From DailyKos


by MsLibrarian
Mon Nov 07, 2005 at 07:11:30 AM PDT
It seems that Matt Drudge has declared war on Brokeback Mountain. We talked a bit about it yesterday in a thread about Jarhead, but that was before the Drudge article. With the current hotbutton issues of same sex marriage and gay rights making the news, this movie could become the whipping boy of the right.

If you haven't heard of it, it's the latest movie from Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and is based on a short story by Anne Proulx. The plot is simple. Two cowboys meet up one summer while tending sheep in Wyoming in the 1960's. They fall in love and spend the next 20 years hiding their relatioship from their families (both marry, have kids). The screenplay was written by legendary western writer Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove, The Streets of Laredo) and stars Health Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. It has all the markings of an Oscar favorite and Drudge knows it. It will be coming out in December, just in time for the awards season.

MsLibrarian's diary :: ::
"Arriving with nudity and explicit gay sex scenes between two cowboys, UNIVERSAL/FOCUS FILMS's BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN has quietly become an award season frontrunner, interviews with Academy members reveal.

"It could very well be the last film standing at this year's Oscars," a top Hollywood producer not associated with the film explained from Hollywood.

"There was not a dry eye in the house at the screening at Telluride [Film Festival in Colorado]," says the producer, who asked not to be named out of respect for the cast and crew of the producer's own Oscar contender. "Watch it come out of the gate at the Golden Globes with super controversy." "

It's already won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and it was reported to have been the best at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals.

It has been suggested in some of the reviews (the Village Voice, the Guardian in the UK) that this is the type of movie that can change minds and hearts. But could it work in reverse as well? If Drudge is bitching two months before it opens, will the movie become a rallying cry for the Right? Or will it just be brushed off as another example of Hollywood Liberalism. Does Hollywood even have the power anymore to make a difference in how people think. Just curious to hear what people think.

By the way, I hope all of you who can go and see this movie. I don't know how good or how realistic it is yet, but the buzz is phenomenal, and it would be a good thing politically for it to do good box office.

And it is potentially the most important major Hollywood release in quite a long time.

I'd be very surprised if this passes under the radar of the right wing noise machine.

I had planned on seeing it Friday going into Manhattan, but the snow storm stopped that idea.

Think its playing in 3 theaters in NYC and that's it for now...it should open in wider release later on.

Ang Lee is one of my favorite directors since Ice Storm(Joan Allen was robbed that year for the Oscar). (although he messed up bigtime wasting his time with the Hulk).

It would be something if this one the Oscar.

I am trying to avoid seeing any spoilers on this movie, so not going to talk about it any further til after we see it.

Yeah, it's in one of those gradual Oscar buzz releases. Opened this weekend in NY, LA and SF. Next week spreads to 55 theaters nationwide. It's supposed to open in Dallas next weekend, but not here in Fort Worth until at least Jan. 6. So, unless I want to trek over to Big D, may be awhile before I get to see it.

May be longer yet for folks in smaller cities. And I wonder if it will play at all in some places.

Well, if it wins the Best Picture Oscar (and there's talk it might), I think very few places would refuse to play it.

I heard this movie only cost $13 million, so despite the right's wishful thinking that it's going to be a terrible flop, it is pretty much guaranteed to be a success. Only question is how big of one.

And speaking of which, just tonight, it won the LA Film Critics awards for Best Picture and Director.




LOS ANGELES (AP) — “Brokeback Mountain,” a gay Western about two ranch hands who share a summer of love and then conceal their ongoing affair, was picked as 2005’s best film by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the group announced Saturday.
The movie, which stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, also earned director Ang Lee the critics’ award for best director, and Ledger was the runner-up for the best actor’s award.
“A History of Violence,” a thriller starring Viggo Mortensen, was the runner up for best film, and its director, David Cronenberg, was runner up for the directing award.
The award for best actor went to Phillip Seymour Hoffman for his work in “Capote,” which chronicled author Truman Capote as he pursued his true-crime book “In Cold Blood.”
Vera Farmiga won the best actress award for portraying a wife and mother who falls deeper into drug addiction in “Down to the Bone.” Judi Dench was the runner up for best actress for “Mrs. Henderson Presents.”
In the best supporting actress category, Catherine Keener won the award for her work in “Capote,” “Ballad of Jack and Rose, “The 40 Year old Virgin,” and “The Interpreter.” Amy Adams, who played a pregnant Southern waif captivated by her new sister-in-law from up north in “Junebug” was the runner up.
William Hurt won the best supporting actor award for “A History of Violence,” while Frank Langella was runner up for his role in “Good Night, And Good Luck.”
There was a tie for the best screenplay award between Dan Futterman for “Capote” and Noah Baumbach for the divorce tale “The Squid and the Whale.”
The awards ceremony was scheduled for Jan. 17 in Los Angeles.
Other 2005 picks:
Foreign language film: “Cache.”
Documentary/nonfiction film: “Grizzly Man.”
Animation: “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.”
Music/score: “Howl’s Moving Castle.”
Cinematography: “Good Night, And Good Luck.”
New generation: Terrence Howard, actor in “Hustle & Flow.”
Career Achievement: actor Richard Widmark.
Independent/experimental: “La Commune (Paris, 1871).”
Special citations: Film critic Kevin Thomas for his contributions to film culture in Los Angeles; and David Shepard, Bruce Posner and the Anthology Film Archive to honor “Unseen Cinema”, a DVD collection of avant-garde films from 1894-1941.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5046849
From Page to Screen: 'Brokeback Mountain'
by Bob Mondello and Melissa Block
AUDIO AVAILABLE
All Things Considered, December 9, 2005 · Director Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain is the story of the love and friendship between two cowboys in the early 1960s. NPR film critic Bob Mondello reviews the movie, which opens Friday.

