THE GAY SUPERBOWL

[wertz]

So Oscar night is here again. By default, the management of the Virgin Megastore Orlando Oscar competition has fallen to me - and I spent the whole of last evening collating and tabulating peoples' votes.

Comments

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[wertz]

In short, loved the story, hated the adaptation. The directing was fine, the performances were passable, the cinematography was great, as was the score - but the screenplay sucked ass. I tend to rate screenwriters as equally important as directors to the success or failure of a film and, due to the writing, I felt the film failed - at least in terms of capturing the Proulx story. It was a great film on many levels, but not on one of the most fundamental: content.

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[wertz]

One of the reasons that I liked Crash so much was that the writing was emblematic - that it wasn't the run-of-the-mill pseudo-naturalism that informs 97.5% of movies (and 99.9925% of mainstream movies). To me, the film was "epic" (in the Brechtian sense of the word) - didactic, anti-illusive, allowing us to be critical observers rather than voyeurs caught up in emotional drama. The use of coincidence (or synchronicity) was another Verfremdungs-effekt technique - similar to that employed in ancient Greek theater - again reminding us that what we are watching is contrived, intended to provoke thought and effect social change. Crash is an example of that rare artform: a dramatic work that targets our reason rather than our emotions.

In relation to Brokeback Mountain (which hasn't a chance in hell of provoking or effecting anything), if you check out my comments above, you'll note that every criticism of the film is based on the screenplay. My original review of the film similarly targets the writing as the weakest link (though I remain

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