I've never had much interest in awards shows, but the missus is ga-ga about them. I just had a WHAT? moment when my eight-year-old remarked that Dolly Parton "sure has big tits."
Nah, I just back to the States. It turns out there's an Oscar thing at my house, so I'm watchin. I'm going to have to wait til later to pull out the delicious, delicious baklava, lest I be compelled to share with the party.
I wish I had gotten the chance before you left to pass along the sage advice from the hot, hot historian from UofC who warned us not to remark to the locals that Ataturk resembles a vampire. I hope you didn't do this.
She really sucked in CG, and I don't know why. Maybe it was just the script; she had to deliver a bunch of stupid-sounding lines in improbable circumstances.
I heard that the original French version of March of the Penguins had actors doing the voices of the penguins, like Look Who's Talking. Did the Academy know this when they voted, or was it based on the Morgan Freeman variety?
I'm a little too weary to carry on my one-woman anti-Ralph Fiennes campaign this evening (actually there are at least three of us), so I'll let 16 and 17 pass. But don't think that I haven't noticed.
What would you say is the greatest score of all time?
I'm tempted to say Gone With the Wind just because whenever I think "film score," the "Theme from Tara" becomes implanted in my head, but I'm also extremely fond of Ennio Morricone's score for Lyne's Lolita.
The music they're playing as people give their speeches is really annoying. It's like they're trying to make the speeches sound emotional and poignant, like the "Oscar bait" monologues in movies. Mind you, I'm watching this on a TiVo delay and am only up to George Clooney. They might have cut that crap out by the point of the broadcast where you all are. One can hope.
36 -- but then I'm not seeing how it was in poor taste -- at least any moreso than going ahead with regular schedule to screen any other film would have been. I don't see any tie-in to terrorism or whatever -- I mean showing "The Towering Inferno" per regular schedule on 9/11 (or on any date FTM) would have been in poor taste. Is it just the plane-crash thing that bothered you?
A very nice woman once claimed that Fiennes was better looking than me and had a better body, whereas I thought he was way too skinny and young-looking. So of course -- he's a hateful beast.
B-Wo, you didn't send me your address! Obviously I sent a card to The Mineshaft, so that one will have to do.
Silvana, if you e-mail me I'll give you all the tips I have on Istanbul. I really enjoyed the city, and I found Turkish people to be extremely courteous and agreeable.
Anyone notice how totally ludicrous the performance of "It's hard out here for a pimp" was? I have no idea if the song itself is ludicrous -- but the performance was off the deep end.
Is it even worth noting the hypocrisy of changing the word "bitches" to "witches" when it retains every other element of prostitution imagery? I guess not. And god that song sounded way better in the movie than it did there.
They were certainly out there -- far preferable a look to my eye, than the squashed look that has then coming out the top of the garment. But in any case tits == good.
I had to tap out half an hour ago, but I thought Jon Stewart got better as the night went on. "And there were never any problems with those issues ever again" was really funny.
I think she had her baby already. Her excuse for that dress was showing of her nursing cleavage, I guess. But fugly. Rachel W., also a fugly dress, I thought. So...black. And billowy. Ugly black and gray dresses are something of a theme tonight. Jessica Alba looked nice, as did Eric Bana.
Oooh shit. I'm sorry. I didn't see it, and actually, I still don't, but I get tons of MT spam/comment notifications at that address, so possibly I deleted it accidentally.
But! I'm going to (the nation of) Georgia in 2 months, and I'll send you something from there; since they don't have much in the way of a tourist industry, your souvenir may be GE significantly cooler than a postcard. A goat, perhaps a sword, etc.
Be it noted that comment span has been showing up here just recently.
Comment spam looks like this:
Amelia: Shameless Kin Promotion
My son's post-Decemberist band, Amelia, is playing in at Barbčs in Brooklyn on Monday, March 6th, 9:30 pm. (376 9th Street - corner of 6th Avenue in Park Slope, 718.965.9177, www.barbesbrooklyn.com) .
On Thursday, March 9th at 7 pm they play in NYC at the Living Room (154 Ludlow Street between Stanton and Rivington, 212.533.7235, www.livingroomny.com).
Not like the Decemberists at all. Jazzy, somewhat Latin, adult music (AAA format for radio).
...except that psh's suit is seriously wrinkled and smudged, which I couldn't see when he was sitting down. Joaquin Pheonix can have his slot in the ranks of decency.
On the question of plastic surgery, did anyone else feel shockingly ambivalent about Dolly Parton? I love her, and she can do no wrong, and somehow it just works great with her whole Dolly Partonishness, but, even so... there's a big part of me that feels kinda wistful that Dolly Parton, of all people, can't age gracefully, for all of us.
I thought Reese Witherspoon looked good. Clooney was awesome. Yeah, Dolly's plastic surgery was over the top but, like you said, she still can do no wrong.
OK, I wrote 85 before I saw that she won. (I based it on her earlier award presentation. That's what you get with the TiVo delay.) You're right -- kinda Miss America and not very genuine sounding.
Perhaps the clearest sense I've ever gotten that I really like Dustin Hoffman came when I watched deleted scenes of him ad libbing with Cedric the Entertainer on the Lemony Snicket DVD. He's really funny.
I was thinking of going out on a limb and just straight out predicting that after BM didn't get film editing or cinematography, but I was too cowardly. shoulda.
I dunno. I guess I favored BM because it felt deservedly important while I was watching it, and it's become a substrate for so many conversations about memory, love, fear, etc., among my friends and me. Although Crash was quite good, it served up ten minutes of talking points with my parents, and then I forgot about it.
my partner is inconconsolable Broke did not win..."Bush won again!" was his first remark. I am sorry too--- the film was so beautiful--- I have not seen Crash and would like to, but I will have to do it on the sly, there will be no renting and showing that film in this house. Partner declared, "I will never see that film. If it shows up here I will burn it." If I want to know what a DVD looks like when it burns, I have a process I can follow.
That's so sad, Mark. That's one of the reasons that I root for movies like Brokeback to win -- that movie seems far more enduring than Crash. Which movie do you really think people will be talking about 10 years from now? It's kind of like the Saving Private Ryan/Shakespeare in Love year. SPR was very flawed and Tom Hanks is teh suck but I still wanted it to win over SIL because SIL just didn't have the staying power that SPR did.
I've given up getting emotional about the Oscars. When Javier Bardem did not win for his unbelievable performance in Before Night Falls (lost to the dubiously talented Russell Crowe), I vowed to wear black for a week. But then I remembered that it never matters who wins. The movies that last still last, as Becks says.
101: The dress was ugly, but kinda cool anyway. The funny thing about it is that she cemented her image (among people who're only vaguely aware of her) as a all twee and "elfin", something that she's been annoyed by in the past.
It's never been very accurate. Here's a woman who, at least in the 80s and 90s, liked to get plastered on vodka every time she went out.
I wanted Brokeback to win b/c it was in the tradition of great Westerns. I like Westerns, and I kind of figured Hollywood might reward it for being in that tradition. Oh well.
the one we will be talking about will be Broke. My impression is that Crash will blend into a melange (sic?) of other movies that have either that story combo thing going on or the LA thing going on (er, I think)-- it will blend in the mind into a MagnoliaCutsConfidential uber-movie--- But then, I have not seen Crash so maybe.... I should only say a little more--- Crash seems to me to be of a time and a place. It makes certain generic moves according to a recipe tried and true and already a little old--- in years to come, we will know Crash for its late 20th/early 21st century provenance without a doubt and it will not be to the movie's credit.
"Are there any good cannibalism movies this year?"
"A German court banned the screening of a horror film based on the true story of a cannibal six days before its planned cinematic release.
Armin Meiwes, convicted of killing another man and eating parts of the body, had requested the ban, saying the movie infringed his privacy rights. He complained that the film showed his act in a sensationalized, degrading and explicit manner."
You people are crazy. This is what a great set of films looks like. Chinatown and The Godfather II are watched today and will still be watched 20 years from now. Has anyone ever watched SPR a second time? Is either Brokeback or Crash anything other than another Gandhi - a movie that one likes because of what it says about the person who likes it?
Come on! Brokeback Mountain has given bi-curious guys everywhere the chance to invite one another to "play a little Brokeback Playstation." That will last, by god!
Brokeback is a great movie because it is a great Western. Why no one beside me sees this, I do not know. But here, in a nutshell, is the argument:
Brokeback, like every other western out there, is about the suppression of male emotion for the greater social need. Will Kane just got married, but no mind: he has to the bad guy, all by himself, because he is the hero, and he understands that his personal emotional needs are less important than the Greater Good. The Magnificent Seven are great because they realize that the decent, hard-working villagers' lives are more important than money, and the Kid ends up staying behind because his emotional needs prevent him from being a true hero, even though paradoxically he becomes instead the thing that the heroes have to protect. The great spaghetti westerns are anamolies, they react to the generic expectation by putting forth essentially nihilistic heroes (being all made during the Vietnam era), but even so, the Clint Eastwood character always saves or protects the victims (Fistful of Dollars) or honors his agreements and alliances (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly).
