Brokeback Mountain

I'm really glad I read the short story before watching this movie otherwise I would have been really disappointed about how anticlimatic the movie is. While the story was more graphic, it was also more emotional. I felt more emotionally connected with the characters and could feel their internal struggles much more intensly than in the movie. It was hard to keep the characters straight in the story at first but by the middle it was easy to see that jack was much more emotionally involved than ennis. I was actually really excited to watch this movie because I heard so many mixed reviews. As taboo as the movie is cracked up to be, I didn't find it uncomfortable at all which surprised me. Everyone that has ever really been in love knows what it's like to be crazy about someone, it's all you can do to not think about that person and seeing that person simply makes everything inside of you complete. I didn't find their relationship unnatural becuase the kind of love they had for eachother was natural. It was unnatural that they were married to women they didn't truly love, they had children they didn't really seem to care about all that much, they just did what society wanted them to do, they did what was "right." I could relate to Jack the most becuase he knew what made him happy and he would have done anything to get that happiness. Jack's idealistic view was so harshly contrasted with ennis's realism that you almost get mad at ennis for being so logical. When Jack said they should get their own ranch in the mountains so they can finally be together I really wanted that to happen. I don't really feel the need to make any more distinctions between the movie and story because the plots were basically the same. Like I said I found the story to be more emotionally charged but Jake Gyllenhall's performance was incredibly powerful. He was extremely good at translating the narrated feelings from the story into his eyes, his expressions, his everything. Brokeback mountain is a forbidden love story, it broke conventions in the type of love and it got me thinking. I've always been religious but I've never looked down upon homosexuality and I'm sure plenty of over zealous religious people went nuts over this movie because they view homosexuality as a choice. I thought it was very moving how homosexuality wasn't portrayed as a preference but rather as an innate quality. In many ways I find this story much more heart wrenching than romeo or juliet because jack and ennis's love was considered wrong on every level possible, except the real tradegy isn't forbidden love, it's society suffocating us.

I read "Where are you going, where have you been?", "The Sentinel", and "Supertoys Last All Summer Long." My favorite story by far was"Where are you going, where have you been" because it was continously building up to the climax and toward the end i was frantically reading so i could finally figure out what actually happens. This was the only story I read that I could see myself being able to adapt into a film because it was so dialogue heavy and the setting was so simple. I loved how it feels like the dialogue takes you through a journey while the main character struggles through her internal conflict and all the while she physically stays in the same spot. It would be extremely difficult to replicate that emotional intensity in a film becuase you can't get inside a character's head on screen unless you have a narration voice over and even that might not have the same effect. I really liked "Supertoys last all summer long" because it was emotional as well. I had no idea what the mom's problem was because she didn't seem to love her son as much as she wanted to so I was extremely confused until the end when it reveals that the boy is basically a robot. All this story did was make me hope people never get smart enough to make human robots with emotions. It also made me realize that sci fi can be really interesting becuase it takes the world we know and spins it, but I realized it's just not for me. The story i liked the least was "The Sentinel" because I found it to be cold. Maybe it's just because I'm a girl, but I have to have human emotion somewhere in a story in order to actually get hooked and feel compassionate for one reason or another, but I didn't get any of that. It was a new twist on the idea of extraterrestrial life and it was definatly unique in how it goes about building up to that idea. I mostly just thought this story was extremely lame and have no interest in making a film about it probably because i feel like this whole alien life form thing is overdone as it is. The only thrill you get out of reading something like this is that feeling that you're so small and the possibility that our ignornat view on being the best species could burst our bubble with another higher life form out there. I didn't didn't this reading assigment would get me thinking about how to adapt the stories into film but somewhere along the way it did get me thinking.

response to The Sky is Gray movie

The movie was basically the story which I liked because I really enjoyed the story. The movie omitted the part on the bus when the boy is looking at a girl and they get into a little fight. I thought that was the most adorable part of the story because even a boy that young still had too much pride to admit he was looking at the girl because he thought she was cute and instead said he was looking past her. I guess the movie wanted to focus on more serious issues. My favorite scene was when the old lady finally gets James and his mother to come in and eat. I thought it was quirky how the husband never comes out but you can hear him talking through the walls. For once the characters actually looked the way I had pictured them in my head, especially the mom. One other thing that was adapted was when the mom gets asked to dance she actually gets up and dances with the man for a while before pulling the switchblade on him. I thought this was better than in the story because I feel like she insulted him more by pretending she wanted to dance with him first and then rejecting him. Other than some minor changes, this movie was the same as the story and I really enjoyed both