So you played online poker for three hours and won a sum that a Polish minimum wage employee would snort derisively at.

The disappointment you feel could not compare to that of these fine gentlemen of film after learning what the wardrobe department had in store for them. We’ve all had to wear tights for one reason or another in our life, but even the butchest of men struggle to pull off these fashion faux pas.

So kick-starting the list is a man who drinks ugly and craps failure…

5: Mickey Rourke – Iron Man 2

Wearing some sort of contortion device normally found in David Carridine’s wardrobe, Mickey Rourke seems to be going bondage in next year’s Iron Man 2.

4: Sylvester Stallone – Rocky III

More a tragic reminder of a time when this sort of fitness fashion was acceptable than anything else! Still, Stallone manages to put some camp into the third Rocky film numerous times during the montage as he changes his vest, each time getting smaller and more colourful *shudder*.

Number 3: Sting – Dune

Some valid debate as to whether Sting qualifies as ‘manly’ in the first place. Either way this costume made Sting look like a ginger, bullied, repressed homosexual Gollum.

Number 2: George Clooney – Batman and Robin

We doth my cap to the costume designer on this film – she made Schwarzenegger look like a (Ice) berk but that doesn’t compare to Clooney’s horrific ordeal. Is it cold in the Batsuit? It must be with those razor-sharp nips flying out! Matching codpiece doesn’t help matters, thus turning comic’s most feared Dark Knight into a bigger camp icon than Robin.

Number 1: Sean Connery - Zardoz

It was an obvious choice but the Scotsman has formed a career on his dripping bravado with misogynistic glee. Then came this costume choice from the (thankfully) forgotten Zardoz. Rumours of Connery being incontinent at the time of filming prompting this choice remain unfounded…

Agree? Disagree? Think there is a man more deserved of the crown than these bunch of camp crusaders? Let us know below…

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For those of you who were too busy smoking to read The Bible, Lazarus was a bearded taxman who choked on a pound coin and dropped dead in the kitchen, only to be brought back to life moments later by a passing hippy called Jesus Christ Superstar.

It’s one of the best stories in there. Only narrowly trumped by the one about Charlton Heston making the Statue of Liberty disappear.

Anyway, in honour of the legend of Lazarus, we thought it high time to doff a cap at a small handful of famous people who have equally died, only to be brought back to life. Metaphorically speaking.

1. Barry from EastEnders

Poor Barry was something of a twerp in EastEnders, everyone thought so. Even that cow Janine who made out she loved him, but eventually killed him by lobbing him off a cliff on holiday. His name was synonymous with being a total failure. Then along came Extras, and suddenly the tables were turned, as he played on his reputation as a loser and won everyone’s affections. It was a bit like the final rap in 8 Mile when Eminem cleverly uses all his weaknesses as a strength. A very little bit.

2. Michael Jackson

Now that he’s bringing the music back, it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t so long ago that Michael Jackson was sitting in a courtroom with his strange broken clown face, explaining to people that he didn’t mean anything by it when he climbed into bed with children. He was just being chummy. Plus, of course, there was the time that he proved his worth as a great father by jokingly dangling his precious baby off a balcony for kicks. Still, try telling that to the frenzied crowds crushing themselves to watch him snatch his balls and kick out a leg to Billie Jean. They won’t listen. They’ve forgotten already.

3. Raef Bjayou

As he snorted something about his ability to hold a conversation with both “prince and pauper”, we were readying ourselves for a swell of hatred directed at Raef on The Apprentice. And yet, by the second week, he’d somehow managed to turn the whole thing around by wearing impressive ties and laughing aggressively down the phone, all the while morphing into our favourite toff since Diana, the princess of hearts. A fine chap indeed.

4. Mickey Rourke

If legend is to believed, at one stage Mickey Rourke was a lonely washed up actor, living on a roadside, making money for scraps by taking part in bare-knuckle boxing fights held in old factory warehouses. The man was an outcast, done for. His face totally buggered by a shit plastic surgeon.  Totally dead in the water. And then he starred in The Wrestler as a big fat warrior with a face like a million year old log, and suddenly everyone wants to work with him again.

