Topic: News Coverage: Feb 6 - Feb 12

[tpe]

Montanans turn out in droves for ‘Brokeback Mountain’

By Joe Nickell - Missoulian - 02/04/06
Movie grossed more than $33,000 at the Wilma Theatre in Missoula during its first four weekends

MISSOULA (LEE) — In late December, conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly predicted that the film “Brokeback Mountain” would never play in Montana. “They’re not going to go see the gay cowboys in Montana,” O’Reilly said during a Dec. 20 broadcast of his Fox News television program. “I’m sorry. They’re not going to do it.”

O’Reilly apparently forgot that stereotypes and off-the-cuff prognostications, no matter how confidently voiced, have an uncanny way of falling apart under the cold light of reality. The fact is, “Brokeback Mountain” isn’t just playing in Montana; it’s playing well, and widely.

In fact, it’s even breaking down some stereotypes that we Montanans tend to harbor about our own state.

Here in Missoula, the film has been a smash hit since it opened at the 1,100-seat Wilma Theatre on Jan. 6. “It’s been super every night since we started showing it,” said Bill Emerson, who manages the 85-year-old theater.

Data collected by Focus Features, which produced the film, show that “Brokeback” grossed more than $33,000 at the Wilma during its first four weekends alone.

 “Those numbers are amazing to me,” said Ryan Pliner, distribution coordinator for Focus Features. “Anybody who’s questioning how this movie is playing (outside of big coastal cities) should look at something like this.”

The last time this town demonstrated such abundant enthusiasm for a film was when “March of the Penguins” opened at the Wilma. That film ended up screening at the theater for more than six months. Only “Fahrenheit 9/11” managed to sell more tickets at the theater from the get-go, according to Emerson.

Needless to say, the Bill O’Reillys of the world forgot about places like Missoula.

But “Brokeback” isn’t just doing well in this, traditionally the most liberal part of the state. In Kalispell, the film drew 576 willing ticket-buyers over its first weekend. It was the No. 1 draw during opening weekends in Helena and Whitefish, beating out “Big Momma’s House 2,” “Nanny McPhee” and “Underworld” the three top box-office draws nationwide.

And guess where the film enjoyed its best opening weekend in Montana? Hint: It wasn’t liberal Missoula.

Try Billings.

In its opening three-day weekend, “Brokeback Mountain” grossed $8,272 in Billings. That’s 15 percent better than the film did during its opening weekend at the Wilma, where it grossed $7,187.

Granted, Billings is a bigger city than Missoula. But if you look at per capita spending on the film, Billings residents spent 9 cents per person on the film during its opening weekend (based on 2004 population estimates). That’s just 2 cents shy of what Missoula residents spent per capita on the film hardly a big margin, given the political gulf that many imagine exists between the two towns.

So how to explain the film’s widespread success in this state?

James Lopach, a University of Montana professor of political science, thinks there’s an obvious explanation even if it’s one that pundits like Bill O’Reilly missed.

“Electing to go to a movie is not a political decision,” says Lopach.

 

[ennisandjack]

"Brokeback" dares us to take heart

By Diane Carman
Denver Post Columnist 

http://www.denverpost.com/carman/ci_3379371

It's the scariest movie since "Fatal Attraction" turned millions of American men into born-again husbands.

No, it's scarier. At least most heterosexual men could summon the courage to see "Fatal Attraction."

The critically acclaimed "Brokeback Mountain" has left many of my strapping heterosexual friends cowering behind fabulous rationalizations while their wives go to the movies without them.

"I'm very traditional when it comes to Westerns," said an otherwise open-minded man, a high school teacher who resorted to the movie-genre-purist cop-out.

"I just don't like relationship movies," said a lawyer, seizing the manly anti-chick-flick defense.

An editor waved me off, saying hell no he won't go, but he'll try to work up the nerve to see it on DVD.

The closest thing to a direct response to why not to see the movie came from a guy who likes his bourbon straight and his women blond and gorgeous. "I just don't want to see two guys humping," he said, adding, "not that there's anything wrong with that."

I was flabbergasted. I know these guys. Every one of them would take serious offense to being called homophobic. And yet talking about "Brokeback Mountain" gives them sweaty palms, shifty eyes and all manner of twitchy body language.

Dr. Robert Davies, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, said no matter what they say, it's not about the sex.

"If you watch the previews, there's no hint of sex, and the reaction in the theater is still as strong."

