I may have mentioned this before, but Michael Medved is based in our neck of the woods. Well, not in the city, but the suburbs. I've had the displeasure, at a time when I briefly reviewed films, to sit at a table with him and I think he's one of the most dillusional people I've ever come across. He practically pulls stuff right out of his ass to make a statement that doesn't even relate to the actual film.
I just find it sad, truly sad, that these a-holes have to lie to try and convince people that this film isn't worth seeing. But it's not only the success of "Brokeback Mountain" that they're afraid of, it's the possibility of Hollywood making more films along the lines of "BM" if it proves successful at the box office.
Edited By filmgabber on 1135143585
"Winners make the rules. Losers live by them" - the only good line from a horrible movie
Just got back from seeing it. I loved it. I LOVED it. Some minor quibbles, but it's probably going to be my favorite movie of the year.
I am so filled with emotion after seeing this film, I don't know where to begin...I can't write much more, I'm so exhausted right now. So many thoughts, the film hit me with so many personal reflections, that I can't yet get my mind into a cohesive process.
One thing I do know is that Heath Ledger gives one of the greatest, most devastating performances I've ever seen.
"...it is the weak who are cruel, and...gentleness is only to be expected from the strong." - Leo Reston
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
I thought the right-wingers were going to stay away from this in order not to drum up any additional coverage...
I watched Michael Medved and Jeanne Wolf on Bill O'Reilly tonight discussing Brokeback Mountain. O'Reilly's main beef was that the NYTimes and other liberal-leaning publications have been publishing article after article about the film in order to promote the political agendas of gay marriage and gay rights. Jeanne Wolf (seemingly, the only person on the segment who was concerned with dispensing facts) countered with the fact that there was so much attention being paid to the film because of the simple fact that it was so damn good. Men, women, straight, gay, they're all flocking to it and it has to do with the quality of the film, not the success of left-leaning propaganda. O'Reilly said that the movie would not do any business in places like Montana. However, if he had researched his facts at all, he might've learned that the film has already had several enthusiastic openings in Montana, Wyoming, and other traditional 'fly-over' states.
O'Reilly went on to say that the promotion for the movie has clearly left out the fact that both characters go on to marry women and deceive the families they've created by indulging in this affair and that, therefore, the movie was anti-family and anti-marriage. Anyone who has seen the trailer can see that both of the main characters get married In fact, one scene in the preview is the actual marriage of Heath Ledger's character. Moreover, if anything, the movie is promoting tolerance and acceptance since the desultory effects on both families are due to the very lack of these qualities in the 1960's American landscape. Again, misinformation, distortion of facts and just plain lying by Mr. O'Reilly. He went on to say that the 'absymal box office' was, of course, a testament to the film's predictable failure (Jeanne, of course, corrected him by saying that it had actually made a very good B.O. appearance having only been released in a limited amount of theaters). Then, if that wasn't enough, Michael Medved offered that when it's all said and done The Chronicles of Narnia will have made more money in its first weekend than Brokeback will make in its entire run - an estimate based on nothing more than his fervent desire for it to be true. He also stated that Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal were both "box office poison" before being discovered in this film, another completely subjective and un-supported claim. Jeanne tried her best to make these idiots realize the error of their statements. Michael Medved is a total hack.
The only thing I did hear from all of them that happenend to be true was that the movie was very well made and would probably garner a ton of Oscars.
All in all, it was some great free publicity for a film already going down in cinematic history. Thanks, Fox News!
"The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely in her shoulders. She was twenty five and looked it."
I didn't find the sex scenes to be erotic at all. And I'm thinking it was Lee's way of focusing on the emotional elements and the physical comraderie of the relationship between Jack and Ennis than to feature it as something sexual. The sex/romance scenes were just too short to make any kind of expression that it's the dynamic of the relationship Lee wanted to highlight.
"Winners make the rules. Losers live by them" - the only good line from a horrible movie
flipp525 wrote:As a sidenote, did anyone catch the 'meta' moment of Linda Cardenelli's (ER) character wanting to go to nursing school? That was pretty funny even if it was unintentional.
