Milk

[Eric]

Ying-yang reviews on The House Next Door. (The "nay" comes from the gay guy, fwiw.)

http://www.thehousenextdooronline.com/2008....-1.html
http://www.thehousenextdooronline.com/2008....-2.html

[Penelope]

franco on the other hand has seemed to shy away from most of the big blockbusters except as a supporting player in the SPIDER-MAN series. i could definitely see him as the type of guy willing to sacrifice money and fame for being honest about himself.

Franco is no dummy: this past June, he graduated from UCLA and is currently enrolled at Columbia pursuing an MA in creative writing. I suspect that doesn't give him much time to focus on a "blockbuster" career and he's thus more interested in good but smaller roles in less arduous films.

[rolotomasi99]

Well, think about the term "toothy". I'd suggest that it might be Matthew McConaughey. First, the alliteration of names Toothy Title match his MM monogram and he's one of those actors whose smile is one of his most defining characteristic.

??? :laugh:

interesting. i always thought matthew and woody harrelson might have something going on. they both seemed like the kind of easy going guys who might be at peace with a more fluid definition of sexuality...especially after a few hits of woody's homegrown stash.

i thought maybe the "toothy" was a reference to james franco and his huge dopey (and adorable) grin. gyllenhaal is not an idiot. with THE PRINCE OF PERSIA coming up, it is clear he has made a decision to be a big star...especially considering the charade of the the witherspoon romance.

franco on the other hand has seemed to shy away from most of the big blockbusters except as a supporting player in the SPIDER-MAN series. i could definitely see him as the type of guy willing to sacrifice money and fame for being honest about himself.

[OscarGuy]

Well, think about the term "toothy". I'd suggest that it might be Matthew McConaughey. First, the alliteration of names Toothy Title match his MM monogram and he's one of those actors whose smile is one of his most defining characteristic.

[Penelope]

So who are we speculating Toothy to be?

The gays over at gossip forum Data Lounge seem to think it's Jake Gyllenhaal. But I wonder if that's just wishful thinking, considering that Jake has been named the gays' sexiest man alive 2 years running in the AfterElton poll.

[barrybrooks8]

So who are we speculating Toothy to be?

[Penelope]

LA Times:

Why are there no openly gay leading men in Hollywood?

Gus Van Sant's "Milk" isn't just a mainstream-minded Oscar candidate; it's also a rallying cry.

With Sean Penn starring as Harvey Milk, the openly gay San Francisco supervisor who was gunned down along with Mayor George Moscone in 1978, the movie (which opens Wednesday) makes its message clear: Gay people must be "out" to be counted.

This theme is particularly timely given California's passage of anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8 this month, but there's also a certain irony:

Here's a broadly targeted movie with marquee actors (James Franco, Josh Brolin and Emile Hirsch co-star), yet not only is none of the featured players openly gay, but there isn't one openly gay leading man in all of Hollywood. Even as gay people have become far more prominent and comfortable in culture and everyday life in the 30 years since Milk's death, not a single current A-list movie actor is "out."

Could it be that big movie stars simply don't swing that way? That lead actors defy all percentages and likelihood to remain a strictly heterosexual crowd?

Or is the more logical explanation that while Hollywood preaches openness, it is fearful to practice it?

"It's the last frontier, and it will remain the last frontier for quite some time," said Bruce Bibby, who as Ted Casablanca writes the popular gossip column "The Awful Truth" for E! Online. "Some of our biggest moneymakers right now are absolute boy-on-boy kind of boys. It's America's dirty little secret. If they only knew."

We won't play the who-is-and-who-isn't game here.

But it's worth noting that at a time when everyone seems to know everything about everyone, and careers move on in spite of arrests, sex tapes, addiction-rehab cycles, affairs and babies out of wedlock, public acknowledgment of homosexuality remains a formidable taboo among top movie talent.

The most cited reason is money.

Van Sant, who is openly gay, laughingly called this an issue of "merchandising," noting that over the last decade leading men have become "industries within themselves. They're almost like industrial conglomerates."

