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This topic comprises 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
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Author
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Topic: Brokeback Mountain
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Sam Graham
AKA: "The Evil Sam Graham". Wackiness ensues.
Posts: 1431
From: Waukee, IA
Registered: Dec 2004
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posted 01-08-2006 01:28 AM
CINEMA: Fleur Cinema & Cafe
AUDITORIUM: 3
PRESENTATION: Beats the heck outta me
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: Well, none really
RATING: Three and one half stars (out of four)
WARNING: Would you like to upgrade to spoilers for just a quarter more?
SIGNS YOU PICKED THE WRONG PLACE TO WATCH A MOVIE: When the ticket counter has a full-page memo posted advising you why your car is going to get broken into and why the theatre isn't liable. Said memo started out explaining that there's an organized crime ring going around breaking into cars. It went into great detail about what people were stealing and how long it takes to perform a smash-and-grab. (Ten seconds, if you were wondering.)
As it happens, the theatre's parking lot is full. WAY full. "Brokeback Mountain" has filled the Fleur's lot to capacity, the dirt lot between the Fleur and a strip mall, and part of the abandoned Target parking lot. Previous to tonight, I have never seen the Fleur's lot even HALF full. I ended up parking in about the darkest place possible in front of a dumpster.
I arrived fifteen minutes before showtime, scheduled for 9:45pm. The lobby is packed with a line of people waiting to get into the movie. One of the employees is explaining to the ticket taker and a customer that they're going to be running about ten minutes late seating people, which is apparently supposed to start happening at 9:35pm. They actually have signs up noting this. At about 9:35, the 7:00 show gets out, and a mass of people come out of the auditorium.
So I'm standing in line when I realize..."Wait a minute...People are leaving!" I look out the window to see prime parking spots opening up. Yep...I went out and moved my car to right under the street light in front of the lobby.
Back in the line, guy behind me notes "I think we're above capacity", pointing at the lobby's capacity sign. The lobby holds about 120 fewer people than the auditorium. That's a little odd. Still, he's wrong. We're not filling that room. No way.
At 9:53pm, the auditorium was declared ready, and everybody filed in. The movie started at 9:57pm to about half capacity.
Most of the movies I've seen in Auditorium 3 have been in left-channel analog mono. The exception came with "Monster". I could have sworn they actually had a digital presentation. Then the next movie I saw there played in 2-channel analog stereo. Then the next. Then we were back to left-channel mono. Tonight, I'm in Row 3 center, and the first trailer plays in left-channel mono. Then the second trailer starts. Suddenly the volume comes up, the sound becomes clear, and there's a rather digital sounding three-channel soundstage in front of me. I give up. The surrounds, of course, are just for show. The picture is perfectly focused and steady. Century 20 has maybe ONCE approached this picture quality when I've been there. Maybe.
So basically "Brokeback Mountain" is about two guys tending to sheep in isolated Wyoming (the part of "Wyoming" being played by Alberta, Canada) who hook up with each other (to the relief of the sheep, I'm sure) in a spontaneous and rather violent looking quickie. The rest of the movie follows their lives for the next two decades in sort of a "Same Time Next Year" fashion because even though they went off and got married and had kids, they can't fight that feeling anymore (da da da da i'd forgotten what i'd started fighting for da da da da).
It's beautifully shot, it's well acted, it's happy, it's sad, it's tragic. The reason people are seeing this in droves is because of the love story. It grabs some people the way Jack and Rose did in "Titanic". And yet, it will absolutely be offensive to some. And I'm fine with that. How boring would the world be if we all thought alike.
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James R. Hammonds, Jr
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 931
From: Houston, TX, USA
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted 01-14-2006 07:31 PM
Friday 1-13-06
AMC Studio 30 Houston, TX
Auditorium 7, 9:35PM
Mid-sized auditorium about 3/4 full.
I got lucky and was in an auditorium with side masking and a perferated screen.
Good audio that I'm assuming was analog (although the theatre opened with mobile SRD and DTS units; I don't know if they use them anymore) except the center channel seemed a bit low.
Framed a tad too high at first but was corrected.
Focus off slightly.
Screen lighting excellent.
Print condition mostly excellent, although there was a little bit of dirt around the changeovers.
SPOILERS AHEAD
I enjoyed this movie and thought it was good, but not great.
I agree with others that the scenery was great and some of those shots should have been held a little longer.
My favorite of which was the full screen shot of the sheep that seemed to flow like water over rocks.
I was really disappointed that this movie was not in scope.
