Cowboy, Take Me Away

Brokeback Mountain

Director: Ang Lee

Cast: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, Randy Quaid, Kate Mara, Linda Cardellini, Anna Faris

Released: December 9, 2005

Viewed in theaters: January 10, 2006

Oscar nominations:

Best Picture (lost to Crash (UGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!))

Best Director - Ang Lee (won)

Best Actor - Heath Ledger (lost to Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote)

Best Supporting Actor - Jake Gyllenhaal (lost to George Clooney for Syriana)

Best Supporting Actress - Michelle Williams (lost to Rachel Weisz for The Constant Gardener)

Best Adapted Screenplay - Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana (won)

Best Cinematography (lost to Memoirs of a Geisha) 

Best Original Score - Gustavo Santaolalla (won)

If you've read my review of Crash and watched the last video I posted in this entry, then you know how much I absolutely hate that effing Crash won the Best Picture Oscar over Brokeback Mountain at the 2006 Oscars. And a lot of people feel the same way as me. I want to quote an excerpt from a tome I have called "85 Years of the Oscars" by Robert Osbourne when discussing the 2006 Oscar ceremony:

It was one of the biggest surprise endings in many years.

 The film the press regarded as most likely to score a triumph in the top spot 

[at the 78th Oscar ceremony] was the one that had been

universally praised since its debut, then voted best by the

Producers Guild, BAFTA, and numerous other 

prize-giving organizations. It was

Brokeback Mountain, a poignant tale

by director Ang Lee about the angst-filled

romantic relationship of two cowboys.

But Jack Nicolson's reaction when he opened the envelope

to announce the winner said it all: Crash

Whoa!

Everyone knows that Brokeback Mountain is by far the more superior film. The fact that Crash won the Best Picture Oscar over it, let alone that it was even nominated, is embarrassing! Unfortunately, a lot of Academy voters are older white men who don't always agree with the gay lifestyle and a lot of voters probably didn't even want to give Brokeback a chance. Which is really sad. Believe me, when this film came out, there were a few people I came across who were all, "Eww! That's gross! They're making out!" Of course, I live in Nebraska :::rolls eyes::: Uh, first of all, who doesn't want to see Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal make out? I'd pay money to see that..and I did! But seriously, it's sad (and kind of pathetic) how afraid of this movie some people were of it. Do they really think they'll turn gay or something if they watch two guys kissing each other? I adore this movie so, so much and it makes me sad that people refuse to see it because of the subject matter. It has been ten years since its been released and hopefully people who didn't want to see it back then have changed their minds and given it a chance.

Spoilers ahoy and if you haven't seen this movie yet, you are missing out!

Can we just take a second and applaud Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal for their brilliant portrayals of Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist? I feel like a lot of heterosexual actors would not have taken on these roles as they would probably be uncomfortable with having to kiss or portray onscreen sex with another man, so I think it was pretty brave (and smart, in the end) for Ledger and Gyllenhaal to take the roles of the gay cowboys. Let's not forget they were only in their early 20s when they made this movie. It was a big risk and if done wrongly, this movie could have turned out horribly, but luckily they had Ang Lee at the helm. Thank God he won Best Director. Fun fact: he is the first non-white person to win the Oscar for Best Director. I can't imagine Brokeback Mountain with any other director or actors (though it would have been pretty amusing if Matt Damon and Ben Affleck had signed on!) 

The movie spans nearly 20 years, starting in 1963 when Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) and Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) meet that summer on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming after being hired by a man named Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid) to herd hundreds of sheep through the mountains. We see them talking about their families, sitting around the campfire and eating beans, and bitching about their boss. And then after a drunken rainy night, Jack tells Ennis, who is sleeping outside in the cold and rain, to get in the tent and we all know what happens next! As my mom would say, Oh, my! At first Ennis is not having any of Jack's advances, but he is the one to, ahem, take control of the situation. The next morning is a bit awkward and they spend the entire day apart from each other until the end of the day when Ennis returns to camp and tells Jack that this was a one-time thing they did and he isn't queer and Jack replies that "It's nobody's business but ours" and that he's not queer either. They continue their strong friendship and sexual relationship on Brokeback until Aguirre suspects something going on between the two of them when he spies on them with his binoculars and sees them frolicking together with their shirts off and cuts their summer short.

