Oscar Noms

I'm posting this at 5am My Local time. They are rehearsing the nominations announcement as we speak, using such great names as MILLION DOLLAR BABY as the potential nominees. This is false of course, but at 6:30am my local time, the real nominations will be announced. These are my guesses as to what till be nominated for best picture..

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
CAPOTE
CRASH
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK
WALK THE LINE

My wildcard pick will be MUNICH.

I'll follow up after the nominations are announced, with my picks as well.

5:12am Calgary Time. Just got them in under the wire.

No movie has had MORE Debate around it

than Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain.

""You know I ain't queer," Ennis tells Jack after their first night together. "Me, neither," says Jack."

The most common way this movie is being described is it's "A Gay Cowboy Movie", which really oversimplifies it, and is totally unfair. The movie is about forbidden love.. it's the story of a time and place where two men are forced to deny the only great passion either one will ever feel. Their tragedy is universal. It could be about two women, or lovers from different religious or ethnic groups.

The movie doesn't try and give any message, it doesn't try to tell us "This is bad or good".. it does nothing but tell the story of these men. It stays on these men, never wavering, never looking at the big picture.

The movie starts in 1963, when Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) are about 19 years old and get a job tending sheep on a mountainside. Ennis is a boy of few words and he can barely open his mouth to release them; he learned to be guarded and fearful long before he knew what he feared. Jack, who has done some rodeo riding, is a little more outgoing. After some days have passed on the mountain and some whiskey has been drunk, they suddenly and almost violently have sex.
"This is a one-shot thing we got going on here," Ennis says. Jack agrees. But it's not.
Years pass. Both men get married. Then Jack goes to visit Ennis in Wyoming, and their undiminished urgency passion stuns them. Their lives settle down into a routine, punctuated less often than Jack would like by "fishing trips."

Make no doubt, in any other hands, Brokeback Mountain could have just been "a gay cowboy movie, but because the movie focuses so intently on the story of Jack and Ennis, it understands the individual characters, the more it applies to everyone. Hence, the story becomes a tragedy, the story of forbidden love, something that could never be. That what makes this movie deserving of all the praise it's getting, and will probably get it best picture this year.

Brokeback Mountain - A

Yes, I fully realize that I gave King Kong high marks as well. How can I give a movie like Brokeback Mountain and King King the same grade? Well, King Kong is a great POPCORN Movie. I never thought Kong is high drama.. it is what it is.. a matinee movie, something along the lines of early Spielberg. Brokeback Mountain gets an "A" for story, performances, and direction.