If this is Friday it must be POLIWOOD. Lionel Chetwynd and I did six rounds with Mickey Rourke (okay, three… okay, one… okay, none) to come up with our review/discussion/pseudo-intellectual analysis/call-it-what-you-will of The Wrestler. It’s clearly one of the year’s best films and represents the Resurrection o’ Rourke, who is nominated for the Best Actor Oscar and will, in case anyone is interested, get my vote. [Are you supposed to reveal that?-ed. Who knows? But I just did. I better tell Price Waterhouse. Invalidating my vote, are you? Don't you know you're in a fragile job market? Phantom blog editors are a dime a dozen.]
Anyway, in case you missed them (and are interested), back Poliwoods here. Coming up: The Reader and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Bless you, Roger. It’s good to have the Mickster back!
I haven’t seen the film but now, I will.
I thought the ending of Gran Torino was great. It tied all the threads together, as a good story will do.
I know this is off the topic, but why do your loyal readers have to wait an additional, unwanted and unwarranted 10 days (from January 26 to February 5) for Amazon to ship your book? What was wrong with Jan 26 as a pub date? I was all for Jan 1, and now it is pushed back even further. Not-yet-published, its Amazon numbers far exceed those of many books in print: http://www.amazon.com/Blacklisting-Myself-Memoir-Hollywood-Apostate/dp/1594032475?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223133634&sr=8-1
Sign me Outraged in Oregon
Not to mention
Pissed Off on the Pacific.
Lawrence Kellog… short answer: the printer.
Was I the only one who watching The Wrestler and thinking of “Requiem for a Heavyweight?”
That 1962 film, with the stellar trio of Quinn, Gleason, and Rooney, featured a washed up boxer who had to become a wrestler to continue earning a living, not only that but humiliating himself with ever more preposterous costumes. He tried a number of jobs outside of the ring and even an attempt at a normal romantic relationship (with Julie Harris) but ultimately found the ring was the “only place he didn’t get hurt.”
The best line of Requiem, delivered by Gleason: “Sport? If there was head room they hold these in sewers.”
Just watched it and congrats on Mickey picking up his Oscar. Seen most of them but this was raw talent without a pretty face.
Great film,Right Brain…it was adapted from television,written by Rod Serling and starring Jack Palance,Keenan Wynn and Ed Wynn
Roger, how come everyone (yourself included) calls this film the resurrection of Rourke’s career? What about “Sin City” (2005) — where he absolutely stole the film? Has this performance gone down the “Memory Hole”?
Damned straight about Sin City.
Rourke totally owned that film — but I guessed it was dismissed by the usual suspects’ attitude toward genre movies – or toward the author’s politics in this case.