I watched FILM 2008's roundup of the year at some point in the holidays. They usually look forward to the year ahead at the end of the programme, and this time was no different, as it focused on the first two months of 2009, and the films that are released specifically with the Golden Globes, BAFTAs and Oscars in mind. This dark, and at the moment totally freezing, time of year is 'Awards Season', as punters are driven into their increasingly bijou cinemas (the Everyman Empire particularly are reinventing filmgoing as some sort of supper club) by the cold, and mild depression.
It's a cool and calculating period for schedulers, but this year feels especially contrived. On FILM 2008 a line-up of Hollywood types regaled us with what 'the Academy likes' in its films, and it's all crushingly worthy. They like the Holocaust...there's THE READER; they like to see an actor age...there's THE READER, and in reverse BENJAMIN BUTTON (does that mean they'll depise it?); they like someone playing a defiant renegade...there's Sean Penn in MILK (a cynical performance in the opinion of Mickey Rourke, since in a leaked text it's alleged he said Penn was 'the biggest homophobe I know'); worthy dramas about Catholic priests and child abuse...Philip Seymour Hoffmann and Meryl Streep teaming up in DOUBT...it goes on.
The one I'm really interested in is THE WRESTLER. It combines Darren Aronofsky, director of PI and REQUIEM FOR A DREAM with Eighties wrestling. All the fuss is about Mickey Rourke's turn in the film as a washed-up wrestler trying to make a comeback, and the parallels with Rourke's acting career. It would be good if he wins something; to stick it to the snarky talking heads who described him on the special as the 'punchline to a joke'. I'm won't be going for him specifically, but a film that deals with a character straight out of the WWF old school (and I don't mean World Wildlife Fund) has got to be worth braving the clinking glasses and wasabi peas crowd in Hampstead. And with that subject matter hopefully it's a safe bet they won't even show.
MICKEY ROURKE YESTERDAY
Here's an unashamed plug: before the Oscars kick off on 22nd February you might want to get your teeth into Mark Harris's highly acclaimed story of the Academy Awards in 1968, SCENES FROM A REVOLUTION.
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Dan
Date: Thu Jan 15, 2009 03:35 PM GMT
In an update it turns out there are not showing THE WRESTLER at the Everyman. IT's a weird one. Too arty for the multiplex, too lurid for the arthouse?
Guest
Date: Thu Jan 15, 2009 11:44 AM GMT
I loved The Reader, but all that blubbing and faux forgetting Angelina's name at the ceremony the other day has put me right off Kate now
Spex
Date: Fri Jan 09, 2009 04:18 PM GMT
I'd like to see The Wrestler, too, as well as Slumdog Millionaire. And I will be eating popcorn or nachos.
