Porco Rosso is a wonderful film. I recorded Whisper of the Heart off TCM this week, but haven't yet had the chance to watch it (I haven't seen this week's Lost or either Stargate, either. Life intervenes). We had a pretty, sunny day last week after a couple of days of storm. My son pointed at the puffy clouds in a deep blue sky and called them "Miyazaki clouds."

Well, after today's viewing I can mark Brokeback Mountain off the date movie list, as guys tend not to find weeping particularly sexy.

I realize that as a gay man who used to ride and spend time on a horse ranch when I was a kid, I may have a slightly easier time identifying with the main characters than the average viewer. But I'd expected that being familiar with the Annie Proulx story would lessen the impact. Clearly, I was an idiot.

The last entertainment that managed to break me like this was the original broadcast of "The Body." And I was not alone - the full-to-the-gills theater that had been silent enough to hear people's breathing through 2 hours of movie started crying en masse when Enis made that phone call to Lureen and heard the details of Jack's death .

t hands Matt an industrial-size box of Kleenex

No, really, just keep it. You'll need it. Brokeback has the strongest hangover of just about any film I can think of; it'll keep rattling around in the back of your head for days afterward and you'll be in line for the copy machine at work or checking your pockets for change at the stamp machine or doing who knows what completely random thing and another image will cross your mind and you'll be broken all over again.

What's with that hangover? I've found myself more affected by the film at various points afterwards than I was during. And although I didn't cry, I was affected.

My sister, OTOH, after being all blasé after seeing it mostly through her first time figures she'll see it once more. Which will take her to five viewings, which beats my first run theatre viewings of anything. She's already planning for the region 1 DVD for when she moves back to Jamaica. She'll of course be getting region 2 as soon as it's out.

Thirding the Brokeback hangover effect. It took me about 24 hours to decide I really loved the movie, instead of just liking/appreciating/admiring it. But once it got its hooks in, it didn't let go.

I had that reaction too; if I had to guess it's because it works more in moments, than as a narrative. And also it's got a lot of pretty pictures, which you can see in the trailer-- Heath with the fireworks behind him, Ennis & Jack on horses, Jack crying in the truck. The last scene, too, which is what kept kicking me in the gut.

I just saw Brokeback today and I'm kinda disappointed. Maybe with myself. I found myself looking at my watch too often. What did I miss?

Still nursing the hangover, a month later.

I downloaded a bit of the soundtrack hoping to smack me out of it, but nope, it all just comes down to Ennis inhaling the shirts, rocking them, and my wish that there is a heaven for fictional characters so they'll always be young, beautiful, in love, camping there for all eternity.

It's a desperate feeling of longing, I think, that won't leave me.

Now see, I came to the end of the picture and was thinking about the awful bitchcakes of ten years on, when Ennis is retired and watching Joan Rivers's early-90s talk show (shut up) and finds out the way middle America did that Mick Jagger and David Bowie have played for both teams.*

It's one thing to think about the story in 1983, and another entirely to think it up to the present day. Ennis's painful cluelessness is a lot moer painful when the alternatives start showing up right in front of your eyes.

* Let it be known that yea, I did watch of the Joan Rivers, and did see that some random guest of hers blabbed about 70s rock star sex lives, and did only vaguely understand what was being talked about, and did watch Joan have a shrieking hissy fit of mortified gossippy glee the likes of which had not happened in the history of the world up to that point, and has not happened since unless you count the sudden cancellation of the Bennifer (mark I) wedding. And lo, teh gay was spread across the airwaves, and the world was not destroyed. It made quite the impression -- I think I was 15.

finds out the way middle America did that Mick Jagger and David Bowie have played for both teams

I remember hearing rumors about the two of them when I was still in junior high (late '70s), and not really understanding at first how one would get sperm in one's stomach, and then grossing out when another student explained it to me. Then again, I saw my first porn video about that same time and was equally grossed out by het sex.