Who says the movies are recession-proof? A lot of people, actually, yet for every record-breaking opening weekend while the economy is in the shitter, a small film studio, distributor or film festival is likely still hurting financially. Maybe even going bankrupt.

Today movie lovers are saddened by the financial woes experienced by two very different film-based institutions. CineVegas, a favorite film festival of Spout’s Karina Longworth, announced it will be taking a year off due to the current economy. Meanwhile, MGM is also in a desperate situation, though not necessarily due to the recession, and that could mean future Hobbit and James Bond films are also at least temporarily in jeopardy.

I’m not as concerned for those film franchises as I am for Leo the Lion, beloved MGM mascot and monumental film icon. I hope to never have to see the likely punny headlines referencing a certain Tokens song if the lion is forever put to sleep. As for CineVegas, I’ve never even been to the Sin City event, so I can’t speak firsthand to what a loss this is for the 2010 film fest circuit. Still, it made me very sad to read the news of its troubles today.

Check out what the film blogs have to say about each of these depressing stories after the jump:
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…And the Oscar for most sorrowful face goes to… Mickey Rourke! Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler grabbed our heart, slammed it to the mat, and showered it with tears. But does Mickey Rourke’s resurrection have what it takes to beat Sean Penn’s transformation in Milk?

Karina gives an update about IFC’s Festival Direct, a way to be among the first to see new indie films even if you can’t spring for a festival pass. Also, an odd run-in with Steven Soderbergh, who may or may not have a bone to pick with our intrepid blogger.

We debate which is the most absurd piece of Che merchandise sent in by listeners, and respond to feedback about usefulness of subjecting terrible, exploitative horror movies to the rigors of film criticism.

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro

2:05 - Absurd Che merchandise

9:42 - Listener response regarding horror and film criticism

15:30 - The Wrestler

35:58 - Karina on IFC, Che

filmcouch-106

Each day this week, Christopher Campbell will take a look back at a “classic” film that played the Sundance Film Festival. Today’s installment: Darren Aronofsky’s Pi (1998).

Today’s story is a little shorter than the rest in this series, but it’s worth remembering because it involves another instance where one Sundance success directly resulted in the making of a later Sundance success (a la Slacker leading to Clerks). The earlier film in this case was Welcome to the Dollhouse, which Darren Aronofsky saw at the 1996 festival. In Peter Biskind’s book Down and Dirty Pictures, Aronfsky comments on the experience: “I thought it was such a unique, weird film, that it really gave me the courage to go back to New York and just try to throw something together.” That November he was in production on Pi.
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We all like to make fun of the Golden Globes, even when the telecast *doesn’t* involve the bequeathing of an unusual amount of power to Billy Bush. So prepare to have your mind blown: there were eight moments on tonight’s telecast that actually transcended my knee-jerk cynicism over awards in general, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Awards specifically. Some were funny, some were borderline surreal, and all struck me as — gasp! — genuinely unscripted. Join me in counting the moments down to the best — and, in all probability, booziest! If you’re on the West Coast and the show’s going on and you want to avoid spoilers … well, then I don’t know why you’re reading a movie blog, but don’t click through the jump.

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From the first scenes of The Wrestler, in which Maryse Alberti’s handheld camera follows Mickey Rourke from behind as his Randy “The Ram” Robinson goes through the closing motions of what we’re to understand is a typically trying day, director Darren Aronofsky announces that he’s picked up a new set of aesthetic references since his last film, the non-linear effects extravaganza The Fountain. It’s apparently impossible for contemporary directors to adopt the technique described aboce without someone suggesting that they ripped it from a film by the Dardennes brothers, but its use in The Wrestler feels very different from its use in, say, L’Enfant: it doesn’t produce the same sense of a tension that could break if the camera ever allowed its subject to get too far away. In fact, several times, the camera just stops while Rourke keeps moving, allowing us to appreciate the full physicality of the actor’s performance long before we ever see his face.