"Hollywood does not like anything that's going to threaten its bottom line," said Michael Jensen, editor of afterelton.com, a Web site devoted to gay and bisexual men in entertainment. "The idea of a gay leading man in a movie that's going to have a budget around $100 million—getting a studio to be the first one to take that chance is a challenging thing to do."

As for the actors, Jensen continued, "there are already so many reasons for a casting director to turn a person down, and being an openly gay actor trying to get a romantic lead role, you're just giving them another reason."

The absence of gay lead actors—and, yes, we are talking primarily of men—stands in stark contrast to the progress activists say has been made in other areas.

"The images in the media 30 years ago and the images today are vastly, vastly different," said Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). "You had 'Three's Company,' an over-the-top caricature of a gay man, and the other characters ridiculed him. Today a show like that would not be aired. We have 'Brothers & Sisters,' we have 'Desperate Housewives,' 'Ugly Betty.' Those are real portrayals."

A gay character on a TV show is no longer news, though GLAAD has tabulated that just 16 of 663 prime-time characters, or 2.6 percent, are gay. Openly gay celebrities in themselves also are no longer such an anomaly.

Singers Clay Aiken and Lance Bass have come out, as did comedian Wanda Sykes just last week. Elton John remains a huge concert draw and classic-rock fixture, and Ellen DeGeneres is welcomed into millions of American homes on her daytime talk show, just as Rosie O'Donnell was on "The View" and her own show.

"People who watch and adore Ellen DeGeneres don't care one iota that she is gay, and they've known she is for a long time," said Mark Urman, distribution president for Summit Entertainment. "That is a very mainstream audience."

Then again, DeGeneres and O'Donnell have done little acting since they opened up about their sexuality. People accept them for themselves, but it's unclear whether they'd accept them as anyone else.

This leads to a dynamic in which heterosexual actors such as Penn or Tom Hanks (in "Philadelphia") have no problems being believed as gay men—or murderers or mentally challenged characters—yet there's much doubt that an openly gay actor could be convincing carrying a romance with the opposite sex.

“I don’t know why that is,” Urman said. “We know for a fact they’re acting.”

There also may be different standards for women and men. Although Jodie Foster does not discuss her personal life, while accepting an award late last year she thanked "my beautiful Cydney" in reference to the woman widely acknowledged to be her partner. Cynthia Nixon's revelation that she is a lesbian had no effect on her participation in this year's smash "Sex and the City" movie, and if anything, Lindsay Lohan has received more sympathetic press since she began dating DJ Samantha Ronson (and stopped acting so erratically).

Back on the male side, Ian McKellen is probably the most prominent "out" movie actor, having co-starred in the lucrative "Lord of the Rings" and "X-Men" franchises. But at 69, McKellen is well beyond the typical leading-man age, and he's British, which comes with a different set of cultural associations. The dashing Rupert Everett also is British, and his career never took off after he opened up about his sexuality, though making the Madonna bomb “The Next Best Thing” didn’t help.

The greatest male success story may be TV's Neil Patrick Harris, who is openly gay yet plays an enjoyably obnoxious straight man on "How I Met Your Mother." T.R. Knight also continues to fare well on "Grey's Anatomy" despite having essentially been outed by reports of former co-star Isaiah Washington's directing an anti-gay slur at him on set.

But neither star is being asked to sell millions of multiplex tickets. Nor are those actors who have come out well after the peaks of their careers, such as Richard Chamberlain. Rock Hudson acknowledged his homosexuality only after he was terminally ill with AIDS in 1985.

Bibby has written a number of much-speculated-about blind items about a closeted actor dubbed Toothy Tile, who he reported was close to going public with his sexuality until his agents and publicists persuaded him not to—a situation far from unique.

"Toothy Tile is a big star, but Toothy Tile wants to remain a big star, and that's the problem," said Bibby, who is gay himself. "Hollywood is a very creative community, and the creative arts have always been totally homo filled. But it's first and foremost a business. We've got to sell the product out to the masses in the rest of the country where it's not so gay filled."

The question is whether the industry's and actors' fears are justified or whether a megastar's coming out might not be such a big deal after all.

