| Product Summary | | Publisher: HBO | | Format: DVD | | UPC: 00026359397325 | | Buy.com Sku: 203167203 | | Item#: V2FELM | | Buy.com Sales Rank: 4877 | | Category Keywords: Documentary Historic Events Tragedy | | Rating: NR |
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| | | An HBO Documentary Films Event.
Features: DVD, Widescreen
One year after Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans, director Spike Lee presents a four-hour, four-part chronicle recounting, through words and images, one of our country's most profound natural disasters.In addition to revisiting the hours leading up to the arrival of Katrina, a Category 5 hurricane, before it hit the coast of Louisiana, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts tells the personal stories of those who lived to tell about it, at the same time exploring the underbelly of a nation where the divide along race and class lines has never been more pronounced.
"...[Lee explores his] subject thoroughly, honestly and rivetingly." David Bianculli, New York Daily News
"...a relentless civics lesson about the storm and its still-unfolding aftermath." Joanna Weiss, Boston Globe
"...Lee's capacious overview is a symphony of American voices, a great chorus of anger, sorrow and disbelief." Sam Adams, Philadelphia City Paper
Editor's Note
With a runtime of over four hours, this HBO-produced Spike Lee documentary is the definitive word on Hurricane Katrina. Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, causing the levees that had previously kept the city from flooding to burst, which led to death, destruction, and homelessness on an alarming scale. Lee carefully plots the buildup to the hurricane, using many of the key figures in the city--such as mayor Ray Nagin and local radio show hosts--to outline the warnings given to residents. The film then covers the hurricane itself, showing gut-wrenching pictures of dead bodies and people pleading to be saved, before it settles into a lengthy discourse on the government response to the tragedy. Celebrities such as CNN's Soledad O'Brien, Sean Penn, and Harry Belafonte all appear, but Lee mainly focuses on the words of those who somehow made it through Katrina and lived to tell the tale. The majority of those people are highly critical of the Bush administration for its poor response, attributing this to the fact that the bulk of the residents affected were African-American. A powerful and important piece of filmmaking, WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE is an eye-opening account of a catastrophe that could so easily have been avoided.
| Features | Audio Commentary By Spike Lee | | Audio: English Dolby Digital Stereo | | Featurette: Next Movement | | Interactive Menus | | Interviews | | Photo Gallery | | Scene Selection |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: HBO |
| Release Date: 9/23/2008 |
| Running Time: 256 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2006 | | Catalog ID: 93973 | | UPC: 00026359397325 | | Number of Discs: 3 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English [CC], English | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Anamorphic Widescreen 1.85:1 |
| Cast & Crew | Al Sharpton - Featuring | | Barbara Bush - Featuring | | Cliff Charles - Cinematographer | | Condoleezza Rice - Featuring | | Dick Cheney - Featuring | | George W. Bush - Featuring | | Kanye West - Featuring | | Mike Myers - Featuring | | Samuel D. Pollard, et. al. - Editor | | Sean Penn - Featuring | | Sheila Nevins - Executive Producer | | Spike Lee - Producer | | Spike Lee - Director | | Terence Blanchard - Original Music By |
| Awards |
Winner (2006) | | | Venice Film Festival, Spike Lee, Human Rights Film Network Award | | | Venice Film Festival, Spike Lee, Venice Horizons Documentary Award |
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| | Professional Reviews | Rolling Stone
"The film is fueled by rage over inadequate federal response, but what you'll remember is the valor and humor of the people of New Orleans, determined to rebuild..." 11/30/2006 p.104Entertainment Weekly
"WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE may be the most evocative, deftly told, and important four hours to his credit." -- Grade: A 12/22/2006 p.64 Total Film
5 stars out of 5 -- "[N]othing cuts to the core sharper than regular people trying to tell their stories, but getting stopped in their tracks as they choke back their tears." 02/01/2007 p.134 Empire
5 stars out of 5 -- "In making such a universal tragedy out of such a local scandal, Lee may have just made the greatest film of his brilliant career." 09/01/2007 p.149 Sight and Sound
"The seething sense of righteous indignation is powerfully conveyed..." 10/01/2007 p.90 Uncut
4 stars out of 5 -- "[M]oving, illuminating....A massive gallery of talking heads bears witness to the murderous injustice..." 11/01/2007 p.152 Variety 10 of 10
Charged with profound sorrow, galvanizing outrage and defiant resolve, Spike Lee's extraordinary "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts" renders the worst natural disaster in U.S. history -- Hurricane Katrina's unforgiving assault on New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities -- as a perfect storm of catastrophic weather, human error, socioeconomic inequity and bureaucratic dysfunction...Notes of foreboding are sounded in interviews -- some filmed as recently as two months ago -- with experts who question whether the city's levee system is now, or ever can be, sufficient. But the scrappy nature of surviving long-time residents is at once amusing and inspiring. - Joe Leydon
Washington Post 10 of 10
It is the anger that cuts deepest -- a righteous, laser-focused anger born of betrayal, laced with sadness, a rumbling anger that pumps like blood through the veins of Spike Lee's masterly Katrina documentary, "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts"...Along with visuals that capture all aspects of the disaster, these bitter, wounded, poignant, thoughtful, expert and often foul-mouthed voices are knitted together in a tightly edited film that manages to sustain four hours without a central narrator...Katrina: The word conjures horrors. It conjures a collective psychic wound for many Americans, especially black Americans and, of course, most especially for the victims. - Lynne Duke
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