The early returns on this are saying it's very, very good. And I'm sure the plea coppage for Mel will increase as the week goes on. I'll most likely be seeing it for free, so there won't be any guilt about spending money to peep it out. This is the Variety review, and it contains what can considered to be SPOILERS:

>Apocalypto

A Buena Vista release of a Touchstone Pictures presentation in association with Icon Prods. of an Icon production. Produced by Mel Gibson, Bruce Davey. Executive producers, Ned Dowd, Vicki Christianson. Co-producer, Farhad Safinia. Directed by Mel Gibson. Screenplay, Gibson, Farhad Safinia.

Jaguar Paw - Rudy Youngblood
Seven - Dalia Hernandez
Blunted - Jonathan Brewer
Flint Sky - Morris Birdyellowhead
Turtles Run - Carlos Emilio Baez
Curl Nose - Amilcar Ramirez
Smoke Frog - Israel Contreras
Coca Leaf - Israel Rios
Mother in Law - Isabel Diaz
Old Story Teller - Espiridion Acosta Cache
Zero Wolf - Raoul Trujillo
Middle Eye - Gerardo Taracena
Snake Ink - Rodolfo Palacios
High Priest - Fernando Hernandez
Oracle Girl - Maria Isidra Hoil, Aquetzali Garcia

By TODD MCCARTHY

Mel Gibson is always good for a surprise, and his latest is that "Apocalypto" is a remarkable film. Set in the waning days of the Mayan civilization, the picture provides a trip to a place one's never been before, offering hitherto unseen sights of exceptional vividness and power. In the wake of its director's recent outburst and unwanted publicity, commercial prospects remain anyone's guess, and those looking for a reason not to attend will undoubtedly find one, be it Gibson's tirade, the gore, the subtitles or outre subject matter. But blood-and-guts action audiences should eat this up, Gibson is courting Latinos, eco-political types will like the message and at least part of the massive "The Passion of the Christ" crowd should be curious, so strong biz is possible if these distinct constituencies are roused.

Despite the subject's inherent spectacle, conflict and societal interest, Central America's pre-Columbian history has scarcely been touched by filmmakers; Hollywood's only venture into the territory was the little-remembered 1963 quasi-epic "Kings of the Sun," with Yul Brynner and George Chakiris.

Cast largely with indigenous nonpros speaking the prevailing surviving dialect of the Mesoamericans, "Apocalypto" is exotic, wild, ferocious, teeming with startling incident and brutal violence.

With co-screenwriter Farhad Safinia, Gibson has cooked up a scenario that is fundamentally a survival and chase film, with a final act that trades on the human hunt motif of "The Most Dangerous Game" and Cornel Wilde's "The Naked Prey."

But both the grand conception of a civilization in decline and the extraordinary detail with which the society is presented make the picture much more than that, to the extent that it startlingly echoes another portent-laden year-end release, Alfonso Cuaron's "Children of Men;" one film is set in the past, the other in the near-future, one was made in Mexico by a Yank-Aussie, the other in Britain by a Mexican, but both are contemporaneously resonant stories of pursuit through poisoned, dangerous lands on the brink.

Starting at a run and seldom stopping for a breather, pic opens on an animal hunt that occasions a graphically gross two-prong practical joke that instantly humanizes the characters. It establishes the relaxed, intimate, sensual nature of family-oriented life in a small jungle settlement occupied by the fearsome-looking but free-spirited protags. Chief among them is Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), an athletic young man who has long flowing locks, sports tattoos, designed body scars, large ear adornments and a sort of chin plug, and wears nothing but a well-fitted loin cloth. His teeth are not quite as bad as those of his pals, which are very bad indeed.

Paradise comes to an abrupt end a half-hour in with the dawn attack of marauders who pillage with ruthless expertise. These guys are more heavily decorated than the locals, with bones through their noses and elsewhere. Two members of what the press notes identify as Holcane warriors stand out: the leader, Zero Wolf (the supremely imposing Raoul Trujillo), whose left arm and head are festooned with human and animal jaws, and the sadistic Snake Ink (Rodolfo Palacios, fantastically hateful), who, restrained from killing Jaguar Paw by Zero Wolf, instead murders the captive's father in front of him, launching an antagonism that runs through the picture. Both of these heavies could stay in costume and stride straight into another "Mad Max" film.

With his surviving fellow villagers, Jaguar Paw is bound and marched off through the jungle, but not before he's secreted his very pregnant wife Seven (Dalia Hernandez) and little son (Carlos Emilio Baez) in a deep pit, promising, rather against the odds, to return.

The greatest mystery surrounding the Mayan civilization is why it collapsed so suddenly. Gibson adroitly lines his film with hints of the numerous possible causes, including famine, disease, drought, increased warfare, a corrupt ruling class and general societal breakdown. A bedraggled group of emaciated natives is glimpsed moving through the forest early on, and the prisoners later pass by a haunted girl with "the sickness" who warns about the coming "blackness of day."

The long central section of "Apocalypto" is simply great epic cinema, with generous dollops of chilling horror and grisly human sacrifice. Production designer Tom Sanders makes a huge contribution to the captives' gradual entry into the great and chaotic Maya City. Each neighborhood is brilliantly detailed, from the derelict outlying shantytown to the industrial and more prosperous commercial districts, the slave market where the women are sold off and, finally, the staggering central plaza, where the first thing seen is a freshly detached human head being bounced down the long steps of a towering pyramid toward a frenzied crowd below.

Only then does it dawn on the shackled prisoners what's in store for them. At the summit preside dissolute royals as well as a high priest who, time and again, plunges a knife into a man's belly and, while the victim is still alive, tears out his still-beating heart as an offering to placate the gods to end the drought.