The sex between the cowboys is all of about a minute of the 134-minute film and so subtle as to be unremarkable.

No, the real discomfort comes from the sympathies Ang Lee's film evokes.

To put it bluntly, it's not the humping, it's the heartbreak.

Great movies make us identify with the characters and feel their longing and pain. For a lot of people, even those who are on board intellectually with gay rights and have gay friends, such an emotional reaction is upsetting. They prefer to keep a safe distance from the power of homosexual love.

That's obvious from the inappropriate laughter in the theater during intense dramatic scenes, Davies said.

"That really disturbed me. It seemed as if some people were so uncomfortable with the subject matter, they had to divorce themselves from the emotional impact. They had

to laugh so they wouldn't have to acknowledge the pain."
It's as if the movie's audience and its characters share the same inner turmoil over the realization that this could actually happen, especially to cowboys.

And that may be the scariest part of all.

I mean, here you have pop culture icons of cigarette-smoking, whiskey-drinking, horse-and-whore riding masculinity out there on the Wyoming frontier falling in love.

For many people, Davies said, that's unthinkable. They have chosen to believe all gay men are girlish and effeminate.

"It's easier to hold on to very negative viewpoints or attitudes if all you ever let yourself see of that world is a stereotype you don't like," he said. "If you were to allow yourself to see two very masculine, straight-looking men in love with each other, it could shake your belief set."

Ah, and that's exactly what "Brokeback Mountain" has achieved, even among those who hunker down at home, channel-surfing bowl games, beer commercials and Clint Eastwood reruns.

In fact, Davies said, its greatest impact may be on the very guys who boycott the movie. "Asking them to see it and then having them say no makes them face the issue," the expert on anxiety said. "They have to wonder, 'Why am I uncomfortable with seeing this?"'

The same thing happened in 1967 when "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" challenged white folks to confront their deep-seated and often unacknowledged racism in a very personal way.

So, like it or not, see it or not, "Brokeback Mountain" lays bare our homophobia. It forces us to confront our fears. It dares us once and for all to understand.

Diane Carman's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
 

[*Froggy*]

Thank you very much for posting this

x Froggy

[Toadily]

What of all this Brokeback Humor
sf chronicle

Some of the "Top Ten Signs You're a Gay Cowboy," courtesy of David Letterman:



_You enjoy ridin', ropin' and redecoratin'.



_Instead of a saloon, you prefer a salon.



_Native Americans refer to you as "Dances With Men."



Is the bottomless font of "Brokeback Mountain" humor — late-night monologues, fake Internet movie trailers, movie poster imitations — harmless and fun, or insulting?



Most gay groups find it fairly benign, and note that in any case, the movie's overwhelming publicity can only be a good thing.



"Some of the humor may be insensitive, but even that has spurred positive conversation," says Susanne Salkind of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest national gay rights group.



But Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, says he's sick of it: "It may be funny, but there is a real element of homophobia. It's making jabs about sex between gay men."



Jay Leno made at least 15 "Brokeback" jokes in January. Many were references to gay sex. One that wasn't: "The cold weather continues to spread across the United States. In fact, down south it was so cold people were shaking like Jerry Falwell watching "Brokeback Mountain."



The Internet is saturated with "Brokeback" imitations. One of the best is a fake movie trailer called "Brokeback to the Future," which uses deftly edited shots from Michael J. Fox's "Back to the Future" to make it look like Marty McFly and that wacky Dr. Emmett Brown are falling in love. There's also "Top Gun 2: Brokeback Squadron," with Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer.



And then there are the poster imitations. Like "Kickback Mountain," with the faces of indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Rep. Tom DeLay superimposed over those of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.



Andy Borowitz, author of The Borowitz Report.com, says people get insulted by everything — "so the safest bet is to make jokes about everything."



Besides, he says, "I run into so few gay cowboys in Manhattan. So I think if I'm at a cocktail party and I make a good 'Brokeback' joke, I'll be safe. I guess if I were on a ranch and there were a few strong, silent types, I'd be careful."



Of the movie's iconic line, "I wish I knew how to quit you," Borowitz says he's "hoping it'll become the new 'Show me the money.'"



Paul Rudnick, a playwright and comedy writer, sees the humor as coming from heterosexual men who are both fascinated and very uncomfortable with the content of the movie.



