"A perfumier designed the aroma to contain hints of 'pus, blood, faecal matter and sweat' so [Jude] Law could imagine himself as [Henry VIII]...."

"At the start of filming Law said he made sure 'very subtly' to use a dab or two of the stomach-turning scent. However, when he found that the smell aided his performance, 'it became a spray-fest.' "When Jude walked in on set,” the director, Karim Aïnouz, said, 'it was just horrible.' [Alicia] Vikander, who performed sex scenes with Law, gave a look of disgust as the actor [said] 'Even the camera operators were gagging. My memory is that we were laughing a lot.... [I'd] read several interesting accounts that you could smell Henry three rooms away. His leg was rotting so badly. He hid it with rose oil. I thought it would have a great impact if I smelt awful.'"

From "Jude Law has more than a whiff of Henry VIII in Firebrand/The film received an eight-minute standing ovation after its premiere at the Cannes film festival on Sunday" (London Times).

Watch Ms. Vikander approach the putrid actor:

I asked ChatGPT, "Can you tell me about other actors who have used smelliness to enhance their performance?" In classic ChatGPT form, I got a list of 5 items:

"The Academy believes in the movies so much, they made Best Picture the third-to-last category of the night ('Nomadland' won). The producers clearly assumed..."

"... the late Chadwick Boseman would win Best Actor, the final award presented, and it would be moving and historic. Well, he didn’t. The night ended without a winner’s speech from Anthony Hopkins ('The Father'). Imbeciles."

From "Oscars 2021 tortured viewers for more than 3 unbearable hours" by Johnny Oleksinski (NY Post). 

I used to follow the Oscars very closely. Used to simul-blog the whole show. But now I just assume it will be 3+ unbearable hours and don't even try to watch. So that NY Post headline jumped out at me. Even though it's not exciting. It's what we expect from the Oscars. Maybe we shouldn't say "tortured" like that. Torture is a serious matter in this world, and no one in the "viewers" category was victimized in any way, other than by their own failure to snap off the screen or — for those truly sapped of vigor — move on to another channel.

Anyway, the Oscars felt so predictable that they switched up the usual order of things and gave the Best Picture award before the 2 main acting awards. But then the one unpredictable thing that happened was the last award going to Anthony Hopkins, the elderly British white man, instead of to Chadwick Boseman, the American black man who died at the age of 43. 

And Hopkins wasn't there to accept the award. Not that Boseman could have been there, but the person accepting for Boseman would have been well-chosen and well-prepared to install the right thoughts and emotions in our head. No one was designated to accept for Hopkins on the off chance that he'd win, so the presenter of the award, just said thank you and winced an awkward smile: 

That's Joaquin Phoenix. I guess that means he won Best Actor last year. What did he win for? Had to look it up: "The Joker." Remember when that was a big deal? Remember that other time an actor played the Joker and won an Oscar? Heath Ledger. He played the Joker, then died, then won the Oscar.

You know, it's very sad that Chadwick Boseman died, but it is better that those who make decisions stick squarely to merit. It's an award for acting, not for dying. The movies make us feel, and death makes us feel, but those who vote on awards shouldn't give an acting award for things a person did that made us feel. 

Perhaps Boseman did deserve the Oscar. It's possible that the presumption — the presumption based on death (and race) — was so overplayed that Academy voters reacted and gave it to Hopkins.

Hopkins is a fine old actor, and here he is, getting around to thanking the Academy and giving a tribute to Boseman:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Anthony Hopkins (@anthonyhopkins)

ADDED:  Someone emailed to tell me it's "Joker," not "The Joker." I feel the faint echo of things that felt important in the fall of 2019. Part of me is just annoyed, on the verge of derisive, like when people insist that you not call Ohio State Ohio State but The Ohio State. Because my name is Ann — pronounced the same as "an" — I'm rather sensitive to this matter. Why am I "an" Althouse instead of The Althouse? I guess the Joker in "Joker" was not the definite article, the definitive Joker, but just one of the man jokers out there. Is that what it mean, the leaving off of the "the"? 

I looked it up. Here's "It’s Just Joker, Not The Joker" (Vulture):

Joker is a movie about jokes and loneliness and jokes about loneliness, but it’s also about the absence of a certain “the.” So Vulture has put together a handy photo-essay guide to the name of the movie’s main character. Call him by his name — Joker — and hope he doesn’t call you anything at all.

