Brokeback Mountain Forum @ ennisjack.com
The Movie & Story => News Coverage, Reviews & Awards => Topic started by: monicita on Feb 20, 2006, 06:31 AM
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Ok, here goes for the new week:
I'll start with Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian (Feb. 20 edition):
http://film.guardian.co.uk/awards/news/0,,1713542,00.html
Here is my favourite part:
Having said which, the sheer quality of Brokeback Mountain is unarguable, and its continued success is a brilliant, almost miraculous repudiation of bigotry and homophobia. The poster of the two heroes in dramatic, symmetrical profile was intended to recall Leo and Kate in Titanic - but those heterosexuals never came up with anything as gloriously, swooningly romantic as this.
The Midas touch of director Ang Lee, which had appeared to desert him for his uncertain movie version of The Incredible Hulk, has been miraculously restored. Jake Gyllenhaal, the best supporting actor winner, has matured more than any Hollywood actor of his generation and it is right and proper that the adapted screenplay award should go to Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana for their richly sensitive opening out of E Annie Proulx's short story.
British optimism goes west
Four Baftas for Brokeback Mountain, just one for The Constant Gardener
Peter Bradshaw
Monday February 20, 2006
The Guardian
Brokeback Mountain cast, Baftas 2006
Mountain highs ... Jake Gyllenhaal (best supporting actor), Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams, director Ang Lee (best director) and producer James Schamus (best film). Photograph: Ian West/PA
What a worthy triumph - yet what a disappointment for British hopes. Ang Lee's cowboy romance Brokeback Mountain thoroughly deserved its four Baftas, but a few tuxedos may be going back to Moss Bros this morning drenched with tears at a dull result for the big British contender: the sizzling version of John Le Carré's The Constant Gardener.
For days, it has been impossible to open a paper without seeing a picture of Bafta nominee Rachel Weisz, who played the passionate activist so well. This was supposed to have been Rachel's night. As it was, she lost out to Reese Witherspoon for her performance in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line, and this looks like being repeated when Oscars night arrives. Witherspoon's was a wonderful performance, and no one could quarrel with her glittering prize, but Weisz getting a Bafta would have been that bit more satisfying. There was, however, homegrown pride at Thandie Newton's Bafta for her performance in the LA race drama Crash.
Article continues
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Hey all, looks like Brokeback did good again - Took the Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Support Actor (for Jake) awards at the British Film Awards. Sorry to hear though that Heath Ledger was passed over for Best Actor which went to Philip Seymour Hoffman for "Capote". To read more go to: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11453242/
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thanks for the post. people really get this film. the tension mounts!
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'Brokeback' Takes Four Prizes in London By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer
Sun Feb 19, 6:12 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060219/ap_en_mo/british_academy_awards_2
LONDON - "Brokeback Mountain" took four awards including best picture Sunday at the British Academy Film Awards, boosting its hopes for the Oscars in two weeks' time.
The film beat out a literary biopic "Capote," L.A. story "Crash," 1950s drama "Good Night, and Good Luck" and the British favorite "The Constant Gardener."
"The Constant Gardener," a spy thriller and love story, went into the ceremony with 10 nominations, but took only one award, for editing. "Memoirs of a Geisha" won three awards, for cinematography, music and costume design.
Ang Lee was named best director for "Brokeback," which is up for eight Academy Awards on March 5. Jake Gyllenhaal won the best supporting actor prize for playing Jack Twist, one of two cowpokes who fall in love over the course of a Wyoming summer.
Gyllenhaal said onstage that the movie, whose commercial success is unprecedented for a gay-themed film, "means even more to me socially than it does artistically."
"I've had a lot of people say to me after the film, to my surprise, 'Thank you for making it,'" Gyllenhaal told reporters backstage. "It's made a social impression, and that social impression to me is the aftermath of an artistic impression, and so much more important."
Lee thanked the British people for their support.
"I don't know what makes me so connect to you," he said. "I'm pretty sure it's not the food."
Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, who adapted Annie Proulx's short story, won the adapted screenplay prize.
Gyllenhaal's co-star Heath Ledger was beaten out for the best-actor prize by Philip Seymour Hoffman for his depiction of the troubled writer Truman Capote in "Capote."
Reese Witherspoon was named best actress for playing June Carter Cash, the wife and muse of country great Johnny Cash, in "Walk the Line."
Thandie Newton took the best supporting actress award for "Crash," an edgy depiction of racial divisions in modern-day Los Angeles. The film, which had nine nominations, also won the prize for best original screenplay.
A host of stars brought Hollywood glitz to rainy London as they walked a sodden red carpet in Leicester Square.
George Clooney, Charlize Theron, Renee Zellweger, "Desperate Housewives'" Felicity Huffman, "The O.C."'s Mischa Barton and "Crash" star Matt Dillon were cheered by hundreds of fans huddled under ponchos and umbrellas.
Clooney went home empty-handed despite three nominations, as director for his study of repressive 1950s anti-Communism, "Good Night, and Good Luck," and as supporting actor for that film and for political thriller "Syriana."
But he said he was pleased that political cinema was undergoing a renaissance.
"In our country we hadn't talked about politics or anything interesting since Watergate," Clooney said on the red carpet. "Now you go to a coffee shop and people are talking about politics. It's good."
In other awards, animation romp "Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" was named best British film, beating nominees including "The Constant Gardener" and "Pride and Prejudice."
"Pride and Prejudice" director Joe Wright won the award for best first-time writer, producer or director.
"De Battre Mon Coeur S'est Arrete" ("The Beat That My Heart Skipped") — an acclaimed French film about a man torn between a love of music and a life of crime — was named best film not in the English language.
Producer David Puttnam received the Academy Fellowship for outstanding contribution to the film industry.
In a nod to the often-unsung professionals who make movie magic, the award for outstanding British contribution to cinema went to veteran gaffer — head electrician — Robert (Chuck) Finch and his assistant, or best boy, Bill Merrell.
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Gyllenhaal: 'Totally unexpected'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4730878.stm
Brokeback Mountain star Jake Gyllenhaal beat George Clooney, Matt Dillon and Don Cheadle to win best supporting actor at the British Academy Film Awards.
Gyllenhaal plays gay cowboy Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain
For me, this was totally unexpected. It was such an honour just to be nominated.
I feel like I've always been supported by the British public. It's been so wonderful. Ever since I was on the stage in the West End, and in Donnie Darko, I feel like the British were the first to champion that.
This award is premature I think, but I'll take it.
I think if George Clooney were only one nominee - if he weren't twins tonight - he would have won. His movies are amazing. He has such courage as a film-maker. Particularly given the position that he is in.
That such a popular person can still stand up and say what is in his heart, to me is more admirable than anything.
I think all films are political, no matter what - whether they are asking you to ignore your everyday life or whether they are asking you engage with it.
With this film, in particular, I've had a lot of people say to me. 'thank you for making it...I've been waiting for this film since I was born'.
To have people go into the theatre and have an experience like that - to feel it's made a social impression, that social impression to me is the aftermath of an artistic impression, and so much more important.
When I read the script I just immediately responded to it. Every love story has its obstacles - this is one of those last great obstacles. It moved me like any love story.
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Thanks for all the news update. Please keep them coming.
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http://wvgazette.com/section/Perspective/2006021825
a must read
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thank you ennisandjack....
yes JAKE was absolutely TRUE @ BAFTA. ......... & now reading his comments......brings tears in my eyes - so joy :'( :'(
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Hollywood Reporter
Feb. 20, 2006
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/international/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002035271
'Brokeback' tops BAFA mountain with four awards
By Stuart Kemp
LONDON -- Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain" lassoed four prizes -- best film, best director, best adapted screenplay for Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, and best supporting actor for Jake Gyllenhaal -- to top the Orange British Academy Film Awards Sunday.
Philip Seymour Hoffman was named best actor for "Capote" and Reese Witherspoon won as best actress for "Walk the Line." Thandie Newton won as best supporting actress in "Crash."
James Schamus, who produced "Brokeback" with co-scripter Ossana, noted it was a "gay shepherd movie" and not a gay cowboy movie. He thanked all at Focus and his "chief shepherd Ang Lee" for putting the movie together. He described producing "Brokeback" as "the greatest professional part of my life."
Lee told the gathered press that after "The Hulk," he had been very stressed. "I felt very blessed to work with James again," Lee said. Schamus helped produce Lee's "Sense And Sensibility" over 10 years ago. Lee also thanked the film's backers for giving an Asian director the opportunity to make such a film.
Gyllenhaal described backstage just how "amazed" he was to secure the award. "This film has made a social impression on me and it has already had a political impact," Gyllenhaal said.
Link to rest of article:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/international/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002035271
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thank you ennisandjack....
yes JAKE was absolutely TRUE @ BAFTA. ......... & now reading his comments......brings tears in my eyes - so joy :'( :'(
He's lovely isnt' he :)
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Hollywood Reporter
Feb. 20, 2006
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/international/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002035271
'Brokeback' tops BAFA mountain with four awards
By Stuart Kemp
LONDON -- Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain" lassoed four prizes -- best film, best director, best adapted screenplay for Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, and best supporting actor for Jake Gyllenhaal -- to top the Orange British Academy Film Awards Sunday.
Philip Seymour Hoffman was named best actor for "Capote" and Reese Witherspoon won as best actress for "Walk the Line." Thandie Newton won as best supporting actress in "Crash."
James Schamus, who produced "Brokeback" with co-scripter Ossana, noted it was a "gay shepherd movie" and not a gay cowboy movie. He thanked all at Focus and his "chief shepherd Ang Lee" for putting the movie together. He described producing "Brokeback" as "the greatest professional part of my life."
Lee told the gathered press that after "The Hulk," he had been very stressed. "I felt very blessed to work with James again," Lee said. Schamus helped produce Lee's "Sense And Sensibility" over 10 years ago. Lee also thanked the film's backers for giving an Asian director the opportunity to make such a film.