"They're not quite sure what to make of it," says Rudnick, who is gay. "They know their wives are going to fall in love with the movie, and with the men in it."



Rudnick hasn't written about "Brokeback" yet — but only because he'd have to find something really original.



"Just joking about a gay cowboy isn't enough anymore," Rudnick says. "If you're going to joke about it now, you really have to be up to the challenge."



___

[Apollonos]

We definitely still have a ways to go.

http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/va/20060206/113929200600.html

All Reuters Movie News
"Brokeback" scribe's friends reluctant to see film
Monday February 6 10:00 PM ET

A few nights before their union handed out its annual awards, seven Writers Guild Award nominees adopted tones in keeping with the spirit of their respective films as they gathered at a panel session in Beverly Hills Thursday.

It was mostly serious stuff, punctuated by comic relief from Judd Apatow, writer-director of "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."

"Brokeback Mountain" co-screenwriter and producer Diana Ossana, said some of her own friends and family in places other than "the coasts" have had a hard time coming to grips with the homosexual love story at the film's center.

"I finally had to say to them, 'It's just a movie. What do you think is going to happen to you if you see it?"' she said. "It hasn't been easy. Trust me." ("Brokeback Mountain" and "Crash" went on to win the WGA's respective awards Saturday for adapted and original screenplay.)

[ethan]

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2006-02-06-making-love_x.htm

Piggybacking on 'Brokeback'
By Thomas K. Arnold, Special for USA TODAY
Nearly a quarter century before Brokeback Mountain, there was Making Love, dubbed Hollywood's first major-studio look at gay romance.

The movie, about a married Los Angeles doctor whose long-repressed attraction for men awakens when he meets a brash young novelist, generated controversy when it was released in 1982. To take advantage of the attention Brokeback Mountain is getting, Making Love arrives on DVD today (Fox, $15).

"From a historical perspective, Making Love is the first major studio film to portray gay characters in a thoughtful and accessible way," Fox's Steve Feldstein says. "It was clearly ahead of its time and rightfully has a place in cinema history and popular culture."

Harry Hamlin, who played the novelist with whom the doctor is smitten, says he's happy to see Brokeback Mountain getting attention. The movie about two cowboys who fall in love in the '60s is up for a best-picture Oscar.

"It's a great story, and it's really well told," he says. "It's amazing they made that movie for $14 million; I think our budget was even bigger, and that was at a time when budgets weren't that huge."

Hollywood has come a long way from Making Love, says Hamlin, who has a recurring role in UPN's teen detective series Veronica Mars.

"In the 24 years since our movie came out, there has been so much attention put on this subject for many reasons, not just the AIDS crisis, but there also have been many discussions in the media and so many plays, so many films."

The goal of Making Love, he says, "was to tell a real love story, to ... show people what was really going on in a part of society no one wanted to look at at the time."

But, he says, "the studio became more afraid as we were making the movie, and as a result, the final product was much more saccharine than any of us had anticipated. It wasn't that well received in many areas. Even the gay community didn't embrace it."

Hamlin says Making Love ended his film career, though he did rebound with a lead in the hit TV series L.A. Law from 1986 to 1991.

"In the early 1980s, Hollywood was pretty much a cowboy town, and not in the sense of Brokeback Mountain," he says. "And if you're sitting around saying 'Let's put this actor as the romantic lead with so-and-so,' and they say 'He was just gay in this movie,' well, I think that may be how the thinking went. I had been doing nothing but studio features until that time, and after that I didn't work at all for a while and then rolled into television."

[chameau]

Thanks Ethan. 

[ethan]

Can movies change our minds?
By Maria DiBattista, MARIA DIBATTISTA is the author of "Fast-Talking Dames."

NEAR THE end of "Brokeback Mountain," the film widely touted as a breakthrough gay romance for straight audiences, the wife of one of the lovers tells her husband as he is leaving for one of his "fishing trips" that Brokeback Mountain is his pretend place. Movies specialize in such private fantasies, but they are also expert in using the arts of pretending to criticize — in the hope of changing — reality. "Brokeback Mountain" represents this kind of make-believe.

Movies can envision the need for social change, but it is unclear that they can help bring it about. They are better at pointing the way to a different, happier, more fulfilling life. Not the least interesting thing about the hopeless love dramatized in "Brokeback Mountain," which garnered eight Oscar nominations last week, is how many social hopes it has inspired. Ang Lee, after winning the award as best director at the Golden Globes, hailed "the power of movies to change the way we're thinking," although he later thought it advisable to wait to "see how it plays out."

