James Brown was a true innovator. Nobody can take his genius away from him. He has passed on to occupy the ancestral realm. Remember the ancestors are always with us, you simply have to invoke their names.

I recommend this book for any James Brown fans or casual reader of history.

Customer Review: a very good read

RIP to the Godfather of Soul, Soul Brother #1, The Hardest Working Man in Show Business. This been a great blow and to all of us James Brown fans here. This book was the one I needed to keep me focused. Just read it all the way through earlier this year. Very strong, uplifting and powerful. James Brown was the Hero, the Legend, the American Pioneer. He wasn’t just an entertainer or a hit maker or an artist, he’s a man that have overcome alot on what’s happening in the world: going thru poverty, business, the Civil Rights Movement, the world, loss of jobs, politics, way of culture, way of living, and a way to express ourselves thru a meaning of religion, life, hunger, soul, pain, and suffering. The Man had it all. Boy I’mma miss him and his talent. His spirit always captures us thru this day. GOOD GOD!!!

Thanks for all the hardship and legacy you put us into, Brother James Brown.

I am lucky enough to have this movie on VHS. Before Robert Downey Jr. just completely fell into a world of somewhere that seems to be the land of no return he was quick witted, funny, sexy and charismatic and his hosting the camera’s adventure during the politcal conventions of ‘92 was actually brilliant! Everyone should see this movie. It rules!

Customer Review: Downey at his best

RDJ is reflective, contemplative, and inquisitive in this film. He manages to question a variety of Americans in many different walks of life including Bill Clinton, Oliver North, Oliver Stone, a homeless man, feminists, a little boy who is an AIDS activist, and Spike Lee. RDJ holds a mirror up to himself as well as to the people and places he visits.

It appears that at long last, the real “Cold Feet” is coming to DVD on our side of the pond. The U.S. release date is January 25, 2005!! Looks like it’s only the first season, but hopefully the whole series will be released as well. I can’t wait!

Customer Review: Cold Feet-UK series

I agree Cold Feet is a must see British series. I’ve seen all seasons. Worth getting a multiregional DVD player. Easy to order online. I have an RJ Tech only $150. Plus if you like The Office, the Christmas episode that aired on BBC last year (not available in the US) is soon to be released through Amazon.co.uk in October.

The Idealist showcases the fine art photography of Glen E. Friedman, who many including the Washington Post call “One of the greats of his generation.” The Idealist is the work of a true visionary, effortlessly mixing landscapes, still life, and documentary photography, and calling parallel to his own innate idealism through the images, and by including original comments from some of the most progressive, and politically controversial thinkers of our time - Ralph Nader, Reverend Al Sharpton, Ian MacKaye, Cornel West, and Ian Svenonius.

This collection of photographs from 25 years (1976 - 2001) of Friedman’s work concentrates on his visual aesthetic and is the public introduction to his striking fine-art photography. Though he continues a heavy focus on both imagery and message, only a few of his traditional photographs of legendary people in the hip-hop, punk and skate communities will be recognized. The Idealist traces Friedman’s development as a fine-artist as his subject matter includes a breathtaking international scope of landscapes, still life, and documentary. New and old fans of his work will be delighted to see his capacity to capture essential moments of most anything he sets his eyes on, to help us open ours.

The book size and cover have been changed slightly, over a dozen images have been removed and over two dozen new ones have been added. The book will now encompass 25 years. Adding 5 years and over a dozen pages to the original edition, as well as additional new words on Idealism contributed by Rev. Al Sharpton, Ralph Nader and Cornel West.

Customer Review: Excellent

Everything submitted about this book is right on point. I just received it and it is a beautiful publication.

It must also be mentioned that besides all of the fantastic photography and art direction overall, the words on idealism contributed by such illustrious thinkers and revolutionaries as Ralph Nader, Cornel West, Ian MacKaye, Al Sharpton, and Ian Svenonius, truly emphasize the viewpoint of the author Friedman as eloquently and as insightfully as you can imagine. Simply inspiring words to pepper this incredibly colorful book.

