He Coulda Been the Contender
Posted on February 27th, 2009 in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »
I saw The Wrestler last night. Much as I was impressed by Sean Penn in Milk, how could Mickey Rourke not have won best actor for that film?
He left everything out there in that performance….you just felt that, physically and emotionally, it took Rourke a lifetime to get to a place where could play that part. And you could see every stupid mistake, every bad choice, of that lifetime in his ravaged face and battered body. Heartbreaking and amazing, I thought.
9 Responses
2/27/2009 9:09 am
Correct! Rourke was robbed.
2/27/2009 2:10 pm
Agreed. Penn’s performance was as good — better than anything he’s done before. But they ought to have given an edge to the guy who did just as good a job — but on such long odds.
2/27/2009 3:24 pm
Class warfare explains the result.
2/27/2009 9:56 pm
You are ignoring the politics of the awards with the voters in the Academy. Given the passage of Prop 8 this year in CA, the voters wanted to send a message by supporting gay rights which is why both Sean Penn won and Milk also won for best screenplay. Mickey’s performance was better, but Milk’s message was the one that the Academy wanted to celebrate.
2/28/2009 7:22 am
Yes, you raise a good point, Anon. That probably did have something to do with it.
2/28/2009 10:55 pm
And to be sure, it was a winning strategy on the part of the judges to send the message that way, since millions of people who used to hate gays but saw the awards ceremony suddenly started loving them after learning from Penn that their grandchildren would otherwise be ashamed of them.
What planet do these people live on? But then, it was no more inept than Eric Holder starting a “national conversation about race” by branding as cowards the people he wants to engage in that conversation.
3/1/2024 9:17 am
Explain, Harry. What I can’t figure out from your message is whether you’re saying Sean Penn was on to something profound in his remark about grandchildren; or whether he’s one of the dopes (inept) too.
3/1/2024 12:28 pm
Sorry for my failure at sarcasm. Penn’s acceptance speech undercut his performance in the movie. If the movie was that compelling as an argument for gay rights, Penn shouldn’t have had to stand up there and tell the doubters what terrible people they are. And it did no good at all to do so: telling people they are shameful is not a way to persuade them to change their minds, any more than telling them they are cowards about race is likely to make them eager to talk about that. So Penn’s speech was feel-good self-indulgence on his part — and his award was self-righteous on the part of the Awards judges too, if it was meant as a message about gay rights. (Haven’t seen the movie mysel, by the way. But loved Slumdog Millionaire and Vicky Christina Barcelona.)
3/2/2024 3:31 pm
Hollywood and feel-good self-indulgence and Hollywood and self-righteousness…I am shocked, shocked by that. That is my attempt at sarcasm by the way.