Then, writers Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry discuss adapting Annie Proulx's 11-page short story into a two-hour film.

They compare adapting the story to hiking a mountain: a challenge, but well worth it. McMurtry says it's the best material he's ever worked with as a screenwriter.


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5044116
Movies
The Sound of 'Brokeback Mountain'
AUDIO AVAILABLE
Day to Day, December 8, 2005 · Producer Derek Rath speaks with composer Gustavo Santoalalla, the man behind the music for the upcoming film Brokeback Mountain.

The film follows the lives of two cowboys who share a physical and emotional relationship that haunts their lives.

In an unusual reversal of how a film is commonly scored, Santoalalla says the music was created first and used as an inspiration for the film's shooting and for the actors.

More,
http://www.npr.org/search.php?text=brokeback+mountain

I've read a number of reviews of Brokeback Mountain, and they are overwhelmingly positive. However, one thing I'm curious about that I haven't seen addressed is how it plays to the gay community. So, I'm just a little skeptical about it. Is this just a gay movie for straight people? Or does it honestly and realistically depict its love story. I'm certainly eager to find out.

Certainly one movie to see - that will show a different viewpoint from not just from the self-proclaimed holier-than-thou distorters of the Bible for their own power, disillusion, and purpose. Missed an earlier screening, but will be seeing it early next week. I like Ang Lee's work because this Director does put an effort into human feelings and see gis characters with real human soul. Just like Spielberg, whom I repect a whole lot. I wish more Americans will bring themselves to see films of such Directors who treasure people as human beings first, instead of listening to those whose big mouths blast/spew/cough out nothing, but revengeful hate against everyone who seems culturally/ethnically different from them.

I'm planning to see it just as soon as I can. However, it may not come here, unfortunately. Good Night and Good Lucknever did.

I didn't realize that Larry McMurtry wrote the screenplay. That's a plus.

McMurtry says it was the best source material he has ever written a screenplay from.

Both may well show up in your neck of the woods after Oscar nominations are announced. Brokeback seems certain to be a top nominee, and Good Night is getting quite a bit of mention, too.

From what I hear, the early word on Speilberg's Munich isn't good. We'll see. Terrence Mallick (The Thin Red Line) also has a film due that may be released in time for Oscar consideration. He hasn't done many films, but whatever he does is always outstanding.

I thought Lee should have won for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. That was an absolutely stunning and groundbreaking film visually.

Another I would like to see is Capote. In Cold Blood is a seminal piece of investigative journalism.

Capote is at the moment my choice for both best actor- Phillip Seymour Hoffman and supporting actress-Catherine Keener, and one of the five
best movies all around.

And I would give Joan Allen the Best Actress award for her upside of anger film.(of course I would give Joan Allen any award at any time.
Nobody ever gives her an award since the Tonys years ago, yet its one great performance after another. By my count she should already have two or three and be a threat toward Katharine Hepburn's record).

Hoffman is incredible-he becomes Capote, without it being a sendup.
Really stunning.

I am not sure if it would count as this year, but DOWNFALL is my favorite movie that I saw in the calender year 2005...but I believe it
was foreign film nominee for last year, whether that disqualifies it once it opens in regular release in USA for this year I don't know.
It did not win foreign film from what I gather was it was too popular and well-known, and they want the foreign film award to go for something that needs to get itself known.

Heard that King Kong received quite a rave in NY. I'm seeing it tonight, and have to see if it stuns me as much as what had been said.

Early word I have heard on King Kong is that it is a great "popcorn" movie but unlikely to be a heavyweight Oscar contender. But that doesn't mean it's not really good for what it is.

My only question, though, is why? Haven't there been enough versions of King Kong?

I like love stories. Doesn't matter who is in love, but great romantic love stories, and there are very few over the last 50 years that really work.

From the ads, King Kong looks like it (as were the other two)

so maybe there both could be 2 of the top 10 love stories

You may well like Brokeback Mountain, then, Graham. Supposedly it works so well because it is a powerful, old-fashioned love story. Though with a modern twist, of course.

BTW, Terrence Malick's new movie is called "The New World" and is scheduled to open Dec. 25. It's about the John Smith-Pocohontas legend and stars Colin Farrell. Since Malick directed, it will be gorgeous, but the subject material doesn't sound too promising to me, and supposedly there were lots of problems with the script.

that(modern twist) does not bother me in the least. Love=love.(wish the republican a-holes would see that and Let it Be.)

Don't tell me details until after I see it though- NO spoilers please.

Past favorite love stories, just some of them(4 hanky ones, like they used to say)
Brief Encounter-just so simple. Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson.
Wuthering Heights
Somewhere in time
Bridges of Madison County(when Clint was standing on the street corner, and the
rain was pounding down on him, and her hand was on the car door...and you just wanted to stand up and shout out in the theater-GET OUT OF THE CAR and go for it)

Vertigo(his heart ached so that he had to re-create it), and the homage to Vertigo,
Obsession by DePalma(although he added the ending incest twist to it)

just some of the ones I can think of that always get to me



I recommend though everyone see Capote (which in a way is a love story too- a man in love with himself)

I've been trying to avoid hearing *too* much about the plot, too. In the reviews I've read, I have skipped over the plot synopsis sections

Then, I think you'll enjoy Woody Allen's 'Match Point'. It's cleverly done, and with the brilliance of the earlier Allen. I don't mind seeing it again when it gets released n the theaters in early January.

