ridiculous rating

Absolutely Fantastic

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Blistering performances.

I have to say that I wished that I got to see the first two parts of this documentary. I bought the DVD with the remaining four parts and the epilogue. I still think it was some of the finest documentary seen on television in a long time about a catastrophe that occurred in the Gulf Coast. New Orleans is a very special place for it's residents whether born and raised or longtime residents. Watching their pain and anguish shows the failure of our country's emergency management like FEMA and insurance companies. New Orleans wasn't alone in magnitude. In nearby Mississippi, destruction was still visible and perhaps more ignored. The sheer volume of lives lost is unforgettable. New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Katrina looked like a war had come upon American soil. Only this time, it was nature's vicious wrath. New Orleans might have been spared if the levees were working properly. When will the people of New Orleans get to go home if she choose too?

This documentary of the Hurricane of the century, Katrina, should be watched by anyone who wants to see the best and worst in humanity. Centered on the New Orleans, LA area, this movie shows us the complete and utter devastation wrought. It's almost hard to believe that this actually happened. Filled with interviews from survivors and their families, along with some of the politicians from New Orleans, the State of Louisiana, and the federal government, we hear their stories of survival, heartbreak, amazement, disbelief, hopelessness, despair and death. The hurricane is merely one part of the equation here. (The movie runs 4 hours) the aftermath and the rescue efforts are given more footage than anything else. Starting with the city's response, then up the ladder to the state's response, then finally to the federal government's response. To say that there was widespread inaction and fumbling would be an oversimplification. What really happened before and during the response from these agencies will be debated ad infinitum. The truth is, there were over 200,000 residents of New Orleans stranded and needing assistance. Many were infirm, elderly, or did not have the means to leave the city when ordered. Some were no doubt, stubborn, refusing to leave their homes. But in the end, they were all human beings in need of help.Through interviews with many people who were there at the time, we learn and see of the chaos that took over in the hours and days following the storm. Without a proper plan in place to deal with all of the affected families and citizens, things broke down. Without proper amounts of food, water, clothing and other basic necessities, many were dying. Some of the toughest footage in the entire four hours is devoted to family members detailing how they had to leave the bodies of their loved ones behind, under blankets and tarps because there was no place to bury them. we see bodies floating in the flood waters, distended from heat, under tarps on a freeways. No way for anyone to die. One aspect of this movie that was somewhat troubling is some of the conspiracy theories that come up occasionally, such as the levees were blown up by the government, but these are generally given short thrift by the filmmaker, and most of the interviewees. However, one major problem I had was with the inclusion of Al Sharpton in the interviews. What does he add? Nothing. It seems as if he was included to pontificate and spew his racist views. He should have been cut. The film does have some major flaws, such as letting the governor of Louisiana Kathleen Blanco, and the mayor of New Orleans off the hook. They are never really questioned extensively about their roles, and it seems as if they were given a pass. On the other hand, FEMA director Mike Brown, was grilled, and deservedly so for his mishandling of the rescue efforts, along with Michael Chertoff, head of the Dept of Homeland Security, and former President Bush, none of whom are interviewed for this documentary. With a Spike Lee film, you're always going to get his angle, which is fine, but in this instance, because it was such a monumental event in this country's history, I though it deserved a more even treatment. Even so this is a must watch. At the end of the movie, we see many of the people interviewed in the film, going back to their wrecked and destroyed houses, to try and rebuild. Mardi Gras is again in full swing, and it seems that New Orleans may just rise from the waters and be reborn. One can only hope...

In some respects, New Orleans, a city built eight feet below sea level in the hear of hurricane country, is a natural disaster waiting to happen. But you might think, given its location in the richest country in the world, that there would at least be top-class flood defences, a solid evacuation plan and a firm commitment to rebuild. But in America, the politics of class and race are never far away, and New Orleans is poor and black. Director Spike Lee has done a real service for his country by making this film which exposes the shocking story of hurricane Katrina, a superficially simple assembly of documentary footage and the sometimes contradictory but always diverting testament of literally dozens of people, some famous but most not, caught up in the disaster. It's hard to pick out the most terrible revelations: but starving victims were prevented at gunpoint from entering neighbouring counties, and the school system has all but collapsed in the aftermath of the disaster because of the decline in the city's tax base: these are things that just shouldn't happen in a supposedly rich and civilised country, and are accidents (if that word is not too kindly) of man, not of nature. The truth is stark and powerful: Katrina did more damage than those planes on 9/11, but its attack was not aimed (especially) at the rich and powerful; the different responses serve a dreadful indictment of the state of the American dream.

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.