There must be a cerebral component to the way Rourke approached becoming the aging wrestler at the center of this film, because otherwise I doubt he’d have been able to so deftly navigate the character’s expansive emotional arc while still nailing all the jokes. But this performance goes way beyond the brain, or the precision with which Rourke transformed his appearance, or even the naturalism with which he performs the wrestling choreography. This is a performance that seems to start and end in the cardiovascular system, making everything Rourke actually does seem effortless. As if he’s just breathing it.

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Most porn is about as titillating as a Yule log on a loop, which is why I never watch it. Except if I happen to be flipping channels on a Friday night, when World Wrestling Entertainment broadcasts its Friday Night SmackDown, a steroid-enhanced, S&M-laced, hard-bodied orgy of enormous proportions. It’s long been my fantasy to sit ringside, to smell the virile sweat and gape in awe at the blown up muscles, so freaky they’re sexy, akin to any porn star’s massively inflated tits. The homoerotic, dominant man on dominant man action, each bulging star vying to become the ultimate top, to slam his rival to the mat and make him his bitch, drives me wild. To this day The Rock’s The People’s Champ still ranks right alongside the remake of Casino Royale as my favorite gay porn.

So naturally I breathlessly awaited the press screening of Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler starring Mickey Rourke – who decades ago honed his S&M chops in 9 1/2 Weeks – as Randy “The Ram” Robinson. …Read more

Catherine Hardwicke hit one out of the park for female directors this past weekend, but she had a lot of help. Not only was she working with a pre-sold property, she also had a very manageable budget of $37 million. Quite different from the $2 million she had to work with on Thirteen a few years back. Of course, she had similar budgets on Lords of Dogtown ($25 million) and The Nativity Story ($35 million), and both were box office disappointments. Still, she’s going to keep on being trusted with more money — if Summit is smart they’ll keep her on for at least the first Twilight sequel, which will surely come with a higher price tag — and as long as she continues with genre films, she’s sure to remain a profitable director.

Not every talented filmmaker does well with more money. Danny Boyle, for instance, typically bombs with bigger budgets. And a lot of foreign auteurs strike out when handed costly studio-produced genre or franchise pics (Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection is a favorite example). But there’s the occasional filmmaker who, like Steven Soderbergh or Christopher Nolan, can make something worthwhile out of any budget they’re allotted. And then there are the many indie filmmakers who quickly find themselves at home with modestly priced broad comedies, such as the case with Seth Gordon easily transitioning from the Slamdance doc The King of Kong to the star-studded Hollywood holiday pic Four Christmases, out this week.

Who will be the next small-scale filmmaker to successfully rise up and prove him or herself worthy of bigger budgets? SpoutBlog has selected five directors we’d like to see given an economic boost, each because he or she would likely deliver something more interesting and popular than the usual Hollywood product.

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There are two kinds of people in the world: hardcore fans of professional wrestling and those of us who think the “sport” is a big joke.  But Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler may change all that. It may not influence the WWE’s television ratings or increase pay-per-view sales for the next Wrestlemania, but it could create more sympathy for the staged spectacle. And this is something that hasn’t really been achieved with past attempts to showcase the sad realities found within one of the fakest forms of showbiz there is.

I’ve listened to the audiobook of Hulk Hogan’s memoir, mostly for laughs. And I’ve seen the great documentary Beyond the Mat and learned enough of the truth to have gained some appreciation for wrestlers like Mick “Mankind” Foley, though it mostly made me feel bad for that guy’s wife and children. Meanwhile, the should-have-been most heartbreaking story from that film, Jake “The Snake” Roberts’ confession that he’s the product of incest, is so unbelievable that it’s hard to take completely serious. I hate to say it, but I couldn’t help laughing then, too.

