What's really scary is you spent so much time cropping and arranging those photos at the top of the post.

Looks like an emotional-quagmire on Jake's message board.

Are you sure this message board isn't just Andrew Sullivan's subconscious?

Scorpius, the really scary part is that Jeff must have signed up with the Gyllenhaalics to collect those incredibly creepy comments from their members-only message board.

(Or so I'm guessing. If Jeff was already a member, then I'd rather not hear about it.)

I got them from Josh

Jake Girlyhaal doesn't look like much of a cowboy to me. He should at least look like someone able to beat down Liberace in a moderately intense slapfight.

I'm still trying to visualize sitting thru it 12 times. I mean, it's not Titanic, we're talking about a sloooooow, minimalist aesthetic here

This settles it! Michael Deaver (of the Reagan White House) was absoluetly right. The world is populated by morons (my words, not his) that will be totally influenced by images without putting any thought into their meaning or accompanying words or narrative.

The emotional retardation exhibited by these quotes is so sad and nauseating at the same time that it makes me think of the unthinking proles in Orwell's 1984.

Hmm. The sex scene and Titanic killed it for me. Kinda like stumbling onto a rottweiler and a chihuahua boning in the backyward.

Beautiful Atrocities will not tolerate anti-Kate Winslet hate speech. You have been warned

I must say, if I could select any celebrity rack in the whole wide world as my own...Kate Winslet's wouldn't be a bad choice.

Just when I was wondering where the obligatory Homoblogger (TM) BBM post was around here, it occurred to me that one probably wouldn't be able to get into BBM in San Francisco until around nowish anyway.

Poor thing, you'd been waiting in line for weeks, hadn't you?

According to xanga.com, the movie has grossed (no pun intended) $42.1 million. From what I read here, all of that money is coming from about 100 people seeing it over and over. Subtract out the salary of two A-list actors in addition to all of the other people who get their piece of the pie and it seems to me that we may not be seeing anymore gay cowboy movies for awhile. I would think that they would have been much better trying to cast the 'next' Gyllenhall or Ledger at a much cheaper cost. Of course, if these guys didn't get me in to see it, then I doubt the poor man's version of them would have either.

Seriously, I don't know anyone who has seen it and I work with several liberal and/or gay people. It's more of a joke than anything. Seriously - gay cowboys? Is that the best premise they could come with? Yes, I know it was a book but Hollywood has taken bigger liberties with historical facts. If you're going to make a drama about a couple of gay guys, why not make it about a couple of politicians - something like closet Log Cabin Republicans. I think that would be more believeable and possibly sell more tickets. If there are two things that don't go together, it's 'gay' and 'cowboy'.

Just sayin'.

Not true!

Are they cowboys are sheep herder dudes?

Because, despite the lid it is not the same thing.

One is a masculine slice of Americana, the other is....is...not.

Or...or sheep herder dudes.

Jeff, did you hear that Gene Shallot referred to Jake's character as a "sexual predator" and then apologized?

I believe Jack Twist is a cowboy moonlighting as a sheepherder. The Gene Shalit thing is nonsense, there's nothing homophobic about that statement. It's lifted directly from the dialogue, where the ranch foreman tells Jake he didn't hire him to let the dogs watch the sheep while Jake "stemmed the rose", meaning, Heath Ledger (who doesn't have Jake's extensive experience). GLAAD are Nazis. They just screamed bloody murder because Isaac Mizrahi used the term 'scary dyke' referring to the scary dyke Charlize Theron portrayed in Monster. Like gay men don't use that term all the time. It's called a 'colloquialism'

Question: Instead of being "Kool-Aid drinkers," can we instead refer to those 'tards as "Pudding Eaters?"

No.

Yes, thanks for the correction in spelling his name. My sorry excuse? Too darned tired to check.

So that was the story? That GLAAD called him on it? I haven't read the short story, but it is on my list of summer reading.

I was wondering if or when you'd see the flick. I was expecting worse from you, so "not very involving" is kinda tame. And since I, like you, came to the short story first, I could see why you'd find the eye-candy casting "false". But I gotta say, I was very moved by the story, first of all, almost 2 years ago. To me it is one of the great American love stories and, like so many love stories, a tragedy. Proulx's language, and her ability to suggest a rich character with little actual narrative is a wonder. And I think she reveals something of the male heart, which is not small feat for, as she calls herself, "an elderly female person". I think that that the empathy and compassion --which is not at all the same as sentimentality or blind affirmation-- which accompanied her writing of this story is part of what produces the effect that it does.
Ennis and Jack are not just victims; they are enacter of their tragedy. I brought that appreciation of the story to the movie. And I had come to feel Ennis and Jack as real people, as Proulx said she did.

Lefties politicize the movie and righties moralize about it. (Some idiots just get trapped in the "gay cowboy" thing and whirl around like demented Maytags.) To me, it reveals elements of the male soul in this pre-gay male/male romance, elements I remember viscerally, especially in my pre-gay days.

Lee has made a long, slow very visual movie of short, rugged very linguistic story. And the scriptwriters filled out the women and children, showing the effects in others' lives of this two-decade love affair. Heath and Jake are not my type, so the movie was not softcore porn for me. But they acted well, Ledger especially. Hoodathunk he could actually act?