Giuliano hopes his own experience could serve as an example. He'd been the mayor of Tempe, Ariz., for two years when he came out, and he was re-elected four times to serve eight more years.

"I had a very misplaced understanding and a very misplaced fear of what life would be like if I was more authentic and more honest and more out," the GLAAD leader said.

McKellen considered coming out to be positive for his craft, saying in a 2005 interview:

"Acting in my case is no longer about disguise; it's about telling the truth, and my truth is that I'm gay. I'm very happy for people to know that, and then I can get on with telling the truth about the character that I'm playing. That's why I say to other actors: If you really want to be a good actor and a successful one, and you're gay, let everybody know about it."

Urman said that at this point, "I don't think that anything to do with anybody's sexual orientation would or could harm somebody's career."

Bibby isn't so optimistic. "My opinion is it would be painful at first because America has shown it has such a fear of gay people," he said. "It would be very rough going for an actor to find that out, and I don't blame them for not wanting to find that out. They're not politicians. They're performers. They don't want to be held accountable for America's discomfort about homosexuality."

Still, Giuliano, who has seen Van Sant’s film, hopes some Hollywood A-listers follow McKellen's and Milk’s lead.

“The message of ‘Milk’ is as important as it was 30 years ago, which is our visibility matters, and you need to be open,” the GLAAD leader said. “The changes we have seen in our society are because we are more open and the community is more visible than it ever has been.”

[Damien]

I guess people don't dress up for premieres any more. We've become a trashy culture.

[Penelope]

Photos from the NY premiere of Milk (click here)...Franco looks stoned, Chase Crawford looks stunning, somebody please give Rose Byrne a sandwich, Alan Rickman has definitely had a facelift, I could run my fingers through Adrien Grenier's hair for hours, Juliette Lewis is such glorious trashiness, and Valentino Garavani just looks ridiculous.

[rolotomasi99]

intersting.

"The CEO of Cinemark, Alan Stock,
donated $9999 to the Yes on 8 Campaign, but
will now profit from showing MILK in his theaters."

this website helps you steer clear of cinemark theatres.

http://www.nomilkforcinemark.com/

[rolotomasi99]

From Variety's blog:

November 5 Did "Milk" miss the opportunity to change history?

In the election aftermath, Kristopher Tapley poses an intriguing question: "Could an earlier ‘Milk’ release have killed Prop 8?"

??? ??? ??? ???

what a stupid question! that is like saying if BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN had been released prior to the election in 2004 instead of 2005 all those anti-gay constitutional amendments would not have passed. even a purely political and inflammatory film like FAHRENHEIT 9/11 could not alter the presidential election. how could a small art house film like MILK chance anyone's mind or spur anymore peopel to action?

i do think the message will be even more powerful and relevant though. it will certainly help keep the movie in people's mind during oscar season.

[FilmFan720]

From Variety's blog:

November
5 Did "Milk" miss the opportunity to change history?

In the election aftermath, Kristopher Tapley poses an intriguing question: "Could an earlier ‘Milk’ release have killed Prop 8?" As he points out, much of "Milk" is dedicated to the fight against Proposition 6, a 1978 ballot measure that would prevented gay people from working as educators. "The parallels between the campaign chronicled in the movie and the real-life battle over Proposition 8 are striking," he writes. "Harvey Milk (Sean Penn’s career-best portrayal) makes the point, to paraphrase, 'We have to make them understand that they know us.' That message, I think, might have carried a lot of heft if voters had made it to the polls four weeks later.... A studio’s priority is, of course, to shareholders, and 'Milk' is likely to make more money in its current release plan than something earlier in the season. But you can’t help but wonder what might have been. And you can’t 'give ‘em hope' after the fact." (As I posted this, an email from Focus Features arrived to remind me that "Milk" release dates begin November 26.) [In Contention]

[FilmFan720]

Spoilers? Wait a minute, they assassinate him? Dammit, now I don't need to see the movie, way to blow it for me.