The two say goodbye without any fanfare. There is no hugging or even a handshake. They just have a short conversation about what they'll do for the rest of the summer, then walk off in different directions. We see Jack in his truck looking like he's trying to hold back tears and we see Ennis go in an alleyway and start punching a wall and crying out. It is a very powerful scene.

Ennis marries his fiancee, Alma (Michelle Williams), who he told Jack about and they have two daughters, Alma Junior and Jenny. Meanwhile, Jack moves to Texas where he meets a rodeo queen named Lureen (Anne Hathaway), the daughter of a wealthy man who sells large farming equipment. She is a very forward woman ("What are you waiting for, cowboy? A mating call?") and they marry and have a son.

Ennis and Jack continue their romantic trysts in secret only seeing each other about once a year, which does not make Jack happy, but Ennis tells him he isn't able to get away with work and he is afraid of someone finding out about his secret. Jack wants him to drop everything and leave Alma and his daughters and have them run a farm together, but Ennis tells him there's no way that's going to happen because two guys living together could mean a death sentence for the both of them. He tells Jack a story of two guys who lived together when he was a kid and one of them was brutally killed and how his father took him and his older brother to see the man's mutilated body. He said for all he knew, it could have been his dad who killed this man which is terrifying. Ennis doesn't do a very good job of keeping his secret from his wife, however, when he receives news that Jack will be in town and this will be the first time in four years Ennis will have seen him since that summer on Brokeback Mountain. He tells Alma that Jack is an old fishing buddy (obviously "fishing" is code for something else!) and when he sees Jack, he can hardly contain his excitement and they aggressively kiss...right in front of the door where Alma can see them...which she does! Her expression is one of shock, betrayal, and hurt. Michelle Williams' best scene in the movie is when she confronts Ennis many years later, after they have divorced, that she knew he never went fishing because she tied a note to the end of his fishing pole telling him to bring home some fish and when he came back and she asked if he caught any fish and he said he did. She knew he was lying because he obviously never read the note and discovered the note was still tied to the pole and it had never been used. And of course this is when we get the famous, "Jack Twist? Jack Nasty!" line. 

I've seen this film five times now (I own the DVD) and I read the short story by Annie Proulx (and it really is short, about 30 pages) about five years ago. While most movies adapted from novels have to take out scenes, they added scenes in Brokeback such as the Thanksgiving scene, and the scene with Ennis and his daughter at the end. They also added the characters played by Linda Cardellini and Anna Faris. All the well-known lines from the film (you know the ones!) are taken from the text. As I mentioned earlier, I can't imagine anyone else but Heath and Jake playing Ennis and Jack, though they were probably a little too good-looking as the two main characters are described as being plain old Joes. I mean, yes, they're dowdy in the movie and there's nothing glamorous about them, but I wouldn't mind sitting between them around the campfire, just saying! 

Whenever I watch the movie, I always notice a few things I hadn't noticed previously. For instance, the scene when Ennis and Jack are saying good-bye to each other after spending some, uh, quality time on Brokeback, Ennis says something about losing his shirt up there and Jack just mumbles something. Well, of course, we know Jack took the shirt because Ennis finds it in his closet at the end of the movie. (Another great scene). That had flown over my head until now. I also never noticed that Jack never calls Ennis by his name (except at the beginning when they introduce themselves to each other), just calls him "friend". I had especially noticed that when reading the story. Something new I learned recently is about the phone conversation Ennis and Lureen have towards the end of the movie after Ennis receives a postcard back that he sent to Jack with "DECEASED" stamped on it (what a gut punch!) and he calls Lureen to ask what happened. Lureen tells him that he was pumping a tire and it blew up and knocked him unconscious and he drowned in his own blood. While she's saying this, we see an image of Jack being brutally murdered by three guys, either what really happened or what Ennis imagined to have really happened. On a podcast I listened to (there I go again with the podcasts!), I learned that Anne Hathaway had to do two takes of this scene: one where the tire story is true and one where it isn't and Ang Lee sliced together both of them to make the final cut. Very interesting. And very tragic. My take has always been that Lureen knew about Jack's secret life and was lying to Ennis about his death and she knew the real reason how he died.