The idea seems to be that his name is Joker. You don't put an article — definite or indefinite — in front of a proper name. I thought I was going to find a more philosophical answer to my question.  

"Gilliam... was standing outside a restaurant in Soho when a car backed into him. 'Yes, a man can fly,' observed a bystander as he flew past."

Hilarious assholes they have in England, it seems.

He broke his back, but seems fine now, despite a cracked vertebra and dislodged disc. "Yeah, I'm a lizard," he says, cackling.

From an article on Terry Gilliam's seemingly cursed movie "The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus." Other problems: The producer died suddenly. And so did the star — Heath Ledger.

"It just isn't possible that he's dead," [said Gilliam.] "There's nothing he can't do, it just flows out of him with ease and grace. He lifted everybody. He wasn't like Marlon Brando or James Dean or any of the more neurotic actors, his was all positive energy. I knew he was tired but that Saturday he had been doing all his own stunts, he was leaping off wagons, indestructible. On no level did his death make sense.... "

We're not all flying men/lizards.

"I ... looked at how to do the remaining scenes without Heath, and realised that, since his character goes through a magic mirror three times, we could get three actors to play the role."

He got Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell, who are all donating their compensation to Ledger's 3-year-old child Matilda.

Other interesting things in the linked article:

1. George Harrison believed that the soul of The Beatles transmigrated into Monty Python when The Beatles died.

2. Monty Python broke up because the guys "got bored of each other."

3. "[Gilliam] renounced his American citizenship in 'disillusionment' with the Bush years, but he retains a pigtail which makes him look like an ageing hippy." You know what I don't understand? The role of "but" in that sentence.

4. Gilliam has never taken drugs, out of sheer fear of losing the distinction "between fantasy and reality." "It was only 15 years ago that I discovered I couldn't fly. I have such a 'sense memory' of flying around the world at the height of a table that when someone asked me to show them, I really thought I could do it."

5. In lieu of drugs: Dali, Ernst, Breughel, Bosch, and Mad magazine.

The Golden Globe nominees are announced...

Here. I've seen few of these things -- and not just because many of the best movies don't play until the end of the year. It's also that I don't enjoy going to the movies these days -- for about 6 reasons.

But I did see "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," which is up for best comedy/musical. And it's got a best comedy/musical actor, Javier Bardem, and supporting actress, Penélope Cruz. I haven't seen the competition, so it's not my place to say who ought to win, but they were excellent, especially Penélope Cruz. She's in competition with Kate Winslet -- a favorite actress chez Althouse -- who is nominated for "The Reader," but Kate also has an actress in a drama nomination, for "Revolutionary Road," so both Kate and Penélope can win.

There's some interesting competition, too, in the supporting actor category:

Tom Cruise for Tropic Thunder (2008)
Robert Downey Jr. for Tropic Thunder (2008)
Ralph Fiennes for The Duchess (2008)
Philip Seymour Hoffman for Doubt (2008)
Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight (2008)

All I can say is, if you're going to give anyone extra points for drugs, give them -- the points, not the drugs -- to Robert Downey Jr. for living, not to Heath Ledger for dying.

"Roy Scheider here. You know who definitely need a bigger boat?"

"The montage of dead people, which I was most certainly not in. What's with the arbitrary cut-off date? I starred in two iconic movies; I played Bob Fosse; I just died. I didn't expect to beat Heath Ledger on the applause-o-meter or anything, but Jesus H., who does a guy have to fuck to make the 'In Memoriam' grade around here? …You know, if I thought I would still be apologizing for The Myth Of Fingerprints in the afterlife, I would have told my agent to shove that script sideways."

Television Without Pity does the Oscars show. (People seem to forget that the Oscars is a TV show.) Click on the little pics along the top to get all the snark.

"Miss Spears, who reportedly had not slept for five days before being committed...."

I feel sorry for Britney Spears, and don't want to set up a post to talk about her. But this news of not sleeping upsets me. News reports had talk of Heath Ledger not sleeping for days before his untimely death. Have you ever gone even 2 days without sleeping? I haven't. I can't imagine having this problem. Some drug is involved, no?