Yeah. I laughed at that one. I've even told some people about it.
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
The movie was phenomenal, completely living up to my expectations. I also have to say I'm kind of haunted by it - it was that emotional of an experience for me. Gyllenhaal, Ledger, and Williams were exceptional, especially Ledger. I truly hope he wins the Oscar for this one. It’s a performance for the books in the tradition of James Dean and Marlon Brando. And I say this as someone who was very impressed with Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance in Capote. It's just did not pack the emotional wallop that Ledger manages to pull off. I was equally impressed with Jake Gyllenhaal's performance, especially in the latter half of the film. His final scene with Ledger was his best moment and felt truly deserved. Anne Hathaway was surprisingly effective in a small role (unlike, filmgabber, I didn't think she was particularly awful). I did, however, feel like she was channeling Sue Ellen from “Dallas” as the film progressed.
The moment after Alma sees the passionate embrace between Ennis and Jack was really well-done by Michelle Williams. As she's staring out in front of her in that decrepit kitchen, you could just see the realization dawning on her that this is her life now, she's trapped in it just as much as Ennis is. Her final scene at Thanksgiving was also very powerful. I wouldn't be surprised to see her become the Oscar frontrunner.
Heath and Jake had a palpable chemistry that really lit up the screen. You completely and totally believe their relationship and attraction to one another. Ennis waiting by the window for Jack to pull up, smoking cigarettes and drinking while he darts his eyes from the window to the door was so true to life.
Where I completely lost it (and when I say 'lost it' I mean I was crying like my mother had just been hit by a truck) was when Ennis opened the closet door after Alma, Jr. had left and he spoke to the postcard and that music came on. I had to restrain myself before I completely broke down. So moving.
What a powerful film. I'm really glad that it was so well-done and has transcended the whole 'gay cowboy movie' label to become a more universal (and tragic) story of two human beings in love. That's what's going to carry this over into mass appeal. The theater in Dupont Circle (Washington, DC) where I saw it was sold out for every show on Saturday and Sunday with people lined up and down the block.
As a sidenote, did anyone catch the 'meta' moment of Linda Cardenelli's (ER) character wanting to go to nursing school? That was pretty funny even if it was unintentional.
"The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely in her shoulders. She was twenty five and looked it."
Hey Penelope, I've gone on multiple-hours roadtrips to go shopping or to just get away, so driving five hours to see the season's best film makes perfect sense. But do try and stay overnight there in Miami, if you can.
"Winners make the rules. Losers live by them" - the only good line from a horrible movie
If it was me, filmgrabber, I may have been referring to the character in the book, cuz I haven't seen the film, yet. But I can't wait any longer--it's not supposed to get to Tampa until January 13, and then at a theater I'd prefer not to see it in. So, Tuesday, I'm driving down to Miami Beach to see it. 5 hour drive (each way), but I simply can't wait any longer. Yeah, I'm nuts, but I haven't taken a road trip in a while, and I like to do such things every once in a while....
"...it is the weak who are cruel, and...gentleness is only to be expected from the strong." - Leo Reston
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
I saw "Brokeback Mountain" last nite with a full house, the place was packed solid.
I must say, on a personal note, I very much related to the story. I kind of didn't know where my ex was coming from and found myself during the movie fitting snuggly into Jack Twist's shoes - wanting to spend more time with someone you truly care for, yet being blamed for complicating his life.
That said, what a wonderful two-hour journey Ang Lee provides. It's a beautiful story told beautifully by actors, who quite frankly, surprised me tremendously. I suspected Heath Ledger had a range, from his brief but convincing showing in "Monster's Ball", but his performance in 'Brokeback' was riveting. I think it was Penelope who said that his character had so many layers, and it's exactly true. He had so many things going on, and in the end he found himself as lonely as he'd ever been in his life. My heart just ached for him.