So here comes Brokeback. Same thing: Ennis has a committment to honor. His personal feeling violates not only his promise (he's engaged) but also all established social norms. The scene where Alma finds out is such a huge deal, arguably central to the film, b/c it shows the problem: it's not just about homophobia (or else Ennis would just be a pure victim), it's about this kind of masculine responsibility where his personal needs and feelings have to be suppressed because, damnit, he has responsibilities. That's why his reconciliation with Alma Jr. at the end is so vitally important.
But, as I said before, the fact that A is like members of type X in having property Y does not ipso facto make A a member of type X, unless having property Y is sufficient to belong to type X.
You didn't say a Western, B. You said a great Western. Which it just isn't in a position to be. Searchers, Liberty Valance, Wild Bunch, Unforgiven - those were great or near great Westerns.
The argument about its greatness hinges on its tragedy. It exposes the essentially tragic nature of the Western (which has always been there): the domestic space that the cowboy creates and protects is something he can never really belong to, because the very qualities that make him a creator/protector unfit him for domesticity. Short version: Western American masculinity defines masculine as that which excludes the feminine. Inasmuch as Brokeback is about gay men--who, obviously, exclude femininity in ways that straight men never can, but who are also defined, by those same straight guys, as essentially feminine--it absolutely captures the paradoxical nature of the Western. Hence, it is great.
It's not a great Western because it doesn't specifically speak to, or more accurately, against, the core of the genre. All of the above movies are extremely morally ambiguous, and suggest that our deep love of Westerns, including the one that we're watching, is really, really fucked up. That's even true of the spaghetti Westerns. For Brokeback to fall into that sort of grouping, Ennis or Jack would have to be killed for being gay, and we'd have to feel both sated and sickened.
I dunno, Bitch. I love me some Westerns, but Brokeback didn't feel like a Western to me. Westerns tend to be about girding oneself up against feelings of love or guilt to do the thing required by honor, while Brokeback is more about being trapped in a prison of honor and kept unable to reach feelings of love and guilt. It's like the opposite motion, but, as you say, with the same tragic nature.
This reminds me of the 1986 comedy Rustlers' Rhapsody, in which Tom Berenger plays a cowboy who is the embodiment of all classic Western-hero stereotypes, plopped down into a more naturalistic, revisionist Western town. The reason he backs down from his big duel with the bad guy (an even more stereotypical Western hero) is that he realizes, as a virgin, that he might be gay.
For Brokeback to fall into that sort of grouping, Ennis or Jack would have to be killed for being gay, and we'd have to feel both sated and sickened.
Um, Jack is killed for being gay. And Ennis is destroyed emotionally. And we do feel sated and sickened by the film: it's deeply moving, and yet the things that move us are also deeply, deeply tragic and fucked-up.
And White Bear, it *is* the opposite motion, but it's all the same elements. As Shklovskii says about Tristram, one might argue that it's the most typical Western ever made.
Oh, and the thing is, Jack is killed for being gay, in part, b/c Ennis won't agree to move in with Jack. Otherwise Jack wouldn't have been in the place where he got killed. So in a sense, Ennis does kill him--and it's clear that Ennis feels really guilty about this. He thinks that they're more at risk together than they are apart, but in the end, he's wrong. His very fear of their being killed helps contribute to Jack's death.
(Of course Jack might have been killed anyway, but the *particular* death that he suffers is an indirect result of Ennis' actions.)
Speaking of Westerns, I thought The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada was pretty fucking great. Long, weird, and crazy, but great. And I think it is a Western, but it doesn't do a lot of the things we're talking about as Western tropes.
#172: Well, but, kinda it is, in a revisionist sort of way. Blondie is the good b/c he honors his alliance with Tuco--but he can't ever actually *admit* it, b/c doing so would make him weak.
"If I miss it in the theater." HA HA HA. I live in bumfuck, nothing ever comes here. Speaking of claustrophobia. I'll rent it and probably cry over the concept of open space and light.
I see it has Dwight Yoakum in it. I have a weird thing about Dwight.
So, according to the all-knowing wikipedia, A Bug's Life was a remake of The Seven Samurai. Is anyone in a position to confirm or deny this?
Vague recall of the blurbage around the movie confirms this. More concrete recall of the film itself confirms the bug movie was a Seven Samurai ripoff, more or less. Sorta like the 37,445 grade Z ripoffs of Yo!Jimbo! The bug movie was the Afterschool Special version or something.
136: "In Iceland teenagers get a bottle of vodka on Friday afternoon and spend the weekend drinking it. That's been our custom for a thousand years".
Bjork seems to be the brains behind her music, which is always interesting and doesn't repeat much. I think that she has fused pop, classical, folk, and electronica better than anyone, ever. Frank Zappa wanted to do something like that, but his ego and his one joke got in the way.
142 Armin Meiwes, convicted of killing another man and eating parts of the body, had requested the ban, saying the movie infringed his privacy rights. He complained that the film showed his act in a sensationalized, degrading and explicit manner."
Only the penis was eaten, not the whole set. It was reported to be tough, and the solution would have been to use a recipe for tongue.
I was going to mention Chinatown, and then two other people did. Now that wast a movie!
I hardly ever go to movies, but most years I add a few to my fake "must-see" list. But not this year.
"What's New Pussycat" and "El Topo" have been on my must-see list for about 35 years now.
I love Björk. I wonder if she's unbearable i person. She comes off not having any insecurities or self doubt, and not being v. patient with people who do.
S/b: I love Björk. I wonder if she's unbearable i person though. She comes off as barely having any insecurities or self doubt, and not being v. patient with people who do.
Yeah, she seems like a fully creative artist in control of all aspects of her work and a true original. Even the album she did as an 11 year old is pretty impressive stuff and many of her vocal and stylistic quirks are present and correct even then.
Also, Bjork looked teh hott in the swan dress. It seems to get dragged up whenever 'worst Oscar outfits' come up -- but to my mind she looked great.
So, on reading this and discovering a reference to "Constant Gardener" the millisecond of pleasure given by the thought that Le Carre gets the success he deserves gave way to horror at the thought of what Hollywood could do to the novel.
But why, I ask myself, do I need to discover that the novel has been filmed from Unfogged? I mean where was I in 2005?
And Ralf Fiennes/ Rachel Weisz?... no way. This can not make for a good filming of the characters.
Also, WTF, Tim? You haven't even seen Brokeback, and you're the authority on its authentic Western-ness, or lack thereof?
Dwight Yoakam is awesome.
Dolly Parton is also awesome, even though she looked like some type of monster.
Those dancers in that Crash song (which, hello! has the same melody as "A Whole New World", people!) reminded me what I loved most about that movie, which was the part about the undead wandering the streets seeking brains.
I just want to vent about the fact that my father and my stupid college boyfriend together totally ruined The Godfather Part II for me. My father, when I was like 14, told me about "this one scene" in the GP2 when Michael kills Fredo, and he pleads for his life saying, "I'm smart; I can do things." Then, my stupid boyfriend, insists, in his characteristically arrogant way "I have these films I must show you," never understanding how obnoxious it was even when I asked him, over and over, why he assumed I hadn't seen them, and in that particular case forgetting that I had made a Godfather reference to him our freshman year and he hadn't seen them yet. But I hadn't yet seen II, so he insisted on watching it on this puny dorm TV with the color all wacked out. That combined with the spoiler totally robbed the movie of its emotional impact, even though I was blown away when I saw I in the proper manner, in the theater.
They do that split the director/picture thing fairly often. It's their diplomatic way of honoring two. I really should have stepped out and predicted; I could have called this; I'm just too wimpy.
"Mr. Lee, great job, and sorry we screwed you over for Gladiator -- what were we thinking? But I don't know if you noticed, somebody got Teh Ghey all over your film. Ewww."
I think Hollywood is tacitly endorsing a Good Behavior code that I find frightening. Sure, the entertainment industrial complex recognizes minorities and good causes and champions them -- but it also disallowed the winning song, "It's Hard Out There for a Pimp," from using the word "bitches" in the broadcast. I mean, really. The word "bitch" has been commonplace on prime-time TV since ... when ... "Dynasty"? At the latest?
...
Sleaze doesn't go away. You can marginalize it, ghettoize it, hide the dirt under your nails beneath nice white gloves ... but the dirt is still there, people. It needs to be healthily integrated into the cultural psyche. Denial of these impulses doesn't work so well -- which was, ironically, the underlying, consciousness-raising message of "Brokeback Mountain."
To not trust ourselves with a free use of harmless, naughty things is to suggest that we don't have enough inherent goodness or flexibility or strength to absorb some light shock. Moral certainty is the enemy, my friends. Not the word "bitch," taken in its proper context, e.g. an autobiographical song written by a fictional pimp.
