaire

Best Director

David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon

Gus Van Sant, Milk

Stephen Daldry, The Reader

Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionare

Best Actor

Richard Jenkins, The Visitor

Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon

Sean Penn, Milk

Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

Best Actress

Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married

Angelina Jolie, Changeling

Melissa Leo, Frozen River

Kate Winslet, The Reader

Meryl Streep, Doubt

Best Supporting Actor

Josh Brolin, Milk

Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt

Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight

Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams, Doubt

Penélope Cruz, Vicky Christina Barcelona

Viola Davis, Doubt

Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin

Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler

Best Animated Feature

Bolt

Kung Fu Panda

Wall-E

Best Original Screenplay

Dustin Lance Black, Milk

Courtney Hunt, Frozen River

Mike Leigh, Happy-Go-Lucky

Martin McDonagh, In Bruges

Andrew Stanton and Jim Reardon, Wall-E

Best Adapted Screenplay

Eric Roth and Robin Swicord, The Curious Case of Benjamin

John Patrick Shanley, Doubt

Peter Morgan, Frost/Nixon

David Hare, The Reader

Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire

Award Season kicks off with the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals

Who would have thought the WWE-sounding film “The Wrestler” would take home the best picture prize at the Venice Film Festival?

The film by Darren Aronofsky (“Requiem for a Dream”, “The Fountain”) did just that Saturday while building up Oscar buzz for star Mickey Rourke.

The film about a retired wrestler trying to participate in one more fight while battling health problems, trying to reconcile with his daughter and romancing a stripper played by Marisa Tomei is one of the only films most critics agreed on.

According to the U.K.’s “Guardian,” jury members joked about whether or not to award any prizes this year. The only other films to receive critical acclaim were the Italian film, “The Birdwatchers,” and the Russian film, “Paper Soldier,” the latter of which won the second grand prize and best director awards. 

With the exception of the young performer prize awarded to Jennifer Lawrence, most of the winners were non-American. The African film “Teza” won the Grand Jury Prize and for best screenplay, Italian actor Silvio Orlando won best actor for “Il Papa di Giovanna” and French actress Dominique Blanc won best actress for “L’Autre.”

The Toronto Film Festival, which runs through Saturday, is showing more high profile films.

“Slumdog Millionaire” may win the top prize while The Coen brothers’ “Burn After Reading” and Charlize Theron’s “The Burning Plain” stumbled, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Dakota Fanning’s “The Secret Life of Bees” and Julianne Moore’s “Blindness” got split reactions, while Kristin Scott Thomas, Meryl Streep and Kate Winslet are the leading contenders for a best actress nomination, per the L.A. Times. 

Find out the winners when they are announced later this week.