5. Jade Goody

Are we allowed to talk about Jade Goody yet ? No? Okay, we’ll leave it.

This was a guest blog by Josh Burt from Interestment, who we’d marry in a jiffy if we had the appropriate parts.

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Folded:

• Chuck Norris ‘Action Jeans’ (you so want a pair)
• The return of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s great. It is)
• Iran, dangerous? (nah, it’s bloody lovely there)
• Eva Green has lived in London for the past two years (why doesn’t somebody tell us these things?!)
• The Mist (just in case you need cheering up in the current climate of doom and gloom)

Creased:

• Oscars coverage (between ancient Tom Brook on the BBC and overcooked bacon Carla Romano on GMTV, you’d have been better off sticking with us)
• Mickey Rourke missing out (all those steroids for nuthin’)
• Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection on PS3 (memory lane is fine , but a plasma screen and Alex Kidd do not mix)
• ‘Boker face’ (it’s silly, childish and impossible to stop singing when trapped in your head)
• Gordon Gekko (definitely a whole lot tamer than you remember)

You’d better be. Because, even though he’s won every single other award on the face of the Earth for The Wrestler, the Oscars have just decided to snub Mickey Rourke and give the Best Actor trophy to Sean Penn. Honestly Oscars, when Mickey Rourke goes off the rails again and ends up starring in Sylvester Stallone’s Get Carter 2, the blood will be on your hands.

Also, Slumdog Millionaire won a bunch of Oscars, which is a great surprise to… oh, nobody.

Prior to Oscars, all the bookies were saying that the big awards were all sewn up. And, mostly, they were. What’s more, all the reactions to the big awards were sewn up too -

* Slumdog Millionaire won Best Picture and Best Director, and Danny Boyle looked like the happiest Morrissey impersonator on Earth on both occasions;

* Kate Winslet won Best Actress and immediately flew into her ‘asthma sufferer you’d most like to punch’ shtick;

* Heath Ledger won Best Supporting Actor and accepted the award in person, admitting that his accidental suicide was simply a ploy to win an Oscar;

* Mickey Rourke won Best Actor and… hey, wait a minute! Mickey Rourke didn’t win Best Actor at all.

Even though he was the critical and public favourite for the best actor Oscar, the Academy decided that the last thing it wanted to hear was another bloody eulogy for a dead chihuahua and gave the Best Actor Oscar to Sean Penn for his role in Milk instead.

Then again, it all seems so obvious in retrospect. The Oscars love Sean Penn. If Sean Penn did a fart in a ziploc bag, he’d probably get an Oscar for it. Because when Sean Penn wins an Oscar, you know you’re going to get a dangerously sincere acceptance speech about cinema’s ability to weave itself into the fabric of the national consciousness, and that tends to ease moviestars’ guilt about being paid millions of dollars to memorise a handful of words in the right order once a year.

Also, Sean Penn won his Best Actor Oscar for Milk, which allowed the Academy to register its disappointment of the passing of Proposition 8 in California last year. So now the entire television audience of The Oscars – essentially a dwindling handful of gay men and nobody else – know that some actors think Proposition 8 is bad. Thank God for that.

Also, did you see The Oscars? What with Sophia Loren, that man who balanced his Oscar upside down on his chin and Hugh Jackman’s big gurning head on top of that little puppet body, these were probably the gayest Oscars in living memory. At least Sean Penn’s victory was a decent fit.

But, despite this upset, the 2009 Oscars will go down in history as the Slumdog Millionaire Oscars. Actually, no, who are we kidding? They’ll go down in history as the Oscars where it looked like Angelina Jolie was cackling at Jennifer Aniston’s inability to talk properly. Something tells us you’ll be hearing more about this soon.

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Because, oh, the speech. Mickey Rourke’s acceptance speech was already going to be a belter, full of the “I had nothing but look at me now” sentiment of his other acceptance speeches – but now it’s going to be even better, because Mickey Rourke’s dog has died.