NEW YORK - The New York Film Critics Circle became the latest group to name the cowboy romance "Brokeback Mountain" as the year's top film, while the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures gave its best-picture award Monday to "Good Night, and Good Luck," George Clooney's depiction of Edward R. Murrow's on-air battles against Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Both groups selected Ang Lee as best director for "Brokeback Mountain," in which Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal play cowboys who find forbidden, unexpected love in Wyoming during the summer of 1963.

"'Brokeback' was an old-fashioned romance that also fulfilled the group's impulse to be daring and original," said Gene Seymour, film critic for Newsday and president of the New York Film Critics Circle. "It combines the best of both these elements."

On Saturday, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association also chose "Brokeback Mountain" as its top film of 2005. With Golden Globe Award nominations scheduled to be announced Tuesday morning, it's emerging as a front-runner among a wide variety of films that have received acclaim.

The New York critics gave best-actor honors to Ledger, while Reese Witherspoon was named best actress for her spirited portrayal of June Carter Cash in "Walk the Line."

"It seemed like such a daring departure from what he'd been known to do before," Seymour said of Ledger, whose previous films include the comedy "A Knight's Tale" and the skateboarding movie "Lords of Dogtown."

As for Witherspoon, he said, "Even in the Hollywood, commercial, popcorn genre she's worked in, she has extraordinary respect from a cross-section of critics here. She's very, very engaged in her character — she really knows what to do in front of a camera, always."

Two performers who underwent significant transformations for their roles received the top acting honors from the National Board of Review: Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote in "Capote," and Felicity Huffman as a preoperative transsexual in "Transamerica."

Even though "Good Night" takes place a half-century ago, the National Board of Review was struck by its relevance to the current state of journalism. David Strathairn stars as Murrow, the pioneering CBS newsman who criticized McCarthy for communist witch hunts of the 1950s. Clooney is the director and co-star.

"The press is very much on the tip of everybody's tongue — what they're reporting, how much they're reporting," said Annie Schulhof, National Board of Review president.

"I think it was an extraordinary film. Mr. Clooney really nailed it. He really understood the issues," Schulhof added. "It got people talking, and many times, that's what a good film does."

Two co-stars from the thriller "A History of Violence" received supporting-actor honors from the New York critics: William Hurt and Maria Bello.

The National Board of Review gave its supporting acting awards to Gyllenhaal for "Brokeback Mountain" and Gong Li for "Memoirs of a Geisha." "Mrs. Henderson Presents," about a wealthy widow who started a nude revue in 1930s London, received the ensemble acting award.

The National Board was the latest group to recognize Terrence Howard with a breakthrough-performance honor for his varied work in several films this year, including "Hustle & Flow," "Crash" and "Get Rich or Die Tryin'." He received similar honors over the weekend from the Los Angeles critics and the New York Film Critics Online.

Noah Baumbach won the original-screenplay honor for "The Squid and the Whale," his semi-autobiographical story about divorce in a literary Brooklyn family, and Stephen Gaghan won the adapted-screenplay award for "Syriana," his multilayered thriller about oil, power and manipulation in the Middle East. The New York critics also honored Baumbach for his screenplay.

"Syriana" also was among the National Board's list of the year's top 10 films. The rest, in alphabetical order: "Brokeback Mountain," "Capote," "Crash," "A History of Violence," "Match Point," "Memoirs of a Geisha," "Munich" and "Walk the Line."

The New York Film Critics Circle, founded in 1935, consists of about 30 reviewers who write for the city's daily newspapers and for New York-based weekly publications.

The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, formed in 1909, is composed of film historians, students and educators.

The Associated Press

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - The gay cowboy romance "Brokeback Mountain" positioned itself as a key Oscar competitor Tuesday, roping in seven Golden Globe nominations, including best dramatic picture and honors for actor Heath Ledger and director Ang Lee.

Other best drama picture contenders were the murder thriller "The Constant Gardener," the Edward R. Murrow tale "Good Night, and Good Luck," the mobster story "A History of Violence" and "Match Point," a drama about infidelity.

The Globes were a triumph for smaller budgeted films over big studio productions.

"This is the first time in the history of the Golden Globes that all of the best (dramatic) film nominees are independent movies made for under $30 million," said Philip Berk, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which presents the awards.

The Globes have a separate category for musical or comedy films. Nominated were the theater tale "Mrs. Henderson Presents," the Jane Austen costume pageant "Pride & Prejudice," the Broadway musical "The Producers," the divorce story "The Squid and the Whale," and the Johnny Cash film biography "Walk the Line."

The Globes were the latest recognition for "Brokeback Mountain," a critical darling that has received top honors from critics groups in New York City, Los Angeles and Boston.

Still, the film has an uphill trail to the Oscars, whose voters may hesitate to anoint a gay-themed movie as its champion.

"It's going to be a front-runner, but it really has a mountain to climb, because never have we seen a gay romance in the best-picture race before," said Tom O'Neil, who runs theenvelope.com, an awards Web site.

Movies with gay angles have earned acting honors, Tom Hanks winning for "Philadelphia" and Hilary Swank for "Boys Don't Cry," but those movies did not break into the best-picture pack.

Yet "Brokeback Mountain" has proved a favorite at film festivals and debuted with huge box-office grosses last weekend, taking in almost $550,000 in just five theaters. The movie goes into wider release over the next few weeks, its backers hoping it will find a broad audience despite the subject matter.

