Good God. Sometimes I just can't control myself.

I worked so hard moving the new furniture into my office this afternoon and reorganizing a bit, that I indulged myself in the silliness of creating my own little Brokeback Mountain roundup page after I was done. Mainly so you can find all my Brokeback posts in one place, but I decided to added some links to other things.

And I thought it might be worth creating a little comments page to centralize the Brokeback commentary of people coming by here in one place. I'm not sure anyone but me is actually interested enough yet to comment, but once the promotional machinery starts rolling ahead of U.S. distribution in December, I bet they will be.

So use this post to do it. I'll put add a direct link on my Brokeback Mountain page.

Update:

A few comment threads have now filled up. Check out my Brokeback Mountain page for the latest thread link.

Proof that marketing people can be brilliant, too.

And creative, and insightful.

At least I assume that line--Love is a force of nature--came from a marketing person. It never appears in Annie Proulx's story Brokeback Mountain. But it's the tagline for the film, and captures the it perfectly--assuming "it" the film bears any resemblence to it on the page.

Oh, was I going to refrain from mentioning this movie again today?

OK, so I just sent myself to David Poland's 31 Weeks to Oscar, and man, excited about the films on the platter for the next three months. Don't know when I'll have time to see them all.

I've already been salivating about Capote and Walk the Line, but had no idea that visual genius Terence Malick was back. (If you've never seen Days of Heaven or Badlands, run to the video store with a smile on your face. You have some classics ahead of you. And I thought The Thin Red Line was wonderful too, easily the war movie that should have been nominated that year instead of that awful Saving Private Ryan.)

And it's starring one of my favorite and underrated actors, Colin Farrell--who should have been showered with awards for A Home at the End of the World last year--as well as an interesting subject and an unknown actress, Q'orianka Kilcher, who's supposedly a top contender for an Oscar.

It's called The New World, and here's the synopsis from the studio:

The New World is an epic adventure set amid the encounter of European and Native American cultures during the founding of the Jamestown Settlement in 1607. Inspired by the legend of John Smith (Colin Farrell) and Pocahontas, acclaimed filmmaker Terrence Malick transforms this classic story into a sweeping exploration of love, loss and discovery, both a celebration and an elegy of the America that was…and the America that was yet to come. 

Also excited about seeing Judi Dench team up with one of my fave directors, Stephen Frears, in Mrs. Henderson Presents, about an aging woman launching an all-nude male revue. Heeheehee. Can't wait.

(Especially since Frears seemed to disappear and lose his touch after an incredible string of films like The Grifters and Sammie and Rosie Get Laid (not at all what it sounds like.) And no, I thought Dirty Pretty Things was terrible.

And one of my favorite directors, David Cronenberg has supposedly topped himself in A History Of Violence.

And then there is The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada and Good Night And Good Luck, which I just started hearing about recently.

Unfortunately Scarlett Johnasson is in Match Point, a movie where I can't see getting interested, and I gave up on the director--Woody Allen, sadly--years ago, but then I could watch her in anything.

Now the bad news.

Stephen Spielberg as the frontrunner for best picture. Please. The premise for Munich sounds good, but that jerk is guaranteed to make schmaltz out of it.

And Nathan Lane in The Producers. Blech!

And maybe Memoirs of a Geisha will be great, but I found my brief attempts at the book so distasteful, and Gary Marshall did such a lame, unimaginative job with Chicago, that my hopes are not high.

But the real sadness: David Poland has my hopefully-to-be-beloved Brokeback Mountain a ways down all his lists, including 12th for best picture. Damn!

But those are all going to go way up and down several times before January. And Gold Derby still has it in the top tier for the top awards (actually listed first for picture, though I'm not sure they're supposed to be in precise order).

If we're to believe all the buzz out of the fall film fests, Jake Gyllenhaal is great in Brokeback Mountain, but Heath Ledger is the one really blowing everyone away. 

I would have predicted the opposite, but kinda pleased to hear it, cause Heath's character is really at the heart of the story.

But I've been a huge fan of Jake since Donnie Darko, been expecting more amazing things from him ever since.

And they might be arriving in Jarhead, which is spawning its own heavy buzz about awards for him, though almost no one has actually seen it.

(Don't you just love how that shit works? I guess what that really means is that Hollywood knows Jake is an incredible talent, and should have won all their awards for Donnie Darko off the bat, and certainly should have handed him something by now, so they're just waiting for something weighty enough--whatever that is; but we know what that is--to feel good about giving it to him.

Here is my fave new Oscar predictions site by the way. And David Poland's 31 Weeks to Oscar at Movie City News was the best by far that I could find last year. Let me know if you know of a better one.)