IN THE COMMENTS: Gary Carson writes:

I've gone for weeks with no more than 2 hours sleep per day (mania) and was constantly drinking beer during my waking hours.

I probably would have really gone nuts without the beer to keep me calmed down.

I don't think it's at all weird that two entertainers have recently died [sic] after a period of sleep disorder.

It would be my guess that bipolar disorder has a higher incidence among entertainers than among the general population and it's certianly the case that risky behavior tends to go hand in hand with manic episodes.

"Blinding you with his razor-sharp acumen...."

1. Keep the razor blades away from my eyes.

2. This is not acumen, John Gibson. This is pure stupidity and ugliness.

3. Even as he mocks the poor Heath Ledger for (apparently) using drugs, John Gibson sounds groggy and slurred. What does it take to overcome your normal inhibitions — whatever residue of humanity you've got inside — and to go on the radio and emit material like that?

"Mr. Ledger magically and mysteriously disappears beneath the skin of his lean, sinewy character."

"It is a great screen performance, as good as the best of Marlon Brando and Sean Penn."

Dead at 28. Heath Ledger.

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo writes:

My 15 year old son was quite shaken by this. He loves the movies. We both liked him in the ones already mentioned.

But he was mostly waiting to see him in Batman, feverishly following all the viral teasers the studio has thrown out over the internet....

I don't know what happened to Ledger; we'll hear soon enough. My son had seen a recent interview that suggested something wasn't quite right with Mr. Ledger, all jittery and picking at his arms....

Here's the video. I knew right away what you were talking about because I was looking for a clip to include with the original post. After watching it, I decided it wasn't the tone I was looking for.

"She walks, talks, sings, smells like Bob Dylan."

Heath Ledger raves about Cate Blanchett's "incredible transformation" into the character of Bob Dylan, whom she plays in the new movie "I'm Not There." Cate is one of a bunch of actors -- Ledger, included -- who play Dylan in the film. But Cate's the best -- "beyond astounding."

I can believe that. If you assemble a lot of actors in a film that's kind of a big acting competition, she wins. I observed this in "Coffee and Cigarettes":

When a movie is broken into a series of vignettes as this one is, critics usually can't resist saying which vignette is the best and grousing that some vignettes are better than others. With an ordinary movie, it doesn't seem worth saying that some scenes are better than others! But with each vignette, you get a new set of two or three actors, so it's hard not to single out, for example, Cate Blanchett. Patty Duke style, she plays two cousins who have the same face, but different hair, clothes, mannerisms, attitudes.

She was utterly fascinating and brilliant.

Leaving Teton Village.

Time to hit the road again, checking out of the posh hotel I will now identify: the Jackson Hole Four Seasons. (Hey, it's 35° here!)

I'll drive most of the day, positioning myself for a quick tour of one last national park before driving the rest of the way home tomorrow. Enough driving already. The mental picture of home has gotten achingly clear.

Feel free to use the comments section here as an amiable coffeehouse. An amiable coffeehouse where everyone's obsessed with Mel Gibson. No, really, give it a rest. Surely, there are lots of other things to talk about, from light -- Is Heath Ledger a good Joker? -- to heavy -- Is Israel winning?

UPDATE: I'm still laughing about something Bissage wrote in the comments: "'the Jackson Hole Four Seasons.' Isn't that, like, you know, three different music groups?" Sippican adds:



Anyway, I'm pining for the Four Seasons, as I've reached today's destination, the worst of the four Holiday Inn Express motels I chose for stepping stones on the way to my two posh hotels. I picked Holiday Inn Express because of the clarity of their internet access promise. I was going to give the brand the Althouse seal of approval, but this last one had a busted ethernet wall jack (and a broken telephone), and when I went down to the lobby to say I needed another room, the desk clerk did not take me seriously -- he sniggered at my problem! He also asserted that there were no extra rooms, but obviously, since I'm posting, there was another room. I won't recount the hassle I went through after a long day's drive, but all I'll say is: Holiday Inn, protect your brand! Two of your motels were first rate. One was very slightly off. But this fourth is rather sleazy.

And I just wanted to add that I've seen all the "Batman" movies. And I watched the TV show when it was originally on and a big craze.

