"Brokeback Fever Pitch," "I 'Cowbot", and other sequels....

[TOoP/Bruce]

by - bjblakeslee (Thu Apr 27 2006 14:16:30 )   

"Under a Bettermost Vanilla Sky" (Abre los ojos de montaña del brokeback )

PLOT SYNOPSIS:

The week of his 33rd birthday, Wyoming native Ennis Delmar, a ranchhand who has strange dreams, spends a night of passion with fishing buddy Jack, a friend he sometimes sleeps with, and a night with Alma, his ex-wife. Ennis feels ready to finally commit to real relationship, but with who?

Delmar is lovable, poor, and inarticulate: he inherited nothing from his parents and his brother and sister want him out of their lives.

Now jump ahead: he's in jail, wearing a prosthetic mask and black cowboy hat, talking to a unsympathetic psychologist (Dr. Joe Aguirre) to get at the truth behind a mysterious death. Who has died? Jack? Alma? How? And who the hell is the Basque?

Ennis rides horses, finds a deep and spiritual love with a man, angonizes over a divorce from a woman who loves him, and struggles to become a good father when he has no role models.

In Ennis's trailer, the television set is on and we see Cigarbutt, a horse who survived for months frozen in ice and through the miracle of science, has lived to be revived - a tantilizing clue to huge plot reveal!

Ennis must come to terms with what is reality and what is illusion, and find the answer to the following question:

Am I alive or dead? When was my timeline edited, and am I the one responsible?

(Music by Johnny Cash, and Nine Inch Nails)

[TOoP/Bruce]

by - bjblakeslee (Thu Apr 27 2006 14:18:17 )   

"ST:TNG/ The Wrath of Borgback Mountain"

Plot Synopsis

24th century and the new Enterprise and it's captain, Jean-Luc Picard, have been ordered not to interfere in a combat between a Borg Cube and Federation ships. Picard ignores his orders and orders the Enterprise to fire on a weak spot of the Cube, destroying most of it. Part of the cube escapes through a hole in the plot and of course it heads straight for Signal, Wyoming.

The Borg go back in time to destroy Joe Aguirre and his hyperdrive experiement, and the Enterprise chases the Borg through a space-time distortion thingy. Now in Signal, Wyoming in 1963, the Enterprise must stop the Borg from assimilating Earth and help Joe Aguirre make his famous hyperjump to space. If Aguirre does not make his hyperjump a routine Vulcan mapping mission would not detect the warp signature, and first contact would not be made in this timeline.

Jack and Ennis are accidently beamed aboard the Enterprise because of some plausible malfunction of the transporter. Jack and Ennis's relationship is accepted and unquestioned aboard the Enterprise because space travel is funded by liberals, not conservatives. The two of them are introduced to the holodeck and Jack conjures up a fantasy about Mexico, which leaves Ennis angry and suspicious. They fight. Ennis storms off, sobbing and dry heaving in the Engineering Section.

Jack is all alone in the holodeck in a Mexican fantasy...

Ennis is suddenly cornered by two Borg who look like Jack's parents with metal parts stuck on. Ennis resists, but resistance is futile. He is captured and assimilated by the Borg.

Jack is left to wonder if he should try to save Ennis, or make a move on the fabulous Mexican Lieutentant working on the bridge. Decisions, decisions....

[TOoP/Bruce]

by - bjblakeslee (Thu Apr 27 2006 14:19:53 )   

"The Wyoming Patient"

PLOT SYNOPSIS:

In a Wyoming hospital in Signal 1963, Lureen, a nurse from Childress Texas, is caring for a pilot who was horribly burned in a plane wreck that was used to watch over a flock of sheep on Brokeback Mountain; he has no identification and cannot remember his name, so he's known simply as "the Wyoming Patient," thanks to his unintelligible accent which seems to be from the Outback side of Wyoming.

When the hospital is forced to evacuate, Lureen determines that the patient shouldn't be moved far due to his fragile condition, so the two are left in an old trailer to be picked up later. In time, Lureen begins to piece together the patient's story from the shards of his memories; he's actually Ennis Delmar, a sheep herder working with Joe Aguirre in Brokeback Mountain territory.