[Sonic Youth]

Variety, Hollywood Reporter and Screendaily love it. Looks like a lock to me, as is Penn. Please forgive the spoilers

Milk
By TODD MCCARTHY
VARIETY


A Focus Features release, presented in association with Axon Films, of a Groundswell and Jinks/Cohen Company production. Produced by Dan Jinks, Bruce Cohen. Executive producers, Michael London, Dustin Lance Black, Bruna Papandrea, Barbara A. Hall, William Horberg.
Directed by Gus Van Sant. Screenplay, Dustin Lance Black.

Harvey Milk - Sean Penn
Cleve Jones - Emile Hirsch
Dan White - Josh Brolin
Jack Lira - Diego Luna
Scott Smith - James Franco
Anne Kronenberg - Alison Pill
Mayor Moscone - Victor Garber
John Briggs - Denis O’Hare
Dick Pabich - Joseph Cross
Rick Stokes - Stephen Spinella
Danny Nicoletta - Lucas Grabeel
Jim Rivaldo - Brandon Boyce
David Goodstein - Zvi Howard Rosenman
Michael Wong - Kelvin Yu
Art Agnos - Jeff Koons

After five years spent working on the more experimental fringe, Gus Van Sant fluently returns to the relative mainstream with “Milk,” an adroitly and tenderly observed account of the life of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man voted into significant U.S. public office. Smartly handled study of the San Francisco politician’s powerful effect on individuals and society accurately catches a moment in American political life three decades ago, but is most notable for the surprising and entirely winning performance by Sean Penn in the leading role. Almost the definition of a specialized audience film, this Focus release looks to perform strongly in urban and university-adjacent areas but will have trouble crossing over to a public not into gay, political and social-vanguard issues. Commentators will not fail to note certain parallels with the current political season, encapsulated by its hero’s parting line, “You gotta give ‘em hope.”

Van Sant has always gravitated toward transgressive outcast characters, and none of them traveled so far from the margins into the status quo, or had such convulsive impact, as the real-life Harvey Milk, a New Yorker who, at 40, moved to San Francisco and broke down a significant sociopolitical barrier before being assassinated by a disturbed fellow politician. The normalizing demands of the biopic genre necessarily squeeze the director into a more recognizable format than he has employed since at least “Finding Forrester” eight years ago, and it’s possible that the most ardent fans of his variously beautiful and aggravating subsequent works -- “Gerry,” “Elephant,” “Last Days” and “Paranoid Park” -- will find this one too conventional.

But while “Milk” is unquestionably marked by many mandatory scenes -- the electioneering, outrage at conservative opposition, tension between domestic and public life, insider politicking, public demonstrations, et al. -- the quality of the writing, acting and directing generally invests them with the feel of real life and credible personal interchange, rather than of scripted stops along the way from aspiration to triumph to tragedy. And on a project whose greatest danger lay in its potential to come across as agenda-driven agitprop, the filmmakers have crucially infused the story with qualities in very short supply today -- gentleness and a humane embrace of all its characters, even of the entirely vilifiable gunman, Dan White.

Enormously researched script by Dustin Lance Black (“Big Love,” the indie feature “Pedro”) begins in November 1978, with Milk presciently tape-recording some personal reflections, driven by the awareness that he could easily become the victim of a political assassination, which he in fact was later that month. “Almost everything I did was with an eye on the gay movement,” he admits, and so it is when, in jumping back to 1972, Harvey moves with b.f. Scott Smith (a frizzy-haired, sweet-smiling James Franco) from Gotham to Baghdad by the Bay, determined to do something meaningful with his hitherto uneventful life. The opening stretch fleetly documents the role Harvey and a small group of gay buds, who hung out at Harvey’s Castro Camera shop, played in transforming the Castro district from an unremarkable working-class neighborhood into the gay Mecca it shortly became.

The banter flies easily among these bright young men, who form the nucleus of Harvey’s activist political organization when he runs for office and loses three times, twice for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and once for California State Assembly. Warm but boldly assertive at all times, Harvey builds a strong support system in the Castro, becomes allied with new S.F. Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber) and, against the backdrop of propagandist singer Anita Bryant’s campaigns to repeal gay rights in Florida and elsewhere, takes advantage of new city redistricting to finally win a seat on the Board of Supervisors in 1977.