"Clearly, we felt that because the film speaks a very universal emotional language; it's going to surprise people, when it comes out, how accessible it is," said James Schamus, a producer on "Brokeback Mountain" and co-president of Focus Features, the NBC Universal banner that released the film.

Best dramatic actor nominee Ledger plays a husband concealing a homosexual affair with an old sheepherding buddy from his family. Other nominees included three actors playing real-life figures: Russell Crowe as Depression-era boxer Jim Braddock in "Cinderella Man," Philip Seymour Hoffman as author Truman Capote in "Capote," and David Strathairn as newsman Murrow in "Good Night, and Good Luck." The fifth nominee was Terrence Howard as a small-time pimp-turned-rap singer in "Hustle & Flow."

"Good Night, and Good Luck" was tied for second-most film nominations with four, along with "Match Point" and "The Producers." The Murrow tale earned a best-director nomination for George Clooney, who also had a supporting actor movie nomination for the oil industry thriller "Syriana."

Felicity Huffman received two nominations — best dramatic actress in a film for her role as a man preparing for sex-change surgery in "Transamerica" and best actress in a TV musical or comedy for "Desperate Housewives." Her "Desperate Housewives" co-stars Marcia Cross, Teri Hatcher and Eva Longoria also were nominated, and the ABC show earned a best TV comedy bid.

ABC also scored three nominations for best dramatic TV series: "Commander in Chief," "Grey's Anatomy" and "Lost." Bids also went to Fox's "Prison Break" and HBO's "Rome." Other nominees for best comedy or musical TV series were HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "Entourage," UPN's "Everybody Hates Chris," NBC's "My Name is Earl" and Showtime's "Weeds."

Other best dramatic film actress nominees were Maria Bello as a wife learning painful secrets about her husband in "A History of Violence," Gwyneth Paltrow as an unstable math genius' daughter in "Proof," Charlize Theron as a woman leading a sexual harassment lawsuit in "North Country" and Ziyi Zhang as a poor girl who becomes the belle of Japan's geisha houses in "Memoirs of a Geisha."

Based on a short story by Annie Proulx, "Brokeback Mountain" grabbed a supporting actress nomination for Michelle Williams as Ledger's wife, who chooses to ignore his affair with a man (Jake Gyllenhaal) to hold her family together. The movie also scored a directing nomination for Lee and received nominations for best screenplay, score and song.

For best actor in a movie, musical or comedy, Globe voters nominated Pierce Brosnan as a burned-out hit man in "The Matador," Jeff Daniels as a husband unglued by divorce in "The Squid and the Whale," Johnny Depp as candyman Willy Wonka in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," Nathan Lane as a Broadway con man in "The Producers," Cillian Murphy as a cross-dressing Irishman in "Breakfast on Pluto," and Joaquin Phoenix as country legend Cash in "Walk the Line."

Best musical or comedy film actress nominees: Judi Dench as a 1930s British dame who opens a nude theatrical review in "Mrs. Henderson Presents," Keira Knightley as the romantic heroine in "Pride & Prejudice," Laura Linney as a divorcing wife in "The Squid and the Whale," Sarah Jessica Parker as a woman hated by her fiance's relatives in "The Family Stone," and Reese Witherspoon as country singer June Carter in "Walk the Line."

Besides Lee and Clooney, the directing contenders were Woody Allen for "Match Point," Peter Jackson for "King Kong," Fernando Meirelles for "The Constant Gardener," and Steven Spielberg for "Munich."

In addition to Clooney, supporting movie actor nominees were Matt Dillon for "Crash," Will Ferrell for "The Producers," Paul Giamatti for "Cinderella Man," and Bob Hoskins for "Mrs. Henderson Presents."

Playing a bigoted cop who dotes on his sickly dad, Dillon was the lone acting nominee from an ensemble of great performances in "Crash," which interweaves multiple story lines on a single tension-filled day in Los Angeles.

"It was honest and truthful to what I believed was an L.A. cop, not typical of what every cop is," Dillon said. "It went and explored these two extremes ... bitter racist cop and really loving son who cares about his sick father. These are the complicated things we see in life."

Supporting actress nominees: Scarlett Johansson for "Match Point," Shirley MacLaine for "In Her Shoes," Frances McDormand for "North Country," Rachel Weisz for "The Constant Gardener," and Williams for "Brokeback Mountain."

Two years ago, the Golden Globes correctly predicted Oscar winners in all key categories, including best-picture champ "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King."

But a year ago, the Globes missed the mark, picking "The Aviator" as best picture, an honor that went to "Million Dollar Baby" at the Oscars.

Winners of the Golden Globes will be announced Jan. 16, five days before polls close for Oscar voters. Oscar nominations come out Jan. 31, and the awards will be presented March 5.