In flashback, we see a handsome young guy from Lightning Flats named Jack Twist as he joins Delmar's team; travelling with him to watch over the flock. Ennis and Jack soon fall in love, which leads Delmar to betray Aguirre, his girlfriend Alma and all that is dear to him. Meanwhile, Alma and the Wyoming Patient are joined by a Basque - a stealth intelligence shepherd who knows some of Delmar's most shameful secrets.

As Lureen pieces the story together and figures out the relationship of Ennis Delmar to her late husband Jack, she is overcome with emotion and gives him a fatal injection and leaves to start a new life in Austin Texas.

[TOoP/Bruce]

by - bjblakeslee (Thu Apr 27 2006 14:23:22 )   

"Brokeback Memento"

PLOT SYNOPSIS:

Ennis Delmar is poor Wyoming ranch-hand whose short term memory has been damaged following a head injury he sustained with a tire iron trying to stop his lover's murder. Now he must leave himself memos, notes, and Polaroid photos to structure his life. Important information about who he is, who he has loved, and how they died are tattooed all over his body. Over his heart is a tattoo that says "I must kill those who killed JACK TWIST in 1983" beneath a picture of Brokeback Mountain tattooed across his chest. On his right arm is a tattoo that says "My daughter Alma married Kurt", and "My ex-wife's name is Alma." On his left arm is tattooed, "Death by tire iron" and "Old Man River (?)"

The movie is told begining with a scene in which he speaks to two shirts in his closet, "Jack, I swear..." But who is Jack, and what does he swear? The movie unfolds in small vignettes reversing the timeline structure of the movie, each sliceback of the timeline revealing things Ennis has forgotten.

Ennis devotedly wants to revenge Jack's murder, but, as he is told several times, what is the point of revenge if he doesn't remember whether he has savored it?

[TOoP/Bruce]

by - bjblakeslee (Thu Apr 27 2006 14:26:54 )   

"Who's Afraid of the Gyllenwoolf?"

PLOT SYNOPSIS:

At a small Wyoming college campus, with majestic Brokeback Mountain lying in the distance, Ennis and Alma return from a party at her daddy's house late at night. They care deeply for each other, and demonstrate this by bickering, abusing, and badgering each other. Ennis is surprised that Alma has invited guests: Jack Twist, a new animal husbandry professor, and his very blonde wife Lureen.

Ennis and Alma up the ante in co-dependent brutality, each scoring points at the other's expense. Jack and Lureen are cuelly used in this vicious battle of the sexes.

The night is young, but the fight isn't. Ennis and Alma rip into Jack and Lureen, attempting to force them to reveal their dirty secrets and true selves. Jack jokes that sinners like himself and Ennis are going to hell; Ennis ripostes that there are a few commandments that he has not yet had the opportunity to shatter. The drop all pretense, doff their clothes, and have at each other like two rabid wolves.

Finally, exorcism... Everyone's secrets have been revealed and purged. Alma goes home with Lureen, leaving Ennis and Jack to try to forge a new abusive relationship.

[TOoP/Bruce]

by - bjblakeslee (Thu Apr 27 2006 14:28:32 )   

"Mo' Bettermost Beans Blues"

PLOT SYNOPSIS:

Set in Lightning Flats 1948, "Mo' Bettermost Beans Blues" tells the tale of young John Twist, a selfish harmonica player who runs a country harmonica club. John Twist is caught between two women; Veronica is a sexy needy bombshell of a cabaret singer, and Betty, a dowdy but highly religious Pentecostal Christian. At his harmonica club, John Twist is sitting on his pockets and not in his control zone as he tries to pay bills, and deal with a friend's gambling problems, and tries keep playing Veronica and Betty and long as he can. Twist is rendered as the protagonist despite his charming and manipulative nature. The plot's a bit thin, but a music video treatment helps carry through the dead spots.

This movie ends almost exactly the way it started, except that now John Twist is an adult whose son Jack is practicing the harmonica, and this time the boy gets to go out and play with the horses in the dirt road.

Who knew Harmonica music could be so crazy-sexy-cool?

[TOoP/Bruce]

by - bjblakeslee (Thu Apr 27 2006 14:30:10 )

"RASH!" (What if Paul Haggis had written Brokeback Mountain?)