Customer Review: It’s Alive

This book is it! I really can’t overstate how great this book is even at the first quick view. If you have the first editon of The Idealist, don’t be put off by the $6 jump in the price, it’s worth a great deal more than that. Moreover, if you were thinking this was just going to be a sloppy re-hash of a previous edition, you won’t believe how well the new edit clicks. Books and photographs like these are the reason why I like my eyes and why I tell people my sense of sight would be the last thing I’d want to lose. For those with a more pure interest in photography, this book shows us that Friedman’s vision and attitude are the secret reasons why the Pentax K1000 was invented. This book embarrasses those other photographers who struggle to force down garbage with unnecessary equipment that costs thousands of dollars more. This book isn’t about equipment, about a process, about celebrity or about an ego. This book really is ANTI-WASTE and BREATHING in a way that “photography” books rarely are: Barnes and Noble should be taking note. If you liked the juxtapositions of the first edition, you’ll be pleasesd to see both new and old favorites. I believe these pictures still stand out after years of having them etched on my consciousness and that’s the reason I’ll always keep coming back to LOOK. That is, Friedman creates pictures and books that age well. Everytime I pick up one of his books, I see something that I never noticed on previous viewings. He never gets boring! You won’t be content with filing this in a dusty library. The Idealist 25 makes me happy in a way that very few material things do.

Al Sharpton for President on Infant One Piece. Don’t know who to vote for? Al Sharpton is always in the running. OK, maybe not this year! 100% jersey cotton toddler tee by American Apparel. Made in the USA.

Cinema is probably the closest art form to politics, as Robert Altman wisely proclaims, “All movie stars are politicians and all politicians are bad actors”.

While the original TANNER ‘88 was so much about the ‘fictional aspects’ of political campaign, about how people in politics had to ‘act’ according to the image they were expected to represent, this 16 years later sequel is about filmmaking and how it deals with reality–in another words, about the representation of a reality which already could be perceived only through representations.

The shift is clearly stressed when Martin Scorsese shows up in episode 1 at Elaine’s restaurant in New York, as one of the many “as himself” cameo (a signature carried over from the original 1988 series, as well as in Altman’s own THE PLAYER). While in the original series most of the “as him/herself” cameo appearances were politicians or people related to politics (including media personalities, movie stars and musicians, nevertheless still in their political activities), in the sequel Scorsese and Steve Buscemi are given the longest screentime among the cameos. The fact that the scene takes place at this particular restaurant automatically sets up another allusion to cinema, since Michael Murphy who plays Jack Tanner was also one of the stars in Woody Allen’s MANHATTAN, the opening scene of which also took place here. Other major cameo appearances are from documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, and from John Kerry’s daughter Alexandra Kerry–who’s also in filmmaking.

One of the major features of the original TANNER ‘88 was how it deliberately mixed the fiction with the documentary, by throwing a fictional candidate’s campaign into an actual presidential elective process, thus permitting a deeply insightful panorama of our political reality. The new TANNER ON TANNER is, as its title literally suggests, about the very theory upon which the original series was based upon. Is the reality that the original series permitted us to glimpse is really “for real”?

This fundamental question must be heightened more than ever when… well, how much of reality there is in today’s politics? Compared to what went on during the 2004 presidential campaign, the 1988 reality of the original series seems almost idyllic. That may be why the sequel is not as hilariously satirical as TANNER ‘88: in the original series, one could laugh because as much of reality there was in it, the intentions of making a rather exaggerated and comical satire was still clear. This reminds me of a very clever comment Altman made when he was asked why there were no agents in THE PLAYER: his reply was “you cannot make a parody of a parody.” The political reality in TANNER ON TANNER –that is, the political reality of the 2004 election– may seem almost a parody of a political campaign, except that its results would dreadfully influence our reality; today, more than ever (after all, the cold was ending back in 1988, while America is now at war in Iraq, and maybe stepping in another one against either Iran or North Korea, or both).

Also, the 2004 election may be the first time since 1960 (when Hollywood strongly supported John F. Kennedy) that the filmmaking community involved itself so heavily and directly in politics: when talking about this election, one can never forget about FAHRENHEIT 9/11, which is a piece of political filmmaking for sure, but not on the same level that Altman’s works are political, or the independent filmmakers of the 60’s-70’s were political. The anti-Vietnam war indies were not in the same game as the politicians. Some of Altman’s films like TANNER ‘88 or SECRET HONOR are political because they observe and analyze the very game politicians have to play, and so were the documentaries of Frederick Wiseman, D.A.Pennebaker, the Drew Associates, the Maysles brothers, or Robert Kramer.

The politically oriented films of Oliver Stone, especially JFK and NIXON were already pointing at a somewhat different direction, and with Michael Moore, American political filmmaking became literally (and in a rather over-simplified manner) part of the political game. Or one may say that we are going back to the era of Sergei Eisenstein and BATTLESHIP POTYOMKIN, or Leni Riefenstahl and TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, but in a far more developed and complex turmoil of the media-oriented populist politics.