By Robert W. Welkos and Elaine Dutka
The Los Angeles Times

HOLLYWOOD -- “Brokeback Mountain” seems to have everything going for it: great reviews, a remarkable opening weekend and dominance in the first wave of the Hollywood awards season, underscored Tuesday by seven Golden Globe nominations, the most of any film.
But there’s one important landmark the film has yet to reach -- roping in a mass audience.
Over the next several weeks, the movie about two handsome young cowboys falling in love with each other -- dubbed by some wags the gay “Gone With the Wind” -- will be released across the United States in cities where its themes of repressed sexuality and cultural intolerance may prove a tougher sell than they have New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, with their concentrations of cineastes and gay and lesbian populations.
“Brokeback Mountain’s” future in the heartland will offer a classic test of whether what the movie business considers its best work will be embraced by audiences whose values may be more conservative than Hollywood’s. In some ways, “Brokeback” could prove a counterpoint to the phenomenal success of last year’s “The Passion of the Christ,” a film disparaged by Hollywood power brokers and many film critics that still emerged as a blockbuster.
The controversial cowboy movie, which is rated R in part for its sexuality, also is hitting theaters at a time when filmmakers and studio executives are worried they are losing touch with audiences, as reflected by a nearly yearlong box-office slump.
At least one national exhibitor believes “Brokeback Mountain’s” appeal will not be limited to major metropolitan cities.
“Between the controversy and the reviews, `Brokeback Mountain’ is becoming a `must-see’ movie of the year,” said Jerry Pokorski, executive vice president and chief film buyer for Pacific Theatres and ArcLight Cinemas, which has about 400 theaters across the country. “Maybe in Wichita Falls it will be a different story, but I still believe that good reviews -- and good films -- drive the business.”
But outside of big cities, movies that generate great reviews don’t always play strongly.
Just this year, “Capote” attracted consistently good reviews, but so far has grossed just $10.4 million in more than 200 theaters. Within movies that have gay themes, the stronger the sexuality the weaker the films tend to perform. Although toned-down gay-themed movies such as “The Birdcage” and “Philadelphia” were hits, the far more explicit (and Oscar-winning) transgender drama “Boys Don’t Cry” sold only $11.5 million in tickets.
“I really don’t think America is ready for a homosexual love story like this,” said Peter Sprigg, vice president for policy at the conservative Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. “I’m sure it has a great deal of appeal within the Hollywood community itself, which is already committed to a pro-homosexual ideology, but I can’t see it as a big box-office success.”
Added Dave Bossie, who was the executive producer of the anti-Michael Moore documentary “Celsius 41.11” and heads the conservative grass roots organization Citizens United: “ `Brokeback’ will not only encounter resistance, but empty theaters. My wife and I watched the trailer in a theater a few days ago and sensed an audible revulsion to two men passionately embracing and kissing on the big screen.
”Blue-collar workers (and) predominantly heterosexual women are not going to pay to see this story in large numbers. The conservative audience that made `The Passion of the Christ’ so successful will be the death knell for `Brokeback Mountain.’ “
But one theater owner in Tennessee says early interest has been running high.
”E-mails are running 50 to 1 in favor of the film -- and not just from (gay and lesbian organizations),“ said Jeff Kaufman, vice president of film for Memphis, Tenn.-based Malco Theatres, a family-owned chain of about 300 screens in small towns such as Blytheville, Ark.; Owensboro, Ky.; and Oxford, Miss.
” `Brokeback’ is a high-quality film, a terrific picture and there seems to be broad-based interest. A gay theme certainly didn’t hurt `The Birdcage,’ which had great commercial success,“ Kaufman said.
On Friday, the film will open on two screens in a theater in Plano, Texas, a Dallas suburb.
”We’ve sold about 40 tickets over the Internet for the Friday screening, more than for any other movie we are showing, including `King Kong,’ “ said Terrell Falk, vice president of marketing and communications for Cinemark USA Inc., which has more than 2,000 screens in 200 theaters, primarily in Utah, Ohio, California and Texas.
But interest in acclaimed titles typically fades once a town’s core film fanatics have come and gone.
Still, novelist Larry McMurtry, who with co-screenwriter Diana Ossana adapted E. Annie Proulx’s short story into ”Brokeback Mountain,“ says the film’s examination of secret love in the wilds of Wyoming should hold universal appeal.
”People seem to like it -- it’s striking them in their hearts and in their gut,“ said McMurtry, the author of ”Lonesome Dove.“
Robin Glasscock, a bartender at the Proud Cut Saloon in Cody, Wyo., said she plans to go see the movie with her friends.
”I don’t know how this community would respond to it,“ she said. ”It’s a pretty conservative type of place. I certainly hope they wouldn’t be (offended by the movie). I think it’s something they should see regardless.“
”Brokeback Mountain“ will need to get those kind of intrepid moviegoers if is to become a breakout hit.
The film’s producer and distributor, Focus Features, says it is encouraged that among the ticket buyers in the opening weekend were a significant (but unspecified) number of straight men who came with their girlfriends or wives.
James Schamus, a Focus co-president, said the stereotype of the ”Middle American who votes Republican and runs screaming from the theater at the thought of this movie is being exploded as we speak.“

Definitely a very well made film. The theme of love is splendidly focused... raising questions on how honest should one be about love, and whether finding happiness in love should be over-riden by social obligation. What came through is the question of fear. If we put fear before love, fear might become the very instigator to promote a self-fulfilling prophesy of what we feared most. The changing seasons and their ladscapes are beautifully and appropriately presented - almost seen as metaphors of the changing relationship between the two principle characters. We get to see the best and the worst of human nature when it comes to love relationship. Superb performances all round. Definitely worthy of seeing and discussing. My two thumbs up for this masterpiece of work and artistry. The slow pacing is especially unique as it serves as a strong purpose for the audience to study the emotions and the reasons for the characters' motivated choices of actions and decision making.

Glad you liked it, S-L.

The right hasn't really gone off on it yet. They'll probably wait until after the "War on Christmas" is over.

I heard this was good too. I just can't get past Woody Allen marrying Mia Farrow's daughter, though! Ever since that, I just can't stomach anything associated with Woody Allen.

