AP: "'Brokeback' A Box Office Success" & A DUer's Review

[Hissyspit]

I am posting this news article concerning how "Brokeback Mountain" is doing VERY well in its initial release, and I am posting it with a review from DUer SkipNewarkDE, one he (?) posted a few days ago in the Lounge. I thought the review itself deserved a wider DU audience, and many not coming to DU the day after Christmas may have missed it:

http://start.earthlink.net/article/ent?guid=20051228/43b36d50_3ca6_1552620051229-241038587
'Brokeback Mountain' a Box Office Success

By SANDY COHEN (AP Entertainment Writer)
From Associated Press
December 29, 2005 2:59 AM EST
LOS ANGELES - Who's afraid of a couple of gay cowboys? Not moviegoers, who helped "Brokeback Mountain" post the highest per-screen average over the film-flush holiday weekend. The Ang Lee film, which follows the 20-year forbidden romance between two roughneck ranch hands, earned $13,599 per theater, compared with $9,305 for weekend winner "King Kong" and $8,225 for "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."

The big question is whether "Brokeback" can maintain its momentum as it moves from selected cities, where audiences are receptive to the subject matter, to suburbs far and wide, where that might not be the case.

- snip -

Response has been so robust that distributors are expanding the film's rollout ahead of schedule. It will show on 269 screens this Friday, and reach an additional 80 markets the following week, Foley said.

Still, he acknowledges that bringing a homosexual love story to the Bible Belt presents its own set of challenges. Various Christian groups voiced opposition to the film before its release. Ted Baehr, who reviews films for the Christian Film & Television Commission, called the film "abhorrent" and "twisted, laughable, frustrating and boring neo-Marxist homosexual propaganda" in a review on the Commission's MovieGuide Web site.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=4492943#4493008

SkipNewarkDE (Posted Dec. 26)

Just Saw Brokeback Mountain

Devastating film, lyrical, restrained, poetic, powerful. The theater was sold out, and people were literally sobbing at the end of it. Ang Lee is a masterful director, Jake Gyllenhal gives a decent performance, and Heath Ledger absolutely knocks it out of the park with an Oscar calibre performance.

The story centers on two ranch hands that work together, alone herding sheep, discovering an intense love. Society and situation make the reality of this attraction something to be hidden, denied. Yet both men go through decades of quiet desparation, attempting to eke out the nuclear family lives that society tells them they must have, while yearning for that innocence of their first summer where an outside world did not impose.

This movie is a poetic masterpiece of direction by Ang Lee. He is not afraid of the material, and he is not flamboyant nor exploitive with the material. A lesser director would have beaten the issue of violence and murder of gays over the viewers heads in graphic detail, relying on the horrorifying aspect of such crimes, yet Lee communicates the true horror of these type events through the faces and few words of his main characters' faces contemplating such events.

The film is so wonderfully controlled and restrained, permeated by the same sort of restraint of the unspoken love that surrounds the two cowboys. It is a dance of words, expressions, and more than not, it is what is NOT said that carries the most import in this film.

Just fucking beautiful movie. I walked out of this thing and could not talk for a full 15 minutes because every time I started, my throat choked and I felt like I was going to bust out crying.

The theater was absolutely jammed today for this film. The audience was not just a bunch of gay guys. There were adult couples of every persuasion. Coming out of the movie, there was a huge line to get in. The audience looked shell-shocked and teary eyed walking out of the thing.

I had read some Fox News movie expert saying that this thing was going to bomb at the box office. I think not. I had also read some stuff at Freek Republic lambasting this film, and applauding the killing of gays on one hand and then talking about Christian values on the other.

If anything, this film is a plea to let people be free and unencumbered by a prejudiced society to find their true peace and love. The quiet desparation of the two main characters is just wrenching to watch, peppered with these moments of pure joy and real love when they return for their retreats to the mountain of the title.

Go see this. See it twice.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. thanks for the information

I've known gays that were "in the closet" for years, marrying, having families, but never being happy-and finally ending the family relationship in divorce-with devistating consequences to the spouse and kids. I can't help but think if society were more open and welcoming to homosexual love, a lot of innocent people wouldn't get hurt just because a gay man wants to live "normally".

[Skittles]

2. I loved it

and I became an instant fan of Heath Ledger (I already admired Jake) :thumbsup: I saw it in North Texas and yes, the audience was quite diverse.