Author Topic: News Coverage - March 13 - 19  (Read 15204 times)

Offline ethan

  • Administrator
  • Jack + Ennis
  • ***
  • Posts: 11242
  • Country: us
  • Gender: Male
News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« on: Mar 13, 2006, 02:52 PM »
Please post your news article here.
Remembering Pierre (chameau) 1960-2015, a "Capricorn bro and crazy Frog Uncle from the North Pole." You are missed

Offline Italian_Dude

  • Jack + Ennis
  • *
  • Posts: 3713
  • Gender: Male
  • Love is Never Wrong
Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #1 on: Mar 13, 2006, 03:25 PM »
'Brokeback Mountain' Soundtrack Saddles Up for the Dance Floor 

Main Theme 'The Wings' From Academy Award-Winning Score Gets Dance Treatment
  by Top DJs, #1 Breakout on This Week's Billboard Hot Dance Club Play Chart

    NEW YORK, March 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Gustavo Santaolalla's Academy
Award-winning score for the breakthrough American love story, "Brokeback
Mountain," is getting the dance floor treatment by some of the world's top
DJs.  The haunting, guitar-driven score's centerpiece track, "The Wings," has
been reworked into three sweeping dance epics by Gabriel & Dresden, Manny
Lehman, Tony Moran and Warren Rigg.  Remixes were shipped to major dance club
DJs last week and they debut at #1 on Billboard's "Breakout" Hot Dance Club
Play chart this week.
    The "Brokeback Mountain" soundtrack continues to gather momentum in
conjunction with the heavily-honored, groundbreaking film.  More than
300,000 copies have been shipped worldwide and approximately 100,000 have been
scanned in the U.S.  The album was #1 on the iTunes Top 100 following its win
for Best Song at this year's Golden Globes for "A Love That Will Never Grown
Old," performed by Emmylou Harris and written by soundtrack mastermind Gustavo
Santaolalla with famed lyricist Bernie Taupin.  That same week, the album was
#1 on the Amazon Music Chart and #1 on the iTunes Soundtrack Chart.  Over
60,000 digital tracks from the soundtrack sold within its first two weeks of
release.
    "The idea for club mixes originated with Grant Pavolka in our corporate
communications department, and he helped Dahlia Ambach-Caplin A&R the various
mixes.  As with everything else we have done with the 'Brokeback' soundtrack,
the cooperation and support of James Schamus at Focus Features and Kathy
Nelson at Universal Pictures has been especially rewarding," said Ron
Goldstein, President & CEO of Verve Music Group.
    The remixers (who were chosen by Ambach-Caplin and Claudia Cuseta at Maxi
Promotions) have taken Santaolalla's main theme and created three vastly
different versions, each with something to please the most discerning club
music fan.  Classically-trained arrangers, Gabriel & Dresden, give the song a
lengthy progressive house reworking that honors the heartbreaking, emotional
core of the score.  The "Collaboration Mix" by Manny Lehman, Tony Moran and
Warren Rigg, lushly reproduces the song into a Balearic house mix.  Manny
Lehman's remix takes a more hard-hitting, tribal approach, and is primed for
peak-hour "big room" consumption.
    A commercial release for the remixes is expected on April 11.
    Verve Forecast, the adult music imprint of Verve Music Group, has been
aggressively marketing the album by increasing its promotional presence with
store window displays at major retailers in New York, Los Angeles and San
Francisco in anticipation of the score's award season attention.  With these
new club mixes, the label is reaching out to as many markets as possible.
    Rufus Wainwright has also just completed a video for "The Maker Makes,"
another breakout track from the soundtrack.  MTV Networks fledgling channel
Logo will host the video's world premiere later this month.
    The "Brokeback Mountain" soundtrack features Gustavo Santaolalla's Golden
Globe and Academy Award nominated score, along with tracks from Willie Nelson,
Emmylou Harris, Teddy Thompson, Rufus Wainwright, Jackie Greene, Linda
Rondstadt, Steve Earle, Mary McBride, and the Gas Band.
You and me together
Through the days and nights
I don't worry 'cause
Everything's gonna be all right
People keep talking
They can say what they like
But all I know is everything's gonna be all right..

Offline Italian_Dude

  • Jack + Ennis
  • *
  • Posts: 3713
  • Gender: Male
  • Love is Never Wrong
*Brokeback Mountain VS. Crash*
« Reply #2 on: Mar 13, 2006, 03:38 PM »
I think this article is amazing!!

*Brokeback Mountain VS. Crash; helping outsiders understand the pain felt by Brokeback Mountain's Oscar loss*
by Mark Salamon, March 13, 2006


During the run-up to the Academy Awards Tony Curtis told Fox News that he hadn't yet seen Brokeback Mountain and had no intention of doing so. He claimed he wasn't alone in the sentiment and other Academy members felt the same way.

Furthermore, Curtis contended, his contemporaries no longer alive to speak for themselves wouldn't have cared for the highly acclaimed Best Picture nominee either." Howard Hughes and John Wayne wouldn't like it," Curtis said in an interview.

 I am not a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but I have seen Brokeback Mountain, and I did like it tremendously—as did millions of others. Our bewilderment over its defeat at the Oscars has been misinterpreted. Would you humor us by considering the following analogy that better explains our position?

***********

   Let's recast Brokeback Mountain as the story about the intolerance faced by a white woman and her black husband in rural Wyoming in the 1960s. At the end of the film, her husband is murdered in a brutal hate crime because of others disgust over miscegenation.

Now imagine that, before this film even premieres, it is the butt of racist jokes. Conservative news commentators decry its very existence as a mistake, calling it a profane plea for acceptance of the sin that is a mixed marriage. They repeatedly predict--and hope for--its failure at the box office.

The movies opens and critics rave that it is an exquisite, poignant, and supremely-well crafted film. The actors are ideally cast in their parts and play their roles with pitch-perfect honesty and involvement. The screenplay is sublimely spare and genuinely evocative of the American west of the recent past. The cinematography, the musical score, the landscapes, the set-pieces: together, they achieve perfection, or something close to it.

Nonetheless, all during its cinematic run, talk show hosts, humorists and live comedy-ensemble network programs can't seem to let a day go by without satirical reference to that "jungle fever cowboy movie." Black and white celebrities play out creepy parodies of "BrokeBlack Mounting." Often these skits are done in whiteface and blackface.

Award season commences and Brokeback Mountain wins almost every precursor "Best" award bestowed by the most prestigious film institutions. It also has the greatest box-office take of all the likely Best Picture nominees, and, by most accounts, is the best reviewed film of the year. And when the Oscar nominations are announced, Brokeback Mountain receives the highest number of nominations for all of the Best Picture nominees.

Shortly thereafter, an Academy member proudly proclaims he has no intention of watching the film because he and his contemporaries don't care for mixed marriages. Their reasoning is,"D.W. Griffith (or insert the name of a famously racist Hollywood Golden Age actor here) would be rolling over in his grave." Consider, too, it is also likely that a significant proportion of Academy members are silently acting out this same bigotry by failing to see Brokeback Mountain before marking their own ballots.

