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Friday, December 30, 2005
'Brokeback Mountain' gains steam
By SANDY COHEN
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Who's afraid of a couple of gay cowboys?
Not moviegoers, who helped "Brokeback Mountain" post the highest per-screen average over the film-flush holiday weekend.
The Ang Lee film, which follows the 20-year forbidden romance between two roughneck ranch hands, earned $13,599 per theater, compared with $9,305 for weekend winner "King Kong" and $8,225 for "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."
The big question is whether "Brokeback" can maintain its momentum as it moves from selected cities, where audiences are receptive to the subject matter, to suburbs far and wide, where that might not be the case.
Early numbers -- and early awards buzz -- establish the picture's staying power, industry insiders say. "Brokeback" earned a leading seven Golden Globe nominations.
"It delivered very strong growth in what is truly a highly unforgiving, competitive, cruel market at this Christmas period," said Jack Foley, president of theatrical distribution for Focus Features. "It showed it has breadth beyond the gay community."
It is discussed here and there so much and so often because this is where acceptance will come through Art. The sad beauty of its story being understood in the heartland is almost as valuable as any proposition on the ballot. The underlying message is that gay people are everywhere which means even in the most unlikely of places.Kings or Queens
Opening the Celluloid Closet
Ang Lee plus straight teen-dreams playing gay cowboys equals the most acclaimed movie of the year—not even in the wildest dreams of Harvey Weinstein. DONNA BOWMAN
Stonewall, Harvey Milk, Fire Island, Edmund White, John Waters, and Andy Warhol are all going on simultaneously with Ennis Del Mar's loneliness. But gay culture can't save him. Gay culture doesn't know he exists. The idea of his "choosing" to live (and presumably die) alone in that closet of a trailer with two shirts in the middle of nowhere is tragic. It all hails from Annie Proulx, but Ennis is a man after Edith Wharton's heart. WESLEY MORRIS
My wife and I attended the first matinee of Brokeback Mountain and discovered a razor blade in our popcorn. I don't suspect foul play—razor blades are used to scrape the poppers after closing time—but the incident underlined the perilous atmosphere in which Brokeback is being released. I'm happy this beautiful film is being put out into the world, but I'll be happier when the politics surrounding it fall away. SCOTT TOBIAS
In rushing to get its love scenes out of the way, Brokeback Mountain relegates soul-sustaining ardor to the realm of the pretty young things. Heath and Jake's teenage pants party is politically thrilling and totally yummy to boot, but a tender makeout between two hairy, paunchy midlifers—now that would be radical. JESSICA WINTER
Brokeback Mountain raised the specter of a neo-Western first-wives club via its emotional investment in the disappointed spouses beautifully played by Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway. Linda Cardellini's warmhearted waitress, Anna Faris's nervy chatterbox, and Kate Mara's pining daughter completed a full house of women whose plights were no less evocatively depicted than that of the entwined cowpokes. Far from diluting the film's queer power, the hetero element emphasized the durability of Ennis and Jack's rawhide passion. GRAHAM FULLER
It's no surprise that a Brokeback backlash is coming, but the form it's taking is odd: straight male critics complaining it's not gay enough. They think a gay film has to prove—or at least aspire to—its outlaw authenticity. Brokeback is not just another story of tragic, helpless victims. Repression, especially the internalized variety, is the clear villain here. It comes in many forms: Straight people claiming the authority to determine queer legitimacy and then fetishizing it is one. STEVE ERICKSON
The year's most transgressive homo love story was Tropical Malady. Just as the crags and bluffs of Brokeback swallow up its star-crossed lovers, at once creating and destroying for them a false Eden, the Thai jungle to which Malady's young men retreat becomes both an erotic sanctuary and a literal fantasy world. MICHAEL KORESKY
Want to know more about a prospective mate's obscurantist/pop inclinations? Ask said p.m. to name this film: One member of an inseparable male-male duo has gone missing, and not coincidentally, a terrifying beast is on the loose. The correct answer: Tropical Malady—or Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. ED PARK
STILL IN the giving holiday mode? Why don't you make a donation to the [NewYork] city's worthy Bailey House, a shelter for
Et Verbum Caro Factum Est et Habitavit in Nobis. And the Word was Made Flesh and dwelt among us. The Word that ca
Darlene Love continues to make her mark on David Letterman’s yearly Yuletide show with her perennial hit, “Christmas (Baby, Please Co
The sum
Ronnie [Spector, of the Ronettes].
…. Leon Russell was on the piano, and by the last takes he was playing so hard it was almost like a concerto. He played himself right off the bench and onto the floor and kept on playing.