The Village People cowboy has his say about "Brokeback Mountain."

Well, of course, "Brokeback Mountain" means it's time for Randy Jones, the cowboy from The Village People to resurface and do some press. Who better to inform us about whether or not gay cowboys are just a Hollywood concoction?

“There they were, a couple of men, alone together in isolated frontier country, for weeks or sometimes months at a time...

“The thought must have passed through their minds, even if they didn’t act on it, because men are sexy animals. If that wasn’t the case, there wouldn’t be so much homosexual sex in prison.”...

Mr Jones ... said that Brokeback Mountain was encouraging “red [Republican] state” gays to come out of the closet. He added that the advice he gave to the actors Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, when they questioned him about the love scenes, was to “keep their hats and boots on in bed. The boots are for traction.”

It sounds as though he knows a tad more what he's talking about than Annie Proulx, the author of the New Yorker short story the movie is based on. (Note to Althouse critics: I read the short story!)

I see the NYT "boldface" reporter talked to Jones a few days ago (TimesSelect link):

This film is described as trail-blazing and pioneering in its depiction of gay cowboys. Does that make you feel underappreciated? we asked.

''I'm a little ----.'' Whoa there, partner. Let's just say miffed.

''They're not even cowboys,'' Mr. Jones said. ''They're sheep herders. If you can't tell the difference between sheep and cows, how can you tell the difference between men and women?''

A good question. But in fairness, we asked him about his own qualifications. For one, he is happily married to WILL GREGA, a recording artist. For another, he said he grew up working in the tobacco fields of North Carolina. Thus, our next question. They wear chaps in the tobacco fields?

''Jeans,'' he said. ''The chaps I left to THE BIKER DUDE.''

Ah. What historical figures do you consider your major influences?

''I was raised on all those 50's Warner Brothers cowboy shows. 'Sugarfoot.' 'Maverick.' 'Cheyenne' with CLINT WALKER. It seems like every week they had his shirt ripped off, and he was either tied to something or another cowboy.''

So who, of HEATH LEDGER or JAKE GYLLENHAAL, best personifies the gay cowboy? Mr. Jones admitted he had not in fact seen the movie yet. But.

''I've got some pictures I've pulled off line of Heath Ledger.''

Yeah, we've heard about those.

Mr. Jones has just finished his role as GOD in ''Sodom: The Musical'' and is moving on to ''I Wanna Be Rosie,'' at La MaMa E.T.C.

''I play all of the men in ROSEMARY CLOONEY's life. Her father, her uncle, her nephew GEORGE CLOONEY, her psychiatrist, JOSÉ FERRER, BING CROSBY, NELSON RIDDLE.''

Mr. Jones also has a film coming out next spring about a country club that is built over the graves of Civil War soldiers, whose spirits are angered when the grounds crew uses extra-strength fertilizer. It is called ''Lawn of the Dead.''

Okay, I never really paid any attention to him before, but I've got to say, I love Randy Jones. He sounds really smart and funny and has an excellent attitude!

"Sodom: The Musical"? Here's a review (from the Village Voice):

Randy Jones ... plays God as a beleaguered office manager, Brian Munn's Abraham, his sycophantic subordinate—or, as he dubs himself in one interminable tune, "God's Li'l Bitch." The white-tracksuit-clad God doesn't want his Sodomites being such sodomites—even though they're cast quite clearly in his own image—and he will smite the land unless Abraham comes up with one good man there.

What follows are songs about sins: The writing team of Kevin Laub and Adam Cohen follows a formula of defining each of the Ten Commandments Greek chorus–style, then demonstrating with a peppy tune how it's violated. Lyricist Laub has his moments, celebrating a sexual paradise where penicillin is doled out "like government cheese," but Cohen's score, trying too hard to satisfy the Broadway musical idiom, is uninspired. Sodom fails the karaoke test: You will never hear these tunes at Pieces or the Duplex.

And here's an interview with Annie Proulx, in which she evades questions about how she got the idea for the shepherds-in-love story.

QUESTION THAT OCCURS TO ME ON REREADING: But what's the hat for?

How political is that "gay cowboy movie"?