Anyway, between Jake and my fond old memories from my days in the Infantry, I'm really looking forward Jarhead.

Update:

Trailer. Still photos.

Heeheehee.

I think of nothing but those tragic gay cowboys in love, it would seem.

And I think I owe you a post about reading the short story. I think I've got an email around here I've been planning to adapt. Let me go find it.

Meanwhile, gorgeous movie poster and access to the trailer here.

The trailer is heartbreaking enough.

And the more I watch it--everyone who comes by the apt gets to see it; so far they have all insisted on watching it at least a second time--the more I think it's sort of a fitting commentary to the underlying premise of the film that the only two kisses in the preview for a love story between two men show the men kissing women.

Of course these two guys had to destroy the most important thing in their lives trying to hide it. The studio can't even dare not to hide it from most viewers now!

That title feels a bit silly to me now, but I could imagine no other heading when I first envisioned this post two months ago, so I couldn't forgive myself if I committed it now.

Sorry for the delay. So busy.

But I did what Oprah told me this summer, and picked up my beautiful little boxed set of three Faulkners.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in with suggestions on the order to approach them. I decided Oprah's handlers prolly knew what they were doing by leading me into As I Lay Dying out of written sequence, and plunged in there.

Wow.

For about 60 pages, I was annoyed and perplexed. This shit was really confusing, and to what end? Not an insight anywhere in sight, a group of--I'm sorry, but illiterate southern prairiebillies from half a century ago with no original thoughts on their existence, and absolutely no connection whatsoever to my life.

That was embarrassing to admit. Sorry about the bigoted part. Didn't like feeling those things about "dumb southerners," wasn't ready to admit it at the time, but yes, those thoughts were in there, despite having lived a good chunk of my life in the south and finding just as many intelligent people there as I have in the north, east and west (all of which I have lived in.)

Then, somewhere around page 60 I started to get the hang of how to read him--chiefly, that when it suddenly made no sense, that was OK; don't get so damn frazzled that you have to know everything every moment; just read on, and all will be revealed in time, and luckily almost always within a few pages. That ability--and my new-found willingness--to just ride out the confusion and uncertainty actually started to feel exhilarating.

So he stopped being such a royal pain in the ass relatively quickly, but I was still wondering what the payoff was supposed to be.

The exact moment, I don't remember. Really dawned on me gradually. And I'm not even going to try to recount it here. But these people had SO much to enlighten me with. They were uneducated, and a few of them were freaking stupid to boot, but most of them . . . man.

I was just overwhelmed by the insights these people had buried inside them. And the way Faulkner told his story. And the way the story kept twisting and twisting and twisting again. Not the plot, the . . . hmmmmm. Words are failing me. The revelations? Of both style and content, I guess, they way they were woven so intricately and perfectly together.

Every ten pages or so I just gasped, and though, Wow, this alone makes this book extraordinary. And then ten pages later . . .

Have you been watching Charlie Rose all week?

Presumably because of the big UN meeting, he had access to a wealth of foreign leaders, and took full advantage.

At first I thought it was overkill, or at least overload. I heard myself whining Oh not another ferner! around Wednesday. Too much heavy stuff, too many heavy accents to wade through, too much of the unfamiliar.

I use Charlie as radio when I'm cooking, cleaning, puttering, and sometimes I'm in the mood for a little levity. The arts stuff is always appreciated.

And painful as it is to admit, thick foreign accents are not always pleasant to my ears, and it can be wearying to untangle them.

And I didn't, frankly. I kept putting them off, letting them stack up on the Tivo.

So by the time I actually got around to listening to Wednesday's broadcast, I was in a little bit of heaven.

A bit of immersion actually makes the accents go down easier. A lot of it turned out to be initial reluctance.

And lack of the familiar turned into the thrill of the freshness.

Also refreshing to hear a stream of politicians not bullshitting. Prolly cause they weren't playing to their own domestic markets, they were remarkably candid. Of course they still all have agendas--every guest on the show does, from every field--but they're never going to be running for re-election here. About the only hardcore bullshitter of the group was the new Iraqi (president? I've already expunged the memory. Nothing but total unadulterated crap.) Which of all places, is pretty disconcerting to find it.

Most refreshing and enlightening goes to India's finance minister. Really helped open a window for me to a whole new world out there I often forget about in this country. Lots of reflection on both India and China, where more than a third of the planet lives. Amazing how little we think about them.

And I've been to India, I was surrounded by Indians for two years in Kuwait, I had an Indian assistant who I was very close to and and Indian boss for a year, it's not like these people are new to me. But so easy to let them slip away.