Mickey Rourke, up for a Best Actor Oscar that he richly deserves at this year’s 2009 Academy Awards ceremony, is not your usual, play-it-safe kind of actor. (To enter our Oscar prediction contest, go here!) Just today, the Huffington Post put a up a slide show of recent promotional appearances Rourke has made in the last month during his run for gold with Darren Aronofsky’s stellar film “The Wrestler.” They are calling it a Hand-In-Pants Retrospective. I think you’ll enjoy it; here’s a taste:

So, the question is: Will Oscar voters want to give this guy a chance to get up onstage on February 22 during an internationally televised event and be himself?

Sunday night at the BAFTA Awards, Rourke won Best Actor and dropped the f-bomb repeatedly as nonchalantly as ever. The British crowd didn’t seem to mind. Here’s his speech:

And after his win at the Golden Globes, he looked as rough as ever, thanking both his dogs and his director. When the camera cut to Aronofsky, he gave Rourke an aptly timed middle finger which the network was not quick enough to edit. (Don’t think they could have CGI-ed over it fast enough– maybe cut to Brad Pitt instead?) Here’s that infamous Golden Globe moment:

Finally, before the SAG Awards (which he lost out to Sean Penn for), Rourke let slip to an interviewer that he would be wrestling at the upcoming WWE Wrestlemania event. A publicist has since retracted the comment, but you know as soon as the Oscars are over, Rourke will probably buff up and go right back in the ring. How surreal is that? Here he is not heeding the advice of a publicist:

So, as Oscar night rolls around, all I can say is, “Let the best man win!” In my opnion, that’s Rourke, and it has nothing to do with the fact that I can’t wait to see what he’s going to say.

(For the record, I predict Penn will win.)

Tags: 2009, academy awards, aronofsky, controversial, interview, mickey rourke, middle finger, Not your usual Oscar bait, speech, wrestlemania, wrestler

I had a good feeling about this one. The man responsible for “Requiem for a Dream” and “The Fountain,” director Darren Aronofsky, has just won the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion Award for his newest movie, “The Wrestler.” It was also just picked up by Fox Searchlight for distribution.

Although a technicality keeps the lead actor in a Golden Lion-winning film from also winning Best Actor, there were universal raves for Mickey Rourke’s performance as a wrestler looking for a comeback. Can’t wait for this one, although I would say his role in “Sin City” was a comeback - one that should have gotten him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod. I voted for him anyway, in the KC Film Critic’s Circle Awards that year, and I remember he just barely lost out to Paul Giamatti for “Cinderella Man,” which, as much as I love Giamatti, is pretty lame. I think everyone else just felt guilty for not giving him props for “American Splendor” and “Sideways.”

Did I mention Aronofsky is doing a new “Robocop” movie? Only about a million times…

All this talk reminds me of something: Awards season has officially begun and its time for me to cram a year’s worth of good films (and usually some studio misfires that aimed for that pre-approved “stamp of quality” like “Cinderella Man” did) in four months. Joel and Ethan Coen, whose “Burn After Reading” opens tomorrow, have a new project that started filming Monday in their home state of Minnesota with longtime cinematographer (and seven-time Oscar nominee) Roger Deakins.

“A Serious Man” stars Michael Stuhlbarg, Fred Melamed, Richard Kind, and Minnesota actors Aaron Wolf, Sari Wagner, and Jessica McManus. Ever heard of any of them? That’s quite a ways from Pitt, Clooney, Malkovich, McDormand, and Swinton. It’s about a a physics professor at a quiet midwestern university whose wife leaves him and a lot of other bad things happen to him as well. I love the fact that these guys refuse to do the same thing twice.

Tags: aronofsky's the wrestler, coen brothers, fox searchlight, golden lion, mickey rourke, venice