Word: lande
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...cartoon. But don't let that turn you off of this worthwhile adventure. It's 1905, somewhere in the American West, and Daniel Hackett (Nick Stahl) is chafing against life on his family's farm. "I hate this farm! It's just a dried-up, miserable piece of land!" he yells to his father, Jonas (Stephen Lang, looking like he just wandered in from a Biblical movie...
...Jonas it means much more. When creepy railroad tycoon J.P. Stiles (Scott Glenn) offers the towns people $50 an acre for their land, only Jonas stands up to question the shady deal. Stiles' thugs hunt him down and shoot him, but Jonas manages to pass the deed to the farm on to his son. Miserable, Daniel runs out to the family boat and cries himself to sleep. Obviously, the Hacketts are farmers and not sailors since the gentle bobbing of the boat unlaces the feebly-tied mooring rope, setting Daniel adrift down the river...
...best part about this movie are the wonderful dynamics between the three "tall tale" heroes. They from a triumvirate whose role alters in the context of each scene. They are the guardians of the land, and of a dying way of life. In a bar, a simple toast with mugs of beer becomes a mystic ritual, the personifications of the West (Pecos Bill), the South (John Henry) and the North (Paul Bunyan) saluting each other solemnly. They are also role models and surrogate fathers to Daniel. The heroes teach him to be self-sufficient, but in the end they...
Although the "savage in a strange land" scenario is a little old, the corresponding environmental messages is not too overstated. "Maybe I'm just old fashioned," says Paul Bunyan bitterly, "but in my day we didn't kill the land; we just borrowed from it." More than the script, director Jeremiah Chechik relies on the gorgeous scenery of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and California. These make a powerful silent plea for environmental conservation...
...prove that, however, local land-control advocates must wrest power away from the feds-and that can lead to bitter confrontations. In New Mexico's Otero County, 600 angry people packed a civic center recently to rail against Washington and plan a strategy for combatting the Endangered Species Act. Otero has now formed a public lands committee to fight for its rights, and has hired a Los Angeles-based legal group, the Individual Rights Foundation, to press its claims in court. In Idaho's Lemhi County, 2,500 citizens turned out at a local fairground on a sub-zero...