No one objects to these glaring violations of the Academy's own rules, or the institution's ethics. Nonetheless, it is widely predicted Brokeback Mountain will win Best Picture. Even Las Vegas odds-makers make it the overwhelming favorite.


Then Brokeback Mountain loses to Crash in what, almost everyone agrees, is one of the—if not the —most shocking upset ever. Is it unreasonable that some might ask if racism had been a factor?

This example is not an overstatement of the abuse that has been hurled at Brokeback Mountain, nor have its accolades been exaggerated. Merely substitute "gay male relationship" into the analogy provided above and you will have an accurate picture of the scathing climate Brokeback Mountain has had to endure.

Consider another scenario. Imagine the gay themes of Brokeback Mountain were received with benign acceptance and treated with quiet respect during its run in the theaters. Reviews were mixed and it did so-so at the box-office. Meanwhile, the issues of race relations in Crash were the subject of daily derision, culminating in an announcement by a prominent Academy member he would not be viewing the movie because it was about “colored people.”

Then, suppose that leading up to the Oscars, Crash received more "Best" awards, not only among all pictures in 2005, but among all movies in history.

Don't you think there might have been a tiny tempest if, under those circumstances, Brokeback Mountain had then won "Best Picture" over Crash? Wouldn't questions of racism within the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences be asked legitimately? Accusations of unfairness within the Academy's voting procedure and the uproar would continue until heads rolled and changes occurred. Spike Lee and the NAACP might well be in the forefront of the campaign.

But Brokeback Mountain is a tale of the love between two male ranch hands. Mr. Curtis--and who knows how many other Academy members--flouted the long accepted conventions of their own guild by dismissing Brokeback Mountain without ever screening it. Is there really a problem with that? Or are those homosexuals just "sore losers," who are "pushing an agenda?"

Homophobia--yes, there's that "h" word--is still so ingrained in Hollywood and within American culture that disdain for gay relationships is accepted as "normal" and "natural". So much so, that the Tony Curtises of this world express it as if by right, feeling no shame and fearing no censure from their colleagues or the public.

In his column entitled "The Fury of the 'Crash'-lash" Roger Ebert concludes by writing: "The nature of the attacks on Crash by the supporters of Brokeback Mountain seem to proceed from the other position: Brokeback is better not only because of its artistry but because of its subject matter, and those who disagree hate homosexuals. Its supporters could vote for it in good conscience, vote for it and feel they had made a progressive move, vote for it and not feel that there was any stain on their liberal credentials for shunning what Crash had to offer."

Let us overlook the fact that Ebert succumbs to the slippery temptation to misrepresent our point, and then finds fault with that misconstruing of our position. What he seems to be suggesting is that "supporters of Brokeback Mountain" are "attacking" Crash because we failed in our attempts to turn the Oscar for "Best Picture" into a competition for "Worthiest Oppressed Minority".

I, and those who agree with me, will freely admit to being Brokeback Mountain supporters, yet let us please speak for ourselves. Few of us have argued Brokeback Mountain deserved the Oscar because it is about gay love. That has nothing to do with it.

What's done is done. Crash won this year's Best Picture Oscar and there is no taking that back. Nor should it be. But given the facts outlined above, is it really asking too much to admit that homophobia may very well have played a part in that outcome?


You and me together
Through the days and nights
I don't worry 'cause
Everything's gonna be all right
People keep talking
They can say what they like
But all I know is everything's gonna be all right..

Offline Tom

  • Jack + Ennis
  • *
  • Posts: 7656
  • Gender: Male
Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #3 on: Mar 13, 2006, 03:45 PM »
Ethan and Dude thank you for these post. I live in the UK and we have always been that wee bit more tolerant (maybe that's why in some countries being gay is called the English disease) , so it is nice to see articles like this following the sometimes crap said about BBM
Actually, "life does get better than this"

Offline tpe

  • Moderator
  • Jack + Ennis
  • ***
  • Posts: 96691
Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #4 on: Mar 13, 2006, 03:53 PM »
Italian_Dude, I thank you especially for the second article.

Offline manila_rocks

  • Lureen
  • ***
  • Posts: 133
"Brokeback Author Peeved" Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #5 on: Mar 15, 2006, 02:44 PM »
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/sns-ap-film-proulx,1,3683026.story?coll=chi-entertainmentfront-hed

'Brokeback' Author Peeved About Oscar Loss

By SANDY COHEN
AP Entertainment Writer
Published March 14, 2006, 9:05 PM CST

LOS ANGELES -- Annie Proulx, whose 1997 short story inspired the film "Brokeback Mountain," has penned a scattershot blast in a British newspaper unleashing her anger over the film's best-picture Oscar loss.

Proulx criticizes Oscar voters and the Academy Awards ceremony in the 1,094-word rant, which appeared in Saturday's issue of The Guardian, a liberal paper boasting 1.2 million readers daily.

The best-picture Oscar went to "Crash," which focuses on race relations in Los Angeles.

Academy members who vote for the year's best film are "out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city," Proulx writes.

The 70-year-old Pulitzer-prize winning author points out that "Brokeback," which was nominated for eight Academy Awards, was named best picture at the Independent Spirit Awards one day before the March 5 Oscars.

"If you are looking for smart judging based on merit, skip the Academy Awards next year and pay attention to the Independent Spirit choices," Proulx advises.

She even lashes out at Lionsgate, the distribution company behind "Crash."

"Rumour has it that Lionsgate inundated the academy voters with DVD copies of Trash -- excuse me -- Crash a few weeks before the ballot deadline," Proulx writes.

She decries the "atmosphere of insufferable self-importance" inside the Kodak Theatre, the Oscars site, and describes the audience as a "somewhat dim LA crowd." The show, she writes, was "reminiscent of a small-town talent-show night."

"Clapping wildly for bad stuff enhances this," Proulx writes.

She notes that "Brokeback's" three Oscar wins, for original score, adapted screenplay and direction for Ang Lee put it "on equal footing with King Kong."

When Jack Nicholson announced "Crash" as the best-picture winner, "there was a gasp of shock," Proulx writes.

"It was a safe pick of `controversial film' for the heffalumps," she writes, using the elephant-like "Winnie the Pooh" character to describe academy voters.

"For those who call this little piece a Sour Grapes Rant," Proulx concludes, "play it as it lays."

Calls by the Associated Press to Proulx's Wyoming home and her literary agent, Elizabeth Darhansoff, were not immediately returned Tuesday.



Copyright © 2006, The Associated Press




« Last Edit: Mar 15, 2006, 02:48 PM by manila_rocks »

Offline Italian_Dude

  • Jack + Ennis
  • *
  • Posts: 3713
  • Gender: Male
  • Love is Never Wrong
Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #6 on: Mar 15, 2006, 02:47 PM »
I love that article. I just read it. AHhh! put a smile on my face! Thanks for that!
You and me together
Through the days and nights
I don't worry 'cause
Everything's gonna be all right
People keep talking
They can say what they like
But all I know is everything's gonna be all right..

