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Money and fame and you can get ANY girl....
Bill
The Wrestler - Mickey Rourke movie
- Thread starter Gerard K H Love
- Start date
Money and fame and you can get ANY girl....
Bill
bospress.net
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How bout these talons...
justine
stop the penistry
really??? i thought rourke was AMAZING in this, i totally believed him in this role. the way he moved, his gestures, the way he looked, all brought to mind the wrestlers we used to watch as kids. i was genuinely moved by his performance.
i do, however, think the movie would have really benefited from ditching the daughter and hooker storylines. both were absolutely clichéd and lame.
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mjp
Founding member
Really? I guess he had to cultivate some convincing gestures since he can't move his face anymore.
The whole thing was contrived, not just the daughter and titty dancer bits. Did anything happen - even one thing - that you didn't see coming? Okay, maybe the fight with the staple gun and barbed wire. I didn't know that kind of thing went on. But that's really out there, they didn't invent that. And had I known it existed, yeah, you could have predicted that he'd end up there.
One thing I don't like about a lot of entertainment, movies especially, is that there is no subtlety. They hit you over the head continually with every point they want to make, because they assume their audience are idiots. "Yeah, okay, I get it, washed up wrestler, stuck in the 1980's." You don't need to blast 30 seconds of shitty Sunset Strip crap metal every ten minutes to remind me.
Really, most movies are contrived and stupid. But great actors can take you out of the stupidity. Rourke - again, he's never been much of an actor. And now that his face is mostly scar tissue, it's really painful to watch him try to act.
Maybe the movie wasn't a piece of crap, I don't know. A lot of people liked it. Carol liked it, and she was sitting right next to me, so I know we saw the same movie. ;) But to hail the movie with awards or say that Rourke did something extraordinary - you'll never convince me of that. I trust my eyes, and my eyes saw a potato in a dirty wig.
Mickey we hardly knew ya...
I've liked Rourke's apparent spirit of rebellion in the past, and his willingness to take on off-beat roles. (I agree that he MUMBLED his way through Barfly, though he made some moments work, but had little sense of the meaning behind Bukowski's words or the right voice inflections...) Now he seems too eager to please, and I find it hard to look at him because of the dramatic restructuring of his face and the constant botox injections or whatever... I scarcely recognize him or his personality, and the outer and the inner no longer seem to match and that feels false to me - a total reversal of his once proud, honest spirit... Through the wonders of science, he's doing that because what he craves is now is apparently more on the surface: the money, the adulation, the roles, the woman - trying to enjoy it while it lasts, with the help of his surgeon general, but at the sacrifice of something real inside that was behind some of his other performances. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard. On the other hand, if it helps keep his sex life alive, prevents him from falling into the depths of his own insecurities, or going broke financial before the threat of oblivion - I'm all for it. ;)
I've liked Rourke's apparent spirit of rebellion in the past, and his willingness to take on off-beat roles. (I agree that he MUMBLED his way through Barfly, though he made some moments work, but had little sense of the meaning behind Bukowski's words or the right voice inflections...) Now he seems too eager to please, and I find it hard to look at him because of the dramatic restructuring of his face and the constant botox injections or whatever... I scarcely recognize him or his personality, and the outer and the inner no longer seem to match and that feels false to me - a total reversal of his once proud, honest spirit... Through the wonders of science, he's doing that because what he craves is now is apparently more on the surface: the money, the adulation, the roles, the woman - trying to enjoy it while it lasts, with the help of his surgeon general, but at the sacrifice of something real inside that was behind some of his other performances. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard. On the other hand, if it helps keep his sex life alive, prevents him from falling into the depths of his own insecurities, or going broke financial before the threat of oblivion - I'm all for it. ;)
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Haven't seen them by now, but think I'm used to worse sights.
Have you seen the fingers of my own Bukowski-actor in the late 90s? He's got gout. His claws are as ugly as one can ever imagine. Still he was my first joice for the part of Chinaski.
I don't think, things coming that you didn't expect, makes a great movie, nor do I think a movie that has a story-line without real surprises is necessarily bad. It takes more than that, to be a good or bad movie. (of course I'm talking in general here and NOT to advocate this Rourke-movie, which I still haven't seen.)
mjp
Founding member
The problem is that when nothing unexpected happens, stories tend to fall into a handful of basic "templates" (didn't the Greeks say there were only really seven different stories? ;)) Once you've seen all those templates dozens of times, it becomes less likely you'll enjoy seeing one yet again.
Music is the same way. I was talking to (flagrant name drop ahead!) Mike Nesmith's son recently and he said he tries to turn his father on to new bands that he's excited about and his dad says, "Eh...yeah....well, I've heard that before. So and so did the same thing back in such and such year..." I had to laugh because that's what happens to you after you've been around for a while. Everything just reminds you of something else. If you saw Led Zeppelin play in the 70's it's hard to get worked up over the latest band of 20 year olds to come along and walk that same path.
---
Thanks to our friend the internet, here are the seven basic plots: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, Rebirth.
[Wrestler spoiler ahead!]
The Wrestler would fall handily into the "Tragedy" category, which is defined as "The terrible consequences of human overreaching and egotism." It could have been "Rebirth," but he chose to die in the ring rather than get the girl.
Music is the same way. I was talking to (flagrant name drop ahead!) Mike Nesmith's son recently and he said he tries to turn his father on to new bands that he's excited about and his dad says, "Eh...yeah....well, I've heard that before. So and so did the same thing back in such and such year..." I had to laugh because that's what happens to you after you've been around for a while. Everything just reminds you of something else. If you saw Led Zeppelin play in the 70's it's hard to get worked up over the latest band of 20 year olds to come along and walk that same path.
---
Thanks to our friend the internet, here are the seven basic plots: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, Rebirth.
[Wrestler spoiler ahead!]
The Wrestler would fall handily into the "Tragedy" category, which is defined as "The terrible consequences of human overreaching and egotism." It could have been "Rebirth," but he chose to die in the ring rather than get the girl.
that's something that happens in EVERY generation, in Every art, in Every thing.
The ancient Greek have made a topic out of that, as you know. (that's 2500 years ago.)
All possibilities have occured before, in One or Another form.
I didn't follow or even read the 'ART'-thread, so I dunno, what's been discussed there. But I think there is No use in defining art through the question: 'Is it NEW? Has it NEVER been seen before?'
Reading Bukowski's stories or poems, I don't expect new subjects or new styles.
I know his subjects (and they suit me) and I know his style (which suits me well).
But reading Bukowski gives me something.
And this 'something' doesn't depend on being 'new' or 'never seen or heared'. In fact, it's so far from that kind of thinking, I ... - stop here.
sorry.
Gerard K H Love
Appreciate your friends
Cable is playing the hell out of this movie now so I watch bits of it at a time. Brutal is the best word to describe all but the part with Marisa Tomei dancing.
Gerard K H Love
Appreciate your friends
mjp; that makes the most sense. LOL