The only acting component that didn't work for me was Anne Hathaway. Aside from her hair getting blonder in each scene, I think any actress could've played her part. She was as wooden as anything Jessica Simpson has done behind the lens.
I'm still emotionally impacted by the film, nearly an entire day since seeing it. Heath Ledger was right on the money, and Ang Lee's work is nothing short of brilliant.
"Winners make the rules. Losers live by them" - the only good line from a horrible movie
WHAT if they held a culture war and no one fired a shot? That's the compelling tale of "Brokeback Mountain." Here is a heavily promoted American movie depicting two men having sex - the precise sex act that was still a crime in some states until the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws just two and a half years ago - but there is no controversy, no Fox News tar and feathering, no roar from the religious right. "Brokeback Mountain" has instead become the unlikely Oscar favorite, propelled by its bicoastal sweep of critics' awards, by its unexpected dominance of the far less highfalutin Golden Globes and, perhaps most of all, by the lure of a gold rush. Last weekend it opened to the highest per-screen average of any movie this year.
Those screens were in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco - hardly national bellwethers. But I'll rashly predict that the big Hollywood question posed on the front page of The Los Angeles Times after those stunning weekend grosses - "Can 'Brokeback Mountain' Move the Heartland?" - will be answered with a resounding yes. All the signs of a runaway phenomenon are present, from an instant parody on "Saturday Night Live" to the report that a multiplex in Plano, Tex., sold more advance tickets for the so-called "gay cowboy picture" than for "King Kong." "The culture is finding us," James Schamus, the "Brokeback Mountain" producer, told USA Today. "Grown-up movies have never had that kind of per-screen average. You only get those numbers when you're vacuuming up enormous interest from all walks of life."
In the packed theater where I caught "Brokeback Mountain," the trailers included a National Guard recruitment spiel, and the audience was demographically all over the map. The culture is seeking out this movie not just because it is a powerful, four-hankie account of a doomed love affair and is beautifully acted by everyone, starting with the riveting Heath Ledger. The X factor is that the film delivers a story previously untold by A-list Hollywood. It's a story America may be more than ready to hear a year after its president cynically flogged a legally superfluous (and unpassable) constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage for the sole purpose of whipping up the basest hostilities of his electoral base.
By coincidence, "Brokeback Mountain," a movie that is all the more subversive for having no overt politics, is a rebuke and antidote to that sordid episode. Whether it proves a movie for the ages or as transient as "Love Story," it is a landmark in the troubled history of America's relationship to homosexuality. It brings something different to the pop culture marketplace at just the pivotal moment to catch a wave.
Heaven knows there has been no shortage of gay-themed entertainment in recent years. To the tedious point of ubiquity, gay characters, many of them updated reincarnations of the stereotypical fops and fussbudgets of 1930's studio comedies, are at least as well represented as other minorities in prime-time television. Entertainment Weekly has tallied nine movies, including "Capote" and "Rent," with major gay characters this year. But "Brokeback Mountain," besides being more sexually candid than the norm, is not set in urban America, is not comic or camp, and, unlike the breakout dramas "Philadelphia" and "Angels in America," is pre-AIDS.
Its heroes are neither midnight cowboys, drugstore cowboys nor Village People cowboys. As Annie Proulx writes in the brilliant short story from which the movie has been adapted, the two ranch hands, Ennis Del Mar (Mr. Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), are instead simply "high school dropout country boys with no prospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough-mannered, rough-spoken, inured to the stoic life."
They meet and fall in love while tending sheep in the Wyoming wilderness in 1963. That was the year of Martin Luther King Jr.'s march on Washington and Betty Friedan's "Feminine Mystique," but gay Americans, and not just in Wyoming, were stranded, still waiting for the world to start spinning forward. Over the next two decades of sporadic reunions and long separations, both Ennis and Jack get married and have children; it barely occurs to them to do otherwise. In their place and time, there is no vocabulary to articulate their internal conflicts, no path to steer their story to a happily-ever-after Hollywood ending. Before they know it, they are, in Ms. Proulx's words, "no longer young men with all of it before them."