That means if Mickey Rourke wins his Oscar, we’ll all be treated to a wet-faced eulogy for a chihuahua so tortured that it’ll make Heath Ledger’s obituary seem like an afterthought. We can’t wait.

The eagle-eyed among you will remember that when Mickey Rourke won his Golden Globe last month, he singled out his dogs for special praise. According to Rourke, the dogs picked him up and helped him to rebuild himself after his notorious self-destruction, giving him a chance when no other human on Earth would.

When that happened, you probably assumed that Mickey Rourke was referring to rottweilers or mastiffs or some other breed that characterised Mickey Rourke’s rough and ready, fiercely loyal persona. But you were wrong.

Mickey Rourke was talking about chihuahuas. You know, the ratty little dogs that Paris Hilton carries around in her handbags. The dogs that were mocked endlessly in Beverly Hills Chihuahua. The dogs that Paula Abdul will occasionally break her nose on when the mood takes her. It doesn’t seem like a great fit, does it?

Not that it matters much now, though, because Mickey Rourke’s favourite chihuahua Loki has just died. E! Online reports:

The Oscar nominee’s Chihuahua, Loki, one of the dogs memorably thanked by Rourke in his Golden Globe acceptance speech, has died, Rourke’s rep confirmed Tuesday to E! News. Loki passed away Monday night at the ripe old age of 18. The pup was prominently photographed walking the red carpet with his master, who called Loki the “love of [his] life,” at the Venice Film Festival in September.

This news is actually quite sad. Mickey Rourke made no secret of how much his dogs meant to him, and so Loki’s death will probably affect him as much as the death of a human loved one. A freakishly small human loved one with bulgy eyes and too much skin who Mickey Rourke paid to have castrated at the earliest opportunity, admittedly, but let’s not spilt hairs.

And also, let’s not get too depressed about Loki’s death. After all, the death of a pet is known to boost an actor’s success when it comes to awards. Right after George Clooney’s pig died in 2006, for example, George was named as the sexiest man on Earth. And now there’s a chance that Mickey Rourke’s favourite dog has died days before he’s named as Best Actor at this year’s Oscars. Dead pets help win awards, everyone knows that.

So, you know, what we suppose we’re trying to say is this: don’t be too surprised if Brad Pitt gets arrested for ramming a stick of dynamite into Maddox’s rabbit’s mouth before the weekend. That’s all.

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It ended with Sylvester Stallone’s Get Carter remake. Ugh. But Mickey Rourke isn’t a man who repeats his mistakes – apart from the mistake involving him having haphazard cosmetic surgery procedure done on his face. And that’s why Mickey Rourke has decided he’ll no longer fight at April’s Wrestlemania.

We’re appalled. Without Mickey Rourke, who at Wrestlemania will provide our fill of tragic, borderline-decrepit ageing beefcakes who essentially make their living as performing monkeys? All the other wrestlers? Oh.

Mickey Rourke is the king of bad ideas. Giving up acting at the height of his fame to become a largely rubbish professional boxer, apparently having all his plastic surgery performed by an angry gibbon with scalpels for hands, Another Nine 1/2 Weeks – these are not the actions of a man with a long-term goal.

And even now that Mickey Rourke is the toast of Hollywood after playing himself in the movie Look, It’s Mickey Rourke In A Blonde Wig, he still doesn’t seems to have given up his old addiction to bad ideas. That’s why he’ll soon be starring in the latest Sylvester Stallone film, why he’s officially become the face of amputated dog testicles, and why he’d been planning to have his face beaten into a concave plasticine pizza at this year’s Wrestlemania.

Earlier this week it was announced that, to pay tribute to those who inspired his role in The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke would be appearing at Wrestlemania this year, possibly by fighting Chris Jericho. And it would have been must-see entertainment, so long as your definition of ‘must-see’ involves an old man, two pairs of borderline-obscene lycra unitards, tens of thousands of rednecks and at least one career-threatening injury.

But now, we’re sad to report that Mickey Rourke has now backed out of Wrestlemania. Access Hollywood reports:

“Mickey was very honored to be asked as he has the greatest respect for WWE however he will not be participating in ‘Wrestlemania,’” the actor’s rep said in a statement to Access Hollywood. “He is focusing entirely on his acting career.”