At this point and beyond, especially during the fight against the attempt by California State Senator John Briggs (Denis O’Hare) to ban gays from teaching in public schools, the film does become overweighted by real and re-created TV reports and docu-like material (actual homemovies and vintage reportage are fluidly mixed with newly shot footage throughout) and rooted in specific issues at the expense of the personal.

In fact, the pic’s least satisfactory interludes are devoted to Harvey’s last important lover, Jack Lira (Diego Luna), a footloose young Mexican who never comfortably coexists with the long-established inner circle. One can surmise there was a strong sexual bond that kept them together, but as Jack increasingly complains about his partner’s busy schedule, he quickly becomes an annoying character, the only person who creates a drag on Harvey’s energy and focus. More insight into this needy, immature fellowwould have helped.

By contrast, another street kid picked up by Harvey, the amusingly brash Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch), proves a constantly vibrant presence as he evolves into a crucial ally and movement leader. The lone woman of consequence, “tough dyke” Anne Kronenberg (Alison Pill), comes aboard to run the successful fourth campaign, while resistance to Harvey’s upfront style is unexpectedly provided by the Advocate publisher David Goodstein (Zvi Howard Rosenman).

But the most surprising, and suggestively inflected, exchanges occur between Harvey and his eventual killer. The city supervisor from a traditional working class district, clean-cut jock Dan White (Josh Brolin) seems distinctly uncomfortable around Harvey; his knee-jerk impulse is to coldly rebuff him, and he believes his Catholicism, and the disposition of his constituents, requires him to counteract Harvey’s gay agenda.

But he is at other times remarkably solicitous, inviting only Harvey, among all the other supervisors, to his son’s christening, and indulging in political horsetrading with his erstwhile opponent (“I think he may be one of us,” Harvey winks to one of his cronies). The pic reveals Harvey’s own unwittingly fateful betrayals of Dan.

But arguably the film’s best scene is between Harvey and Dan in an otherwise empty foyer; an inarticulate plea for understanding in the form of a drunken rant by Dan, the exchange oozes a complicit vibe between the two men, all but confirming Harvey’s earlier suspicions. Brolin’s work is superlatively expressive of the inchoate impulses roiling inside his sorry character.

But good as most of the cast is, the show belongs squarely to Penn. Made to more closely resemble Milk via an elongated nose, which also makes his face look narrower, the actor socks over his characterization of a man he’s made to seem, above all, a really sweet guy, but who crucially possessed the fearlessness and toughness to be a highly successful political motivator, agitator and, ultimately, figurehead of a movement. Penn’s Harvey is a man with a ready laugh, alive to the moment, open to life regardless of neuroses and past tragedies, and acutely aware of one’s limited time on Earth. The explosive anger and fury often summoned by Penn in his work is nowhere to be seen, replaced by a geniality that is as welcome as it is unexpected.

Penn is also an ideal conduit for a characteristic shrewdly underlined in Black’s writing, that being Harvey’s talent for gently but firmly nudging people out of routine or complacent attitudes. Harvey knows how to tweak others with lightly provocative or stimulating comments that break the ice, and Penn lays on just the right amount of casual innuendo to make this crucial personality trait convincing.

Re-dressed to assume its more humdrum look of 30-plus years ago, the Castro represents itself with absolute authenticity; even Castro Camera has been re-created in the precise storefront location it occupied at the time. If anything, Van Sant and his team, including cinematographer Harris Savides, who so strikingly helped David Fincher evoke the same city and general era in “Zodiac,” have downplayed ostentatious period manifestations in costuming, production design and music in a bid to make a naturalistic film with a lived-in look.

----------------------------------------------

Film Review: Milk
By Kirk Honeycutt
Hollywood Reporter

"Milk," written by Dustin Lance Black and directed by Gus Van Sant, is the first great film to look at civil rights from the perspective of the gay movement. The subject, of course, is the late, charismatic San Francisco gay activist and politician of the 1970s, Harvey Milk, played with extraordinary depth and wisdom by Sean Penn. "Milk" resists bumper-sticker identifications: Yes, it's a biopic, a love story, a civil rights movie and sharp political and social commentary. But it transcends any single genre as a very human document that touches first and foremost on the need to give people hope.

