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Mr. Brownstone
Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 9:33 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 2450
Trish:

Not even in the screen world. The accomplishment that you perceive in Brokeback isn't diminished one iota by its failure to capture the Best Picture Oscar, anymore than Streetcar Named Desire, Cool Hand Luke, Mean Streets, Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Dead Man Walking, etc., etc.
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billyweeds
Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 10:46 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
Mr. Brownstone wrote:
Trish:

Not even in the screen world. The accomplishment that you perceive in Brokeback isn't diminished one iota by its failure to capture the Best Picture Oscar, anymore than Streetcar Named Desire, Cool Hand Luke, Mean Streets, Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Dead Man Walking, etc., etc.


Good point, Tim, and here are some practical examples:

Which movie has been more influential:

The winner The Greatest Show on Earth or the loser High Noon?

The winner Gandhi or the losers E.T. and Tootsie?

The winner How Green Was My Valley or the loser Citizen Kane?

The winner Forrest Gump or the loser Pulp Fiction?

I could go on and on--and on--but you get the point, I think.
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Marc
Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 11:22 am Reply with quote
Joined: 19 May 2004 Posts: 8424
Quote:
If Crash had not beaten the iconic Brokeback Mountain for the Oscar no one would be talking this much about how good or bad it was.


well, yeah.
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shannon
Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 11:30 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 1628 Location: NC
Mr. Brownstone wrote:
Shannon:

"Does this situation (the 2004 presidential election) bear any simularity to the Crash win?"

No. The presidential election has given us more fear, xenophobia, invasions of civil liberties, war, bloated budgets, extension of the Patriot Act, etc., etc. Crash winning an award means Haggis can get a couple more movies greenlit. I would respond to your post with your own retort: Over-react much?


It wasn't a comparison of severity, but of circumstance.
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marantzo
Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 11:34 am Reply with quote
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I agree totally with what Marc posted about Crash and it's shortcomings, but I didn't dislike it as much as he. I haven't seen BBM, but the other three nominations were much better and actually deserved their nomination.
Mr. Brownstone
Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 11:41 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 2450
Gary:

"I haven't seen BBM, but the other three nominations were much better and actually deserved their nomination."


Considering your endorsement & practice of willful ignorance, how are you not a fan of our president?

That being said, that was a pretty funny line.
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shannon
Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 11:55 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 1628 Location: NC
Brokeback Mountain is no Citizen Kane or Pulp Fiction. Nowhere near. It's cultural impact will be ephemeral. It's a very "of the moment" film. (All the nominees save Capote were "of the moment" films. Even Crash would've been "of the moment" back in 1992.) A decade from now people will go back and view Brokeback Mountain and wonder what all the fuss is about. Sure, it'll probably still stand as a good love story, but a dated one. I think some of the anger associated with its loss could be due to the realization that without Best Picture, this cultural impact has been severely squashed. Winning the Best Picture would've cemented its reputation to middle, non-film-buff, America (the people who need to see and accept this film for it to mean anything) who, unlike us, do view the Academy Awards as the end-all and likely don't spend much time on "serious" films without reason (ie "It won an Oscar. It has to be good."). Without the Oscar, Brokeback , to them, looks like the movie "them Hollywood liberals" wanted to win, but wasn't good enough to succeed.
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marantzo
Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 11:59 am Reply with quote
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Mr. Brownstone wrote:
Gary:

"I haven't seen BBM, but the other three nominations were much better and actually deserved their nomination."


Considering your endorsement & practice of willful ignorance, how are you not a fan of our president?

That being said, that was a pretty funny line.



I have recently become a big fan of your president. He's finally achieved what I had predicted he would do in the last election (but was too early with my prediction); The more he spoke, the more votes he would lose. Bless his heart, he is finally validating my faith in the American populous. He is foolishly making speech after speech about the rightness of his Iraq policy and his polls go down after every speech. I love watching him speak. "Keep ridin' that train. You're slow and mundane. Georgie boy, you're giving me just what I need."
Mr. Brownstone
Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 12:03 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 2450
What's amusing to watch is him concede so many other points in an effort to gain political traction, yet still fuck it up.

For example, he addressed the accusation that the administration was tunnel-visioned and unaccepting of outside viewpoints, he invited all of these secretaries of state to a dinner to hear their views on Iraq.

The press was first all congratulatory to Bush, until all the secretaries came out and said, "Yeah, he spent, like 17 minutes with each of us, and didn't really listen to anything we had to say. It was incredibly patronizing."

This guy could fuck up shitting himself.
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Joe Vitus
Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 12:17 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
shannon wrote:
Brokeback Mountain is no Citizen Kane or Pulp Fiction. Nowhere near. It's cultural impact will be ephemeral. It's a very "of the moment" film. (All the nominees save Capote were "of the moment" films. Even Crash would've been "of the moment" back in 1992.) A decade from now people will go back and view Brokeback Mountain and wonder what all the fuss is about. Sure, it'll probably still stand as a good love story, but a dated one. I think some of the anger associated with its loss could be due to the realization that without Best Picture, this cultural impact has been severely squashed. Winning the Best Picture would've cemented its reputation to middle, non-film-buff, America (the people who need to see and accept this film for it to mean anything) who, unlike us, do view the Academy Awards as the end-all and likely don't spend much time on "serious" films without reason (ie "It won an Oscar. It has to be good."). Without the Oscar, Brokeback , to them, looks like the movie "them Hollywood liberals" wanted to win, but wasn't good enough to succeed.


I think this is pretty on-target, especially about the need to cement a mainstream acceptance of the movie.

However, I'm also thinking of Gone With the Wind. The great controversy over "damn" means nothing to us now. Perhaps the uneasiness among the business suits in Hollywood and conservatives in the heartland over a gay love story will be veiwed as "what was the deal?" in a decade or so. Let's hope sooner. But even with the "damn" now a whimper, Gone With the Wind is still considered a well-realized, emmensely satisfying movie, a classic even (of the popular, not the Citizen Kane, variety). Perhaps, for people who want that kind of movie, a similar niche will be found for Brokeback Mountain.

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Syd
Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 6:19 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Brokeback Mountain should do fine on DVD. They'll just slap "Winner of 3 Academy Awards" and list some of the other awards it won. It's a tale of forbidden love, which is a time-honored theme, and it was well-done and got to a lot of people. It's also beautiful to look at. I wanted to go live in the mountains after I saw it, then I saw Grizzly Man and had second thoughts.

Memoirs of A Geisha will get the same sticker, but hopefully people will have the sense to see Brokeback Mountain instead.

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yambu
Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 7:28 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area
Syd wrote:
.....I wanted to go live in the mountains after I saw it, then I saw Grizzly Man and had second thoughts.......
HAH!

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