It takes a freakish act of nature to save Jaguar Paw, but he and the few other survivors are quickly made objects of sport in an arena, from which commences the long and eventful chase of Jaguar Paw by Zero Wolf and his minions back through the jungle. Double-whammy ending tips over into undue melodrama that some may find risible, and one aspect of the climax establishes the film's time frame as much later in Mayan history than one might have guessed.

Notwithstanding the fantastic sets, costumes, makeup, body and hair designs and natural locations, perhaps the greatest impression is made by the performers' faces, which are superbly photogenic and unlike any normally seen in movies. The attractive, agile Youngblood carries the film with room to spare, and is entirely convincing in his many dramatic moments as well as in the intense action. Casting director Carla Hool rates a huge bonus for tracking down the people who play everyone from the most savage looking warriors to the paralyzingly weird female aristocrats in the city.

One notable aspect of the characterizations is the general attitude toward death. The Mayans as portrayed here naturally fear it like anyone, but they accept it, just as they acknowledge physical pain as an everyday aspect of life. They are utterly without sentimentality, tears or remorse; when one is about to die, another will sincerely tell them, "Travel well," and that is that. Blood and violence is abundant, but doesn't feel exaggerated or out of line in relation to the material.

Production is a wonder. Dean Semler's camera moves relentlessly through the densest of foliage and over the roughest of terrain on locations near Veracruz and in the rainforests of Catemaco, with some additional shooting done in Costa Rica and the U.K.; Gibson clearly knew the impact the lenser of the second and third "Mad Max" films could deliver. More remarkable still is that pic was shot on the new high definition Genesis camera system. Without a doubt, "Apocalypto" is the best-looking big-budget film yet shot digitally; one can't tell it wasn't shot on film.

James Horner composed an uncharacteristically low-key and moody score, full of threatening, choral-like synthesizer growling, woodwind interludes and alarming percussive strikes.
_______________________________________________________________________
"Would you get your face out of that computer? Life is happening all around you, and you're watching the commentary."
- Danny (Bradley Whitford), Studio 60 (yep!)

and believe me I was all prepared to hate

I felt kind of guilty considering his tirade.

+BEST BLOG EVER:
http://theworldaroundusblog.blogspot.com (updated daily!!)

