Brokeback Mountain Review and Response - Page 6

DavidMn · #76 12-14-2005, 04:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by amber

Best sentence ever. I totally agree.
It's amazing how moronic and irrelevant to the movie those reviewers "points" were.

Sorry, I haven't seen it, though....

They wanna get people to pay attention to them and their shock statements. that's all it is.

dissention · #77 12-14-2005, 04:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparky

For God's sake someone see this damned thing so there is another opinion !

It's not out yet here, bub. It's only playing in New York, LA, and San Francisco at the moment!

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparky

Then, he went on to talk about how terrible it was that Focus Features was marketing it to get a straight female audience, that Focus is owned by NBC, which is in turn owned by GE. Of course, GE is evil, so you should not go see the movie because to do so would be to contribute to furthering the agenda of one more evil conglomerate.

Well, a third of Dunkin' Donuts was just sold to The Carlyle Group. I shall no longer purchase wheat bagels from them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparky

So short sighted. On top of that, the maniac movie reviewer Michael Medved actually said nice things about the film, but had to comment that one scene that implies gay bashing was a questionable suggestion of a "political agenda".

Are you not a Med Head?

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparky

I fail to understand why so many are incapable of employing art as an inspiration for dialogue without sucking the soul out the piece of art. It drives me nuts.

I wish Kael was around to give us a review of this movie. Who knows what the hell she'd say about it because she was such a wild card, but it would certainly be worth reading.

Rickypt · #78 12-14-2005, 04:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparky

POSSIBLE MINOR SPOILER ALERTOne extremely annoying and predictable development is the politically correct gay cynic response I have read a few times.

The problem is that so many people see it as a gay movie. GLAAD didn't help by sending a press release about it the day it opened, trying to get some political capital out of it.

Once it is defined as a gay movie, then a lot of gay people are going to start looking at the movie through a political lens. I caught myself doing it from time to time, but was able to check myself.

You have described the movie very accurately, sparky. It is a love story between two men. It is really irrelevant if they were straight men who fell in love, one gay guy and a straight guy, two gay guys that would have been able to identify themselves that way in a different place and time, etc.

DavidMn · #79 12-14-2005, 04:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rickypt

The problem is that so many people see it as a gay movie. GLAAD didn't help by sending a press release about it the day it opened, trying to get some political capital out of it.

Once it is defined as a gay movie, then a lot of gay people are going to start looking at the movie through a political lens. I caught myself doing it from time to time, but was able to check myself.

You have described the movie very accurately, sparky. It is a love story between two men. It is really irrelevant if they were straight men who fell in love, one gay guy and a straight guy, two gay guys that would have been able to identify themselves that way in a different place and time, etc.

Well said.

sparky · #80 12-14-2005, 04:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dissention

It's not out yet here, bub. It's only playing in New York, LA, and San Francisco at the moment!

YOU should have gone to NY to see it. But I think it opens in 20 more cities this weekend.

Quote:

Well, a third of Dunkin' Donuts was just sold to The Carlyle Group. I shall no longer purchase wheat bagels from them.

Doesn't the Carlyle group own about 40% of the world yet ?

Quote:

Are you not a Med Head?

The irony is, that guy is about as hissy and prissy as Charles Nelson Reilly.

Quote:

I wish Kael was around to give us a review of this movie. Who knows what the hell she'd say about it because she was such a wild card, but it would certainly be worth reading.

We no longer need her. WE HAVE YOU.

dissention · #81 12-14-2005, 04:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparky

YOU should have gone to NY to see it. But I think it opens in 20 more cities this weekend.

You's talking crazy, cracker. If I'm going to drive to NYC to see a goddamned movie, the red carpet had better be rolled out for my arrival.

They're showing it here on Thursday at midnight (crazy fools), but I can wait until Friday night.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparky

Doesn't the Carlyle group own about 40% of the world yet ?

57% to be exact. I hear they're currently attempting to purchase a hefty portion of Chik-Fil-A, which will bring them 4% closer to absolute world domination.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparky

The irony is, that guy is about as hissy and prissy as Charles Nelson Reilly.

He's a closeted Mary if I've ever seen one. Just look:

I thought his review for Brokeback Mountain was a a scream. You just know he got hard when he typed the words "explicit R-rated man-on-man action."

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparky

We no longer need her. WE HAVE YOU.

Aw, you flatter me. Hopefully the movie will elicit a kind & gentle repsonse from me.

