Posted on 08/23/2007 5:45:11 PM PDT by Reaganesque
"This handsome indie Western damningly recounts the 1857 slayings of 120 settlers passing through Utah, but the didactic presentation, grim speechifying and tacked-on love story all signify a less-than-healthy regard for the audience's intelligence."
Variety Justin Chang
1/4 "The film feels less like historical drama than a venomous religious tract printed on celluloid." Minneapolis Star Tribune Colin Covert
"September Dawn has the ham-fisted lyricism of political ads and pharmaceutical commercials." Village Voice J. Hoberman
"When the movie isn't doling out ham-fisted history...it gives us magnificent vistas of a pristine prairie...and there's a deep sweetness to the subplot of Jonathan and Emily falling in love." Film Journal International Frank Lovece
1.5/4 "When watching the screen depiction of a historic event in which 120 people were murdered, giggling is not the appropriate response." Salt Lake Tribune Sean Means
1/5 "It has the chilling certitude of the self-righteous." Orlando Sentinel Roger Moore
2.5/5 "The real problem is that September Dawn isn't a very good movie. It moves too much like a public-school history pageant and gives us mono-dimensional characters who speak dialogue that fairly reeks of printer's ink." Arizona Republic Richard Nilsen
1/5 "The jarring MTV-style filmmaking is so distracting and the 'messaging' so unsubtle that after two long hours you find yourself leaving the theater with a massive headache, wondering when you started to hate Mormons." Orlando Weekly Brett Register
1/4 "Forget Grindhouse. September Dawn is the year's first honest-to-goodness exploitation flick." Slant Magazine Nick Schager
1/4 "Bombastic, slow-drying dramatization with lead-weight dialogue and a turgid romantic subplot." Newsday Gene Seymour
D- "Has serious problems in historical terms. But in this case they're exacerbated by the simple ineptitude of the filmmaking." One Guy's Opinion Frank Swietek
"Even if one gets past the movie's controversial depictions, there is the matter of its second-rate, made-for-television fare -- the poor battle choreography, the wooden editing and the cheesy writing." Washington Post Desson Thomson
2.5/4 "If September Dawn is a kind of Western, it's a Western utterly devoid of heroism or the usual archetypes. But the core message transcends time: Hatred laced with religious fanaticism is a toxic blend." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Dave Tianen
1/4 "Doesn't even measure up to an episode of your typical, cowboy TV show from the Fifties like Roy Rogers or The Lone Ranger. Get my drift, Kimosabe?" NewsBlaze Kam Williams
Click here for links to the full reviews.
I’ll bypass your ludicrous assertions which have no factual basis whatsoever as delineated by several previous posts. But do really believe that a governor has the right to take the law into his own hands & completely ignore due process & the constitution in this case? Are you really a republican conservative? That’s Clintonian type stuff. I’m afraid your hatred for mormons has clouded your otherwise conservative principles. A shame really.
Are you mentally unstable or are you smoking something funny?
You sound sad that the mob didn't kill 'em all. Your so-called evidence of Smith's army smacks of Nazi propoganda against the Jews. How do you sleep at night?
Thank God for the Constitution or people that think like you would be slaughtering the innocent in the name of "self-defense".
I’m weighing in with my opinion that he isn’t “right in the head.”
“I’ll bypass your ludicrous assertions which have no factual basis whatsoever as delineated by several previous posts.”
Assertions which have no factual basis whatsoever, SAYS WHO??? If you go through my long posting history, you will find I give more links to original Mormon documents than just about anyone on Free Republic, so I conclude you are the one blowing wind.
Here, read these links, then come back to me and tell me I am full of it:
The account of where 1000 at FarWest almost got wiped out until the budding tinpot general Smith surrendered.
http://www.mormoninformation.com/reedpeck.htm
Account of how Smith ran a Ponzi scheme at the Kirtland and Monroe Banks
http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/OH/painerep.htm
Eyewitness accounts of the Danites pillaging Gallatin and the Gentiles, precipitating the Mormon War.
http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/findingaids/rg005-01.asp#f41_f01-02
The Nauvoo Expositor Press expose of wife stealing, land speculation, embezzlement, harboring fugitives etc. of Joseph Smith, whose destruction precipitated Smith’s death at the Carthage jail
http://solomonspalding.com/docs/exposit1.htm
When you get through reading every word of those accounts (I have a ton more) then maybe I’ll believe you know what the hell you are talking about. I’ll even send you pro-Mormon accounts later, but since you disbelieve the Mormons could commit any crime whatsoever, I get the first shot. I fully admit there is accountability on the Gentile side, but if you come away from these linked source accounts believing the Mormons are blameless, well heaven help you.
“But do really believe that a governor has the right to take the law into his own hands & completely ignore due process & the constitution in this case?”
Hell yes, in times of war the Governor is Commander In Chief of the State Militia. What happened at Far West and Gallatin in Missouri is called the Mormon War for a reason. What happed at Nauvoo is not known as a war BECAUSE Governor Ford allowed the execution of Smith (who by the way had broken out of jail at Liberty Missouri and had busily had himself ordained king AND Lt. General of the 2000 man Mormon Legion and was coercing people to vote for him for president). So, these were emergency conditions, the State Militia had been called out in Illinois and pitched battles were about to commence along with the immediate destruction of Nauvoo if Ford had not acted. I’d call what happened an executive decision by a Commander in Chief to avert great bloodshed.
“Are you really a republican conservative?”
No, I am a Martian. What do you think? What are you, a member of the Society of the Historically Deaf Dumb and Blind?
“That’s Clintonian type stuff.”
No, Clintonian stuff is screwing a bunch of idiot women on the cheap, sort of the way Joseph Smith did.
“I’m afraid your hatred for mormons has clouded your otherwise conservative principles. A shame really.”
Conservative principle Number One: Follow the Truth. I just provided you with more than a hundred pages and around fifty eye witness accounts. I think the ball is in your court now to provide direct historical info that I am wrong instead of blowing hot air.
“You sound sad that the mob didn’t kill ‘em all.”
Ah, projection, the typical artifice of the liar. Actually I agree with Reed Peck, who saved the thousand defenders of Far West by telling the State Militia Commander it was the Mormon leadership core that was to blame and the Mormon followers should not suffer because they’d been duped.
Here, let me use your same deceitful artifice:
You sound sad that the Mormon Danites didn’t kill ‘em all at Gallatin.
Ah, I see, it’s so easy to spew mindless invective, why bother to actually research the issues.
“Your so-called evidence of Smith’s army smacks of Nazi propoganda against the Jews.”
Your Big Lie technique (taken directly from Hitler’s Mein Kampf) that Smith had nothing at all to do with the Danite Army and with Sydney Rigdon’s extermination order, smacks of Nazi propaganda against the Jews.
Again, it’s so easy to spew venomous crapola like you do, and never cite a single iota of source material. I just cited a 100 plus pages and about fifty witnesses in the post above this (read them). And what do you provide? Nada, zilch, zippo, hot gas.
“How do you sleep at night?”
Like a lamb. I work hard finding the root documentary source of historical issues, I used to do it for a living, so I feel good when I have left no stone unturned.
“Thank God for the Constitution or people that think like you would be slaughtering the innocent in the name of “self-defense”.”
Well, next time an apocalyptic Prophet raises an army of hundreds, destroys a few towns in one state, escapes from jail and raises another army in another state, has himself ordained king, sets himself up as a pimp, destroys a free press to cover it all up, then makes an order to his Legion to break him out of another jail to start a civil war, I hope you are the Governor in position of responsibility to say “Let the Wacko go free and start a murderous Civil War, I don’t want to violate his due process!”
Cripes, even in 2007 with the ACLU inserting itself, I think you’d be hanging from a lampost by the morning even as Governor if you made a statement like that.
I didn’t know Smith was crowned King.
King of what?
http://boxofficemojo.com/daily/chart/?sortdate=2007-08-24&p=.htm
September Dawn comes in dead last at #22. Estimated Friday gross of $190,000 from 857 theaters. I’m not sure what a movie ticket costs in the USA, but if it is about $10 that works out to 22 people seeing it per theater, not per showing or per screen, per theater.
Prediction: By the time September 11th gets here, the movie will be gone and forgotten.
“I didn’t know Smith was crowned King.
King of what?”
Smith convened a secret group, something called the Council of 50 at Nauvoo composed of all the top Mormon Apostles and hoity toity. The Council of 50 were to act as a Shadow Government and take over rule of the Earth when the end times came, which they expected quite soon. Each of the Council of 50 were given a prospective Governmental post (it was based on the US Constitution more or less), and Joseph Smith (Lt. General / Prophet / Presidential candidate / Spokesperson of God) was conveniently ordained (not crowned) king of the shadow government.
This is one of many reasons everyone was so bent out of shape over Smith, he made Jim Jones and Koresh look like pikers.
From Wikipedia:
“The Council of Fifty (also known as the Living Constitution, the Kingdom of God, or its name by revelation, The Kingdom of God and His Laws with the Keys and Power thereof, and Judgment in the Hands of His Servants, Ahman Christ[1]) was a Latter Day Saint organization established by Joseph Smith, Jr. in 1844 to symbolize and represent a future theocratic “Kingdom of God” on the earth (Quinn 1980, p. 165). Smith and his successor Brigham Young hoped to create this Kingdom in preparation for the Millennium and the Second Coming of Jesus. Latter-day Saint theology holds that the Second Coming will be a time of great violence and natural disasters in which the governments of the world will collapse into universal anarchy. The political Kingdom of God, organized around the Council of Fifty, was meant to be a force of peace and order in the midst of this chaos. According to Mormon teachings, while Jesus himself would be king of this new world government, its structure was in fact to be quasi-republican and multi-denominational; therefore, the early Council of Fifty included both Mormons and non-Mormons (Ehat 1980, pp. 256–57). Although the Council played a significant role during the last few months of Joseph Smith’s life, particularly in his campaign for President of the United States, the Council’s role was mostly symbolic throughout the 19th century within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This was largely because the Council was primarily meant for a time when secular governments had ceased to function. Regular meetings of the Council ended in the 1884, after the church abandoned its theocratic aspirations. The organization was technically extinguished when its last member, Heber J. Grant, died in 1945 (Quinn 1980, p. 185).”
Regarding being made king:
Some time after that as Smith saw the curses promised failed to materialize, he thought he would try and run the nation himself. The Lord had made him Prophet, Seer, Translator and Revelator of the church, he secured the right to be sole trustee of all the church properties, [page 121] some say he was crowned a king, as was one of his successors in office. This can hardly be denied as William Marks, the President of the High Council, and the man who ordained young Joseph, and was his Counsellor says: “I was also witness of the introduction (secretly) of a kingly form of government, in which Joseph suffered himself to be ordained a king, to reign over the house of Israel forever.” Saints’ Herald, Vol. 51, Jan. 27, 1904, page 73. “Ye shall have no king.” D. C. 38, 5.
According to the oft quoted Michael Quinn:
William Marks…stated that the [LDS] Council of Fifty performed an ordinance “in which Joseph suffered himself to be ordained a king, to reign over the house of Israel forever.”Some have been uncomfortable with the assertion that Smith became a king. They have claimed that Marks and other critics either confused or misrepresented Smith’s reception of the strictly religious ceremony of the second anointing as “king and priest.”…
In fact a later revelation to the Council of Fifty affirmed that God called Smith “to be a Prophet, Seer and Revelator to my Church and Kingdom; and to be a King and Ruler over Israel.” (The Mormon Hierarchy, Origins of Power, 124)
///////
If Marks was lying, it doesn’t explain why he was so adamant about enticing Joseph Smith III to lead the RLDS as part of a lineal succession. But even if Marks were wrong, it hardly matters to nit pick, because everyone thought Smith had been ordained king and the perception was widespread. Given the previous history, I’m sure Governor Ford was thinking, when you strike the king, you must kill the king.
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney has nothing to fear from the anti-Mormon pic September Dawn because no one saw it: the Slowhand film opened to only $190K Friday from 857 venues for a per screen average of 222 (probably, people who were just craving movie theater popcorn).
It’s ridiculous to think an indie film depicting one of the darkest and most controversial events in Mormon history could ruin the Republican presidential candidate because he’s a Mormon.
Even more ridiculous to think Hollywood is releasing this pic depicting graphic scenes of violence and fanaticism by 19th century Mormons on purpose to upset his campaign. See my previous Will New Anti-Mormon Movie Hurt Mitt?
http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/summer-box-office-finally-cools-superbad-1-nanny-diaries-bombs-for-weinsteins/
Thanks for the info!
Much appreciated!
I’m one who’ll drive THOUSANDS of miles to see something like this! (I’d be a LUNATIC not to; now!)
I don’t even take a pottery shard found in a stream bed, where it is sure to be covered in the new little flood.
I stay on existing roads and don’t force a ‘trail’ to be a road, and tend to take litter of others with me.
[Less than a week and I am HYPED!]
I hope it's gonna have fantastic scenery!
ALL???
Then you must agree with THIS, for it uses YOUR logic, revisited.
We have the right to disagree, and to state that what you are saying is LDS organization "Truth" is in direct opposition to all the evidence that exists outside your secret sacred rituals.
You think?
If he's like Auntie; he'll condemn someone ELSE's Granpa!!!
Is that up on the Swell, just north of I-70 as it fallens out on the east side?
Well; in 1978...
Are we talking about Mel's PASSION???
Yup; they'll deny YOUR truth, but will hang on to someone ELSE's 'truth' until they die!
Not so...
BECAUSE they were 'mormon', they were 'fearful' that this wagon train was out to get them!
Acting on those fears (generated in them BECAUSE they were Mormon), they lashed out and murdered.
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