This isn’t a huge surprise – if you saw this painfully awkward showdown between Mickey Rourke and Chris Jericho on Tuesday’s Larry King, you’ll know you may as well have spent three minutes watching a giant flashing sign reading ‘UNCOMFORTABLE SECOND THOUGHTS’…

Some are saying that Mickey Rourke is backing out of Wrestlemania because it would have been the quickest way for him to lose his Oscar. Playing a wrestler in a story that uncomfortably mirrors your own life is one thing – but actually being a wrestler for a night, without the opportunity to launch into a desperate tear-filled soliloquy at the end to show your emotional range? Piss off.

Would Sean Penn do that, huh? Would Sean Penn stand in the middle of an arena and have a chair smashed into his face by a seven-foot monster who’d been pumped full of steroids? No. No he bloody well wouldn’t.

Nice thought, though, isn’t it?

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But not us. We’d say that Mickey Rourke’s face doesn’t look enough like an uncooked hamburger patty that’s been trampled by a marching band. And we think Mickey Rourke agrees with us.

Why? Because it’s been hinted that Mickey Rourke – from The Wrestler, remember – will wrestle Chris Jericho at Wrestlemania in April. One-sided? Relax! After Wrestlemania there’s going to be a rematch to see who can sob the most incoherently on a beach, a bout that Rourke will easily win.

You know what there’s not enough of? Actors promoting their work by taking on the real-life job of the characters they play. It’d be great – George Clooney could market his return to ER by literally slicing a man open and fumbling around inside his guts until he yanks out what he assumes is a spleen, while Julia Roberts could have easily improved her Oscar chances for Pretty Woman by literally having grubby, meaningless sex with a string of lonely men for cash.

No, of course we’re just joking. Only an idiot would take on a job that they’ve only really done before for the sake of a movie. It’s probably the stupidest thing that anyone could ever do. It’s not just stupid, but arrogant too. So it’s a good job that actors aren’t either stupid or arrogant, isn’t it? Oh, hang on a minute…

We forgot about Mickey Rourke. The Wrestler has been good to Mickey Rourke – it’s established his position as an acting behemoth, plus it’s allowed him to take on other challenges as varied as being in Iron Man 2 and pleading with the public to smash off their pet’s testicles with a hammer. Or something.

And because of this, Mickey Rourke wants to give something back to the people that inspired his character in The Wrestler - the old, beaten-down, injury-ravaged former wrestlers who are all guaranteed to die tragically young in poverty-stricken agony. And it looks like Mickey Rourke is going to accomplish that by becoming one of them himself.

That’s right, as E! Online reports, Mickey Rourke is going to Wrestlemania:

“The nicest thing has been the whole wrestling community embracing us. The movie was about their world and so I think maybe I’m gonna do Wrestlemania in Houston. I had some dialogue with Vince McMahon and Ric Flair, Roddy Piper and all the rest of them and they’ve been really supportive… Chris Jericho, you better get in shape, because I’m coming after your ass.”

It might seem a little strange at first – The Wrestler carries an unsubtle anti-wrestling sentiment at times, so Mickey Rourke promoting it by appearing at Wrestlemania is a little like Reese Witherspoon promoting Rendition by kidnapping a stranger, flying him to Egypt and then booting him in the balls for eight months until he confesses to a crime he didn’t do.

But you know what? Good for Mickey Rourke. If he thinks his body is up to the rigours of professional wrestling, then all the best to him. And if worst comes to worst, it might take a doctor up to three minutes to remould his face. His skin is like Play-Doh, we heard.

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So he has. And what good cause has Mickey Rourke chosen to promote? Why, the unnecessary proliferation of dog testicles. Mickey Rourke has taken part in a PETA campaign to urge dog owners to neuter their pets.

Mickey says this is to stop the murder of millions of unwanted puppies each year, but we think differently – we think Mickey Rourke uses mashed-up dog testicles as a facial filler to mask his weird plastic surgery and that he’s on a stockpile drive.

