Brokeback Mountain @ 20

by Patrick Ball

Brokeback Mountain, I’ll never wish I knew how to quit you. I turned 17 in 2005, the year I came out to my parents, and the quiet revolution that was Brokeback Mountain was the first movie I took them to. We saw it on a misty winter afternoon at The Pruneyard in Campbell, CA. It was the first movie I took them to and said “this is me”.

It’s hard to grapple with the fact that 2005 was 20 years ago. That this film, this miracle of cinematic craftsmanship wrapped around a  soul aching romantic drama, was met with both snickers and scorn upon release. Though critically acclaimed, and championed by those willing to embrace “the love that dare not say its neigh-me”, its immediate legacy was riddled with jokes. “The gay cowboy movie”, “I wish I knew how to quit you”, Michelle Williams’ immortal utterance of “Jack Nasty”...

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Greatest Movies of the 21st Century. Did you join in the fun?

by Nathaniel R

The talk this week in US cinephile circles has been the New York Times interactive "10 Best Movies of the 21st Century". 2025 is a good time for it. Here was my ballot, done on a whim, because how else to do it really? We all know that there are more than 10 "Best" movies in any given quarter century!  Sometimes there are more than 10 "Bests" in a single film year. Nevertheless it was fun to watch friends and strangers sound off this week...

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Five Things I've Learned From "The Film Critic & The Common Man"

By Ben Miller

I danced around the idea of hosting my own podcast for quite some time.  There were a thousand reasons to avoid it.  What made me special that anyone would care what I have to say?  I'm just another straight white guy who loves films.  But, I discovered if I talked to someone who doesn't have the same critical approach, we could really be onto something.  Enter my big brother Jake. 

We started a podcast called The Film Critic & The Common Man.  Together, we discuss a film from my critical perspective and from his perspective of a regular guy.  Sometimes we talk about a box office hit that won Best Picture.  Other times, we talk about a dumb comedy.  We record episode 10 this weekend.  Despite our limited time, I've learned a lot from the experience...

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Showbiz History: An Unmarried Woman, Oscar Balloting, and Hula Hoops

7 random things that happened on this day, March 5th, in showbiz history...

Best Actor and Best Actress, Victor McLaglen & Bette Davis

1936 The 8th Academy Awards are held honoring the best of 1935. Victor McLaglen (The Informer) and Bette Davis (Dangerous) take the acting Oscars. Mutiny on the Bounty wins Best Picture (and nothing else). That happened three times in the first eight years of Oscar history and has literally never happened since. That same night John Ford wins the first of his four Best Director prizes (the all time record) for The Informer. Curiously only one of his Best Director wins, How Green Was My Valley, came with a companion Best Picture win. (So he's like if you combined Alfonso Cuaron and Ang Lee's records, both of whom have won twice without a companion Best Picture win, and rewrote history -- which we'd sure like to *cough Brokeback* -- to add in 1 random Best Picture win.) The four wins without much help from Best Picture frontrunner status is such a crazy record if you think on it for even half a second. It's hard to imagine that it will ever be broken...

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Showbiz History: Peanuts Special, Dame Judi, and Young Tom Hardy in Prosthetics

5 random things that happened on this day, December 9th, in showbiz history

1965 "A Charlie Brown Christmas" premieres on CBS, the first of many TV specials (and later feature films) based on Charles M Schultz classic comic strip. It went on to receive a Grammy nomination and win the Emmy for Outstanding Children's Programming and the Peabody, too. 

1988 Mississippi Burning (the first of Frances McDormand's three soon-to-be-four appearances in a Best Picture nominee) and two comedies My Stepmother is an Alien and Twins open in movie theaters...

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