Offline manila_rocks

  • Lureen
  • ***
  • Posts: 133
annie proux is angry Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #7 on: Mar 15, 2006, 07:22 PM »
Yes.  I heard there is another story from British Guardian or something like that?  Where Annie talks about many of the voters being in elegant LA rest homes!  The academy!!

Miss Nice

  • Guest
Re: annie proux is angry Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #8 on: Mar 16, 2006, 06:23 AM »
Yes.  I heard there is another story from British Guardian or something like that?  Where Annie talks about many of the voters being in elegant LA rest homes!  The academy!!

Yeah, heard so too. Here it is:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1727309,00.html

Should I paste it in or is the link sufficient? It seems to be the same text as the one pasted above from another paper... (though the headline is BLOOD ON THE RED CARPET) :)

Katie
« Last Edit: Mar 16, 2006, 06:24 AM by Miss Nice »

Offline manila_rocks

  • Lureen
  • ***
  • Posts: 133
Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #9 on: Mar 16, 2006, 02:27 PM »
Mar. 16, 2006 16:23
Turkey restricts viewing of "Brokeback Mountain"
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
ANKARA, Turkey

Turkey's Culture Ministry has restricted the viewing of the Oscar-winning gay romance "Brokeback Mountain" to viewers over the age of 18, saying that the movie violated public morals, a ministry official said Thursday.

The restriction reflects the sensitivities in overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey, where homosexuality is largely a taboo subject.

The movie ratings subcommittee of the Culture and Tourism Ministry restricted the viewing of "Brokeback Mountain" before its opening in Turkey next Friday, the ministry official said on condition of anonymity. Turkish officials cannot speak to the press without prior authorization. The subcommittee ruled that the movie would harm public morals, the official said.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395619032&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
« Last Edit: Mar 16, 2006, 02:29 PM by manila_rocks »

Offline Italian_Dude

  • Jack + Ennis
  • *
  • Posts: 3713
  • Gender: Male
  • Love is Never Wrong
Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #10 on: Mar 16, 2006, 02:31 PM »
So its not banned from Turkey right?

Just you have to be over 18 to see it..

Thats okay, wasn't it rated R in the USA? doesn't that mean 18+ or with and adult if ur younger?

In Canada it was 14A (younger than 14 requires an adult) boo ya!
You and me together
Through the days and nights
I don't worry 'cause
Everything's gonna be all right
People keep talking
They can say what they like
But all I know is everything's gonna be all right..

Offline manila_rocks

  • Lureen
  • ***
  • Posts: 133
    
Taiwan travel agency offers Brokeback Mountain tours
Last Updated Mon, 13 Mar 2006 18:03:34 EST
CBC News

A Taiwanese travel company is marketing trips to southern Alberta, where the award-winning movie Brokeback Mountain was filmed.

And Lion Travel Service is offering $200 discounts to gay couples who want to take the tour.
Brokeback Mountain was filmed in Alberta

"We're marketing this package especially to gay and lesbian people mainly," said company spokeswoman Linda Chow.

Gordon MacIvor, the economic development officer for the town of Fort Macleod, where much of the gay love story was filmed, said not every one in the town is excited about it becoming a destination for gay travellers. But he said any visitors to the town will be welcomed and not judged.

"We are in a modern society today, so there have been a lot of movies out on controversial issues and it's your own personal judgment on it," MacIvor told CBC Radio.

Don Boynton of Travel Alberta says his website also suggests a site-seeing tour of the film's locations. But he says the tour isn't only for gay people.
Taiwanese gays visit Pincher Creek and nearby Fort Macleod

"The movie and the scenery is appealing to all people no matter what their lifestyle is," he said.

Brokeback Mountain won Oscars for best director, best adapted screenplay and best original score. The move was set in Wyoming, but filmed in the area of Fort Macleod and Pincher Creek area.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/business/national/2006/03/13/broke-060313.html

Offline Italian_Dude

  • Jack + Ennis
  • *
  • Posts: 3713
  • Gender: Male
  • Love is Never Wrong
Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #12 on: Mar 16, 2006, 02:59 PM »
I wanna go!!! hah!
You and me together
Through the days and nights
I don't worry 'cause
Everything's gonna be all right
People keep talking
They can say what they like
But all I know is everything's gonna be all right..

Offline ethan

  • Administrator
  • Jack + Ennis
  • ***
  • Posts: 11242
  • Country: us
  • Gender: Male
Taiwan travel agency offers Brokeback Mountain tours
Last Updated Mon, 13 Mar 2006 18:03:34 EST

Perhaps we could contact the travel agency and make BBM tour arrangment for us.
Remembering Pierre (chameau) 1960-2015, a "Capricorn bro and crazy Frog Uncle from the North Pole." You are missed

Offline manila_rocks

  • Lureen
  • ***
  • Posts: 133
Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #14 on: Mar 16, 2006, 03:16 PM »
I want to see a brochure from this travel agency about the tour and its specifics.  If anyone knows how to get one please let me know.  I see they have a listing in Taipei on google.  I do not speak Chinese.

Offline Italian_Dude

  • Jack + Ennis
  • *
  • Posts: 3713
  • Gender: Male
  • Love is Never Wrong
Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #15 on: Mar 16, 2006, 03:43 PM »
We should.. i want to find out more haha!
You and me together
Through the days and nights
I don't worry 'cause
Everything's gonna be all right
People keep talking
They can say what they like
But all I know is everything's gonna be all right..

Offline Lost_Girl

  • Ennis
  • ******
  • Posts: 1836
  • Gender: Female
  • If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it.
Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #16 on: Mar 16, 2006, 03:44 PM »
Sorry this article has been write 1months ago, but I don't know where I can post it. Feel free to move it.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18712

An Affair to Remember
By Daniel Mendelsohn
Brokeback Mountain
a film directed by Ang Lee, based on the story by E. Annie Proulx

Brokeback Mountain—the highly praised new movie as well as the short story by Annie Proulx on which the picture is faithfully based—is a tale about two homosexual men. Two gay men. To some people it will seem strange to say this; to some other people, it will seem strange to have to say it. Strange to say it, because the story is, as everyone now knows, about two young Wyoming ranch hands who fall in love as teenagers in 1963 and continue their tortured affair, furtively, over the next twenty years. And as everyone also knows, when most people hear the words "two homosexual men" or "gay," the image that comes to mind is not likely to be one of rugged young cowboys who shoot elk and ride broncos for fun.

Two homosexual men: it is strange to have to say it just now because the distinct emphasis of so much that has been said about the movie—in commercial advertising as well as in the adulatory reviews—has been that the story told in Brokeback Mountain is not, in fact, a gay story, but a sweeping romantic epic with "universal" appeal. The lengths to which reviewers from all over the country, representing publications of various ideological shadings, have gone in order to diminish the specifically gay element is striking, as a random sampling of the reviews collected on the film's official Web site makes clear. The Wall Street Journal's critic asserted that "love stories come and go, but this one stays with you—not because both lovers are men, but because their story is so full of life and longing, and true romance." The Los Angeles Times declared the film to be

    a deeply felt, emotional love story that deals with the uncharted, mysterious ways of the human heart just as so many mainstream films have before it. The two lovers here just happen to be men.

