deep
Blue Crack Addict
diamond said:if i felt manipulated or not etc.
db9
keep your hands out of your pockets
diamond said:if i felt manipulated or not etc.
db9
joyfulgirl said:
MrsSpringsteen said:there is video of Shalit's review in the link
http://www.glaad.org/action/alerts_detail.php?id=3849#
On Jan. 5, NBC News' Today show featured Gene Shalit's review of Brokeback Mountain on his regular "Critic's Corner" segment. Rather than focus on the merits of the film, Shalit — who has been a Today show regular for 31 years — used the occasion to promote defamatory anti-gay prejudice to a national audience.
In the piece, Shalit refers to Jake Gyllenhaal's character, Jack, as a "sexual predator" who "tracks Ennis down and coaxes him into sporadic trysts." Shalit's bizarre characterization of Jack as a "predator" and Ennis (Heath Ledger) as a victim reflects a fundamental lack of understanding about the central relationship in the film and about gay relationships in general. It seems highly doubtful that Shalit would similarly claim that Titanic's Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) was a "sexual predator" because he was pursuing a romantic relationship with Rose (Kate Winslet).
Shalit does offer a kind word for Ledger's performance and says "Brokeback Mountain does have a few dramatic peaks" before calling the film "wildly overpraised, but not by me."
Shalit has every right as a film critic to criticize Brokeback Mountain. But his baseless branding of Jack as a "sexual predator" merely because he is romantically interested in someone of the same sex is defamatory, ignorant and irresponsible. And it is equally irresponsible for NBC News to have given Shalit a platform for his gratuitously offensive comments.
Irvine511 said:
deep said:I go alone.
Saw this one alone.
When i first started going by myself I hated it, too.
Now, I think I may prefer it.
deep said:I go alone.
Saw this one alone.
When i first started going by myself I hated it, too.
Now, I think I may prefer it.
joyfulgirl said:The salon.com review was rather negative but I actually agree with this part about the wives and Jack's in particular (her final scene was one of my complaints about the film--really made little sense to me)--but mostly I'm posting this as an example of constructive criticism vs. Shalit's homophobic review:
http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2005/12/09/brokeback/index.html
...The movie's ultra-sensitive, ultra-tasteful sense of daring is really just a scrim for some pretty conventional cautionary impulses. This is what comes of denying your true nature: You get stuck with a frowsy, unhappy wife in a shabby housecoat, clutching a coffee cup as she stares into space.
But then, of course, this isn't the wives' movie: It's a movie in which women don't figure much at all. Jack and Ennis are essentially early-'60s-type men, and although the movie does give us a few scenes showing Ennis tending to his sick daughters, and one of Jack driving his son around in a big tractor, most of the child-rearing is left to the womenfolk. The movie occasionally pretends to be mildly interested in these jilted spouses, particularly Ennis' wife, Alma, played by Michelle Williams. Williams, an expressive actress who's only just beginning to find out what she can do, has some good scenes, although mostly she's required to suffer silently in the couple's dismal flat. (Ennis works hard as a ranch hand, but he never makes quite enough to support his family, let alone buy paint or lightbulbs.)
But Anne Hathaway, as Jack's wife, Lureen, barely registers as a character. When we first meet her -- she's a young rodeo princess with a wild sex drive and an even wilder smile -- she jolts the movie awake like a pistol shot. But as the story limps along, moving from the '60s to the mid-'70s, her outfits get progressively louder and her teased tresses progressively blonder. She's a hairhopper by necessity, as if Lee had reached his quota of real human beings and needed to fill out the corners of his story with cartoons. Her final scene, in particular, is baffling. Lee directs it in such a way that we have no idea what it means: We go through the whole picture with no idea how she feels about her husband, and the movie's ending gives us no further clues.
Irvine511 said:just wanted to say that i think it's been a very good for movies, but especially movies about issues -- Brokeback, Munich, Capote (the death penalty, to some extent, but also the ethics of "new journalism"), The Constant Gardener, and Crash.
anitram said:
Good Night and Good Luck was also solid in this regard. And Syriana.
MrsSpringsteen said:"As difficult as it is to look at something you don't understand, it's so important to do it," says Guzzwell.