"Brokeback Mountain" won Best Picture awards in red states, as well as blue states. It also earned Best Picture awards outside the United States. And it deservedly won writing awards from many prestigious organizations.

I lived in that country setting. I know the people. I know that many are highly educaterd and intelligent! Many of us have taken up writing, and had to study the craft, even though we were fairly isolated.

The two main characters are not "gay cowboys". They wouldn't know what the heck "gay" was if they heard the term. They met at a job calling for sheepherding.

They were poor and did not have a good enough formal education. This was 1963, in country that barely supported its poor people.. They didn't have time to read about the gay lifestyle. That was for the big cities.

Like I said, I know that country, and its people. I could literally smell, breathe, taste, hear and touch the whole atmosphere of "Brokeback Mountain". And the music was perfect. It astounded me that one single note from a guitar has so much soul, when played at just the right moment. Also, the lyrics to the songs are spot on!

Heath Ledger, especially, had to invent a lot about his character. He set a precedent. It was an amazing job that he did. It was like a blank canvas, and he had the paintbrush in his hanc, and proceeded to create his artistic vision. And Jake Gyllenhaal was also innovative.

The movie didn't register with many of those old people who live in Beverly Hills mansions. These people were more comfortable with a contrived film that insulted minority intellectuals. A movie that won only two stars from a major New York newspaper.

But there was a lot more going on during that voting period. Jay Leno played a major part, imo!

Yes there was a smear campaign on ABM and it did not sugarcoat anything.

Or, Tom, you just continue to remain emotionally invested in "Dreamgirls" and therefore still cannot see how utterly cheesy and unconvincing this movie was.

Hey I agree with you on something! OMG! I also think Shakespeare in Love deserved its win over Saving Private Ryan and everything else with the exception of The Thin Red Line. It is unfairly maligned because it beat Saving Private Ryan which wasn't even the Best WWII movie of the year!

I am not so sure you are right about the reasons Dreamgirls and Brokeback Mountain lost. I am willing to give you the old crotchety white guy thing for BBM's loss (although I think it had more to do with the guilty white liberals being manipulated by Paul Haggis to vote FOR Crash and the fact that Brokeback Mountain was only really that good for the first and last 30 minutes) but Dreamgirls did not lose because it was about black women. There is nothing racially intimidating about Dreamgirls, it is a movie about a pop group that makes black music for white audiences, except this time all the songs are written by white people.

I do actually think that Dreamgirls lost out because of the early front-runner thing because everyone was saying it was a front-runner without having seen the full movie (the 10 minute clip shown at Cannes doesn't count). At this time last year, people were just starting to get their first glimpses of the finished Dreamgirls and they realized while it was good, it wasn't the Best Picture sure thing everyone thought it would be. Helen Mirren and Forest Whittaker ARE different because they didn't start dominating the precursors until AFTER people saw their films.

This is not the first time this has happened either. There is almost always that prestige Oscar Bait movie that looks good on paper, gets good advance word-of-mouth and then comes just short of Oscar glory. The most recent example of this was Cold Mountain. It had everything going for it until it got released and people were completely indifferent to it. Just like Dreamgirls, Cold Mountain lost out on a nomination for Best Picture and Best Director, but still managed to get an impressive number of nominations that ultimately only resulted in a win for Best Supporting Actress. You can't argue that Cold Mountain didn't appeal to old crotchety white people I mean it was based on a Pulitzer Prize novel set during the Civil War based on The Odyssey. It doesn't get more old-white-people appealing than that. Just like with Dreamgirls, Cold Mountain was being hyped as a front-runner sight unseen based on nothing but the talent and a few production stills. Voters don't like to be "expected" to vote a certain way and have movies shoved down their throats before anyone has seen them yet. It is one thing for films to maintain hype based on reports from people who have seen the finished movie (in fact that is usually good for a movie because it keeps it on everyone's mind as a quality film), its a completely different thing to simply assume that people are going to vote a certain way because of circumstantial evidence. It is also important to note here that in both of these cases, neither of the films were that good. If a film can deliver on its hype than the early frontrunner status is no problem. The problem is that oftentimes--particularly in the case of Dreamgirls--no movie can live up to that sort of hype, but it didn't help that Dreamgirls was also mediocre at best.

If I am right about the early frontrunner status only hurting the campaign of sight unseen movies, than films like Sweeney Todd and Charlie Wilson's War are the most in danger of getting overhyped before anyone has gotten a chance to see them. They are the most high profile BP candidates that almost no one has seen yet. There Will Be Blood is another, but even that has had a few low-profile screenings that have been wildly praised by those who have seen it. On the other hand, Atonement and No Country for Old Men are probably still front-runners, as they have played the festival circuit and their buzz stems largely from their actual quality rather than what pundits think their quality will be.