Gyllenhaal described backstage just how "amazed" he was to secure the award. "This film has made a social impression on me and it has already had a political impact," Gyllenhaal said.
Link to rest of article:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/international/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002035271
What amazes me, is the constant support Jake and Heath have for BBM. They took risks, they were aware of it, they just stand by the movie and Annie's short story. They are apart of DPU I guess?
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Don't know if this is the right thread or if these 'For Your Consideration' ads are posted elsewhere. I pasted two together to make a screen saver. The rest of them can be seen at the link here: http://www.oscarwatch.com/FYC/Focus_Features/Brokeback_Mountain/ Just click on next to see a succession of FYC ads.
(https://ennisjack.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg453.imageshack.us%2Fimg453%2F3741%2Fiswearfycss7wv.jpg&hash=4be155023638c5f35bc5cb87c9b83f328476d813)
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Hollywood Reporter
Feb. 20, 2006
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/international/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002035271
'Brokeback' tops BAFA mountain with four awards
By Stuart Kemp
LONDON -- Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain" lassoed four prizes -- best film, best director, best adapted screenplay for Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, and best supporting actor for Jake Gyllenhaal -- to top the Orange British Academy Film Awards Sunday.
Philip Seymour Hoffman was named best actor for "Capote" and Reese Witherspoon won as best actress for "Walk the Line." Thandie Newton won as best supporting actress in "Crash."
James Schamus, who produced "Brokeback" with co-scripter Ossana, noted it was a "gay shepherd movie" and not a gay cowboy movie. He thanked all at Focus and his "chief shepherd Ang Lee" for putting the movie together. He described producing "Brokeback" as "the greatest professional part of my life."
Lee told the gathered press that after "The Hulk," he had been very stressed. "I felt very blessed to work with James again," Lee said. Schamus helped produce Lee's "Sense And Sensibility" over 10 years ago. Lee also thanked the film's backers for giving an Asian director the opportunity to make such a film.
Gyllenhaal described backstage just how "amazed" he was to secure the award. "This film has made a social impression on me and it has already had a political impact," Gyllenhaal said.
Link to rest of article:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/international/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002035271
Thankx for posting!
Jake sounds better by the minute!!!
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Starpulse News Blog
Heath Ledger Chooses Jake Gyllenhaal as Daughter's Godfather
http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2006/02/21/heath_ledger_chooses_jake_gyllenhaal_as_
Heath Ledger has asked 'Brokeback Mountain' co-star Jake Gyllenhaal to be his baby's godfather. The actors got so close while shooting the gay cowboy drama, Heath decided he wanted Jake to be involved in his daughter's life. The 'Donnie Darko' star admits he was thrilled to be asked to help raise little Matilda, Heath's daughter with partner Michelle Williams.
Jake told Daily Mirror newspaper: "Heath and I are best friends now, making the film was very intense for us. I'm actually godfather to Heath's daughter Matilda which is an amazing honor."
Heath recently revealed he loves his new role as a dad - even though all he does now is cook and wash up. The Hollywood hunk says he's happily settled into domestic life since Michelle gave birth last October.
He said at the time: "My life right now is, I wouldn't say reduced to food, but my duties in life are that I wake up, cook breakfast, clean the dishes, prepare lunch, clean those dishes, go to the market, get fresh produce, cook dinner, clean those dishes and then sleep if I can.
"And I love it. I actually adore it."
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KATE MOSS A LESBIAN
http://www.vogue.co.uk/vogue_daily/story/story.asp?stid=33118&date=&sid=
KATE MOSS has apparently been approached by Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee to play one of Dusty Springfield's early lovers in a biopic of the singer's life. In a coupling that is bound to threaten all previous box office records, Charlize Theron is thought to have been lined up to play the lead role in the film, which will feature Springfield's life from her birth in Hampstead to her death from breast cancer in 1999. "Kate is the ideal choice to play the love of Dusty's early life," a source told ananova.com. "She is beautiful, aloof and she epitomises swinging London. There'll probably be sexual scenes but as Ang is behind the cameras they will be very tastefully done. Kate's character breaks Dusty's heart and sparks off the chain of tumultuous relationships that dogged her throughout her life." (February 21 2006, AM)
My comment: I'm really happy that a lesbian story might be made that treats the subject and the women with respect. However, I don't like the hypocritical attitude some people take where they have no problem with (lipstick) lesbianism but hate gay men. Its discriminatory.
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Starpulse News Blog
Heath Ledger Chooses Jake Gyllenhaal as Daughter's Godfather
http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2006/02/21/heath_ledger_chooses_jake_gyllenhaal_as_
Jake told Daily Mirror newspaper: "Heath and I are best friends now, making the film was very intense for us. I'm actually godfather to Heath's daughter Matilda which is an amazing honor."
Thanks for posting, ennisandjack. I saw Jake's comment on towleroad earlier today. I'm so glad the two actors have become friends, it really seems as if BBM is making its own family ! :D
http://towleroad.typepad.com/towleroad/
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Brokeback Fever :D
http://nursing.advanceweb.com/common/Editorial/Editorial.aspx?CC=67419&CP=1
By Leslie H. Nicoll, RN
Forget Avian Flu.
There’s a new disease sweeping the land, with the potential to infect millions of people and wreak havoc on the nation’s economy through thousands of hours of lost worker productivity.
It’s called “Brokeback Fever”.
Brokeback Fever was first identified in 1997 when the short story, “Brokeback Mountain,” by author E. Annie Proulx, was published in the New Yorker.
However, due to limited distribution and a small reading audience, the disease was kept in check.
Now, with the release of the movie and its award winning status (Venice Film Festival, Critics Circle, Golden Globes, 8 Academy Award nominations, and numerous other accolades) it is likely that the disease will reach epidemic proportions in America and, potentially, throughout the world.
Etiology
Epidemiologic study has identified the zero case as Diana Ossana, coauthor (with Larry McMurtry) of the screenplay for the film.
A self-described insomniac, Ossana read the story one sleepless night and in her words, “was weeping by the end; deep gut-wrenching sobs.”
This, in fact, is a classic symptom of Brokeback Fever.
Ossana, in an effort to assuage her symptoms, optioned the story and wrote the screenplay with McMurtry.
Through many long years, the story was always in her mind. It is not known if release of the film has resolved Ossana’s illness; she has chosen not to publicly reveal that information.
Transmission & Symptoms
Brokeback Fever can be contracted in a variety of ways.
Most common is reading the short story or seeing the movie. However, the illness has also been identified in people who have read about the movie, through reviews or interviews with those involved in its production, but have not yet seen the film.
This latter form of infection has come about through the limited release strategy of the film’s distributor, Focus Features. It appears that indirect infection is no less virulent than the direct form of the disease.
Symptoms include obsessive thinking about the movie/story, disturbed sleep patterns, weeping/sobbing, and a need to discuss it endlessly with family, friends, and coworkers.
Some have reported physical symptoms, including aching joints, throbbing head, and a mild depression that can last for hours or days.
Additional symptoms that have been identified include obsessive reading about the movie (reviews, interviews, etc), listening to the soundtrack repeatedly, and a desire to write fan letters to authors Proulx, Ossana, and McMurtry, director Ang Lee, and stars Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway.
Click for rest of article
http://nursing.advanceweb.com/common/Editorial/Editorial.aspx?CC=67419&CP=1
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Wah Gawd! :P
From a serious nursing magazine...
Too funny ;D ;D ;D
Thanks for posting.
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(https://ennisjack.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg453.imageshack.us%2Fimg453%2F3741%2Fiswearfycss7wv.jpg&hash=4be155023638c5f35bc5cb87c9b83f328476d813)
Beautiful pic. Thanks for posting.
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(https://ennisjack.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg453.imageshack.us%2Fimg453%2F3741%2Fiswearfycss7wv.jpg&hash=4be155023638c5f35bc5cb87c9b83f328476d813)
Beautiful pic. Thanks for posting.
You got me! :'( :'( :'(
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by Nick Papps - News.com.au, 20 February 2006
Heath Ledger is at the centre of a $13 million guerrilla-style campaign to win Oscar votes.
Ledger's role in the film Brokeback Mountain - the favourite for Best Picture - has been mounting a battle to win votes at next month's Academy Awards.
The tactics include pasting posters outside the offices of Academy voters, having Brokeback clothes exhibitions at voters' cinemas and even holding a strange career honour night for 26-year-old Ledger.
As the Oscar race heads to the February 28 deadline when votes must be cast, The Daily Telegraph has been told lavish parties are being held by several best picture nominees in an illegal bid to win votes from the 5798 members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
Oscars expert Tom O'Neil said he was aware of parties held to woo Oscar voters, in breach of Academy rules. But there was no evidence that Brokeback Mountain was one of them.
"There's a lot of illegal wooing of Academy voters going on right now," he said. "It's illegal to have a party to target academy members."
One source said that Brokeback Mountain was "running their campaign like a political campaign" and was spending $13 million to promote the film which cost $18 million to make.
The source said nothing was being left to chance in a bid to get the best picture award and best actor award for Heath Ledger.
Recently, Ledger and his Brokeback Mountain co-star have been appearing in a series of posters put up outside the headquarters of the Screen Actors Guild.
Speculation is mounting that the controversial film about gay cowboys may be facing an anti-gay backlash from Academy voters.
"There is a feeling that old straight members of the Academy like Tony Curtis are saying they're not watching Brokeback Mountain and that this film is not important," Mr O'Neil said.
The Academy Awards will be held on March 5.
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Oscars expert Tom O'Neil said he was aware of parties held to woo Oscar voters, in breach of Academy rules. But there was no evidence that Brokeback Mountain was one of them.
"There's a lot of illegal wooing of Academy voters going on right now," he said. "It's illegal to have a party to target academy members."
Speculation is mounting that the controversial film about gay cowboys may be facing an anti-gay backlash from Academy voters.
"There is a feeling that old straight members of the Academy like Tony Curtis are saying they're not watching Brokeback Mountain and that this film is not important," Mr O'Neil said.