+my fave okp beef: logical explanations vs lessonheads � okp KayCee

~~~~~~~~~~~~

www.itsallthewaylive.net

www.twitter.com/allthewaylive

which isn't really saying that much.

I wish Mel didn't have such a disappointing track record as director.

--------

hell-below.com

"I wish Mel didn't have such a disappointing track record as director."

Braveheart! The Passion!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

www.itsallthewaylive.net

www.twitter.com/allthewaylive

Lessons I took away from it:

Englishmen are snivelling fags. The Scottish are real men. And medieval battles were fought by two sides running screaming at each other.

The Passion's only good scene was the Mary/Jesus flashback. The rest was ludicrous.

--------

hell-below.com

...off me! He could direct the best superhero flick of all time but ay, it still won't happen.

GOMD

the lighting, the action, the costumes, the sets look very good

http://twitter.com/AyeDreezy

And anybody hating better not have one single R.Kelly track anywhere within their homes or mp3 players lol.

I'm not copping that SNOOP album...UGH!

GOMD

I'm torn between my hate of douchebaggery and my love of seeing good movies. Also, The Passion of the Christ was terrible. That's pushing me over to the "don't see it" side.

------------------------------

17x NBA Champions

called it "anti jew," which is short for "anti jewish warrior mel gibson."

unsuprisingly, anti jew KILLS in the boxing ring.

----
bshelly

"You (Fisher) could get fired, Les Snead could get fired, Kevin Demoff could get fired, but I will always be Eric Dickerson.” (c) The God

from what i have gathered, mel gibson is depicting the mayans as IMPLODING, and "coming to an end".. this is utterly false.. the mayan civilization was conquered by the spanish, who robbed them of their land & wealth, and slaughtered their people.. if he wants to make a film about the mayans, why not do a DANCES WITH WOLVES/THE NEW WORLD type of film which portrays the tragedy of colonialism...

one

------------------------------------------
REP MUZIK, TIL DEATH DO US:
http://www.myspace.com/boxcutterknow1edge
http://www.soundclick.com/boxcutterknow1edge

I was thinking the same thing. Although from doing a little reading it is true that there was no singular cause for the civilization to decline. Numerous factors, including colonialism, famine and disease, peasant revolt and collapse of trade systems.
For cinematic purposes, Mel probably thought it would more entertaining to say the Mayans couldn't sustain their civilization and it collapsed on itself. I mean, he's know for taking historical subject matters and adding his own twist on it, so this is no surprise.

However, I am def. considering seeing this. Something to watch on a lazy holiday afternoon.

C


"This brother is free, I'll be what I want to be."

The Mayans were already gone when that happened.

********************************

Get Out The Room!
http://getouttheroom.podomatic.com
@fakewilliamkatt

"You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do!" - Olin Miller

>The Mayans were already gone when that happened.


Tell that to the millions of Maya people today who still speak their language and practice "traditional" culture

***************************************

www.twitter.com/MsKianga
http://nativebeadwork.blogspot.com/
'I can't stand Tim McCarver. He has a penchant for making blindingly obvious statements in a self-congratulatory tone' Kyle Lohse

_________________________

done before. I'm not so sure his aim is to be historically accurate.
_______________________________________________________________________
"Would you get your face out of that computer? Life is happening all around you, and you're watching the commentary."
- Danny (Bradley Whitford), Studio 60 (yep!)

from the L.A. Times:

>MOVIES

History fires the imagination

The past guided 'Apocalypto's' makers but still left them room to create their tale of a Maya world.

By Susan King
Times Staff Writer

December 7, 2006

THE creative team behind Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" did a lot of research on the once-magnificent Maya civilization of Mexico that, during a 1,000-year period, created huge cities, magnificent pyramids and a culturally and scientifically advanced society.

But when it came time to re-create that universe, which disappeared 500 years ago, they allowed their imaginations to build upon historical fact.

"There are no photographs of history," said production designer Tom Sanders, who previously worked with Gibson on "Braveheart" and "Maverick." "It gives you a lot of creative license. We wanted to set up the Mayan world, but we were not trying to do a documentary. Visually, we wanted to go for what would have the most impact. Just as on 'Braveheart,' you are treading the line of history and cinematography. Our job is to do a beautiful movie."

Sanders said the creative team attempted to get as close to historical fact as possible before giving the designs their own spin.

"We had an archeologist, Dr. Richard Hansen, onboard," said Sanders. "It was really fun to say, 'Is there any proof they didn't do this?' When he said, 'There is no proof they didn't do that,' that gives you some license to play."

Shot on location in Catemaco, the site of one of Mexico's last remaining rain forests, as well as Veracruz, "Apocalypto" revolves around a young husband and father named Jaguar Paw, whose idyllic existence in the jungle is violently upended when his village is attacked and destroyed by a group of men from a nearby Maya metropolis.

The villagers who survive are captured and taken on an arduous march to the city, where they are to be sacrificed on top of the pyramids to appease the gods for the widespread famine that has attacked the land. Jaguar Paw seeks to find a way to escape so he can return home to save his wife and young child.

Sanders' design and construction crew was international � and large. "There were probably 300 people at one point," he said.

For Jaguar Paw's village, said Sanders, "we raised the huts off the ground and made them see-through so you could see the attack very well. You do a lot of stuff on purpose. We wanted (the village) to be really translucent � so you would see all the way through everything."

The extensive village and pyramids were built on a former sugar cane field. "We built everything from scratch," he said. The pyramids were made out of steel, wood and plaster. The one where the sacrifices were held was nine stories tall.

"I think we built the whole set in four months. There were probably 30 to 40 huts and 25 to 30 buildings."

Gibson wanted the Maya city to reflect the decadence of the civilization. "The whole goal was to show that this society is collapsing," said Sanders. "I picked an industrial route , so you would see the consequences of the industry. We purposely showed the city that is consuming itself. You see the poverty and the richness. I was juxtaposing the design so we would get a cross-section of the society."

The production was besieged with bad weather and sweltering heat. "We had two hurricanes," said Sanders. "We had flooding. We had a 200-year-old tree in strong winds fall into the (village) set. We rebuilt part of the set. And the fallen tree became the entrance into the village."

Costume designer Mayes C. Rubeo's crew was almost entirely Mexican. "I wanted it that way," said Rubeo, who is Mexican herself. "The only person who wasn't Mexican was my wardrobe supervisor. I had Mexican professional wardrobe people, and I gathered a group of Mexican artisans that I found randomly by going to remote communities. I had people who were experts in feather art. I had people who were jewelers."