The relationship between Ennis and Jack is a tricky one and having seen the movies five times and read the story once, this is my own assessment of the two characters: first of all, I don't think of them as being gay or bisexual because I don't think they would label themselves as either one, though technically they would be bisexual since they were both married (and had children) to women. I read somewhere that someone said that Ennis is more toward the straight side of being bisexual while Jack is the opposite and I agree. While Jack was willing to divorce his wife and start a life with Ennis, Ennis did seem to care about Alma and was aware of the consequences if he and Jack shacked up together. He was paranoid that people knew about his secret and even after he was divorced from his wife, he found companionship (for a very short time) in another woman, Cassie (Cardellini). Jack was the only male he had a relationship with, whereas with Jack there's the scene where he attempts to buy a beer for the rodeo clown (before he even met Lureen), the scene where he's in Mexico attempting to fill his void, so to speak, and the scene with Lashawn's (Faris) husband where he hints at them going to his boss's cabin together. Obviously Jack had been with other men. Fun fact: the actor who played that guy is David Harbour whose name I instantly recognized it when I saw it in the credits because I had just watched him in as the police chief in Stranger Things. 

Now, here's the big question: who knew about their relationship? Obviously, Alma did since she saw them making out on her front lawn. And as I mentioned earlier, I think Lureen had a good idea too. Also, Lureen's father made that comment to his son-in-law during the Thanksgiving scene when he states that his grandson should watch football and be a man, as though he's making a jab at Jack. And David Harbour's character must have known or I doubt he would have made an advance on Jack. And I'm pretty sure Jack's parents had an idea, especially his mother, when Ennis went to visit them after their son died. Hmmm, interesting that all the people who I suspect knew about them (Alma notwithstanding) are all a part of Jack's life/storyline. This makes sense though, since he was the one who was more ready to admit to their relationship. I guess he didn't keep the secret as well as Ennis did. 

The aging of the main characters over twenty years' time was done subtly with changes to hair styles (and a little gray) and make up to add wrinkles. Okay, maybe Anne Hathaway's blonde hair wasn't so subtle, but I was willing to believe Heath as Kate Mara's dad, even though she was born four years after him. She plays teen Alma Junior.  

Watching this movie always make me feel so sad. Not just because it has a tragic ending (and even if Jack hadn't died, I don't think those two would have ever had their happy ending), but just seeing Heath Ledger. He was so good in this; his performance is very subtle and quiet. He gets a lot of praise for his performance as the Joker, which he was brilliant as, of course, and won the Oscar for, but I feel like some people forget this performance because it wasn't as epic or the movie wasn't as big as The Dark Knight. But just the fact that he could take on two completely different roles and just own them is a testament about what a great actor he was and it's such a shame we'll never see what else he could have done. I've mentioned numerous times how much I adored Heath Ledger (I was a total fangirl at first (what can I say? I'm a sucker for Australian accents!), but then when Brokeback rolled around, I realized he was actually a pretty good actor and began to actually respect him an an actor). There have been plenty of celebrity deaths I've been very saddened about and got choked up over, but his was the one that got to me the most. I was in a state of shock when I found and I cried every night for two weeks after he died. It is also bittersweet watching him and Michelle Williams together, since they had a daughter named Matilda who turns eleven next month. Eleven! Where did the time go? 