That is probably why Jack Tanner’s daughter Alex Tanner (Cynthia Nixon) had to become a documentary filmmaker, and why TANNER ON TANNER focuses on her filmmaking. Also maybe because in 1988 the almost naive sincerity of Jack Tanner still had its place in the election campaign itself, while in 2004 the only area where Altman could find sincere people were the documentary filmmakers covering the election. Jack Tanner was proven to be out of the game when he lost back in 1988, while in 2004 the game became such a heightened one that there’s no place to sincerity. And FAHRENHEIT 9/11 may have given us a good example: in a film the protagonists must have some kind of sincerity even when they make mistakes. Not only that the protagonist being a fool but he is also void of any sort of genuine sincerity cannot sustain a dramatic narrative. And one won’t be able to make a filmic satire about them.

So TANNER ON TANNER focuses on Alex’s desperate endeavor of making a documentary film about her father, and on the course she makes all kinds of mistakes of “what not to do in documentary filmmaking” that nevertheless most filmmakers fall in at least once, and learn never doing it again in a hard way: don’t try to put words into the mouth of your subject, don’t go out shooting unless you are very prepared, don’t fall into panic, don’t get lost from your crew when you’re supposed to be shooting everything that is happening or may happen, and most of all, don’t be to obsessed with your own ego… and so on. These mistakes happen so often in a documentary film production, this film may be able to be seen as a textbook of documentary filmmaking.

Of course some of the questions that those mistakes portrayed in the film evoque involve certain contradictions: one also should add “don’t try to follow literally the advice from Robert Redford simply because you think he’s ordinary Bob (when after all, everybody has his or her own subjectivity so who’s ordinary?)”. Every step of filmmaking is a subjective choice; from what do you chose as your subject, how are you going to frame each shot, what questions would you ask in interviews, to what structure would you take in the editing, what would you leave in the final cut and what not. To go through all that you have to believe in what you’re doing, you need to have a passion for it. And Alex should have all that since she’s making a film about her father that she loves so much, believes in him so much, and she experienced first hand what political campaigning really means. But at the same time, you have to accept what ever is happening in front of the camera. If something that you never expected happens when you’re shooting, think twice before you try to control the situation, since this may be more interesting than what you have pre-planned. You must be patient. You must be listening and observing instead of pushing yourself onto the people or the situation– in one word, your must throw your ego out of your working system.

It is a very tough contradiction to deal with, and Alex may be too naive and even perhaps too spoiled to go through it. But that makes the dramatic core of TANNER ON TANNER (also can be read as “Alex Tanner on Jack Tanner”, but really Alex Tanner on Alex Tanner herself), and Cynthia Nixon gives a lot of credibility to her character. She may be too egocentric, sometimes even stupid, but she’s still very sincere in all the mistakes she makes. The series of scene when she walks out of her own premiere screening in the first episode, and the very last scene in which she gives a speech to her student are especially touching.

While Altman is making this show as a comedy, he also can be very sincere and serious in spite of the overall comical narrative. A scene in episode 4 when Alex and her crew are discussing how to use Jack’s interview done on a racket ball court focuses on a dilemma that we, film viewers and filmmakers who’d like to consider themselves being serious and sophisticated, have to face at this present time. In another words, our “sophisticated” cinematic culture would somehow discard FAHRENHEIT 9/11. Most certainly our esthetics do not allow such hasty collage of TV footage, nor our political sense would not tolerate such manipulative propaganda montage. BUT, that’s what works for the audience today, and if you feel some responsibility about what you’re doing, about what you say may mean to the society… what shall we do?

TANNER ON TANNER is a film about those questions and contradictions. By focusing on the dilemma of the filmmakers, Altman makes us realize the fundamental problems of the “reality” as we see, hence the reality that is represented through the media, which is almost the only reality we actually see except for our immediate surroundings. While it is still funny and entertaining, it surface being very light-hearted, what the film deal with is deadly serious–even more so when it is dealing with our own seriousness. The particularly poignant and brilliant touch is Jack Tanner making up the portion of Kerry’s acceptance speech dealing with Iraqi war, “Now I know that there are those who criticize me for seeing complexities and I do, because some issues are not that simple.” Even seeing complexities that exist in reality becomes part of a simplified political agenda…

Customer Review: A disappointment, but extras are a treat

I’ll give anything with Cynthia Nixon a fair shake, so we tried to stomach our way through this four-episode compilation. It’s most unfortunate to report back that it takes a lot of intestinal fortitude to make it to the finish line.