Ennis's and Jack's acute emotions - yearning, loneliness, disappointment, loss, love and, yes, lust - are affecting because they are universal. But while the screenplay, by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, adheres closely to the Proulx original, it even more vividly roots the movie in the rural all-American milieu, with its forlorn honky-tonks and small-town Fourth of July picnics, familiar from elegiac McMurtry works like "The Last Picture Show." More crucially, the script adds detail to Ennis's and Jack's wives (as do Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway, who play them) so that we can implicitly, and without any on-screen moralizing, see the cost inflicted on entire families, not just on Ennis and Jack, when gay people must live a lie.
Though "Brokeback Mountain" is not a western, it's been directed by Ang Lee with the austerity and languorous gait of a John Ford epic. These aesthetics couldn't be more country miles removed from "The Birdcage" or "Will & Grace." The audience is forced to recognize that gay people were fixtures in the red state of Wyoming (and every other corner of the country, too) long before Matthew Shepard and Mary Cheney were born. Without a single polemical speech, this laconic film dramatizes homosexuality as an inherent and immutable identity, rather than some aberrant and elective "agenda" concocted by conspiratorial "elites" in Chelsea, the Castro and South Beach, as anti-gay proselytizers would have it. Ennis and Jack long for a life together, not for what gay baiters pejoratively label a "lifestyle."
But in truth the audience doesn't have to be coerced to get it. This is where the country has been steadily moving of late. "Brokeback Mountain," a Hollywood product after all, is not leading a revolution but ratifying one, fleshing out - quite literally - what most Americans now believe. It's not for nothing that the proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage vanished as soon as the election was over. Polls show that a large American majority support equal rights for gay couples as long as the unions aren't labeled "marriage" - and given the current swift pace of change, that reservation, too, will probably fade in the next 5 to 10 years.
The history of "Brokeback Mountain" as a film project in itself crystallizes how fast the climate has shifted. Mr. McMurtry and Ms. Ossana bought the screen rights to the Proulx story after it was published in The New Yorker in 1997. That was the same year the religious right declared a fatwa on Disney because Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet in her ABC prime-time sitcom. In the eight years it took "Brokeback Mountain" to overcome Hollywood's shilly-shallying and at last be made, the Disney boycott collapsed and Ms. DeGeneres's star rose. She's now a mainstream daytime talk-show host competing with Oprah. No one has forgotten she's a lesbian. No one cares.
ANOTHER startling snapshot of this progress can be found in a culture-war skirmish that unfolded just as "Brokeback Mountain" was arriving at the multiplex. The American Family Association of Tupelo, Miss., a leader in the 1997 anti-"Ellen" crusade, claimed this month that its threat of a boycott had led Ford to stop advertising its Jaguar and Land Rover lines in glossy gay magazines. Last week Ford, under fire from gay civil-rights organizations and no doubt many other mainstream customers, essentially told the would-be boycotters to get lost by publicly announcing that it would not only resume its Jaguar and Land Rover ads in gay publications, but advertise other brands in them as well.
As far as I can tell, the only blowhard in the country to turn up on television to declare culture war on "Brokeback Mountain" also has an affiliation with the American Family Association. By contrast, as Salon reported last week, other family-values ayatollahs have made a conscious decision to ignore the movie, lest they drum up ticket sales by turning it into a SpongeBob SquarePants cause célèbre. Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America imagined that the film might just go away if he and his peers stayed mum. Audiences "don't want to see two guys going at it," he told Salon. "It's that simple."
So he might wish. The truth is that the millions of moviegoers soon to swoon over the star-crossed gay cowboys of "Brokeback Mountain" can probably put up with the sight of "two guys going at it." It's the all too American tragedy of what happens to these men afterward that neither our hearts nor consciences can so easily shake.
"...it is the weak who are cruel, and...gentleness is only to be expected from the strong." - Leo Reston
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
Yes, Sonic, I liked it despite the worst projection problems I've had in a theatre since Adapation - and at the same theatre, mind you.