To take this review full circle, let me just add one last thing (and continue my bitching): five, ten, twenty years from now, nobody is going to remember anything about Crash. But whether if people have seen it or not, like what it stands for or not, they'll at least remember Brokeback Mountain. Oh, sure, some might refer to it as the "gay cowboy movie" (and yes, I love the movie, but trust me, I make stupid Brokeback jokes all the time), but I think in the long run this movie will have longevity. Hell, if somebody ever asks me what movie won the Oscar for '05, I'm going to tell them it was Brokeback. And I'll bet you they'll believe me! Okay, from now on, in my mind, Brokeback Mountain is 2005's Best Picture Winner.

There are about 100 songs that remind me of this movie, so I made this clip video and narrowed it down to two songs! And it is no coincidence that both songs feature the word "cowboy"! Speaking of which, how great is the (Oscar winning!) score by Gustavo Santaolalla? It is instantly recognizable. 

I wish I knew how to quit you, Brokeback Mountain! 

Reviews of 2012 Best Picture nominees

I haven't seen all nine of them, but here are reviews of the movies up for Best Picture this year that I have seen.

Life of Pi (viewed in theaters December 10, 2012)

Director - Ang Lee

This review does contain spoilers.

Oscar nominations:

Best Picture

Best Director - Ang Lee

Best Adapted Screenplay - David Magee

Best Cinematography 

Best Editing

Best Score - Mychael Danna

Best Song - "Pi's Lullaby"

Best Visual Effects 

Best Sound Editing

Best Sound Mixing

Best Production Design

This is one of my favorite books (I read it in 2006) and Ang Lee is one of my favorite directors - I really love Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and now you can add Life of Pi! I really loved this movie - it's my second favorite movie of the year at the moment. It's about an Indian family who own a zoo and move to Canada for a better life. They take a ship to, ahem, ship all the animals. There's a horrible storm and Pi, the sixteen year old protagonist finds himself alone on a life raft after he's lost his entire family and everyone else who was on the ship. He's not exactly alone, though. A zebra, hyena, and orangutang are also on the boat. And, unbeknownst to Pi for quite a while, the full-grown Siberian tiger named Richard Parker (the tiger's name got confused with the name of the guy who sold it to them) is under the half of the boat that is covered by a tarp. I would have been scared you-know-what-less if I had been in Pi's position. There's a scene where the hyena starts attacking the zebra (who was wounded in the storm) and Pi starts hitting it with an oar. I wouldn't want the zebra to be killed by the hyena (which it was and amazingly the carcass was dumped into the ocean pretty early (not shown) - you think Pi would keep it around so the tiger could eat it instead of thinking about going after him!), but I also would have felt bad if I had to toss the hyena into the ocean (if I could). But let's be honest: if I was in this situation (or anyone, probably), I would be dead within five minutes. It's not long before all the animals are killed by another animal and the tiger and Pi are the only ones left. Pi makes a smaller liferaft that he attaches to the boat and steals the cans of food under the tarp whenever Richard Parker is sleeping and he has the chance. It's been awhile since I've read the book, but I thought the movie did a good job of following the book and I remembered certain things, the island for one. As the movie progresses, Pi is able to get into the boat with Richard Parker. The tiger (not a real one for obvious reasons, but looks very real) becomes an emotional part of the story and you start to root for him to have a happy ending as well as Pi. The movie ends with an interesting question when Pi tells what happened when he is rescued. He tells the authorities what happened and they don't believe he was in a boat with a tiger and the other animals, so he tells them that he was instead with his mother and two other people who we meet on the ship, so it's up to the audience to interpret what really happened. I saw this movie in 2-D because I hate 3-D, but now I kinda wish I had seen it in 3-D. The movie was atheistically stunning and pleasing to the eye. It is by far the most gorgeous movie of this year; it is truly a work of art! 