"Brokeback Mountain," the high-class film everyone thinks must be called the "gay cowboy movie," is doing extremely well in the few theaters where it has opened -- in NYC, LA, and San Francisco. The question is whether Middle America is in the mood for this sort of thing. Here's how Frank Rich analyzes it (TimesSelect link):

The culture is seeking out this movie not just because it is a powerful, four-hankie account of a doomed love affair and is beautifully acted by everyone, starting with the riveting Heath Ledger. The X factor is that the film delivers a story previously untold by A-list Hollywood. It's a story America may be more than ready to hear a year after its president cynically flogged a legally superfluous (and unpassable) constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage for the sole purpose of whipping up the basest hostilities of his electoral base.

Got that? We're sick of this damned President, so we want to see cowboys make love. I don't like the constitutional amendment and related political pandering, but I can't imagine how being tired of all that would make me more likely to go see a big outdoorsy melodrama with the selling point that the lovers are both men. In fact, the notion that to go to this movie is a political statement makes me less likely to go see it. The movie purports to be high art, not some tedious demonstration of good politics.

A serious movie about a gay love relationship may very well make a more effective political argument than a movie that presents itself as political argument. But writers must write, and they will spell out the political argument that the movie only implies, thus making it harder for the film's unarticulated, inherent argument to influence people. But the political baggage is not accumulating as fast as it might have. Rich notes:

As far as I can tell, the only blowhard in the country to turn up on television to declare culture war on "Brokeback Mountain" also has an affiliation with the American Family Association. By contrast, as Salon reported last week, other family-values ayatollahs have made a conscious decision to ignore the movie, lest they drum up ticket sales by turning it into a SpongeBob SquarePants cause célèbre. Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America imagined that the film might just go away if he and his peers stayed mum. Audiences "don't want to see two guys going at it," he told Salon. "It's that simple."

Oh, no! Those social conservatives are supposed to be backward louts! Have they learned the elite technique of restraint? Damn! They were supposed to be ayatollahs. How am I going to crank out these columns now?

Only now am I realizing that I'm writing about a TimesSelect article. Too bad it will be hard for you to read the whole thing. Well, elsewhere in the freely accessible parts of today's NYT there are other insights into the "gay cowboy movie." (Really, the guys are shepherds, but there's no shepherd movie genre, no iconic character The Shepherd to play off of by changing some key element.)

First, there's Manola Darhgas:

Less than two weeks after its release, "Brokeback Mountain" is already on the verge of being embalmed in importance. A lightning rod for attention even before it opened, the film has earned plaudits from critics' groups along with predictable sneers, and provoked argument over its gay bona fides. That "Brokeback" is a landmark is a matter of empiricism; its merits as a work of art are a matter of taste. What has gone missing is that this is also that rare American film that seamlessly breaches the divide between the political and the personal, the past and the present. Here, against the backdrop of the great American West, that mythic territory of rugged individualism and the Marlboro Man, is a quietly devastating look at masculinity and its discontents.

Then, there's this piece by Guy Trebay in the Styles section:

But to gay men trying to forge lives in a world where the shape of masculinity is narrow, and where the "liberated" antics of the homosexual minstrels so often depicted on television can seem far off, the emotional privation and brutal violence of "Brokeback Mountain" seems like documentary.

"That could have been my life," Derrick Glover said one bitter cold afternoon last week, referring to the film, which he had seen at a special screening a week before in Jackson, Wyo. A 33-year-old rancher, Mr. Glover comes from a family that has worked the land around Lusk for generations. His father still runs 300 head of cattle....

"They always define it as coming out of the closet, but I don't consider myself to be out of the closet," Mr. Glover explained. There is a reason for that, he said. "Where I live, you can't really go out and be yourself. You couldn't go out together, two guys, as a couple and ever be accepted. It wasn't accepted in the past, it's still not, and I don't think it ever will be."

This is really the most interesting of the three articles I'm linking in this post. Trebay goes to Wyoming, where the story in the movie takes place and where Matthew Shepard was murdered in 1998, and interviews some gay men about what life is like for them:

The experience was "extremely, extremely lonely," [rancher Ben] Clark said, leaving him feeling so isolated that he more than once contemplated suicide. "I could not accept being gay because of the stereotypes that were drilled into me," he explained. "Gay men are emotionally weak. They are not real men. They are like women."