Indeed, a month after the movie's release most of the reviews were resisting, indignantly, the popular tendency to refer to it as "the gay cowboy movie." "It is much more than that glib description implies," the critic of the Minneapolis Star Tribune sniffed. "This is a human story." This particular rhetorical emphasis figures prominently in the advertising for the film, which in quoting such passages reflects the producer's understandable desire that Brokeback Mountain not be seen as something for a "niche" market but as a story with broad appeal, whatever the particulars of its time, place, and personalities. (The words "gay" and "homosexual" are never used of the film's two main characters in the forty-nine-page press kit distributed by the filmmakers to critics.) "One movie is connecting with the heart of America," one of the current print ad campaigns declares; the ad shows the star Heath Ledger, without his costar, grinning in a cowboy hat. A television ad that ran immediately after the Golden Globe awards a few weeks ago showed clips of the male leads embracing their wives, but not each other.

The reluctance to be explicit about the film's themes and content was evident at the Golden Globes, where the film took the major awards—for best movie drama, best director, and best screenplay. When a short montage of clips from the film was screened, it was described as "a story of monumental conflict"; later, the actor reading the names of nominees for best actor in a movie drama described Heath Ledger's character as "a cowboy caught up in a complicated love." After Ang Lee received the award he was quoted as saying, "This is a universal story. I just wanted to make a love story."

Because I am as admiring as almost everyone else of the film's many excellences, it seems to me necessary to counter this special emphasis in the way the film is being promoted and received. For to see Brokeback Mountain as a love story, or even as a film about universal human emotions, is to misconstrue it very seriously—and in so doing inevitably to diminish its real achievement.

Both narratively and visually, Brokeback Mountain is a tragedy about the specifically gay phenomenon of the "closet"—about the disastrous emotional and moral consequences of erotic self-repression and of the social intolerance that first causes and then exacerbates it. What love story there is occurs early on in the film, and briefly: a summer's idyll herding sheep on a Wyoming mountain, during which two lonely youths, taciturn Ennis and high-spirited Jack, fall into bed, and then in love, with each other. The sole visual representation of their happiness in love is a single brief shot of the two shirtless youths horsing around in the grass. That shot is eerily—and significantly—silent, voiceless: it turns out that what we are seeing is what the boys' boss is seeing through his binoculars as he spies on them.

After that—because their love for each other can't be fitted into the lives they think they must lead—misery pursues and finally destroys the two men and everyone with whom they come in contact with the relentless thoroughness you associate with Greek tragedy. By the end of the drama, indeed, whole families have been laid waste. Ennis's marriage to a conventional, sweet-natured girl disintegrates, savaging her simple illusions and spoiling the home life of his two daughters; Jack's nervy young wife, Lureen, devolves into a brittle shrew, her increasingly elaborate and artificial hairstyles serving as a visual marker of the ever-growing mendacity that underlies the couple's relationship. Even an appealing young waitress, with whom Ennis after his divorce has a flirtation (an episode much amplified from a bare mention in the original story), is made miserable by her brief contact with a man who is as enigmatic to himself as he is to her. If Jack and Ennis are tainted, it's not because they're gay, but because they pretend not to be; it's the lie that poisons everyone they touch.

As for Jack and Ennis themselves, the brief and infrequent vacations that they are able to take together as the years pass—"fishing trips" on which, as Ennis's wife points out, still choking on her bitterness years after their marriage fails, no fish were ever caught— are haunted, increasingly, by the specter of the happier life they might have had, had they been able to live together. Their final vacation together (before Jack is beaten to death in what is clearly represented, in a flashback, as a roadside gay-bashing incident) is poisoned by mutual recriminations. "I wish I knew how to quit you," the now nearly middle-aged Jack tearfully cries out, humiliated by years of having to seek sexual solace in the arms of Mexican hustlers. "It's because of you that I'm like this—nothing, nobody," the dirt-poor Ennis sobs as he collapses in the dust. What Ennis means, of course, is that he's "nothing" because loving Jack has forced him to be aware of real passion that has no outlet, aware of a sexual nature that he cannot ignore but which neither his background nor his circumstances have equipped him to make part of his life. Again and again over the years, he rebuffs Jack's offers to try living together and running "a little cow and calf operation" somewhere, hobbled by his inability even to imagine what a life of happiness might look like.

One reason he can't bring himself to envision such a life with his lover is a grisly childhood memory, presented in flashback, of being taken at the age of eight by his father to see the body of a gay rancher who'd been tortured and beaten to death—a scene that prefigures the scene of Jack's death. This explicit reference to childhood trauma suggests another, quite powerful, reason why Brokeback must be seen as a specifically gay tragedy. In another review that decried the use of the term "gay cowboy movie" ("a cruel simplification"), the Chicago Sun-Times's critic, Roger Ebert, wrote with ostensible compassion about the dilemma of Jack and Ennis, declaring that "their tragedy is universal. It could be about two women, or lovers from different religious or ethnic groups—any 'forbidden' love." This is well-meaning but seriously misguided. The tragedy of heterosexual lovers from different religious or ethnic groups is, essentially, a social tragedy; as we watch it unfold, we are meant to be outraged by the irrationality of social strictures that prevent the two from loving each other, strictures that the lovers themselves may legitimately rail against and despise.

But those lovers, however star-crossed, never despise themselves. As Brokeback makes so eloquently clear, the tragedy of gay lovers like Ennis and Jack is only secondarily a social tragedy. Their tragedy, which starts well before the lovers ever meet, is primarily a psychological tragedy, a tragedy of psyches scarred from the very first stirrings of an erotic desire which the world around them—beginning in earliest childhood, in the bosom of their families, as Ennis's grim flashback is meant to remind us—represents as unhealthy, hateful, and deadly. Romeo and Juliet (and we) may hate the outside world, the Capulets and Montagues, may hate Verona; but because they learn to hate homosexuality so early on, young people with homosexual impulses more often than not grow up hating themselves: they believe that there's something wrong with themselves long before they can understand that there's something wrong with society. This is the truth that Heath Ledger, who plays Ennis, clearly understands—"Fear was instilled in him at an early age, and so the way he loved disgusted him," the actor has said—and that is so brilliantly conveyed by his deservedly acclaimed performance. On screen, Ennis's self-repression and self-loathing are given startling physical form: the awkward, almost hobbled quality of his gait, the constricted gestures, the way in which he barely opens his mouth when he talks all speak eloquently of a man who is tormented simply by being in his own body—by being himself.

