T Y
This is appreciated. And I'm glad Spike Lee has put viewers in contact with the horrible Katrina imagery. (I stowed my TV in storage 4 years ago to cut down on the idiocy in my life, so I missed footage of the disaster). But my rental place only had the first and the last dvds in the series. I missed the central 2 hours! But that oversight, sadly, has pointed out the shows problem; extrapolating from the two DVDs I saw, I feel pretty confident that I could guess the general tone, format and points of the missing DVD. It's not a very focused or structured series. I don't feel like I missed anything specific.Lee chose to roll footage of the debris and inundation, which is fine. But I wish someone else (Frontline) would do an expose on who's to blame. Like everyone else, I blame the incompetent Bush and Co. as the main culprits. But Lee keeps blame (and thus any solution) very vague. He really seems to be letting Nagin off the hook here. Even after black homeless refugees cite Nagin as a problem. For any of the Sean Penn haters, Penn was there putting himself out and helping people in danger - What were you doing?
charlessmith702210
In this very special documentary that Michael Moore would truly love, New Orleans was listening, but not listening enough. The big problem was when Hurricane Katrina was about to slam towards the New Orleans coast; at that point, most of New Orleans' residents thought that the hurricane would go east towards Texas and not hit Louisiana. They were wrong.As Katrina hit the Gulf Waters and strengthened after hammering the state of Florida as a Category 4 storm, the storm grew to the highest scale in the Saffir-Simpson scale---a Category 5. Seeing that hurricane on radar in the Gulf, even though I was no hurricane forecaster, I believe that winds had whipped up to 145 to 160 mph in the worst part of the storm. The air pressure in the hurricane reached about 900 millibars. That means that convective available potential energies in that storm could reach as high as 6,000 joules per kilogram and lifted indices as high as -11. You only get these readings in a very severe thunderstorm.In other words, Katrina was a monster storm that cannot be ignored.On August 28, 2005, hurricane watches were put out throughout the whole Gulf Coast. The mayor of New Orleans told all New Orleans people to evacuate, but some New Orleans residents could not get out. Then the city government made a plan to put all evacuees who could not get out of New Orleans before the hurricane to the Superdome in downtown New Orleans. I saw about 100,000-150,000 people herded in the Superdome like cattle.And even after the storm, things were not better. People were stranded for days. The Superdome got hotter and hotter and some people decided to get out of there. The New Orleans Convention Center did not fare any better. The government did not care for them, and that is why a fair amount of hurricane victims died in the streets and in the waters. And to top it all off, anarchy akin to what happened in south central Los Angeles during the riots of 1991 exploded like a nuclear bomb in New Orleans. Several looters were shot; police kept the destitute and dislocated away from higher ground; and even police who had powers to arrest were unable to do it. One testimony of a Black looter who got shot twice by someone firing a shotgun and ending up with buckshot wounds all over made me so scared, because you only see such stuff in westerns.For some people, the breach of the levee in 2007 that triggered most of the New Orleans flooding, especially those who were at the Gentilly area of New Orleans, caused enormous fears. Some people near the breach of the levee heard explosions, and this was akin to the dynamite detonations of the levee during the last hurricane in New Orleans in about 1962.
