Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
"Brokeback Mountain" and "Wuthering Heights" - both "one of a kind"?
Front-Ranger:
Nebraska is getting to be trendy and famous, thanks to Alexander Paine. Did you read the recent article about him in the New Yorker? Apparently he continues to live in Nebraska even though he's now an acclaimed film director. I watched the movie "Nebraska" starring Bruce Dern when I was hanging out at Mt. Elbert Lodge recently. It was not quite as bad as having dental work done.
I actually like movies and books set in rural places. But I'd rather them not be as bleak, dystopian and sad in the endings. I'd prefer more of a Jane Austen in the countryside type of story.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on March 28, 2017, 10:37:15 am ---Well, maybe there's more there than just Uncle Otis. You could at least get an article out of it--and send it to The New Yorker!
--- End quote ---
I don't think it's quite the New Yorker's type of thing. But I have already published one essay about it in a literary journal called River Teeth. You've never heard of it, I'm sure, but actually as obscure literary journals go, it's pretty well respected.
--- Quote ---Is it far from Council Bluffs?
--- End quote ---
31 miles. North on I-29, NE on US-30.
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on March 28, 2017, 09:53:57 pm ---Nebraska is getting to be trendy and famous, thanks to Alexander Paine.
--- End quote ---
Well, that's kind of like saying Fargo, N.D., got trendy and famous thanks to the Coen Bros. Of course, they don't live anywhere near there/here, so it's a little different. Maybe someday Chanhassen, MN, will be trendy and famous thanks to Prince. Well, Prince (along with the Replacements and other critically beloved bands) did lend some trendiness and fame to Minneapolis.
My parents lived briefly in Omaha when I was a baby. My brother was born there. Then, thankfully, they returned to Minneapolis. I think Omaha has some hip neighborhoods and the like, as every city does these days, but ...
--- Quote --- I watched the movie "Nebraska" starring Bruce Dern when I was hanging out at Mt. Elbert Lodge recently. It was not quite as bad as having dental work done.
--- End quote ---
I loved Nebraska. I didn't find the ending sad. I'm sometimes put off by bleakness, but it has to be bleaker even than that.
Requiem for a Dream, Leaving Las Vegas and Platoon are my bleakness triad -- well-made movies that I actually wish I hadn't seen. One good rule of thumb is that if the soundtrack includes Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, stay away. Unless it's used ironically, in a comic context, to satirize movies I should stay away from. According to Wikipedia, a lot of comedies have done that -- notably Seinfeld in the '90s. It looks like for about the past 15 years it has been used pretty much exclusively in comedies.
--- Quote --- I'd prefer more of a Jane Austen in the countryside type of story.
--- End quote ---
I have nothing against Jane Austen. But generally I like grittiness, especially in accounts of periods when life could be very gritty, at least for some people. I never saw Downton Abbey, and I'm pretty sure if I did watch it I'd get sucked into the plot and start liking it. But I read an article about how prettified it made that time period and situation seem, compared to the actual gritty reality in the lives of servants in those days.
I loved The Nick, a two-season TV series about a hospital in 1900, directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Clive Owens. It featured clumsy early surgical experiments gone wrong, incredible racism and classism and sexism, and all sorts of other gruesome stuff.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on March 30, 2017, 10:50:03 am ---I don't think it's quite the New Yorker's type of thing. But I have already published one essay about it in a literary journal called River Teeth. You've never heard of it, I'm sure, but actually as obscure literary journals go, it's pretty well respected.
--- End quote ---
I dunno. Over the years they've run stories about some pretty odd people.
--- Quote ---31 miles. North on I-29, NE on US-30.
My parents lived briefly in Omaha when I was a baby. My brother was born there. Then, thankfully, they returned to Minneapolis. I think Omaha has some hip neighborhoods and the like, as every city does these days, but ...
--- End quote ---
At the risk of sounding like an East Coast snob, Omaha has always sounded so ... Middle America to me. Like Peoria. Or some place Sinclair Lewis would write about.
On the other hand, I do feel an odd attraction to the place, or at least to the name, because, of course, the Union Pacific began to build from Omaha. Also, for some reason, I don't know why, the locomotive of my first HO train set, going back to before I was even in kindergarten, had "Omaha" on the side of it.
--- Quote ---I have nothing against Jane Austen. But generally I like grittiness, especially in accounts of periods when life could be very gritty, at least for some people. I never saw Downton Abbey, and I'm pretty sure if I did watch it I'd get sucked into the plot and start liking it. But I read an article about how prettified it made that time period and situation seem, compared to the actual gritty reality in the lives of servants in those days.
--- End quote ---
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who never saw Downton Abbey. Before it debuted, I thought it just sounded like a rip-off of Upstairs, Downstairs, except with Maggie Smith. Then it became a sort of cultural phenomenon, but I never watched it because I figured by then I'd have no idea what was going on.
Does everything British have to have that Upstairs, Downstairs element? Even Victoria has it.
--- Quote ---I loved The Nick, a two-season TV series about a hospital in 1900, directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Clive Owens. It featured clumsy early surgical experiments gone wrong, incredible racism and classism and sexism, and all sorts of other gruesome stuff.
--- End quote ---
I would have liked to have seen The Nick, and not just because of Clive Owen. ::) I can't say off-hand now why I didn't. Possibly I don't receive the channel on which it was broadcast.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on March 30, 2017, 12:01:18 pm ---At the risk of sounding like an East Coast snob, Omaha has always sounded so ... Middle America to me. Like Peoria. Or some place Sinclair Lewis would write about.
--- End quote ---
At the risk of sounding like a snob in a nearly neighboring state, I feel similarly. Whenever funding for some cultural thing is threatened in Minneapolis, people always say that without it we'll turn into a "cold Omaha."
Of course, I would not use "Middle America" as a pejorative, although in this case it's geographically correct. Sinclair Lewis is from, and wrote about, Minnesota. I can't remember if he explicitly mentions the state in his novels or just implies it. And his attitude is definitely pejorative.
--- Quote ---I would have liked to have seen The Nick, and not just because of Clive Owen. ::) I can't say off-hand now why I didn't. Possibly I don't receive the channel on which it was broadcast.
--- End quote ---
You probably don't. It was on Starz. I think it's the only thing I've ever watched on Starz, and now that I know The Nick isn't being renewed, I'm going to cancel it. You might be able to find it somewhere on Amazon or Netflix or something like that, though.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on March 30, 2017, 03:26:59 pm ---At the risk of sounding like a snob in a nearly neighboring state, I feel similarly. Whenever funding for some cultural thing is threatened in Minneapolis, people always say that without it we'll turn into a "cold Omaha."
--- End quote ---
:laugh:
--- Quote ---Of course, I would not use "Middle America" as a pejorative, although in this case it's geographically correct. Sinclair Lewis is from, and wrote about, Minnesota. I can't remember if he explicitly mentions the state in his novels or just implies it. And his attitude is definitely pejorative.
--- End quote ---
I've never actually read Lewis, only read about Lewis, but I picked up the idea that he wrote pejoratively about small-town Middle America.
--- Quote ---You probably don't. It was on Starz. I think it's the only thing I've ever watched on Starz, and now that I know The Nick isn't being renewed, I'm going to cancel it. You might be able to find it somewhere on Amazon or Netflix or something like that, though.
--- End quote ---
That would explain it. I don't get Starz.
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