The Stars and the Cookie Jar

Heath Ledger blew me away as Ennis. He was a perfect, laconic, hard-core grim realist cowboy.

Jake Gyllenhaal knows how to make a sly, flirty puppy face. Even when you age him up and put a thick, robust Seventies moustache on him.

Anne Hathaway did not make me hurt. Her I'm-a-grownup-actress-now bare breasts, however, do not charm me nearly as much as they ought. It says a lot that I am a fairly lesbian lesbian, as lesbians go, and yet I was more enamored and enthralled by the manly gay cowboy men.

Matters of the flesh aside, I thought it was a brilliant, restrained, well-timed movie with a good sense of elision. There were some 'long' moments, but never when the actors were onscreen. Mostly it was Ang Lee's odd brand of lingeringly slow visuals that started to grate on my nerves. When performers other than sheep were present, I was drawn to the screen by the bleakness and the verisimilitude of the work.

The ending was heartbreaking, and everyone I saw was sniffling and dabbing their eyes. And it just drove home the point that Ennis can't fix it, so he has to stand it. That's the life to which he's resigned himself, to which his circumstances and his time have condemned him.

It made me really glad that I saw it with my wife. It also made me extremely mindful of how far we still have to go. There are so many Riverton, Wyomings out there. I think maybe all the gay male couples who cried as they left the theatre were crying, a little bit, for the fact that there's still no law that keeps them from being Ennis too.

You should go see this movie. It deserves its buzz and its hype and whatever. And Ang Lee doesn't do anything weird with doves.

Today I finished outlining The Seal Wife through to its completion. Descriptors and images locked down, themes pegged in place, fates... sealed. Um. Now I just need the rest of the pretty words to arrive so that I can plug them in.

It's about a three-page detailed outline. In the end, it depends whether I expand or I distill. I could have 30,000 words there or 60,000. It depends on the words, when they arrive.

Now it's just waiting. I have to wait until I hear them speaking in my head, you see. And right now I can only see what they're doing, and to a far extent what will happen because of it. But no one's talking to one another in the little movie in my head yet.

I'd like to hope I don't have to wait long.

What would be helpful? If Alexander Desplat scored another film.