So much, at any rate, for the movie being a love story like any other, even a tragic one. To their great credit, the makers of Brokeback Mountain—the writers Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, the director Ang Lee—seem, despite the official rhetoric, to have been aware that they were making a movie specifically about the closet. The themes of repression, containment, the emptiness of unrealized lives—all ending in the "nothingness" to which Ennis achingly refers—are consistently expressed in the film, appropriately enough, by the use of space; given the film's homoerotic themes, this device is particularly meaningful. The two lovers are only happy in the wide, unfenced outdoors, where exuberant shots of enormous skies and vast landscapes suggest, tellingly, that what the men feel for each other is "natural." By contrast, whenever we see Jack and Ennis indoors, in the scenes that show the failure of their domestic and social lives, they look cramped and claustrophobic. (Ennis in particular is often seen in reflection, in various mirrors: a figure confined in a tiny frame.) There's a sequence in which we see Ennis in Wyoming, and then Jack in Texas, anxiously preparing for one of their "fishing trips," and both men, as they pack for their trip—Ennis nearly leaves behind his fishing tackle, the unused and increasingly unpersuasive prop for the fiction he tells his wife each time he goes away with Jack— pace back and forth in their respective houses like caged animals.

The climax of these visual contrasts is also the emotional climax of the film, which takes place in two consecutive scenes, both of which prominently feature closets—literal closets. In the first, a grief-stricken Ennis, now in his late thirties, visits Jack's childhood home, where in the tiny closet of Jack's almost bare room he discovers two shirts—his and Jack's, the clothes they'd worn during their summer on Brokeback Mountain—one of which Jack has sentimentally encased in the other. (At the end of that summer, Ennis had thought he'd lost the shirt; only now do we realize that Jack had stolen it for this purpose.) The image —which is taken directly from Proulx's story—of the two shirts hidden in the closet, preserved in an embrace which the men who wore them could never fully enjoy, stands as the poignant visual symbol of the story's tragedy. Made aware too late of how greatly he was loved, of the extent of his loss, Ennis stands in the tiny windowless space, caressing the shirts and weeping wordlessly.

In the scene that follows, another misplaced piece of clothing leads to a similar scene of tragic realization. Now middle-aged and living alone in a battered, sparsely furnished trailer (a setting with which Proulx's story begins, the tale itself unfolding as a long flashback), Ennis receives a visit from his grown daughter, who announces that she's engaged to be married. "Does he love you?" the blighted father protectively demands, as if realizing too late that this is all that matters. After the girl leaves, Ennis realizes she's left her sweater behind, and when he opens his little closet door to store it there, we see that he's hung the two shirts from their first summer, one still wearing the other, on the inside of the closet door, below a tattered postcard of Brokeback Mountain. Just as we see this, the camera pulls back to allow us a slightly wider view, which reveals a little window next to the closet, a rectangular frame that affords a glimpse of a field of yellow flowers and the mountains and sky. The juxtaposition of the two spaces—the cramped and airless closet, the window with its unlimited vistas beyond—efficiently but wrenchingly suggests the man's tragedy: the life he has lived, the life that might have been. His eyes filling with tears, Ennis looks at his closet and says, "Jack, I swear..."; but he never completes his sentence, as he never completed his life.

One of the most tortured, but by no means untypical, attempts to suggest that the tragic heroes of Brokeback Mountain aren't "really" gay appeared in, of all places, the San Francisco Chronicle, where the critic Mick LaSalle argued that the film is

    about two men who are in love, and it makes no sense. It makes no sense in terms of who they are, where they are, how they live and how they see themselves. It makes no sense in terms of what they do for a living or how they would probably vote in a national election....

    The situation carries a lot of emotional power, largely because it's so specific and yet undefined. The two guys—cowboys—are in love with each other, but we don't ever quite know if they're in love with each other because they're gay, or if they're gay because they're in love with each other.

    It's possible that if these fellows had never met, one or both would have gone through life straight.

The statement suggests what's wrong with so much of the criticism of the film, however well-meaning it is. It seems clear by now that Brokeback has received the attention it's been getting, from critics and audiences alike, partly because it seems on its surface to make normal what many people think of as gay experience— bringing it into the familiar "heart of America." (Had this been the story of, say, the love between two closeted interior decorators living in New York City in the 1970s, you suspect that there wouldn't be full-page ads in the major papers trumpeting its "universal" themes.) But the fact that this film's main characters look like cowboys doesn't make them, or their story, any less gay. Criticisms like LaSalle's, and those of the many other critics trying to persuade you that Brokeback isn't "really" gay, that Jack and Ennis's love "makes no sense" because they're Wyoming ranch hands who are likely to vote Republican, only work if you believe that being gay means having a certain look, or lifestyle (urban, say), or politics; that it's anything other than the bare fact of being erotically attached primarily to members of your own sex.

Indeed, the point that gay people have been trying to make for years—a point that Brokeback could be making now, if so many of its vocal admirers would listen to what it's saying—is that there's no such thing as a typi-cal gay person, a strangely different-seeming person with whom Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar have nothing in common—thankfully, you can't help feeling, in the eyes of many commentators. (It is surely significant that the film's only major departure from Proulx's story are two scenes clearly meant to underscore Jack's and Ennis's bona fides as macho American men: one in which Jack successfully challenges his boorish father-in-law at a Thanksgiving celebration, and another in which Ennis punches a couple of biker goons at a July Fourth picnic—a scene that culminates with the image of Ennis standing tall against a skyscape of exploding fireworks.)

The real achievement of Brokeback Mountain is not that it tells a universal love story that happens to have gay characters in it, but that it tells a distinctively gay story that happens to be so well told that any feeling person can be moved by it. If you insist, as so many have, that the story of Jack and Ennis is OK to watch and sympathize with because they're not really homosexual—that they're more like the heart of America than like "gay people"—you're pushing them back into the closet whose narrow and suffocating confines Ang Lee and his collaborators have so beautifully and harrowingly exposed.
YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW BAD IT GETS !!!!

"There are places we can never return"
"When you ain't got nothing, you don't need nothing"

Icon by meowwwwwww

Offline *Froggy*

  • Jack + Ennis
  • *
  • Posts: 10977
  • Gender: Female
  • No longer using this account: frog123
Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #17 on: Mar 17, 2006, 11:58 AM »
http://www.irishexaminer.com/breaking/story.asp?j=202838015&p=zxz83883x&n=202838901



Secretary scene voted sexiest in the movies

A spanking scene in the movie Secretary has been named the sexiest moment in film.


The kiss between Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger in the gay cowboy movie Brokeback Mountain came second.

Hollywood heart-throb George Clooney and star Jennifer Lopez take third place for the movie Out Of Sight.

The sexual tension between Clooney’s bank robber and Lopez’s federal agent is sparked when he locks her in the boot of his car.

The opening sex scene featuring French actress Beatrice Dalle in the explicit 1986 film Betty Blue is fourth.

The kiss between stars Selma Blair and Sarah Michelle Gellar in the 1999 movie Cruel Intentions is fifth.

The classic Alfred Hitchcock movie Rear Window is next in the poll for Lovefilm.com, for the moment when James Stewart’s character is woken by a kiss from his girlfriend (Grace Kelly).

DVD rental service Lovefilm.com surveyed 120,000 of its members for the poll.

Top Ten Sexiest Movie Scenes

1. Secretary (2002): Lee (Maggie Gyllenhaal) being spanked by her boss (James Spader)


2. Brokeback Mountain (2005): The passionate kiss between Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger).

3. Out of Sight (1998): The sexual tension builds when Jack (George Clooney) locks Karen (Jennifer Lopez) in the boot of his car.