I think the worst thing about the whole evening was that Hollywood was trying to paint itself as a machine that makes bold, brave and radical statements to the world. It sang its own praises for being an organism that tenaciously upholds the torch of forward, open-minded thinking in the face of oppressive forces, and for championing tolerance, peace, awareness and free speech.
And all night long, there they were, censoring the living fuck out of themselves.
Also, WTF, Tim? You haven't even seen Brokeback, and you're the authority on its authentic Western-ness, or lack thereof?
Yeah, I don't know how or why I started doing that - crankiness? rampant homophobia? - it's an impossible posture from which to argue. Worse yet, I stand by everything I said. I can't think of a single "social moment" movie that has stood the test of time. Everyone loved Driving Miss Daisy when it came out, too. (Except, to their great credit, every African American I've ever had the nerve to ask.)
OTOH, if you liked the movie or movies like it, there is a benefit to my rash position; now I feel obliged to see the movie, which will increase sales, and thereby stimulate the creation of more pap "important" movies. It's even better if you want me in pain; I know I'm going to want to walk out on it, but I'll feel obliged to suffer through the whole thing.
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore was totally "Scorsese does feminism" (judging by Pauline Kael's piece on it), and holds up. Do the Right Thing I haven't seen for a long time, but I bet it holds up.
They're not old enough to tell if they "withstood the test of time," but I'll bet that in 40 years Boys Don't Cry and Monster will still be good movies.
Social black comedies hold up well also, which is even more surprising, since they tend to be even more "of the moment" than their dramatic counterparts. See: Dr. Strangelove; Network.
Oh, i just thought of another great "of the moment" drama: All The President's Men.
For that matter, what about SCMT's great movie: Chinatown. I can't remember exactly what the water shenanigans were in it, but it was pretty clearly Big Moneyed Interests screwing with the little people, with some sexual abuse mixed in for good measure.
If you want an unwatchable gay-themed movie, "Suddenly Last Summer" (1959) is it. Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, pre-fat Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, and Katherine Hepburn playing a woman who overacts all the time.
Clift was supposed to lobotomize Taylor to silence her as a witness, but in the end they get married and livew happily ever after. Hepburn's gay son is apparently murdered by a mob of brown Moroccan street-punks. (Was there cannibalism? I like to think so.)
Available with Georgian subtitles if Armsmasher's still around.
Also, all the great Vietnam films, even though they were after the fact, like Platoon, Apocolypse Now and M.A.S.H. (yes, I know that one's set in Korea, let's not be silly).
Re. "social moment" movies: now Westerns aren't "social moment" movies? Please. You can totally date a western by looking at its attitude towards social norms like domesticity. The Vietnam-era westerns are not the 50s-era westerns, and so on.
Anyway, my claim is that Brokeback isn't (strictly, or only) a "social moment" movie. People are distracted by teh gay from seeing a lot of other things about the film, like its genre, and the way it fits into Ang Lee's other work, etc. etc.
Plus, social moment movies like the ones people have already named are *way* more gonna stand the test of time that ahistorical pablum like, say, "Braveheart."
SCMT: so, so pwned. (Anyway, I think the Gay Oscar-Bait Message Movie was Philadelphia. Lee at least comes by it honest, if you've seen The Wedding Banquet.)
(That was not a biscuit conditional, I don't think. Emerson, however....)
Hmmm. I'm going to have to watch some of these movies again (and some for the first time). That said, by "social moment" I (think I) meant something like a movie that centrally asks you to accept "the Other" as part of common humanity. I didn't see Inherit the Wind when it first came out, and by the time I did, the rationalists are top dogs by a long shot. I'd be surprised if that weren't true by 1960. TKAM - not about the black guy, but about what it means to be a decent white guy. Welcome to the magic black man, by which you will know your white hero. Mr. Smith - I don't think I've ever seen it, but I'd be surprised if the little guy going to Washington and fighting corruption was ever a position that needed much support. Do the Right Thing - I rate it well behind She's Gotta Have It, School Daze, Mo' Better Blues, and even X. And can anyone even bear to watch Jungle Fever these days?
Women's/feminist movies are the only exception to the general rule that I can think of - though I'd be surprised if anyone watches Alice anymore. I suspect this is because male/female relationships are always assumed to exist, these movies reflect the constant negotiation between the two, and so stay relevant. Gay people and minorities - no reason, as a straight white guy, to assume you have to deal with them.
After I see Brokeback, I'm going to rewatch My Beautiful Laundrette. And then declare it a substantially better movie.
SCMT, since you are a fan of Teh Seventies, what about Dog Day Afternoon as a nominee for a movie that centrally asks you to accept "the other" as part of a common humanity? Also, in what way does WSS not meet that definition?
I'm kind of uncomfortable with the idea that "lasting" is the end-goal of all art. I agree, the kids love the Shakespeare because, like, they got all the same problems, but what about satire? Its power fades over time because we forget the immediate targets, and unless we can transform those into general targets, it's dead. (Dr. Strangelove still works because we remember its targets and it easily transfers to more general types.) But that doesn't mean that, at its own moment, it didn't have an important, wonderfully powerful effect.
AWB, I'm guessing that each artist has his or her own priorities as to the goals of their work. But I'm sure that "lasting" is a goal that a great many artists aspire to.
237: You're certainly right, but I think that can be a shame. Here's an example:
Schindler's List v. Hotel Rwanda. They're both films about a man who has personal and financial ties to a community being wiped out by genocide. The man at first performs small actions to help those who are being killed, but then ends up nearly sacrificing everything to help them. Politically and ethically, I think HR is by far the better film, as it really concentrates on the global problem of apathy toward African tragedy, instead of focusing on the dramatic narrative of the not-oppressed hero. But that same responsibility and timeliness will be why SL, a film that's more "artistic" than socially relevant, is the one that will be shown to ninth-graders until we're all dead.
Sure, there's that little problem that genocide against black people doesn't spark the same indignation in the Western world.
1. It's been a long time since I saw WSS. I note that there's a difference between Puerto Rican and Puerto Rican. Which is to say, Othello with Olivier in blackface - not what I'm talking about.
2. DDA - feels much more like My Beautiful Laundrette. The focus of the movie is a guy who is completely losing it - robbing a bank to pay for your lover's sexual transformation surgery? Weird in all sorts of ways. Not, to me, centrally about being gay. Mostly an amazing performance by Pacino. And I didn't love the movie. (I read somewhere recently that "gay" media acceptance is only now reaching the point that it was in the 70s. I'm not sure how that's relevant, but I'm starting to think it's true.)
3. Joe, School Daze is also a musical. And more interesting. I'm actually curious about your reaction to it; it's probably my second favorite Lee movie.
Wasn't Crash guaranteed the win here, since it is exactly the sort of crap that counts as drama in this country? I liked the movie in terms of its production, which was very good, but the narrative is exactly what counts as "deep" --- a story about hopelessness that is essentially unredeeming, in this case about racism and its persistence. I mean, isn't the point of the movie to force you to acknowledge that it is (a) awful and (b) something we can never end? I say this is drama American-style because it is leaves the status quo completely unchallenged: sure, the bad-cop character has his moment saving the black lady from the burning car, but the real story is the white cop who, well meaning as he is, kills the black kid and dumps his body. Whether or not we think he'll get away with it, or if we think Don Cheadle will catch him, the point is that racism has won again. Status Quo: 1, Possibility for Human Growth, 0.
I wonder how Brokeback fits with this, but my sense is that it was a more challenging movie (which I have yet to see), and thus had to lose.
It's uneven, like a lot of Lee's work But I really like it. Favorite song - the catchy "Jiggaboo" song; I'm always afraid, after I've re-watched the movies, that I'll unconsciously start singing it, and rightly be beaten to death. So, fair warning.
SCMT, watch Brokeback. And then you can come crawling back and concede that the whole "gay people are human too!" thing is so very *not* the central point of the film.
Also, I agree with AWB that satire is inevitably both very of-the-moment *and*, I would argue for that reason, much funnier and therefore "better" than more "timeless" humor.
Which has nothing to do with Bback, but just for the record.
Yeah, the central point of Brokeback is that love is painful and always ends badly; that we never get to be happy. Everything good gets taken from us, or is never allowed us in the first place.
. And then you can come crawling back and concede that the whole "gay people are human too!" thing is so very *not* the central point of the film.
If I'm wrong, I'll admit it. But I start pretty committed against the "good liberal" movie. In fact, I'll go further than comparing Brokeback to Laundrette. If there's a gay porn movie called Bareback, I'll watch it and declare it a better movie than Brokeback.
I just overheard two women talking in the bathroom: one who is black and one who is Hispanic. The Hispanic woman asked the black woman if she watched the Oscars last night and the black woman said she hadn't because Hollywood doesn't care about black people but wished she had now because Crash won and that had redeemed the Academy in her eyes.
