Posted on 12/09/2005 4:28:35 AM PST by jjm2111
OS ANGELES (Reuters) - It has wowed film festivals, won rave reviews and sparked Oscar buzz, but when "Brokeback Mountain," a.k.a. the gay cowboy movie, begins playing to general audiences on Friday, it faces its toughest challenge yet -- wooing mainstream America.
[snip]
...Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, risk alienating fans and sending their stars plummeting if, after watching the pair have sex on screen, audiences cannot see them any other way than gay.
Winning over middle America is important for the roughly $12.5 million movie because its backer, art house specialist Focus Features, wants a big box office and wider exposure for the film's themes of love, friendship and family ties.
[snip]
Gyllenhaal and Ledger say they are less concerned about their futures than the film's, which was directed by Ang Lee and based on Annie Proulx's story about two cowboys who meet in 1963 wrangling sheep in Wyoming and form a bond that transcends time and transforms their lives.
Ledger, whose career has suffered from several recent flops, also said the role gave him the opportunity to mature. "If you just be safe about the choices you make, you don't grow," he said.
[snip]
Critics have raved. Roger Ebert told Reuters: "Brokeback will become the kind of movie that you hear about at dinner parties that you feel you have to go see. [in the liberal Northeast]"
[snip]
But many industry watchers are skeptical of its crossover potential in a country divided into conservative states mostly in mid-America and the South and liberal states on the coasts.
"(But) we should probably recognize there are some areas and some groups that will oppose this film."
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
While most of us have learned over the years not to be offended by ick in movies, the real problem is the soporific nature of the theme. Those of us who don't have these "tendencies" just cannot relate to the emmotional and social problems of a couple of queens. It doesn't touch us. Unless they make it uproariously funny - at the expense of the subjects for whom they are attempting to create empathy - I am just not interested. I would rather watch re-runs of Rin Tin Tin. I have some empathy for the problems of dogs. Even hollywood ones.
Pandering to gays can be a career plus in some industries. Although 'brown-nosing' gays doesn't sound like such a good idea....
He did breakthrough gay movies in Taiwan and the US. You could be right about the pandering, but color me skeptical. The guy is a talented director with a successful resume--why pander? There's something else going on here...and it may not be that he's gay, although that must remain on the list.
LOL...reminds me of the Cheers episode where norm stopped being a "painter," and began doing, "interior decorating."
Apparently these cowpokes (sheeppokes?) misunderstood what their boss meant by the term "ridin' fence".
Cowboys don't wrangle range maggots for crying out loud! Sheepherders do that.
The guy was dumb as a rock and exteremly nervous(fidgeting all over the place) about talking about the movie, almost seemed embarassed about it.
'"..."(But) we should probably recognize there are some areas and some groups that will oppose this film.""
How about just "not see this film." '
Exactly. And it won't just be "some areas and some groups" staying away either. Whatever one's personal moral beliefs about homosexuality, when it comes right down to it, the only people who want to watch gay men having sex are gay men.
Gives new meaning to the term 'cowpoke'...
They can use Rock Hudson's Greatist Hits for the soundtrack.
"I've Never Kisses A Parrot, But I've Kissed A Cockatoo."
It's too bad "pushing the edge" always seems to mean "pushing the fudge." As an art form, cinema's strangling itself if it thinks this is the best it can do.
So this is the liberal answer to the Passion of Christ and Narnia..... Butt Sex.... everybody worship butt sex this Christmas....... liberals are crazy.
Perhaps health care workers will it as a great venue to distribute AIDs & HIV awareness literature.
that's BS. Hollywood types say that movies need to push the edge. Well, why don't they put movies that accurately portray the threat from Islamo-fascism rather than crap like "Syriana" or whatever it is?
Let me guess, their romance begins after the meet in a saloon and one says to the other, "Mind if I push in your stool?".
Thats a joke, right?
He and his late bud are flamers.
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