crackerjack
Well-known member
Love this film. Best Chandler adaptation there is, bar the first Big Sleep, and the one he would've hated the most.
Films you've seen recently and would unreservedly recommend:
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Love this film. Best Chandler adaptation there is, bar the first Big Sleep, and the one he would've hated the most.
empty mirror
remember the jackalope
man i just saw the wrestler the other night. wow. really very moving picture. i grew up watching WWF on TV and even caught a WCW match (Lex Luger!) at the Meadowlands in NJ (Dave the Snake Sabo, guitarist of Skid Row was in the audience, I remember) in the late 1980s.
The last wrestling match I watched in the flesh was like 1997---I went with friends, expecting a night of tongue in cheek irony, we even dressed up in Ratt satin jackets, Def Leppard t-shirts, stonewashed jeans, and bandanas on our heads. The match was held in a warehouse in a rough section of Philadelphia, and it was a dark dark experience. We did not fit in at all----people glared and snickered at us. White power bands played between matches, and they threw firecrackers into the crowd----I saw someone smash a beer bottle over someone else's head in the audience. Lesbian + Midget wrestling matches started the night, but the matches grew increasingly darker, culminating in barbed wire matches, with broken glass and thumb tacks on the floor of the ring. Lots of blood and cruelty. really depressing and scary.
it was nice to see the analogue on the silver screen---the movie was even set in the tri-state area where i grew up (some scenes even in philly).
i just saw Ikiru a short time ago. this should be required viewing for humans.
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crackerjack
Well-known member
You sure this wasn't the set for some as-yet-unmade Mad Max movie?
empty mirror
remember the jackalope
it is predictable in the sense that it is a retelling of the new testament narrative but some stories are so good we don't mind hearing them over and over, especially when they are recast in the present
i don't know what you mean that mickey rourke is playing himself
anyhow, mickey rourke is going to be wrestling in wrestlemania 25 (?!)
apparently a major coup as vince mcmahon hated the warts-and-all portrayal of professional wrestling
i don't know what you mean that mickey rourke is playing himself
anyhow, mickey rourke is going to be wrestling in wrestlemania 25 (?!)
apparently a major coup as vince mcmahon hated the warts-and-all portrayal of professional wrestling
by mickey rourke 'playing himself' i just mean that all the hype around the film has centered on the parallels between the character's life and rourke's.
it wasn't just the story that was predictable though, it was everything - the degraded film it was shot in, the estranged daughter (HAD to be a daughter), the asshole boss at the supermarket and ram eventually having a barney and quitting, the stripper/mother, all of the "it's just who i am, i can't change" platitudes, the way he has a NES and is all confused when the kid talks about call of duty 4 (ok, we get it! you're stuck in the 80s!)... i did like the backstage parts where he was hanging out with the other wrestlers and they were all really nice and friendly to each other.
it wasn't just the story that was predictable though, it was everything - the degraded film it was shot in, the estranged daughter (HAD to be a daughter), the asshole boss at the supermarket and ram eventually having a barney and quitting, the stripper/mother, all of the "it's just who i am, i can't change" platitudes, the way he has a NES and is all confused when the kid talks about call of duty 4 (ok, we get it! you're stuck in the 80s!)... i did like the backstage parts where he was hanging out with the other wrestlers and they were all really nice and friendly to each other.
empty mirror
remember the jackalope
i guess i just don't know anything about mickey rourke's life; that should not be a factor when we consider a film though, should it?
i see your point about the cliche of the NES wrestling scene, and i would add that the conversation between him and the stripper at the bar about cobain coming along and ruining it all as a bit stilted and unconvincing (i don't think he should have even known the lead singer of nirvana's name), but i don't know, i think that's how life works---it is often trite, kitsch-y, and cliche. there is a lot that has happened to me in life that if i saw it in a film, i wouldn't buy it at all, but that's just how life works in my experience---cliches, i think, touch on some cosmic truths. 🤷
EDIT: just read the Mickey Rourke wiki and I see the resonances you are talking about. Apparently, when Mickey Rourke was boxing, his entrance song was "Sweet Child of Mine"
I guess something that colored my perception of the film was the soundtrack. Basically the same music I was into when I watched wrestling----Cinderella, Ratt, Accept, GNR...