DavidMn · #82 12-14-2005, 04:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dissention

You's talking crazy, cracker. If I'm going to drive to NYC to see a goddamned movie, the red carpet had better be rolled out for my arrival.

They're showing it here on Thursday at midnight (crazy fools), but I can wait until Friday night.

57% to be exact. I hear they're currently attempting to purchase a hefty portion of Chik-Fil-A, which will bring them 4% closer to absolute world domination.

He's a closeted Mary if I've ever seen one. Just look:

I thought his review for Brokeback Mountain was a a scream. You just know he got hard when he typed the words "explicit R-rated man-on-man action."

Aw, you flatter me. Hopefully the movie will elicit a kind & gentle repsonse from me.

Dammit, stop it!!! Youre making my sides hurt today..

dissention · #83 12-14-2005, 04:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidMn

Dammit, stop it!!! Youre making my sides hurt today..

That's nothing, man! Go to his website.

It's cool to be conservative!

Or, my favorite, his website poll:

Which mainstream media story scares you the most?

-Bird Flu Pandemic
-Small Pox Outbreak
-Category 5 Hurricanes
-Cataclysmic Earthquakes
-President Hillary Rodham Clinton

DavidMn · #84 12-14-2005, 04:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dissention

That's nothing, man! Go to his website.

It's cool to be conservative!

Or, my favorite, his website poll:

Which mainstream media story scares you the most?

-Bird Flu Pandemic
-Small Pox Outbreak
-Category 5 Hurricanes
-Cataclysmic Earthquakes
-President Hillary Rodham Clinton

When I saw him on tv today, he reminded me of a younger Joel Siegel.

sparky · #85 12-14-2005, 04:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rickypt

The problem is that so many people see it as a gay movie. GLAAD didn't help by sending a press release about it the day it opened, trying to get some political capital out of it.

GLAAD is so desperate to have gay culture legitimized that they would claim a Leave It To Beaver episode was gay. Not that I don't understand their aims, but I have different view of the culture and this movie than they do. Which I will get to...

Quote:

Once it is defined as a gay movie, then a lot of gay people are going to start looking at the movie through a political lens. I caught myself doing it from time to time, but was able to check myself.

My issue is with the definition of GAY. I am no longer looking at that word as a cultural concept. I no longer view love or my sexuality as a political statement. And while I can appreciate the marriage of the romantic and political in terms of civic struggles, it is no longer how I view my own life.

Quote:

You have described the movie very accurately, sparky. It is a love story between two men. It is really irrelevant if they were straight men who fell in love, one gay guy and a straight guy, two gay guys that would have been able to identify themselves that way in a different place and time, etc.

That is what I am talking about. Political activists have understandably taken the cause of equal rights, and marriage and all that, and are fighting the courts and politicians to get protections for people like myself. Their agenda does not belong in the world of every piece of art. It has little place in the world of art criticism. The word GAY to me has become so politically charged that I hesitate to even associate it with myself. IMO, gay "culture" has been spiritually and emotionally bankrupt for very long time.

What I like about this story in particular is that it is independent of all of that. Two guys fall in love. Period. I identify with it on a primal level. My life is for the most part independent of what is identified as gay culture. Most of what is included in that is of no interest at all to me. Give me a simple, down to earth guy who likes to go out in the woods, ride horses, camp, build stuff, and run around in a pickup truck. That's it. Is it a dream world ? Not really. Did we have to go through all the politics to get here ? I guess so. I could go into how those two characters could have done just that, but they didn't. It wasn't the point of the story. The fact that there was no gay community for them, that they had their private, isolated affair over those years...you can take out the adultery, take out the secrecy, and it doesn't change the spirit of the connection. It was simple, unavoidable. A force of nature. I think that's the point.

DavidMn · #86 12-14-2005, 04:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparky

GLAAD is so desperate to have gay culture legitimized that they would claim a Leave It To Beaver episode was gay. Not that I don't understand their aims, but I have different view of the culture and this movie than they do. Which I will get to...

My issue is with the definition of GAY. I am no longer looking at that word as a cultural concept. I no longer view love or my sexuality as a political statement. And while I can appreciate the marriage of the romantic and political in terms of civic struggles, it is no longer how I view my own life.

That is what I am talking about. Political activists have understandably taken the cause of equal rights, and marriage and all that, and are fighting the courts and politicians to get protections for people like myself. Their agenda does not belong in the world of every piece of art. It has little place in the world of art criticism. The word GAY to me has become so politically charged that I hesitate to even associate it with myself. IMO, gay "culture" has been spiritually and emotionally bankrupt for very long time.