The audience for this film is all over the map but probably modest -- the gay and lesbian community for sure and anyone with politics on the brain. And anyone who cares about acting too, not just for Penn but persuasive performances from a large and talented cast.

The film is superbly crafted, covering huge amounts of time, people and the zeitgeist without a moment of lapsed energy or inattention to detail. Even the opening moments -- black-and-white archival footage of cops rousting men covering their faces from gay bars of the '50s and '60s, the kind of harassment that led to the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York -- offer a poignant reminder of what was not that long ago.

The narrative device is a tape recording Milk makes in his final and 48th year to be played in the event of his death. (He received many death threats.) Here he tells the story of his eight years in San Francisco, how he moved there with his lover, Scott Smith (James Franco), founded a camera shop that became a center for the gay community and took up activism to become the "Mayor of Castro Street."
Van Sant and Black cover a lot of distance with a simple approach: The key people in Milk's life deliver the key moments, political strategies emerge from personal convictions and emotions spring from the close relationships among the activists. Thus, the film brings in young street punk-turned-activist Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch); Milk's surprising new lover, Jack Lira (Diego Luna); his campaign manager, Anne Kronenberg (Alison Pill); and fellow supervisor and eventual murderer Dan White (Josh Brolin).

Black's screenplay is based solely on his own original research and interviews, and it shows: The film is richly flavored with anecdotal incidents and details. "Milk" surfaces in a season filled with movies based on real lives, but this is the first one that inspires a sense of intimacy with its subjects.

This allows for unusual moments, such as a couple of phone conversations Milk has with a handicapped gay youth from the Midwest or his electrifying observation that he looked into White's haunted eyes and believes White may be "one of us."

Van Sant moves beyond his experimental filmmaking of the last half-decade for a restrained, unembellished approach. The style is classic filmmaking of the '70s, a film that watches and observes everything and everybody. He makes excellent use of archival footage throughout the period film, especially such images as the Castro district undergoing sweeping demographic changes and the awful moment of Dianne Feinstein's City Hall steps announcement of the assassinations of Mayor Moscone and Milk.

Penn is one of those actors in complete control of his entire instrument. He uses voice, body movements, line readings and something indefinable within his own psyche to transmigrate into another person's body and mind. Franco, meanwhile, demonstrates the dilemma of a person who signed up for a committed relationship but not necessarily a revolution.

Luna is loopy and sometimes, seemingly, just looped as Milk's erratic boyfriend. Brolin is surprisingly sympathetic as a man in over his head, unable to differentiate between friends and foes and clinging to traditional mores in a city caught in the ferment of radical change.

With top contributions from his entire crew, Van Sant captures in "Milk" an entire panoply of clashing passions, opinions and personalities within the gay rights movement that changed a country forever but drove a wedge between its people that remains to this day.


----------------------------------

Screendaily:

Milk
Dir: Gus Van Sant. US. 2008. 128 mins.

Gus Van Sant's most conventional film since Finding Forrester – but far superior ­- Milk is a briskly-told, warmly humanistic and stirring portrait of inspirational gay activist and politician Harvey Milk who was assassinated in San Francisco in 1978. Boasting a set of superb performances by a starry, largely male cast, the film will immediately win over liberal audiences and might make some inroads into a wider demographic, although its very specific focus on gay rights activism will turn off the crossover crowds who adopted Brokeback Mountain. Awards recognition for the film will keep it in the public eye.

Gay audiences worldwide will embrace Milk as perhaps the definitive Hollywood movie about the gay experience. Focusing more on the political struggles and successes of the man rather than dwelling intently on his personal life, Van Sant returns to a time in recent US history when right wing forces in America were actively campaigning against the civil rights of gay men and women. The controversial Proposition 8, which would allow gay marriage in California and is on the election ballot there this week, has attracted the ire of the same forces, making the film as timely as it could be.