roland-104
Spike Lee tells the story of Hurricane Katrina's toll on the people of New Orleans in this long film made for an HBO miniseries, a highly detailed account of the disaster, its antecedents and its continuing impact on the survivors. Lee has utilized a vast trove of archival footage, shot much new material, and interviewed around 100 individuals – from victims to political leaders and engineers. The version that aired on television consists of four "acts," spanning 255 minutes cumulative running time; the DVD adds an "act V – Next Movement" – another hour or so composed exclusively of further material from the interviews.The story, of course, is familiar to all of us in both its broad outline and many of the details presented here. But Lee succeeds in elaborating upon the suffering, frustrations, and often half concealed truths of the story in a manner that far exceeds what came to us through the conventional media, with its usual foreshortened reportage. It is a monumental accomplishment, a journalistic tour de force that is unparalleled in its depth and poignancy.We do learn new things. In one glaring instance, we are told that armed vigilantes formed human barriers to prevent the exodus of those departing flooded areas into a drier, safer place. We see evidence at every turn of the pathetically inadequate responses of local, state and federal government. In particular we get a first hand look at the absurdity of FEMA efforts, especially the horrid trailers that usually have been delivered too late, and, even then, are too often unfit to live in.We get a fuller picture than before of the flimsiness of the barriers to water surge erected by the Army Corps of Engineers: silly, thin little walls planted with insufficient depth, virtually begging to be knocked down, where instead broad earthen levees were needed. We are confronted by the deep pain of people returning to inspect houses that are beyond repair, filled with ugly piles of goods where once orderly rooms of furniture and other belongings had their place. The insides of these places - piled full of gruesome messes of detritus that once were articles of furniture, appliances and beloved possessions, as if some hostile giant had savagely shaken the places while holding them under water – look horridly alike.The story goes agonizingly along. And we come away wondering whether a disaster of this magnitude, had it occurred in a community not so heavily composed of underclass folks, primarily people of color, would have evoked a swifter, more supportive, and more effective response by government agencies and private insurers.Many among those interviewed have profoundly troubling stories to tell and several tales of courage and generosity. Among the most memorable voices to me were: civil engineering professor Robert Bea; composer Terence Blanchard; historian Douglas Brinkley; trial attorney Joseph Bruno; state medical examiner Louis Cataldie; Eddie Compass, former N.O. police chief; Calvin Mackie, Tulane engineering professor, speaking of the deaths of his parents seemingly brought on by the catastrophe; Wynton Marsalis; Mother Audrey Mason, who tells Barbara Bush a thing or two; Times-Picayune City Editor David Meeks; CNN reporter Soledad O'Brien; Sean Penn, recounting his personal efforts to save people stranded in their homes; actor Wendell Pierce; local radio commentator Garland Robinette; and minister Elder William Walker, Jr.Among other displaced survivors not so well known, some of the most arresting in their responses are Terence Blanchard's mother, Wilhelmina; Phyllis Montana LeBlanc, who recites her harsh poem about the event; Judith Morgan and Cheryl Livaudais, who deliver a shrill duet of nonstop slashing criticism of the whole post-storm relief effort; Kimberly Polk, who lost her 5 year old daughter; Michael Seelig…I could go on and on…Lee's focus is selective. He touches lightly on the technical and engineering issues. He offers no real analysis of the political and bureaucratic problems hampering relief efforts. He doesn't follow the story of the health care crisis or allegations of euthanasia in several cases. He doesn't follow people exiled to other cities and states to see first hand how they are faring.Lee also doesn't mention the jockeying of developers, lobbyists and politicians scheming to make money off the rebuilding process. The material Lee uses to highlight the conduct of civic leaders is closely cropped, no more comprehensive than the best news shows offered at the time. No, Lee's lens remains for the most part fixed on the suffering of the people – black, white, and mostly poor.The quality of the photography is highly variable, as you expect when footage is extracted from many sources. But the editing is generally very good. The music is a mixed bag. There are famous tunes, like Fats Domino's "Walking to New Orleans" and the traditional "St. James Infirmary" sung, surprisingly, by Marsalis. There's footage of a wonderful funeral band processing along the street in "act IV." Theme music that reoccurs throughout the entire series is from the recent movie, "Inside Man," composed by New Orleans' Terence Blanchard, the same man already mentioned among notable interviewees. Blanchard has worked with Spike Lee for years, doing the music on most of Lee 's film projects. His score in this instance is entirely fitting: it is elegiac, funereal, slowly paced, often rendered with a spare unaccompanied piano. But for some obscure reason Lee's sound mixer often decides to suddenly ratchet up the volume to the point that it can drown out what interviewees are saying and even feel enervating and painful to the ear. So one must sit with remote control in hand, constantly on the alert to turn the volume down, then later back up, to contend with this bothersome phenomenon.Despite its selective focus and the sound problems, overall this unique production is one that no informed citizen will want to miss. My grades: 8/10 (B+) (DVD seen on 02/03/07)
