Drive-by, high-speed post

[felis_ultharus]

I am working full-time this week. Actual full-time.

They're swamped at work, more than they've ever been. And this is supposed to be our dead season.

Tomorrow, I return to the borg cube to give English placement tests. This means waiting for some trusting data-entry clerk to let two strangers past security, because it's considered too much of a security risk to issue us passes >_<

I cleaned the living room. I've got less than one third left on my major edit.

I saw Rent yesterday and today. But I am still the last gay man on earth not to see Brokeback Mountain.

Comments

[seal7.livejournal.com]

Not quite the last ;)

Hope your week won't be too horrible.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

How did you avoid it? You were still working in a theatre at that time 0_o

And thanks. I think I'll need it :)

[seal7.livejournal.com]

Yeah but we didn't show that one. Way too off mainstream for us.
I kinda wanted to see it too, but I got into an argument with the person I planned to go see it with and we sorta dropped it then and I didn't want to go on my own.

[teecs.livejournal.com]

You haven't seen brokeback mountain? If I was closer I would drag you to see it. That must be against some kind of law or something...:)

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I don't see many movies -- just about two a year in theatres. I'm generally more interest in special-effects extravaganzas, because books do everything else better.

Still, I'll see this one eventually. Some day, if I ever time again.

[sugar-spun.livejournal.com]

You're not missing anything. It's a short story that should have been made into a short film and it doesn't have the momentum to be a full length feature. They held it together with sweeping landscape shots, but the Lord of the Rings trilogy did those better and had a story behind them too.

There were a couple of nice scenes, but for the most part it wasn't good.

This is my opinion as a straight woman and a film geek. Opinions may vary.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

You're not the only one to give me a tepid review of it -- and actually the most scathing reviews I've heard so far have been from queer people. Supportive straight people usually like it.

One friend of mine, a queer woman, said it was like slash fanfic.

Another, a gay man, was irritated by all the movie clichés -- including the fact that sympathetic gay male characters are always so ultra-masculine (straight-acting married cowboys are the extreme expression of that), while unsympathetic gay males are so queeny.

As a self-described queen himself, he notices people are always falling all over themselves to explain how "gay men aren't all like that" -- i.e., like him. Of course, plenty of us are, and that's not a bad thing.

He also points out that if there's a happy queer couple in a starring role, one of them is dead by the end of the movie. There's very little variation on that cliché in mainstream film.

So, yeah, I can see how people would have problems with it, and I definitely don't have my hopes up too high. I also worry that a lot of people felt they had to like it, or it would mean they were unsympathetic -- like how so many people were afraid to admit that Ellen was a very boring sitcom.

[sugar-spun.livejournal.com]

I'm incredibly sympathetic to every person who wasted their money and their two hours on that film.

I'm sympathetic to the guy beside me, who had such poor taste in films that he sniffled through the whole damn film from the first kiss onwards. I'm sympathetic even though he annoyed the bejesus out of me.

It just was not a good film, and I will not allow PC fools who think that I have to like a film because it's about gay men to dictate cinema to me. I'm a straight single woman. Does that mean I have to watch romcoms because I should be supportive of my fellow straight single women as portrayed on the screen? Should I allow Bridget Jones room among my DVD collection because she too is in her late twenties and all she can find is ill-advised sex with ratbastards at the expense of a relationship?

I'd rather get it on with Alfred Hitchcock. At least that man knew what he was doing.

Rant over. Enjoy the film :)

On the other side, I thought that the way the sex scenes between men and women were done was really interesting. They had an air of being slightly disgusting and shameful, whereas the all male sex really didn't. I liked that touch, but it didn't make the film any better.

[scottevil.livejournal.com]

I could lend you Brokeback, which we own. This would also give me an excuse to hook up with you for coffee or whatever, maybe get your feedback on an idea I've had for a writing project. (And there's always the show, which I am always intending to get back to, and now I finally have some new ideas and know what to add/cut, but writing in screenplay format -- which is how a lot of plays and musicals are done now -- can be a bit of a pain to get started in, what with the Word paragraph styles and such.)

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

That'd be great, but it's not going to happen this week. I have my every day completely full until Tuesday, and I even have to keep free, just in case things are still busy at work.

The earliest I can guarantee you is a week this Saturday (July 22). Other than that, I can't make any firm plans.

[melting-penguin.livejournal.com]

Best of luck with the cube...may you get people with names you can mock for us later!!!

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Nah -- people at the cube tend to have quite normal names. Actually, the most interesting names I come across are in the English section when I'm verfying JF's attendance.

For some reason, people of British background learning French with us seem to have the most fancful names.