The Academy Awards will be held on March 5.
Where are you Crash? Are you still partying? (Joking.. right?)
"But there was no evidence that Brokeback Mountain was one of them."
Good BBM, you should not cheat like others movies ;D
Speculation is mounting that the controversial film about gay cowboys may be facing an anti-gay backlash from Academy voters.
"There is a feeling that old straight members of the Academy like Tony Curtis are saying they're not watching Brokeback Mountain and that this film is not important," Mr O'Neil said.
Humm, then it's unfair. Oscar should fire the old straight members then! Like I said, straight guys who are comfortable with this movie are the "real" straight guys. I don't believe there are many straights female members would do this, woman are clever and more open.
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Here's a link to a major feature in USA Today, 2-22-2006, 'Milestone, or Movie of the Moment?" I've pasted some of the text below.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2006-02-21-brokeback_x.htm
Brokeback also is freighted with expectations not foisted on a film in years. It leads a raft of social-issues films that are dominating the awards season. Some hail the picture as the one that will change not only how Hollywood portrays gay characters but also how gay men and lesbians are accepted by mainstream America. Those are mighty claims for a $14 million Western seen by fewer people in the three months since its release than who saw Dancing with the Stars on television last week. (Related story: Response 'surprisingly warm')
Admirers say the film is erasing Hollywood's homosexual stereotypes and raising consciousness of gay rights. Critics say Brokeback's destiny is to be remembered more for its marketing than its artistic achievements.
"It's brave to do a movie like that," says Terrence Howard, an Oscar nominee for best actor for his work in Hustle & Flow. "Sometimes you've got to say, 'To hell with audience reaction. We've got something to say.' We could be at the start of a cultural revolution."
...
Gay actor and writer Bruce Vilanch says that though he applauds Brokeback's illumination of a "new kind of gay person in Hollywood," the industry "is hardly out of the closet. I don't think you're going to see openly gay leading men or action heroes until you see openly gay football and hockey players. It's the last plateau of macho. But at least it has people talking."
And that, Judy Shepard says, might be all the movie needs to do. The death of her gay son, Matthew, in 1998 stirred a national debate over violence against gays. The murder is referenced vaguely in a scene in Brokeback.
Shortly before his death, her son gave her a copy of the story that inspired the film, Shepard says.
She doubts the movie will have an immediate effect on gay rights "because some people are ashamed to go see it. Even some of my friends — my friends — say it's just a gay cowboy movie and are afraid of something like that."
But when people can rent it privately, "I think they'll see it how I see it: as a story that's trying to say that you can't help who you fall in love with. If it opens just a few eyes to that, then it's done a good thing."
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"But when people can rent it privately, 'I think they'll see it how I see it: as a story that's trying to say that you can't help who you fall in love with. If it opens just a few eyes to that, then it's done a good thing.'"
I think she's definately right about that.
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Brokeback Fever :D
http://nursing.advanceweb.com/common/Editorial/Editorial.aspx?CC=67419&CP=1
By Leslie H. Nicoll, RN
Forget Avian Flu.
There’s a new disease sweeping the land, with the potential to infect millions of people and wreak havoc on the nation’s economy through thousands of hours of lost worker productivity.
It’s called “Brokeback Fever”.
I love it !!!!!!!!!!!
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Shortly before his death, her son gave her a copy of the story that inspired the film, Shepard says
Wow I didn't know that. Eerie :'(
Interesting article thanks for posting it.
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Wow, all one can say.
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http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2006-02-21-brokeback_x.htm
'Brokeback Mountain': Milestone or movie of the moment?
By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY
It has yet to win an Academy Award. It has never been the No. 1 film in theaters. Not that many people have seen it.
Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal star as conflicted cowboys in the much ballyhooed Brokeback Mountain.
Focus Features
Yet Brokeback Mountain already is The Movie. The film is the punch line of jokes, the subject of Internet parodies and the front-runner for the Oscars on March 5. Oprah plugged the gay-cowboy drama on her show. Howard Stern gave it a thumbs up. "Have you seen Brokeback?" has become a dinner-party Rorschach test of gay tolerance.
Brokeback also is freighted with expectations not foisted on a film in years. It leads a raft of social-issues films that are dominating the awards season. Some hail the picture as the one that will change not only how Hollywood portrays gay characters but also how gay men and lesbians are accepted by mainstream America. Those are mighty claims for a $14 million Western seen by fewer people in the three months since its release than who saw Dancing with the Stars on television last week. (Related story: Response 'surprisingly warm')
Admirers say the film is erasing Hollywood's homosexual stereotypes and raising consciousness of gay rights. Critics say Brokeback's destiny is to be remembered more for its marketing than its artistic achievements.
"It's brave to do a movie like that," says Terrence Howard, an Oscar nominee for best actor for his work in Hustle & Flow. "Sometimes you've got to say, 'To hell with audience reaction. We've got something to say.' We could be at the start of a cultural revolution."
Others maintain that Brokeback has become a tool of the political left and evidence of Hollywood's disconnect with middle America. Some in the film industry wonder whether the attention surrounding Brokeback isn't more the result of canny salesmanship than a seismic shift in sexual attitudes.
‘Brokeback’ leads the pack
Brokeback Mountain hasn’t hit the
$100 million mark in ticket sales,
which defines a blockbuster. But it
has earned more than the other
films up for the best-picture Oscar:
Brokeback Mountain: $72M
Crash: $53.4M
Munich: $45.4M
Good Night, and Good Luck: $29.3M
Capote: $22.1M
Sources: Nielsen EDI, Box Office Mojo
"It's ridiculous," film critic Michael Medved says. "Everyone knows about this movie because of relentless publicity, not great controversy or popularity. I have to remind myself it's a good movie."
No one seems more awestruck by the attention than Brokeback director Ang Lee, the Taiwanese-born filmmaker who says he's rattled by the reaction to his take on the Annie Proulx short story that inspired the film.
"It's a little overwhelming," he says. "I was worried about it just making its money back."
The story of two cowboys who struggle with their love for each other has been seen by about 12 million Americans and has taken in about $72 million. It leads all films with eight Academy Awards nominations and is widely regarded as the favorite to win the Oscars for best picture and director.
More important, Brokeback "is zeitgeisty," Entertainment Weekly's Dave Karger says.
The movie's oft-quoted line "I wish I knew how to quit you" is making the pop-culture circuit, a staple of the Lenos and Lettermans of late night. President Bush and Vice President Cheney have been plastered on spoof posters. The title also has become a derogatory term: Students at Gonzaga University in Spokane were reprimanded by the school this month for chanting "Brokeback Mountain!" to opposing basketball players, suggesting they were gay.
Encouraging discussion
Meanwhile, gay-rights groups are embracing the film in much the same way churches embraced The Passion of the Christ. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has established an online Brokeback resource guide with links to articles and support groups for gay cowboys and farmers. The Human Rights Campaign is issuing "Oscar party kits" with posters of Brokeback and cards that read "Talk About It" to encourage discussion of gay rights.
Film critic and historian Leonard Maltin expects Brokeback to prompt people to reconsider homosexual relationships in much the same way that The Defiant Ones, In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner raised the consciousness on race relations in the late 1950s and '60s.
"The movie is in some uncharted waters, because it shows what it's like for two men to feel that kind of longing and passion for each other, and people aren't used to that," Maltin says. "No one movie is going to turn things around, but they can be building blocks. That could be this movie's legacy."
It will take some help from moviegoers. Charlize Theron, who won an Oscar for portraying a serial killer who was also a lesbian in 2003's Monster, says audience support for challenging fare, whether gay-themed or politically charged, is the key to a shift in Hollywood.
"People are always pointing the finger at Hollywood and saying, 'Hollywood isn't writing female leading roles, or they're not making socially relevant movies,' " she says. "The problem is that studios tend to lose money on these films. Why? Because audiences don't go. We've got to get the audience to see these films so studios don't feel a high risk in investing in them."
Felicity Huffman, who received a best-actress nomination for her transgender character in Transamerica, is concerned that Brokeback is facing resistance .
"I don't know if the red states have embraced it as much as the blue," she says. "If they did, it would speak to, hopefully, the inclusiveness that America is moving toward. I know there's a movement against that, but ultimately I think those things that unite us far outweigh those that divide us."
Other movies have explored conflicted sexual themes and found Oscar success. William Hurt won a best-actor Oscar for playing a gay prisoner in 1985's Kiss of the Spider Woman. Tom Hanks won best actor for portraying a homosexual lawyer in 1993's Philadelphia. Hilary Swank won her first Academy Award for her transsexual character in 1999's Boys Don't Cry.
One difference between Brokeback and those films, critic Emanuel Levy says, is that Brokeback attaches contemporary issues to a Hollywood archetype.
"It's a sweeping Western with tough cowboys, telling a time-tested love story that's simply about unrequited feelings," says Levy, author of All About Oscar. "On the other hand, it shows two men having intercourse, which is a first for a mainstream Hollywood film. That's what has people talking."
The time for message movies?
The film also benefits from its timing. George Clooney, who is nominated for an Oscar for directing Good Night, and Good Luck, says Brokeback represents a crop of movies with "something to say. Some people in Hollywood feel it's time to speak up about politics, or race or the media."
The result on the Hollywood product, Levy says, could be a shift away from the fey gay characters in TV shows such as Will & Grace and films such as The Producers and Rent. "I think we're going to see gay characters portrayed in a new, more complex way."
Not everyone agrees. Robert Knight of the conservative policy group the Culture and Family Institute points out that Brokeback's box-office tally is modest compared with Christian-themed movies such as Passion and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
"I don't think this movie means that Americans have accepted homosexuality," Knight says. "It's just the product of two decades of a pro-homosexual agenda by Hollywood and the media that's made it no big deal for something like this to be on TV or in the movies."