It isn't a "good liberal" movie. It isn't the movie's fault if a bunch of idiotic "good liberals" have coopted it just because it happens to have gay people in it.
Daniel Mendelsohn has a good essay on the "central point" of the movie in the NYRoB. I say it's a good essay meaning it strikes me as precise; whether it's accurate, I don't know.
I note that there's a difference between Puerto Rican and Puerto Rican.
So, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal are lavished with praise for "acting" gay, but West Side Story gets a hindsighted wag o' the finger for using fake Puerto Ricans? Is "acting" gay harder than "acting" Puerto Rican? I'm not sure where I come down there, but there's some slippage...
Painful. To. Watch?
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 6:33 PM
I've never had much interest in awards shows, but the missus is ga-ga about them. I just had a WHAT? moment when my eight-year-old remarked that Dolly Parton "sure has big tits."
But I misheard. He said she had big lips.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 6:39 PM
the missus is ga-ga about them
The Oscars, that is. Not awards shows generally.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 6:40 PM
Who is this Oscar? We do not know this man in Istanbul.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 6:44 PM
Don't worry about it smasher.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 6:45 PM
isn't it like six in the morning in Constantinople?
and so far, underwhelmed by Jon Stewart, which is a shame.
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 6:50 PM
Aw, at least he's not fucking up.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 6:53 PM
Nah, I just back to the States. It turns out there's an Oscar thing at my house, so I'm watchin. I'm going to have to wait til later to pull out the delicious, delicious baklava, lest I be compelled to share with the party.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 6:54 PM
But I brought fezzes! Who wants to join my super-secret society?
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 6:54 PM
Smasher! How was your trip?! I leave for Istanbul on Friday.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:00 PM
some of us already have fezzes, and have been members for years.
but i say too much...
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:00 PM
The Will Ferrell/ Steve Carell makeup thing was pretty funny.
And Jon Stewart can't do any worse than Billy Crystal, who only makes me cringe.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:00 PM
I wish I had gotten the chance before you left to pass along the sage advice from the hot, hot historian from UofC who warned us not to remark to the locals that Ataturk resembles a vampire. I hope you didn't do this.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:04 PM
I love Rachel Weisz, but have to think less of her now that she called Ralph Fiennes "luminous."
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:07 PM
Hey, where's my fez/postcard?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:08 PM
I had lunch sitting across from Ralph Fiennes last month, and he really is luminous. Lovely skin, very bright cerulean eyes.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:10 PM
"cerulean" is a word that needs to be used more often.
i like Rachel Weisz, too, but i thought she was the weakest link in Constant Gardner. Fiennes was great- he should have been nonminated.
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:12 PM
She really sucked in CG, and I don't know why. Maybe it was just the script; she had to deliver a bunch of stupid-sounding lines in improbable circumstances.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:14 PM
Smasher, do you have the little scooters.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:16 PM
Does Lauren Bacall have a neurological disorder? That was really uncomfortable.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:23 PM
French guys with giant stuffed penguins are creepy.
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:24 PM
Billy Crystal would do those musical numbers, which at least shows he was committed to something.
Everyone looks horrible tonight except for George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. The graphics and the set are hideous. Why do I watch this show?
Graham and I have resorted to giving each other awards for biggest fucking doof on the face of the planet in order to avoid actually watching.
And oh my God they're doing a swathed in dry ice reenactment of every scene from Crash including the molestation. I can't look, yet I have to.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:27 PM
Are there any good cannibalism movies this year?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:29 PM
Oh, Nicole Kidman also looked good.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:30 PM
I heard that the original French version of March of the Penguins had actors doing the voices of the penguins, like Look Who's Talking. Did the Academy know this when they voted, or was it based on the Morgan Freeman variety?
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:30 PM
Charlize Theron looked like she had the parrot on her shoulder giftwrapped.
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:33 PM
Are there any good cannibalism movies this year?
There was that scene pretty early on in A History of Violence.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:39 PM
any good cannibalism movies
Can there be such a thing as a bad cannibalism movie?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:44 PM
Yes.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:46 PM
They showed Alive on the night of 9/11/01 in Cleveland. Tacky.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:49 PM
Haven't seen it. But I can see how earnest portrayals might not live up to cannibalism's full silver screen potential.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:49 PM
I'm a little too weary to carry on my one-woman anti-Ralph Fiennes campaign this evening (actually there are at least three of us), so I'll let 16 and 17 pass. But don't think that I haven't noticed.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:50 PM
30 -- what was the context for the showing? Was it meant as relevant to the events of that day, and how?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:50 PM
Tia, my first date ever was to see that movie. A sign?
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:51 PM
32: I'm curious what dirt you have, because, in my observation, he unnecessarily hogs tables, and it gave me suspicions against him.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:51 PM
33: I think they were just going ahead with the regularly scheduled programming.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:53 PM
34: Did you end up killing and eating him?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:53 PM
37 - No, but I should have.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 7:54 PM
What would you say is the greatest score of all time?
I'm tempted to say Gone With the Wind just because whenever I think "film score," the "Theme from Tara" becomes implanted in my head, but I'm also extremely fond of Ennio Morricone's score for Lyne's Lolita.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:00 PM
The music they're playing as people give their speeches is really annoying. It's like they're trying to make the speeches sound emotional and poignant, like the "Oscar bait" monologues in movies. Mind you, I'm watching this on a TiVo delay and am only up to George Clooney. They might have cut that crap out by the point of the broadcast where you all are. One can hope.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:03 PM
Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky by a mile.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:03 PM
My Ralph objections may be the most consistent of my identifying features here. That's me, Celt-friendly, ovary-possessing, Ralph-hating ac.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:05 PM
36 -- but then I'm not seeing how it was in poor taste -- at least any moreso than going ahead with regular schedule to screen any other film would have been. I don't see any tie-in to terrorism or whatever -- I mean showing "The Towering Inferno" per regular schedule on 9/11 (or on any date FTM) would have been in poor taste. Is it just the plane-crash thing that bothered you?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:11 PM
I can't help it - I looove Dolly Parton. Then again, I'm a gay man trapped in a woman's body so I guess this isn't that surprising.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:13 PM
Ralph Fiennes is a living god. (Not really; he just seems like a bizarre one to hate.)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:13 PM
And, Altman is teh cool.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:13 PM
See Sunshine, and you'll understand. Three whole hours of intense, ridiculous Ralphness.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:14 PM
Okay, Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep just kicked ass.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:14 PM
43: It didn't bother me, but I felt it should have. Also, it was my birthday, so I went out looking for other coincidences.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:16 PM
A very nice woman once claimed that Fiennes was better looking than me and had a better body, whereas I thought he was way too skinny and young-looking. So of course -- he's a hateful beast.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:18 PM
B-Wo, you didn't send me your address! Obviously I sent a card to The Mineshaft, so that one will have to do.
Silvana, if you e-mail me I'll give you all the tips I have on Istanbul. I really enjoyed the city, and I found Turkish people to be extremely courteous and agreeable.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:23 PM
Anyone notice how totally ludicrous the performance of "It's hard out here for a pimp" was? I have no idea if the song itself is ludicrous -- but the performance was off the deep end.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:23 PM
Is it even worth noting the hypocrisy of changing the word "bitches" to "witches" when it retains every other element of prostitution imagery? I guess not. And god that song sounded way better in the movie than it did there.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:23 PM
I don't know if Jennifer Garner's breasts are hanging low, or if I've just been reading too much Go Fug Yourself.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:29 PM
What would you say is the greatest score of all time?
M.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:29 PM
They were certainly out there -- far preferable a look to my eye, than the squashed look that has then coming out the top of the garment. But in any case tits == good.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:31 PM
B-Wo, you didn't send me your address!
I sent my address to the email address listed on all the posts at grammarpolice.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:31 PM
56 to 54. And, sorry 'bout the half-assed syntax.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:31 PM
I had to tap out half an hour ago, but I thought Jon Stewart got better as the night went on. "And there were never any problems with those issues ever again" was really funny.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:34 PM
J.G. is pregnant isn't she? I thought Rachel W. had the better maternity-wear, if so, luminous or no luminous.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:34 PM
His "interpretive dance" quip was very funny.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:36 PM
Are they both going to South Dakota, where abortion is no longer mandatory?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:36 PM
I think she had her baby already. Her excuse for that dress was showing of her nursing cleavage, I guess. But fugly. Rachel W., also a fugly dress, I thought. So...black. And billowy. Ugly black and gray dresses are something of a theme tonight. Jessica Alba looked nice, as did Eric Bana.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:38 PM
I didn't like Alba's hair, but the rest of her looked good. Eb, the only thing I remember from M. is the awesome whistling.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:40 PM
Oooh shit. I'm sorry. I didn't see it, and actually, I still don't, but I get tons of MT spam/comment notifications at that address, so possibly I deleted it accidentally.