By Jack Mathews
New York Daily News
OK, it’s time to declare Ang Lee’s "Brokeback Mountain" an Oscar juggernaut.
After winning a rash of critics’ awards in recent days, the so-called gay cowboy movie has shifted center-stage in Hollywood with seven nominations for the Golden Globes, three more than George Clooney’s "Good Night, and Good Luck," Woody Allen’s "Match Point" and Susan Stroman’s "The Producers."
That whooshing sound you hear is the air being sucked out of the sky over America’s red states. Get ready for a renewed how-dare-they assault on liberal Hollywood.
The Golden Globes, whose annual telecast is a cash cow for the ragtag Hollywood Foreign Press Association, may have little street cred with critics, filmmakers or knowledgeable movie buffs. But, as the dress rehearsal for the Academy Awards, it is the second-most-important player in the game.
Globes can’t rule anything in or out, but as linchpins of multi-million-dollar Oscar campaigns, they can be a major influence on Academy voters.
On that score, the big losers of the day were Terrence Malick’s "The New World," which was shut out, Steven Spielberg’s "Munich," which received just two nominations, and Rob Marshall’s "Memoirs of a Geisha," also with two.
("Munich," a drama about the hunt for masterminds of the hostage crisis at the `72 Munich Olympics, opens in theaters Dec. 23, and "The New World," a love story about Pocahontas and John Smith, opens on Christmas Day.)
Peter Jackson, whose "King Kong" figures to be 2005’s box-office champion, had to settle for nominations for his direction and James Newton Howard’s musical score.
Besides "Brokeback," the day’s obvious winners among movie nominees (the Globes also offers a full slate of TV nominations) were "Good Night, and Good Luck," a small black-and-white docudrama about 1950s newsman Edward R. Murrow’s stand against red-baiting U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and "Match Point," which tackles issues of guilt and morality among London’s tennis set.
"Match Point," which opens in theaters Dec. 28, landed on the key ballots for best drama, director, screenplay and supporting actress (Scarlett Johansson).
There were no real outrages — by inclusion or exclusion — in the acting categories.
I would like to have seen Tommy Lee Jones ("The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada") nominated as best dramatic actor over phone-thrower Russell Crowe ("Cinderella Man"), but it’s a close call. And I have no reservations over the presence on that ballot of Heath Ledger ("Brokeback Mountain"), Philip Seymour Hoffman ("Capote"), Terrence Howard ("Hustle & Flow") and David Strathairn ("Good Night, and Good Luck").
As usual, the Globe voters used their second best-picture category (for musical/comedy) as a spillover bin for dramas. It’s on the ballot for best musical/comedy actor where you find Joaquin Phoenix, heralded for his dramatic performance in the biographical drama "Walk the Line."
Phoenix’s co-star, Reese Witherspoon, is on the women’s musical/comedy ballot.
In any case, the developing story coming out the critics’ awards and Golden Globe nominations is the strength of "Brokeback Mountain," which covers 20 years of the secret love life of two married cowboys in the modern West.
The film’s embrace by critics and Hollywood insiders will doubtless fuel attacks on so-called liberal elites by religious groups and garden-variety homophobes. It is to be hoped that some of the people incensed by the movie and its honors see it before they attack.
The 63rd annual Golden Globes airs live Jan. 16 from Beverly Hills on NBC at 8 p.m. EST.

When I see a movie, I tend to see it for its artistic and creative talent, not what the Directors or the cast do with their personal lives, or who they screw or not screw. I'm more inclined to see whether my time spent inside a closed up environment could actually put me into the Directors or Writers' brains for those films, and only those films at those precious time I leave the real world!

For all the fanatics' nasty blows and dirt thrown at Spielberg, I'm glad that Spielberg's ‘Munich’ has been honored with the Washington D.C. area film critics’ pick for best film, and director. The Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association is comprised of 34 D.C.-based film critics from television, radio, print and the Internet.

True enough, but an actor or director's outside activities can leave an impression on audiences that impacts the film. That's somewhat true with Allen (though I think a bigger reason for his drop in popularity is the fact that he kept making the same movies over and over again to the point of irrelevance).

Russell Crowe may be on the verge of that now. And Jane Fonda and Oliver Stone sure inspire enmity from those on the right (and Vietnam War veterans in Fonda's case).

Any celebrity who engages in political (or illegal/questionable) activities runs the risk of having it hurt their career by turning off part of their audience.

The radio news yesterday said that the WH showed this movie over the weekend to guests. They all were upset and many walked out. Scott McClellan had to issue a press release that they had no idea what the movie was about so not to offend the religious right. But then they said they would show Rent (which has scantily clad women) and another controversial movie.

That's a good one, Heritage. With as much publicity as "Brokeback Mountain" has received, they didn't know what it was about?

Maybe Dubya wanted to see it

A radio person said Bush thought the movie was about cowboys clearing brush.

