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The Outsider (1961)
OK film, extremely BAD history
If one didn't know the actual history one might mistake this film for the truth. And that's a shame, since a story as important as this deserves absolute truth. Worse is that the film presents itself as absolutely true, and more than a few reviews here accept that at face value.
FACT: Hayes had multiple friends in his platoon, was widely liked, was friendly and outspoken. He wasn't the shy, easily intimidated pushover surrounded by indifferent or even racist soldiers.
FACT: Hayes's drinking problem was sporadic, and not as devastating as shown. He was in fact a very LIGHT drinker, and thus a few drinks could get him drunk far easier a severe alcoholic could. Ironically this film's stance against racism is undercut by perpetuating a racist stereotype about Natives.
And just plain strange...the film shows the friendship between Hayes and the fictional Sorenson as a thinly veiled frustrated gay relationship. That's because the screenwriter was a closeted gay man back in the days when much of society wouldn't accept that. He projected his own struggles onto Hayes, which is really bad (and confusing) filmmaking.
Almost as strange...the bizarre choice of Curtis as Hayes, done up in heavy pancake makeup that makes him look almost like a drag queen at Halloween. Coupled with his "poor little me" impression of Hayes, it comes off as about as realistic as a boy scout dressed in plastic feathers giving a speech about "us poor Indians." Hayes deserved far better than this, and so does the audience. Thank God for Flags of Our Fathers finally giving the world a far more decent (and more accurate) picture.
The Business of Fancydancing (2002)
In Your Face. Indians Will Enjoy This & Whites Need to See This.
I actually agree with the person saying "Don't expect another Smoke Signals." SS in its own way deliberately tried to steer away from issues which might offend white sensibilities. This one doesn't. In fact it confronts them head on. It deals directly with colonialism, misdirected anger against whites, well meaning but clueless white liberals, and other minorities turning on each other. It's final message at the end, "As hopeless as things seem, keep singing," won't satisfy anyone expecting either a Hollywood happy-redemptive ending, or a throw your fist in the air pseudo revolutionary cliché. But it is more honest.
Carlos Castaneda: Enigma of a Sorcerer (2004)
Cult Apologist Film for an Abusive Cult Leader
What's most revealing about this film is what it leaves it.
It leaves out that Castaneda was exposed as a fraud repeatedly, first by American Indians and then by academia.
It leaves out the lawsuit by a Tai Chi master he ripped off and had to pay a huge settlement to.
It leaves out that his books and ideas have zip to do with any Native traditions.
It leaves out that instead they are cheesy ripoffs of eastern traditions, passed off as Mayan and Yaqui.
It leaves out that American Indians consider him an offensive exploitative racist, and any who fall his ideas naive fools.
It leaves out that most anthropology professors use him as an example of what NOT to do. IOW, don't make stuff up and pass off role playing fantasy as reality.
It leaves out that he formed an actual CULT and abused people by the hundreds.
It leaves out that he routinely told women they could ingest his wisdom by receiving his sperm into their bodies. And they often fell for it. Yes, your average Castaneda devotee really is that gullible.
Most of all, it leaves out how his cult self destructed. Castaneda got tired of the fraud by the end of his life. But his cult's inner circle wouldn't let him quit. Too much money in it. So they kept him a prisoner.
And then the three "witches" that were his inner circle committed group suicide. Truly sad, but also pathetic.
His followers went on to found Cleargreen. Cleargreen self destructed too. Lots of people ripped off, many abused, and the group fell apart.
Stay far FAR away from anyone whose into this dangerous nonsense.
2012 (2009)
Bases on Nonsense Anyway, There Is NO Such Mayan Prophecy
So if you were naive enough to go to this film for anything other than an Ed Wood level of incompetent film making you get what you deserve.
Shame on Hollywood for spreading yet more lies about American Indians.
---------------- http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091011/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/ lt_mexico_apocalypse2012
2012 isn't the end of the world, Mayans insist
Mexico CITY – Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out" on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it's not the end of the world.
Or is it? Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff." It can only get worse for him. Next month Hollywood's "2012" opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House.
At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the "Curious? Ask an Astronomer" Web site, says people are scared.
"It's too bad that we're getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they're too young to die," Martin said. "We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn't live to see them grow up." Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas.
A significant time period for the Mayas does end on the date, and enthusiasts have found a series of astronomical alignments they say coincide in 2012, including one that happens roughly only once every 25,800 years.
But most archaeologists, astronomers and Maya say the only thing likely to hit Earth is a meteor shower of New Age philosophy, pop astronomy, Internet doomsday rumors and TV specials such as one on the History Channel which mixes "predictions" from Nostradamus and the Mayas and asks: "Is 2012 the year the cosmic clock finally winds down to zero days, zero hope?" It may sound all too much like other doomsday scenarios of recent decades — the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, the Jupiter Effect or "Planet X." But this one has some grains of archaeological basis.
One of them is Monument Six.
Found at an obscure ruin in southern Mexico during highway construction in the 1960s, the stone tablet almost didn't survive; the site was largely paved over and parts of the tablet were looted.
It's unique in that the remaining parts contain the equivalent of the date 2012. The inscription describes something that is supposed to occur in 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, a mysterious Mayan god associated with both war and creation.
However — shades of Indiana Jones — erosion and a crack in the stone make the end of the passage almost illegible.
Archaeologist Guillermo Bernal of Mexico's National Autonomous University interprets the last eroded glyphs as maybe saying, "He will descend from the sky." Spooky, perhaps, but Bernal notes there are other inscriptions at Mayan sites for dates far beyond 2012 — including one that roughly translates into the year 4772.
And anyway, Mayas in the drought-stricken Yucatan peninsula have bigger worries than 2012.
"If I went to some Mayan-speaking communities and asked people what is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn't have any idea," said Jose Huchim, a Yucatan Mayan archaeologist. "That the world is going to end? They wouldn't believe you. We have real concerns these days, like rain." The Mayan civilization, which reached its height from 300 A.D. to 900 A.D., had a talent for astronomy Its Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. Thirteen was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas, and the 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012.
"It's a special anniversary of creation," said David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin. "The Maya never said the world is going to end, they never said anything bad would happen necessarily, they're just recording this future anniversary on Monument Six."
Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992)
Terrible Film and Even Worse History
Corny, goofy, and with some of the worst non-acting you ever saw: It doesn't get much worse than Tom Selleck as an effete fop. Try and hear him say "Por-too-gahl" without busting out laughing.
Or Rachel Ward playing Queen Isabela as a shallow minded slut who gives Columbus money because she was horny for him. Seriously, this film claims that! Try and reconcile that with the real life history: Isabella was a sharp, powerful queen who presided over the uniting of her nation, and one of the most devout Catholics to ever be on the throne. There's good reason she's called Isabela La Catolica and the Defender of the Faith.
And Columbus as a supposed charming rake? (Actually this actor comes across as a conceited ass in love with his own reflection.)Oh yeah, and showing his wife as a hot young thing...Columbus married a widow older than him, for her money.
Please! Columbus was a driven, obsessed religious fanatic who thought the world was coming to an end in hislifetime, a believer in The End Times who thought he would play a role in Arrmageddon.
Which, of course, is the worst thing the film does. It whitewashes genocide, doesn't show Columbus as the man who killed at least 800,000 Taino Indians, chopping off hand if they didn't give him enough gold, handing over Indian girls for his soldiers to rape as rewards for jobs well done, feeding Indian bodies to his dogs, and personally raping Indian women and enslaving both Indians and Africans. And he went to prison in Spain, for falsely imprisoning and torturing Spaniards.
Skip this travesty and see the far better films, Surviving Columbus or Columbus Didn't Discover Us. And unlike this sanitized fiction, these two films are the truth. And you can find them for free on Youtube.
Starship Troopers (1997)
Wants to be Profound, Ends Up Pure Camp
This film kept reminding me of what we called in the army "John Waynes," posers who think they know what the military is like, but only know from the movies. The military aspects aren't believable in the slightest, but since that's already been covered by other reviewers, let me point to its most serious flaw.
The movie's writer and director wanted it to be satire, and wound up making a campy two hours of cheap thrills, the kind that a teenager will watch the whole way through without a hint their is any kind of supposed message in it. In their desire to make a big blockbuster and lots of cash, they piled on the "thrilling action" "thrilling special effects" thrilling romance" "thrilling explosions and things blowing up REAL BIG OH MY!" If they really wanted this film to be satire, then they wouldn't have made a film about "How War Is Just So Doggone Fun!" IOW, they would actually make a film that undercuts their own supposed message.
So enjoy it for what it is,a really high priced version of Plan Nine From Outer Space, so-bad-it'-fun-to-laugh-at.
Spirits for Sale (2007)
A devastating look at whites who want to be Indian and the harm they do
I saw this film at the South Dakota Film Festival, where it won Best International Film. The audience, both Native and white, was bowled over by it, cheering the Native activists, laughing at the foolishness of white wannabes, and booing the deception and abuse by pretenders.
The film follows American Indians in South Dakota, New Mexico, and Texas, giving us Lakota, Navajo, Cherokee, and Apache views on the phenomena of pay to pray and whiteshamanism or plastic shamanism, imposters who pose as Native spiritual leaders. We also see a group of European wannabes get taken by a white pretender, doing a fake sweatlodge and getting it comically wrong. (It's just plain dumb luck none of them were killed. Think of those poor people in Sedona who died.) There's some wonderful scenes where clueless New Age people say one foolish thing after another, only to be shown to be wrong time and again by Natives.
The film has some wonderful words of wisdom from Arvol Looking Horse, a spiritual leader of the Lakota, Gayle Ross, a descendant of Cherokee Chief John Ross, Andrew Thomas, a Navajo artist, and Al Carroll, an Apache historian. Looking online it seems some of the same New Age hucksters who worry about their bank accounts getting smaller have conducted a smear campaign against the film and its participants. That is probably the best compliment they could give, because it says just how worried they are abou8t the truth getting out.
Billy Jack (1971)
One of the WORST Movies Ever Made About American Indians
It's also one of the worst movies ever made, period. Too offensive to even be camp, with a phony sanctimonious and hypocritical message of "beat people up in the name of peace." The film is what I would call Red-sploitation. Just like there was Blaxploitation, where 70s films supposedly about Blacks (but rarely ever actually made BY them) pushed the worst kinds of stereotypes and justified them by giving the audience cheap thrills. "Yeah! he beat up the Man!" Except that nothing was changed. It was the cheapest kind of straw man empty "victory."
To top it off, they have a WHITE man playing an Indian. McLaughlin was Not Indian At All. He's even less believable as an Indian than David Carradine was as Chinese in Kung Fu. Shouldn't a film supposedly so strong against anti Indian racism at least not be racist itself?
So how does this white man in redface pretend to be Indian? He puts on a Cowboy Hat. And he Squints. And Talks Slow. Talk about every racist stereotype in the book!
And the film gets every fact about American Indians Wrong! It invents a fictional Nishnobie tribe. It invents a phony snake handling ceremony that doesn't exist outside a screenplay. And it has a White woman who preaches and tells the supposed Indian Billy Jack about how to be an Indian. Talk about racist arrogance!
Even the pretense about being against racist violence is phony. American Indians don't need some phony white pretender to come in and protect them. The real American Indians, people like AIM and warrior societies, were already fighting the good fight, and putting their lives on the line in real ways. They didn't go in and lash out without thinking. Just like Martin Luther King (except they believed in self defense) they went in with carefully thought out campaigns to help their causes. They weren't brainless knuckleheads.
Even the fight scenes are so badly done. The double is smaller, darker, and Asian. The editing looks like it was done with a meat cleaver.
And for sheer annoyance, nothing can beat the soundtrack. Like nails on a chalkboard.
Oh yeah, the sequel to Billy Jack bombed. That's because of American Indian protests against the racism of these films.
Unles you enjoy laughing at the camp racism of it, save your money. Better yet, rent Smoke Signals. Watch a real American Indian film, not one put out by a racist pretender.