Brokeback Mountain

[SilverEagle]

...if so, what's your assessment.

[eulesseagle]

we are just waiting on your review gayeagle

[gksmith]

Brokeback Mountain...not just for women and gays anymore.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10342237/

Why would a chick flick feature two guys spooning?

[Guest JohnDenver]

Saw it. Enjoyed it for what it was...

It isn't really my *type* of movie. It didn't have much dialogue, but it makes up for it with the stunning camera work. The scenary is great.

I had always heard it was a gay cowboy romance. False. It isn't a *romance* movie. Sleepless in Seattle, You've got mail, Bridges of Madisson County -- those are all ROMANCE movies. This was a straight up love tragedy. It is a sad movie the entire way through it. There really isn't any happiness at all. In their family lives, in their mutual love, in their private lives.. it is all sad. It I would have been prepared for the tragedy title and not the romance title I would have entered the theater with a more grown up attitude. Instead, I easily giggled at forced gay dialogue. I snickered when the make-out scenes were so rough and tumble. Only when the whole movie ended did I see the whole gravity of the story ...

Lately I have seen media calling it a gay cowboy drama. I think that is more fair to the intentions. The movie wasn't out to paint a pretty picture of gay love. It wasn't there to convert people. That is what "romance" makes people think ... drama is just a good serious story that is being told.

I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, but I definitely wouldn't discount it because of the "gay romance" stories....

[CMJ]

I saw it about 2 weeks ago. Fantastic film, infinitely better than I was expecting. I haven't seen all of the most "buzzed" movies around town, but out of those i have seen it's probably the best.

IMHO

[ntmeangreen11]

No.

Just not the way I swing.

[SilverEagle]

No. 

Just not the way I swing.

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I't isn't about your sexual orientation, it's about.......oh, never mind.

[Coffee and TV]

No. 

Just not the way I swing.

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Just because you're straight doesn't mean you can't go see it, its not as if the movie portrays any kind of gay lifestyle as glamorous.

[eagle60]

I mean, with all those sheep around, what's all this "he'un and he'un?"

[CMJ]

No. 

Just not the way I swing.

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I could take a few easy pot shots at that statement, but I shall refrain.

To bring it back to NT, alumnus Larry McMurtry co-wrote the screenplay and he's favored to take the Oscar!

[SilverEagle]

Some thoughts from one of my favorite columnist...Leonard Pitts.

The threat of 'Brokeback'

By Leonard Pitts, The Miami Herald

I went to see Brokeback Mountain recently, mainly to prove to myself that I could.

This was after reading a New York Times piece by Larry David of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm fame in which he wrote that, though he loves gay people and supports both gay marriage and gay divorce, he does not plan to see this critically praised movie about gay cowboys. David said he's discomfitted by the idea of watching two men fall in love and fears that it might make him gay by osmosis.

"Not," he said, "that there's anything wrong with that."

It strikes me that David's essay amounted to the smiley-face liberal version of what is being said more bluntly in conservative circles. "Gay love story carries a high 'ick' factor" reads the headline of a story on the American Family Association Web site. It quotes a prediction that people will leave the theater vomiting.

How asinine, I think.

Yeah, says a little voice in my head, but if that's how you feel, why haven't YOU been to Brokeback Mountain?

Well, I protest, right now I'm teaching in this tiny college town in the middle of nowhere. I'd have to drive 90 miles.

Good point, says the voice. But didn't you drive that far to see Good Night, and Good Luck?

Now look, I say, some of my best friends are gay. Heck, my own brother's gay. But you know, we are talking about a love story between two guys, and they might be kissing and, you know, touching and ... stuff.

The little voice falls silent. It is a put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is silence.

So I went to see Brokeback. And I can report that it was as shattering and powerful as advertised. People were moved. Nobody threw up.

Which brings me back to that ick factor.

I find myself wondering if this primeval revulsion doesn't speak less to our antipathy toward homosexuality than to our fears about masculinity. I mean, while a movie about two women in love would surely be controversial, I doubt it would present the visceral threat that Brokeback Mountain does for some of us.

Indeed, the idea of women who can't keep their hands off each other is a staple of so-called men's entertainment. Visit a magazine stand if you don't believe me. In the '80s, it seemed as if every Prince video had band members Lisa and Wendy groping each other.

Point being, when it's women, we -- meaning straight men -- tend to find it titillating, exotic, arousing in its very forbiddance.

When it's men, we -- meaning straight men and women -- tend to react as if somebody dropped a snake in the bed. Small wonder that the FBI reports that while 902 men were reported victims of sexual orientation hate crimes in 2004, only 212 women were.

We seem prone to find male homosexuality the more clear and present danger, the more urgent betrayal of some fundamental ... something. Some will say it's -- and I will finesse this for a general audience -- the nature of man-to-man sex that some of us find off-putting. I think it's more basic than that. I think gay men threaten our very conception of masculinity.

The amazing thing about Brokeback Mountain is its willingness to make that threat, directly and overtly. These are not cute gays, funny gays, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy gays. These are "cowboys," and there is no figure in American lore more iconically male. Think Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, the Marlboro Man. The cowboy is our very embodiment of male virtues.

In offering us cowboys who are gay, then, Brokeback Mountain commits heresy, but it is knowing heresy, matter-of-fact heresy. Nor is it the sex (what little there is) that makes it heretical. Rather, it's the emotion, the fact that the movie dares you to deny these men their humanity. Or their love.

Ultimately, I think, that's what the Larry Davids among us sense. And why for them, Brokeback Mountain might be the most frightening movie ever made.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Leonard Pitts writes for The Miami Herald. lpitts@herald.com

[UNTLifer]

I find the title funny in an ironic sense.

[Eagle1855]

I could take a few easy pot shots at that statement, but I shall refrain.

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you kinda did anyway with that statement, right?

--eh nevermind--

no point in arguing... not going to see it either, and I think the title is funny as well.

Edited January 23, 2006 by Eagle1855