What I like about this story in particular is that it is independent of all of that. Two guys fall in love. Period. I identify with it on a primal level. My life is for the most part independent of what is identified as gay culture. Most of what is included in that is of no interest at all to me. Give me a simple, down to earth guy who likes to go out in the woods, ride horses, camp, build stuff, and run around in a pickup truck. That's it. Is it a dream world ? Not really. Did we have to go through all the politics to get here ? I guess so. I could go into how those two characters could have done just that, but they didn't. It wasn't the point of the story. The fact that there was no gay community for them, that they had their private, isolated affair over those years...you can take out the adultery, take out the secrecy, and it doesn't change the spirit of the connection. It was simple, unavoidable. A force of nature. I think that's the point.

Someone that can actually see the forest through the trees. BRAVO

dissention · #87 12-16-2005, 10:19 PM

I just got back from seeing this.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed it. Mostly on a personal level because of some things going on in my life right now. I loved the story and the way it played out (for the most part), but I was not a big fan of the direction. Ang Lee's rigid ideals of tastefulness began to bug me after a while.

Heath Ledger blew me away. He made me tear up quite a few times; I never knew he was such a gifted actor. Masculine, heartfelt, sexy, I thought he was riveting. I couldn't take my eyes off of him when he was onscreen. His loneliness was palpable and broke my heart. Gah, I just loved him. Loved him. Gyllenhaal suffered a bit next to him if you ask me, but not to the point where I'd diss his performance. Michelle Williams was pretty ****ing fabulous, too. I could have done without Anne Hathaway, but that was mostly because her character was so poorly written and developed. She was nothing but a cartoon character; as one-dimensional as a Little Lulu comic book panel and inspiring nothing but a snicker and a roll of the eyes from me.

The relationship between Ennis and Jack was the one of the most realistic depictions of love I've ever seen in a movie. Nothing seemed forced or phoney, it came across as actual love; deeply flawed as only humans could make it, but it being the only thing in life that matters. That feeling of longing that you have for someone you love but can't fully act on for whatever reason and the sense of not being whole without the person you're madly in love with; it was all so real. I get chills just thinking about it. So wonderful.

I only have a few real complaints about it. Ang Lee is as subtle as a jackhammer to the groin. The "visual imagery" he uses metaphorically is obvious and conventional. I got a bit bored by his subjecting me to frame after frame of lush mountainscapes with gurgling streams running in the background when the two leads are onscreen together. What is it meant to signify? Why, the natural beauty of their love, of course. Like I said, the man is as subtle as a jackhammer to the crotch and as imaginative as latter-day Stephen King.

Lee can't find it in him to be anything but pure and chaste to an extreme degree. For example, take the sexual encounters between Ennis and Jack. If Lee had taken a cue from John Waters and filmed these scenes in Odor-Rama, chances are that after I scratched the corresponding dots on my card and held them up to my nostrils, I would have smelled lilies & rose water, not the scents of dirt, sweat, & the foul stench of booze. The scenes are almost as unrealistic as heterosexual sex scenes in other mainstream pictures. In those het-sex scenes, there is a lot of light kissing, heavy petting, slow gyrating, and just a hint of shoulder to make it seem erotic. Then each character rolls over onto their respective side of the bed, sheet pulled up to their armpits, and seem to happily lie in the resulting wet spot. Realistic? Not a chance.

My gripes with Lee aside, I absolutely loved it. It made me think a lot about some things going on in my life and I'm sure my great enjoyment of it was colored by those things.

strandinthewind · #88 12-17-2005, 03:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparky

YOU should have gone to NY to see it. But I think it opens in 20 more cities this weekend. . . . .

It opened in Atlanta this weekend. I am waiting to see it with my friend. I need that shoulder to cry on

markolas · #89 12-17-2005, 10:07 AM

I've made plans with a couple of friends to go see it after the holiday.

markolas · #90 12-17-2005, 10:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparky

My life is for the most part independent of what is identified as gay culture. Most of what is included in that is of no interest at all to me. Give me a simple, down to earth guy who likes to go out in the woods, ride horses, camp, build stuff, and run around in a pickup truck.

What exactly is identified as "gay culture." And is the only alternative camping in the woods and driving a pick-up truck? I've got news...I have no sense of direction, and if it's not an automatic transmission, I can't drive it. Hey, there's something else for the "I Can't..." thread!