Review: The Wrestler

The world of professional wrestling is something I can honestly say I’ve never been a part of. I had a brief stint during middle school when I watched it, but I never saw The Rock or Hulk Hogan or any other famous wrestlers bash each other with chairs or pile drive their opponents into the ground.

Despite my ignorance to the male soap opera, there’s something more universal about “The Wrestler” that makes it work.

Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke, “Sin City”) is an aging wrestler whose glory days have passed him by and who has nothing but his job going for him. When a heart attack takes that away, he tries to reconnect with his daughter and start a relationship with his favorite stripper (Marisa Tomei).

“The Wrestler” is not afraid to show off the gritty world of wrestling and the self-inflicted pain existing outside of the ring for Robinson. Rourke’s character fits in best while fighting. Using a staple gun, dropping an opponent on barbed wire or smacking them with a fake leg is nothing outside the norm for “The Ram” and proves to be more disturbing than entertaining.

Bringing Up Oscar

By Jeff Mason

Later this week, the nominations for the 81st Annual Academy Awards will be announced. It should be a great week of speculation for awards and entertainment writers, serving up who they think will be chosen and who will be snubbed, opening up a debate about what exactly film excellence is and who is responsible for it. That sure would be nice, but that isn’t going to happen, at least not while being interesting.

Let me save you the trouble of waiting a week and tell you the nominees for Best Picture right now: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, Frost/Nixon, Milk and Slumdog Millionaire. In addition, this list is the same group that will be nominated for best director. And finally, as most everyone following the awards circuit knows, Slumdog Millionaire and director Danny Boyle are the heavy favorites to win the awards come Oscar night, so lets just go ahead and say they’ve won right now.

There you go, the race is over and most of the movies that will be nominated haven’t even been in wide release yet. Even most of the writing and acting awards already have their strong frontrunners, such as the supporting actor category where the bigger question is who will accept the award on Heath Ledger’s behalf.

While I’ll certainly be checking who made the list on Thursday, it probably won’t bring any surprises, so why not make things interesting by doing something the Academy hasn’t done since “Casablanca” won the Oscar in 1944: have 10 movies nominated for Best Picture.

Sure, it won’t necessarily be as prestigious, but it will make for a better discussion and allow many movies that wouldn’t otherwise be recognized get in. It would let comedies and action movies, which usually get slighted in favor of dramatic ones, jump into the discussion and at least be recognized.

Animated films could vie for the highest award in the land instead of being tossed in a category that nominates nearly half of the movies that qualify in it. Possibly the most important thing an expanded Best Picture category would do is open up the discussion to the usually neglected independent movies.

Just imagine if the Best Picture category included The Wrestler, Tropic Thunder, WALL-E, Rachel Getting Married and Burn After Reading. Sure, none of these movies would stand a chance to win the award, but it would make the nominations more interesting and give each one of these movies more exposure, which is especially important for the independent films.

It wouldn’t change a whole lot in the end and would probably tick off some people in the Academy, but why not do it for the sake of mixing things up?

Best and Worst Dressed at the Golden Globes: A Subjective Idea

By Sydney Elliot

So, I don’t really pay much attention to awards shows, but this year’s Golden Globes have caught my attention. I didn’t watch the actual ceremony, but the hype surrounding one of my favorite movies of the year, Slumdog Millionaire, made me actually look at the nominees and the winners of this year’s Globes.

But in my search of who swept the Globes besides Slumdog and 30 Rock, I found out who the best and worst dressed were. I’m not exactly fashion savvy, but looking at the commentary on the worst dressed of this year’s Globes actually made me feel bad for these celebs. Who strutted their stuff down the sacred red carpet and who rolled out of bed and onto the red carpet? That’s definitely subjective.

I compared the lists of best and worst dressed from Entertainment Weekly online, Film.com and AOL.com, and I found that some of the were similar. It just seems like so much hype was put into the fashion scores and wardrobe let downs that no one took the time to consider who won and on what grounds. Isn’t it more important that we acknowledge great directing or acting ability instead of who wore what to which awards ceremony?

Review: Slumdog Millionaire

It’s not too often when a film without any big name actors makes a splash in the American movie scene, let alone one starring a no-name minority cast.

Lucky for us, “Slumdog Millionaire” is just one of these movies, and even though it has studio roots, a relatively well-known director and a veteran writer, the movie feels authentic to its native India and worthy enough to take on any of this year’s Oscar challengers.

“Slumdog Millionaire” tells the story of Jamal Malik, a teenager living in Mumbai, India, who winds up on the Indian version of the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” Jamal is arrested for allegedly cheating on the show after he gets all the way to the final question.

In order to clear his name, Jamal tells the story of his life, which coincides with how he knows the answers to the show. Each chapter of his life, from his childhood up to his time on the show, answers a question and elaborates on his relationship with his brother, Salim, and childhood friend, Latika.

As cheesy as it might sound, the story ends up working beautifully. It flows seamlessly, thanks to an excellent first story that sets the emotional tone for the movie. From there, it goes on a dark and winding ride through the slums of India and begins to unfold the film’s love story.