The Wrestler

[pete]

it was great.  all the little moments had so much warmth in there too.  I also just kinda like scripts that leave things hanging.  I remember an ang lee interview when he talked about he liked to poke a few holes in hollywood scripts before directing otherwise it'll be like directing an unsinkable battleship and what's the fun in that.  this movie was like that, it purposedly let things go unresolved because sometimes that's way more powerful.  this and the new rocky (and obviously dozens of other comeback sports films)had some similarities　ｂｕｔ　ｈｏｗ　ｔｈｉｓ　ｏｎｅ　ｗｅｎｔ　ａｂｏｕｔ　ｉｔ　ｗａｓ　ｓｏ　ｃｈｉｌｌ．

[Pas]

Independant Spirit Award speech by Mickey Rourke...GENIUS stuff

Anyway this is easily the best movie of the year for movie and I'll campaign the shit out of it for the xixaxies

[MacGuffin]

Iran angered over films 'The Wrestler' and '300'

TEHRAN, Iran – An adviser to Iran's president has demanded an apology from a team of visiting Hollywood actors and movie industry officials, including Annette Bening, saying films such as "300" and "The Wrestler" were "insulting" to Iranians.

Without an apology, members of Iran's film industry should refuse to meet with representatives from the nine-member team, said Javad Shamaqdari, the art and cinema adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"In my viewpoint, it is a failure to have an official meeting with one who is insulting," Shamaqdari told The Associated Press on Sunday.

The film "300," portrays the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., in which a force of 300 Spartans held off a massive Persian army at a mountain pass in Greece for three days. It angered many Iranians for the way Persians are depicted as decadent, sexually flamboyant and evil in contrast to the noble Greeks.

Iranians also criticized "The Wrestler" starring Mickey Rourke as a rundown professional wrestler who is preparing for a rematch with his old nemesis, "The Ayatollah." During a fight scene, "The Ayatollah" tries to choke Rourke with an Iranian flag before Rourke pulls the flagpole away, breaks it and throws it into the cheering crowd.

Neither movie was shown in Iran.

While American actors such as Sean Penn have traveled to Iran, it is rare for such a large group to visit. In February, Iran denied visas to a U.S. women's badminton team that had been invited to compete in a tournament in Iran.

The group includes the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Sid Ganis; actors Bening, and Alfre Woodard; producer William Horberg; AMPAS Special Events Programmer and Exhibitions Curator Ellen Harrington; and Tom Pollock, the former Universal Pictures chairman.

According to the Web site of Iran's Cinema Association, the group arrived Friday in Iran. They met a group of Iranian artists on Saturday, and will be holding educational seminars in directing, screenwriting, acting, producing, marketing and film distribution.

Shamaqdari says Iranians will warmly host the visiting Americans "but it will not stop Iranians from demanding an apology."

The visits come as President Barack Obama has indicated a new willingness to open up relations with Iran.

Relations between the two countries have been strained over concerns in the West that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapons program, something Tehran denies. The U.S. has also alleged that overwhelmingly Shiite Iran supports Shiite militias in Iraq, which Iran says is not true.

The two countries have not had diplomatic relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the hostage-taking at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

[Neil]

mac does your signature/jokers line apply to these iranians, or what?

calm it. fucking publicity.

[MacGuffin]

20th Century Fox has just announced the DVD and Blu-ray Disc release of Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler on 4/21. Single-disc DVD and 2-disc Blu-ray editions will be available (SRP $29.98 and $39.99). The single-disc DVD will include the Within the Ring featurette and Bruce Springsteen's The Wrestler music video. To this, the Blu-ray will add the Wrestler Round Table featurette and a Digital Copy version of the film on the second disc.

[SiliasRuby]

Already pre-ordered.

[Pozer]

Already pre-ordered.

I have it pre-ordered on blu-ray for criterion...its coming in may.

I did preorder it on blu-ray...the film that is...

DVD and Blu-ray coming out in July. Already preordered mine.

ever just order-order for shits & gigs?

[SiliasRuby]

Already pre-ordered.

I have it pre-ordered on blu-ray for criterion...its coming in may.

I did preorder it on blu-ray...the film that is...

DVD and Blu-ray coming out in July. Already preordered mine.

ever just order-order for shits & gigs?

Yes, but it isn't as fun.

[MacGuffin]

[72teeth]

hahaha... oohh, i don't know...

Hey, someone who hasn't seen it, judge it by the cover and tell me what you think it's about...

[Neil]

hahaha... oohh, i don't know...

Hey, someone who hasn't seen it, judge it by the cover and tell me what you think it's about...

Curt Hennig aka "Mr. Perfect" Bio-pic finally hits shelves...