I loved the movie, saw it twice, and admit to being haunted by it, as I was by the story.

Hey wait a minute, you were the one forwarding ME those emails! I never even heard of a fan club until you sent them to me.

Oh hell, Josh, it's nothing to be ashamed of. We're all adults here

Yeah, which is why you should fess up!

So, you're seriously a Kate Winslet fan? Have you heard her sing "What If?"

I'm willing to overlook "What If?"

Seriously, you're a Proulx fan? No matter how hard I've tried, I can't get halfway through anything she writes without throwing it down and bellowing at the characters: "Buy a SPACE HEATER, already. Just getting WARM would solve a good 75% of your whiny-ass problems!"

WTF? I must be missing something. Getting married and having children AFTER you discover you have a thing for ABBA, leather, and rough gay sex sans anal lube is NOT anything to be proud of.

Nice movie, Hollywood. Can't wait 'til you remake Pricilla, Queen of the Desert.

Getting married and having children AFTER you discover you have a thing for ABBA, leather, and rough gay sex sans anal lube is NOT anything to be proud of.

The movie isn't making an endorsement or a moral judgement on their lives, as it shouldn't. Art is not propaganda. When conservatives criticize the movie as 'promoting' the gay lifestyle, they're confusing 'depict' with 'endorse' & accepting the worldview of the PC Left, that the point of art is not to illuminate the human experience, but to 'provide good role models.' They just disagree on the particulars. But on the basic assumption, GLAAD & Rush Limbaugh are in agreement, at least about this movie: the point is not art, but agitprop

Re Proulx, I like her for sentences like this:

"His face was blue with whiskers & he was built like a gin bottle with hard, square shoulders."

I'm beginning to think of this movie as a Rorschach test.

I never really liked Kate until "Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind" which she was good in. To me, she has that "I'm actually a BBC actress who's trying to make it in Hollywood" look to her. It's not her accent or that she's British, it's her face that looks at odds with her hollywood-esque make up and dress; a face which would fit-in better in a Jane Austin work or slumming it in a crappy BBC soap.

BTW, I'm straight even though that passage indicated otherwise.

You are not

Jeff, I wish I knew how to quit you.

(Sorry. Had to be said.)

Only gay people don't wanna boink Kate!!!

Heavenly Creature that she is:)

Only gay people don't wanna boink Kate!!!

From this I can only conclude that: 1) straight women want to Boink Kate and 2) Lesbos don't

which one are you, Sondra?

BTW, I'd boink her, I like Rubinesque women being that I'm straight and all...

No offense, Scorpius, but the fact that you've bought into the idea that she's "Rubenesque" shows just what a hold the Hollywood portrayal of the ideal woman has on people. She is not Rubenesque in ANY sense of the word as it's normally construed. She is, however, totally gorgeous, and sooooooooo fuckable. I saw her first, Sondra.

Only gay people don't wanna boink Kate!!!

swell. now I'm gay. Fiesty's gonna love that...

BBM is a powerful and mostly well done. I read the short story before seeing it and was impressed at how the screenplay does Proulx's original story a favor by expanding the minor characters and subplots. The Willie Nelson version of the Dylan tune at the end was an apt coda. Right wing critics have pointed out some gaps in the story like, how many years does it take a wife to make an issue out of goin' fishin' but not bringin' back no fish??? The slavish repeat views by some fans help ghettoize the flick, as being that much more limited in its appeal.

It's very well made, Heath Ledger & Michelle Williams are great. I just thought Gyllenhaal was miscast or misdirected. He wasn't able to hold his own with Heath Ledger, who kind of blew him off the screen

You said "fag hag" like it's a BAD thing, you fundie! I'm offended!

(Why do you think I have a guy who doesn't like Kate "No, I am NOT Camryn Mannheim" Winslet co-writing on my blog, anyway?) ;-)

If on some level you don't find Jake G. cute, the movie is pointless, no matter how good Ledger's performance. Otherwise, why the 20 years of angst?

Exactly. Or you get an actor with enough presence to carry the role. Clearly, Heath Ledger 'got' it (Proulx was blown away by his performance). In Gyllenhaal's case, either he didn't get it, or he was in over his head

I have yet to see the film (It is banned here you know. Damned Momons!), but I did hear a clip on Fresh Air, and I couldn't believe I was listening to Heath with that cowboy accent.

Sooper Sekrit Message: Laughed my A$$ off! Thanks, Jeff.

I haven't seen the movie yet. Nor have I done Kate Winslett.

I'd better get busy.

These people are lame.

Movies i've only seen four or seven or whatever times (counting teevee and DVD, of course) should be counted as mildly involving films that i watch if nothing else is available on a slow afternoon.

As to my favourites -- i have no idea how many times i've watched " TARGET="_blank">Once Upon a Time in the West" since 1968, but i know it must be nearly a hundred times, if not more.

"a vehicle for two Hollywood pinups"

Nearly everything that comes out of Hollywood stars pinups. This movie shouldn't be singled out just because it IS (obviously) a Hollowood movie. Hello.