… in the kitchen, cooking dinner, doing so
Phil Spector's Christmas opus e
"Christmas (Baby, Please Co
It's Christmas
Baby, please co
The snow's coming down
I'm watching it fall
Watching the people around
Baby please co
The church bells in town
They're ringing a song
What a happy sound
Baby please co
They're singing deck the halls
But it's not like Christmas at all
I re
And all the fun we had last year
Pretty lights on the tree
I'm watching 'em shine
You should be here with
Baby please co
Baby please co
Baby please co
They're singing deck the halls
But it's not like Christmas at all
I re
And all the fun we had last year
If there was a way
I'd hold back these tears
But it's Christmas day
Baby please co
Ohh...
Baby please co
Baby please co
Baby please co
Ohh...
Baby please co
Baby please co
Terrence Malick's "The New World" is a lush, angry movie about how America got its seat-of-the-pants start.
It shows the good, the bad and the ugly of the interactions between the settlers at Jamestown and the Native Americans who sealed their own fate by lending those settlers a hand.
This is a sublimely rewarding yet prickly movie, anchored by the steady, hypnotic gaze of part-Peruvian, part-Swiss newcomer Q'Orianka Kilcher, who was 14 when she made this. Her luminous, ethnic looks transcend her role as the Powhatan princess Pocahontas to the point where she seems to embody the wild beauty and purity of the land itself - at least the land as it was before it gave rise to concrete, billboards and fast-food joints.
Revisionist history lesson gives way to romance. "The New World" can stand alone as a powerful, intimate love story - an impossible love, to be sure, but that's the most romantic kind.
Colin Farrell plays Capt. John Smith as a swashbuckling adventurer whose lust for new worlds (and women) to conquer was well served by his era. Kilcher is a wise, unspoiled Pocahontas, whose childlike joy and fierce intellect are an irresistible combination.
In reality, Smith and Pocahontas probably didn't hook up like that, despite Disney's animated version and a deeply ingrained collective fantasy. Some of "The New World" is deeply faithful to history (it was filmed around Jamestown, where the settlers landed), while some of it takes poetic license to get at greater truths.
In the end, it's a sweeping, important film that overturns everything you learned in school about the birth of this nation.
When the members of the Powhatan tribe first come across the clueless British settlers (who would have starved without agriculture lessons), they neither rattle spears nor attempt the kind of stilted negotiation movies usually depict. Instead, they swarm over the settlers, sniffing, touching, poking. They're curious and alarmed, territorial yet playful.
If tree-huggers gave Oscars, "The New World" would be a shoo-in. When Pocahontas travels to England to meet the queen (after she's married to another settler, the steadfast tobacco farmer John Rolfe, played with a different but no less effective romantic vibe by Christian Bale), we see the pruned hedges and landscaped gardens through her astonished eyes. Nature can be trussed up magnificently to appear safe and manageable, but implicit in Pocahontas' gaze is all that civilization has traded away in pursuit of progress.
Malick is a writer-director of extraordinary vision who is like an endangered species. Sightings of him are rare. "The New World" is only his fourth movie in 32 years, and it's up there with "Days of Heaven" in terms of ravishing visuals and a story that bundles the fate of its powerfully conflicted characters with that of the land they vainly try to tame.
Even if Smith and Pocahontas didn't take a tumble in the maize, historically speaking, they represent two complicated cultures that were fascinated with and terrified by each other, and whose inevitable mingling was their legacy to the America we inherited.
Originally published on December 23, 2005
Whatever he is, it seems that Colin puts his heart into his trade and we are there for him.
Los Angeles, CA (Reuters) -- As Hollywood starts its annual awards season leading to the March 5 Oscars, key front-runners in main categories are either gay-the
It could be the gay Oscars this year because gay-the
“Brokeback is going to be hard to beat. Rarely do we have this kind of award consensus for a movie, and its director (
"Brokeback," the first gay romance to make a bid for mainstream respectability, has already won the top awards handed out by critics in New York and Los Angeles and copped seven nominations for the January 16 Golden Globes, often a key indicator as to which way the Oscar wind might be blowing.