Mickey Rourke, make no mistake, is the greatest Christmas gift we’ve ever received. Sure, we’ve seen plenty of written-off actors make spectacular comebacks in our time – like when Sylvester Stallone made Rocky Balboa or when Steven Seagal decided to set Under Siege 3 in space – but Mickey Rourke blows them all out of the water. This is for four primary reasons:

1) Mickey Rourke has won unbelievable critical acclaim for his role in The Wrestler.

2) Mickey Rourke has become one of the world’s most highly sought-after actors because of his role in The Wrestler.

3) Mickey Rourke has a face that looks like a water bomb that’s been filled with Ardennes pate and dropped down an abandoned lift shaft.

4) Now that he’s famous, Mickey Rourke won’t bloody shut up about his dogs.

This was apparent on Sunday, when Mickey Rourke essentially dedicated his Golden Globe win to all of his dead pets. But just in case that wasn’t enough, he’s now also decided to take part in a PETA campaign to encourage dog owners to castrate their pets. People reports:

Cradling his Chihuahua, Jaws, in PETA’s new ad, the actor urges people to “have the cojones to fix your dog. When dogs get knocked up, puppies get put down because there aren’t enough homes for them… The most important thing about having a dog and loving a dog is keeping the dog its whole natural life,” says Rourke, who adds that “you have a responsibility to communicate with your animal how much he means to you.”

And there was us thinking that PETA stood for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. How wrong we were – turns out it’s actually an acronym for Please Eliminate Testicles Agonisingly. We’ll remember that.

However, just because it doesn’t seem to count canine genital mutilation as cruelty, we shouldn’t write off PETA’s campaign straight away. If Mickey Rourke says that keeping the bollocks on your dog will end up with the death of some unwanted puppies, then maybe it’s our responsibility to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Also, if we do it now then PETA won’t have to resort to its plan B – Mickey Rourke’s ‘I’d Rather Go Naked Than Not Neuter My Pet’ billboard campaign. Nobody deserves to see that.

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9 - Incredible vintage pictures of inventions that science never got round to inventing, the bastards – Wellmedicated

8 – Quite an interesting article about The Dark Knight score. If you like that sort of thing – Slashfilm

7 – All the celebrity mugshots you will ever need – ABCactionnews

6 – Want to be a knackered-out old crying redneck like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler? Then here’s how – Asylum

5 - A list of people who were such tools that their names all became common terms for ‘tool’ - Cracked

4 – DRAGON CAKE! - Flickr

3 - Pictures from Transformers 2. Better to get all the disappointment out early, like we’re doing - Yahoo

2 - Soul-crushing workout videos - Liquidgeneration

1 – Someone please, please commission this Japanese gameshow for the UK. The terrorists don’t hate us enough as it is – I Am Bored

Turns out we couldn’t have been more wrong. Mickey Rourke is hot property again – and he’s proving it by also starring in Iron Man 2. According to reports, Iron Man director Jon Favreau is keen to have Rourke play the movie’s villain.

It’s bittersweet news, really – Mickey Rourke must be thrilled by the enthusiasm in which he’s been re-embraced by Hollywood, but it’ll be a bitter blow to The Puppet Corpse Of Orson Welles. He really had his eye on that part, you know.

Over the next couple of years or so, there’s a chance you’ll be seeing Mickey Rourke’s face more often than you’ll actually see your own. And, no, for once that won’t be because you’re hounded by a recurring dream that involves you being chased through a cave by a slurring monster whose face appears to be made entire out of flan – it’s because Mickey Rourke is going to be in just about every film made within the next few years.

Thanks to the critical acclaim heaped upon his performance in The Wrestler – aka The Story of Mickey Rourke, In A Wig – everyone wants a piece of Mickey Rourke these days. As we reported yesterday, Mickey has signed up to join the cast of Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables, but that’s not all.

Just to prove that there’s more to him than movies about former box office giants who bottomed out and spent years in the wilderness before finally gaining reacceptance from their Hollywood peers, Mickey Rourke is apparently close to landing a starring role in Iron Man 2, a film starring Robert Downey Jr – a former box office giant who bottomed out and spent years in the wilderness before… oh tits, he’s done it again hasn’t it?

