I bought the wide-screen version. It looks great on the tv, and even better on my computer monitor. Both the tent scenes look significantly better on the tv. You can actually see what's going on now. I don't know if they lightened it for the dvd release or if it just translates better to a smaller screen, but it's almost like they've got overhead lights in the tent now.
The sound is better, too. Ennis says, "I'm sorry," to Jack when he comes into the tent for the second tent scene, Jack tells him, "It's all right, come here." I swear, I didn't hear ANY of that in the theater.
Also when they kiss, there's a thin string of saliva between their lips.
I didn't like the way they divided the scenes. Sometimes I had to fast foward through several scenes to get to the one I was wanting to watch again.
I kept noticing little things that I missed before during the three times I saw it in the theater. I guess it's because now I can slow it down and really take a look at what's on the screen.
For example:
The sign on Aguirre's trailer door: Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
Check out the beans cooking in the cans on the grill. I think somoene here has mentioned this before, but I wanted to point it out again: The label reads BEANS on the bottom and at the top, Better Most: B B M (Broke Back Mountain).
After the sheep is killed by a coyote, a few scenes later, there's a skinned coyote on a pole, with its tail blowing in the breeze.
When Ennis shoots the elk, and Jack yells, "Woo-wee!" and Ennis shoves him back, I never noticed how Jack does that giggle before...
When Ennis gets the first postcard, he tells Alma, "We was fishing buddies," and goes into the living room. The blue chair in the living room, has a broken leg and sets crooked on the floor.
Want to see something really fascinating? Watch the scene where they jump off the cliff into the water in slow motion.
Also, watch the scene where Jack is beaten by the mechanics in slow motion (frame by frame). One of the attackers is a black man. The other two men are the two mechanics seen in the trailer. They pull his legs apart, and stomp on Jack's crotch. And you can actually see the tire iron make contact with his face. In the theater, it happened so fast, I didn't see any of that...
The scene with Jack's mother and father, when she asks if he wants a piece of cherry cake, there really is a cherry cake sitting on the kitchen counter next to the aluminum foil. It's a sort of a pound cake and you can see one of the cherries.
Again, I was startled by the starkness of the house, inside and out. The dry grass and sunbaked house, outside. The white bare walls, sparsely furnished rooms inside. The only real color is the mother's blue sweater. The coffee cups - none of them match. This really was a poor family. (Now when I hear the bartender tell Jack about Lureen and her dad selling $100,000.00 tractors, and how he looks at her with renewed interest, I wonder if THAT'S why he married her...?)
When Ennis is leaving, and the old man starts talking, and the mother puts her hand to her throat, and then she tells Ennis, "You come back and see us again..." for some reason, I cried this time at that line of dialogue, when I never did before. I felt SO sorry for that poor woman, and I really felt that she and Jack had suffered SO much at the hands of that old man.
The scene in Jack's bedroom - there's an light shaped like an anchor on the wall - I read somewhere that Ennis Del Mar translated from Spanish means Island in the Sea. Ennis was Jack's anchor.
Also look at the books on Jack's desk. There's a book with a bucking bronco on the cover. Of course, there's the tiny toy horse with the little cowboy figure on it. I never noticed before, the tears on Ennis's face when he looks up after putting the horse back down on the desk.
I made screen captures of most of the things I mentioned here, but I don't know how to post them here... How do you guys do it?
Anything else you've noticed that you didn't see before?
