Come Anticipate "Brokeback Mountain" With Me

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

I read the Ioannis Mookas article you posted. It made several good-but-predictable points ("Is it me, or is there not something inherently masochistic in gays obediently lining up to throw our mythic disposable income at a movie whose stars assiduously deny their own gayness, as well as their characters’?") and a few ridiculous ones (giving your money to the Evil Media Conglomerate NBC Universal; guess I should stop buying major-label albums too.).

None of the film's more fervent dismissals are as perceptive as the guarded raves in the Voice, Slate, and Salon.

Yeah, I grok the quixotic nature of the anti-GE screed, but it makes marginally more sense in the context of this REVOLUTIONARY film! And all the purty shots of pollutant-free Wyoming (Alberta).

Good spotting of DP Rodrigo Prieto in the hustler alley upthread.

Nice late bit by Roberta Maxwell as Jack's mom. Tho the dad's "and there was this OTHER fella" -- maybe the most withering line in Proulx -- loses most of its sting cuz we've SEEN the other fella already.

leaving aside the issue of whether or not i'm "quite incorrect" in my dislike of anne hathaway, this seemed to be the case amongst the audience the other day. it was a sold-out showing, and from what i overheard the main topic of exit discussion was what the telephone scene actually meant. i'm also assuming that not all of these people were drooling idiots incapable of picking up on the subtleties of the plot, and that either her performance or the direction led to some confusion.

I don't know, overall it seemed poorly written or poorly portrayed. I can't put my finger on it.

I'm not saying that Jack was indeed beaten to death; since the scene is definitely shot from Ennis' point of view, it's subjective. But Lureen's reaction (and how Hathaway intoned the lines) sure as hell suggested that she was lying about something.

the wives are vital!! they probelmatize a competely queer reading, they hetreosexualise the discourse.

i think the word "heterosexualise" is a little silly, but you're right, they complicate the film, although a lot of people felt like the film doesn't show much (enough) sympathy with the michelle williams character. in a way her and heath's divorce, like jake's death, seem to invest the narrative with a certain degree of "realistic" chance or randomness but also serve as a kind of escape for the screenwriters who are able to deal only superficially with some of the most knotty issues that a story like this could potentially raise.

the weird last scene w/anne hathaway just amplified the ambiguity of the "flashback" to gyllenhaal's death. the robotic way hathaway recites the circumstances of gylenhaal's death could lead to a number of irreconciliable interpretations. i don't know if it was *designed* that way or if the screenwriters and director weren't seeking that kind of ambiguity. in any event i'm not sure what the ambiguity (intended or not) adds to the film.

i thought hathaway was just fine. anyway i was too distracted in the earlier scenes by her RED HAT. yow.

i still think the last shot was lovely.

actually i agree, but i think that in the context of an overall robotic performance in an underwritten role it becomes ambiguous in a way not perhaps intended.

I was rooting for her to leave Ennis! The film would rightly be dismissed as Guess Who's Coming To Dinner if the wives had been shrewish harridans. In fact, all the women are sympathetically written and acted (even though Lureen's increasingly ridiculous hair-do's are a bit much).

yeah her character was kind of ... inconsistent.

don't know if that means: complexity or incoherence.

the RED HAT was definitely erotic

http://www.co.lubbock.tx.us/HR/Halloween/1_Halloween-Red-Hat-Lady-20.jpg

A.H. should've had a peroxided mustache.