Some in the industry question what Hollywood believes. At the Berlin Film Festival last week, actor Ian McKellen said he doubts Brokeback will open doors for openly gay actors. "It is very, very, very difficult for an American actor who wants a film career to be open about his sexuality," says McKellen, who is gay. "The film industry is very old-fashioned in California."
Gay actor and writer Bruce Vilanch says that though he applauds Brokeback's illumination of a "new kind of gay person in Hollywood," the industry "is hardly out of the closet. I don't think you're going to see openly gay leading men or action heroes until you see openly gay football and hockey players. It's the last plateau of macho. But at least it has people talking."
And that, Judy Shepard says, might be all the movie needs to do. The death of her gay son, Matthew, in 1998 stirred a national debate over violence against gays. The murder is referenced vaguely in a scene in Brokeback.
Shortly before his death, her son gave her a copy of the story that inspired the film, Shepard says.
She doubts the movie will have an immediate effect on gay rights "because some people are ashamed to go see it. Even some of my friends — my friends — say it's just a gay cowboy movie and are afraid of something like that."
But when people can rent it privately, "I think they'll see it how I see it: as a story that's trying to say that you can't help who you fall in love with. If it opens just a few eyes to that, then it's done a good thing."
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Movie of the moment because simply everyone talk about it but never go see this movie. It is more '' homophobic '' comments so thanks to the homophobes to make they movie so popular. Because people will don't care, they will just want to watch it if it is true ::) wich.. is not true!
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Thank you very much for posting this Italian_Dude.
Very interesting!
I would bet Milestone, there was never a movie like this before.
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Thank you very much for posting this Italian_Dude.
Very interesting!
I would bet Milestone, there was never a movie like this before.
no problem, and i agree it is a milestone!
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BAFTA May Tattle on Oscars: Can 'Crash' beat 'Brokeback'?[/b]
Tom O'Neil, LA Times
The possibility of an upset in the Oscar best pic race is very real. Film critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper are officially predicting "Crash" will beat "Brokeback Mountain." Ebert, remember, called the "Shakespeare in Love" upset over "Saving Private Ryan," but then again, well, he also said "Moulin Rouge" would beat "A Beautiful Mind."
Over the past week I've run into about a dozen academy members who couldn't resist blabbing how they're voting, even without me asking. Curiously, I discovered the same amount of support for "Crash" and "Good Night, and Good Luck" as for "Brokeback." Plus a stray vote for "Munich." Fascinating, eh?
But that anecdotal survey is not a statistically reliable sampling. More accurate might be what we witnessed yesterday at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards (BAFTA) where "Brokeback" lost five races, but nonetheless prevailed in four top categories that really count: best picture, director, screenplay and supporting actor (Jake Gyllenhaal). Rumor has it that 900 members of BAFTA also belong to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, which has 5,800 members. That's a whopping 15% overlap — quite substantial.
This is only the fifth year that the British Academy Awards were bestowed prior to their Hollywood equivalent, so it's difficult to say with authority how BAFTA tattles on the Oscar outcome. Winners usually don't line up because nominees vary significantly, but BAFTA still reveals a lot if results are studied closely. For example, "Million Dollar Baby" was released so late in Britain that it wasn't eligible at last year's BAFTAs where "The Aviator" soared off with the best picture honor.
Excluding the top races that "Baby" ended up taking at the Oscars (picture, director, actress and supporting actor), BAFTA forecast the other two correctly: actor (Jamie Foxx, "Ray") and supporting actress (Cate Blanchett, "The Aviator"). That's significant considering Blanchett was no shoo-in.
Three years ago BAFTA had, as Winston Churchill might say, its finest hour as an Oscar snitch when "The Pianist" won the British kudos for best picture and director, thus revealing secret Oscar momentum. Academy watchers sensed "The Pianist's" growing support within Hollywood, but, frankly, didn't know how seriously to take it. Obviously, BAFTA was onto something. On Oscar night "Chicago" still triumphed as best picture, but "The Pianist" pulled off upsets for director (Roman Polanski) and actor (Adrien Brody). Since it also won the screenplay award, voters suddenly had some 'splaining to do. How could "The Pianist" be hailed as the best directed, best written and best acted film, but not be best picture?
At BAFTA this year no rivals bumped off "Brokeback" in the picture and director races, so it's probably safe to assume that it's still — for now — the Oscar front-runner despite what gossips claim. Over the weekend I ran into one of them, a graying academy member, who snarled, "Have you ever looked out over the crowd at an academy screening? Let me put it this way: Those aren't people who are going to vote for 'Brokeback' for best picture, if you know what I mean. No way!" (He's voting for "Good Night, and Good Luck.")
What he meant was that the room is typically full of the balding and graying heads of straight, tough geezers who aren't the type eager to cuddle up with young gay cowboys.
He's probably right, but Oscar expert Pete Hammond adds, "Yes, I've seen those crowds at academy screenings and I can safely say that they're not representative of the full academy. Those screenings are usually dominated by retirees who have a lot of free time on their hands. The other academy members are diversified, they're younger and they're hipper." And, presumably, those unseen academy members must skip official screenings and watch nominees on DVDs because they're too busy making important films that might be nominated next year.
At BAFTA, "Crash" won best original screenplay as expected, but also demonstrated surprise strength when Thandie Newton pulled off an upset for best supporting actress. Perhaps "Crash" might have won supporting actor too, if two costars hadn't competed against each other(Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle). At least they split the vote between themselves. Poor George Clooney split the vote with himself, being nommed for both "Syriana" and "Good Night, and Good Luck." Considering how oddly the category was stacked, perhaps Jake Gyllenhaal shouldn't have looked so shocked when he won.
This means that "Crash" support is strong and it's truly the formidable foe that many Oscarologists warn about. "Good Night, and Good Luck" might be a secret giant killer too, but, if so, that was never likely to surface at BAFTA. There's no way Brits can understand what Clooney's movie means to liberal Hollywooders weary of right-wing leadership in Washington.
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From The Times online
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,14929-2049561,00.html
An Alternate Look at the BAFTAS
Smile... only two hours to go
JAMES CHRISTOPHER
Hollywood trumped us at the Baftas. And where was Reese? Our correspondent reveals what the contenders were really thinking
"There wasn’t even the comfort of Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Gorgeous George for his terrific part in the political thriller Syriana. This was won by Jake Gyllenhaal for Brokeback Mountain despite the fact that Gyllenhaal has more lines than Heath Ledger in the film and should have been nominated for Best Actor alongside his hunky co-star."
Well, Duh.....that's cuz Ennis didn't talk :-)
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This was won by Jake Gyllenhaal for Brokeback Mountain despite the fact that Gyllenhaal has more lines than Heath Ledger in the film and should have been nominated for Best Actor alongside his hunky co-star."
Well, Duh.....that's cuz Ennis didn't talk :-)
;D
Yes ..it's a new rule: you have to count the lines..and of course no mute can be a lead charachter..
( do you remember Marlee Matlin?)
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FYI---cnn headline news show Showbiz Tonight, which airs again later--check your local listings, I get it at 10pm Central---will have the man who bought the shirts on about mid way through the show, and he talks about how he feels about the shirts and why he bought them---and he brought them along and shows them on the show.Thursday Feb 23
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Link to video clip of CNN interview of Gustavo Santaolalla about BBM music:
http://www.emailthis.clickability.com/et/emailThis?clickMap=viewThis&etMailToID=1899773719
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Link to video clip of CNN interview of Gustavo Santaolalla about BBM music:
http://www.emailthis.clickability.com/et/emailThis?clickMap=viewThis&etMailToID=1899773719
hidesert! Thanks a load for posting this!
I want the Oscar for Gustavo! Plize!
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I bought the CD today and I am so afraid to open it, I truly don't want to damage any part, so I go on listening to the mp3 version I have on my HD. he is truly a genius,
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I bought the CD today and I am so afraid to open it, I truly don't want to damage any part, so I go on listening to the mp3 version I have on my HD. he is truly a genius,
Yup! I know, the Opera Queen on this board have only one CD playing for weeks... Some country music...
Please Lord, Oscar for Gustavo, PLIZE!
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http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&storyid=2006-02-24T155353Z_01_N24373423_RTRUKOC_0_US-LEISURE-OSCARS-BROKEBACK.xml&rpc=22
Brokeback" rides into popular culture
Fri Feb 24, 2006 10:54 AM ET
By Jill Serjeant
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - It began as a simple love story between two gay cowboys that movie critics wondered whether America would embrace.
But in three short months, "Brokeback Mountain" is not only an Oscar front-runner but has found its way into U.S. popular culture, inspiring parodies, jokes and cartoons across the spectrum from politics to pop music.
Seen the "Kickback Mountain" poster parody reflecting the corruption scandal sweeping the U.S. Congress? Laughed at TV comedian David Letterman's "Top 10 Signs You're a Gay Cowboy" (10."Your saddle is Versace")? Heard Willie Nelson's new recording "Cowboys are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other"?
Actually seen the movie? Probably not.
"I wish I knew how to quit you" might have become the coolest phrase to throw around during a lovers' tiff but with a mere $72 million U.S. box-office, "Brokeback" is hardly a blockbuster.
"Many, many more people have told a 'Brokeback Mountain' joke than have seen the movie. It's one of those things that has really transcended itself and gotten way more attention than its box office indicates," said culture expert Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television.
As an astonished Jake Gyllenhaal said this week after winning a British Film Academy award for best supporting actor, "Who would have thought this would happen?"
In 2004, voters in 11 U.S. states backed amendments to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, making movie industry watchers nervous about "Brokeback's" reception outside the liberal East and West coasts.
COMEDIANS CAN'T RESIST
Those outside the gay community have responded to the movie's universal love theme. But its niche in popular culture owes much to the fact that the story turns the 195Os and 60s Western -- a showcase for the manly American cowboy -- on its head.
"The idea of taking this very modern 21st century story of tender love between two cowboys and putting it into the time period of an old Western opens up the floodgates for telling jokes," said Thompson. "Comedians can't resist because we all know what a cowboy movie is and this challenges it."