The Maya, she said, worked hard at their appearance. "It was almost an obligation to look good," she said. In fact, wealthy Maya always wore jade. But because of the gem's weight and cost, wood beads were used on the costumes and jewelry.

"If you caramelize them in a certain way, it looks like the real thing," Rubeo said. "We did use amber and coral for real. I went to one community there that had lots of amber. I was very happy to give them the business and happy they had the materials."

The villagers' clothes were made out of cotton.

"We wanted to portray these simple, happy villagers that were self-sufficient," she said. "They were agricultural people and hunters."

Rubeo said that Gibson had show-and-tell sessions with his creative teams. "Mel was always present and aware of what I was designing and what I was proposing," she said. "He is a director who gives direction. This doesn't happen very often."

Because the Maya used tattoo decorations on their faces and bodies, Aldo Signoretti, who worked on hair and makeup design, decided to have the tattoos match the characters' hair color. When it came to the wealthy characters, Signoretti illustrated the decadence of the society by matching the color of the body paint and hair.

Gibson, he said, gave him free rein to do what he wanted. "We had a show-and-tell, and I wasn't sure if it was the right direction or if he'd like it," said Signoretti. "I was scared to death. But everything I proposed, he didn't say no to. He accepted my ideas. He really let me do it."
________________________________________________________________________
"Would you get your face out of that computer? Life is happening all around you, and you're watching the commentary."
- Danny (Bradley Whitford), Studio 60 (yep!)

>done before. I'm not so sure his aim is to be historically
>accurate.

ok, that makes sense now. i was wondering about that.

anyway, very good movie! up for this week's dvd release.

I'm assuming that you haven't seen it yet.

The ads are a bit misleading. The story was about a man getting home to his wife and child.


It had nothing to do with the destruction of Mayan civilization.

but to your point there WAS a hint at what you spoke on.

______________



http://www.windimoto.com


http://ten2one.wordpress.com/ <-FEB

http://wallpapershi.net/wallpapers/2012/01/boba-fett-star-wars-star-wars-boba-fett-movie-anime-1080x1920.jpg

but the Mayan people still existed and their descendants r still alive... but as far as active civilization, the spaniards encountered the Aztecs

*******************************************************
i will not let finite disappointment undermine infinite hope
- Cory Booker

Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes, and at the end the Germans always win
- Gary Lineker

still i probably won't see this.

from the L.A. Times:

>'Apocalypto'

Another bloodbath, Mel Gibson�s "Apocalypto" doesn�t miss an impalement or a dismemberment.

By Kenneth Turan
Times Staff Writer

December 8, 2006

Who knows what violence lurks in the hearts of men? Mel Gibson knows, and he just can't resist putting every last ounce of it on screen. He also can't resist pulling those bloody, still-beating hearts out of human bodies and putting them up on screen as well. And that's just the beginning.

Numerous good things can be said about "Apocalypto," the director's foray into the decaying Mayan civilization of the early 1500s, but every last one of them is overshadowed by Gibson's well-established penchant for depictions of stupendous amounts of violence.

Despite a genuine talent for taking us to another time and place, a gift that under other circumstances would be worth experiencing, Gibson has made a movie that can be confidently recommended only to viewers who have a concentration camp commandant's tolerance for repugnant savagery.

Mountains of hacked up corpses, exit wounds spewing fountains of blood, spears shattering teeth, warriors literally beating each other's brains out, it's all here in living and dying color.

This is the kind of movie in which a person known as a finisher does not work on your floors, a jaguar graphically munches on a man's face, and when someone says, "I will peel his skin and have him watch me wear it," we can only pray that it doesn't come to pass.

Perhaps even Gibson himself doesn't know what deep need is satisfied by putting this kind of brutality on screen. But no one who's seen the disemboweling scene in "Braveheart" or the torture and crucifixion in "The Passion of the Christ" (not to mention the Gibson parody on "South Park") can doubt that need is there.

Given that penchant, it was only a matter of time until the director would find his way to a civilization that enthusiastically practiced human sacrifice. If ever there was a filmmaker congenitally unable to resist shots of severed heads bouncing, bouncing, bouncing down the side of a steep pyramid, this is the man.

In a Gibson-directed movie, it's usually not very long until someone sticks the knife in and does his worst, and "Apocalypto" is no different. It opens with a ferocious tapir hunt in a verdant jungle that ends with the animal impaled and eviscerated with its throat cut for good measure. Welcome to Mel's World of Fang and Claw.

The men in the hunting party, including tribal elder Flint Sky (Morris Birdyellowhead) and his son Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), soon to be the film's protagonist, are weighed down with so many body and facial piercings, including what look to be nuts and bolts under the lower lip, that it would not be surprising to see True Value Hardware with a product placement credit.

These men are part of a small village living in peaceful serenity in all that jungle. (The Mexican rain forest of Catemaco location has been beautifully shot in high definition digital video by Dean Semler, an Oscar winner for "Dances With Wolves.") The first hint that the future will be less bucolic is an encounter with the fleeing people of another village. The look on their faces is enough to cause Flint Sky to give a pep talk to his son, telling him that fear is a disease that must be kept at bay at all costs.

That talk turns out to be especially timely, as early the next morning the ultrafierce Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo) leads a group of sneering, sadistic warriors from a more advanced civilization in a savage attack on the village. Women are raped, men die in grotesque ways, but, for reasons we can easily guess, the attackers are as interested in taking prisoners as in meeting Gibson's bloodshed quota.

After hiding his pregnant wife, Seven (Dalia Hernandez), and their small son in a deep hole, Jaguar Paw gets captured and taken on the long journey to Zero Wolf's city. Along the way he sees crop failure, drought and plague, all symptoms of a civilization in serious crisis.

It wouldn't be fair to detail all the trials the script by Gibson and Farhad Safinia puts Jaguar Paw through, though his exploits do make the sprinting in "Run Lola Run" look like a Sunday stroll. Attention must be paid, however, to the pains that have been taken to make the look and feel of this vividly imagined world both authentic and involving.

For one thing, Gibson has insisted that all his actors, most of whom are new to the screen, speak their dialogue in the primary Mayan language of Yucatec. The director also employed a movement teacher to ensure that everybody's body language would be convincingly primitive.

Equally impressive is the high quality work that has gone into the physically imposing Mayan buildings and pyramids (Tom Sanders is the production designer). Ditto for the convincingly otherworldly head-to-toe look of the urban Mayans themselves, who look like habitues of the "Star Wars" cantina crossed with extras in a Carmen Miranda musical.

Gibson unblushingly intends "Apocalypto" as a clarion call warning modern man to watch his step or risk following the Mayas into decline and near-extinction. To this end he opens the story with a famous quote from historian Will Durant about the fall of Rome: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."

This is all well and good, but the reality of "Apocalypto" is that this film is in fact Exhibit A of the rot from within that Gibson is worried about. If our society is in moral peril, the amount of stomach-turning violence that we think is just fine to put on screen is by any sane measure a major aspect of that decline. Mel, no one in your entourage is going to tell you this, but you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. A big part.
________________________________________________________________________
"Would you get your face out of that computer? Life is happening all around you, and you're watching the commentary."
- Danny (Bradley Whitford), Studio 60 (yep!)

i cheated myself, like i knew i would. i told you i was trouble. you know im no good (echo....horn stabs til fade)

the overabundant violence while praising Clint Eastwood for "showing restraint" in the upcoming Letters from Iwo Jima... having seen Letters, all I have to say about that claim is... sheeeeeeit....
_______________________________________________________________________
"Would you get your face out of that computer? Life is happening all around you, and you're watching the commentary."
- Danny (Bradley Whitford), Studio 60 (yep!)

Wonderful.

--

"You can't beat white people. You can only knock them out."

The two main reasons I want to see it are to hear the language and to see the reconstructions of the architecture. And well also out of curiosity of how uber Christian Mel depicts the "heathen" natives

But there are so many reasons not to see and support this flick because from what I understand it still plays off the old stereotype of the "noble savage". I've read a few articles looking at this movie from a native perspective and it's quite disturbing. But then there is that curiousity factor in which I feel like I need to see it for myself to judge. Also I'm very well schooled in Maya history and so I know how to separate fact from myth and really critically examine this movie.

***************************************

www.twitter.com/MsKianga
http://nativebeadwork.blogspot.com/
'I can't stand Tim McCarver. He has a penchant for making blindingly obvious statements in a self-congratulatory tone' Kyle Lohse

>Also I'm
>very well schooled in Maya history and so I know how to
>separate fact from myth and really critically examine this
>movie.

what was the main reason for the decline? The movie looks like its gonna put most of it on war between cities, but I always thought there was more to it than that

But war and famine seemed to play at least some role.

And if Melly Gib would've focused on this insteada that other bullshit he'd have a helluva movie on his hands

Jokey Dowell

"Apocalypto"
By Jokay Dowell, SGF Affiliate Project, Eagle and Condor Indigenous Peoples Alliance,


The movie, "Apolcalypto" ,(according to the NY Post, a movie about human sacrifice among the ancient Maya) is about to premiere tonight at Chickasaw Nation's River Wind Casino amidst Hollywood-style hoopla. Oklahoma Indian actors have been wooed by Mel Gibson and are about to make a big splash on the big screen with potential for even bigger and better roles for Natives in film.

I understand Gibson's claim that the movie is about a society's excesses and the costs of war (the movie has also been billed as an anti-war film). I can stand with him on those aspects.

But what message is "Apocalypto" really sending about Native peoples of Mexico and Central America? This is but one thing we Indian people in the North must consider and question before we jump on Gibson's bandwagon.

I have been to Central America. I have visited the Maya in their homes where I saw mountains of beautiful fruits and vegetables being grown, not for the Mayas' consumption, but for export, most likely to the U.S. The Maya could not eat those fruits of their labor. They cannot afford to. In the village I visited, the Maya shared a communal kitchen where most days the women cooked meals of beans and tortillas because that is what the family's hard labor in the fields afford them.

I heard the cries of women whose husbands had been "disappeared" and murdered by government troops or by paramilitaries. In Guatemala they are struggling to recover after almost 40 years of civil war incited by the 1954 U.S. CIA overthrow of a democratic government subsequently wiping from the face of the earth 140 Mayan villages. The Maya fled to bordering countries and some were held in death camps for removal, much like our own ancestors' Trails of Tears. This is contemporary history! Today! Intertwined with our own!

No, the extreme impoverished lives most Mayans live are not due to the "excesses of their ancestors," as stated in an ABC segment with Mel Gibson about "Apocalypto, " but rather to the same institutionalized racism of church, military, and government, which could not even recognize our own Indian ancestors as human, justifying their wholesale slaughter, Christian conversion via boarding schools, and the taking of our lands.

Before we rush to pat Gibson on the back we should understand that the same religious, government, military, and corporate institutions who systematically conspired to take our lands and destroy our culture here in the North, also have had a hand in the demise of the ancient and contemporary Maya people. When the Spaniards invaded Central America in the 16th century, ancient Maya texts were burned so that the people would forget their history and a new history, more palatable to Europeans, could replace it.

Because my community work gives me the opportunity to occasionally network with Indigenous peoples from below the imposed U.S. border with Mexico, I have been made aware that some Maya people are not happy with this film. This pretty much answers the question why Mr. Gibson chose to hire North American Indians, making it necessary to teach them a Mayan language, when if the film was thought to be welcomed by the Maya, he could have hired Maya people since the film was made in their territories.

As with our own struggles here in the North, Indigenous peoples in Mexico, Central, and South America are still struggling to regain their languages, cultures, and to protect and maintain their lands.

How will a film, which depicts the Maya as blood-thirsty primitives, impact their work, their lives, their image, our perception of them? What impacts will that portrayal have on the people in power who have an obligation to make policy for the Maya in Mexico or Guatemala, or elsewhere in Central America, where most policy is implemented at the business end of a gun?

So, because we have a genetic, cultural, and historical relationship with all the peoples of Turtle Island, we have an obligation to view this film with discerning eyes and a critical mind. Since the movie is done and will premiere nationally next Friday, we can use this as an opportunity for consciousness- raising and education about our commonalities with the Indigenous peoples from below the border.

