the L 'n' X are silent, or, rhymes with goo.

Word up.
pretty much anything in orange/blue is a handy link. me? bored? uh. yeah.

i've been waiting quite a few weeks to blog this book-becomes-film recommendation and i'm gonna do it now because soon it'll be getting a lot of coverage and you won't regret being ahead of the game.

film versions of books are always gonna be potential disasters - especially when you love the book. but i think it's arguably a greater loss when you see an adaptation, really like it and then realise maybe you should have read the book first. d'oh!

so i am begging you: pleeeeeeeease go READ annie proulx's Brokeback Mountain before you see the film, which is due out during the winter.

i read it a few weeks back and reread it within 24 hours i was so impressed and moved by it. it'll take you at most an hour to read. not a moment wasted.

i love proulx's style, although brokebakc mountain is more sparse than her novels. (i have resisted watching the film version of the shipping news because the images from the book are so vivid in my mind and therefore precious. i just know the former would replace the latter in my imagination. i am currently reading accordian crimes and loving it. )

brokeback mountain is beautiful, tragic, heartbreaking. you can get it at amazon as a lone novella but i'd recommend you spend the extra couple of quid and buy close range: wyoming stories where it sits alongside a bundle of short stories.

only once you've relished the text should you hop over to see the trailer for the movie version, which just won the golden lion at venice for best film and so therefore should be quite good. official site is due up soon.

if you hear anyone say, as some idiot in the observer did, that this is simply a gay cowboy movie, i suspect you should ignore them. it could only be that if ang lee has strayed majorly from the text. the trailer doesn't suggest he has, and looks to have captured the heart of the novella - it is an incredible love story- athough he has cast two men far more good looking that proulx's description suggests. that, however, is not a complaint. also ignore anyone who says that the fact that this is a love story about two men is merely incidental. it is the fact that they are men which drives this story.

so. go read it. get outta here.

shoo.

or should that be shoulx?

x.