As for political films, the field is crowded with potential winners: "
Many experts predict that Brokeback's toughest competition could co
Before the race began and before anyone had a chance to see Spielberg's movie, it was being touted as the odds-on favorite to snare the best picture award, na
The film is an examination of the cost of fighting terrorism and whether a democracy can use
The film was hit by a backlash as soon as it was shown to Jewish-A
New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier wrote that "
David Poland of Movie City News said that
He noted that at screenings at the headquarters of the
Other films with gay characters or gender-challenging the
In this movie, she's a woman playing a man about to beco
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THE BILL OF RIGHTS
A
The Conventions of a number of the States having, at the ti
Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of A
Congress shall make no law respecting an establish
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a
No soldier shall, in ti
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous cri
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the cri
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punish
The enu
The powers not delegated to the
It's not so much the difficulty in admitting that one reads a tabloid that causes discomfort, the true difficulty lies in accepting a simpleton's take on things without having the concrete opportunity to inform said simpleton of their inability to understand. Lloyd Grove writes the riveting Lowdown for the New York Daily News which is preceded in profound revelation only by the New York Post's Page Six. Today the brilliant Mr. Grove called Nathan Lane's very New Yorkese sense of humour an "'Emperor's New Clothes' Moment" for Brokeback Mountain. It's a mole hill, Mr. Grove. There's no story here. It's Nathan Lane being funny. It's what he does. Ever see The Birdcage? Jeffrey? Isn't there something better to report? Perhaps Bill O'Reilly making an obscene telephone call or harassing a hapless woman? Grove wrote:
But openly gay stage and screen star Nathan Lane went on the "Today" show Friday and, instead of treating the Ang Lee movie with customary reverence, had a satirical field day at "Brokeback's" expense.
"I wish I could quit you," twanged Lane - who was on the show ostensibly to promote "The Producers" - mocking Gyllenhaal's cowboy confession to his bunkmate.
"It's really when [Ledger] said, 'This thing gets hold of us the wrong time, the wrong place, we're dead,' " Lane recalled as Katie Couric and "Today" crew members giggled. "I thought, 'What do you mean, like the A&P? You're in the middle of nowhere! Get a ranch with the guy! Stop torturing these two poor women and get a room! What's the problem?' "
Robbie Williams solo singer of boy band lineage on the other hand will now be inducted into the Tom Cruise/Liberace Hall of Silly Poofters for suing those who have made the horrible, very terrible, earth shattering accusation that he is [shudder] gay.
Perhaps he is trying to avoid being the subject of an urban lie (legend is too good a word for drivel) like Mr. Gere’s. Before discussing anything else let it be said that it seems that straight people with not much going on in their lives are most titillated by the idea of a rodent being able to make its way beyond the human anal sphincters. The brilliant defunct TV show Action addressed the issue brilliantly demonstrating how the rumour might have happened.
That being said, Mr. Williams has to know that most people, especially the people who would listen to his music don’t care. In what way could it hurt his musical career?
Frank Rich wrote recently in the New York Ti
The history of "
It just might be that ti
Admittedly so
Since it very likely thast he of the boy band pedigree might take inot consideration that his success mightbe due to the gay among us buying his music and going to see him perform. In this Post-Modern Age others might benefit from an admission or at the very least acknowledging that there is nothing wrong with being considered a gay person and there might be so
Yes, Gay is Good, Mr. Williams, it is not an accusation. Get over yourself, please.
Yup, Di knew all along that Dixie was alive. See next week's column for the entire scoop.
A great hidden gem among Westerns is
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
In the western drama penned by Guillermo Arriaga (21 Grams),
Jones won best actor at the Cannes Film Festival this year for his poignant performance as Perkins." Estrada" is also nominated for four Independent Spirit Awards including best film.
Q: You don't think it is a western?
A: I would hope that this movie would defy categorization and albeit the need for it.
[above from The Village Voice]
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(AP) -
Jones also co-stars in this spare, old-school Western as a Texas rancher investigating the killing of one of his employees (Julio Cesar Cedillo), an illegal immigrant from Mexico with whom he'd for
Working from a screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga, whose nonlinear narrative recalls his earlier scripts for Amores Perros and 21 Grams, Jones lulls us in with wide-screen, scrub-brushed vistas (so
Until then, Three Burials is all about killing ti
As a new border patrol agent, watching for Mexicans to cross in groups from their own vast, dry nothingness into more of the sa
His tackily gorgeous, bored wife, Lou Ann (January Jones), spends her days chain-smoking at the local truck stop diner and dreaming of going shopping at the mall in faraway Odessa.
Rachel (Melissa Leo), a longti
The fatal shooting and hasty burial of Melquiades, told in flashbacks and from different perspectives, shakes up all their lives. It also sheds light on who this quiet, polite man was - besides just "a good Mexican," as one clueless cop describes him - and causes the ornery, slightly insane Pete to realize who he's capable of being.
His promise to Melquiades that he'd bury his friend in his tiny, remote ho
But he's not alone. Having determined the identity of Melquiades' killer, Pete drags him along for the ride - literally - by beating him up, handcuffing him and strapping him onto the horse behind him. Their trip is often painful to watch, partly because of the languid pacing but mostly because of Pete's bloodily abusive way of teaching this remorseless killer a lesson.
In classic Western tradition, justice and redemption co
Three stars out of four.
The Canadian Press, 2005