Two of the shirts worn by the men in the movie sold for $100,000 on the Internet this week.
The gay activist buyer called them "the ruby slippers of our time," a reference to the most famous item worn by Judy Garland in "The Wizard of Oz."
TV's ratings hit "American Idol" got in on the act with its own "Brokenote Mountain" spoof last week.
The New Yorker magazine, whose cartoonists have had a field day with the movie's theme of forbidden love in the wilds of Wyoming, gave readers "Watch Your Back Mountain" this week. The two protagonists were accident-prone hunter and Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush.
"That poster is a template to project so many different pairings with so many different meanings. It is an image that captures the imagination but begs to be remade," said Marty Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center, which examines the impact of entertainment on society.
Spread quickly by the Internet and by bloggers, much of the fun at "Brokeback's" expense has been affectionate and, as such, mostly welcomed by the gay community.
Paul Levinson, professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University, said there was already a growing interest in gay relationships in mainstream heterosexual culture.
"'Brokeback' came along at the right time. It was a popular culture success waiting to happen," he said.
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Thanks, ennisand jack, for posting this article. It looks like the miracle is happening, the whole world is adopting BBM culture. ;D
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http://wvgazette.com/section/Perspective/2006021825
a must read
Definitely a must read. This is the same tale told over and over in pages and posts on this Forum. What a film this is! What a joy to have been around to witness it.
thank you karind for this.
tom
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http://wvgazette.com/section/Perspective/2006021825
a must read
While reading this article, I was nervous at first, I thought there were going to be some dreadfully sad revelations. Thankfully, there weren't any. An absolute must read.
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Two Gay Cowboys Hit a Home Run Op-Ed Columnist NYTimes ny times.com Two Gay Cowboys Hit a Home Run
By FRANK RICH.
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 c�l�bre.
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.
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Thank you so much for these posts...I'm never gonna see these articles over here in Scotland.
This is what I am loving about all of this , I have preconceived ideas of how homophobic Mid West USA is from articles I have read over here about Matthew Shepard and such. When I first heard about BBM all the movie mags and papers over here were saying that it was not going to be shown in Southern and Mid Western States. Now I'm reading that people are demanding it be shown and are booking tickets weeks in advance.
It is so refreshing to see these articles and long may you continue to post them for all of us over here>
Tom
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frenchcda! Your the man! Thanks for posting this great article.
Hugs!
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It's the all too American tragedy of what happens to these men afterward that neither our hearts nor consciences
can so easily shake.
Indeed. Thanks, frenchcda for posting this.
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If brokeback mountain does not win best picture, i will seriously have somekind of breakdown..
if it doesnt win i will start an uproar!!!
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Link to video clip of CNN interview of Gustavo Santaolalla about BBM music:
http://www.emailthis.clickability.com/et/emailThis?clickMap=viewThis&etMailToID=1899773719
hidesert! Thanks a load for posting this!
I want the Oscar for Gustavo! Plize!
Me too Cham. Gustavo deserves the recognition.
WalMart is selling the BBM CD and it will be interesting to see if they sell the DVD when it's released. WalMart panders so much to the religious right that it wouldn't surprise me if they refuse to sell it.
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Is Secret Homophobia Fueling a Possible 'Crash' Upset?[/b]
Tom O'Neil, LA Times 2/24/2006
Something weird is going on among Oscar voters — and it's also going unspoken. "Crash" and "Good Night, and Good Luck" have their passionate supporters who gush with their honest love of those best picture nominees, but most non-"Brokeback" votes I hear from Oscar voters are really anti-"Brokeback."
Scads of academy members fume to me when they tattle on how they're inking their ballots, "I'm not voting for 'Brokeback'!" Then they calm down a bit and add, "I'm voting for (fill in the blank)" and give a positive reason to justify their decision for picking an alternative. In most cases I hear contrary votes for "Crash," but there's also surprising strength for "Good Night, and Good Luck." So far I've heard equal numbers of votes for "Brokeback" as "Crash," with "Good Night" not far behind. The best picture race is really thisclose.
It's the fury that voters express when mentioning "Brokeback" that's so odd and suspicious. In some cases I believe they're people who think the film is overrated. Or they're just weary of gay cowboy jokes. But in the majority of cases I suspect it's something else and something bad that they feel they can't utter out loud, so they're holding it in. You can see it on their faces.
Could it be secret homophobia? Perhaps. The academy is comprised mostly of straight white guys with white hair who know it's intolerable to bash gays in lavender-friendly, liberal Hollywood. But I really don't think it's that in any large way. Instead, I think it's the same frustration non-Jews feel when there's a glut of Holocaust films leading the Oscar pack in Jewish-friendly Hollywood. They want to exclaim, "Enough already with the Holocaust films!" This time I suspect many straight Hollywooders — who are totally cool with gay people in general — are fighting the urge to shriek, "Enough already with the gay persecution films!"
This Oscar year there really is a glut of them and, if I'm right in my predictions, we'll see the all-gay Oscars on March 5 with victories in the top categories by "Brokeback Mountain," "Capote" and "Transamerica."
How widespread is this anti-"Brokeback" tide? It's hard to say because it's mostly unspoken, but it's very real and it makes predicting the best picture race a crapshoot. It's quite possible that we could see another one of those best picture/director splits that used to be so rare, but are now commonplace with "Chicago," "Shakespeare in Love" and "Gladiator" winning best picture while the director laurels went to, respectively, Roman Polanski ("The Pianist"), Steven Spielberg ("Saving Private Ryan") and Steven Soderbergh ("Traffic"). Whatever happens this year, it's clear that Ang Lee has the best director trophy in the bag.
In the end, I believe "Brokeback" will win because there's a clear voting pattern in the top category recently: academy members want to be on the winning team. Front-runners tend to win even when there's a growing surge against them. Backlash against "The English Patient" was so widespread that "Seinfeld" did a whole episode about it, but it still won. Even though "A Beautiful Mind" was under attack on all fronts a few years ago, it nonetheless prevailed. "Chicago" pulled off its best picture victory even though late-breaking momentum for "The Pianist" was so strong that it won the top prizes for director, actor and screenplay. That bodes well for the gay cowboys remaining tall in the saddle on Oscar night.
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The LA Times "Oscar Guru" Tom O'Neil makes his predictions:
Complete Oscars Predix: 'Brokeback' Will Win Five[/b]
LA Times 2/24/2006
No more lollygagging. 'Tis time to stick out our Oscar necks, my fellow award seers. Here are the categories I believe will be claimed by the triumphant pix. It's a crying kudos shame that two of the finest films of 2005 didn't get nommed for best picture, but at least "King Kong" and "Memoirs of a Geisha" will be multiple champs in other categories while two movies that did make the cut, "Good Night, and Good Luck" and "Munich," will probably be shut out.
"BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN"
[Best] Picture
[Best] Director
[Best] Adapted Screenplay
[Best] Musical Score
[Best] Cinematography
"CRASH"
Original Screenplay
Film Editing
"KING KONG"
Sound Editing
Sound Mixing
Visual Effects
"MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA"
Art Direction
Costume Design
"CAPOTE"
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Best Actor
"TRANSAMERICA"
Felicity Huffman, Best Actress
"SYRIANA"
George Clooney, Supporting Actor
"THE CONSTANT GARDENER"
Rachel Weisz, Supporting Actress
"TSOTSI"
Foreign Language Film
"WALLACE & GROMIT IN THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT"
Animated Feature
"HUSTLE & FLOW"
Song ("It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp")
"CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE"
Makeup
"MARCH OF THE PENGUINS"
Documentary Feature
"GOD SLEEPS IN RWANDA"
Documentary Short
"THE MOON AND THE SON"
Animated Short
"SIX SHOOTER"
Short Film, Live Action
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At least Gustavo would make it.
No actor award will break my heart. :-\
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At least Gustavo would make it.
No actor award will break my heart. :-\
Same here.
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News Flash
Ennisjack.com has obtained a photo that reveals otherwise
http://www.ennisjack.com/index.php?topic=1371.60#msg26686
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
The Oscar of our Hearts
I swear...,
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At least Gustavo would make it.
No actor award will break my heart. :-\
Yeah, wish they could win all of the acting nominations, but it's a long shot. Another prediction list that I read had George Clooney winning "Best Original Screenplay" and Jake Gyllenhaal winning "Best Supporting Actor". Not a bad scenario.
But 5 wins (O'Neil's Predix) out of 8 nominations wouldn't be shabby.
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At least Gustavo would make it.
No actor award will break my heart. :-
Yeah, wish they could win all of the acting nominations, but it's a long shot. Another prediction list that I read had George Clooney winning "Best Original Screenplay" and Jake Gyllenhaal winning "Best Supporting Actor". Not a bad scenario.
But 5 wins (O'Neil's Predix) out of 8 nominations wouldn't be shabby.
Lets try to be realistic here:
Best Film :-[
Best director (keep weapons away from me if Ang don't get it)
Best adaptated Screenplay (same as above)
Best music score (John Williams votes are splited in 2 nominations, Go Gustavo!)
Michelle, Heath, Jake? At least one plize! :P
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I scanned some pages of this week's Entertainment Weekly re: Oscar predictions. Click the thumbnails for larger images.
(https://ennisjack.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg515.imageshack.us%2Fimg515%2F9237%2Factorstitch1ab.th.jpg&hash=673fe16498df731371657b4b1c7f7762ca36e201) (http://img515.imageshack.us/my.php?image=actorstitch1ab.jpg)
(https://ennisjack.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg114.imageshack.us%2Fimg114%2F6388%2Fpicturedirector8ck.th.jpg&hash=86007c51d7f9ebe89aa59c9f5248bf308ec80529) (http://img114.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picturedirector8ck.jpg)
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Thanks for posting the predictions, glacier1. Let's hope for the best.