4. Betty Blue (1986): Opening sex scene with Betty (Beatrice Dalle) and Zorg (Gean-Hughes Anglade).

5. Cruel Intentions (1999): A lesbian kiss between Selma Blair and Sarah Michelle Gellar’s characters.

6. Wild Things (1998): The infamous car washing scene featuring Neve Campbell and Denise Richards.

7. Rear Window (1954): J.B Jeffries (James Stewart) is woken by a kiss from his girlfriend (Grace Kelly).

8. The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989): Susie (Michelle Pfeiffer) sings ‘Makin’ Whoopee’ on the piano.

9. Mulholland Drive (2001): Betty (Naomi Watts) and a mysterious brunette (Laura Harring) share a bed together.

10. The Hunger (1983): A vampire seduction scene featuring Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon.


Support bacteria, they are the only culture some people have!


If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.
~ Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592) ~ (Thankx to gimmejack)

Offline bnjmn3

  • Jack
  • *****
  • Posts: 555
  • Gender: Male
  • BBM: The Best Picture Show
Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #18 on: Mar 17, 2006, 06:30 PM »
Old article, but Robert Osborne discusses the BBM gay curse and how much caampaigning has to do with winning an Academy Award. Maybe we can convince him to change the name of TCM' 31 Days of Oscar
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/entertainment/tv/s_417102.html

'360 Degrees of Oscar'
By Ed Blank

TRIBUNE-REVIEW FILM AND THEATER CRITIC
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) calls it "360 Degrees of Oscar," a double-meaning label for the movies it will be running from 6 a.m. Feb. 1 through 7:02 a.m. March 4.
All 360 movies being shown during the month leading up to the March 5 Academy Awards ceremony were nominated for, or won, at least one Oscar. And the 360 are lined up as a daisy chain, linked by cast members - an application of the "six degrees of separation" principle.
The first movie, "Mogambo," features Ava Gardner, who co-stars in the second film, "Show Boat" (1951 version), with Kathryn Grayson, who co-stars in the third movie, "Thousands Cheer," with Donna Reed and so on.
Not all of the 360 linking players are well known. When was the last time you deliberately set out to watch two consecutive movies with Jean Willes or Dort Clark? Eric Pohlmann isn't so well known, either, and he's the guy who completes the daisy chain, appearing in the 360th movie, "Lust for Life" (5 a.m. March 4) and the month-launching "Mogambo."

TCM's Robert Osborne will introduce roughly 124 of the 360. He hosts any that begin between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. and sometimes a bit later.
He lives in New York City but does most of the taping in Atlanta, to which he has been traveling by train about once a month since 9/11.
Hosting the films associates him with a permanent inventory of 3,348 movies Turner Entertainment Co. owns and thousands of others that rotate through on leases.
"I think we have about 7,000, but the total changes so frequently," Osborne says. "Turner is constantly acquiring packages, so the total varies.
"One contract may give us unlimited use of the Selznick library for maybe five years. Another may give us 10 showings of certain movies over a five-year period. In another case, we may be able to select 30 Columbia Pictures from a list of 300 to show one time.
"Every case is different. In some cases performers such as Bob Hope or Cary Grant or a director like (Alfred) Hitchcock made deals with the studios whereby the rights reverted back to them (as a key participant) after so many years. Those guys had great foresight.
"So did John Payne, who for certain B pictures he made had stipulations he'd get the rights after a certain numbers of years, and they all had to be shot in Technicolor. He saw that they'd have more value in color on TV later. He became very wealthy as a result of that."
The off-screen Osborne is a bottomless pit of information and opinion about thousands of movies and Hollywood history.
Besides authoring more than a dozen books on the Oscars, including "75 Years of the Oscar," he was, after he graduated from the University of Washington, under personal contract to Lucille Ball, who formed a troupe of young performers to mentor as a theater company.
He also, for The Hollywood Reporter, reviews Broadway and writes a column on movies.
Ask Osborne how some of the oddest victories in Oscar history occurred, as when Grace Kelly, as the long-suffering wife of an alcoholic actor in "The Country Girl" (1954), beat the conspicuously great portrayal by Judy Garland in "A Star Is Born" as ... the long-suffering wife of an alcoholic actor.
"Grace was the new girl in town, and everybody adored her," Osborne says. "Very classy, very (ideally) representative of the movie industry. Judy was brilliant in her movie, but she was trouble on the set, and she would only work at night, and she couldn't work on some days, and people were sick of that. She was a pain for years about that stuff.
"But when you look at those movies today, there's no comparison whose performance is better."
The 2002 race for best picture and director seemed to come down to the two so heavily promoted by Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein. It was "Chicago," directed by former Pittsburgh and first-time filmmaker Rob Marshall, vs. "Gangs of New York," directed by the veteran Martin Scorsese, a long-revered multi-time nominee.
"Chicago" won as picture. Certainly it was the best-liked contender. But the two Miramax film directors lost in a major upset to Roman Polanski of "The Pianist."
"I think that's where the politicking got into it. I think Harvey Weinstein (who spent very heavily to promote his company's primary contenders) had it all mapped out (with 'Chicago' having the better chance for picture and Scorsese having the better chance for director).
"His thinking probably was that Marshall was a young guy with more chances and Scorsese was more like Custer's Last Stand and wanted to pay him off, but he couldn't pay him off with best picture because 'Gangs of New York' wasn't that good."
Somehow that ambivalence nudged open the door for Polanski to get in with a Holocaust movie that was well enough liked to win for its screenplay and for its leading man, Adrien Brody.
"Polanski was from out of left field. He was the underdog, the exile."
Polanski infamously fled the States in 1978 to avoid being sentenced in a Los Angeles legal case involving the alleged drugging and raping of a 13-year-old girl.
Oscar nominations for 2005 movies will be announced Tuesday. Already Osborne finds "Brokeback Mountain" just about unbeatable in the main category despite gay content that would have made it a long shot at best in earlier times.
"I think 'Brokeback' deserves to (win). I think it's chances are helped enormously by the fact one producer is a woman and the other is a straight man, who has kids, as is the director, who is straight and has kids, and both lead actors, who are straight.
"All that stuff makes it safe enough. Someday I don't think that will matter, and it shouldn't now. But the fact it was made by straight people takes the curse off it.
"If it were like the Tony Awards, where (winners) get up and kiss their (same sex) partner on stage, people say 'Whoa!' I think that 'Brokeback Mountain,' though, has enough of a straight pedigree that it makes it OK for people to vote for it. It makes it safe to talk about and to like the movie."
Osborne is heading for Los Angeles because his star is being embedded Wednesday in the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
"It's going to be pulling together a lot of old friends I haven't seen in some time, mainly Tom Troupe and Carole Cook," husband-and-wife performers who date back to the Lucille Ball ensemble.
"One of the things I'm pleased about," Osborne says, "is that the star will be on Vine Street in front of what used to be the Huntington-Hartford Theater that became the James Doolittle and is now, I believe, the Ricardo Montalban Theater.
"It was built by NBC around 1936 for the old Lux Radio Theater. When I first got to L.A., Lucy used to take Carole and me there when we were under contract to her because we couldn't afford to go. We saw Bette Davis and so many others perform there, so that means something to me."
We can't change it. We will have to stand it.