But! I'm going to (the nation of) Georgia in 2 months, and I'll send you something from there; since they don't have much in the way of a tourist industry, your souvenir may be GE significantly cooler than a postcard. A goat, perhaps a sword, etc.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:41 PM
"your GE souvenir may be"
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:42 PM
Be it noted that comment span has been showing up here just recently.
Comment spam looks like this:
Amelia: Shameless Kin Promotion
My son's post-Decemberist band, Amelia, is playing in at Barbčs in Brooklyn on Monday, March 6th, 9:30 pm. (376 9th Street - corner of 6th Avenue in Park Slope, 718.965.9177, www.barbesbrooklyn.com) .
On Thursday, March 9th at 7 pm they play in NYC at the Living Room (154 Ludlow Street between Stanton and Rivington, 212.533.7235, www.livingroomny.com).
Not like the Decemberists at all. Jazzy, somewhat Latin, adult music (AAA format for radio).
http://www.ameliaband.com
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:42 PM
Hmm, my understanding is that film editing is a traditional predictor category for best picture. Signs of a Crash upset?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:43 PM
PSH and Terrence Howard also look good.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:45 PM
...except that psh's suit is seriously wrinkled and smudged, which I couldn't see when he was sitting down. Joaquin Pheonix can have his slot in the ranks of decency.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:49 PM
How awesome was Animatronic Keanu Reeves? Answer: very!
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:52 PM
Sandra Bullock looks like she's had some pretty bad work done, though.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:55 PM
I guess that would explain why she looked odd.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:56 PM
It makes Baby Jesus cry when ladies who are aging well get work done.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:57 PM
I liked the penguins! Cute!
Re. Rachel Weisz, I'm sorry, but Catherine Keener and Frances McDormond are way, way better actors.
Also, when George Clooney gave his speech, I thought, "now I can kinda see why the Unfogged guys all have man-crushes on him."
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:58 PM
So, so many things about the oscars make Jesus cry.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 8:59 PM
And when men do it.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:00 PM
I heart my TiVo. Watched 3 hours of Oscars in 30 minutes.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:00 PM
Yeah, Clooney's speech made me see what that big [redacted] Ogged sees in him.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:01 PM
Congratulations on increasing your Oscar-watching productivity.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:03 PM
Witherspoon's a little Ms. America for my tastes. I missed Clooney; I just assumed they'd have him on last.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:03 PM
On the question of plastic surgery, did anyone else feel shockingly ambivalent about Dolly Parton? I love her, and she can do no wrong, and somehow it just works great with her whole Dolly Partonishness, but, even so... there's a big part of me that feels kinda wistful that Dolly Parton, of all people, can't age gracefully, for all of us.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:03 PM
77- I hadn't seen that. Poor Roops.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:05 PM
Reese Witherspoon made me feel bad for Felicity Huffman.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:05 PM
I thought Reese Witherspoon looked good. Clooney was awesome. Yeah, Dolly's plastic surgery was over the top but, like you said, she still can do no wrong.
And a belated welcome back to Armsmasher!
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:05 PM
Regarding the Bjork joke, I think that that was the best outfit in the history of the Oscars.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:07 PM
OK, I wrote 85 before I saw that she won. (I based it on her earlier award presentation. That's what you get with the TiVo delay.) You're right -- kinda Miss America and not very genuine sounding.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:07 PM
I agree. The Bjork dress was fabulous.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:08 PM
Funny, B, I thought of you when watching Dolly Parton, because I kind of got all confused as to what to make of it.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:08 PM
Maybe "not genuine" is harsh. "Rehearsed", though.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:08 PM
That's a very high compliment indeed, in many ways. Thank you.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:08 PM
Is Dustin Hoffman drunk?
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:10 PM
Oscar? Isn't that a Soviet submarine? (At least they had Whisky too. Kilos in fact.)
Me, I went to the ballet. All Balanchine. Cool.
Posted by md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:10 PM
What was Björk wearing?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:10 PM
I al;ways think of B when seeing women with unusual-sized breasts.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:10 PM
Oh, a reference to the swan dress, right? She wasn't at this year's oscars?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:11 PM
McMurtry is the best dressed man thus far.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:11 PM
OMG! Shut up! I haven't seen Brokeback, and I'm still going to demand my money back after that.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:12 PM
Perhaps the clearest sense I've ever gotten that I really like Dustin Hoffman came when I watched deleted scenes of him ad libbing with Cedric the Entertainer on the Lemony Snicket DVD. He's really funny.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:12 PM
There was a joke about Bjork not being there because Cheney shot her.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:12 PM
I've read interviews with Bjork, and she seems to live in an entirely different world than anyone in Hollywood.
Spacy in a very down-to-earth way, and pretty much in control of her destiny.
And cuter and more talented than almost any of them.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:15 PM
Not a totally coherent joke it must be said.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:15 PM
I'm afraid I'm no Dolly Parton. Not even when I was nursing. I can't begin to imagine what her bra size must be--they've gotta be custom-made.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:15 PM
Dolly claims that she always had big boobs, but they looked freakish because she is so tiny otherwise.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:17 PM
That joke was hilarious.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:18 PM
She did always have big boobs.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:19 PM
My sister has a Dolly Parton body and hair.
"Jokes about dumb blondes don't bother me, because I'm not dumb and I'm not blonde."
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:19 PM
McMurtry is the best dressed man thus far.
I'd say Eric Bana. But I don't even recall, was he wearing anything?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:20 PM
See? Dolly is the best. Plus, how fucking classy was she when the song from Hustle and Flow won?
Aww, Ang Lee won for best director. I'm really pleased.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:21 PM
I think it's both sweet and classy to thank your characters.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:22 PM
Hey look at that Tia, your film won.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:23 PM
Crash?! Really?! Tia wuz right!
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:24 PM
Fuck. Crash.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:24 PM
I was thinking of going out on a limb and just straight out predicting that after BM didn't get film editing or cinematography, but I was too cowardly. shoulda.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:24 PM
I haven't seen it, so I have no idea if it was any good, but based on what all I've heard, I'm kinda shocked.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:24 PM
It hardly seems possible. How strange.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:25 PM
At least it wasn't Spielberg.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:25 PM
And I used the TiVo to confirm - the nip slip of that girl in the orange dress was off camera, guys.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:25 PM
"our wonderful movie about tolerance and truth".
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:26 PM
115 sums it up for me, too.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:26 PM
I should do Oscar pools with you guys. I'd do well, since I knew it was a possibility.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:27 PM
I can't believe they cut the Best Picture award speech short, either. The person running the show must be gay and pissed.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:27 PM
JIHAD!
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:29 PM
120: me too.
Three six mafia won?
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:30 PM
I dunno. I guess I favored BM because it felt deservedly important while I was watching it, and it's become a substrate for so many conversations about memory, love, fear, etc., among my friends and me. Although Crash was quite good, it served up ten minutes of talking points with my parents, and then I forgot about it.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:30 PM
(also, Dolly was teh hideous. I could hardly look at her. She almost competes with the dry ice Crash reenactment for grossest element of the evening,)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:31 PM
As described in Glenn Reynolds' An Army of Cheesegraters.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:31 PM
I'm up early, but I only caught the last ten fifteen minutes or so.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:33 PM
I don't know what I did want to win, but I know it wasn't Crash or Brokeback.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:33 PM
Blessed are the cheesegraters, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:39 PM
And when they get there, they get seventy never before grated...
maybe I shouldn't finish this sentence.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:40 PM
Was Stewart any good?
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 9:55 PM
my partner is inconconsolable Broke did not win..."Bush won again!" was his first remark. I am sorry too--- the film was so beautiful--- I have not seen Crash and would like to, but I will have to do it on the sly, there will be no renting and showing that film in this house. Partner declared, "I will never see that film. If it shows up here I will burn it." If I want to know what a DVD looks like when it burns, I have a process I can follow.
Posted by Mark | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:05 PM
That's so sad, Mark. That's one of the reasons that I root for movies like Brokeback to win -- that movie seems far more enduring than Crash. Which movie do you really think people will be talking about 10 years from now? It's kind of like the Saving Private Ryan/Shakespeare in Love year. SPR was very flawed and Tom Hanks is teh suck but I still wanted it to win over SIL because SIL just didn't have the staying power that SPR did.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:10 PM
I've given up getting emotional about the Oscars. When Javier Bardem did not win for his unbelievable performance in Before Night Falls (lost to the dubiously talented Russell Crowe), I vowed to wear black for a week. But then I remembered that it never matters who wins. The movies that last still last, as Becks says.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:15 PM
101: The dress was ugly, but kinda cool anyway. The funny thing about it is that she cemented her image (among people who're only vaguely aware of her) as a all twee and "elfin", something that she's been annoyed by in the past.