By DAVID CRARY
AP National Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Gay-rights leaders are elated that a tale of same-sex love and heartbreak is reaching mainstream filmgoers in the form of acclaimed “Brokeback Mountain,” while some conservatives are dismayed by the film’s glowing reviews and rooting for it to fail at the box office.
The story of two Wyoming cowboys in the 1960s has drawn capacity crowds in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Its big test, though, starts Friday when — on the heels of seven Golden Globe nominations — it expands to more than 20 other cities.
“This film has tremendous potential to connect with audiences gay and straight alike,” said Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
“What ‘Brokeback Mountain’ does,” Giuliano added, “is allow audiences to experience, on an intensely emotional level, how ignorance and intolerance can force people to deny their love and deny who they are.”
But Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America’s Culture and Family Institute, hopes the film flops.
“I can’t think of a more effective way to annoy and alienate most moviegoing Americans than to show two cowboys lusting after each other,” Knight said on his group’s Web site. “It’s a mockery of the Western genre embodied by every movie cowboy from John Wayne to Gene Autry to Kevin Costner.”
Knight contrasted “Brokeback Mountain” with “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” a family-oriented film with underlying Christian themes.
“That’s why it will make zillions while ‘Brokeback’ will impress the critics and some fringe audiences in urban centers, but that’s about it,” Knight said.
The men in “Brokeback Mountain” are played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Another Hollywood star, Felicity Huffman of “Desperate Housewives,” plays a transsexual in the new movie “Transamerica.”
Susanne Salkind of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay-rights group, urged gays to take straight friends, relatives and co-workers to both movies, which she said were capable of shattering stereotypes.
“The more people who are exposed to authentic stories about our lives, the more support we’ll get throughout the fabric of American culture,” Salkind said.
There has been vibrant discussion in gay-oriented media about how “Brokeback Mountain” will fare in the U.S. heartland.
Ryan James Kim, writing for Advocate.com, likened the film’s romantic appeal to “Titanic” and predicted young straight women will flock to it.
“Most viewers will remember ‘Brokeback’ not as a movie in which cowboys kissed but as a love story they cannot forget — straight guys included, if they’re mature enough, or at least smart enough, to follow the lead of the women they love,” Kim wrote.
However, Matt Hennie of the Atlanta-based gay weekly Southern Voice predicted the film will be a box-office bust.
“Don’t misunderstand, I’m a big fan of the movie,” he wrote. “But America isn’t ready and willing to flock to theaters to watch a two-hour film about two gay cowboys. ...a movie that will put faces on issues that silently make them shudder.”
Tom Neal, former editor of a gay monthly in Tulsa, Okla., said he was pleased that a local theater operator has pledged to show “Brokeback Mountain,” apparently undeterred by denunciations of the film on a Tulsa radio talk-show.
“The issues in the film would resonate in a place like Tulsa,” said Neal, a descendent of Oklahoma Land Rush settlers. “That model of men who fall in love with each other but get married to women — I know a lot of people who went through that.”
Seattle filmmaker Michael Culpepper, who recently completed a documentary about gay couples in a tiny Idaho farming town, believes rural audiences will be receptive to “Brokeback Mountain.”
“The honesty of it — that’s something these people will respect, though it’s definitely a struggle for some of them to understand what a gay relationship is like,” Culpepper said.
Those upset by “Brokeback Mountain” include men who say they moved away from homosexuality through prayer or therapy and are now active in what is known as the “ex-gay movement.”
Alan Chambers, president of an evangelical network of former homosexuals called Exodus International, said the film portrays emotions “that I and thousands of others who have left homosexuality are well familiar with.”
“We hear from thousands of individuals who are grappling with the same problems and are tired of messages, such as the ones presented in this film, that only further add to their confusion and desperation,” Chambers said.
The Christian group Focus on the Family has an article about the film on its Web site — headlined “Gay Love Story Carries a High ‘Ick’ Factor” — that summarizes opinions of several conservative critics.
One, Ted Baehr of a Web site (movieguide.org) aimed at pointing out family fare, called the film “boring neo-Marxist homosexual propaganda” and predicted its scenes of gay sex would repel audiences.
And Dick Rolfe of the Dove Foundation, which encourages production of family-friendly films, cautioned: “If Christians protest too loudly, they can end up making the mistake of calling attention to a movie that otherwise may not do very well at the box office. We have to be very careful not to use our anger strategies to a point where they boomerang on us.”