[Gold Trumpet]

I thought this was pretty disappointing. The first half of the film sets up the drama with a narrative track that is supposed to be a record of the Ram's life and a behind the scenes look at professional wrestling. This isn't the televised version, but the everyday wrestling from town to town where elementary schools and beer halls are sold out before arenas. People have their conceptions about the WWE, but the day the core of living in The Wrestler is how most wrestlers begin and end their careers. It's all pretty desperate, but they live for the work. 

I enjoyed the first half for the most part. I have followed professional wrestling all of my life so I liked all the small details that they got accurate. I even enjoyed recognizing a lot of wrestlers in the film that I haven't seen in years. Most of them were former professionals who had brief stints in either WWF or WCW and I have seen myself on smaller circuits. Yes, I've been to my share of these shows. They're fun but they always represent the opposite of luxury, but no one ever minded. The film got all the small things right and even started to develop Rourke well as a character. The best colorization for him started when he had to transition from a wrestler to a deli worker. The scene where he first starts in the deli and progressively makes the job his own is very good. It underscores a lot about who he is. Professional wrestlers are people who live behind persona's, but they still get a weird enjoyment out of performing. Continuing with the job is just accepting change of time and deterioration of the body but still rolling with the punches. As a life to screen look, all of it was developed well.

Another element of the first half I liked was the self consciousness of the drama as sad comedy. In the first scene between Tomei and Rouke where she is giving him a lap dance, she prophesies about the meaning of his life by referencing the Passion of the Christ. She is sincere with her reference and he takes it to heart, but it perfectly casts the meaning that these people see in a job that could look ridiculous to everyone else. The film highlighted that unexpected moment of tenderness between a stripper and a wrestler, but it could have been said between two wrestlers. They could have talked about a storyline that seemed ridiculous and spoken of it in terms of luxury that only they can believe and truly understand. The film used another character to make a more identifiable reference so the audience could understand the belief that these characters have in things that inherently make some of us snicker, but bring them to tears and reflection.

Then the film outstretches its story to a venerable drama and problems arise. The purpose is to make drama out of this sad situation with characters and events, but the film starts to implore too many artificial techniques and storylines. First the storyline simplifies Rourke's character (and others) to a dramatic situation of a bunch of what ifs involving life or death. The heart attack wasn't an initial problem in the story because it wasn't heavily doted upon, but it became an unnecessary arc to the final act of the story with everything in Rourke's life depending on him making good on a few choice situations. Originally I accepted these plot instances because the simple nature of the story meant that the resolution had to be simple, but I was totally taken out of the film with Tomei's dramatic dash to convince Rouke to not fight. It felt so hammed and made me think that all the good small moments of nuance in the first half of the film were just set up to this bad and trite dramatic situation.

Professional wrestlers age and are reduced to sad situations, but I've never heard of a dramatic angle in their true fall from grace being as goofy as the one in this film. The equivalent of this story is the bad plot in 24 recently where Keifer Sutherland's character used torture to break a suspected terrorist and get him to admit to a bomb that was about to blow up any minute. The point was to excuse torture. Theoretically the situations in 24 and The Wrestler are possible, but they never happen. I may have stomped on someones real situation with previously said criticism, but as far as I know, they don't. Wrestlers die all the time, but it's never in this fashion. What happens is that the nature of the business reduces them until they have nothing and their nature as an entertainer changes them into something else. When Rouke flips out at the end in the Deli, that was a possible changing moment of his nature. He rejected a chance to entertain a possible fan and reduced himself to the worst possibilities of his anger, but it was just a moment of regret and then another with deciding to wrestle later on.

Like I said, that could possibly happen, but it usually never does. What really happens is that the wrestlers just change and wither away from their old self. The drugs and abuse change them and their end is muddled in a lot of small details that are confusing and nuanced, but the main fact is that they eventually become different people. The end in this film is the tragedy of a few mistakes, but it doesn't get to the heart of what a wrestler's unfortunate end usually looks like. It makes his end more graceful and tragic. I disliked it because all the small moments at the beginning of the film begged for an ending of similar nuance, but every situation is wiped clean in one fell swoop. 

I really liked Slumdog Millionaire and defended the cliches. I still do but I don't defend the cliches here. Slumdog Millionaire had an immediate tone to its story that made everything that happened believable, but The Wrestler only took its tone to heart for 3/4 for the story. Then it believed that full resolution of the characters was more important than anything so looked for the first story exit to get that. Very dis sappointing.