It's never been very accurate. Here's a woman who, at least in the 80s and 90s, liked to get plastered on vodka every time she went out.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:16 PM
I wanted Brokeback to win b/c it was in the tradition of great Westerns. I like Westerns, and I kind of figured Hollywood might reward it for being in that tradition. Oh well.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:23 PM
I thought Stewart was shaky in the beginning, then got much better after the monologue. The campaign ads were great.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:25 PM
the one we will be talking about will be Broke. My impression is that Crash will blend into a melange (sic?) of other movies that have either that story combo thing going on or the LA thing going on (er, I think)-- it will blend in the mind into a MagnoliaCutsConfidential uber-movie--- But then, I have not seen Crash so maybe.... I should only say a little more--- Crash seems to me to be of a time and a place. It makes certain generic moves according to a recipe tried and true and already a little old--- in years to come, we will know Crash for its late 20th/early 21st century provenance without a doubt and it will not be to the movie's credit.
Posted by Mark | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:25 PM
I think Brokeback is one of the most extraordinary films of the last ten years.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:27 PM
I think Brokeback is one of the most extraordinary films of the last ten years.
A little lacking in the cannibalism department, though.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:35 PM
"Are there any good cannibalism movies this year?"
"A German court banned the screening of a horror film based on the true story of a cannibal six days before its planned cinematic release.
Armin Meiwes, convicted of killing another man and eating parts of the body, had requested the ban, saying the movie infringed his privacy rights. He complained that the film showed his act in a sensationalized, degrading and explicit manner."
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:35 PM
"If you're going to show me killing a man and eating his genitals, please, be tasteful. Tell the world how I loved him."
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:41 PM
Oh, I dunno. I'm sure Ennis and Jack ate parts of each others' bodies, if not on-screen.
I gotta disagree with Joe, though: the campaign ads were just embarrassing.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:41 PM
Crap, pwned by a White Bear.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:41 PM
You people are crazy. This is what a great set of films looks like. Chinatown and The Godfather II are watched today and will still be watched 20 years from now. Has anyone ever watched SPR a second time? Is either Brokeback or Crash anything other than another Gandhi - a movie that one likes because of what it says about the person who likes it?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:43 PM
Come on! Brokeback Mountain has given bi-curious guys everywhere the chance to invite one another to "play a little Brokeback Playstation." That will last, by god!
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:47 PM
Director
CHINATOWN - Roman Polanski
DAY FOR NIGHT - Francois Truffaut
THE GODFATHER PART II - Francis Ford Coppola
LENNY - Bob Fosse
A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE - John Cassavetes
Damn.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:49 PM
Brokeback is Guess Who's Coming to Dinner - another movie that everyone praises, but no one can bear to watch - for the new milenium.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:55 PM
I'm sure Ennis and Jack ate parts of each others' bodies, if not on-screen.
I wish I knew how to cook you.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:55 PM
Brokeback is a great movie because it is a great Western. Why no one beside me sees this, I do not know. But here, in a nutshell, is the argument:
Brokeback, like every other western out there, is about the suppression of male emotion for the greater social need. Will Kane just got married, but no mind: he has to the bad guy, all by himself, because he is the hero, and he understands that his personal emotional needs are less important than the Greater Good. The Magnificent Seven are great because they realize that the decent, hard-working villagers' lives are more important than money, and the Kid ends up staying behind because his emotional needs prevent him from being a true hero, even though paradoxically he becomes instead the thing that the heroes have to protect. The great spaghetti westerns are anamolies, they react to the generic expectation by putting forth essentially nihilistic heroes (being all made during the Vietnam era), but even so, the Clint Eastwood character always saves or protects the victims (Fistful of Dollars) or honors his agreements and alliances (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly).
So here comes Brokeback. Same thing: Ennis has a committment to honor. His personal feeling violates not only his promise (he's engaged) but also all established social norms. The scene where Alma finds out is such a huge deal, arguably central to the film, b/c it shows the problem: it's not just about homophobia (or else Ennis would just be a pure victim), it's about this kind of masculine responsibility where his personal needs and feelings have to be suppressed because, damnit, he has responsibilities. That's why his reconciliation with Alma Jr. at the end is so vitally important.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 10:58 PM
But, as I said before, the fact that A is like members of type X in having property Y does not ipso facto make A a member of type X, unless having property Y is sufficient to belong to type X.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:00 PM
That is in no way an argument that it isn't a Western; it's just you being a little bitch.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:05 PM
Why no one beside me sees this
I don't think you're the first person to posit the theory.
Heck, even the Red State Update guy said as much.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:05 PM
Well, thank god. B/c I haven't seen anyone else talking about it in those terms, and it's been bugging the crap out of me.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:07 PM
That is in no way an argument that it isn't a Western; it's just you being a little bitch.
It is an argument that your argument that it is a Western is fallacious, though.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:08 PM
What would be a non-fallacious argument that it's a Western?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:11 PM
You didn't say a Western, B. You said a great Western. Which it just isn't in a position to be. Searchers, Liberty Valance, Wild Bunch, Unforgiven - those were great or near great Westerns.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:12 PM
It is a great Western. It's not in a position to be a great western b/c why?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:12 PM
So, according to the all-knowing wikipedia, A Bug's Life was a remake of The Seven Samurai. Is anyone in a position to confirm or deny this?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:17 PM
The argument about its greatness hinges on its tragedy. It exposes the essentially tragic nature of the Western (which has always been there): the domestic space that the cowboy creates and protects is something he can never really belong to, because the very qualities that make him a creator/protector unfit him for domesticity. Short version: Western American masculinity defines masculine as that which excludes the feminine. Inasmuch as Brokeback is about gay men--who, obviously, exclude femininity in ways that straight men never can, but who are also defined, by those same straight guys, as essentially feminine--it absolutely captures the paradoxical nature of the Western. Hence, it is great.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:17 PM
I am so going to make this argument a blog post tomorrow morning.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:22 PM
It's not a great Western because it doesn't specifically speak to, or more accurately, against, the core of the genre. All of the above movies are extremely morally ambiguous, and suggest that our deep love of Westerns, including the one that we're watching, is really, really fucked up. That's even true of the spaghetti Westerns. For Brokeback to fall into that sort of grouping, Ennis or Jack would have to be killed for being gay, and we'd have to feel both sated and sickened.
Shane's a Western; it's not a great Western.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:27 PM
s/b "to be killed by the hero"
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:29 PM
I dunno, Bitch. I love me some Westerns, but Brokeback didn't feel like a Western to me. Westerns tend to be about girding oneself up against feelings of love or guilt to do the thing required by honor, while Brokeback is more about being trapped in a prison of honor and kept unable to reach feelings of love and guilt. It's like the opposite motion, but, as you say, with the same tragic nature.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:29 PM
A Bug's Life is the only one of the major Pixar films that I have not seen, but I find that wildly impropable.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:29 PM
This reminds me of the 1986 comedy Rustlers' Rhapsody, in which Tom Berenger plays a cowboy who is the embodiment of all classic Western-hero stereotypes, plopped down into a more naturalistic, revisionist Western town. The reason he backs down from his big duel with the bad guy (an even more stereotypical Western hero) is that he realizes, as a virgin, that he might be gay.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:34 PM
For Brokeback to fall into that sort of grouping, Ennis or Jack would have to be killed for being gay, and we'd have to feel both sated and sickened.
Um, Jack is killed for being gay. And Ennis is destroyed emotionally. And we do feel sated and sickened by the film: it's deeply moving, and yet the things that move us are also deeply, deeply tragic and fucked-up.
And White Bear, it *is* the opposite motion, but it's all the same elements. As Shklovskii says about Tristram, one might argue that it's the most typical Western ever made.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:39 PM
You had me at Shklovskii.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:41 PM
Oh, and the thing is, Jack is killed for being gay, in part, b/c Ennis won't agree to move in with Jack. Otherwise Jack wouldn't have been in the place where he got killed. So in a sense, Ennis does kill him--and it's clear that Ennis feels really guilty about this. He thinks that they're more at risk together than they are apart, but in the end, he's wrong. His very fear of their being killed helps contribute to Jack's death.
(Of course Jack might have been killed anyway, but the *particular* death that he suffers is an indirect result of Ennis' actions.)
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:42 PM
Yeah, I figured that would get you. Shklovskii kinda makes me swoon, too.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:44 PM
the domestic space that the cowboy creates and protects is something he can never really belong to
This is the theme of, say, Shane, but not of, say, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:46 PM
SCMT, are you saying that High Noon is not a great Western?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:48 PM
Speaking of Westerns, I thought The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada was pretty fucking great. Long, weird, and crazy, but great. And I think it is a Western, but it doesn't do a lot of the things we're talking about as Western tropes.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:52 PM
Damn, yet another movie I wanted to see, but haven't yet. I wonder is it still playing around here ...
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:53 PM
#172: Well, but, kinda it is, in a revisionist sort of way. Blondie is the good b/c he honors his alliance with Tuco--but he can't ever actually *admit* it, b/c doing so would make him weak.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:55 PM
I wonder is it still playing around here ...
