The Wrestler stars Mickey Rourke as a has-been wrestler who decides to head back to the ring with aspiration of a comeback. He meets up with Marisa Tomei, a stripper, who gives Rourke a place to stay, which brings about a friendship between the wrestler and her son.
Directed by Darren Aronofsky (The Fountain) and scripted by Robert Siegel, The Wrestler won The Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
Fox Searchlight features 5 videos from The New York Film Festival’s press conference for The Wrestler. The director and cast comment on the process of making the award winning movie. Rourke is a treat to watch here.
The surprise winner of this year’s Venice Film Festival, Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler has squeezed into the remaining 2008 release schedule, due out on December 19th in the US. The film, focusing on a washed-up wrestler’s attempts to redeem his career and his estranged family, exceeded expectations, with the director’s usually frenzied style being pared back to allow the cast to work their magic. Indeed, Micky Rourke is already being predicted to nab an Oscar nomination at the least, hence the film’s release date.
This is of course great news for Aronofsky. Good advance press, as well as a subject matter that is strangely appealing to many young men, should ensure a good profit, which may free up one of America’s best directors to continue making experimental films like Pi and The Fountain. Sadly, the director is still lined up to direct a boxing pic (can he revitalise it in the same way he has done with The Wrestler?), and afterwards remake Robocop.
However, in a lengthy interview with Slash Film, Aronofsky speaks about some other ideas he’s thrashing about. One is a “religious” film about Noah, the man who, according to the Bible, saved all life on the planet by gathering up a couple from each species and placing them on an Ark before a huge flood hits. Aronofsky and The Fountain writer Ari Handel have written a script about the “first environmentalist”. This sounds like an interesting project, and hopefully a better one than Evan Almighty. No work has been done on the project yet, however, so don’t keep your hopes up.
The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei and directed by Darren Aronofsky, was awarded the Golden Lion today at the Venice Film Festival. The film centers on a wrestler (Rourke) forced into retirement. He sets into motion a romance with an aging stripper (Tomei.) It’s hard to see Tomei as an aging stripper; she looked so good in Before the Devil Knows Your Dead.
Darren Aronofsky is set to direct the next RoboCop the movie about hero who’s “part man, part machine and all cop.”
MGM is bringing the film to the screen and is keeping the logline under wraps, but insiders say it will take the sci-fi vigilante classic in more of a noir direction, according to Variety.
To bring you up to date the original films centered on a fatally wounded cop who returns to the police force as a powerful cyborg haunted by submerged memories. After 1987’s RoboCop and its two sequels hit the big screen, both films are solid earners for MGM’s film library as DVDs.
The Wrestler stars Mickey Rourke as a has-been wrestler who decides to head back to the ring with aspiration of a comeback. He meets up with Marisa Tomei, a stripper, who gives Rourke a place to stay, which brings about a friendship between the wrestler and her son. 