movies

Brokeback Mountain

I’ve been biting my tongue listening to all the hype surrounding Brokeback Mountain, both before and after the Oscars, and reading what people, both gay and straight, had to say in movie reviews and on various blogs. Now that Annie Proulx has had her say, I feel a little less constrained about unleashing the hounds. So here are some random thoughts I have about our society’s reaction to Brokeback Mountain:
I find it annoying and more than a little condecending that straight people can watch a two hour movie and presume to understand and empathize with a struggle that I’ve engaged in for more than 37 years.
I’m quietly infuriated when people say they see in Brokeback Mountain “not two men in love, but the universal story of love” or something similar, or when they describe Ennis and Jack’s relationship as another example of a “universal forbidden love story that we all can related to.” Don’t get me wrong; I’m thrilled that straight people finally understand what we feel is real live love like theirs. (Although one would think that a three-year-old could have grasped that long ago, and that it shouldn’t have required a movie like this one).
But it means they’ve missed the entire and complete point of the movie — our love is not like everyone else’s love – our pain is different, and so is our triumph when we succeed. Equating gay relationships to to other forbidden loves (like bi-racial marriages in the sixties) is not an equal comparison. I’m struggling with explaining an intangible quality about gay relationships — but the best description I can give is that within our relationships, we are not complementary to each other, but reflective of each other. That intangible quality is what is so unique (in an overwhelming and often frightening way), and so real, about our relationships, and what is captured so extraordinarily in the film. It comes out best in the confrontation scene near the end of the movie, the one that was so overshadowed by the heavy “I wish I could quit you!” line that so swamps the boat and makes people forget what that scene was really about. It was that line where Ennis asks, or tries to ask, whether Jack ever feels what he does — that sense that everyone can see through him and see who he is. That is what makes this story of lost love different than everyone elses.

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Really, How Hard Is Pimping?

I think need to watch the movie Hustle and Flow, because there must be something about this pimping business that I’m missing. ‘Cause now that it won an Oscar, I keep hearing the song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” and I’m wondering what’s so difficult about it.

See, because my understanding of the pimping profession is this: you get some women. You send them out to have sex. They do all the work. When they come back, you smack them around until they give you all the money. Lather, rinse, repeat. Occasionally, if they don’t give you the money, you get your ho hooked on crack, so they have to keep coming back to you, until eventually they die. Lather, rinse, repeat. Then you put some rims on your car, and get a fuzzy hat. That’s pretty much what I took away from that documentary they did a few years back called “American Pimp.”

Occupational Hazard Chart
Occupational Hazard Chart

What’s hard about that? Maybe it’s tiring being a souless, evil, morally bankrupt waste of space who should have been aborted before birth — but really that just puts you in the same class at George Bush and Pat Robertson, and they seem to get up in the morning just fine.

I can see if someone wrote a song about “It’s Hard Out Here for the Hos.” ‘Cause that is hard. You go out and have sex with skanky, ugly men, get money, go home, get smacked around, get your money taken, find out you have a STD, have sex with more men, get knocked up, have your kids taken away because you’re out having sex with men, get addicted to crack, and eventually die of AIDS. That’s hard. Why not write a rap song about that?

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Netflix Throttling

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Friday Fishwrap has an interesting commentary on Netflix policy of “throttling” DVD shipments to people who are heavy users in favor of first-time or light users of their service. Interesting; I agree that it sucks, but I can kind of see the light users point of view, too. If you wanted to get a DVD occassionally and can only get crap because some people turn around so many, you’d also be pretty peeved.

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Star Wars… Pants?

Lines from Star Wars that can be improved if you substitute the word "Pants" for key words.

We’ve got to be able to get some reading on those pants, up or down.

The pants may not look like much, kid, but they’ve got it where it counts.

I find your lack of pants disturbing.

Many Bobans died to bring us these pants.

These pants contain the ultimate power in the Universe. I suggest we use it.

Storm Trooper Bio-break
Storm Trooper Bio-break

Han will have those pants down. We’ve got to give him more time!

General Veers, prepare your pants for a ground assault.

I used to bulls-eye womp rats in my pants back home.

TK-421… Why aren’t you in your pants?

Lock the door. And hope they don’t have pants.

You are unwise to lower your pants.

She must have hidden the plans in her pants. Send a detachment down to retrieve them. See to it personally Commander.

Governor Tarkin. I recognized your foul pants when I was brought on board.

You look strong enough to pull the pants off a Gundark.

Luke… Help me remove these pants.

Great, Chewie, great. Always thinking with your pants.

That blast came from those pants. That thing’s operational!

Luke…..I am your pants.

A tremor in the pants. The last time I felt this was in the presence of my old master.

Don’t worry. Chewie and I have gotten into a lot of pants more heavily guarded than this.