So far, "Brokeback Mountain" plays out as a love story that has ignited the cultural equivalent of a range war. Typical of conservative salvos is Don Feder's denunciation of the film as one of Hollywood's "agitprop epics" that he lambastes for being "anti-American … religion adverse and into moral relevancy." Frank Rich pronounced the film "a landmark in the troubled history of America's relationship to homosexuality," and he exuberantly declared that it "is not leading a revolution but ratifying one, fleshing out — quite literally — what most Americans now believe."

But what Americans believe may not be the same as what Americans want to see fleshed out. When recently asked whether he had seen "Brokeback Mountain," President Bush, without disclosing his reasons, reported that he hadn't. He then amiably added, "I hope you go back to the ranch and the farm … " (without elaborating what we were free to do once we got there).

Movies can take on the great social problems of their time, but they may be the least effective — or appropriate — medium for solving them. Did "Gentleman's Agreement" mark the beginning of the end of anti-Semitism in America? Did "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" make it easier for interracial couples to marry? Did "Wall Street" help unseat the captains of industry and discredit their doctrine of "greed is good"? Name any "problem film" — whether it deals with discrimination (racial, ethnic, sexual or religious), social reform (of schools, prisons, legislatures) or corporate corruption (national or global) — and you will come up with the same unimpressive results. The more designs a movie has on us, the less willing we are to change our minds, much less our social and business practices.

"Brokeback Mountain" seems to have its own thoughts on this question of movies and social change. As it opens, "1963" appears on the screen. That year began in militant democratic hope — Martin Luther King Jr. announced "I have a dream" and President Kennedy asserted "Ich bin ein Berliner" — and ended in the trauma of Kennedy's assassination. It was the year Betty Friedan published "The Feminine Mystique," the Supreme Court ruled that reading the Bible in public schools was unconstitutional and Bob Dylan prophesized "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall."

But none of these indicators of change are evident in the rural West where the movie is set. There, the "homosexual mystique" and all the lives it warped — all the violence it inspired — are simply taken as part of the way things are. The movie's insulation from the realities of 1963 may give its love story a feeling of being outside time — but it also suggests that social change does not transform everything in its wake. The movie shows us people and places left behind or slow to catch up. And it holds out little hope to them.

Can movies that offer no visions of a happier society still change hearts and minds? The lovelorn melodramas of the 1930s and 1940s, to which "Brokeback Mountain" is more deeply indebted than to the western, offered audiences little or no hope of change in the real world, yet morally uplifted them with the myth of self-sacrifice as ennobling. Bette Davis assuring her lover in "Now, Voyager" that they didn't need the moon, they had the stars, testifies to the transcendent power of this myth. The self-denial in "Brokeback Mountain," by contrast, is morally barren. There were scenes in which I thought Heath Ledger, who plays the stoic and laconic Ennis Del Mar, was turning to stone right before my eyes.

The images of freedom and change in the movie are associated with Brokeback Mountain itself, the great pretend place where men ride horses with pleasure — and purpose — across the beautiful, demanding land. The movie's scenery is the scenery of the myth of the American frontier, which has always represented the promise of spiritual, as well as physical, openness. In the movie, that promise becomes a hope that two men might find a way to be together without hurting others or destroying themselves.

What moves us to want to change things— even ourselves — when we watch a movie are its images, not its social agenda, however creditable. If "Brokeback Mountain" changes the way we think and act about homosexual relationships, that change won't come from seeing two men throbbing with love for each other. It will come out of our last glimpse of Brokeback Mountain, reduced to a postcard tacked on a closet door. You don't have to be gay or straight, you just have to be alive to human possibility to feel the reproach of that diminished prospect.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-debattista5feb05,0,4111971.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary

[Buddy]

Pretty brilliant piece-


The New York Review of Books: An Affair to Remember
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18712
Volume 53, Number 3 · February 23, 2006

[ennisandjack]

Thanks for all the great articles 

[chameau]

Excellent, so many thanks, I will share that with many people.

[manila_rocks]

February 10, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Ex-Gay Cowboys
By DAN SAVAGE
Seattle

FIRST, a little of that full disclosure stuff: I have not actually seen "Brokeback Mountain" or "End of the Spear," both of which I'm going to discuss here.

