Come Anticipate "Brokeback Mountain" With Me

I forgot you lived in Miami.

close - San Francisco.

I forgot you lived in Rockford.

What a bunch of crap.

And some bits of Scarface.

Aw yeah.

Lotsa dull dull domestic melodrama, and there's hardly any carnality (or eroticism) in it after the spit-lube. The way the next-to-last scene with the daughter panders to the hetero 'mainstream' made me kinda ill. Bet the Best Picture Oscar, and I wonder if Heath will keep up the Novocaine Mouth in his acceptance speech.

Boys with that brand of bizarre, oversized features can crawl in my tent too.

Wow. I know the scene is not in the story, but any scene as well-played as that one (Kate Mara gives the film's least heralded good performance) works just fine.

Anthony: you got mail.

Compare/contrast slash fiction, written and read almost exclusively by heterosexual women.

I agree, but a rather cold one. It reminded a bit of a Douglas Sirk picture: kitsch redeemed thanks to the director's tonal control.

Apparently Michelle Williams may be 'acting' off the set much like Katie Holmes, IF you know what I mean...

-- Dr Morbius (wjwe...), November 10th, 2005.

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You guys realize if there's any pudding in this film, it'll be the strawman indie film as outlined by Cartman in South Park?
-- mike h. (m...), November 10th, 2005.

Can anyone translate, or explain?

xpost
Unsubsantiated rumor: MW and HL's coupling (and child) is a front for his gay/bisexuality.

South Park's Cartman once defined 'independent film' as movies about gay cowboys eating pudding.

People are so often unwilling to explain things these days.

(I saw a ref to Ang Lee referring to The Last Picture Show as a different kind of male-male romance that inspired him, so our Jeff Bridges-Dennis Quaid fantasy version could be within reach. You get the time machine, I'll work on convincing Proulx to write it when we get to 1979.)

Nude Jack washing Ennis' shirt by the river is one of the most erotic scene in the film (and Most Likely to Freeze Frame).

My Fave Erotic Moment: Jack, quietly licking his lips and barely able to keep his hands off Ennis, during his surprise visit after learning about the divorce -- more evidence that Hot Jake was as much up to the physical acting challenges as Ledger.

They are, to contrast marriage, babies, the hearth, all the domestic shit that in the film's ideology make men less manly, and the homoerotic romance of wide open spaces, mountains, rivers and the world of "real men".

(Am will now shit down my throat_)

if they're so vital, then their parts could have been written as more than blank stereotypes. there was so little to them that i just found them distracting. michelle williams got a little more to work with and did fairly well, but anne hathaway had about 20 minutes of screen time total and could barely act her way through what few scenes she had.

Bloggerific WFMU DJ Mark Allen's take (scroll to 12/14) -- has anybody ever heard "stemmin' the rose" before btw?:

http://www.markallencam.com/toptenoftheweek.html

"In their first encounter in the tent, with all the spastic pushing, slap-punching, violent face-butting and pants-ripping, Ledger and Gyllenhaal display the intimacy of a pair of drunken paraplegics fighting over the last belt buckle at a Western Wear closing sale."

This is, of course, quite incorrect.

By LARRY DAVID
Published: January 1, 2006

SOMEBODY had to write this, and it might as well be me. I haven't seen "Brokeback Mountain," nor do I have any intention of seeing it. In fact, cowboys would have to lasso me, drag me into the theater and tie me to the seat, and even then I would make every effort to close my eyes and cover my ears.

And I love gay people. Hey, I've got gay acquaintances. Good acquaintances, who know they can call me anytime if they had my phone number. I'm for gay marriage, gay divorce, gay this and gay that. I just don't want to watch two straight men, alone on the prairie, fall in love and kiss and hug and hold hands and whatnot. That's all.

Is that so terrible? Does that mean I'm homophobic? And if I am, well, then that's too bad. Because you can call me any name you want, but I'm still not going to that movie.

To my surprise, I have some straight friends who've not only seen the movie but liked it. "One of the best love stories ever," one gushed. Another went on, "Oh, my God, you completely forget that it's two men. You in particular will love it."

"Why me?"

"You just will, trust me."

But I don't trust him. If two cowboys, male icons who are 100 percent all-man, can succumb, what chance to do I have, half- to a quarter of a man, depending on whom I'm with at the time? I'm a very susceptible person, easily influenced, a natural-born follower with no sales-resistance. When I walk into a store, clerks wrestle one another trying to get to me first. My wife won't let me watch infomercials because of all the junk I've ordered that's now piled up in the garage. My medicine cabinet is filled with vitamins and bald cures.

So who's to say I won't become enamored with the whole gay business? Let's face it, there is some appeal there. I know I've always gotten along great with men. I never once paced in my room rehearsing what to say before asking a guy if he wanted to go to the movies. And I generally don't pay for men, which of course is their most appealing attribute.

And gay guys always seem like they're having a great time. At the Christmas party I went to, they were the only ones who sang. Boy that looked like fun. I would love to sing, but this weighty, self-conscious heterosexuality I'm saddled with won't permit it.

I just know if I saw that movie, the voice inside my head that delights in torturing me would have a field day. "You like those cowboys, don't you? They're kind of cute. Go ahead, admit it, they're cute. You can't fool me, gay man. Go ahead, stop fighting it. You're gay! You're gay!"

Not that there's anything wrong with it.

Larry David appears in the HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

Stephanie Zancharek, whose negative review I otherwise accept, remarked that Anne Hathaway was poorly directed -- a ridiculous assertion.

Mark Allen writes:

In a heartbreaking scene where Lureen [Anne Hathaway] is telling Ennis an obviously made-up story of how her husband died, she's shown reciting the tall tale over the phone in a bored monotone, perched in a gorgeous all-white living room, dripping in silver, turquoise and platinum mile-high hair... any look of emotion on her face obscured by mountains of Mary Kay.

http://www.outsports.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=002660

(the later pages, obv)

http://www.the-ozone.net/05-06images/football/12-27-05/NotreDame/images/12-27-05-FB-0533.jpg