I know you're a punctuation reformist, Ben, but this is insane.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:55 PM
#174: I'll have to put it on the list.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:56 PM
It would be a good rental if you miss it in the theater. It makes the open air of Texas and Coahuila seem downright claustrophobic.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 5-06 11:57 PM
"If I miss it in the theater." HA HA HA. I live in bumfuck, nothing ever comes here. Speaking of claustrophobia. I'll rent it and probably cry over the concept of open space and light.
I see it has Dwight Yoakum in it. I have a weird thing about Dwight.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 12:02 AM
He is extra repulsive here, and often humiliatingly nude.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 12:07 AM
Awesome!
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 12:21 AM
So, according to the all-knowing wikipedia, A Bug's Life was a remake of The Seven Samurai. Is anyone in a position to confirm or deny this?
Vague recall of the blurbage around the movie confirms this. More concrete recall of the film itself confirms the bug movie was a Seven Samurai ripoff, more or less. Sorta like the 37,445 grade Z ripoffs of Yo!Jimbo! The bug movie was the Afterschool Special version or something.
ash
['Yippee! Everybody died!']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 12:22 AM
The second half of Three Burials benefits greatly from being seen on a theatrical screen, if possible.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 12:30 AM
re: Yojimbo/Seven Samurai
I hereby nominate Toshiro Mifune for man-crush....
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 1:58 AM
A Bug's Life was very explicitly a remake/homage of The Seven Samurai. I thougt it was clever.
Posted by mealworm | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 2:54 AM
136: "In Iceland teenagers get a bottle of vodka on Friday afternoon and spend the weekend drinking it. That's been our custom for a thousand years".
Bjork seems to be the brains behind her music, which is always interesting and doesn't repeat much. I think that she has fused pop, classical, folk, and electronica better than anyone, ever. Frank Zappa wanted to do something like that, but his ego and his one joke got in the way.
142 Armin Meiwes, convicted of killing another man and eating parts of the body, had requested the ban, saying the movie infringed his privacy rights. He complained that the film showed his act in a sensationalized, degrading and explicit manner."
Only the penis was eaten, not the whole set. It was reported to be tough, and the solution would have been to use a recipe for tongue.
I was going to mention Chinatown, and then two other people did. Now that wast a movie!
I hardly ever go to movies, but most years I add a few to my fake "must-see" list. But not this year.
"What's New Pussycat" and "El Topo" have been on my must-see list for about 35 years now.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 4:11 AM
I didn't appreciate being tld the ending of brokeback.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 4:19 AM
That came out more pissy than I wanted to. Bit thoughtless of you, though.
I'm not that upset; Brokeback doesn't sound that great.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 4:29 AM
I love Björk. I wonder if she's unbearable i person. She comes off not having any insecurities or self doubt, and not being v. patient with people who do.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 4:33 AM
S/b: I love Björk. I wonder if she's unbearable i person though. She comes off as barely having any insecurities or self doubt, and not being v. patient with people who do.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 4:35 AM
169, 171: I prefer Shchutskii to Shklovskii.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 5:35 AM
re: 187
Yeah, she seems like a fully creative artist in control of all aspects of her work and a true original. Even the album she did as an 11 year old is pretty impressive stuff and many of her vocal and stylistic quirks are present and correct even then.
Also, Bjork looked teh hott in the swan dress. It seems to get dragged up whenever 'worst Oscar outfits' come up -- but to my mind she looked great.
How could anyone not like: http://news.softpedia.com/images//news2/Bjork-s-Swan-Dress-Will-Be-Auctioned-For-Charity-2.jpg
or http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1240000/images/_1242394_bjork150.jpg
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 6:23 AM
Björk is crazy hott.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 6:27 AM
So, on reading this and discovering a reference to "Constant Gardener" the millisecond of pleasure given by the thought that Le Carre gets the success he deserves gave way to horror at the thought of what Hollywood could do to the novel.
But why, I ask myself, do I need to discover that the novel has been filmed from Unfogged? I mean where was I in 2005?
And Ralf Fiennes/ Rachel Weisz?... no way. This can not make for a good filming of the characters.
I guess Im just too possesive of the book.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 6:36 AM
Possessive, even.
Posted by Autro | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 6:38 AM
Also, WTF, Tim? You haven't even seen Brokeback, and you're the authority on its authentic Western-ness, or lack thereof?
Dwight Yoakam is awesome.
Dolly Parton is also awesome, even though she looked like some type of monster.
Those dancers in that Crash song (which, hello! has the same melody as "A Whole New World", people!) reminded me what I loved most about that movie, which was the part about the undead wandering the streets seeking brains.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 7:36 AM
I just want to vent about the fact that my father and my stupid college boyfriend together totally ruined The Godfather Part II for me. My father, when I was like 14, told me about "this one scene" in the GP2 when Michael kills Fredo, and he pleads for his life saying, "I'm smart; I can do things." Then, my stupid boyfriend, insists, in his characteristically arrogant way "I have these films I must show you," never understanding how obnoxious it was even when I asked him, over and over, why he assumed I hadn't seen them, and in that particular case forgetting that I had made a Godfather reference to him our freshman year and he hadn't seen them yet. But I hadn't yet seen II, so he insisted on watching it on this puny dorm TV with the color all wacked out. That combined with the spoiler totally robbed the movie of its emotional impact, even though I was blown away when I saw I in the proper manner, in the theater.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 7:43 AM
SCMT is Kaus!
Giving the award to Ang Lee but not to Brokeback Mountain? Why not just carry around a big sign saying "We're milquestoast wimpatrons," Hollywood?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 7:45 AM
They do that split the director/picture thing fairly often. It's their diplomatic way of honoring two. I really should have stepped out and predicted; I could have called this; I'm just too wimpy.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 7:46 AM
"Mr. Lee, great job, and sorry we screwed you over for Gladiator -- what were we thinking? But I don't know if you noticed, somebody got Teh Ghey all over your film. Ewww."
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 7:50 AM
Didn't see Crash so I'm basically trolling.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 7:52 AM
That sucked. Site working again?
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 8:27 AM
Looks like it. I don't know what that downtime was all about.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 8:36 AM
Interesting writeup by Cintra Wilson in Salon:
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 8:37 AM
Also, I would like to commend Yglesias for being the straight male representative in the "Brokeback needed more hott gay action" lobby.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 8:40 AM
As they say at Gringotts, life ain't nothin' but witches and money.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 8:40 AM
Little-known fact: Ang Lee was a journeyman pro fiotball player.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:12 AM
Emerson, how you like him now?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:16 AM
Also, WTF, Tim? You haven't even seen Brokeback, and you're the authority on its authentic Western-ness, or lack thereof?
Yeah, I don't know how or why I started doing that - crankiness? rampant homophobia? - it's an impossible posture from which to argue. Worse yet, I stand by everything I said. I can't think of a single "social moment" movie that has stood the test of time. Everyone loved Driving Miss Daisy when it came out, too. (Except, to their great credit, every African American I've ever had the nerve to ask.)
OTOH, if you liked the movie or movies like it, there is a benefit to my rash position; now I feel obliged to see the movie, which will increase sales, and thereby stimulate the creation of more pap "important" movies. It's even better if you want me in pain; I know I'm going to want to walk out on it, but I'll feel obliged to suffer through the whole thing.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:18 AM
I can't think of a single "social moment" movie that has stood the test of time.
What about To Kill a Mockingbird? Inherit the Wind? Mr. Smith Goes to Washington?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:22 AM
Potemkin? The Battle of Algiers?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:24 AM
How about Casablanca?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:26 AM
Yeah, no one watches To Kill A Mockingbird anymore. Or The Grapes Of Wrath. Or West Side Story, for that matter.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:30 AM
Shoulda previewed.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:31 AM
I didn't see TKAM, but I did read the novelization. Probably the best piece of young-adult fiction ever.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:32 AM
Rough, SB.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:34 AM
**All the young adults of America roll their eyes simultaneously**
Except my niece. She loves school and loves her teachers, and she's been talking like a teacher since she was 8. She'll read your TKAM for you.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:36 AM
Whee!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:37 AM
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore was totally "Scorsese does feminism" (judging by Pauline Kael's piece on it), and holds up. Do the Right Thing I haven't seen for a long time, but I bet it holds up.
So, that Spike Lee bank-robber movie: looks good?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:38 AM
They're not old enough to tell if they "withstood the test of time," but I'll bet that in 40 years Boys Don't Cry and Monster will still be good movies.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:40 AM
In fairness, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is unwatchable.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:42 AM
As long as I'm serial commenting, another one that holds up: Norma Rae.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:43 AM
Social black comedies hold up well also, which is even more surprising, since they tend to be even more "of the moment" than their dramatic counterparts. See: Dr. Strangelove; Network.