But since when did not seeing a film prevent anyone from sharing his or her strong opinions about it? Before the posters for "Brokeback Mountain" were even printed, everyone from the blogger Mickey Kaus to the Concerned Women for America to gay men all over the country had already said a lot about the film. (Their opinions were, respectively, con, con and pro.)

So, let's get to it: Remember when straight actors who played gay were the ones taking a professional risk? Those days are over. Shortly after Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, both straight, received Oscar nominations for playing gay cowboys in "Brokeback Mountain," conservative Christians were upset when they learned that a gay actor, Chad Allen, was playing a straight missionary in "End of the Spear."

"End of the Spear" tells what happened after five American missionaries were murdered in 1956 by a tribe in Ecuador. Instead of seeking retribution, the missionaries' families reached out to the tribe, forgave the killers and eventually converted them to Christianity. An evangelical film company, Every Tribe Entertainment, brought the story to the screen. In a glowing review, Marcus Yoars, a film critic for Focus on the Family, noted that the "martyrdom" of the slain missionaries has "inspired thousands if not millions of Christians." But after conservatives took a closer look at the cast list, the protests began. Many felt Chad Allen's presence in the film negated any positive message.

The pastors claim they're worried about what will happen when their children rush home from the movies, Google Chad Allen's name, and discover that he's a "gay activist." ("Gay activist" is a term evangelicals apply to any homosexual who isn't a gay doormat.) They needn't be too concerned. Straight boys who have unsupervised access to the Internet aren't Googling the names of middle-aged male actors gay or straight — not when Paris Hilton's sex tapes are still out there.

Frankly, I can't help but be perplexed by the criticisms of Mr. Allen from the Christian right. After all, isn't playing straight what evangelicals have been urging gay men to do?

That's precisely what Jack and Ennis attempt to do in "Brokeback Mountain" — at least, according to people I know who have actually seen the film. These gay cowboys try, as best they can, to quit one another. They marry women, start families. But their wives are crushed when they realize their husbands don't, and can't, ever really love them. "Brokeback Mountain" makes clear that it would have been better for all concerned if Jack and Ennis had lived in a world where they could simply be together.

That world didn't exist when Jack and Ennis were pitching tents together, but it does now — even in the American West. Today, the tiny and stable percentage of men who are gay are free to live openly, and those who want to settle down and start families can do so without having to deceive some poor, unsuspecting woman.

Straight audiences are watching and loving "Brokeback Mountain" — that's troubling to evangelical Christians who have invested a decade and millions of dollars promoting the notion that gay men can be converted to heterosexuality, or become "ex-gay." It is, they insist, an ex-gay movement, although I've never met a gay man who was moved to join it.

This "movement" demands more from gay men than simply playing straight. Once a man can really pass as ex-gay — once he's got some Dockers, an expired gym membership and a bad haircut — he's supposed to become, in effect, an ex-gay missionary, reaching out to the hostile gay tribes in such inhospitable places as Chelsea and West Hollywood.

What should really trouble evangelicals, however, is this: even if every gay man became ex-gay tomorrow, there still wouldn't be an ex-lesbian tomboy out there for every ex-gay cowboy. Instead, millions of straight women would wake up one morning to discover that they had married a Jack or an Ennis. Restaurant hostesses and receptionists at hair salons would be especially vulnerable.

Sometimes I wonder if evangelicals really believe that gay men can go straight. If they don't think Chad Allen can play straight convincingly for 108 minutes, do they honestly imagine that gay men who aren't actors can play straight for a lifetime? And if anyone reading this believes that gay men can actually become ex-gay men, I have just one question for you: Would you want your daughter to marry one?

Evangelical Christians seem sincere in their desire to help build healthy, lasting marriages. Well, if that's their goal, encouraging gay men to enter into straight marriages is a peculiar strategy. Every straight marriage that includes a gay husband is one Web-browser-history check away from an ugly divorce.

If anything, supporters of traditional marriage should want gay men out of the heterosexual marriage market entirely. And the best way to do that is to see that we're safely married off — to each other, not to your daughters. Let gay actors like Chad Allen only play it straight in the movies.

[manila_rocks]

By Antonio C. Abaya

ONE of the weirdest reactions to the Ultra stampede last Feb. 4 is the conclusion in much of Philippine media that it was caused, ultimately, by poverty, on the grounds that most of those who flocked to Ultra to watch the game show raffle were “desperately poor.” This spin has unfortunately been picked up international media (CNN, BBC) in their reportage of the accident.

