Equanimity

 
             

   
 
 

Sunday, January 22, 2006

 
Saw Purple Rain and Brokeback Mountain. Text to SFJ: "Apollonia Kotero -- I just didn't know." (SFJ in reply: "And now you do. And will never forget.") ((Miss M hijacking the phone: "Jordan likes her breasts."))

The lesson appears to be: Treat your bandmates well, for they are plagiarizing your crazed father. Wait, no, it's: Women, especially luscious ones, crave sadism. No, that's not it either, it's: Kissing completes a circuit of true erotic hotness.

Schematic relationships, stick figure plotting, genius dialogue ("That's not Lake Minnetonka"), and several unbelievably great performances -- musico-sexual ones, that is. Filing this under "better late than never," and planning to watch it as often as humanly possible.

*

What to say about Brokeback Mountain? I loved everybody in it except Jake Gyllenhaal, whose aging makeup really didn't work, surprise. Never saw anything Ang Lee made before, never having studied with Jim Schamus; another brilliant DP whose narrative sense derives entirely from storyboards.

Preponderance of ass shots -- asses in jeans, asses of cars, thousands of sheep asses -- in the first five or six minutes. Randy Quaid's ass is looking trim. The sex scene reminded me of Spidey Maguire and Charlize Oscar's roll-in-the-grass in Cider House Rules; it lasts as long as Gyllenhaal's rodeo bull ride. It's hot enough; I kept comparing their moments to Keanu and River's in My Own Private Idaho. Ledger and Williams are plausibly sexy in bed.

Advice to the makers: subtitle Heath Ledger. Great slow build -- not sure I'm feeling as much erotic tension in advance of their night together as their whiskey'd leap of love implied, though. And then once they change the game, doesn't the story have to keep accelerating? 134 minutes is a mighty long time. Not 187, but still...

Jordan - #

 

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I'm Jordan Davis.
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Say hi: jordan [at] jordandavis [dot] com.

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