Gene Shalit has been the Today show film critic for 31 years now, not because he has anything particularly insightful to say, but because it's fun to look at a man in permanent Groucho nose glasses every morning. But Shalit's bizarre Brokeback Mountain review yesterday has revealed a dark side to Bozo the Pringles Guy that none of us could ever have anticipated. An exerpt:
Behold the topical M bius strip birthed from our pal Towleroad's inspired word and image juxtaposition: The melancholic catchphrase of one of the year's most admired movies, poised above the American icon that movie purpotedly subverts, who in turn are merely Madison Ave. constructs whose sole cynical aim is to sell us on an addiction far deadlier than forbidden cowpoke love. Result: the mind folds in on itself in a moment of purely "made in the USA" meta social critique. Nice!
Today's SAG award nominations offer yet another suggestive nudge to any waffling Academy members who still aren't sure if they should check off the "gay cowboy movie in all categories" box at the top of their Oscar ballots. Brokeback Mountain, a heartbreaking story of doomed cowboy love, or, alternately, a hilarious comedy about the lengths women will go to to delude themselves into thinking they aren't married to a gay guy, took four nominations, including best actor for Heath Ledger and best cast.
Apologies to anyone who may have already been obsessively tracking the auction of this absolutely breathtaking "Double Oscar" statue commemorating the fine gay cowboy performances of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, but we felt an obligation to take a moment to bask in its golden glory. Like the traditional Oscar, the Brokeback Mountain version has no conspicuously jutting male genitalia, but in a vast evolutionary leap over the Academy's iconic award, this one actually plays the soundtrack from the movie. (Warning: so does the auction page. Loudly. Or at least something that sort of sounds like the soundtrack.) And should Ledger's more celebrated, mumbly turn win him some hardware, this much improved prototype would remind the actor that he couldn't have made it to the podium without the love and support of his co-star.
The critics have gone on a fishing trip with cowboy-on-cowboy three-bandanna weeper Brokeback Mountain, but we reckon there ain't much fishing going on. Its accolades have been so unanimous, the buzz around Hollywood (where Hollywood = Reuters and The Envelope) is that Brokeback has now become far and away the one to beat for Best Picture at this year's Oscars:
· King Kong takes in a "respectable" $63.4 million at the international box office over the weekend, while the fourth Harry Potter seemingly mocks the ape by becoming the 20th film to cross the $700 million mark. [Variety]
· West Wing writers face a daunting task after John Spencer's sudden death, not helped by the fact that his character was featured in a flash-forward sequence taking place three years in the future earlier this season. (Correction: According to people who actually watch the show, Spencer's character didn't appear in the flash-forward, which apparently would've cause all manner of spoiler problems. We regret passing along faulty information.) [THR]
· Amazing! Even in limited release, Brokeback Mountain just might be succeeding with some non-gays! [Variety]
· Doomed third circle of development hell project Watchmen is picked up by Warner Bros, who likely will torture fans of the comic book with the prospect of production before ultimately stuffing it head-first into a hole with some disgraced popes. [THR]
· The Academy snubs Sin City in its visual FX nominations, which we believe was payback for Jessica Alba playing a stripper but showing nary a nipple. [Variety]
Call it Dawson's Curse: wherever they are, ex-cast members of Dawson's Creek are haunted by the Question. No setting is too inappropriate: Joshua Jackson was asked in a public men's room. Now Michelle Williams, under the auspices of a Newsweek interview about her performance in Brokeback Mountain, once again falls victim to its pernicious prying:
Blogger not only but also was the lucky recipient of the Brokeback Mountain swag pictured above, a cleverly subversive piece of promotional merchandise. For straight audiences, the item is merely a bandanna: classic, simple and western, and thus highly evocative of the movie itself. But for The Gays, a colored bandanna means one thing: the Hanky Code (arguably NSFW), a comprehensive fetish classification system based entirely on spectral differentiation. It's sort of like the Department of Homeland Security's Color-Coded Threat Level System, only in place of terrorism alertness, you're measuring inclination towards fistfucking.
It seems no awards season news can begin without a discussion of gay cowboy fireside tale Brokeback Mountain. Early this morning, Brokeback piled up seven Golden Globe nominations, with best drama, best director, and best actor nods among them. But the Hollywood Foreign Press quite callously split up the movie's heartsick cowpokes, celebrating sensitive monosyllabic mumbler Heath Ledger while snubbing dreamy-eyed, bull-riding (SPOILER ALERT!) bottom Jake Gyllenhaal. It seems that even the Globes are conspiring to keep these star-crossed lovers apart.
Our nation's film critics are commendably proficient at arriving at year-end localized consensus, not so much when it comes to scattering the news. As their God-like pronouncements of 2005's most deserving motion picture achievements continue to tumble forth, we bring you part two of our awards round-up:
· The Boston Society of Film Critics hop on the tastefully decorated bandwagon and give Brokeback Mountain the film that artfully reminded us of the tender cowboy love currently missing from our bleak lives the year's top honor, with Ang Lee's contribution acknowledged as best director. A shut-out Steven Spielberg spends the day shaking his head and repeating to himself, "Assassins don't win Oscars. Sad cowboys win Oscars." Reese Witherspoon picks up a best actress nod for her work in Walk the Line, but Joaquin Phoenix is again snubbed, losing to what is quickly looking to be this year's Best Actor frontrunner, Philip Seymour Hoffman.