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Darren Aronofky’s handheld camera follows Mickey Rourke from behind for the first several scenes of The Wrestler. It’s apparently impossible for contemporary directors to use this technique without someone suggesting that they ripped it from a Dardenne film, but its use in The Wrestler feels very different from its use in, say, L’Enfant: it doesn’t produce the same sense of a tension that could break if the camera ever allowed its subject to get too far away. In fact, several times, the camera just stops while Rourke keeps moving, allowing us to appreciate the full physicality of the actor’s performance long before we ever see his face. There must be a cerebral component to the way Rourke approached becoming aging wrestler Randy “The Ram” Robinson, because otherwise I doubt he’d have been able to so deftly navigate the character’s expansive emotional arc while still nailing all the jokes. But this performance goes way beyond the brain, or the precision with which Rourke transformed his appearance, or even the naturalism with which he performs the wrestling choreography. This is a performance that seems to start and end in the cardiovascular system, making everything Rourke actually does seem effortless. As if he’s just breathing it.

A wrestling superstar in the 80s (famous enough, at his peak, to have his own 8-bit representation jumping off the ropes in a Nintendo game), 20 years later Randy is barely holding it together, sleeping in a van when his trailer is padlocked for failure to pay rent, unloading boxes at a supermarket to make the cash from small-time meets stretch to cover his bleach, tanning and human growth hormone habits. Randy remains fiercely committed to the sport, even though his body’s not what it used to be, and even though the sport –– at least on a mainstream, big-money level –– no longer has much interest in him. With the 20th anniversary coming up of Randy’s biggest fight, a face-off with an Iranian flag-waving wrestler by the name of The Ayatollah, Randy’s producer approaches him with “two words: Re. Match.” This gives Randy something to work on other than the hot-and-cold affections of aging stripper Pam (Marisa Tomei), but when a particularly intense fight results in serious injury, Randy has to turn off autopilot and reevaluate his options.
That this all manages, for the most part, to avoid sports film fall-rise cliches and veer into unexpected directions whilst exploring a wide range of feeling, is a minor miracle. It’s a cliche to say that Rourke’s performance is “fearless” but, well, it is. But it only works as well as it does because of the economy of The Wrestler’s construction, and the stealthiness of Aronofsky’s craft.

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I’ve been sitting here for two hours trying to figure out how to shoehorn press conference quotes into a review of The Wrestler, the NYFF closing night film which screened for the press this morning. But Stu at Defamer already beat me to posting the money quotes from star Mickey Rourke. Here’s the part that I planned to use to great dramatic effect, which Rourke spat out in response to the last question of the session, all the while gesticulating with what appeared to be a half-smoked, unlit cigarillo:

“I mean, if I knew it would take me 15 years to get back in the saddle and work again because of the way I handled things, I really would have handled things differently,” he told the crowd. “I just didn’t have the tools. I’m doing things differently this time around — understanding what it is to be a professional, be responsible and to be consistent. Those are things that weren’t in my vocabulary back then. Change for me didn’t come easy; I didn’t wanna change until I lost everything until I realized that you better change, or, you know, blow your fucking brains out. Either you change and go on with life, or you’re just a piece of shit.”

The film finds interesting ways to invert that life lesson. More in a bit. In the meantime, you can read Stu’s full report here.

I was pleased to be asked to participate in indieWIRE’s post-TIFF critics poll, through which consensus selected Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s Still Walking as Best Film, Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler) as Best Performance, and Les Plages d’Agnes by Agnes Varda as Best Doc. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any of those movies, but the three titles I named as my favorite films of the fest all made the poll’s top ten: Summer Hours, Rachel Getting Married, and Treeless Mountain. For Best Performance, I named Treeless‘ Hee Yeon Kim, Mathieu Almaric from A Christmas Tale (maybe technically a Cannes film, but he still blows most of the competition out of the water, as far as I’m concerned) and Matthew Newton, director/writer/star of Three Blind Mice. I didn’t see as many docs as I would have liked (I guess I’m saving them for the fall season of Stranger Than Fiction, programmed, like TIFF’s Reel to Reel, by Thom Powers), but by far my favorite was Blind Loves.