Les Miserables  (viewed in theaters December 29, 2012)

Director  - Tom Hooper

Oscar nominations:

Best Picture

Best Actor - Hugh Jackman

Best Supporting Actress - Anne Hathaway

Best Costume Design

Best Make -Up

Best Original Song - "Suddenly"

Best Production Design

Best Sound Mixing

You know when you see a movie that totally moves you, mesmerizes you, and just captures you in awe and it becomes one of your favorite movies for the rest of your life and when it comes up in conversations, you tell everyone how much you love that movie and they need to see it and when they do, they thank you for suggesting that they watch it because it moved and mesmerized them and captured their heart as well? You know what I'm talking about, right? We all have a few movies that do this to us. Les Mis....is not one of those movies! Sorry to get your hopes up if you did like this movie! I wanted to like this movie, I really did. I had never read the book or seen the musical and knew nothing about the story (besides it was obviously depressing), but I was so bored throughout most of it. Everyone did a great job with the singing and the cinematography was gorgeous - I loved when Notre Dame was in the background. The only scenes I really liked were Helena Bonham Carter and Sasha Baron Cohen singing "Master of the House" - that was definitely the most liveliest song!; any scene with the little kid - I thought he was a hoot (to bad he died...) and Anne Hathaway singing "I Dreamed a Dream" Dreadfully boring song, but I gotta give her props..she was singing and acting at the same time and she is amazing. She has snot running down her nose, her face is blotched, and she has this hideous short cropped hair, and she brings it! If she wins the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, I would not be disappointed. If Les Mis won the Best Picture Oscar, I would be very disappointed. With an exception of a couple songs, I found most of the songs to be not that memorable. I knew this was a musical going in (duh), but I thought it was the kind of musical where they talk, sing a song, talk, sing a song - you know, like Chicago. But not in this movie! No, they sing every single line. EVERY SINGLE LINE! EVERY. SINGLE. DAMN. LINE. And this movie is two and a half hours. And this movie moves at a S-L-OOOOO-W pace. It was excruciating for me to watch. I haven't seen Lincoln, Amour, or Beasts of the Southern Wild yet (I'll check those out on DVD), but I'm pretty confident when I do see them, Les Mis will be my least favorite Best Picture nominee! 

Django Unchained (viewed in theaters January 14, 2013)

Director - Quentin Tarantino

Oscar nominations:

Best Picture

Best Supporting Actor - Christoph Waltz

Best Original Screenplay - Quentin Tarantino

Best Cinematography 

Best Sound Editing

Very slight spoilers! 

If I were to watch a Quentin Tarantino movie without knowing it was a Quentin Tarantino movie, I'm pretty confident I would be able to tell it was directed by him because he has such a distinct way of directing his films. I think that's what makes his films so much fun to watch - they give a little nod and wink to the audience. The way he uses different camera shots, the way he pays homage to other movies, and even the way his credits are - it's all very Tarantino-esque. Oh, and you can always tell by the language and amount of violence! This movie is pretty heavy in both aspects. There is A LOT of blood in this movie. By people getting shot, by people beating the crap out of each other, and one guy gets mauled by dogs, but mostly by people getting shot. It seems Tarantino has lately been interested in playing around with world history. His last movie, Inglorious Basterds, was set during World War II and he sort of changed the way Hitler died - just a tad! This movie is set during pre-Civil War when slavery was abound in the South. Jamie Foxx plays Django (the D is silent!), a slave who is given his freedom with the help of a German dentist/bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz (played by Austrian actor, Christoph Waltz). They set out to rescue Django's wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) who knows German, so it's easy to track her down since she's the only slave woman who knows German. She works for Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), the villain of the film. Samuel L. Jackson rounds out the cast as Calvin Candie's best confident and he plays an older man and he is absolutely great. He provides a lot of humor and yet he's very sinister. Even though I haven't seen all the Best Picture nominees, this movie is most definitely the most violent out of all of them...and probably the funniest! I laughed quite a bit at some scenes. The KKK scene was hilarious. Only Tarantino could make a scene involving the KKK hilarious. I loved the scene where Django and King visit Don Johnson's character, Big Daddy (they call him "Big Daddy" because he's big!) and after he learns that Djanog is a free man, he tells one of his female servants, "Make you you don't treat Django like a slave now!" and she says,"Should I treat him like a white man!" and he goes, "No!" and she says, "Well, how am I suppose to treat him, then?" It was just really funny how it was done and I found myself laughing quite a few times during the film. It's a very gorgeous film as well and I can see why it's nominated for Best Cinematography. The use of the landscape is beautiful, especially when they were on a plantation in Tennessee. I'm not a tree expert, so I don't know what they were, but there were these huge trees with hanging foliage (not weeping willows) that were really pretty. Christoph Waltz steals this movie (and is the best part along with Sam Jackson) and although he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, he was more co-leads with Foxx. He is not in the last third of the movie and I noticed that once he was gone the movie dragged on a bit. Of course, the movie, which is about 2 hours and 40 minutes, could have easily been trimmed down by 30 minutes. There's a scene with Quentin Tarantino and it was just really random. It almost felt like he was filling in for another actor who was suppose to play that part that didn't show up on the set that day - it was just so out of place! Plus he has an Australian accent which makes it even more weird. Quentin Tarantino asked Will Smith to be Django, but he declined and I wish he hadn't because I think he would have made a way better Django than Jamie Foxx, who is fine, but I think Will would have been very dynamic...I would have loved to see what he would do with the role. 

