I’m late to the Malcom Gladwell party. His books had caught my eye in the past but I didn’t pick up “Blink” or “The Tipping Point”. I guess the buzz of those two made me pick up “Outliers”.
It was a good read, but in the end it left me a little disappointed. “Outliers” is an easy read in that you don’t feel like you’re reading a textbook even though there are a lot of statistics and scholorly quotes thrown at you. But his theories just seem a little weak to me. He gives you hard stats but it’s all tied very loosely together.
One of his ‘theories’ was that, in short, children in middle class families do better in school than children from lower class households. I didn’t need to read fifteen pages to come to that conclusion.
With all of that being said, I just picked up a copy of “The Tipping Point”.
A month ago I went to the funeral of a friend. It was a long service with a variety of speakers, all of which added to the memorial. Stories told by his sisters about him as a child. Childhood friends told stories of teenage hi-jinx. And professional colleagues told stories about how much fun he was to work with.
But the thing that struck me was how effective the video tribute was in actually capturing exactly who Andrew Ashwood was. From the clips of him as a radio novice, to him addressing the camera in his office at Fox Sports in his last days. That was really the Andrew Ashwood that I knew and loved.
Mickey Rourke for Best Actor. Mickey is back. Mickey is back in a big way.
The Best Actor Oscar should go to the guy who plays a role that nobody else could play. That’s exactly why Rourke should get the trophy. With all due respect to Sean Penn and his performance as Harvey Milk, this year it belongs to Mickey. Could Robert Downey Jr. have pulled off Harvey Milk? Maybe. Christian Bale? Sure. Brokeback Jake would’ve given it a shot for sure.
Who else could’ve played Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson? The answer is nobody. It wouldn’t have been the same movie with any other actor. It couldn’t have been the same movie.
I’ve intentionally stayed away from other reviews of The Wrestler. I wanted to have a clean slate as I watched it. I don’t know if Rourke has talked about the ways that The Wrestler mirrors his own life.
This is Mickey Rourke’s Raging Bull. This is his The Godfather. Mickey is The Wrestler.