[picolas]

spoils

he wasn't rejecting the chance to please a fan in the deli. he was embracing his wrestling persona. he couldn't bear to have a fan see him as a regular deli worker so he masked it with this crazy, ill-conceived rant. he only does it because he gets caught. the ram working in a deli. this is the thinking that makes up his fatal flaw. the need to uphold the glory of 'the ram'.

your criticism is 'this doesn't happen'?? so what? it happened in the movie and i believed it. if you can't literally believe it there are so many other, wonderful metaphorical implications to take away from it... he's a time-traveler, wandering through the present. stuck in the 80s. when he finally loses the ability to sustain his old self, he has nothing left in the present despite his best, last-minute efforts, and can only bring 'the ram' back, the only thing that makes sense to him, even if it means death. essentially it's about how lack of change or a refusal to change can kill even the nicest, most vibrant people. and other things of course. but don't reject it just because it creates a situation that doesn't typically happen in the real world. that. is pure baloney. yeah, i went there.

[Gold Trumpet]

spoils

he wasn't rejecting the chance to please a fan in the deli. he was embracing his wrestling persona. he couldn't bear to have a fan see him as a regular deli worker so he masked it with this crazy, ill-conceived rant. he only does it because he gets caught. the ram working in a deli. this is the thinking that makes up his fatal flaw. the need to uphold the glory of 'the ram'.

Earlier in the film he would have probably been happy to be recognized and gratified as the Ram in the deli. It's not like he was trying to take on a different persona to hide his wrestling self. There was no somber tone to his new job. He was as playful with customers as his wrestling character so he was looking for recognition and gratification in all the ways he would as a wrestler.

your criticism is 'this doesn't happen'?? so what? it happened in the movie and i believed it. if you can't literally believe it there are so many other, wonderful metaphorical implications to take away from it... he's a time-traveler, wandering through the present. stuck in the 80s. when he finally loses the ability to sustain his old self, he has nothing left in the present despite his best, last-minute efforts, and can only bring 'the ram' back, the only thing that makes sense to him, even if it means death. essentially it's about how lack of change or a refusal to change can kill even the nicest, most vibrant people. and other things of course. but don't reject it just because it creates a situation that doesn't typically happen in the real world. that. is pure baloney. yeah, i went there.

Films are subjective and yes, this worked for you. What you described is the working thought to everything that happened, but to make a low key film build up to such a blatantely dramatic (and I mean that in the negative sense here) moment, just does a disservice to the rest of the film. Most of my review of the Wrestler is positive, but an ending can derail my overall feelings and that happened here.

But I refuse to just check my gut on whether a movie worked. The ending was total formula and contrary to the rest of the film. And yes, "doesn't happen" is a valid criticism film here. The credibility of the entire film is that it banks on the experience of professional wrestlers. The whole narrative of the first half of the film is docu-drama to what they go through so it is important to have an ending that speaks to their experience. It doesn't need to speak to the exact experience of a real dead wrestler, but it needs to compliment their end in better ways. I don't buy that a good rationalization can make a generic ending feel authentic when it just reminds me of other bad stories. Besides, lots of people that like the film admit that the story enters cliche toward the end. Should we just buy it hook, line and sinker?

[©brad]

spoilies.....

But I refuse to just check my gut on whether a movie worked. The ending was total formula and contrary to the rest of the film. And yes, "doesn't happen" is a valid criticism film here. The credibility of the entire film is that it banks on the experience of professional wrestlers. The whole narrative of the first half of the film is docu-drama to what they go through so it is important to have an ending that speaks to their experience. It doesn't need to speak to the exact experience of a real dead wrestler, but it needs to compliment their end in better ways. I don't buy that a good rationalization can make a generic ending feel authentic when it just reminds me of other bad stories. Besides, lots of people that like the film admit that the story enters cliche toward the end. Should we just buy it hook, line and sinker?

Are you on meth? The ending is not cliche. In fact, it takes active steps to circumvent cliche. He. Fucking. Dies. (Yes I know the ending is somewhat ambiguous but I think it's pretty clear that regardless of whether he dies at that moment or several weeks or even months later, his fate is to die doing the thing he was born to do). Nevermind the fact that he and Marisa Tomei's character don't end up living happily ever after, nor does he reunite with his daughter.

Here's a cliche ending: after a much-prolonged, gut-busting battle, the Ram looks up in the stands and sees Maria Tomei's character mouth "I believe in you" and then delivers one last, devastating blow, knocking out his opponent and triumphantly winning the match. Marisa then jumps into the ring - and what the hell, so does his daughter out of nowhere - and they share a 3-way hug while a melodramatic John Williams score circa 1980s Spielberg swells on the soundtrack.

The only thing in my book that could be argued cliche is the whole stripper with a heart of gold in a low-budge film bit, and even that's a non-issue b/c her character is a dynamic and multi-dimensional one, not to mention the obvious wrester/stripper as performers parallel.