PLOT SYNOPSIS:

A gay married couple from Sage who own a horse ranch. A gay Basque store owner who rides horses. Two gay police detectives on horseback who are also lovers. A gay Native-American television director and his significant other who film documentaries about gay cowboys. A gay Mexican locksmith on horseback. Two gay horse-jackers. A gay rookie cop on horseback. Two gay ranch hands (Jack and Ennis)looking for work as shepherds...A middle-aged gay Korean couple who ride gay horses…

They all live in Signal, Wyoming. During the next 36 hours, all these horses will collide…

"We scratch ourselves only that we might feel something," Jack woefully opines -- and that pretty well sums it up.

RASH is contageous, scabrous, and an often superficial and irritating look at human relations that barely begins to scratch the surface of gay racial tolerance and mutual gay sexual attraction in Wyoming. RASH is both a brilliant metaphor for a highly contageous skin condition, and the tendency to react with absolutely no thought whatsoever. This mildly compelling gay suburban drama tracks the volatile intersections of a multi-ethnic cast of gay characters’ struggles to overcome their fears of gay rejection as they sleep with each other casually and promise to call again. In the gay area between gay black people and gay white people, gay victims and gay aggressors, gay Basque shepherds and gay caucasion shepherds, there are simply no cheap wrinkle creams or salves…

Somewhat plausible, semi-powerful, and as always, entirely risible, RASH unfortunately reminds us of the futility of tolerance as it ventures beyond purebred horse blood-lines…and uncovers a uncomfortable truth regarding the rural gay community. I have a dream, that one day, all gay people will be judged not by the color of their horses' hair, but rather by their contempt for their charicatures.

The cast features damn near everyone in Hollywood in cameo parts including: Nick Lachey, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Justin Timberlake, Antonio Banderas, Brendan Fraser, Terrence Howard, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Ewan McGregor, Ryan Phillippe, Larenz Tate, Michael Pitt, Diego Luna, Gael García Bernal, Tony Leung, and the Chippendales Dancers.

[TOoP/Bruce]

by - bjblakeslee (Thu Apr 27 2006 14:31:46 )   

"Muscle and Flow"

PLOT SYNOPSIS:

JackT tires of his life of running a gay escort service in El Paso. He yearns to ditch it all and become a Gospel and Country Western Harmonica Star.

He sells the business, and takes a job watching sheep on Brokeback Mountain. He meets a really repressed guy named Ennis and does the best he can to draw him out in coversation. JackT comes to realize that nothing beats a good roll in the tent when it comes to making conversation, and the two forge a life-long bond.

They go their separate ways, and JackT successfully avoids the draft, but he has big dreams to fulfill. What he wants is chance to get up off his pockets and enter his control zone.

JackT runs into an old friend at a dance, Ran-dahl, a sound engineer who inspires Jack to get his butt moving. JackT pulls it all together and lays down some of the ice-coldest, deffest, hardcore harmonica tracks ever committed to an 8 track tape, but now he really has to pack on some hardcore muscle, and hustle a few last tricks, if he’s ever going to flow.

[TOoP/Bruce]

by - bjblakeslee (Fri Apr 28 2006 03:32:59 )   

"101 Damnations"

PLOT SYNOPSIS:

"I must a wrung it out a hunderd times thinkin a you."

So Ennis tells Jack in a motel room after their big reunion. This film documents each of those "hunderd" times and the horrific guilt Ennis carries with him in the aftermath of a perfectly natural biological function.

[TOoP/Bruce]

by - bjblakeslee (Fri Apr 28 2006 03:34:35 )   

"Guess Who's Humming to Dinner?"

PLOT SYNOPSIS:


Pentecostals Mr. and Mrs. Twist have raised their son Jack to try not to think for himself and to blindly conform to the conventional views of morality. Needless to say, they've totally failed. Nothing in the Twist's limited social experience can begin to prepare them for Jack's return from herding sheep one summer with a hot new "best friend" in tow: poor, inarticulate, sexually repressed, and socially awkward Ennis Delmar.

The family prepares for dinner, and are joined by a local Catholic priest, and Ennis's brother and sister. Ennis exchanges intimate glances with Jack, embracing him from behind, and humming softly in his ear.

Jack's father is dead set against this union, but Jack is determined to marry Ennis at a unique gay church in Mexico City. He wants his parents blessings, but will go ahead with the marriage no matter what people think about it. Ennis however tells John Twist (Jack's dad) that he will not consider marriage until he receives the unqualified approval of both Mr. and Mrs. Twist.

Complications ensue, and John Twist delivers a touching monologue at the end revealing an inspiring and totally unbelievable change of heart.