The film started out stretched with the top of the film at the bottom. They soon fixed the top to bottom problem, but continued to stretch the film causing one woman to scream "they look fat, they're not fat!" The most annoying thing, though, was that the boom mike kept appearing in mid shots and disappearing in close-ups. Finally, just before the big sex scene, they shut it down, changed the lens and brought it back out of focus causing the audience to grown until they brought it back into focus. Only about six people walked out, demanding their money back.
Larry McMurtry ought to get some kind of life achievement award. No one alive has breathed more life into the almost dead western genre. From Hud to The Last Picture Show to Lonesome Dove to co-writing the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain, he just keeps coming up with brilliant takes on the subject.
The film is not perfect. There are long stretches with peripheral characters that are clearly put there to stretch the story out, and most of the female characters are stereotypes, but the mournful music and end title song, the cinematography, editing, spare costumes, writing, direction, editing and performances by Ledger, Gyllenhaal and Williams are all award worthy, especilly Ledger. This could easily become the most nominated independant film with up to 12 nods, thouigh I suspect it will fall a bit short of that number.
I think the reason it's dominating the year-end awards is two-fold. One, to thumb a collective nose at the reactionary Bush administration and two, to thumb a collective nose at bloated, over-produced films that emphasize special effects over flesh and blood characters. It's no accident that BBM's Globe comeptiton are equally small films.
Big Magilla wrote:
The film is about two people who belong together, but because of societal influences can't have a life together. This is a theme that has resonated in literature and drama for centuries. It's Romeo and Juliet, it's Tristan and Isolde, it's Beauty and the Beast. It's something anyone can relate to, and in Heath Ledger's tightly wound macho man, we have one of the great male performances of all time. His stoicism rivals that of Robert Donat's Mr. Chips and Paul Scofield's Thomas Moore. His angst is as palpable as Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy James Dean's Cal Trask and Jim Stark. It evokes Gary Cooper and John Wayne at their best. In short, it's an everyman performance...
Big Magilla wrote:All the awards laid on Brokeback Mountain may entice audiences who wouldn't ordinarily flock to a gay themed film to see it. Once seen, it may change a few minds. That's what the bigots are afraid of.
That IS probably the main reason why they changed the rating. The review was very complimentary to the film and didn't out and out condemned homosexuality. (Merely said that it was against Catholic teachings and that some Catholic viewers might find it offensive).
To their defense, they did give Kinsey and Vera Drake equally glowing reviews.
Ah, yes, the same organization that sees Hary Potter as a dangerous influence on your children and the box office batle between King Kong and Narnia as the battle between King Kong and the King of Kings.
There has to be something wrong with a reviewer who counts the number of expletives in a film and then chronicles them in explicit detail for his puritanical readers. The Legion of Decency, or whatever name they go by nowadays, lost its influence on society decades ago and won't get it back any time soon. In the 50s they could keep condemned films like Baby Doll from playing neighborhood theatres, but by the 60s when they condemned films like Rosemary's Baby nobody paid them the slightest attention.
All the awards laid on Brokeback Mountain may entice audiences who wouldn't ordinarily flock to a gay themed film to see it. Once seen, it may change a few minds. That's what the bigots are afraid of.
The film is about two people who belong together, but because of societal influences can't have a life together. This is a theme that has resonated in literature and drama for centuries. It's Romeo and Juliet, it's Tristan and Isolde, it's Beauty and the Beast. It's something anyone can relate to, and in Heath Ledger's tightly wound macho man, we have one of the great male performances of all time. His stoicism rivals that of Robert Donat's Mr. Chips and Paul Scofield's Thomas Moore. His angst is as palpable as Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy James Dean's Cal Trask and Jim Stark. It evokes Gary Cooper and John Wayne at their best. In short, it's an everyman performance and that's why the bigots don't want you to see it. To paraphrase Diane Keaton's description of her deaf, gay son in The Family Stone, he's more normal than any a--hole at the table. The bigots don't want you to know that.
