Author Topic: My good, Brokeback related, deed for the day....  (Read 2328 times)

Offline Becky

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My good, Brokeback related, deed for the day....
« on: April 12, 2006, 06:12:26 pm »
On my adventure into my town centre this morn I took a small detour through a popular UK newspaper and such suplier(AKA WHSmith) and to my suprise they had Uncut DVD magazine. The person that I am, I decided to search through this popular DVD magazine to see if there was any such news on my favourite cinematic experience(BBM). I was starting to loose hope in all things good and pure, on this here earth because it was not feautured in the coming up section. But to my elation it was in the top 5 "Must own DVDs"! This particular magazine had articles on Brokeback Mountain and another film staring young Gyllenhaal(Jarhead). As I have not yet done a good deed this morrow I thought I would type out what was written in that there magazine for those of you who do not live on this here British Isle. So here it is, my fellow scholars:

Quote
Ok,it's in the nature of the Oscars that some awards are undeserved, but still, what on earth were the voters thinking by not giving their top honour to Brokeback Mountain? Thankfully we now have this DVD to remind, in magnificent, slow burning detail, why Ang Lee's film was the uninsputed best film of 2005

Yes you have that Jolly well right, young man!

Quote
Adapted from Annie Proulx's short story, it revolves around the love affair between Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar, two young cowboys who spend the summer of 1963 herding sheep on the remote slopes of a Wyoming mountain. Although agreeing their relationship, consumated one whiskey-fuelled night in a tiny tent, is a "one shot thing", Jack and Ennis see each other over the next 20 years.
Trapped in failing marriages and worn down by the disapointments of middle age, they escape a few times each year for fishing trips, rare moments together in lives otherwise marked by a sense of loss and regret. The result is a love story of emotional delicacy and old-fashioned, unironic passion.
   Proulx's original story was a mere 35 pages long.
This adaptation by Larry McMurtry and Dianna Ossana sticks to much of her dialouge (which has an authentic spit-and-chewing-baccy flavour of the old west), even to some of her own evocative imagery, but he is in no hurry to chart Jack and Ennis' thwarted relationship. This magisterial, expansive pace deepens the poignancy of the central love story. In the clipped economy of Proulx's story, you sense that the only time that mattered for Jack and Ennis were the few days and nights they spent together on Brokeback. Here you get a sense of how long and wastefull the rest of their lives are when they are apart.
   Jake Gyllenhaal brings to Jack Twist a boyish charm that the character never quite grows out of. But it is Heath Ledger's Ennis that really impresses. Tall in the saddle and sparing with his words, the Austrailian old-school cowboy presence; but an emotional rawness is never far below his gruff exterior.  His farewell to Jack after their summer o Brokeback is typically terse, despite the prospect he'll never see him again; but as Jack drives off, he rushes into an alleyway, his unexpressed sense of loss is so violent, he doubles over and pukes.
Lee has disavowed the "gay western" tag, but scenes like these powefully evoke Jack and Ennis' need to surpress their feelings in this macho environment. Their first sex scene is unusually frank, as physical and urgent as a bar-room brawl yey possessed with a tender sensuality. There are no more moments of such intimacy, free from suspicion. After the uninhabited idyll of Brokeback, there are just snatched post-fuck conversations in motel rooms and fumbled embraces outside Ennis' family home- a sharp comment on the homophobia of the times rather than an attack of coyness by Lee.
The personal freedom two men find on Brokeback is underlined visually, although the many beautifully-shot scenes on the mountain inevitably loose something on the big screen. But the DVD allows you to pick up on the films quieter triumphs, like the sensitivity with which Lee depicts Ennis' failing marriage to his young wife Alma, who knows about his affair with Jack. Eager to go on one of his fishing trips, Ennis passes his wife their youngest  daughter, manhandling the child as if she were one of the sheep he used to herd. It's an act of unthinking cruelty, but you feel every bit of Alma's shame and anger thanks to the teriffic performance by Michelle Williams. And as  Jack's wife Lureen, Anne Hathaway's brittle, guarded performance suggests she knows more than she lets on about her husbands sexuality.
The Taiwanises Lee has doem some of his best work in the US- so it's perhaps not surprising he should have made a good job of a western, that of most American genres. Just how good is the only surprise. Brokeback Mountain is possibly his masterpiece, a movie of unquestionable emotional force, which hits us with the strength of prairie wind.

