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elwood

100 miles south of Lubbock and 50 miles east of Midland, you will, in fact, find Bum-Fuck Egypt.

Member Since 2004

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Saturday Dec 13, 2008

Dec 13, 2008
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Crap. I just realized that I have a seemingly endless number of things in common with a gorgeous young lady that I really get along with and was already planning to ask out. ...all the way down to the penguin bully I had on my profile for years.


...and (this is important) she can pour a Guinness without being a jackass and making a fucking mess.

Now I'm nervous.

Back to Harvey Milk:


I'm still confused by the timing of the film's release. I have no doubt that it would have heavily influenced the end result of the same-sex marriage ban on multiple ballots last month, especially Prop. 8 in California. A couple of websites claim that its initial release date was slated for sometime in October, but I can't find any official information to back that up; nor have I seen any mention of why it would have been delayed were that the case. (Of course I spent all of five minutes in research, so it's probably out there... Let me know if you find it.)

From the Alternative Film Guide:


"And I can't help but wonder what Milk might have meant for today's cause, if anything, had it landed in the marketplace last month.

"Some of the film's most inspiring and, indeed, captivating moments come during the sequence that details the Prop 6 fight. Consistently, Harvey Milk (Sean Penn's career-best portrayal) makes the point, to paraphrase, 'We have to make them understand that they know us.' That message, I think, might have carried a lot of heft if voters had made it to the polls four weeks later."

***

I doubt that Milk itself would have had any impact on the Prop. 8 vote. That said, I believe that if an early Milk release had been surrounded by loads of publicity, at least some voters would have understood that just like California didn't go under after the anti-gay Prop. 6 was defeated back in 1978 it wouldn't go under if the anti-gay Prop. 8 got defeated as well.

In fact, I can't understand why Focus Features, which is releasing Milk on November 26, didn't open the film in September or October, when the Prop. 8 debate became quite heated not only in California but elsewhere in the United States as well. That would have meant lots of free publicity for their film, which they hope will be a contender for the 2009 Academy Awards.





The Austin Chronicle had this to say about the film:

SPOILERS! (Click to view)


Milk
Year Released: 2008
Directed By: Gus Van Sant
Starring: Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna, James Franco, Alison Pill, Victor Garber, Denis O'Hare
(R, 127 min.)

"My name is Harvey Milk, and I want to recruit you." Milk liked to open stump speeches and rallies with that call to action, and it perfectly captured both his large-heartedness and single-mindedness about the fight that defined the last decade of his life - advancing gay rights in San Francisco, the state of California, and the whole of America. Gus Van Sant's very fine biopic restricts itself to that last decade, when Milk, a semicloseted insurance man living in New York, moved to San Francisco's Castro district and embarked upon a historic campaign (four, in fact) to become the first openly gay man elected to public office. The tragic coda, of course, is that Milk was assassinated in 1978 (not long after taking office), alongside the city's mayor, by fellow City Supervisor Dan White. The film's merits aside - of which there are many - it's worth nothing that Milk is the second biopic released this fall to suffer from a case of curious timing. In the instance of Oliver's Stone's rush job, W. - made too soon to have anything truly substantive to say about Bush - it raised the question: Why now? And with Milk, one wonders - with something of a moan for the missed opportunity - why not two months ago? Besides the fact that Van Sant and Penn's endearing, indelible portrayal of Milk might personalize a gay man for Middle America in much the same way Brokeback Mountain did three years ago, there is also the obvious correlation between the recent Proposition 8 vote in California and a similar struggle, as told in Milk, over California's Proposition 6 initiative, which sought to remove gay and lesbian teachers from public schools. Both are instances of civil rights being stripped from a large swath of a state's population, and the Prop. 6 portion of Milk leaves a bitter aftertaste - for the sad fact of how far we still have to go and for the blown chance of a film to act as agent of change during a crucial election. Certainly Milk will have a place in the post-Prop. 8 groundswell of public awakening to the cause, and it'll have a place in the Oscar race, too. Technically, Milk is a knockout: It was shot by Harris Savides on 35mm, but the stock has the era-appropriate feel of grainy 16mm, and the set and costume design - browns and ochers, high waists and wide ties - feel authentically lived-in, without a whiff of kitsch or prop department wankery. Top to bottom, the thing is terrifically acted, from Penn's titanic, open-faced performance to staggering turns from two young, chameleonic actors - Hirsch, as the bushy-haired Cleve Jones, who matures under Milk's tutelage from kid trick to sharp-shooting activist, and Franco, as Milk's put-upon lover, Scott. The early scenes establishing Milk and Scott's relationship will catch your breath, with their intimate lens into the everyday ways every couple must negotiate its domesticity, as in a teasing chase around their apartment that ends with Milk leapfrogging onto the bed, crying out, "Sanctuary!" Still, when the focus of the script (by first-timer Dustin Lance Black) turns almost exclusively to the Prop. 6 fight and Milk's last days, the film loses much of its loose-limbedness - a mirror, perhaps, of Milk's own tamping-down as politics swallowed his personal life whole, but a disappointment nonetheless. Milk is a more conventionally satisfying picture than Van Sant's previous Aughties output - Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days - which were almost aggressively experimental films that didn't always work but got under the skin something fierce. The deeply heartfelt Milk is more of a surface skim: a fairly standard biopic - if a very fine one, indeed - but never the transcendent work one would have hoped from the filmmaker or his subject.

Kimberley Jones [2008-12-05]






I'm a little pissed by the slight negativity in the review, but then, I've never really had much respect for "professional" critics.


Mural by John Baden of Harvey Milk at 575 Castro Street, the former site of Milk's store, Castro Camera. Emerging from the gun at left is a quote from Milk: "If a bullet should enter my brain, let the bullet destroy every closet door".

VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
dmac:
I had also heard that the film industry had dicked around with the release date of "Milk" although I never really saw any legitimate proof of that either. Politics and Hollywood are inextricably bound these days, it seems. Strange bedfellows, I guess. surreal
Dec 21, 2008
niobe:
I like the new profile picture.
Dec 22, 2008

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