Oh, i just thought of another great "of the moment" drama: All The President's Men.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:50 AM
Norma Rae is no 9 to 5.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:51 AM
Oh, right, Do The Right Thing is awesome.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:52 AM
For that matter, what about SCMT's great movie: Chinatown. I can't remember exactly what the water shenanigans were in it, but it was pretty clearly Big Moneyed Interests screwing with the little people, with some sexual abuse mixed in for good measure.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:54 AM
If you want an unwatchable gay-themed movie, "Suddenly Last Summer" (1959) is it. Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, pre-fat Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, and Katherine Hepburn playing a woman who overacts all the time.
Clift was supposed to lobotomize Taylor to silence her as a witness, but in the end they get married and livew happily ever after. Hepburn's gay son is apparently murdered by a mob of brown Moroccan street-punks. (Was there cannibalism? I like to think so.)
Available with Georgian subtitles if Armsmasher's still around.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:55 AM
Also, all the great Vietnam films, even though they were after the fact, like Platoon, Apocolypse Now and M.A.S.H. (yes, I know that one's set in Korea, let's not be silly).
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:57 AM
#188: Sorry about that.
Re. "social moment" movies: now Westerns aren't "social moment" movies? Please. You can totally date a western by looking at its attitude towards social norms like domesticity. The Vietnam-era westerns are not the 50s-era westerns, and so on.
Anyway, my claim is that Brokeback isn't (strictly, or only) a "social moment" movie. People are distracted by teh gay from seeing a lot of other things about the film, like its genre, and the way it fits into Ang Lee's other work, etc. etc.
Plus, social moment movies like the ones people have already named are *way* more gonna stand the test of time that ahistorical pablum like, say, "Braveheart."
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:57 AM
SCMT: so, so pwned. (Anyway, I think the Gay Oscar-Bait Message Movie was Philadelphia. Lee at least comes by it honest, if you've seen The Wedding Banquet.)
(That was not a biscuit conditional, I don't think. Emerson, however....)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 9:57 AM
And Full Metal Jacket, of course.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 10:00 AM
Hmmm. I'm going to have to watch some of these movies again (and some for the first time). That said, by "social moment" I (think I) meant something like a movie that centrally asks you to accept "the Other" as part of common humanity. I didn't see Inherit the Wind when it first came out, and by the time I did, the rationalists are top dogs by a long shot. I'd be surprised if that weren't true by 1960. TKAM - not about the black guy, but about what it means to be a decent white guy. Welcome to the magic black man, by which you will know your white hero. Mr. Smith - I don't think I've ever seen it, but I'd be surprised if the little guy going to Washington and fighting corruption was ever a position that needed much support. Do the Right Thing - I rate it well behind She's Gotta Have It, School Daze, Mo' Better Blues, and even X. And can anyone even bear to watch Jungle Fever these days?
Women's/feminist movies are the only exception to the general rule that I can think of - though I'd be surprised if anyone watches Alice anymore. I suspect this is because male/female relationships are always assumed to exist, these movies reflect the constant negotiation between the two, and so stay relevant. Gay people and minorities - no reason, as a straight white guy, to assume you have to deal with them.
After I see Brokeback, I'm going to rewatch My Beautiful Laundrette. And then declare it a substantially better movie.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 10:12 AM
SCMT, since you are a fan of Teh Seventies, what about Dog Day Afternoon as a nominee for a movie that centrally asks you to accept "the other" as part of a common humanity? Also, in what way does WSS not meet that definition?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 10:29 AM
Psst...Tia, WSS isn't a real film. It's a musical.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 10:31 AM
I'm kind of uncomfortable with the idea that "lasting" is the end-goal of all art. I agree, the kids love the Shakespeare because, like, they got all the same problems, but what about satire? Its power fades over time because we forget the immediate targets, and unless we can transform those into general targets, it's dead. (Dr. Strangelove still works because we remember its targets and it easily transfers to more general types.) But that doesn't mean that, at its own moment, it didn't have an important, wonderfully powerful effect.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 10:40 AM
AWB, I'm guessing that each artist has his or her own priorities as to the goals of their work. But I'm sure that "lasting" is a goal that a great many artists aspire to.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 10:44 AM
237: You're certainly right, but I think that can be a shame. Here's an example:
Schindler's List v. Hotel Rwanda. They're both films about a man who has personal and financial ties to a community being wiped out by genocide. The man at first performs small actions to help those who are being killed, but then ends up nearly sacrificing everything to help them. Politically and ethically, I think HR is by far the better film, as it really concentrates on the global problem of apathy toward African tragedy, instead of focusing on the dramatic narrative of the not-oppressed hero. But that same responsibility and timeliness will be why SL, a film that's more "artistic" than socially relevant, is the one that will be shown to ninth-graders until we're all dead.
Sure, there's that little problem that genocide against black people doesn't spark the same indignation in the Western world.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 10:56 AM
1. It's been a long time since I saw WSS. I note that there's a difference between Puerto Rican and Puerto Rican. Which is to say, Othello with Olivier in blackface - not what I'm talking about.
2. DDA - feels much more like My Beautiful Laundrette. The focus of the movie is a guy who is completely losing it - robbing a bank to pay for your lover's sexual transformation surgery? Weird in all sorts of ways. Not, to me, centrally about being gay. Mostly an amazing performance by Pacino. And I didn't love the movie. (I read somewhere recently that "gay" media acceptance is only now reaching the point that it was in the 70s. I'm not sure how that's relevant, but I'm starting to think it's true.)
3. Joe, School Daze is also a musical. And more interesting. I'm actually curious about your reaction to it; it's probably my second favorite Lee movie.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 11:02 AM
I've never seen it! I guess I should.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 11:04 AM
Also, Schindler's List sucked.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 11:06 AM
Wasn't Crash guaranteed the win here, since it is exactly the sort of crap that counts as drama in this country? I liked the movie in terms of its production, which was very good, but the narrative is exactly what counts as "deep" --- a story about hopelessness that is essentially unredeeming, in this case about racism and its persistence. I mean, isn't the point of the movie to force you to acknowledge that it is (a) awful and (b) something we can never end? I say this is drama American-style because it is leaves the status quo completely unchallenged: sure, the bad-cop character has his moment saving the black lady from the burning car, but the real story is the white cop who, well meaning as he is, kills the black kid and dumps his body. Whether or not we think he'll get away with it, or if we think Don Cheadle will catch him, the point is that racism has won again. Status Quo: 1, Possibility for Human Growth, 0.
I wonder how Brokeback fits with this, but my sense is that it was a more challenging movie (which I have yet to see), and thus had to lose.
Posted by sparacando | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 11:10 AM
I've never seen it! I guess I should.
It's uneven, like a lot of Lee's work But I really like it. Favorite song - the catchy "Jiggaboo" song; I'm always afraid, after I've re-watched the movies, that I'll unconsciously start singing it, and rightly be beaten to death. So, fair warning.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 11:16 AM
#241: Agreed.
SCMT, watch Brokeback. And then you can come crawling back and concede that the whole "gay people are human too!" thing is so very *not* the central point of the film.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 12:01 PM
Also, I agree with AWB that satire is inevitably both very of-the-moment *and*, I would argue for that reason, much funnier and therefore "better" than more "timeless" humor.
Which has nothing to do with Bback, but just for the record.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 12:04 PM
Yeah, the central point of Brokeback is that love is painful and always ends badly; that we never get to be happy. Everything good gets taken from us, or is never allowed us in the first place.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 12:11 PM
SCMT, watch Brokeback.
Just be aware of the side effects, Tim. I'm here for you.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 12:14 PM
. And then you can come crawling back and concede that the whole "gay people are human too!" thing is so very *not* the central point of the film.
If I'm wrong, I'll admit it. But I start pretty committed against the "good liberal" movie. In fact, I'll go further than comparing Brokeback to Laundrette. If there's a gay porn movie called Bareback, I'll watch it and declare it a better movie than Brokeback.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 12:14 PM
I just overheard two women talking in the bathroom: one who is black and one who is Hispanic. The Hispanic woman asked the black woman if she watched the Oscars last night and the black woman said she hadn't because Hollywood doesn't care about black people but wished she had now because Crash won and that had redeemed the Academy in her eyes.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 12:15 PM
It isn't a "good liberal" movie. It isn't the movie's fault if a bunch of idiotic "good liberals" have coopted it just because it happens to have gay people in it.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 12:31 PM
the central point of Brokeback
Daniel Mendelsohn has a good essay on the "central point" of the movie in the NYRoB. I say it's a good essay meaning it strikes me as precise; whether it's accurate, I don't know.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 12:34 PM
I note that there's a difference between Puerto Rican and Puerto Rican.
So, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal are lavished with praise for "acting" gay, but West Side Story gets a hindsighted wag o' the finger for using fake Puerto Ricans? Is "acting" gay harder than "acting" Puerto Rican? I'm not sure where I come down there, but there's some slippage...
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 03- 6-06 2:34 PM