Offline frances

  • Jack + Ennis
  • *
  • Posts: 5153
  • Gender: Female
Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #19 on: Mar 18, 2006, 04:32 AM »
'Brokeback' writer voices truth on Oscars' relevance
by KAREN HERSHENSON  (Arts and Entertainment editor of the Times) - Mar 17 4:00 PM


WE HAD a spirit ed discussion in the newsroom this morning about comments made by Annie Proulx, author of the slender short story "Brokeback Mountain," which director Ang Lee turned into a breathtakingly nuanced big-screen picture. You may have heard of it: a couple of hunky actors, a wide-open Western backdrop, behavior many found unbefitting a cowboy.

As you may also know, the movie seemed unstoppable heading into the Academy Awards, having already swept most of the big awards ceremonies. There were whispers that the multilayered race melodrama "Crash" might come up from behind, but I for one dismissed them -- "Crash" was nowhere near the movie that "Brokeback" was. It had moments of brilliance, to be sure, but it was overly ambitious, almost ham-handed in its earnestness.

So when Jack Nicholson blurted out that "Crash" had won best picture, collective jaws dropped. I was on serious deadline at that point, helping to get our Oscar coverage into the next day's paper; still, I wandered around the office, fuming. It seemed like such a cop-out, the Academy backing away from controversy yet again.

I can only imagine what Annie Proulx was doing, because last weekend she spewed in The Guardian, a British newspaper. A 1,094-word rant, as brilliant and precise as her Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Shipping News."

The red carpet in front of the theatre was larger than the Red Sea. ... Sequins, diamonds, glass beads, trade beads sparkled like the interior of a salt mine.

And then the harsher stuff. That Jon Stewart was "witty and quick, too witty, too quick, too eastern perhaps for the somewhat dim L.A. crowd."

And of course the harsh words about "Crash":

She called them "conservative heffalump academy voters," who were "out of touch, not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city."

Cut to Wednesday morning, the day this section goes to press. A good friend at the paper came over to my desk and stated flat out: "Annie Proulx is on my list." She was appalled that even this notoriously sharp-tongued author would lash out at the Academy, which did award "Brokeback" with three high honors -- best director, best adapted screenplay, best original score. To her, Proulx's anger seemed downright tacky.

Normally, I would agree with her. But Proulx's rant hit on something those of us who love film -- really love it -- have been realizing for years now: The Academy Awards have lost their relevance. They've been upstaged by awards that are more in tune with reality, such as the Independent Spirit Awards, which Proulx cited, even the Golden Globes, which are way more fun.

Instead of being a body of professionals who consistently recognize truly great films, the Academy consistently caves in to political pressure, and the fear of public backlash. Prizes going to artists to make up for previous years' slights. George Clooney getting best supporting actor because they couldn't reward his directing talents.

Until Oscar voters find the courage to make the hard calls, their Big Night will continue to slip in our esteem and the ratings.

Movie lovers deserve better.


My candle burns at both ends / It will not last the night / But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends / It gives a lovely light (Edna St. Vincent Millay)

Offline tpe

  • Moderator
  • Jack + Ennis
  • ***
  • Posts: 96691
BBM distributed broadly
« Reply #20 on: Mar 18, 2006, 03:08 PM »
From http://www.dailynews.com/business/ci_3614675


-------------------------------------------------------


'Brokeback' distributed broadly
By Greg Hernandez, Staff Writer

LAS VEGAS - When Todd Davison, owner of a three-screen theater in Macon, Mo., booked "Brokeback Mountain" to play at his venue a few days before the Academy Awards, he got a phone call from a surprised patron.
"She said to me that after I had played `The Passion of the Christ' a few years ago, she didn't think I'd play a film like that," Davison recalled. "But everybody wanted to talk about it, and a lot of people wanted to see it."

Davison and several other theater owners at this week's ShoWest Convention said that when it comes to booking a movie, it's not their personal opinions that come into play, it's the financial bottom line. That's why they said they didn't flinch at booking "Brokeback," the controversial gay love story that won three Oscars and has grossed more than $81 million at the domestic box office.

"You really can't take it as a gay theme or a love story or whatever, you have to look at it and say, `Is this picture going to work in this market?"' said Deborah B. Frank, president of Frank Theatres, which has 10 locations in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida, with just under 100 screens. "`Brokeback' did very well and we played it in all of our locations."

"Brokeback," directed by Ang Lee and starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as two cowboys in love, is the highest-grossing gay drama in Hollywood history and was made with a production budget of just $14 million.

Previously, only gay-themed comedies such as "The Birdcage" and "In & Out" made any kind of box office impact while most gay-themed dramas were relegated to the art-house circuit or have failed to get much distribution at all - especially those featuring love scenes between two men as is the case in "Brokeback."

"It might open up a few new avenues for filmmakers," observed box office analyst Robert Bucksbaum, president of Reel Source Inc. "I think theater owners would play any movie as long as it's a good movie and it's going to make money even outside the major metropolitan areas."

"Brokeback" appears to be heading towards the end of its surprisingly strong theatrical run. It has dropped out of the top 10 and played in less than 900 locations  this week. But Bucksbaum believes that the film's commercial and critical success to date could lead to more gay-themed movies making it into the mainstream.

"They may have thought initially that subjects like this might not make money at the box office," he said. "`Brokeback' is really shattering a lot of perceptions in that respect. And a lot of studios might be willing to look at projects they might not have ventured into before."

Wesley Aberson of Apex Theaters in Louisville, Ky., said he actually expected more of a backlash when he booked "Brokeback" in early January.

"In Kentucky you would think that people would protest because it's very conservative, but no. I was very surprised," Aberson said. "We had a couple of call-ins from people who were threatening us if we played it, but nothing crazy; we get people like that all the time."

The film, which had been the Best Picture Oscar front-runner but lost to "Crash," has been playing for more than 10 weeks at the Apex Theaters. Aberson said future gay-themed films will be considered based on their box-office potential.

"It's all dependent upon generally how things do in New York and L.A. first that kind of dictates what happens in the rest of the country and generally you know right away by the buzz; there's an awareness before it even opens and you know if it will do well.

"Content is not something we're as concerned about as the awareness and the reviews."

John Fithian, president and CEO of the National Association of Theater Owners, said this week that the wide distribution given to "Brokeback" in virtually all parts of the country is an example of how the movie exhibition business should work.

Greg Hernandez, (818) 713-3758 greg.hernandez@dailynews.com
 

Offline Lost_Girl

  • Ennis
  • ******
  • Posts: 1836
  • Gender: Female
  • If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it.
Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #21 on: Mar 19, 2006, 05:11 AM »
http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/movies/chi-0603050458mar05,0,387050.story?coll=mmx-home_top_hedsh2o

----------

Boy oh boy, is that hot!
'Brokeback Mountain's' man-on-man love scenes spur women with a sexual giddy up
     
By Nancy Watkins
Tribune staff reporter

Attention, straight men who don't want to see "Brokeback Mountain" with your wives or girlfriends: For the sake of your own love lives, you might reconsider.