i see your point about the cliche of the NES wrestling scene, and i would add that the conversation between him and the stripper at the bar about cobain coming along and ruining it all as a bit stilted and unconvincing (i don't think he should have even known the lead singer of nirvana's name), but i don't know, i think that's how life works---it is often trite, kitsch-y, and cliche. there is a lot that has happened to me in life that if i saw it in a film, i wouldn't buy it at all, but that's just how life works in my experience---cliches, i think, touch on some cosmic truths. 🤷
EDIT: just read the Mickey Rourke wiki and I see the resonances you are talking about. Apparently, when Mickey Rourke was boxing, his entrance song was "Sweet Child of Mine"
I guess something that colored my perception of the film was the soundtrack. Basically the same music I was into when I watched wrestling----Cinderella, Ratt, Accept, GNR...
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craner
Beast of Burden
I couldn't believe it! I mean Lado's Short Night of Glass Dolls and Who Saw Her Die? are two fairly sophisticated and atmospheric, if also slightly tedious, gialli. This was something else entirely. Starts off like a bonehead Italo Last House on the Left-style exploiter that suddenly, about a third of the way in, ditches into a hideous zone of psychosexual cruelty, with possibly one of the most disturbing scenes I have ever seen (you know the one I mean, right Rich? The clammy lighting...stench of semen and vomit...gaaah...) Actually, I do not recommend this film at all unless you like being thrown off balance. (Maybe I do.) It gets under your skin. Leaves a horrible dread chill in the stomach.
On a more positive note, I'm going to go and see Notorious at the NFT in an hour or so. Super.
crackerjack
Well-known member
I just went to see that, but not at the NFt, you posho. i was pleasantly surprised, tho expectations weren't high.
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
*wags tail* sounds great. Good call on that one chaps.
good but ultimate feel bad film of all time?
Lol, i think he assumed, as I did, that you were going to watch the new biggie smalls biopic
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472198/
nochexxx
harco pronting
one extremely valid point i'd like to put forward is because there's yet to be any other film which gives a realistic portrayal of this industry, it naturally is an important piece of work. despite the cliche plot lines (which i feel are true to life anyway), a bench mark has now been set. for obvious reasons if i was working in the wrestling industry i'd no doubt would have cried during this film.
interestingly here are some comments made by a former wwf champion cactus jack with regards to this film.
“I walked in something of a cynic, figuring there was no way an actor could ever really get a feel for what we do without having done it. But within the first five minutes, I was completely sold. From an emotional standpoint, I found Mickey Rourke to be so believable. He made it so easy to suspend disbelief that within five minutes in the movie, I never once thought of him as being Mickey Rourke, let alone an actor. He was Randy the Ram. It was the little cues that really registered — like how he lived to get a reaction from people, even if they were just customers at the deli counter.”
“In a real-life situation, a guy like Randy would understand the value of the wrestling tights [that he throws away]. And no matter how injured he was, he would’ve taken those tights home with him and immediately put them up on eBay! In fact, I once had an article of clothing that had to be cut off me in the hospital and, believe me, that made it a cooler piece of memorabilia.”
full article here
nochexxx
harco pronting
forgot to add this comment about the drug dealing scene.
"There was another thing that didn't ring true to me — the steroid deal. My editor would've referred to that as being "way too convenient." For a film that dealt with subtleties so well, it felt a little too obvious and unlike anything I have seen in my 23 years in wrestling. I'm not saying guys don't take things, but that transaction seemed a little forced. I just doubt that a transaction like that would occur out in the open like that in any wrestling room I have ever been in."
"There was another thing that didn't ring true to me — the steroid deal. My editor would've referred to that as being "way too convenient." For a film that dealt with subtleties so well, it felt a little too obvious and unlike anything I have seen in my 23 years in wrestling. I'm not saying guys don't take things, but that transaction seemed a little forced. I just doubt that a transaction like that would occur out in the open like that in any wrestling room I have ever been in."
IdleRich
IdleRich
I thought that was the mix up that was happening. Then again I only knew that the Hitchcock one was on at the NFT 'cause I was there at the weekend to see the Wild Bunch.
It's not that it's the most violent or explicit film or anything but it succeeds more than most others that I can think of in achieving a base filthyness. I mean, really, what is the point of the film other than watching some people (girls of course) being capture, terrified and raped (with a knife if I remember correctly)?