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Two Gay Cowboys Hit a Home Run Op-Ed Columnist NYTimes ny times.com Two Gay Cowboys Hit a Home Run
By FRANK RICH.
WHAT if they held a culture war and no one fired a shot? That's the compelling tale of "Brokeback Mountain."
(...)
Thanks for posting this terrific article, frenchcda.
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PHS wins best actor?? :o Bleh... :P ::) only Heath deserves to win best actor, period!! :-*
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PHS wins best actor?? :o Bleh... :P ::) only Heath deserves to win best actor, period!! :-*
I second that.
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PHS wins best actor?? :o Bleh... :P ::) only Heath deserves to win best actor, period!! :-*
I second that.
and i third that! ;D
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PHS wins best actor?? :o Bleh... :P ::) only Heath deserves to win best actor, period!! :-*
I second that.
and i third that! ;D
Heheheeeeeheheee,.... ;D
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Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez comments in LA TIMES. Ennis' original heritage:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-oscarcritics26feb26,0,6567802.story?page=2&coll=la-home-commentary
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News Flash
Ennisjack.com has obtained a photo that reveals otherwise
http://www.ennisjack.com/index.php?topic=1371.60#msg26686
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
The Oscar of our Hearts
Thanks :) That pic made my day :-*
I swear...,
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ROPIN' THE OSCARSBrokeback Mountain
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/13960610.htm?source=rss&channel=dfw_nation
By Todd CampStar-Telegram Staff Writer#24 in a series of 30
Much has been said of the angry war of words between closeted cowboys Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger in this stunning multiple-Oscar nominee from director Ang Lee. As the two men bitterly grouse about the futility of their situation and their inability to spend more time together, Gyllenhaal utters the helpless, embittered "I wish I knew how to quit you" remark that has become the fodder of T-shirt sloganeering and late-night punch lines. But the film's most affecting moment comes in a flashback during said argument, when a much younger Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) groggily stares into the coals of a nighttime campfire as Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) ambles up, wraps his arms around him and hugs him from behind, gently whispering in his ear, "Time to hit the hay, cowboy .... Come on, you're sleepin on your feet like a horse." For many audiences, this simple moment of human tenderness finally rises above notions of gay and straight and poignantly underlines the tragic circumstances of two souls robbed of the opportunity to truly share their love for one another. It's beautiful and agonizing
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Is ‘Brokeback’ in for a ‘Crash’?: Oscar showdown for Best Picture may bring surprise
http://theedge.bostonherald.com/movieNews/view.bg?articleid=127994
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http://www.news24.com/News24/Entertainment/Abroad/0,6119,2-1225-1243_1888590,00.html
All bets on Brokeback
26/02/2006 14:38 - (SA)
Los Angeles - All bets are on the gay cowboy romance Brokeback Mountain galloping to victory at the Oscars, betting odds showed, as the film romps into next week's show armed with a leading eight nominations.
Taiwan-born director Ang Lee's aching story of forbidden love is the clear favourite to win the best picture Oscar four weeks after it first left its competition in the dust when the Academy Awards nods were unveiled.
Pundits wagering with online bookmakers have also pegged Lee to win the best director statuette, with Walk the Line star Reese Witherspoon and Capote's Philip Seymour Hoffman hotly tipped as favourites for the best actor gongs.
"It's clearly the favourite, and we'd be surprised if it didn't win," said Patrick Erlich of the Canada-based online betting website Sportsbook, which said Brokeback was the 1/9 favourite to win the top award on March 5.
The odds mean that its chances are so strong that a one-dollar bet would generate a profit of only 11 cents on the original investment.
Top British bookie William Hill gave the controversial movie 1/6 odds for best picture in a year in which a record number of punters are expected to lay wagers, while Britain's Readabet gave it 1/7 odds.
Trailing behind Brokeback, which stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as the star-crossed lovers, is the racially charged movie Crash.
Sportsbook gave Paul Haggis's drama 5/2 odds - a return of $2.5 for each dollar wagered - while Bennett Miller's Capote and George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck were next, both with 15/1 odds.
The last film in the best picture lineup - Steven Spielberg's big-budget drama Munich, based on the events following the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics - trailed the pack with 20/1 odds on its victory.
"We take into account permanent industry buzz and other awards shows, and also look at what the actual betting trends are," Erlich told AFP.
British betting giant Ladbrokes showed a similar trend, which gave Brokeback 1/5 odds, while Crash came in at 4.5/1.
Sportsbook placed 1/5 odds on Hoffman, who convincingly played eccentric US author Truman Capote, winning the best actor Academy Award, and 1/6 odds on Witherspoon, 29, taking the matching award for a leading actress.
Witherspoon's chances of winning were pegged at 1/6 by William Hill, 2/7 by Ladbrokes and 1/4 by Betfair and Pinnacle Sports.
Joaquin Phoenix, who played singer Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, lagged behind Hoffman, with 3/1 odds on his victory, followed by Ledger at 6/1 and Hustle and Flow star Terrence Howard at 8/1, according to Sportsbook.
But David Strathairn, who played broadcaster Edward Murrow in Good Night, was the "outsider," according to Sportsbook, with punters liable to reap 35 dollars for each dollar bet if he wins.
Many other online bookies, however, gave Ledger next-best odds after Hoffman for winning the best actor award, including Britain's Readabet, which gave the Aussie actor 1/6 odds compared with Hoffman's 1/7.
Punters reckon that Witherspoon's closest competition is Felicity Huffman, who movingly played a transsexual in Transamerica.
Huffman's odds at Sportsbook were 12/5, followed by Pride and Prejudice's Keira Knightley at 28/1, Judi Dench of Mrs Henderson Presents at 30/1 and Charlize Theron of North Country at 32/1.
Among the directors, Sportsbook gave Lee 1/8 odds on victory, followed distantly by Spielberg at 2.5/1, Clooney at 7/1, Haggis at 25/1 and Miller, the outsider, at 30/1.
All the odds were provided by offshore bookies, as non-sporting bets are banned in the United States.
The odds suggest that this year's Oscars show may hold few dramatic twists, as punter and industry expert predictions have changed little since the nominations were unveiled on January 31.
>
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Thanks for the articles Italian Dude. I can't help but think that the hopes for Crash winning over brokeback is mostly fuelled by people who want any film to win over brokeback. Maybe I'm being cynical but I haven't really heard much praise for Crash until it seemed like it could be the film to take the bp oscar from brokeback. Let's hope its just wishful thinking on the part of these writers and out film prevails ;D
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http://boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2012&p=l.htm
>'Brokeback Mountain' Most Impressive of Tepid 2005
by Brandon Gray
February 25, 2006
2005 is known as the year of the slump, but for all the excuses the indust y and the media made throughout the year, the bottom line reason for t e theatrical woes was the movies themselve
It's a product-driven industry, and the product wasn't there, leading ticket sales to drop to their lowest point in nine years. It was as if Hollywood sat 2005 out—from the outset, the slate was weaker than 2004, lacking potential blockbusters in the top tier and middle ranges. What's more, the year was bereft of cultural phenomena in the magnitude of The Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 9/11.
All told, 2005's box office tallied $8.84 billion, down six percent from 2004. It was the first time since 1991 that there was a year-to-year dip in dollars generated. Still, there were a few highlights.
With most 2005 releases having had ample time to show their stuff, the ten best pictures at the box office can be determined, and they are not simply the highest grossing ones. These are the movies that impressed the most based on contextual factors, including genre, industry expectations, longevity and cultural impact.
For instance, movies like King Kong, War of the Worlds and Madagascar had high grosses, but they weren't exceptional when factoring in their pedigrees.
It is important to note that, as is always the case, this list does not necessarily reflect the quality of the movies themselves. Bad movies can be blockbusters, good movies can bomb, and vice versa.
The Ten Most Impressive Box Office Performances of 2005:
Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain
1. Brokeback Mountain - $73 million (and counting)
The gay cowboy gimmick brought Ang Lee's repressed romance to the dance, but Focus Features' marketing and distribution savvy made it an irrepressible success. More than just a movie of the moment, this picture resonated after posting the biggest per theater average for a live action movie on record, and it played well outside of the big cities, making more than most Westerns and gay movies ever do. What at first looked like a picture that needed Academy Award nominations to find an audience turned into a cultural phenomenon, generating far more talk than its gross would imply.
>Yee Haw!!! Go, Brokeback, GO!!!
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Thanks for posting this Apollonos
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You're welcome! I love posting good news about our beloved BBM.
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You're welcome! I love posting good news about our beloved BBM.
thankies! ;D
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Thanks!! ;)
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From the LATimes: http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-et-martinez27feb27,1,707391.column?coll=la-news-columns
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Al Martinez:
A molehill to a 'Mountain'
February 27 2006
I was talking with a friend the other day about Oscar contenders and asked if he had seen "Brokeback Mountain" yet. He said he hadn't and that he didn't intend to see it unless he had a woman to accompany him.
Ed, which is his name, went on to explain that he had broken up with the person he'd been dating for several months and at the moment lacked female companionship.
I said, "What's that got to do with whether or not you see the movie?"
"I'm just not going alone or with another guy," he said.
"Take your mother."
"That," he declared self-righteously, "wouldn't do it."
And then I got it. If he went alone or with a male friend, someone might think he was, you know, "light." For those who don't hang around beer bars, that's a term employed by certain polite members of the blue-collar set to denote someone who is gay.
Wondering if this were a prevailing attitude among men who are more masculine than, say, fashion designers or ballet dancers, I asked another outdoor worker, Rob, if he had seen the movie. He replied that he had not and would not. The reason he gave was that he's a Christian.
To the best of my memory, there wasn't a religious reference in "Brokeback." No scenes of devil worship or celebrations honoring Baal. It was about two men who, well, liked each other. A lot. OK, it was a love story.
But Rob told me that homosexuality violates God's word. I could find it, he said, in the Bible.
