I found out about it yesterday afternoon, but didn't know what to say.
Death of Heath Ledger
Covering a Celebrity's Death
It's always tragic to know when someone who's near or at the peak of their game dies unexpectedly. You don't want to see rising stars fall, especially when you don't suspect that there might be something wrong.
I enjoyed Mr. Ledger's movies and looked forward to the challenging roles he would have played had he not died suddenly. I still look forward to seeing him in The Dark Knight. I think he will make an excellent Joker and I'm sad that we won't get to see him in the third installment of Nolan and Bale's Batman incarnation.
I recommend The Four Feathers, Brokeback Mountain, and Monster's Ball. I haven't yet seen Ned Kelly or The Brothers Grimm.
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6 comments:
I would suggest skipping "The Brothers Grimm". Not one of Terry Gilliam's best movies.
As you know, I grew up in Montana, and my dad grew up on a cattle ranch. I've been on a few ranches myself. I'm also liberal and work as an artist and have both gay and lesbian friends.
At the risk of sounding homophobic, I thought Brokeback mountain was pure fantasy. It just made no sense whatsoever to me on so many levels.
I watched an interview with the director on Charlie Rose and I thought he was a nut. He talked about going to Wyoming for a couple of weeks to get a feel for the culture. What a bunch of crap. I just couldn't find any trace of reality in that film. I've tried to blog about this but it always came off wrong.
Nice photography and music however, But that culture doesn't allow for gay cowboys and not even in the closet. I know it well. What I find interesting is that the public swallowed it.
Okay Don.
Ang Lee is a well-respected director; he's won two Golden Lions (the highest prize given at the Venice Film Festival). I enjoyed his adaptation of "Lust, Caution" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was, to date, the highest grossing foreign language film in the United States.
The short story that serves as the source for the movie won an O. Henry Award and the collection of short stories it was published in was a front runner for the Pulitzer for fiction. I haven't read the short story but I've read that the narrative sequence is nearly the same - it's incredibly faithful for a film adaptation.
So if you can't accept the possibility that the "cowboy culture" doesn't allow for men in or out of the closet, you should at least be able to accept that the idea of two gay (or, depending on the interpretation, bisexual) men trying to live in a homophobic society is an interesting conflict to explore in literature and film.
You would think,.. However I just think that Brokeback mountain (the movie) is the result of a lack of understanding of a culture, or the result of placing the values of one culture on another.
All of those awards probably came from the same place that the movie did.
Having said that, I think I could have tweeked the characters to make it somewhat believable. But the characters were stereotyped to the point that it just didn't work.
An interesting concept to explore is different than pulling it off.
I've had a hard time explaining my complaint about Brokeback Mountain and that's why I didn't blog about it. But I feel it is culturally insensitive. It offended me because of that, and not because there were gay cowboys in it.
As far as the director goes, I listened to him for an hour on Charlie Rose. He clearly has issues.
All right Don.
It's okay that you don't agree with me on the artistic merits of a particular film. It's okay that you don't like a film I happened to enjoy. It's okay that you find it acceptable to write off a talented director's accomplishments just because you think he's a kook.
Believe it or not, I feel similarly to the way you feel about "Brokeback Mountain" regarding "Memoirs of a Geisha". But I can put the fantasy and ludicrousness aside to appreciate what I can from the film.
Controversy in film gets people to watch the film and start thinking and talking about whatever issue the film is controversial about. I think that's more important than whether or not the film was exact to life.
I definitely didn't blog about Heath Ledger's death to argue with you about one of his movies. I'm sad that he passed just as his star was rising and he was doing some really interesting stuff artistically. That's regardless of what the coroner's report will say about his death.
Yes, my comments were off point. For that I'm sorry.
It is too bad that he died so young. Tragic when anyone dies young.
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