There were times when Heath Ledger suffered from Boomhauer syndrome and I had a really hard time understanding him.
I was wishing for subtitles.
My main gripe (and this is the biggest reason why my girlfriend hated it) is that they didn't do a good enough job of making the couple seem like they were actually in love.
It seemed to me that the main focus of their time spent together was that they were meeting up to go have sex in the mountains.
Jack Swift even says so the last time they are together.
Obviously they wouldn't go through all that trouble just to fuck each other.
If that's all Jack Swift wanted, he could have moved to Mexico.
As stand-offish as he is, you get the impression that Ennis Del Mar also wants to be with Jack, but knows what could and probably would happen if they did get together permanently, so he was smart enough (in that sense) not to do it.
It seems that the development of their love for each other could have been given more exposure.
Were there scenes left out that I don't know of?
So we have two people who want to be together because of the cultural and moral climate of the time and I have sympathy for them.
They part ways once the job is over and lead "normal" live and get married to women and have children like they are "supposed to".
They lose much of this sympathy when they decide to lie to and cheat on their wives and children.
The film didn't seem to show the same sympathy for the wives and children that these two men lied to.
You saw some of the pain and frustration of Alma Del Mar, but hardly any of Lureen Newsome.
Although the movie wasn't as much about them as it was about Jack and Ennis, they could have done a little better with that.
The ending was sad.
You feel bad for Jack for the way he went out.
You feel bad for Ennis for losing his friend and lover and for not being allowed to carry out Jack's will and spread his ashes over Brokeback Mountain like he had wished.
I was actually worried for Ennis that he was being drawn to Jack's hometown to suffer Jack's fate.
The movie did end on a good note, however.
At various points during the movie, he put work before the people in his life.
In one of the final scenes, he makes a commitment to make his daughter's wedding a priority over his work.
I think I'd give it a 3 out of 5 stars.
[ 01-15-2006, 07:45 AM: Message edited by: James R. Hammonds, Jr ]
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Eric Hooper
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 532
From: Fort Worth, TX, USA
Registered: May 2003
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posted 01-16-2006 04:11 AM
Ok, time for me to “spur my guts out”
I gave it an A-, but it could possibly be a B+.
This *is* a great movie. The acting and directing are fantastic. The scenery is incredible. It’s something new, fresh, and different, and that makes the movie truly an ‘experience’.
But-
I agree with James, there is something “missing”. The development of their ‘love’ is really not shown to us. Even Jake admitted on Leno that people have said ‘the movie is not gay enough’. Well, the movie certainly is gay, and deals with gay themes, but, I think people are referring to this problem with the movie when they say that. Later in the movie, we get scenes of Ennis and Alma playing in the snow, and sitting at the drive in with his arm around her and the baby starts kicking and such. But what we get from the cowboys are just one quick make out scene, a little rastlin’ around seen through binoculars, a cute thing with the rope where Jack lassos Ennis, (but that scene eventually turns into something else important with the story), and then we have to wait until 3/4ths through the movie to get the ‘flashback’ scene of Ennis coming up behind Jack and holding him (the ‘sleeping on your feet like a horse’ scene). Yeah, the lack of intimacy does hold up the creditability of the rest of the movie in that way.
Now some have said “well they’re 19 year old cowboys with undeveloped emotions, and they’re not supposed to be all touchy feely when they were first up on the mountain”. I don’t buy that, because they *were* touchy feely as seen in the ‘flashback’ scene. And we needed a touchy feely scene like that to happen in the first part of the movie when they’re up on the mountain, to show that they were ‘falling in love’ and make it believable and the rest of the movie believable, not have that quick scene happen later on in the movie, during a different difficult emotional scene!
All we would have needed was one small 15 second scene, of them holding each other by a campfire or something, maybe even sharing a cigarette. They wouldn’t have needed to talk or anything. Just an image of them two together like that in the first part of the movie WOULD HAVE MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE. I don’t know if any additional scenes like this were left out, and if they were, I would be suspect of the reason why they were left out. But if there is any additional scenes that portray them a little more ‘falling in love’ up on the mountain, I certainly hope they’re included in a ‘directors cut’ re-release or DVD release. It truly would have been ‘sweeping’ (as the ads say) if we had just had a little bit more development of their ‘love’.
Many people have complained about this issue with the movie. Ang, Focus, Screenwriters, are you listening?
(Imagine what an “extended director’s cut” re-released in theatres might do for the already good business for this movie. Hmmm.)
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