Anyone seen Milk?

[Non Sequitur]

Thinking of seeing it tonight. Sean Penn is always great and Emile Hirsh was great in Into the Wild (not to mention his riveting performance in The Girl Next Door). I was in SF the day Milk and Moscone were killed and have vivid memories of that day. It looks pretty good.

[TripletDaddy]

It has been getting great reviews. If you do go, please share your thoughts.

Sean Penn is annoying off-screen, but he really is a great actor.

[MarkGrace]

Not terribly interested in this one. 2008 has been an incredibly uninteresting year in movies for me.

I do like Emile Hirsh and thought he was great in Into the Wild and Alpha Dog.

[HuskyFreeNorthwest]

Alpha Dog.

That was one of the most underrated movies I have seen in a long time. I thought it was very good. Not just because of my JT fetish.

I am interested in seeing Milk, so I would love a review.

[CardiacCoug]

I saw Milk with the wife on opening night.

It was great -- very well-acted by Sean Penn and James Franco. According to my wife, some of the sex scenes were fairly graphic -- I admit to closing my eyes for them. That probably makes me homophobic or something.

http://www.cougaruteforum.com/showth...highlight=milk

[RobinFinderson]

Faith dragged me out to see Milk yesterday. I wanted to see Slumdog Millionaire, but she insisted on Milk. Here are my thoughts:

This is an actor vehicle if there ever was one. All of the name actors get a moment in the sun, and nobody disappoints, least of all Sean Penn, whose vision of Harvey Milk does a fine job of carrying the entire film on its back. Penn cruises, preens, politics, and marches his way from being a closeted desk jockey on a NYC subway train (where he meets a handsome young Jame Franco and convinces him to run away with him) to building and running the gay scene in the Castro district of San Francisco.

The story ends where history insists it must, but through the images of Milk's marches and protest, looking like they could have been torn from yesterday's newspaper, Van Sant's retelling has an immediacy that will not be lost on anyone remotely awake during the entire Prop 8 fiasco. In the film, Prop 8's proxy is Prop 6, a bill that if passed would have terminated the employment of all homosexuals from CA schools. In the film there is also a right-wing religious political activist group that stands in for the Mormons (which is exactly the way the gay community will see it). At one point a leader for the right-wing group agrees to debate Milk. What follows is probably more entertaining to those of us with enough frame of reference to imagine Thomas Monson on the debate platform getting whooped up on by a gay rights activist. Prop 6 loses (it was nice to see archive footage of our nation's most openly Christian president, Jimmy Carter, calling for its defeat).

Where the film savages the fundies who support Prop 6, it is far more sympathetic to Josh Brolin's Dan White character, Harvey's eventual assassin. Milk's rise in political power parallels White's, but where the first represents the ascendancy of the new uber-progressive Left, the latter represents the traditional white conservative power structure on the decline. Harvey looks for opportunities to win White's support. Harvey speculates that White might be living deeply in the closet. Harvey plays his political cards well, and crosses White on several occasions. The film seems to suggest that it was White's political humiliation and the depression that followed which triggered the murders. Van Sant leaves one wondering if latent homosexuality and self loathing didn't also have something to do with it.

Milk is no Brokeback Mountain, which was a phenomenally good film. I'm not sure if any of the hunky young actors are gay (James Franco, Diego Luna, Emile Hirsch), but you wouldn't know from watching this film. I can imagine how their agents might have pitched the film to them -- imagine Ari Gold to Vincent Chase, "Vince, what would it take to get you to tongue kiss pretty-boy Loyd in front of a fifty million people? Well what if Loyd was played by Sean Penn and you would be directed by Gus Van Sant? Get ready to pucker up baby, cause this thing is going to be bigger than Brokeback! Short of hooking up with Britney Spears, getting in bed with the gay lobby is the absolute best thing that could happen to your career."

Well it isn't bigger than Brokeback, but it is a well-acted, well-crafted film with a timely message for our times. After seeing the film, I am a bit surprised it wasn't nominated as a Best Picture in the Golden Globes. The GG's love them some Kate Winslet.

[TripletDaddy]

I still think it might get the nod at the Oscars. As we know, the globes are a decent barometer, but not all telling.

Another one generating a ton of buzz in the traders...The Wrestler. Yes, the one with Mickey Rourke. It killed at the Toronto Film Festival.

[HuskyFreeNorthwest]

I still think it might get the nod at the Oscars. As we know, the globes are a decent barometer, but not all telling.

Another one generating a ton of buzz in the traders...The Wrestler. Yes, the one with Mickey Rourke. It killed at the Toronto Film Festival.

Plus you get to see Marisa Tomei's boobs.

[TripletDaddy]

Plus you get to see Marisa Tomei's boobs.

Wow, really? I guess that is why the movie is called Milk?

[Donuthole]

Plus you get to see Marisa Tomei's boobs

And no juxtaposition with a naked Phillip Seymour Hoffman, which tends to confuse one's libido.

[MarkGrace]

Another one generating a ton of buzz in the traders...The Wrestler. Yes, the one with Mickey Rourke. It killed at the Toronto Film Festival.

Watch the leaked scene of Marissa Tomei and my guess is you'll be buzzing as well.

[MarkGrace]

Wow, really? I guess that is why the movie is called Milk?

Call that still happen when they have piercings? Not a question I had previously considered.

[TripletDaddy]

Watch the leaked scene of Marissa Tomei and my guess is you'll be buzzing as well.

I am not sure I want to see a leak scene of Marissa Tomei's boobs in a movie called "Milk"

[Non Sequitur]

I am not sure I want to see a leak scene of Marissa Tomei's boobs in a movie called "Milk"

I haven't seen boobs like that since Junior High School.

[MarkGrace]

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