· The trades react to the sad news that Richard Pryor died of a heart attack on Saturday. Var calls him "groundbreaking," and "talented and tormented," while THR reminds us that Pryor nabbed $4 million for the awful Superman 3. [Variety, THR]
· Paramount will try to defray the cost of Friday's impulse-buy (when Brad Grey sees something he likes in a store window, money is no object!) of DreamWorks by flipping the studio's 59 title live-action library to a third party for $1 billion. [Variety]
· The WB benefits from Friday's bombshell Paramount/DreamWorks announcement, pink-slipping about 20 network workers while everyone was worrying about how much richer Steven Spielberg and David Geffen were about to get. [THR]
· Brokeback Mountain and Memoirs of a Geisha set limited release box office record. The gay cowboys wrangled $108,910 per theater, while the controversially Chinese geishas did $84,194 per. [Variety]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, British Import Edition, Part XXIV: Fox greenlights a pilot for The Worst Week of My Life, based on a BBC series about a "hellacious" week (read: wackiness ensues!) before a couple's wedding. [THR]
The first critics association awards were announced this weekend, widely considered to be Oscar barometers, up until the actual Oscars when we are reminded annually that the Academy is looking less for critical achievement, more for films exhibiting what best could be described as an inherent "Ron Howardness." A round-up of the nominees and winners thusfar:
· The Los Angeles Film Critics Association names Brokeback Mountain, the shattering film that flipped over and spittle-diddled our hearts, Best Picture. Ang Lee, who went to comic book villain extremes in his quest for cowboy-love-thwarting realness, is recognized for the effort with a Best Director nod. Philip Seymour Hoffman's uncanny kazoo-voiced transformation into Truman Capote won him Best Actor, while Best Actress went to Vera Farmiga in Down to the Bone, which in turn wins the LAFCA its own award: Best Recognition of a Performance No One Has Seen.
· The New York Film Critics Online go with Defamer repeat viewing favorite The Squid and the Whale for Best Picture, and the curveballs keep flying from there: Best Director, Fernando Meirelles for The Constant Gardener; Best Actress, Keira Knightley for Pride & Prejudice. The only non-surprise goes to Hoffman for Best Actor.
This just in: blogger The Gilded Moose is, as we speak, liveblogging Bruce Vilanch that's right, Hollywood Square Bruce Vilanch, the man who puts the 'did she just say that?!' in Whoopi Goldberg's Oscar-hosting monologues as he takes in an afternoon screening of Brokeback Mountain at the Grove. The updates, so far:
Alec Baldwin is hosting Saturday Night Live for the 12th time tomorrow night, perhaps the only man who can make a Boy Scout molestation sketch funny ("I ll tell you a truth, canteen boy! You know what I hate? Underpants!"). The NY Times celebrates this SNL milestone, which ties him with John Goodman and puts both just behind lucky 13 Steve Martin, by spending some time with the actor as he prepares for the show. It appears the SNL writers have once again (quite literally) tapped comedy gold by placing Baldwin in a rugged environment to get his man-sex groove on:
For two glorious sentences, we thought that the NY Times just might be using a Brokeback Mountain review to launch the initial installment of a major daily newspaper's first-ever serialized erotic novel:
· The LAT gives some front-page Calendar section love to "Peggy Archer," the pseudonymous set-dwelling. lighting-tech troublemaker behind the Totally Unauthorized blog, one of our favorites.
· "Listen here, Mr. Dreamy Eyes, I don't care if Heath didn't brush his teeth this morning. Plug your nose and kiss that cowboy like your life depends on it! I'm gonna get that Oscar nomination even if it makes your damn lips fall off."
· "'I went through some very lonely times,' the King Kong star said while promoting the movie. 'I spent a lot of time in my car crying my eyes out. One night, I drove along thinking, maybe I’ll take a left here, over the cliff, because I can’t take it any more.'” Then Naomi Watts remembered that was just a scene from Mulholland Drive, not her real life, and everything was fine again.
· Kirsten Dunst turned out for Saturday's USC-UCLA massacre.
· Leonardo DiCaprio produces a film about global warming, finally attains the coveted media honorific "actor-activist."
If you were a bird soaring high above a movie premiere, you might notice a pattern in the seemingly random seat assignments beneath you. (You would also quickly be shot down by a PR woman's handpistol; no feathered squawker's gonna interrupt the flow of her big night!) The WOW Report provides this helpful visual guide to Brokeback Mountain's premiere seating cartography; note everything starts at the Jake Pole and spreads outward in concentric circles of descending celebrity significance, resulting in a Hollywood social-hierarchy dart board of sorts.
Once again (and this one really stings), our fancy Hollywood premiere invitation appears to have been pilfered by the mailman, as we spent a night on the couch ignoring some Barbara Walters special instead of enjoying the open-bar-and-finger-food largesse of the Brokeback Mountain premiere in Westwood. (Yes, the untold thousands of dollars in secret studio kickbacks we've been getting for chronicling every gay cowboy-related sound-bite of the past six or so months are great, but sometimes it's nice not to feel like a discarded whore, you know?) Luckily, a Defamer operative took copious mental notes on the festivities, sharing this quite detailed report with us and somehow reducing the pain of not greedily devouring free crab cakes in the general vicinity of Lupe Ontiveros:
With Brokeback Mountain's premiere just around the corner, its producers are delighted that co-stars Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams fell in love on the set, providing a welcome counterpoint to all the "gay cowboy movie" talk. To thank his leading man, producer James Schamus kick-starts Ledger's public re-heteroization:
The countdown has begun to Brokeback Mountain, the movie that will test the outer man-on-man tolerance limits of even the most admiring of Ang Lee's straight, male cineaste fanbase. Much is made in the current Newsweek of the, for lack of a better term, balls-out content of the Jake Gyllenhaal-Heath Ledger gay cowboy love story, and how that will play in Gay Pride Parade-free Peoria. But nothing would divert the filmmakers from the message this story set out to tell, not even in its marketing:
