Ah, Peter, you are a kindred soul on the "Independence Day" thing. It may be a movie that only Americans can love (some of them, I mean...). I can buy the notion that it's partially a send-up, but it's still obnoxious. I've seldom been so angry at having spent $10 on a movie as I was with that one.

jacqui - You're right that the "close encounter" line is pretty darned funny, and I agree that "Deep Impact" is by far the best of the disaster movies, because it makes a sincere effort to look into the human side of the situation, rather than just burying the viewer under a barrage of special effects and patriotic bombast. Also, Morgan Freeman plays the president with his usual dignity and presence, which are considerable.

One other movie I hated as much as Independence Day...well, even more...was Pretty Woman (and I usually like movies with Richard Gere). The message that one delivered was as totally sick as anything I think I've ever seen onscreen.

The Dances With Wolves thing, Stilly? You say that "A lot of Indians felt betrayed by it." Well, yeah, I guess...no surprise to me there. Why do I say that? I've been hanging around traditionals since the late 70's, and I've never seen anything artistic done yet concerning Indians (whether done by Indians or not) that didn't cause a lot of Indians to feel betrayed.

I'm frankly getting a bit cynical about it. There are a lot of shoulders out there with big chips on them in medicine land, and it has proven utterly impossible to please them...again and again.

Believe me, you can love all that is Native American with your whole heart and soul, and tear your guts out trying to honor it in the best way you can possibly imagine...and still get pilloried for it by various people who are self-appointed super-Indians and are just so absolutely perfect and superior, that by golly, they are disgusted at how you have betrayed the purity of...blah, blah, blah...yadda, yadda. They even do it regularly to each other in the Medicine Lodge. I've seen it. The competition for legitimacy and acceptance on the Good Red Road can be fierce out there, and it carries its own share of hypocrisy and pretentiousness.

Now what did Kevin Costner do? He portrayed an Indian society in a profoundly sympathetic manner, and portrayed white society as ignorant, expansionist, corrupt, dirty and senselessly violent. He showed the gradual transformation of an ordinary white soldier into a man who felt that he truly was Indian to the very heart. He was humbled by the Indians. He admired them tremendously. They helped him, and when the opportunity arose, he helped them. That's brotherhood. It just naturally figures that they both had gifts to offer one another.

Beats me how it's a betrayal of Indians, but I'm not a bit surprised that some say so. Like I say, I've seen it happen before...every time anyone dares to touch the subject in a serious way. "Seven Arrows" is an extraordinary book, written by an Indian about Indians, and some of them think it's a betrayal too.

Well, you jut can't please everyone. And you know, opinions are often formed in people by the very first person they talk to about something, and it goes from there, reinforcing the first impression. All I know is I saw the movie, I'm a patriot to the Medicine Way, and I loved it. I did not feel betrayed. It wasn't perfect, but it was very good.

This is all just opinion, of course.

Windwalker was a neat little movie about Indians, and it didn't feature one single white character in the whole story, and it had one white actor, playing an old man, and about 8 or 10 Indians playing all the other parts, and most of the dialogue was in the Cheyenne language with subtitles, but some Indians still felt "betrayed" by that too. Yeah, I heard them yakking about it pretentiously at Rolling Thunder's camp after the show...I talked to him about it and he said they were just trying to make a big thing out of themselves, and it was a pretty darned good movie, which was what I thought. These people make me tired. Where do they get the time to be so perfect? If they even did a movie themselves about Indians, with total artistic control, half of them would complain afterward about how the other half screwed it up, I figure.

Not what I call "good medicine".

- LH