"The Fighter" is starting to cross over into cultural spoof territory. But then with Marky Mark, dramatic speeches and Boston accents, it was probably only a matter of time. Below, a riff on Micky Ward's  not-you moment of empowerment, complete with George Costanza, Emilio Estevez and Cookie Monster.

Elsewhere on the viral-video front, Fox Searchlight and James Franco continue to embrace the I'm-not-sure-I-can-watch-that reactions to "127 Hours." After the studio created a T-shirt and a website tweaking those who either didn't see or couldn't watch the movie, Franco's grandmother offers a jab at her own in this home video. Despite plaudits and awards attention, the campaign hasn't quite worked yet: Only about 1.3 million people have given the critically well-regarded Danny Boyle film a shot.

-- Steven Zeitchik

twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

Forget Felix Unger and Oscar Madison. Mark Wahlberg and David O. Russell, the actor-director pair who will soon team up on (the apparently controversial) "Drake's Fortune," may be the oddest professional couple in show business.

Wahlberg is a former street kid, underwear model and teenybopper sensation. Russell is the quirky intellectual, the fussy auteur, the master of dark comedy. (And as Lily Tomlin could tell you, not always the smoothest handler of actors.)

Yet somehow Wahlberg and Russell have found alchemy. After teaming up on "I Heart Huckabees" and "Three Kings," they join forces for the third time in the upcoming underdog-boxer story "The Fighter," a movie that takes its cues from ring films such as "The Set-Up" and "Rocky" yet is also smart and nimble enough to know when to depart from them.

In a story in today's Los Angeles Times, we sit down with Wahlberg and Russell to talk about what it is that makes the two click. Among the reasons we observed: Wahlberg likes basking in Russell's haute-cinema glow, and the director appreciates the everyman cred that a Mark Wahlberg lends you. When the two were researching a scene in a prison, Wahlberg insisted that the two walk into the state penitentiary and talk to inmates about changing their lives even as those inmates taunted the actor and director from behind bars.

There's symbiosis in other ways: The actor, for instance, says he has helped Russell get over his self-confessed commitment issues. Wahlberg recalls that before they started shooting "Huckabees," Russell would "have four or five different ideas. And he'd call me and say, 'We're going to do this. No, wait, we're going to do that.' And I'd say to him, 'Let's go, dude. At this pace you're going to make six movies in your entire career.'"

The director says he's now getting over those commitment issues. "I feel that I see things much more clearly. I don't turn over an idea as I once would," he said, adding: "Ideas are not a problem for me. But I realize now you have to pick up one to throw down with."

Photo: David Russell, left, Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale on the set of "The Fighter." Credit: Jojo Wilden

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Fans of the video game Uncharted: Drake's Fortune have been intrigued since the moment David O. Russell committed to direct the film -- if nothing else, it's a chance for a quirky auteur and surehanded filmmaker to shake up the beleaguered videogame-to-movie genre.

They've also been a little hesitant about how quickly this thing will move forward. Russell, after all, has recently worked at a fairly deliberate pace. (He's completed just one movie since "I Heart Huckabees" came out six years ago, the upcoming boxing dramedy "The Fighter.")

But "Drake's" is apparently rolling along. When we talked with Russell for "The Fighter," (more on that one shortly), he said he's already about halfway done with the script, which dovetails nicely with Sony's and fans' hope for a finished movie pretty quickly. "It's a locomotive," he said of the movie's progress.

While the video game centers on Nate Drake (a descendant of Sir Francis Drake) and his quest to find lost treasure on an island far from civilization, Russell plans on expanding the movie to include Drake's extended family -- and put them in fraught, globetrotting situations with some of the world's most influential people.

"This idea really turns me on that there's a family that's a force to be reckoned with in the world of international art and antiquities ... [a family] that deals with heads of state and heads of museums and metes out justice," he said.

Meanwhile, Mark Wahlberg, the "Fighter" star who will take on the Nate Drake role in this new film, told 24 Frames that he hasn't read what Russell's written yet but had been told extensively about the idea and believes it's a world away from most video-game adaptations. "To me what a lot of those other movies lack is the level of character and heart," he said. (Wahlberg is, of course, no stranger to video game-based movies, having starred in the less-than-well-received "Max Payne.")

Russell has plenty of experience in the character and dysfunctional-family department, notably chronicling the adventures of an unconventional unit in his 1996 hit "Flirting with Disaster," among other pictures. He sees movies like that influencing him on "Drake's."

"We'll have the family dynamic, which we've done in a couple of movies now," he said. "And then you take that and put it on the bigger, more muscular stage of an international action picture, but also put all the character stuff in it. That's a really cool idea to me."

--Steven Zeitchik

twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

Photo: 'Uncharted: Drake's Fortune' video game. Credit: Sony

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The fall movie season got a major jolt, and the awards season a bona fide new player, when David O. Russell's "The Fighter" world-premiered in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening.

The working-class, Massachusetts-set family drama -- which stars Mark Wahlberg as real-life 1990s boxing hopeful "Irish" Micky Ward and, even more eye-catchingly to many in the room, Christian Bale as his fighter-turned-crack addict half-brother -- played to rapturous crowds at its surprise AFI Fest screening. Russell's film, his most dramatic in a career filled with dark comedies, had the audience engaged in its underdog story from the start, while the crowd laughs came too, particularly in scenes showing Ward's large Catholic family and standoffs between his domineering mother (Melissa Leo) and broad-minded girlfriend (Amy Adams).

The reception marked a turnaround of heavyweight proportions. Interest in "The Fighter" was high coming into the fall, if only because the movie represented a rarity in the current climate: a high-end studio drama. (It's arguably only the second such example, after "The Social Network" earlier in the season; a third, the Coen brothers' remake of "True Grit," has yet to premiere.) But as the months wore on and no one had seen the film, it risked becoming an afterthought.

In 24 hours, however, all of that changed. The early-December release went from a question mark with no public screenings on the docket to a contender in both the commercial and awards departments.

The movie will still face some obstacles on the first count. The major studios decision to stop releasing dramas with big stars and budgets may recognize or reinforce a shrunken appetite. There's a reason this film went through so many false starts. (Taking the stage before the screening, Wahlberg said repeatedly, almost pleadingly, that this "was not an easy movie to get made.") And with the movie's auteur's framing and serious themes, the conventional wisdom could suggest that it lacks the ingredients of a mainstream hit.

At the same time, the history of boxing crowd-pleasers is longer than, well, Don King's hair, and loud applause at a climactic fight scene suggested this film could well continue that tradition. And the success of "The Town," set in a similarly working-class Massachusetts milieu, can only help "The Fighter."

On the Oscar front things should be simpler. Acclaimed movies set in the ring -- though they date all the way back to "Rocky" and "Raging Bull" (and before) -- continue to resonate with voters. This past decade alone, "Million Dollar Baby" and "The Wrestler" both became awards-season favorites. Those thinking the well had run dry were pleasantly surprised on Tuesday night, and it's likely others will find themselves thinking the same in the weeks to come.

-- Steven Zeitchik
twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

Photo: Mark Wahlberg in "The Fighter." Credit: Paramount Pictures

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