For instance, do you know that in some of those countries Indigenous peoples comprise 40-80% of the population? In the case of the Maya, a lot if not most, speak Maya as their first language. The women still dress in the traditional huipil. In Chiapas, where the Maya communities are occupied by the Mexican government (with aid from the U.S.), a large part of the region's resources are sucked out from under the Mayas' feet to generate electrical power for the rest of the country while the Chiapas Maya live without running water or electricity.

The atrocities against the Maya are not of their own making. Christian conversion is not the cure (also implied by the ABC piece), for if that were true their struggle would not be ongoing today since they have been invaded by missionaries for 500+ years.

We should remember, if we haven't already recognized, that some of the Brown people coming across the lower border as "illegals" are probably Maya as well as descendants of other Native Nations. To justify atrocities against Native peoples, (and to manipulate the citizenry into looking the other way) the elite have historically sought ways to portray us as less than human.

The Mayan peoples of Central America are still caught in the cross-fires of war as are many Indigenous communities throughout "Latin America." Please take this occasion to research the School of the Americas where torture was (is) taught to Latin American military (and others from around the world) and carried out against Indigenous peoples such as the Maya. It will profoundly affect you.

Let's make this an opportunity to learn more about contemporary Mayan struggles as well as the current struggles of Indian communities throughout the Americas. They are among the thousands of Indigenous peoples who are going to the international community to seek redress for their grievances.

As we watch this new movie we are obligated to do so with an informed mind. Our history is the Mayan history.

JK Dowell
Founder/Director
Eagle and Condor Indigenous Peoples' Alliance
Tahlequah, OK
jkdowell@earthlink. net

***************************************

www.twitter.com/MsKianga
http://nativebeadwork.blogspot.com/
'I can't stand Tim McCarver. He has a penchant for making blindingly obvious statements in a self-congratulatory tone' Kyle Lohse

.

Read UCSB Professor's critique below:


Having viewed a screening of Apocalypto at UCSB on December 3rd, I walked away recognizing three main points within Mel Gibson�s movie. This first colors the entire story, seemingly as a kind of guiding moral: �the good Indian is the savage one in the forest.� There is absolutely nothing appealing about Maya city-life in this movie�no indication that Maya urban centers flourished in the region for hundreds of years. Instead, religious figures are depicted as fraudulent or heavily drugged; political figures are fat and passive (both of these characterizations having been lifted straight from The Road to El Dorado); and everyone else seems to be living a nightmare of hard labor, servitude, famine, and/or disease. The �Maya� living in the forest village, on the other hand, are fantasized animations of National Geographic photos of Amazonian tribes. These �hidden� Indians provide the audience the only possibility for sympathy�and this perhaps restricted to puerile humor or one family�s role as (surprise!) the underdog. For Gibson, it appears, the �noble savage� remains a valid ideal.

Second, for having a completely clean slate upon which to write, the story is pathetically unoriginal. From his decidedly Western constructions of masculinity, gender, and sexuality, to the use of a baseball move in a critical hand-to-hand combat scene, to lifting an escape scene from Harrison Ford�s character in The Fugitive, one gets the sense that all of his creative energy was invested in discovering ways to depict (previously) unimaginable gore. In fact, I would be ready to write off the entire movie as nothing more than a continuation of Gibson�s hyper-violent mental masturbation, except for the real-world implications.

This leads me to the third point, and the real crime, which is Gibson�s interpretive shift in his representation of horrific behaviors. Specifically, four of five viscerally repugnant cultural practices that are here attributed to Maya culture are actually �borrowed� from the West. The raid on the protagonist�s village constitutes the first interpretive shift viewed by the audience. The brutality and method of this raid directly replicate the documented activities of representatives of the British Rubber Company in the Amazon Basin during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the Amazon case, those perpetuating the human rights violations were European or European-descendents against indigenous communities; the raiding of villages for human sacrifice is undocumented for Maya cultures. Next, the slave market depicted in the city constitutes a mirror image of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in the pre-Civil War United States. In that case, the �sellers� of African slaves were Europeans or European-Americans, dehumanizing Other peoples by treating them as commodities. While slavery is documented for Maya cultures (and Greek, and Roman, etc.), there is nothing that attests to their having been bought and/or sold in public market contexts.

A third objectionable attribution is that of decapitated human heads placed on stakes within the city center. Documented examples of this practice come from Cortes�s entrada into Central Mexico committed by Spanish conquistadors against their indigenous �enemies.� Depictions of �skull racks� do exist, but there is no evidence that these resulted from mass murder or even that they still had flesh on them when they were hung. Finally, the escape portal for the protagonist�the releasing of captives to run toward freedom while being shot at�is straight from ancient Rome (or at least Hollywood�s depictions of Roman coliseum �sports�) and finds no corroboration in records concerning Maya peoples.

Heart sacrifice is the only practice that scholars have �read� from ancient Maya cultural remains�although the scale and performance is Gibson�s fantasy alone. The attribution of heart sacrifice to the Maya is largely anchored to Spanish accounts of Aztec practices, which raises two additional issues: i) Mathew Restall�s recent Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest gives a good overview of how unreliable Spanish accounts may be; and ii) Mel Gibson clearly could not have substituted the Aztec capital for his �Maya� city given the same Spanish accounts of it (e.g. Bernal Diaz del Castillo on approaching Tenochtitlan: �With such wonderful sights to gaze on we did not know what to say, or if this was real that we saw before our eyes. On the land side there were great cities, and on the lake many more��)

In any event, these perversions of the historical record appear to be Gibson�s alone and cause me to wonder if they reflect an agenda. Whether he meant to claim that all cultures have been as grotesquely violent or inhumane as the West (and so in some twisted way, making such behavior �ok�), or if there is a more nefarious attempt at disparaging Mesoamerican cultures in some sort of justification of their �conquest� (implied by the pristine representation of the Spaniards)�this is a question Gibson alone can answer.

Whatever his response, my assessment is that�apart from its �artistic� license�because it takes the worst of the West and �reads� it into one or two days of �Maya� civilization, this movie comprises an extreme disservice to Maya (and Mesoamerican) cultures past and present, and to indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere. The case is so extreme, I wonder if it might constitute a legally actionable hate crime against Maya people. At the very least, though, with this movie, Gibson has performed a tremendous disservice to scholars who aim at accurate representations of the past, and to the audiences who will have their perspectives of Maya culture tainted by the agenda of one man with too much money.

Prof. Gerardo Aldana y V

University of California, Santa Barbara

gvaldana@chicst.ucsb.edu

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www.twitter.com/MsKianga
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'I can't stand Tim McCarver. He has a penchant for making blindingly obvious statements in a self-congratulatory tone' Kyle Lohse

very interesting how he shows where Gibson's ideas came from (they were crimes against humanity that were perpetrated by White Westerners and were not indigenous to the Mayans)

Also, might cop this book:

>i) Mathew Restall�s recent Seven Myths of the Spanish
>Conquest gives a good overview of how unreliable Spanish
>accounts may be;

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For MANY reasons...

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and sneak into this one. that way Mel doesn't get my money! I'm a sucker for historical movies.

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Contains SPOILERS. From the L.A. Times:

>In 'Apocalypto,' fact and fiction play hide and seek

A consultant on the film acknowledges creative license in depicting Maya life and violence.

By Robert W. Welkos
Times Staff Writer

December 9, 2006

A key consultant among several archeologists who served as advisors on Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" said he is disappointed that the film overlooks many of the Mayas' cultural and scientific achievements and portrays the people as "bloodthirsty savages."

As a chase movie, "Apocalypto" is top-notch, said Richard D. Hansen, a professor of anthropology at Idaho State University who has written extensively about the Mayas. The sets, makeup and costumes are also "accurate to the nth degree," he noted. But it's a feature film � not a documentary � which may let down those looking for accuracy at every turn.

"This is Hollywood, first and foremost," Hansen said.

As with any historically based feature, whether it's "Alexander" or "All the President's Men," directors take creative license with the facts. "Apocalypto" is no different.

"The final decision when making a film is, 'What is the right balance between historical authenticity and making it exciting, visually as well?'" said Farhad Safinia, who cowrote the script with Gibson, adding: "The film is an all out entertainment thrill ride, and that is what it was always designed to do. It is a work of fiction."

Gibson and Safinia have said they wanted the film to serve as a reminder to today's world that the precursor to the fall of a civilization is always the same: widespread environmental degradation, excessive consumption and political corruption.

But archeologists point out that nobody knows why the Mayas, who ruled in the Americas for more than 1,000 years, abandoned their cities and allowed their majestic pyramids to become overgrown with jungle. And to watch Gibson's "Apocalypto," one might not realize that the Mayas were in fact a highly sophisticated people: They mapped celestial objects, developed an accurate 365-day calendar, created their own writing system and perhaps most notably had developed the concept of zero in mathematics.

"The calendar (angle) is so rich," Hansen said. "It would have been a marvelous part of the story."

Safinia said that the film's narrative is told through the eyes of the central protagonist, Jaguar Paw, and it is his journey that we follow. "You do see aspects of the Mayan civilization in the background," Safinia said, such as their architecture, their industry and their preponderance to ornament themselves with jewelry, costumes, textiles and such.

Gibson's long-awaited film, which opened Friday to mixed reviews and criticism of its scenes of excessive violence, re-creates with great effect the bloody drama of human sacrifice that took place atop a Maya pyramid.

In one memorable scene, a Maya priest slashes open the chests of frightened prisoners, rips out their still-beating hearts and decapitates them. All the while, the populace screams and gesticulates wildly as each severed head comes bouncing down the steps.

Experts say that although the Mayas did practice human sacrifice, it came late to their civilization and was likely picked up from the Aztecs.

The movie "makes us think that maybe (the Maya) were bloodthirsty savages," Hansen said.

Safinia says that reality was far more intense than the film shows. "The Mayans did engage in decapitation. They did roll bodies down the temple steps," he said, noting there is evidence that the crowds tore the bodies apart limb by limb, but "you can't show that stuff" on screen.

The film's hero, played by actor Rudy Youngblood, is a forest dweller who is taken prisoner by a Maya raiding party. Later, he and other captives are given a chance to run for their lives in a deadly game in which Maya warriors throw spears and fire arrows at them for sport.

Hansen and Safinia can't say for certain that such a game ever existed among the Mayas.

"The process of using these individuals as target practice is a real possibility," Hansen said. "I couldn't say it did happen, but I couldn't say it didn't either. (Gibson) wanted to have some reason to have the guys go after Rudy Youngblood, to go after the hero�.That was entirely Mel's scenario � but it's highly reasonable."

Some question why Gibson included that scene instead of a sport for which the Mayas are truly famous: ball games.

Jim Brady, who teaches archeology at Cal State L.A., said he has never heard of the Mayas staging a target practice game with prisoners, but they certainly staged sporting events on ball courts using rubber balls and stone rings. Brady, who has not seen the film, noted that there are indications that the captain of the losing team may have been sacrificed, "but we don't know how much that happened."

In the film, Jaguar Paw and other prisoners appear awed by the grandeur of the pyramids as they are led into the Maya city to meet their fate.

But Brady notes that anyone living in that region certainly would have been aware of pyramids.

In another much talked-about scene, Jaguar Paw comes upon a giant pit filled with hundreds of sacrificial bodies.

Hansen said it is "conjecture" whether those pits existed. "All (Gibson was) trying to do there is express the horror of it."

"Apocalypto" depicts the latter days � the post-classic period � of Maya civilization, but the main pyramid where the human sacrifices occurred actually comes from classic period, when the Mayas were at their zenith. "There was nothing in the post-classic period that would match the size and majesty of that pyramid in the film," Hansen said. "But Gibson was trying to make a story here. He was trying to depict opulence, wealth, consumption of resources."

Safinia said the mixing of architectures was done for aesthetic reasons.

About 25 members of the Maya community in Los Angeles were invited to an advance screening of Gibson's film last week. Two of those who attended came away impressed, but added that they too wished Gibson had shown more of the Maya civilization.

"It was a great action film that kept me on the edge of my seat," said Sara Zapata Mijares, president and founder of Federacion de Clubes Yucatecos-USA. "I think it should have had a little bit more of the culture," such as the pyramids. "It could have shown a little more why these buildings were built."

Still, she said, it was a "great picture."

Alfonso Escalante, who teaches folk dancing, said the movie was "very exciting" and the costumes were stunning, but for people who don't know anything about the Maya culture, "It's going to be a little tough because there was more about killing than about the culture. But definitely, they are going to see how they looked at that time, how they lived."
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"Would you get your face out of that computer? Life is happening all around you, and you're watching the commentary."
- Danny (Bradley Whitford), Studio 60 (yep!)

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And who are you; the proud lord said, that I must bow so low?

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www.juwandickerson.com

you still mindlessly supporting a lot of stuff that's way worse daily i'm sure. if you're going to take a stand and stop supporting Mel b/c of what he did then do it all the way around in your life and stop supporting all of it.

eh....

who refuse to support the work of an Anti-Semitic drunk. I can dig that, but I can also dig seeing a big movie for free even more...
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"Would you get your face out of that computer? Life is happening all around you, and you're watching the commentary."
- Danny (Bradley Whitford), Studio 60 (yep!)

Mel just got caught.

just because I ain't perfect in my pop-culture consumption doesn't mean I shouldn't worry about supporting an anti-semite.

I understand the hypocracy point you're trying to make but I don't think that undermines gestures such as boycotting an anti-semite.

if Kramer came out with a movie would you happily go give him your money?

________________

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instead of a man with a person's share of issues

would you like to be DEFINED as your worst moment?

furthermore, the contradictions (in supporting some artists who have *done* bad things and yet copping a "conscience" against an unpopular guy who has clearly *said* and likely *thought* bad things) DO matter because it calls to task your supposed "stand" against ....what?

I'd recommend it.

Of course it had a little "hollywoodization" (i.e. chase scenes and overdramatic dialogue), but over all It was a good flick...

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entertaining, gruesome, indigenous use of "he's fucked," overdramatics.. it was all there.

� www.myspace.com/thesmyrk �

the Jews.


... just kidding. That was a good-ass movie. And damn if I didn't see that ending coming, I always thought it would be cool to end a movie about pre-Columbian Native Americans like that. I guess it's pretty obvious, but it was still cool.

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Just the ending irked me a little, but for the most part I enjoyed it quite a bit. The scenary was beautiful and the cast looked spectacular.

The woman were beautiful and still remained savage, it was impressive to see because I felt as if I shouldn't find them attractive due to the piercings and tattoos and dress.

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*Note to self: Add Sig*

>The woman were beautiful and still remained savage

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i will not let finite disappointment undermine infinite hope
- Cory Booker

Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes, and at the end the Germans always win
- Gary Lineker

I meant they still looked good, despite the fact that they were living in shitty little huts out in the jungle.

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*Note to self: Add Sig*

the actors' facial expressions were so powerful I could have watched it w/o any subtitles. I was loving the whole one-with-nature thing in the second half. plus I like the human hunt angle in any movie (Ice-T would have been proud).

I didn't really care about the film's historical accuracy/lack thereof. it was a vehicle for a really great chase/heroism plot. if I really wanted to know about proper Mayan culture I'd read about it. luckily, I don't base my knowledge of history on a single Hollywood movie.

and I downloaded a DVD screener of the movie, so Mel didn't get any of my money either.

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Apocalypto
The beauty and brutality of Mayan Culture
Grade A
A group of peaceful hunter gatherers villages are destroyed by more aggressive members of their own culture. The members who are not killed are marched into the city to either become slaves or sacrifices. One of the captives(Jaguar Paw) escapes and returns to the village to reunite with his wife and child.
spoiler







At the end of the movie Jaguar gazes toward the coastline and we see the arrival of the Europeans.



















end spoiler





Is this film racist?.... hardly.
It just shows what we know but many refuse to except. The ancient cultures of the new world, were a little fucked up before the arrival of the Spaniards.
Human history has been nothing more but a continuous cycle of cultures being annihilated by more *sophisticated* cultures. These so called sophisticated cultures always collapse and are replaced by another so called advanced culture


As a matter of fact much of the issues that plagued the Mayans concern us today.
There was *belief* in prophecies then just like today.
There was *drought* then there are droughts all over the world today.
*Class divisions* existed then like they do today.
*Jade* was status symbol of the Mayans today it is *bling bling*
Religious *fanatics* existed then and they still exist toda



They were just as beautiful as well. This is a beautiful film, I wanted to be there. The Mayans I imagine were these beautiful bronze people with bodies that were sculpted by the rigors of everyday living. No need for Gold's Gym, personal trainers or protein shakes. The city scenery is magnificent. The costumes of the nobles were full of elaborate ornaments as well as unusual hues. The Pyramid temple was awesome. The Jungle scenes were also well done.

The villagers are portrayed as folks who live a life of simplicity but they are not simple minded people. I assume any real knowledge of the mysteries of the universe perished with them(the religion of the nobles is clearly satanic). Or did they perish at all? Perhaps they are somewhere in the fifth dimension.

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I especially liked the last 2/3's of it or so, after they have been captured and are being led to the city(im thinking that was supposed to be Chichen Itza, which had already been deserted by that time, but anyways....) and then all the of the chase sequences.

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<--The drought is over

"have fun reveling in your pettiness tho" (C) Dula summing up 98% of OKS

"I didnt finish a damn thing...matter of fact I jerked off after she left."
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