BRAVE NEW WEST

“Critics pick 2008's Best of the Big Screen. Sprung from the American West and shaped by two Missoulians, High Plains Films' Brave New West is an engaging documentary profiling Utah environmentalist/journalist/curmudgeon Jim Stiles, greatly strengthened by Stiles' own remarkable archives (16mm footage of Glen Canyon before it was damned, for example) and the wisdom of filmmakers Doug Hawes-Davis and Drury Gunn Carr in employing them. In doing so, they've strengthened their own place in the lexicon of Western storytellers.”

Missoula Independent

“Delightful doc about Jim Stiles, longtime writer, publisher and artist of the Canyon Country Zephyr, a bulwark of liberal thinking in right-wing Utah. Doug Hawes-Davis and Drury Gunn Carr direct this tribute to an American original.”

Kansas City Star

“Through interviews, voice-over letters to the editor and just following Stiles around Moab, you feel the love he has for Canyon Country - and the love he poured into the Zephyr as its publisher, editor, ad sales staff, designer and cartoonist -- 'It's either advocating or against nearly everything,' he says. Also appearing are Stiles' friend Ken Sleight, better known as the inspiration for Abbey's Seldom Seen Smith in The Monkey Wrench Gang, and Herb Ringer, whose trip journals, commentary and photography of the West were printed in the Zephyr for years as the historical feature 'Herb Ringer's American West'.”

Mountain Gazette

“Inspiring.”

Tucson Citizen