Silver Linings Playbook (viewed in theaters January 21, 2013)

Director - David O. Russell

Oscar nominations:

Best Picture

Best Director -  David O. Russell

Best Actor - Bradley Cooper

Best Actress - Jennifer Lawrence

Best Supporting Actor - Robert De Niro

Best Supporting Actress - Jackie Weaver

Best Adapted Screenplay - David O. Russell

Best Editing

This is an unconventional romantic comedy. Bradley Coooper (who would have ever thought that  good ol' Will Tippin would ever be nominated for an Oscar?) is Pat, a guy who has just been released from being in a mental institution for almost a year after he caught his high-school teacher wife with another teacher in the shower and beat him up. His wife divorced him and has put a restraining order on him and has moved and Pat is working to get her back because he wants to prove to her that he's changed. Jennifer Lawrence plays Tiffany, the sister-in-law of one of Pat's friends. Her husband was killed in an accident and she got fired from her job. Pat and Tiffany meet when they both have dinner at Pat's friend's house and from there they begin an interesting relationship. Since Tiffany's sister knows Pat's ex-wife, she tells him that if she writes a letter, she could find a way to give it to her, but says if she does this, she wants something in return and wants Pat to join a dance competition with her, something she's always wanted to do with her husband. It's a very charming movie and Robert De Niro and Jackie Weaver are great as Pat's parents. (And I just realized that this is the second time Cooper and De Niro have worked together - they were also in Limitless). 

Zero Dark Thirty (viewed in theaters January 28, 2013)
Director - Kathryn Bigelow

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture
Best Actress - Jessica Chastain
Best Original Screenplay - Mark Boal
Best Editing
Best Sound Editing

This is about the search and capture of Osama Bin Laden. The movie starts in 2003 (after a little prologue of 9/11) and ends at his capture which I'm sure we all remember that Sunday night in May of 2011 when Obama came on our TVs for a special report. Jessica Chastain plays Maya, the CIA agent who had a big hand in finding the compound Bin Laden was hiding at in Pakistan. As she told the CIA director (played by James Gandolfini) who asked her who she was, she replied with, "I'm the mother****er who found that place." She's very bad-ass, but not in a Sarah Connor/Lara Croft kind of way. She's badass in a realistic way and I would love to see Chastain win the Oscar. Bigelow was definitely snubbed of a directing Oscar - I liked this movie more than The Hurt Locker, which she won for. It's interesting that this is up for an Original Screenplay when it's based on true events. I guess they didn't use a book to write this, but used other sources? I really liked the guy who played Dan, Maya's partner during the first half of the film. I had never seen him in anything before and it turns out he's Australian in real life. There are a few torture scenes in the movie (being an avid fan of 24, I'm used to watching them - the things they did on 24 were worse than what they do in this movie!) At first Maya is very uncomfortable watching them, but then as the years pass, she is not shy to use it as a tactic to get information. Jennifer Ehle plays another CIA agent who works with Maya and she has found a huge lead with someone she thinks can lead them to Bin Laden. She and some others are supposed to meet him and you just know things are not going to end well. I kept gripping my seat waiting for a bomb to explode. Even though I knew what happens in the end and that they get the bad guy, I still felt a little jumpy when the Seal Team 6 invaded the compound they had reason to believe Bin Laden was at. They had no visual confirmation that he was there, but they strongly believed it could be him because there was a male that never left the compound at all. They had no way to see if it was him because they didn't want to spook him in running to a new location. Chris Pratt plays one of the Seal Team 6 members and it was a bit humorous to think of Andy from Parks and Rec going to kill Osama Bin Laden. The movie is two and a half hours - it's exactly the same length as Les Miserables, 157 minutes. But while Les Mis was excruciatingly long - it felt like it would never end!, Zero Dark Thirty did not feel like that at all - it went by pretty quickly. If you can make a two and a half hour movie and make it not feel long, then more power to you! It does a good job of keeping you interested and has a nice flow.

