The "ABCs of BBM": Round 965! (Rules in first post)

[Fran]

"It's four years before Jack stops for a visit, and the two discover that their spontaneous passions expressed on Brokeback Mountain have grown to stronger feelings than they ever imagined.  Taking occasional fishing trip trysts over the next 16 years, the doomed love affair leads to inevitable heartbreak that leads many an audience member to tears."

-- John Nesbit, ToxicUniverse.com

[Toast]

There is no way to convince any such close-minded individuals that Brokeback Mountain stretches a far larger canvas across all sexual orientations and reaches deep into the human condition; so, if you agree with that radio host, read no more—this review isn't for you. Go back to your simple John Wayne cowboy flicks that only require the Duke to show up in his movie star persona and shoot up the bad guys and Navajo extras.

-- John Nesbit, ToxicUniverse.com

=aside= Fran and Sandy
I've always loved the reviews and the quotes we got from them.
Have I gotten too lazy to look for them??  I wonder ..
Thanks for finding these cool ones, Fran.

[Ellemeno]

Ennis had pugnacious tendencies.

[memento]

Because Jack and Ennis are so riddled with guilt about their feelings for one another, they sometimes speak in riddles about those feelings.

=aside= Clarissa
I'm impressed that even from Alberta, you found time to put in a good word.

[Toast]

Last night I overheard a local conservative radio broadcaster slam Brokeback Mountain as that "gay cowboy movie" that is symptomatic of why "nobody" wants to go to the movie theaters today (certainly a movie that he'll never watch). He then went on to pine over the loss of the John Wayne years when there were no "gay cowboys."

-- John Nesbit, ToxicUniverse.com

[Fran]

"As the sullen Ennis, Ledger is cynical, emotionally wounded and trapped as a suffocating soul looking to make sense out of his sexual malaise.  Convincingly, he carries the scars of guilt, shame, and trepidation on his sinking shoulders."

-- Frank Ochieng, TheWorldJournal.com

=aside= Toast
The reviewers' names sure come in handy, too. 

[memento]

"Bereft of mentoring fathers or friends, and practicing an anachronistic profession, these cowboys are orphans, citizens of nowhere. But up in the high country, Ennis and Jack find home in each other - as well as father, brother, friend, lover. A fragile, transient community of two, their Edenic coupling looses a passion that makes them fit only for each other, unsuited for the flatland roles they subsequently try to play."
                                                                                                                     

--Kathleen Murphy, Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing

[Toast]

By 1983, Jack Twist had realized the vacuity of Ennis Del Mar's plans to settle down with him; and wondered if he should still be content to stand it any longer.

def - The quality or fact of being devoid of something specified

[Fran]

"The source for the film is a short story by Annie Proulx, first published in The New Yorker (Oct. 13, 1997).  The story is beautifully written:  filled with vivid details of the landscape, an omniscient narrator’s wry vision of a forbidden but irrepressible romance, and a matter-of-factness wholly in keeping with the American West and the two cowboy protagonists, Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar...."

-- John Stone, Epinions.com

[memento]

When Jack got word of Ennis' divorce, he was xpectably very confident that they would have a life together.