Rating: 
Summary: American Dream's Worst Case Scenario
Review: The American Dream's worst case scenario; Manifest Destiny's darkest heart-people with everything they need moving West because the next best thing, the finally fulfilling thing, the Big Rock Candy Mountain, is over the horizon. But along the way, snow and hunger and the darkness of the human heart pouring out and spreading with the blizzards. Perhaps the most telling line in this documentary is written by one of the 12 year old girls who survives the six month ordeal and by summer time is writing to her cousin. "Come West," she writes, "and come quickly. Just don't take no short cuts." The power of the Manifest Destiny, and the pull of California, the ending point not only of America's Manifest Destiny, but an itchy-footed journey taken over centuries by west bound peoples leaving Greece, leaving Italy, bound always for something better, for something more.
Rating: 
Summary: The Donner Party
Review: The Donner Party documentary is a first class history lesson in our pioneer forebears and the hardships they endured in our nation's manifest destiny.This is fascinating for the true historian and the amateur historian. Though it is based on fact the humanity resonates in every minute. It is a story that outdoes any fictional movie I have seen. Some of the hightlights are the readings of the letters of the people who lived through it and what became of the people who lived through the ordeal. The subject of cannabilism is handled without sensationalism. One finds themself thinking would they be able to do what these people had to do: would I become a hero or a demon, would my TRUE nature be good, bad or simply human? My father is a high school history teacher and he shows this to his students who while fascinated by the subject of cannabilism find themselves learning in spite of themselves. My deepest thanks to the producer Ric Burns. Cynthia C.Cameron
Rating:
Summary: Haunting Tribute to Unknown Heroes
Review: The Donner Party has to be one of the best documentaries ever made, a tale of impossible hardship, a journey that tests the human endurance and puts a new meaning to the words, survival instinct.
I first watched the Donner Party on UK's Channel 4, way back in '92, with the title 'Death of a Wagon Train', and it really blew my mind, and I have been searching since then for it to no avail, until quite recently when I was pleasently surprised by its release on DVD. Thanks PBS.
In a way, we should consider ourselves lucky, for despite the atmosphere of anxiety and uncertainty that palgues the 21st century, our age offers us vast technological advances that makes life much easier in all aspects. Yet we do take so much for granted, for there was another time, a time of continious struggles to survive. The 1840s in the States was also, I would imagine a very exciting time, for along with the difficulties, there were dreams to seek a better life and fulfil them through uncharted and virgin territories, a vasteness that can devour as much as lead to 'eldorado'. The 'eldorado' in question was California, and emigrants way before the Gold Rush of the 1850s, rushed there to improve their lot and seek their fortunes.These people were really brave! To decide to leave the certainty of their established lives, and jump into the unknown needed a lot of courage! But it is this courage that made the emigrants of the Mayflower leave Plymouth, and it is this courage that made America the great power that it is today.
The Donner party was one of the unlucky ones, who decided against the advise of a more experienced tracker,to take a shorter route to 'eldorado',a mistake that would cost most of them their lives, and would push some to the darkest recesses of the human soul.While many emigrants successfully made it to California and rebuild their lives and rewritten the country's history in the process, most are fogotten. The fate of Donner Party on the other hand is not, not only because most failed to reach their destination, but because of the horrors that they experienced trying.
Ric Burns brilliantly captures this ill fated journey, through the letters of both the dead and few survivors (perfectly read with an errie tone), soundbites from historians (just a few), and beautiful cinematography that captures the beauty and hostility of the landscape. Brian Keane adds so much power with his gorgeous music.(I am still waiting for the soundtrack to be released, it is worth it!!!)
You have to buy the Donner Party and look in awe and fascination at the courage of early emigrants, and in sheer terror at the tests that the human being is put under and the lenght that he/she will go to to survive. Scary Indeed!
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Summary: White Arcades
Review: The highest compliment that can be said of this video is that it haunted me for days after... There has been talk of Angelo Badelamenti's atmospheric music for this video...
Well, most of this music was composed by Harold Budd from his album "White Arcades".
...don't get me wrong, I love Angelo as well.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Informational Video
Review: This is the video for you if you like documentaries and drama. We watched this video in my english class last week and I loved it. This video starts at the beginning showing the town that everything started in and some of the families in the Donner party. This is a very detailed film but I wouldn't recommend it for any child under the age of 13 because some of the journals and narrator discriptions can be a little frightening for our younger vieweres. At the end their is an epilouge of what happend to the main people focused on in this film which I found very interesting. Wonderful for using as an educational film for 7th grade and up.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent account of a terrible event
Review: This was an excellent documentary, period. Even if you are not "into" history, you will be hooked on this story. It is a tragic tale of the perils of westward expansion. Sure it is just an ink drop on the pages of history, but the story will live on.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best documentaries I have ever seen
Review: Very moving and award winning. You actually feel like you are traveling with the doomed party. I love the aerial views of the terrain they fought thru to get to California. I had to watch this as a AP History student in high school. You learn a whole ton about manifest destiny as well. To think, these people literally walked across the United States.
Rating:
Summary: Hauntingly powerful
Review: You are there with the doomed members of the Donner Party as they migrate west to California, following a supposed shortcut promoted by a man who never actually traveled the path he spoke of. Trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains by the worst winter in decades, they must make a terrible choice if they are to survive. With contemporary photographs, journal entries and a haunting musical score, Ric Burns and PBS have created a powerful and disturbing true horror story which continues to resonate in the American consciousness more than 150 years after the events took place.
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