Free Republic

South Park has done several great episodes lampooning popular films. One of my personal favorites involves the children dressed up like Lord of the Rings characters taking a pornography tape back to the video store while avoiding the temptation of watching it and trying to escape some older kids who want the tape for themselves. While I’ve never been a big fan of the show, I have grown more fond of it lately, and I’m pretty sure I watched every episode this season. Series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker are capable of being very topical in that they can...

One hour into "Brokeback Mountain," Amy Jo Remmele began to cry, and not just for the woman on-screen, standing in a doorway in Riverton, Wyo., watching her husband embrace a man. "When I saw that look in her eyes, I thought, 'Oh, yeah.' Even though I never saw my husband with another man, I knew exactly how that woman would have felt," said Mrs. Remmele, a respiratory therapist in rural Minnesota. On June 1, 2000, Mrs. Remmele, then 31, discovered her husband's profile on the Web site gay.com. The couple stayed up all that night weeping and talking. Soon afterward,...

During the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, the major movie studios worked closely with the Protestant Film Office and the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency to reach the broadest possible audience and to avoid governmental censorship. Due to this partnership, films like "Ben Hur" and "The Ten Commandments" became the two highest grossing religious pictures of all time. Because of a withdrawal of funding by conservative denominations and in-fighting among liberal denominations, however, the Protestant Film Office shut its doors in 1966, contrary to the desires of many studio heads at the time. This invaluable...

Gene Stone: Hollywood Hardly Hearts Homosexuals Gene Stone Tue Mar 7, 12:47 AM ET One of the best rumors floating around on DataLounge.com, the popular gay website, is that old Hollywood was so determined to stop Brokeback Mountain from receiving a Best Picture Oscar that Jack Nicholson, who announced the award, promised his cronies that if Brokeback won, he would announce the movie Crash instead. What could the Academy do about it? They couldn't take it back. They couldn't award another one to Brokeback. ADVERTISEMENT It's a pleasantly paranoid possibility, about as likely to be true as Tom Cruise being...

Priest Advises a “Brokeback Lent”, Homily Encourages Propaganda Film By John-Henry Westen BOSTON, March 7, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The homosexual propaganda film Brokeback Mountain, besides winning three Oscars over the weekend, has shown itself as an adept tool for outing dissidents within the Catholic Church.  While committed Catholics have seen in the film as a dangerous propaganda tool which normalizes homosexuality, left-leaning Catholics have been hard-pressed to outdo one another in lauding the film. First, the director for the USCCB Office for Film and Broadcasting Harry Forbes gushed over Brokeback saying, "Director Ang Lee tells the story with a sure sense...

NEW YORK -- We chatted about it, joked about it, argued about it, spoofed it. "Brokeback Mountain" was everywhere in our popular culture - yet it lost the big Oscar it was supposed to win. Was there a "Brokeback Backlash," or was "Crash" just the worthy contender that came on strong in the final Best Picture stretch? There were as many theories being offered up Monday as there are "Brokeback" parodies on the Internet. One theory was that, despite the hoopla, the endless late-night monologues and the clever imitations, people (Academy voters, that is) didn't really love the soulful saga...

Oscars Bank on 'Brokeback' to Grab Viewers By DAVID GERMAIN LOS ANGELES (AP) - The year of the small movie could mean small ratings for the Academy Awards, whose organizers hoped a new host and the cultural buzz over front-runner "Brokeback Mountain" would beef up viewership for Sunday's show. The Oscars generally lure their biggest audiences in years when blockbusters such as "Titanic" or "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" are favored to win. This year's best-picture lineup has been heralded as an artistic triumph of daring, character-driven stories, yet none of the contenders had the...

Well, it's true that the average 25-year-old does not feel about homosexuality the way his great-grandfather felt at that age. In that sense, there is indeed a "rising tide." But the salient feature of tides is that they go out again. Whatever their appeals to virtue, inevitablist theories of history are always the weakest--the notion that progress is a ratchet effect, moving irreversibly in one direction. On September 10, 2001, for example, not many commentators in North America or Europe paid much attention to the views of Islamic lobby groups. The idea that whether something does or does not cause...

HOLLYWOOD (AFP) - Tension reached fever pitch as Hollywood began the final countdown to Sunday's Oscars, with a posse of "serious" films, led by "Brokeback Mountain," set to overrun the big night. As workers frantically put the finishing touches on preparations for the 78th annual Academy Awards, which start with the legendary red carpet celebrity fashion show, the anxious nominees are crossing their fingers. In a year laden with small-budget movies packing weighty political or social messages, Taiwan director Ang Lee's film about gay cowboys is the frontrunner for the top awards, including best picture and best director. "We're almost...