Film fans know by now that "Brokeback," which is up for eight Oscars tonight, is not so much a "gay cowboy movie" as a women's weepie in the tradition of "Titanic." And while women are flocking to it with hankies in hand to wallow in the tragic love story, a few of them are walking out thinking, "Hmm ... those man-on-man love scenes were hot."

Delia Coleman of Chicago was one of those women. In fact, she could hardly wait to see some "hot cowboy man love" from her first glimpse of stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in the previews.

"It was a lot hotter than Nicole Kidman and Jude Law in 'Cold Mountain,' " said Coleman, 36, referring to another star-crossed-lovers-at-high-elevations movie. "Two men, strength for strength, having feelings for one another. ... It was incredibly arousing."

Portia Ebert, on the other hand, was not expecting it. When the men were reunited after their first long separation, said the 32-year-old from River Forest, "I felt that feeling of waiting to see somebody--that passion, you could feel it. Which surprised me. ... I thought I wouldn't react to it."

Here we thought only guys were interested in watching members of the opposite sex getting it on with each other. But Midge Wilson, a professor of psychology at DePaul University who teaches human sexuality, affirms that, yes, women indulge in that fantasy as well.

"Because female sexuality has been so suppressed, the concept that women might similarly be sexually aroused by the fantasy of two men--maybe with her!--has not been spoken about," Wilson said. "Now it's finally being openly expressed about women's sexual desires and that there is no shame in their sexual fantasies, and that has opened the door for being aroused by watching a film like `Brokeback Mountain.'"

Of course, it's not just the sex scenes, which are brief and non-explicit, that made "Brokeback" what British journalist Laura Craik called "a slice of the finest soft porn for women ever committed to celluloid." It's also the longing, the furtive glances, the tortured anticipation.

"It has to do with how well the men portrayed the forbidden love and how it took them by surprise," said a 43-year-old North Shore mom who asked not to be named.

"For some reason it didn't seem to make any difference that they were men," she said.

"Here's a chick flick and it's about two men," said Amy Reynaldo, 39, of Chicago. "They want to be together, they want to cuddle ... but they're men. Don't we all want the man who's willing to act in a chick-flick way? And here are two of them in one movie!"

It certainly doesn't hurt that the two lovers are so hunky.

Ebert found the love scenes hot, all right, but "I wouldn't be reporting the same if it were starring John Goodman and Dom Deluise, for instance!"

Coleman agreed: "What's not to like about two hot guys making out?"

None of the women interviewed had seen the movie with her significant other, and a couple of them acknowledged that it would have been nice to have their men around to share all that passion with.

And so, guys, you're passing up the opportunity to be sitting at your gal's side, holding her hand, perhaps stroking her shoulder during those steamy moments?

You don't want to be there as the lights come up and she's fanning herself and some lanky, handsome stranger in front of her is standing up and stretching?

There's still time before Gyllenhaal and Ledger take to the red carpet in their sexy tuxedos tonight. Catch a "Brokeback" matinee with your woman, and the two of you may find something better to do than watch the Oscars.

- - -

Oscar winners have more staying power

Heath Ledger (left) and Jake Gyllenhaal, both nominated for Academy Awards this year, may have more riding on tonight's show than they realize.

The March issue of the Harvard Health Letter cites a study that found Oscar-winning actors and actresses lived, on average, almost four years longer than nominees who went home empty-handed.

The study's theory: An Oscar on the mantel moves the winners up the Hollywood pecking order; winners find it easier to get work, and when they do, they're better appreciated and better paid. And there's the incentive to stay fit, look good and watch what they eat.

How `Brokeback' breaks down

As part of our research, which unfortunately did not involve multiple viewings of "Brokeback Mountain" on company time, we sent a mass e-mail to females in the Q address book posing the multiple-choice question, "When I saw the love scenes between Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in `Brokeback Mountain' . . . "

a) "I was disgusted."

b) "I was uncomfortable."

c) "I was touched."

d) "I thought they were hot." Here are the embarrassingly unscientific results. Percentages add up to more than 100 because some respondents gave more than one answer.

Disgusted: 0 percent.

Uncomfortable: 29.6 percent.

Touched: 66.6 percent.

Hot: 18.5 percent.
YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW BAD IT GETS !!!!

"There are places we can never return"
"When you ain't got nothing, you don't need nothing"

Icon by meowwwwwww

Offline Buddy

  • Alma Jr.
  • **
  • Posts: 47
Re: Heath in Liz Smith 3/20
« Reply #22 on: Mar 20, 2006, 09:47 AM »
MEN IN PRINT! A nice mix this month of movie males interviewed. Rolling Stone offers Heath Ledger . . .  Ledger is all insecurity and rather endearing quirks, still on the fence about fame and the baggage of being a "star." A fretful young man who seems most connected to his lady love Michelle Williams and their baby, Matilda. (I remember now seeing him fidget on talk shows promoting "A Knight's Tale" and thinking, "What's up with this guy - stoned?" Nope. Just not actor-y.)


Offline OnesEnough

  • Cassie
  • *
  • Posts: 1
Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #23 on: Mar 21, 2006, 10:17 AM »
So its not banned from Turkey right?

Just you have to be over 18 to see it..

Thats okay, wasn't it rated R in the USA? doesn't that mean 18+ or with and adult if ur younger?

In Canada it was 14A (younger than 14 requires an adult) boo ya!

It opens this week here and there are even TV ads running - its R rated so minors cannot see it. But I do not think there is any restriction!

Offline jetzenpolis

  • Alma Jr.
  • **
  • Posts: 62
  • Gender: Male
  • jetzenpolis
Rolling Stone: March 2006 Heath Ledger article
« Reply #24 on: Feb 04, 2008, 08:47 PM »
Rolling Stone: March 2006 Heath Ledger article

Heath Ledger's Lonesome Trail: His dad wanted him to race cars. Hollywood wanted him to play Spider-Man. But he wanted to play a gay cowboy. Now he's a huge star, and he's not happy about it.

DAVID LIPSKY
Posted Mar 23, 2006 11:46 AM


Heath Ledger's Lonesome Trail (David Lipsky) 3/23/2006
www.rollingstone.com/news/story/9448111/heath_ledgers_lonesome_trail
In the distance between what you "try to believe" and what you "know": never trust what you try to make yourself believe; trust what your intuition knows.

Offline chameau

  • Moderator
  • Jack + Ennis
  • ***
  • Posts: 28148
  • Gender: Male
  • Miss ya little darlin'
Re: News Coverage - March 13 - 19
« Reply #25 on: Feb 04, 2008, 10:42 PM »
We merged your post to this existing thread :)
La dictature c'est ''ferme ta geule'', la démocratie c'est ''cause toujours''
 Jean-Louis Barrault