When I got home that night, I tried to locate a reference to the so-called love that must not be spoken in my annotated Bible but came up empty. I looked under "homosexuality," "gays" and even "forbidden desire." Zilch. I suppose it's there in some remote corner of Leviticus or Deuteronomy, but I sure couldn't find it.
I telephoned Rob the next day to ask where it was in the Bible, but he wouldn't answer. I also wanted to know if it was OK with God for a cowboy to have sex with a cowgirl, and he hung up on me, but not before using a term which, I am positive, you won't find in the Good Book.
The movie was a masterful piece of filmmaking. I only winced twice. No, three times. I winced at the kiss too. When we left the theater, my wife said, "I'll bet Tom Mix never did that." He was an old-time cowboy hero.
"That's hard to say," I said. "He did seem to use a lot of makeup. Especially lipstick."
"It was their idea of on-screen makeup. Even Zorro wore rouge."
I'm not sure what cowboys did, or what they're doing, out on the range. I keep thinking about the lyrics to the song that went, "You don't know what lonesome is till you get to herding cows." A man can be driven to doing a lot of things, I guess, with no one for company but another cowpoke and a couple of hundred Longhorns.
I asked a gay man what he thought of "Brokeback Mountain." Call him Paul. He shrugged. "It was OK," he said.
"Just OK?"
"It had flaws."
Initially taken aback by a gay man's tepid attitude toward a hit movie about two gay men in love, I came to realize that I was a victim of my own preconceptions. It did not necessarily follow that people of a particular sexual orientation should like the idea of watching them make love on the big screen. I'm not big on groping movies even when they involve couples of the opposite sex.
Only a real fuzz-brain would assume that all gays, all straights, all men, all women, all blacks, all Latinos or all Asians are alike. I have a Chinese American friend who wouldn't eat Chinese food if you dragged him into P.F. Chang's and chained him to a chair. I feel that way about Mexican food. I am emotionally incapable of eating a taco.
We are the creations of our progenitors, fashioned from the same clay that fashioned them. We inherit their biases and hardly notice the slow crawl of social change taking place around us. Observing a shift in attitudes is the cultural equivalent of watching a tree grow. One day it's 10 feet tall, a year later it's 12 feet tall. But you never actually see it grow. Change occurs when we're not looking.
I saw "Brokeback Mountain" a second time, just to test my own attitudes. I still winced three times. But as I walked out, I was behind a group of young people. They were raving about how good it was. Not what a great gay movie it was, but what a compelling love story it was.
And in their fresh, unbiased attitude toward what was indeed a beautifully composed film, I thought I perceived a tree growing in America.
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This (preceding post) is a terrific essay. Thanks for posting it.
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This (preceding post) is a terrific essay. Thanks for posting it.
You're welcome, glacier1!
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This (preceding post) is a terrific essay. Thanks for posting it.
You're welcome, glacier1!
Ditto!
I'm glad you're back TPE, you have been my best article pusher since I joined this board, I was in need of a fix ;)
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This (preceding post) is a terrific essay. Thanks for posting it.
You're welcome, glacier1!
Ditto!
I'm glad you're back TPE, you have been my best article pusher since I joined this board, I was in need of a fix ;)
Thank you, Pierre. I do it out of necessity: like you, I am utterly helpless: I need my daily dose of articles. :)
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I don't partyicularly like the label 'redneck' applied to entire states/regions, but if one overlooks this initial usage, one sees the author's point.
From The Times Online: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2058537_1,00.html
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The Sunday Times February 26, 2006
Gay cowboys embraced by redneck country
Andrew Sullivan
Last December, when the movie Brokeback Mountain nudged nervously onto the cultural radar screen in the US, the consensus was broad and wide. This movie was one step too far. It was yet another example of Hollywood’s liberal bias. It wouldn’t sell in the heartland.
“They’re not going to go see the gay cowboys in Montana. I’m sorry. They’re not going to do it,” opined cable television’s chief windbag Bill O’Reilly on December 20.
The liberal blogger Mickey Kaus wrote around the same time: “I’m highly sceptical that a movie about gay cowhands, however good, will find a large mainstream audience. I’ll go see it, but I don’t want to go see it . . . When the film’s national box office fails to live up to its hype and to the record attendance at a few early screenings, prepare to be subjected to a tedious round of guilt-tripping and chin- scratching.”
The Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer made a new year’s prediction about Oscar night: “Brokeback Mountain will have been seen in the theatres by 18 people — but the right 18 — and will win the Academy Award.”
Something odd happened between the elite’s assessment of the heartland and the heartland’s assessment of Brokeback Mountain. No, it’s no The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe. But of all the Oscar nominees it has racked up by far the biggest domestic grosses so far: more than $70m at the last count (compared with, say, $22m for the superb Capote). And that’s before the potential Oscar boost. More interestingly, it’s done remarkably well in the middle of the red states.
O’Reilly’s Montana? In the 85-year-old cinema in Missoula, Montana, the owner told the media: “It’s been super every night since we started showing it.” The movie did even better in Billings, a more conservative city in the state.
According to Variety magazine, some of the strongest audiences have been in Tulsa, Oklahoma, El Paso, Texas, Des Moines, Iowa and Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock is the place George W Bush calls his spiritual home and may well be the site for his presidential library. Greenwich Village it ain’t.
What happened? There are various theories. Brilliant marketing pitched the movie as a love story and a western, two genres well ingrained in middle American tastes. Women dragged nervous husbands and boyfriends to see a film where the women could enjoy long, languorous views of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, and the men could admire the scenery.
Blue state liberals felt it some kind of social duty to see the film. Gays and lesbians flocked. The media hyped the “gay cowboy” movie and it generated more and more publicity, and thereby curiosity and thereby tickets.
The iconic phrase uttered by Gyllenhaal — “I wish I knew how to quit you” — has become part of the popular culture. The cover of last week’s New Yorker had a parody of the now-famous poster, with Bush and Dick Cheney as the cowboys and Cheney blowing some steam off the top of his rifle.
Everyone seems to have an opinion about the film, especially those who haven’t seen it. My own view is that Brokeback has done well primarily because it’s an excellent film. It has a compelling story, two astonishing performances from Ledger and Michelle Williams, and an elegant screenplay from the great western writer Larry McMurtry.
I still don’t think the movie is in the same class as the brilliantly compressed short story by Annie Proulx on which it’s based. But it’s still way better than most films now offered by Hollywood, and it’s a little depressing that we have to ask why a decent number of people would not want to see a rare example of Hollywood excellence.
As for the gay sex, it’s barely in the movie, and the least convincing part of it. Compared with the sex and violence usually served up by Hollywood films, Brokeback is Jackanory. But there is something, perhaps, that explains the interest beyond mere artistic skill.
The past two decades have seen a huge shift in how homosexual people are viewed in the West. Where once they were identified entirely by sex, now more and more recognise that the central homosexual experience is the central heterosexual experience: love — maddening, humiliating, sustaining love.
That’s what the marriage debate has meant and why the marriage movement, even where it has failed to achieve its immediate goals, has already achieved its long-term ambition: to humanise gay people, to tell the full, human truth about them.
And that truth includes the red states. The one thing you can say about the homosexual minority is that, unlike any other, it is not geographically limited and never has been. Red states produce as many gay kids as blue ones; and yet the heartland gay experience has rarely been portrayed and explored.
In America this is particularly odd, since the greatest gay writer in its history, Walt Whitman, was a man of the heartland. And you only have to read about the early years of Abraham Lincoln’s life to see that same-sex love and friendship was integral to the making of America, especially in its wildernesses and frontiers. You see that today even in the American gay vote, a third of which routinely backs Republicans.
Brokeback, in other words, is not just a good movie, but a genuinely new one that tells a genuinely old story. It shows how gay men in America have families and have always had families. It shows them among themselves and among women. It shows them, above all, as men.
For the first time it reveals that homosexuality and masculinity are not necessarily in conflict, and that masculinity, even the suppressed, inarticulate masculinity of the American frontier, is not incompatible with love.
It provides a story to help people better understand the turbulent social change around them and the history they never previously recorded. That is what great art always does: it reveals the truth we are too scared to see and the future we already, beneath all our denial, understand.
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The past two decades have seen a huge shift in how homosexual people are viewed in the West. Where once they were identified entirely by sex, now more and more recognise that the central homosexual experience is the central heterosexual experience: love — maddening, humiliating, sustaining love.
That’s what the marriage debate has meant and why the marriage movement, even where it has failed to achieve its immediate goals, has already achieved its long-term ambition: to humanise gay people, to tell the full, human truth about them.
Brokeback, in other words, is not just a good movie, but a genuinely new one that tells a genuinely old story. It shows how gay men in America have families and have always had families. It shows them among themselves and among women. It shows them, above all, as men.
For the first time it reveals that homosexuality and masculinity are not necessarily in conflict, and that masculinity, even the suppressed, inarticulate masculinity of the American frontier, is not incompatible with love.
It provides a story to help people better understand the turbulent social change around them and the history they never previously recorded. That is what great art always does: it reveals the truth we are too scared to see and the future we already, beneath all our denial, understand.[/b]
[/i]
This piece is beautiful :'( :'( :'(
Tom
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TPE! Thanks again, the printer here is about to melt ;)
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Awesome. Thank you, tpe. I particularly love those parts:
Where once they were identified entirely by sex, now more and more recognise that the central homosexual experience is the central heterosexual experience: love — maddening, humiliating, sustaining love.
That’s what the marriage debate has meant and why the marriage movement, even where it has failed to achieve its immediate goals, has already achieved its long-term ambition: to humanise gay people, to tell the full, human truth about them.
Brokeback, in other words, is not just a good movie, but a genuinely new one that tells a genuinely old story. It shows how gay men in America have families and have always had families. It shows them among themselves and among women. It shows them, above all, as men.
For the first time it reveals that homosexuality and masculinity are not necessarily in conflict, and that masculinity, even the suppressed, inarticulate masculinity of the American frontier, is not incompatible with love.