But this interpretations is flawed, colored as it is by some people’s knee-jerk reaction to blame every single bit of bad news on the Arroyo government.

This is dumb. All or most of the people who crowded outside and into Ultra, for a chance to win one of the prizes, owned at least TV sets. Otherwise, they or most of them would not have become faithful followers of Wowowee and would not have learned of the prizes that were being given away.

I would hazard the guess that they, or most of them, also owned refrigerators, stereos, cellphones, electric flat irons, rice cookers, LPG gas burners, etc. Some of them no doubt also owned VCRs or DVD players.

These are not the accoutrement of the “desperately poor.” These are the accoutrement of the working proletariat these days, who either hold regular jobs or run small businesses here, and/or are the direct beneficiaries of family members working abroad.

One of those who were (almost) crushed to death in Ultra — she merely fainted and was fortunately immediately carried away — was the mother of our 13-year-old alaga and wife of our driver. They do not earn enough to vacation in Baguio or Boracay, but they are not “desperately poor” either.

They own a motorcycle, TV set, cellphone, refrigerator, stereo, VCR, etc. We pay him almost double the going entry- level wage for drivers, plus free food and lodging during the work week, plus full scholarship for their eldest child (who is handicapped) and half scholarship for their second (who is normal).

Yet, despite her more comfortable station relative to her siblings’, she still felt compelled to try her luck at the game show, in a bid to yet improve their economic status. So do hundreds of millions of others around the world who take part in raffles, bingos and lottos. The vast majority are not “desperately poor,” but they, including myself, do not hesitate to invest modest sums in the hope of winning a million bucks or more.

Of course, tragic accidents do happen. Every day and everywhere. On or about the same day as Ultra, five Brazilians were trampled to death in a stampede in Sao Paulo during a rock concert. And some 800 Egyptians drowned when the ferry they were sailing in sank in the Red Sea.

Yet I did not hear or read international media accounts of these accidents as being due to the “desperate poverty” of Brazilians out to escape the squalor of their favela slums. Or the “desperate poverty” of Egyptians forced to work in Saudi Arabia because they could not find jobs in their own country.

It seems to be only Philippine media (and the perennial critics whom they like to quote) who love to feast on the carcasses of accident victims, just to be able to score political or ideological points against the incumbent government. And since our media is largely in English, international media are able to quickly and obligingly echo our media’s ghoulish attitudes.

* * *

Brokeback molehill. Many of those who eagerly await the release of Brokeback Mountain may be in for a big disappointment. Having seen this film win best film and best director awards at the Golden Globes, they may be expecting some kind of epiphany in the history of cinema for its graphic treatment of homosexuality.

But, in my opinion, it is a boring film, from start to finish. It is one of those films which you wish would end soon, but which you keep watching in the hope that it would redeem itself in the last five minutes. It doesn’t.

Why it has generated so much buzz can only be attributed, I think, to clear press agentry that induce in viewers the psychological need to feel “with it” or au courant with Hollywood’s fad-du-jour, which this year is homosexuality.

Brokeback Mountain has little plot, based as it is on a mere short story. There is virtually no character development. And it has all the dramatic tension of a herd of sheep crossing from a pasture to the next. Which is the actual setting for the film: two unemployed cowboys are hired to herd sheep in the spectacular valleys and mountains of Wyoming.

Within a short time, with only the slightest hint of a growing camaraderie, the two are groping and buggering each other in their tent. Purely for the shock value, it would seem. If the two had groped and buggered some of the sheep, instead of each other, there might have been more human interest in the plot.

The two hours that I wasted on this film would have been better spent if it had shown nothing but the dramatic mountain scenery of the locale.

In 1954, Marlon Brando was widely criticized in his film debut (in On the Waterfront) for delivering his lines as if he had marbles in his mouth. In Brokeback, Heath Ledger, one of the cowboys, delivers his lines as if he had marshmallows in his.

I had to turn on the English subtitles to try and understand what he was mumbling about as he masticated his marshmallows. But the English subs, it turned out, were equally incomprehensible. They read as if they had been written by Fu Manchu before he passed the English proficiency test of immigration. So back to lip-reading.

It is a mystery to me why and how the talented Taiwanese director Ang Lee was conned into directing this nothing film, or why he won the best director award for it in the Golden Globes, or why he is the hands-down favorite for the Oscar.