Maybe you’d like it back in your pants, your highness.

Luke, search your pants. You know it is true.

Your pants betray you. Your feelings for them are strong. Especially one… Your sister!

Jabba doesn’t have time for smugglers who drop their pants at the first sign of an Imperial Cruiser.

Short pants is better than no pants at all.

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More Things I Learned From The Movies

Signals

If a tapping sound or flashing light represents morse code, there’s always someone around that can interpret the message. When Morse Code is used, the interpreter will call out words as they are being sent, rather than letters. Furthermore, a single word is represented by a few "beeps", and all words are sent at the same rate, no matter how long the word is. Example:

beep-beep-be-beep… "Help…"
be-be-beep beep… "Us…."
beep-be-be-beep beep… "We’re…"
beep beep-be-beep… "Surrounded…"
be-beep beep beep… "Send…"
be-be-be-beep beep… "Reinforcements…"
beep be-beep beep… "Hurry…" etc.

A message in Morse Code will start several seconds before someone actually interprets it; however, no information is lost, as the message actually begins when the interpreter starts to read it.

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Things I Learned From Movies

When they are alone, all foreigners prefer to speak English to each other.

If being chased through town, you can usually take cover in a passing St. Patrick’s Day parade – at any time of year.

All beds have special L-shaped cover sheets which reach up to the armpit level on a woman but only to the waist level on the man lying beside her.

The Chief of Police will almost always suspend his star detective – or give him 48 hours to finish the job.

All grocery bags contain at least one stick of French Bread.

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Kerasotes Theaters (Glendale) 5 Buck Club

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Kerasotes Theaters is offering a five dollar club, with a discount card that you can use to see movies for five dollars any time for movies that have been playing at least two weeks.
That’s a pretty nice deal for movies when the regular matinee price is $6.25. And the theater at Glendale is one of my favorites (stadium seating, comfy flip-up arms on the chairs).

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Saved!

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I caught the 2003 movie Saved! this weekend. There was a lot of controversy when it came out because it a comedy that depicts a Christian school in a less-than-flattering way. After watching it, though, it’s clear that the comedic critique in the movie is of hypocrisy, not of Christianity, and of people who pay lip-service to religious beliefs without investing themselves in the spirit of them. And the movie is just hilarious.
It’s the story of Mary, who’s on track to have a have a perfect senior year at her Christian school, what with her membership in a perky Christian pop group, her hot-popular clique of friends, and her handsome, devout Christian figure-skater boyfriend Dean. Until Dean comes out to her, of course. Then she hears what she thinks is a vision from Jesus telling her to save Dean, which she interprets as a command to change his homosexuality by sleeping with him. Silly girl. Of course she does, and of course, he doesn’t. But she gets pregnant as Dean is hauled off to a brainwashing camp for a cure. And suddenly Mary loses not just her boyfriend, but her friends, her pop-group and (temporarily) her faith as well, as she struggles through her senior year with the help of the school’s other outcasts: the lone Jewish girl and her boyfriend the paraplegic.

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Oscar Classic Movies on TCM

Beginning February 1st, Turner Classic Movies will air 360 “Oscar winner and nominee” movies, 3 per evening, until the Academy Awards (which airs March 5th). All of them are uncut and commercial free.

Of course, the criteria to qualify as an “Oscar winner or nominee” is pretty open; they’re not talking all “best picture” noms here, but including any movie that was nominated in any category. Which means that Benji and The Karate Kid are among of the selections. (I will be DVR’ing Benji, because I haven’t seen that in years.)

But there’s more than enough great films to jam up your DVR; see TCM’s list here. It’s a bit frustrating that they don’t have a single page with the complete listings to link to. Entertainment Weekly magazine has a great pull-out page with all the movies, times and air dates.

There are quite a few movies on my “to watch” lists, which is really bad considering it’s also sweeps month and the Olympics will be on, too. Good thing I have this new TV, since I’ll be parked in front of it for all of February.

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Super Size Me

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Stephanie and I finally got a chance to watch Super Size Me tonight. We had DVR’ed it last year, but never got around to watching it, and it deleted itself after awhile.
I knew the basics about the film, and we have already seen most of the first season of 30 Days. But actually seeing it was pretty eye-opening, especially some of the facts and figures. I’m going to record it to tape and keep it to watch again, because I want to go over some of the data in the film.
I’m going to bite the bullet and keep a food journal. I’ve tried that off and on over the years, but I’ve never quite made it stick, because I’d eventually get busy and forget to write stuff down, even when I was on weight watchers. I think that was the part of the WW program that was hardest for me, and what made me eventually give up on it; trying to keep track of what I ate all the time was too tough to manage. We’ll see how far I get this time.

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