And here is my review of Argo.

My first post!

Welcome to my very first post of my movie blog! Let's get started, shall we?

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo hu cang long)

Director: Ang Lee

Cast: Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Ziyi Zhang

Released: 12/22/00

Viewed in theaters: 3/17/01

Oscar nominations:

Best Picture (lost to Gladiator)

Best Director - Ang Lee (lost to Steven Soderbergh for Traffic)

Best Adapted Screenplay - Hui-Ling Wang, James Schamus, and Kuo Jang Tsai (lost to Stephen Graghan for Traffic)

Best Art Direction (won)

Best Cinematography (won)

Best Costume Design (lost to Gladiator)

Best Editing (lost to Traffic)

Best Original Score (won - great soundtrack, you can't go wrong with Yo-Yo Ma!)

Best Foreign Film (won - duh!)

What do Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain have in common? I can name six things:

1. They both feature horses.

2. They both feature mountains.

3. They both feature people who fall in love with each other after spending time together in the great outdoors.

4. They both have star-gazing scenes.

5. They both won Best Score at the Oscars.

And what's the other one? Oh yeah...

6. They were both directed by Ang Lee.

I thought it would be interesting to compare Lee's two best-known and critically acclaimed movies. Obviously, they're nothing alike plot-wise, but they do share some similarities. (Though the first two may be a bit of a stretch since countless movies have horses and mountains in them - okay, maybe they were all a bit of a stretch!)

Look, a mountain!

When I first saw this movie, I knew Michelle Yeoh from one of the James Bond movies and I had heard of Chow Yun-Fat. It was actually the second foreign film I had ever seen. (The first was the other foreign film that has been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar - Life is Beatiful). Nine years later and I've seen about thirty foreign films; not a whole lot, but better than two! I know there are people out there who are opposed to foreign-language films because they don't want to be bothered to read the subtitles or they're just too lazy to read them! It's a shame because those people are missing some good movies out there. I don't know, maybe subtitles don't bother me because 1)I'm a fast reader so I can quickly read what's on the screen and be able to see the action, and 2)I've gotten used to subtitles by now. The CTHD DVD does come with the option to watch the dubbed English version, but I prefer to watch it with its native language and read the subtitles. I did watch it in English once and it just didn't resonate the same. Supposedly the three main actors all have different accents since they're all from different parts of Asia, but I couldn't tell with my American ears!

I love this movie because it's just so much fun to watch and visually stunning. Obviously invisible wires were used, but I have no idea how they were so graceful during the fight scenes and they must have taken months to choreograph. The film does a good job of giving the audience enough of the martial arts scenes to keep us entertain, but it doesn't drown in them.

My favorite scene would have to be the one where the petite Jen (Zhang) is eating her meal and all those burly guys come in to "teach her a lesson" and she pretty much ends up kicking all their asses! It's hard to believe Zhang is going to be 31 this February; she's so youthful- looking and looks like a porcelain doll in this film.

This movie has the honor of being the first foreign film to reach over $100 million in the U.S.