In 1993, Ang Lee directed The Wedding Banquet, with a more innocent and light-hearted treatment of homosexuality. In it, a (male) Taiwanese real estate developer in New York — who has an Anglo boyfriend — is pestered by his parents in Taiwan to marry and start a family.

To get his parents off his back, he tells them that he is engaged to a nice Taiwanese girl in New York, not anticipating that they would fly right away to New York to meet their future daughter-in-law and plan the wedding. And so the charade begins.

A more serious view of homosexuality can be found in the 1995 British film Priest, by Antonia Bird. In it, a young Catholic priest ministers, with limited success, to his new parishioners in a working class neighborhood of Liverpool, and then indulges his homosexual urges at night.

Priest has far more dramatic tension and far more character development than Brokeback. And its angst is more profound as the characters grapple with hypocrisy, betrayal, forgiveness and redemption.

For my money, the most compelling film about homosexuality is the 1993 Cuban film Strawberry and Chocolate, by Tomas Alea Gutierrez. It examines the relationship between two university students, one straight, the other gay who schemes seduce him.

Parallel to the sexual sparring is an ideological one, between a faithful Party member and a free spirit. Parallel to the sexual sparring is an ideological one, between a faithful Party member and a free spirit. Jorge Perrugorria is outstanding as the gay student, with his sensitivity, his love of life and his instinct for creative freedom.

In Brokeback, insurmountably shallow Hollywood has unconvincingly made a Mountain out of an insignificant molehill.

[ennisandjack]

New York Times

For Old Cowhands, How Close Is Too Close?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/movies/12lasky.html?_r=1
             
By DAVID JAY LASKY
Published: February 12, 2006
Three people on a yacht; the Bahamas; sexy skullduggery. That's the extent of the pitch for Columbia Pictures' "Nautica," a thriller in development that might bring the stars of "Brokeback Mountain," Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.
 
According to studio notes about the film, Mr. Ledger has signed on, and Mr. Gyllenhaal is in talks, though for what characters isn't clear. But having taken the risk of playing gay lovers, should they pair up again at all, whether in straight or gay roles? Sure, the team of Robert Redford and Paul Newman entered the pantheon by teaming up for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Sting." On the other hand, nobody's clamoring for yet another "48 Hrs." with Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy. Asked to assess the career prospects of a Ledger-Gyllenhaal duo, three Hollywood casting directors turned thumbs up, with reservations.

To Janet Hirschenson, who with her partner, Jane Jenkins, has cast "The Da Vinci Code" and "Poseidon," the question is: "Why not?" Ms. Hirschenson said both actors had futures as leading men, and working together again shouldn't harm either career. The potential pitfall lies in the script, she said. If the movie's no good, the partnership will end with "Nautica."

Avy Kaufman, the casting director of "Brokeback Mountain," echoes that thought. "As long as they stick with really great material and really great directors, you don't lose," he said. With "Nautica," the director is a question mark. Ted Demme ("Blow") was to direct and, after he died, in 2002, the job briefly belonged to Stephen Hopkins (HBO's "Life and Death of Peter Sellers"). But now the studio notes list no one in that important chair.

Laura Adler, who cast the forthcoming independent film "Hollenbeck" and NBC's "Four Kings," cites the stars' track record of on-screen chemistry as a plus in any future reteaming. "The only con," she said, "is that we've seen it already."

As for whether they're the next Redford-Newman or the next Murphy-Nolte, well, the casting directors agreed that moviegoers would have the final word. DAVID JAY LASKY

[Apollonos]

This is an excerpt from an article at boxofficemojo.com.

http://boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2005&p=l.htm

On the down side, Harrison Ford grimaced his way to another disappointment with the generic thriller, Firewall, and the Oscar luster continued to fade for Brokeback Mountain and company.

After gaining little momentum from last week's Oscar nominations, Best Picture contenders all shed screens and collapsed at an alarming rate, implying indifference from moviegoers. Brokeback Mountain held up the best but was still down 30 percent, while Capote, Good Night, and Good Luck. and Munich each tumbled over 40 percent. By comparison, last year's crop fell 17 percent on average at this same point. With an estimated $4.2 million weekend, Brokeback Mountain has $66.6 million in the till in 66 days, leading the Oscar pack by a wide margin.

This is certainly disappointing, but at least, of all the Oscar contenders, BBM fared the best.