We still have a bit of TIFF coverage in the can for posting over the next few days, BTW. Look for interviews with Jonathan Demme, Anne Hathaway, Ari Folman and more by the end of the week.

With the first weekend of the 2008 Toronto International Fim Festival now in the dustbin of history, here are a few notes from the ground:

• Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler premiered here last night, fresh off its Golden Bear win in Venice, and nary a negative word has so far been heard. In the interest of time management, I’m going to wait until NYFF to catch it, but a reliable source told me after the screening that the film “is fucking awesome.” Apparently Fox Searchlight agrees––this morning they locked a deal to domestically distribute the film and finance a major Oscar push for star Mickey Rourke.
• A film at the polar opposite end of the buzz spectrum is Spike Lee’s The Miracle at St. Anna, which even admirers of Spike’s provacations are calling a waste of time. Our own Kevin Kelly was at the film’s junket, which he says devolved into “The Elect Barack Obama Show” when neither journalists nor the filmmaker could keep the conversation focused on the movie. Kevin will have a report from the junket coming soon.
• Somewhere in between in terms of audience reaction: Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married. It’s my favorite film in Toronto this far, and a small contingent of journalists are also all about it. Still, some are (bafflingly, to my mind) pejoratively comparing it to Margot at the Wedding (the titles share a word, so apparently such comparisons are fair game), and rumor has it that the NYFF selection comittee unanimously rejected it for inclusion.
• Magnolia hasn’t officially announced it yet, but everyone is saying that they’ve settled on a deal to distribute Che. The NY Post says Mark Cuban’s distribution arm is “already booking theaters.”

If I was Nikki Finke, I’d start this headline with a “TOLDJA!”, but I’m too obsessed with search engine optimization for that.

So as I predicted, Steven Soderbergh’s Che, which has gone MIA since controversially premiering in a two-part, 4.5 hour cut at Cannes, has made the lineup for the Lincoln Center event. Also of note, Darren Aronsofsky’s The Wrestler, which will close the festival.

Otherwise, it’s basically Cannes Redux–giving lie to the whispers that this year’s installment of the French festival was sub par, I guess. Clint Eastwood’s The Changeling will serve as its Centerpiece, and will join a whole ton of Cannes cherry picks, including Gomorrah, Tony Manero, Waltz With Bashir, Serbis, A Headless Woman, A Christmas Tale, 24 City…I could go on for awhile. There’s really only a handful of films which didn’t premiere at Cannes (one of which, I’m Going to Explode, was directed by the star of Azazel Jacobs’ The GoodTimesKid, and also Mike Leigh’s Berlin fave Happy-Go-Lucky). I’ve pasted their titles and synopses after the jump. I guess, refreshingly, there are few slots filled by star-studded indie-arm Oscar bait…but then, there are few indie arms left to fill slots. indieWIRE has the full schedule.
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• Former New Line heads Bob Shaye and MIchael Lynne have announced their first project under their new deal at WB. They’ll adapt Foundation from Isaac Asimov trilogy about “a society that has figured out how to predict the future based on a method called psychohistory and sets up a foundation devoted to scientific research to protect itself and ensure its survival.”
• Jennifer Lopez will attempt to return to the thematic site of past glories, playing a preternaturally sophisticated servant who falls for her boss in The Governess, a new film for her Maid in Manhattan director Kevin Wade.
• New films from Darren Aronofsky, Jonathan Demme and Kathryn Bigelow will join the Coen Brothers’ Burn After Reading at the Venice Film Festival. And these are just the Americans––Barbet Schroeder, Hayao Miyazaki and Takeshi Kitano are among the international auteurs to show work in the competition.
• Meanwhile, due to “unforeseen events and personal reasons,” Anjelica Huston has backed out of a planned appearance at the Locaro Film Festival, where her film Choke will screen and where she was to accept a special award.