Milk's life and death were the subject of an Oscar-winning 1984 documentary by Rob Epstein, and Hollywood has been flirting with making a feature of his life for years. Oliver Stone and Bryan Singer have both been attached to a film of Randy Shilts' biography Mayor Of Castro Street, with actors from Robin Williams to Daniel Day-Lewis to Steve Carell flirting with playing Milk. Van Sant himself was once attached to that project, but instead opted for this Dustin Lance Black screenplay which covers Milk's life from the ages of 40 to his death at 48.

The film is framed by scenes of Milk (Penn) dictating the story of his political life into a tape recorder in the event that he be assassinated. He first appears picking up a young man called Scott Smith (Franco) on the New York subway on his 40th birthday and taking him home. Milk is a closeted man, working for an insurance company, but the two decide to move to San Francisco. They set up a shop (Castro Camera) in the Castro neighbourhood, which would soon become one of the world's most famous gay havens.

Stunned by the police brutality and widespread prejudice against gays, Harvey becomes an outspoken advocate for the community. He enters the world of politics and, after losing several years in a row, is finally elected supervisor for the district. He successfully introduces a citywide ordinance protecting people for being fired because of their sexual orientation and leads the charge against the statewide referendum to fire gay schoolteachers.

Along the way, of course, he draws many enemies – numerous death threats from anonymous sources and a nemesis in another supervisor Dan White (Brolin) who will ultimately take his life.

The film is structured simply and chronologically through the eight years and up to the horrifying murders of Milk and Mayor Moscone by White for which he served only five years' jail time. Van Sant peppers the drama with real-life footage of the time, although only at the end does he show us moving images of the real people.

He also elicits great work from his actors. Penn gives one of the most likeable star turns of his career as Milk, a performance filled with passion, humanity and humour which should firmly lodge him in contention for best actor awards. Emile Hirsch is terrific as his young supporter Cleve Jones, Brolin fine as the damaged Dan White, Diego Luna appropriately shrill as Milk's unhinged lover Jack Lira and James Franco touching and strong as Scott Smith, who left Harvey when his career became all-consuming.

Just as engaging as the film's scenes of activism and protest is its evocation of time and place. From the awful hairstyles to the moustaches, the flairs to the ghastly blouses, Milk offers a delirious insight into San Francisco of the 1970s.



Edited By Sonic Youth on 1225684782

[rolotomasi99]

Harris Savides has varied the grain to suggest everything from 35 to 16 to we're thrown right into the midst of things.

rolo, I think we're missing a paragraph (or two) here....

i double checked, but apparently it is a mistype by the original poster.

here is another quick opinion by someone who saw it.

"We went last night as well.

A lot of dialog was lifted verbatim or nearly verbatim from archival footage that was used in "The Times of Harvey Milk." For me, this was slightly distracting, but I doubt that anyone would care about that if they've not seen the documentary umpty million times like I have.

They got their history right, though. When filmmakers stick that closely to people's actual words and film them in the actual places where the actual events actually took place, then you cannot walk away feeling like you've seen an exaggerated or romanticized version of the story. You walk away feeling like you've seen something authentic, something that can be backed up either by direct documentation or by eyewitness reports, with no speculation having been made by the filmmakers.

And because of that, I believe that their handling of Dan White is fair. Which is actually terribly, terribly important, so tht the phobes cannot point to the film and say that it's a misrepresentation, a demonizing of a good, God-fearing white man. Harvey speculates once that he thinks Dan's a closet case, and it's never mentioned again. And it's the character's speculation, not the filmmakers' speculation.

The film is around two hours long. It did not feel long to me, but it felt like a lot of time had passed, if you catch my drift. They've packed a lot of information and events into a relatively short amount of time.

I heard several people in the audience make the Anita Bryant-Sarah Palin connection.

The intercutting of archival footage with new footage had a very slightly jarring effect a couple of times (especially early on). I don't mean the Anita Bryant or Dianne Feinstein footage. I mean shots of the Castro. The quality of the image changes drastically a few times between, say, this archival shot of Castro Street in the 1970's next to that new shot of the camera shop. Yet, by the same token, they bent over backwards to reenact some news footage of Harvey and to degrade the picture to simulate a 1970's TV image. But that's just me, I pay attention to this kind of picky stuff."