Like Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist in the film, Mr. Clark dated women for a time, bowing to the pressure to be "normal" although, unlike them, he never married and led a double life. There's a joke out here about how one goes about finding a gay man on the frontier. The punch line is deadpan: "Look for the wife and kids."

Fortunately, Mr. Clark said, "I never did get married, because I never wanted to hurt a woman like that."

I've made fun of the Oscar ads for the movie, because of the way they emphasize the relationship between the men and their wives. This ad campaign is laughable for intentionally hiding the nature of the central love story. Nevertheless, the story of the wives interests me greatly. And the political argument inherent in this part of the story is, I think, especially strong. Those who would try to prevent or inhibit men from forming lifetime bonds with each other ought to give more thought to what happens to the women they marry. Those who think a man should struggle against his sexual orientation and find a way to form the classic marriage relationship with a woman ought to think about what they are advocating for the woman: a lifetime relationship with a man who has only feigned sexual attraction to her.

IN THE COMMENTS: Lots of interesting discussion. I especially like the part where Palladian says: "Geez, all you straight people can think about is sex, sex, sex. Here we are having a conversation about love and art and all you can think to add is some base, puerile and off-putting remarks about genitalia 'fitting' together, as if it were some sort of dirty Lego set."

The Golden Globe nominations.

Here.

Best Pic, Drama
Brokeback Mountain
The Constant Gardener
Good Night, and Good Luck
A History of Violence
Match Point

Best Pic, Musical/Comedy
Mrs. Henderson Presents
Pride Prejudice
The Producers
Squid and Whale
Walk the Line

Director:
Woody Allen, Match Point
George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck
Peter Jackson, King Kong
Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
Fernando Mereilles, The Constant Gardener
Steven Spielberg, Munich

Actor, Drama
Russell Crowe, Cinderella Man
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Terence Howard, Hustle and Flow
Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck

Actor, Musical/Comedy
Peirce Brosnan, The Matador
Jeff Daniels, The Squid and the Whale
Johnny Depp, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Nathan Lane, The Producers
Cillian Murphy, Breakfast on Pluto
Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line

Actress - Musical/Comedy
Judi Dench, Mrs. Henderson Presents
Keira Knightley, Pride & Prejudice
Laura Linney, Squid and the Whale
Sarah Jessica Parker, The Family Stone
Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line

Actress - Drama
Maria Bello, A History of Violence
Felicity Huffman, Transamerica
Gwyneth Paltrow, Proof
Charlize Theron, North Country
Ziyi Zhang, Memoirs of a Geisha

Actress, Supporting Role
Scarlett Johannsson, Match Point
Shirley MacLaine, In Her Shoes
Frances McDormand, North Country
Rachel Weisz, Contant Gardener
Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain

Actor, Supporting Role
George Clooney, Syriana
Matt Dillon, Crash
Will Ferrell, The Producers
Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man
Bob Hoskins, Mrs. Henderson Presents

I have only seen "A History of Violence," actually. I wrote about it here. Key passage:

Maria Bello is not a good actress. She's interesting to look at, but she can't do what is needed in a film like this. Cronenberg tried to cover for her inadequacies by having her do things like run out of the room and throw up off camera or bury her face in Mortenson's shoulder and cry. We'd watch more of him then, instead of her. And by the way, if there's one thing I would like to ban in movies, it's having a character express emotion by vomiting.

Okay, so I guess I shouldn't trust any of the other nominations.

Another thing. I don't like the way dramatic biopics of musicians screw up the classifications into dramatic and musical/comedy. Joaquin Phoenix, emoting as Johnny Cash, will utterly unfairly overshadow the comic performances that the two-category actor approach is supposed to highlight. Unfair. Moreover: unfair to Johnny Depp. The outrage!

UPDATE: Corrected, after someone in the comments wisecracked "Pretty sorry set of musicals/comedies those actresses were in." I'd cut and pasted from the Oscarwatch site, and they had "Musical/Comedy" as the heading for the "Supporting" actress category. "North Country" and "Brokeback Mountain" are so far from being comedy that even the thought of going to see them makes me feel bad. Another correction: I have seen more than one of these films, not just "History of Violence," but also "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Sorry, Johnny! Don't know how it slipped my mind.