Anyway according to the Hollywood Reporter:

Marvel has been keeping a very tight lid on the script for the sequel, being written by Justin Theroux, but it is known that Rourke would play a tattooed Russian heavy named Ivan who becomes Whiplash, a man with deadly, technologically enhanced coils.

A Russian heavy with deadly, technologically enhanced coils? We’re not even sure we know what that means. However, we’re fairly certain that if Mickey Rourke takes this Iron Man 2 role, the character description should probably be changed to ‘a crying Russian heavy with deadly, technologically enhanced coils who’s found himself on the outs and is determined to make one last shot at glory in the field of having deadly, technologically enhanced coils. Possibly.

And that’s not all – as well as The Expendables and Iron Man 2, IMDb says that Mickey Rourke has also got upcoming roles in The Informers, Killshot, 13 and Sin City 2. And there’s a rumour he’ll be playing the lead in High School Musical 4. Plus he’ll be playing Samantha in the next Sex And The City movie. Plus if you film anything on your mobile phone between now and Christmas 2010, Mickey Rourke is legally obliged to hang around crying in the background of every shot in a creepy way to ensure that nothing is ever made that he doesn’t appear in.

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That’s if you believe the hype. If you don’t believe the hype you’ll realise that Mickey Rourke was lucky enough to be cast in a movie that required a washed-up squidge-faced dumbbell who cries a lot as a star. But either way, thanks to The Wrestler Mickey Rourke is back in business.

So how is Mickey Rourke going to continue of his run of critically-acclaimed highbrow movies? By co-starring in a low-rent film about Sylvester Stallone killing everything. Whoops.

The Wrestler is something of a once-in-a-lifetime movie role for Mickey Rourke. In it, he gets to do what he’s good at – which is basically beat people up – while looking all sad because he’s not really that famous any more. Until someone writes a film called Barry The Nightclub Doorman Who Suffers From Nonspecific Anxiety Disorder, there won’t ever be a film better suited to Mickey Rourke than The Wrestler.

Of course, with all the praise and mountains of award nominations he’s received for The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke runs the very real risk of being typecast as the hasbeen beefcake in serious films that are lauded by his peers and constantly nominated for the highest honours in the movie industry. And Mickey Rourke wouldn’t want that, would he?

And that’s why the first film that Mickey Rourke has agreed to appear in after the wave of renewed interest in him stirred up by The Wrestler is The Expendables, which appears to be a sort of Kwik Save knock-off version of The Dirty Dozen. Variety reports:

Mickey Rourke has joined the ranks of “The Expendables,” joining the ensemble of the Sylvester Stallone-directed action adventure for Nu Image/Millennium Films. Rourke will play an unscrupulous arms dealer who becomes the go-to guy for a group of mercenaries planning to topple a South American dictator.

OK, OK, we get it. Sylvester Stallone did the whole art mirroring life thing with Rocky Balboa where he got to play a past-it old beefcake who cries a lot, and now he’s getting Mickey Rourke – a man who’s just done the exact same thing – to be in The Expendables with him. Wow, talk about over-egging the pudding. You’re both expendable. We understand. Jeez. But at least that’s it, right?

Well, no. Also signed up for The Expendables alongside Sylvester Stallone and Mickey Rourke are expendable middle-aged cage fighter Randy Couture, expendable goon du jour Jason Statham, expendable faded kung-fu legend Jet Li and expendable blonde Sylvester Stallone Dolph Lungdren. We could be wrong, but we’re guessing that The Expendables is going to feature a lot of product placement by Stannah Stairlifts.

Best of all, The Expendables isn’t even going to being shooting until March, so there’s plenty of time for Sylvester Stallone to recruit all the other actors who Hollywood has casually tossed aside over the years, including Steven Seagal, Burt Reynolds, Cuba Gooding Jr, Heath Ledger, the ghost of Marlon Brando, with a special guest appearance by The Puppet Corpse Of Orson Welles as a hardbitted lieutenant who doesn’t play by the rules.

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