Oscar Winners - blow by blow

[ledroit]

Mkymkus,


Yours is, singularly, the best objective critique of why BBM was so effective to so many and lost on (or offensive to) so many others. Your sense of perspective and objecivity is profound - as are your powers of detachment and reason.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your entire post since you had the advantage of having seen both films and the ability to express your opinion like few others.

Thanks.

stronzo, thank you. Very generous thing to say.

 

[Dr. Dilznick]

Clooney's speech fucking ROCKED.

I personally found it to be trite, self-appreciating, and a roller coaster of cliche.

BB is already famous as a non-american view of one of the all-time great american love stories. It finds decency in a place where it shouldn't even exist, and sets real humanity against a mythological backdrop, and shows how it can survive in the face of a perverse, anti-human subtext. Perfect american idea. But the film goes beyond that, visually, and actually shows you what beauty looks like, all the way through. It also makes you remember what love feels like, and the simple life, in spite of yourself.


It's not surprising that people like predictable movies, but you would think that people at some point would get tired of violence as the national religion of the USA. The difference about Brokeback was not the gay thing. I think it was the fact that it revealed something real and human in a place people expect to find nothing real at all, and certainly nothing human. Definitely not something american.

I went into this movie with an open mind and basically saw nothing different than your average love story, except the characters were gay and there was a "forbidden love" element to the whole story. That's it. Average dialogue, average acting, average everything.

 

[B_Stronzo]

stronzo, thank you. Very generous thing to say.

What you critiqued in your previous Mkymkus was precisely the thing so many refused to see in BBM.

Did I think it slow moving? Yes. Did I find the "message" (if you will) obvious?? Well, yes since I'm a homosexual. Did I find it a bit trite because I live that 'message'? Yes too.

But your description is precisely why it was so valuable to what is obviously a rather undereducated and rather myopic audience of blazé Americans who refuse to address the reality of their own countrymen's plight (even those who have personal history with a simliar battle for equal rights). That's what's most astounding to me.

All told, it supports the contention that once one group gains broad acceptance often it simply wants to "slam the door shut" behind itself for those who come afterward.

Odd and short-sighted phenomenon that.

With regard to Mr. Clooney's speech. The man's earned his stripes. You want to talk 'self-appreciating' try that little ninny Witherspoon whose saccharin platitudes mimicked those of a latter day Sally Field. Or how about the blatant illiteracy and gushing of those accepting for the theme to "Hustle and Flow"? Now that was self-aggrandizing.

Clooney's the genuine article. He inspires rather than ridicules and I find those who have the conviction to state truisms in the face of the current political mood to be anything but 'cliché'.

Bravo bravissimo Giorgio.

 

[Dr. Dilznick]

Clooney was preaching to the choir. That whole bit about being "proud to be out of touch" I guess was supposed to be a response to the fact that Hollywood doesn't represent the average American. And he basically said "of course we don't represent the average American, look how much better we are than the average American!" Arrogant, condescending and vomit-inducing.

 

[B_Stronzo]

If he was preaching to the choir I suspect yours wasn't the only dissenting opinion. His choir was every man. The Oscars had an audience of 41 million viewers.

I'd say the "average American" (whatever that actually is) is broadly represented.

And any fear that Hollywood is out of touch with your "average American" can be immediately dispelled by this drivel:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0393735/

or:

http://www.yoursmineandoursmovie.com/

or:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455612/

Any questions?

 

[Shelby]

Ooooh yick! Family entertainment.
​

 

[Dr. Dilznick]

If he was preaching to the choir I suspect yours wasn't the only dissenting opinion. His choir was every man. The Oscars had an audience of 41 million viewers.

I'd say the "average American" (whatever that actually is) is broadly represented.

It was the same old "us vs. them" bullshit. See also Penn at the '04 Oscars: "If there's one thing actors know, aside from the fact that there were no WMD's [...] "

And any fear that Hollywood is out of touch with your "average American" can be immediately dispelled by this drivel:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0393735/

or:

http://www.yoursmineandoursmovie.com/

or:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455612/

Any questions?

Hollywood does have an agenda: making money.

 

[B_Stronzo]

oooooookay then.

Shelby

 

[hung9mike]

And any fear that Hollywood is out of touch with your "average American" can be immediately dispelled by this drivel:

Funny post, Stronzo. For what it's worth, I don't believe Hollywood is out of the mainstream of the American public at all. Hollywood can't be. Any movie studio that would produce a series of movies that the American public can't identify with would soon be out of business.

Now I know it's fashionable in some circles to say that Hollywood is out of the mainstream, that it promotes values that aren't productive, etc., as if the only goal of everyone in Hollywood was to deliver propaganda pieces to an unsuspecting American public. Although individuals may be vocal about their political views-- across the political spectrum from Charlton Heston to Michael Moore-- movie studios themselves are cautious about what they bring to the big screen. It's not hard to imagine why: movie-making, Hollywood style, is a high-stakes game. A mistake could cost a studio millions of dollars. This is the real reason Brokeback Mountain took so long to come to fruition: no one really knew if such a movie could make any money. Anyway, I think that Hollywood reflects American culture about as well as any institution does.

 

[hotnmpls2000@yahoo.com]

Funny post, Stronzo. For what it's worth, I don't believe Hollywood is out of the mainstream of the American public at all. Hollywood can't be. Any movie studio that would produce a series of movies that the American public can't identify with would soon be out of business.

Now I know it's fashionable in some circles to say that Hollywood is out of the mainstream, that it promotes values that aren't productive, etc., as if the only goal of everyone in Hollywood was to deliver propaganda pieces to an unsuspecting American public. Although individuals may be vocal about their political views-- across the political spectrum from Charlton Heston to Michael Moore-- movie studios themselves are cautious about what they bring to the big screen. It's not hard to imagine why: movie-making, Hollywood style, is a high-stakes game. A mistake could cost a studio millions of dollars. This is the real reason Brokeback Mountain took so long to come to fruition: no one really knew if such a movie could make any money. Anyway, I think that Hollywood reflects American culture about as well as any institution does.

well spoken. I think Hollywood stretches America's perception of itself a little farther than Middle America is comfortable with. But you are right, if they didn't reflect the direction of our culture, they wouldn't be making any money.

The reason that it took so long to make Brokeback into a movie could also be that it was a short little story. I was surprised when I saw how short it was, a few weeks before the movie came out when I bought it.