By FRANK RICH
New York Times News Service
What if they held a culture war and no one fired a shot? That’s the compelling tale of “Brokeback Mountain.” Here is a heavily promoted American movie depicting two men having sex — the precise sex act that was still a crime in some states until the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws just two and a half years ago — but there is no controversy, no Fox News tar and feathering, no roar from the religious right.
“Brokeback Mountain” has instead become the unlikely Oscar favorite, propelled by its bicoastal sweep of critics’ awards, by its unexpected dominance of the far less highfalutin Golden Globes and, perhaps most of all, by the lure of a gold rush. Last weekend it opened to the highest per-screen average of any movie this year.
Those screens were in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco — hardly national bellwethers. But I’ll rashly predict that the big Hollywood question posed on the front page of The Los Angeles Times after those stunning weekend grosses — “Can `Brokeback Mountain’ Move the Heartland?” — will be answered with a resounding yes. All the signs of a runaway phenomenon are present, from an instant parody on “Saturday Night Live” to the report that a multiplex in Plano, Texas, sold more advance tickets for the so-called “gay cowboy picture” than for “King Kong.” “The culture is finding us,” James Schamus, the “Brokeback Mountain” producer, told USA Today. “Grown-up movies have never had that kind of per-screen average. You only get those numbers when you’re vacuuming up enormous interest from all walks of life.”
In the packed theater where I caught “Brokeback Mountain,” the trailers included a National Guard recruitment spiel, and the audience was demographically all over the map. The culture is seeking out this movie not just because it is a powerful, four-hankie account of a doomed love affair and is beautifully acted by everyone, starting with the riveting Heath Ledger. The X factor is that the film delivers a story previously untold by A-list Hollywood. It’s a story America may be more than ready to hear a year after its president cynically flogged a legally superfluous (and unpassable) constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage for the sole purpose of whipping up the basest hostilities of his electoral base.
By coincidence, “Brokeback Mountain,” a movie that is all the more subversive for having no overt politics, is a rebuke and antidote to that sordid episode. Whether it proves a movie for the ages or as transient as “Love Story,” it is a landmark in the troubled history of America’s relationship to homosexuality. It brings something different to the pop culture marketplace at just the pivotal moment to catch a wave.
Heaven knows there has been no shortage of gay-themed entertainment in recent years. To the tedious point of ubiquity, gay characters, many of them updated reincarnations of the stereotypical fops and fussbudgets of 1930s studio comedies, are at least as well represented as other minorities in prime-time television. Entertainment Weekly has tallied nine movies, including “Capote” and “Rent,” with major gay characters this year. But “Brokeback Mountain,” besides being more sexually candid than the norm, is not set in urban America, is not comic or camp, and, unlike the breakout dramas “Philadelphia” and “Angels in America,” is pre-AIDS.
Its heroes are neither midnight cowboys, drugstore cowboys nor Village People cowboys. As Annie Proulx writes in the brilliant short story from which the movie has been adapted, the two ranch hands, Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), are instead simply “high school dropout country boys with no prospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough-mannered, rough-spoken, inured to the stoic life.”
They meet and fall in love while tending sheep in the Wyoming wilderness in 1963. That was the year of Martin Luther King Jr.’s march on Washington and Betty Friedan’s “Feminine Mystique,” but gay Americans, and not just in Wyoming, were stranded, still waiting for the world to start spinning forward. Over the next two decades of sporadic reunions and long separations, both Ennis and Jack get married and have children; it barely occurs to them to do otherwise. In their place and time, there is no vocabulary to articulate their internal conflicts, no path to steer their story to a happily-ever-after Hollywood ending. Before they know it, they are, in Proulx’s words, “no longer young men with all of it before them.”
Ennis’ and Jack’s acute emotions — yearning, loneliness, disappointment, loss, love and, yes, lust — are affecting because they are universal. But while the screenplay, by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, adheres closely to the Proulx original, it even more vividly roots the movie in the rural all-American milieu, with its forlorn honky-tonks and small-town Fourth of July picnics, familiar from elegiac McMurtry works like “The Last Picture Show.” More crucially, the script adds detail to Ennis’ and Jack’s wives (as do Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway, who play them) so that we can implicitly, and without any on-screen moralizing, see the cost inflicted on entire families, not just on Ennis and Jack, when gay people must live a lie.
Though “Brokeback Mountain” is not a western, it has been directed by Ang Lee with the austerity and languorous gait of a John Ford epic. These aesthetics couldn’t be more country miles removed from “The Birdcage” or “Will & Grace.” The audience is forced to recognize that gay people were fixtures in the red state of Wyoming (and every other corner of the country, too) long before Matthew Shepard and Mary Cheney were born. Without a single polemical speech, this laconic film dramatizes homosexuality as an inherent and immutable identity, rather than some aberrant and elective “agenda” concocted by conspiratorial “elites” in Chelsea, the Castro and South Beach, as anti-gay proselytizers would have it. Ennis and Jack long for a life together, not for what gay baiters pejoratively label a “lifestyle.”
But in truth the audience doesn’t have to be coerced to get it. This is where the country has been steadily moving of late. “Brokeback Mountain,” a Hollywood product after all, is not leading a revolution but ratifying one, fleshing out — quite literally — what most Americans now believe. It’s not for nothing that the proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage vanished as soon as the election was over. Polls show that a large American majority support equal rights for gay couples as long as the unions aren’t labeled “marriage” — and given the current swift pace of change, that reservation, too, will probably fade in the next five to 10 years.
The history of “Brokeback Mountain” as a film project in itself crystallizes how fast the climate has shifted. McMurtry and Ossana bought the screen rights to the Proulx story after it was published in The New Yorker in 1997. That was the same year the religious right declared a fatwa on Disney because Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet in her ABC prime-time sitcom. In the eight years it took “Brokeback Mountain” to overcome Hollywood’s shilly-shallying and at last be made, the Disney boycott collapsed and DeGeneres’ star rose. She’s now a mainstream daytime talk-show host competing with Oprah. No one has forgotten she’s a lesbian. No one cares.
Another startling snapshot of this progress can be found in a culture-war skirmish that unfolded just as “Brokeback Mountain” was arriving at the multiplex. The American Family Association of Tupelo, Miss., a leader in the 1997 anti-“Ellen” crusade, claimed this month that its threat of a boycott had led Ford to stop advertising its Jaguar and Land Rover lines in glossy gay magazines. Last week Ford, under fire from gay civil-rights organizations and no doubt many other mainstream customers, essentially told the would-be boycotters to get lost by publicly announcing that it would not only resume its Jaguar and Land Rover ads in gay publications, but advertise other brands in them as well.
As far as I can tell, the only blowhard in the country to turn up on television to declare culture war on “Brokeback Mountain” also has an affiliation with the American Family Association. By contrast, as Salon reported last week, other family-values ayatollahs have made a conscious decision to ignore the movie, lest they drum up ticket sales by turning it into a SpongeBob SquarePants cause celebre. Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America imagined that the film might just go away if he and his peers stayed mum. Audiences “don’t want to see two guys going at it,” he told Salon. “It’s that simple.”
So he might wish. The truth is that the millions of moviegoers soon to swoon over the star-crossed gay cowboys of “Brokeback Mountain” can probably put up with the sight of “two guys going at it.” It’s the all too American tragedy of what happens to these men afterward that neither our hearts nor consciences can so easily shake.