I thought I would share this wonderful review with you all, as you deserve it for being top chaps. There was also an interview with young mister Ledger, but you will have to wait until tomorrow teatime to hear that as I have to get ready for my interview and I am of to bed soon so spit-spot.
If you wonder why I am talking weirdly, it is because it is the 400th aniversairy of the union Jack, so I thought I would celebrate antoher Jack for a change.

Enjoy!

Beardy-beard! O0
"Look too often at those hills, lie too long beside those rippling rivers, and you may think you are hearing a love song, when actually it is a death song." Larry McMurtry, Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay.

Offline Kd5000

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Re: My good, Brokeback related, deed for the day....
« Reply #1 on: April 12, 2006, 06:23:54 pm »
Very good Becky.  I'm browsing thru magazine at the Barnes and Noble and I found something about BBM in Metrosource.

I bought the magazine yesterday because a guest editorial (it's the APRIL edition) had a writeup about BBM. The writer, Drew Limsky seemed to think that Heath was getting alot more praise for his performance because Jake was the gayer one.  That had crossed my mine as well as I thought they were both excellant in portraying their characters.  Of course, Ewan McGregor being on the cover caught my attn.

QUOTE
"The praise for Heath Ledger has been so across-the-board, at the expense of Jake Gyllenhaal's equally sensitive performance, that I wonder whether (mostly straight) critics were simply more interested in the character perceived as "straighter."

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http://www.metrosource.com/   You can go to the website and see the full article. This is just the top half.


How does Brokeback compare with The Way We Were?
By Drew Limsky.
 
Much of my romantic sensibility was formed by heterosexual love stories and moments like Barbra Streisand touching Robert Redford"s hair at the end of The Way We Were.
The emotions in a movie like The Way We Were are easy for anyone with a heart to access, but the sexual bond between straight characters is as murky to me as gay sexual attraction is to straight people.

Which is why the experience of Brokeback Mountain was like seeing my first film. The fact that it is a gay film seemed lost on some. The praise for Heath Ledger has been so across-the-board, at the expense of Jake Gyllenhaal's equally sensitive performance, that I wonder whether (mostly straight) critics were simply more interested in the character perceived as "straighter." There"s a seemingly benign attempt to cut the movie loose from its gay essence. San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle says, "It's possible that if these fellows had never met, one or both would have gone through life straight." Who's the "one" in "one or both"? Probably not the one - Jack - who visits male prostitutes in Mexico and tries to pick up rodeo clowns.

 

Offline FuzzyChanny

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Re: My good, Brokeback related, deed for the day....
« Reply #2 on: April 12, 2006, 06:25:10 pm »
I thought it was cos of the cake :D

Thank you Becky *said in student to teacher voice* Wonderful typing skills :D

I think I need to sleep and dream of the Beardy-Beard, all nuzzly and scratchy, GRRRR!!
I've learnt that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is stalk them and hope they panic and give in!

Offline delalluvia

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Re: My good, Brokeback related, deed for the day....
« Reply #3 on: April 12, 2006, 07:40:30 pm »
Lovely to read.  Thanks for posting.  The Brits certainly had their act together this year in re to BBM.

Offline Becky

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Re: My good, Brokeback related, deed for the day....
« Reply #4 on: April 13, 2006, 08:38:18 am »
Thank you for all your kind words, me is gdod ta tpynig! LOL
The Heath interview will be coming to a thread near you soon, but I have to get lunch and go to the cinema(Oh the things I have to do! ::)) So expect it some time around 6:00 English time. Then I get to exhibit more briliant typing skills.


Yes Chantelle I think it was mainly the cake that was making me type like that and I just made up and excuse for it later! ;D 

 O0 SOD!
"Look too often at those hills, lie too long beside those rippling rivers, and you may think you are hearing a love song, when actually it is a death song." Larry McMurtry, Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay.