Dances With Wolves

Washington - Crowds swarmed outside the Uptown Theater Friday night because they had to -- HAD TO -- see heart-throb actor Kevin Costner.But many of those who paid up to $100 for the world premiere of "Dances With Wolves," Mr. Costner's epic new film about a Lakota Indian frontier before the encroachment of white settlers, came because they had to see the movie.Mixed in with an audience of members of Congress, football players and models were those like Bill Achord. He came from faraway Lincoln, Neb., where there's a large Lakota community, because he was so anxious to see the movie.

'Dances WithWolves'Stars Kevin Costner.Directed by Kevin Costner.Released by Orion.Rated PG-13.*** 1/2 "Dances With Wolves" is a bebop with revisionist history, an epic of smug hindsight. Exasperatingly, it's also wonderful.How much easier if the movie were crummy and could be dismissed. But, damn its smarmy soul, it's beautifully watchable, a return to the visual vernacular of the western epic and all its old-fashioned scenic values, sweeping, romantic, adventurous and enthralling.It's almost a fable-pure account of a journey to a heart of lightness, the story of a man who discovers redemption exactly where it shouldn't be, among the people his own kind has declared savages.

HANDICAPPING the Oscar nominations:BEST PICTURE1 -- "Dances With Wolves." Didn't see it. Line in front of theater stretched to Vermont, no parking spaces. Heard it has something to do with Indians.2 -- "Awakenings." Didn't see this one, either. But my wife saw it with her sister. Said it was a real tear-jerker. Something about a mental patient who suddenly . . . oh, I don't know. Tell you the truth, was watching "MacGyver" when she explained it. Went in one ear and out the other.3 -- "Goodfellas."

New Orleans - Kevin Costner is in a bad mood. He does not want to be trivialized. He does not want to be analyzed. He does not want to be criticized. He does not want to be "titillized," as he puts it, much less titillated.He stalks down a street on the cusp of the French Quarter, wearing jeans and a bright green shirt, his hair slicked back and his scorching blue eyes shaded behind dark sunglasses. The heels of his brown cowboy boots tap an impatient tattoo, and he is annoyed when a group of middle-aged women hesitantly beg him to pose for a photograph while he waits at a red light.

These days video retailers are grumbling about business sagging in the first half of the year. For most the best hope for a profitable '91 hinges on a bang-up fall quarter.That means the release -- from late August on -- of the kind of movies that will lure legions of customers. "Ghost" was the only big draw in the first half of the year. Without it, business for most retailers would have been woeful.The retailers are in luck. The fall lineup looks strong now and may get stronger.The titles include "Home Alone," "Terminator 2," "The Godfather Part III," "Fantasia," "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Dances With Wolves."

Yes, he can hit.No, he is not a threat to Cal Ripken Jr. at shortstop.Such were the reviews yesterday at Memorial Stadium for Kevin Costner, star of such recent blockbuster movies as "Robin Hood" and "Dances With Wolves."And despite his baseball background in "Field of Dreams" and "Bull Durham," he was not altogether comfortable with his pre-game role on 33rd Street yesterday."I went into the clubhouse and I wasn't even sure I was putting the uniform on right," Costner admitted. "I had to look around at the other guys to see how they did it."

The word "epic" just seems to follow Kevin Costner around these days.Mr. Costner, who won an Academy Award in 1991 for directing the sprawling, three-hour "Dances With Wolves," will direct, star in and produce "The Kentucky Cycle," a six-hour HBO miniseries spanning 200 years of American history. The project was adapted by Robert Schenkkan from his own Pulitzer Prize-winning play, co-produced in 1992 by the Mark Taper Forum."In a business of superlatives, this is an amazing day in the history of television," said Bob Cooper, senior vice president of HBO Pictures, who signed off on Mr. Costner's deal Wednesday morning.

"Black Robe" is "Dances With Wolves" through a glass darkly.It's a wonderful movie, as was "Dances" -- but it's 'N wonderful in a different way."Dances" was indeed a dance -- a minuet with a romantic vision of a Native American people who were eco-correct and oh-so-wonderfully noble and altruistic. It may have been dreadful anthropology, but it was a platform from which to critique the hallowed myth of manifest destiny and white superiority. And, like any fairy tale, it childishly cleaved the world into moral opposites: good (red)

So, it was 11:27 on a Monday night. Did you know where your children were?Well, if they had any sense, they weren't listening to the director of "Journey of Hope" thanking the Turkish crew that worked on this Swiss movie that won the Academy Award for best foreign film.Hey, nothing against "Journey of Hope," probably a great film, but it's getting close to Ted Koppel time. We're talking late. If it was a Monday Night Football game, halftime would almost be over.Maybe it's written somewhere that the Oscar telecast has to be longer than the film that wins best picture.

Remorse for collective wrongs may be admirable, but it can also seem self-indulgent -- which is the primary problem with "The Last of His Tribe," a handsomely produced period movie premiering at 8 tonight on HBO.Jon Voight plays a turn-of-the-century anthropologist studying an Indian who is apparently the only survivor of his tribe. The Yahi were wiped out by white men, and native actor Graham Greene ("Dances With Wolves") portrays the Indian. A number of Indian extras were used in the cast, too.The film's story supposedly springs from the true experience of a prominent figure in the study of Indian tribes, University of California professor Alfred Kroeber, who worked with an Indian named "Ishi" (for "man" in his native tongue)