"Brokeback Mountain," the controversial film about homosexual cowboys in love, allegedly had a lack of loving concern for the animals featured in the film. The American Humane Association has fired off a letter to the movie's director, Ang Lee, expressing dismay over reports animal care and protection guidelines were violated during production of the Oscar-nominated film, claiming it sends "a dangerous message" that the public condones animal endangerment for the sake of entertainment. "The excessively rough handling of the sheep and horses leaves viewers questioning whether anyone was looking out for the safety of those animals," wrote Marie Belew Wheatley,...

Question for those who watched this weeks Boston Legal. I have the distinct impression that two of the main characters, close buddies Denny Crane and Alan Shore, will soon have a 'brokeback mountain' episode. The writers have already had them sleeping in the same room on a fishing trip, then sharing a bed to combat Alan's 'night terrors'. Now Alan is moving in with Denny to comfort him through his recent marriage/divorce. The writers repeatedly use the Denny Crane character as a useful conservative idiot. This season, each episode has become more ultra-liberal agenda pushing than the next. It truly...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=6609548779

March 6, 2006 issue - An Oscar nod for Best Picture often means big box-office increases, but "Brokeback Mountain" hasn't gotten the kind of bump insiders expected. Unlike last year's "Million Dollar Baby," which saw an 88 percent increase between the noms and Oscar night, and "Chicago," which shot up 100 percent, the grosses for "Brokeback" have actually been declining every weekend.

'Brokeback' named Hollywood word of the year Tue Feb 28, 2006 10:33 AM ET LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - And the winner for Hollywood's word of the year is "Brokeback," thanks to all the talk around the water cooler and Internet jokes that have turned a film about two gay cowboys into a cultural phenomenon. The nonprofit group Global Language Monitor placed "Brokeback" -- as in the film title "Brokeback Mountain" -- at the top of its list of Hollywood words and phrases that captured attention this year. Paul JJ Payack, the head of Global Language Monitor, said the movie became...

Considering the current hoo-hah over the movie "Brokeback Mountain" and whether it will win any Academy Awards brings into focus what the appeal of this movie might be for straights – heterosexual persons, that is. While I am aware that there is a larger context for this movie in the social arena – a serious dramatic treatment of homosexual love – and that gay advocacy groups consider this another victory in their agenda to break barriers and normalize homosexuality, my personal reaction is to question why I would want to see a movie on this theme. Because of the strength...

By now, the plot line of Brokeback Mountain is well known. For those just returning from another planet, here it is: in the early 1960s, two young, male sheep herders, Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar become sexually involved for a summer on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming. Then, with no strings attached, they move on to marry heterosexually. After a few years they reunite and go on periodic fishing trips together where their fishing lines never get wet. Eventually Ennis' marriage falls apart and Jack dies via suspicious circumstances.   Brokeback Mountain has been billed by some as a universal...

Is there any crime that is rewarded more richly by the United States...

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Tom Gregory just spent more than $100,000 on two used cowboy shirts. And he couldn't be happier. The shirts are the ones worn by the ill-fated lovers, played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, in Oscar front-runner "Brokeback Mountain." The shirts that represent their relationship. The shirts that, to Gregory, represent the ongoing plight of gays for acceptance in society. "They really are the ruby slippers of our time," said Gregory, 45. A longtime gay activist, Gregory plans to keep the shirts "as they were, on the hanger, entwined."

Country singer Willie Nelson chose Valentine's Day to release the gay-themed song "On the Rod Again." The Texas country icon sings about love among men on the range. The song aims to show Mr. Nelson's support for gays, particularly to conservative country-music fans. The song was unveiled on Howard Stern's Sirius Satellite Radio show. Stern provided accompanying grunts and squeals in the studio as the record was played. The timing of the song's release coincides with a time when the idea of gay cowboys is being discussed throughout the media in response to the success of the Academy Award-nominated film...

Mickey Kaus at Kausfiles.com says that the gay-cowboy movie Brokeback Mountain has the same marketing strategy as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Both, he says, have been hyped as blue-state movies that are reaching and changing minds in the cities of red America. He calls this the "Heartland Breakout Meme”. ("Meme" refers to a cultural copying unit that hops from brain to brain without much thought or any at all). What Kaus means is that the mainstream media keep reinforcing ideas liberals want to believe, whether they are true or not. But the alleged breakout of Fahrenheit appears to be myth,...