I watched "Milk" this morning. Sean Penn is BRILLIANT in this role.

Don't walk, RUN to see this film.
Best work EVER by Penn, if that is possible.
He just keeps getting better.

Seriously- this is a MUST see performance and film.

BHN

On edit, I just need to add that I think Dweeb
was channeling Harvey earlier in a disappeared post tonight.
Love you Dweeb.

I saw it for the first time yesterday.

I was stunned how good this was, how good he was. I've always liked him as an actor, but with roles like this there's always an extreme danger of being too over-the-top *or* far too low-key with the characterization. Milk is a difficult character to play since he has so many sides to him, and Penn (and the writing) captured that very well I thought.

I can't imagine him not getting an Oscar for this.

When I saw the clip of Harvey Milk and realized how
completely Penn BECAME him, I was speechless.
Seriously, there are no words to describe the brilliance
of the performance.

BHN

Coincidentally, Harvey Milk was my first exposure to the concept of homosexuality when I was a child. I was aware of him originally because some members of the family were huge Anita Bryant fans/worshipers, and his name came up at family gatherings. Then, we he was murdered, I was aware of it and remember my Grandma saying something about it that people needing to pay more attention to the words in the Bible and stop using it to justify killing people. (She didn't like Bryant ... thought she was a loudmouth with no brain. Grandma liked loudmouths. She was a loudmouth. She loathed loudmouths with no brains.)

And then I saw a documentary about him a few years later on HBO, and he intrigued me enough that I learned quite a bit about him before I was even in high school.

So, yeah ... Penn just transformed himself and remained true to the real, heroic person that Milk was. I haven't gotten over being impressed yet and likely won't.

I can't bring myself to watch movies about or based on Huey Long. They always get it wrong in my experience, and that's one of my "subjects." It's hard for me to enjoy movies I'm constantly critiquing, and I'd already heard I probably would be doing that.

None of my friends would see it with me. :)

Not good, I take it?

Reviews said same.

The Broderick Crawford version would have fine if Mecedes McCambridge had not been so stridently overacting.

Yup ... that's what I was expecting. This always seems to happen when that subject or era is invoked. Irksome, it is.

including the part about dweeb.

Know what I'm talking about?
If not, stick around.

BHN

I haven't caught Milk yet, but I just re-watched "The Assassination of Richard Nixon" last night on TV.

Catch it if you can.

I was bit let down. It's a pretty conventional treatment of a pretty unconventional character and storyline.

There's a much better ( imo) documentary called "The Times of Harvey Milk" which is based on real time footage of Milk along with interviews with most of the supporting cast real life characters in the movies you saw: Cleve Jones, etc.

"Milk" is good though. Especially if you like Sean Penn and are unlikely to ever see the documentary.

I was surprised at how filled the suburban theater was ( a definite plus) and also by the average age of the audience ( 60 ish I'd say). I'm not sure if that's good or bad. Might be nice if younger people saw it so they can figure out WTF is going on.

Without context, nothing can really be understood.

But as an actor- he's undeniably brilliant.

One of the hardest things I ever learned was that
not all great artists are nice people.
Quite the opposite.

BHN

Documentaries are great, and that's a good one.

However, for better or worse, you introduce far more people to concepts and subjects and meaning with films like this. People that won't sit down and watch a documentary just because it is a documentary will see a movie about the same thing. And then they might watch the documentary, or they might not. Either way, they know more than they did.

I'd have a different opinion if they'd butchered the story. They didn't. It is fairly historically accurate and doesn't do nearly the kind of time compression and character composition that many movies of this type do.

Penn really is brilliant as Milk. Brolin looks so much like White it's frightening.

playing anywhere near me. . .:-(. But I do have a question . . .whatever happened to Dan White, anyway? Did he kill himself?

He served a ridiculously short term for
man slaughter charges and after his release,
committed suicide.

BHN

But I've always believed he was bipolar. He showed a lot of the symptoms.

You are right. It's awesome.

:hi:

maybe i'll give watching it a try tomorrow.

Victor Garber plays Mayor Moscone.

Garber was the naval architect in Titanic, Mr. Andrews.

He was the only other person in the cast I knew besides Sean Penn. (OK, so I live under a rock.)

I will happily go see it again and will be getting the DVD. Despite the tragic ending, most of the story is a joyful celebration of Harvey Milk and Sean Penn captured the man magnificently. As I said to my hubby after we got out of the film, "I know Sean Penn isn't gay nor is he Harvey Milk, but for those two hours, I forgot.".