One of the most abiding features of Ang Lee's (
The booming oil city of Calgary, famous for its annual stampede, is where the crew stayed during the making of the film two years ago and it gets a special mention in the film credits. As does the Calgary Gay Rodeo Association, which advised and consulted on the rodeo sequences featuring Jake Gyllenhaal as the rough-rider Jack Twist. Members of the group appear in several sequences.
"We are the only gay rodeo association in Canada," said member Tim Cyr, "but it's part of a huge circuit throughout the US. We have the best turn out on the circuit, and to be a part of it is a great feeling."
This year's 10-day Calgary Stampede takes place July 7 to July 16 in Stampede Park. Originally established as an agricultural fair in 1886, the modern event starts with a grand parade through the city streets and features a wide range of events, the most famous of which are probably the chuckwagon race, and the bull riding and calf roping events, which both feature so strongly in Brokeback Mountain.
Ten-gallon hats and cowboy boots are, needless to say, de rigueur for the Stampede.
But it is Kananaskis Country -- a favorite place for Calgarians wanting to avoid overcrowded Banff and Lake Louise -- which is the setting for the beautiful outdoor scenes which make up most of the movie. The changeable Rockies weather was apparently a problem during the filming and I've known days which have started with drizzling rain turning to stinging sleet and snow and ending up in warm sunshine.
Ang Lee, who won an Oscar with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, said of the Canadian Rockies locations: "You realize when you place the camera that you have to tilt it up a little bit; the sky is so grand. It's not only the big landscape, but the big sky."
Randy Quaid, the seasoned US actor who plays the taciturn Joe Aguirre, who employs Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist as sheep herders, was particularly impressed by the locations on what was his first visit to this part of Canada. "I loved the mountains, and even the wind. It's gorgeous big sky country," he said.
Most of the riverside camping sequences in Brokeback Mountain were shot in K Country, near the former coal mining and now mountaineering and skiing center of Canmore, to the west of Calgary.
Highway 40 -- the Kananaskis Trail -- to the east of Canmore will take you into the heart of the mountains to the tranquil Kananaskis Lakes and past many scenes recognizable from the movie.
There's one shot in the film when Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) is returning for his annual assignation with Ennis (Heath Ledger) on Brokeback Mountain where his pick-up swings round into the mountains at a turn-off into the Peter Lougheed regional park.
Other shots were used from around the shores of the Kananaskis Lakes in Lougheed park, which are completely surrounded by snow-covered peaks with such formidable names as Indefatigable, Invincible and Inflexible. As was the tradition in the days of Empire, these mountains were named after British Navy warships which took part in the Battle of Jutland in 1916. Others in the Upper Kananaskis Lake area, which also feature in the film, take the names of French Commanders from the first world war -- Foch, Joffre and Sarrail.
Highway 742 -- the Smith-Dorrien/Spray Trail -- is the alternative way to approach Kananaskis Country from Canmore. It takes you up through the mountain pass of Whiteman's Gap and the imposing Chinaman's Peak -- named after the Chinese cook, Ha Ling, who first climbed it for a US$50 bet.
Jack and Ennis' spectacular nude cliff-top leap into a river was shot at the appropriately named Sheep River Falls in the Elbow Sheep Wildland Provincial Park near Okotoks, south of Calgary. We drove to this idyllic spot, passing the house-sized, isolated glacial erratic, said to be the largest in the world and emphatically known as The Big Rock, to reach the Blue Rock campsite in Sheep Valley.
Camping there in the wilderness, the only sounds the thundering waterfall and the rushing river, we felt something of the same sense of peace that the fictional Ennis and Jack must have felt on their Brokeback Mountain.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located