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Breaking the Social Order: Brokeback Mountain and the Re-Imagined Western
[24 February 2006]
In making its protagonists sympathetic, genuine cowboys, and in love with each other, the film asks audiences to believe that the renewal of American freedom should include the right of Jack and Ennis to have the "sweet life" Jack dreams of.
by Shaun Huston
:. e-mail this article
:. print this article
:. comment on this article
Quickly and inevitably "gay cowboy movie" has become the ubiquitous shorthand description for Brokeback Mountain. While certainly accurate, the label is less definitive than it might seem. Simply put, Brokeback Mountain's contribution to the Western genre runs deeper than merely speaking what has largely gone unspoken about cowboy sexuality. That's the easy achievement; easy to do and easy to recognize. More interesting is how the film excavates one of the Western's foundational tropes: the hero's sublimation of personal desire and emotion. Brokeback Mountain shows that there are costs to this sublimation, costs that don't disappear simply because the protagonist is self-sacrificing for a civilization that depends on him, and it is almost always "him," to make such choices. As Brokeback deconstructs and explodes one foundation of the Western, it re-imagines the nature and scope of another: the freedom and opportunity promised by the Frontier, and, therefore, by America. The film pushes audiences to accept that this freedom and opportunity includes sexual expression and identity, and the right of people to choose who they get to love.
The reduction of Brokeback Mountain to "gay cowboy movie," is often followed with the proclamation, "Of course, all cowboy movies are gay cowboy movies." While glib and precious, this assertion does draw out the presumptive nature of Frontier heterosexuality. The comment also points to the absurdity of denying homosexuality, whether as preference or practice, in stories where men admiring other men and male bonding are central. However, what it masks is that the sexuality of most Western protagonists is more indeterminate than definitively hetero or homo. As classically represented in forms like film and the dime novel, the distinguishing quality of the true Westerner is not his sexuality, but his ability to see what's right and just and to ensure that those things are done regardless of other desires, including sex of any inclination.
Gary Cooper's Will Kane is the archetypal Frontier hero. The story in High Noon (1952) springs from two failures on the part of society. First, Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald), a "wild and crazy" killer that Kane caught and helped to put away, is unexpectedly released by a judge "up north." Second, the people of Hadleyville, the town where Kane as Marshall captured Miller and to which Miller is returning to seek revenge, would rather avoid confrontation than join Kane in standing up to him. From the vantage point of the town fathers, Hadleyville is just starting to reap the rewards of a tamed frontier and confronting Miller would threaten this stability. Will Kane is virtually retired from marshalling; he is told that Miller is not his problem anymore. They also try to persuade him that his new wife means that he now has something to lose. However, unlike the other men in the film, Kane appears to have no truly personal needs or aspirations. Indeed, his marriage to Amy (Grace Kelly) only happened because American society expected men like him to settle down once the wilderness had been tamed.
Ultimately, Kane faces down the Miller gang without help or sanction from the town, risking his marriage and his life for the greater good of civilization and the social order. Kane's responsibility is to a higher and truer law than the one promulgated by settled and comfortable people. It is precisely at the moments when society loses its way that the Western hero needs to make sure right is done. It is this fidelity to a higher sense of justice and right, even at the expense of one's own wishes and desires, that makes Kane the model for all true cowboys, even for outlaws and anti-heroes like Sam Peckinpah's Wild Bunch and Paul Newman and Robert Redford's Butch and Sundance. And if the Gorch brothers are bound by the code exemplified by Will Kane, Brokeback Mountain's good guys, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger), and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), certainly have no choice in the matter. Ennis, in particular, is determined to see that he and Jack do the right and noble thing after their Frontier days, which is to preserve and reproduce the social order by settling into marriage and having children. That's just the way it's got to be.
Where Brokeback departs from classic Westerns like High Noon is in the attention it pays to the post-Frontier period. We never see how Will Kane and Amy end up. We do see how Ennis' and Jack's attempts at self-denial work out. And what we find when we peer into that side of the cowboy life is that it looks very different from its prelude, where, in its traditional film form at least, the mytho-poetic pursuit of natural justice and living off of the land in perfect freedom rule the day.
At a basic level, Brokeback Mountain argues that the cowboy's sublimation of personal desire and emotion can only last so long before something has to give. After four years of trying to stay apart, Ennis and Jack attempt a compromise with society. They meet regularly for "fishing," and in-between they will lead "normal" domestic lives. More critical than its exposure of the real hardships of living like Will Kane, is the film's questioning of the necessity, and presumed nobility, of its heroes' sacrifice. It would be one thing if only Jack and Ennis suffered from the weight of their choice, that would at least be consistent with the Western ideal, but no one seems to be benefiting. Jack is in a loveless marriage. His father in-law has little regard for him. Nonetheless, he's stuck selling combines for that same father in-law's dealership, while wife, Lureen (Anne Hathaway), does the books. Neither Jack nor Lureen seem fulfilled by this life. Ennis ends up estranged and divorced from his wife, Alma (Michelle Williams). His relationship with his daughters is clearly uneven and distant. They live in communities with ramshackle landscapes and little in the way of opportunity. They live in a society that would unofficially sanction beating them to death for what they mean to each other. America seems neither better nor worse for their having sublimated their own happiness for the sake of civilization.
At film's end, Ennis is confronted with a choice between work and attending his eldest daughter's wedding. As allegories for the whole mythic history of the Frontier, Western stories make their heroes' actions into metaphors for the wider process of carving order out of chaos. High Noon replays the taming of the Frontier through Will Kane's confrontation with Frank Miller. Rounding up cattle is the equivalent for Ennis, or, at least that's his initial thought. So, he chooses work over the wedding, trusting his sense of duty to higher powers more than his own desires. However, having lost Jack, and sitting in his tiny trailer with little to his name and to show for in his life, he pauses, and chooses his daughter, and personal emotion, over external obligation. The earth continues to turn. While emotionally poignant and narratively significant, this deconstruction of the Western's sacrificial codes isn't merely an end in itself. It also serves as the foundation for Brokeback Mountain's reconstruction and expansion of the genre's image of Frontier freedom and opportunity.
The Western has always been caught between the romance of the Frontier and the march of civilization, as are Ennis and Jack. The Frontier is where men are made true and strong. Being alone in the wilderness compels individuals to rely on themselves for survival and on their own judgment for the institution of order. Civilization, by contrast, is a flawed necessity. Jack and Ennis' resort to hunting and fishing for food exemplifies this contrast. Canned beans might feed the masses, but they pale in comparison to game you've shot yourself. Within the mythology of the Western, American identity is premised on the idea that the Frontier experience imprints itself on the civic order, leaving an impression of freedom and individualism where you would otherwise find tyranny and collectivism.
Paradoxically, that same freedom and individualism is a key reason why the Frontier must give way to civilization. While the right men flourish in Frontier conditions, men of bad disposition, like High Noon's Frank Miller, turn freedom into license. In a different movie, Ennis and Jack might be viewed in this way, but Brokeback Mountain not only refuses this vantage point, it reverses it. Rather than being seen as a deviance enabled by primitive conditions and an excess of freedom, their love for, and attraction to, each other is part and parcel of the romance of the Frontier. That society looks askance at their union is a reason to be skeptical of civilization, not one to be fearful of the wilderness. This contrast is set up in the film's first hour through scenes of beautifully photographed, bucolic landscapes, and men bonding in conditions of almost perfect freedom. Indeed, right up until Jack and Ennis' coupling, Brokeback Mountain might as well be Unforgiven (1992) or Open Range (2003) and Jack and Ennis might as well be Will (Clint Eastwood) and Ned (Morgan Freeman) or Boss (Robert Duvall) and Charlie (Kevin Costner). The opening act comes to a close after their employer, Randy Quaid's Joe Aguirre, spies them, shirts off, cavorting in camp. Looking suspicious and disgusted, Aguirre ultimately forces society's will on Jack and Ennis by cutting their season short. The remainder of the film explores the consequences of society's demand that Jack and Ennis part from each other and assume their rightful place in the social order.
Not surprisingly, when they re-start their relationship, Jack and Ennis return to the Frontier, on "fishing trips," safe from "the blessings of civilization." However, Jack still believes in a larger Frontier. He tempts Ennis with the same vision almost every Western hero entertains: settling down with a partner on a pretty piece of land that's truly yours, tucked away from the rest of the world. However, like the genre itself, Ennis is too wary of civilization, and its advance, to accept this dream. So he tries to content himself with memory, and with moments of freedom and contentment where and when he and Jack can still find them.
The film wants us to believe in Jack's vision. It pushes audiences to think about the meaning of American freedom and opportunity in specific terms, and not just as abstract, high-minded ideals. It asks, following Frederick Jackson Turner's famous formulation, "what do we mean when we talk about the significance of the Frontier in American History?" Significant how and to whom? In situating Jack's and Ennis' relationship within the romantic traditions of the Western, Brokeback Mountain makes their right to be together into a sliver of the impression meant to be left behind by America's Frontier experience.
Brokeback Mountain's rethinking of two of the Western's articles of faith, the significance of the Frontier and the necessity of its heroes' personal sacrifices, is far more meaningful than the simple outing of cowboys. However, Jack and Ennis' homosexuality matters to both sides of this de-/re-construction. It matters because the sublimation of these feelings to the "proper" order of things is a sacrifice that contemporary audiences will recognize as something that can and does happen. The fact that many Americans also believe that it should happen, makes it matter to how we understand the promise of the Frontier. In making its protagonists sympathetic, genuine cowboys, and in love with each other, the film asks audiences to believe that the renewal of American freedom should include the right of Jack and Ennis to have the "sweet life" Jack dreams of. After all, Will Kane put himself on the line so that America could remain free, not only from the wild savagery of men like Frank Miller, but also from the tyranny of its own worst impulses. And in both High Noon and Brokeback Mountain society is shackled by fear and cowardice. Viewed through the frame of the Western, those are qualities that the taming of the Frontier should have banished from American character.