The original “Tanner ‘88″ was groundbreaking, and it’s a thrill to go back and see a young Ms. Nixon as the faux-presidential aspirant’s daughter. And, in general, I’m a fan of Robert Altman’s unique filmaking style, especially when it it comes together brilliantly in works like ‘The Player’ and ‘Gosford Park.’ Unfortunately, Mr. Altman lays a stinkeroo from time to time, like the dreadfully bad ‘Dr. T and the Women.’ ‘Tanner on Tanner’ is closer to that end of the Altman scale. There’s rather stilted polemic-y dialogue (monologue?) from the likes of Mario Cuomo, thrown together with a muddled mix that washes out otherwise neat appearances by the likes of Steve Buscemi and Marty Scorcese.

Why three stars? Well, the extras on the DVD are fascinating. Good interviews with Altman and Gary Trudeau. There’s a cool piece called ‘The Two Alexs,’ which talks about the scene where the fictional Alex Tanner (Nixon) meets the real Alexandra Kerry (also a documentary filmmaker), and they both film an interview with Ron Reagan, Jr. (who’s also filming). So, as Altman and Trudeau explain, Reagan and Kerry are there with their film crews, Nixon with her fake crew, and the whole thing is being filmed by Altman himself. Moreover, Tanner on Tanner features a student filmmaker filming Nixon’s attempt to make her film. As Altman and Trudeau note, the effect of Tanner on Tanner is to poke as much fun at the seriousness and angst of the documentary filmmaker as at the political process.

Most fascinating is a piece called ‘Sex and the DNC’ that talks about Nixon and Michael Murphy (Jack Tanner) walking the floor of the Democratic National Convention in character. People recognize Nixon from ‘Sex and the City’ and call out to her “I love you!” She brilliantly turns that around by deflecting it to her screen Dad and has him plunge into the crowd. Altman adds to that, noting that “no politician is going to answer ‘no’ when you say to them ‘you remember X’” (’Jack Tanner’ here). Sure enough, they show a great scene of a befuddled Joe Lieberman, obviously desparately trying to recollect candidate Tanner’s face, pumping Murphy’s hand saying “of course I remember.” I could watch two hours of this kind of stuff. Too bad we only get 15 - 20 minutes of the extras and two hours of the show itself.

Evan Mandery, research director on Ruth Messinger’s doomed challenge to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, offers a behind-the-scenes look at political campaigns in the television era. A day-to-day account of the 1997 New York City mayoral race, it takes us to the real battlegrounds of modern politics: polls, focus groups, and television editing studios. With Mandery as our guide, we watch first-hand as political consultants conceive of the ideal candidate and then attempt to fit their client into that ideal, no matter how uncomfortably. The stars of the story are memorable: Rudy Giuliani, popping his eyes and tweaking the truth; Al Sharpton, the colorful preacher and rising political force; and Ruth Messinger herself, torn between her populist political upbringing and the modern political world where money dominates over all other concerns. Sometimes cynical, often mirthful, and always honest, The Campaign will forever change your view of political campaigns.

Customer Review: It’s Oscar-riffic!

I loved the cover. How did Mandery draw all of those characters onto the book jacket? Very impressive!

Customer Review: Witty, insightful and eye-opening

This is not only an interesting, easy to read book, it shows a side of politcal campaigning from an interesting point of view. Mandery is an objective observer with an inside seat. He was part of the campaign, but not part of the culture. That, in my opinion, is to his credit. The book he has written is rife with funny anecdotes, touching scenes and aggravating politics as usual. Mandery keeps his perspective through the whole mess.

After watching this deeply moving video there’s no way you’ll ever want to go back to eating meat. Every day, millions of animals are brutally killed for food in the United States. Their lives are cut short as they are crammed into factory farms, forced to live in their own filth, never to feel the sun of their back or grass beneath their feet. As they are drugged to grow so fast in such a short period of time, many animals will die before they even reach the slaughterhouse, the victims of their own misfortune.

Alec Baldwin narrates this piece and shows such cruelties of our world today. After coming face to face with such horrors, you’ll want to know more about the true tragedies of factory farming. So, the next time you sit down to eat dinner, take a good look at what’s on your plate. Is it comforting to know your dinner may have once had a face?

Customer Review: Excellent, informative video

I am so glad I watched this video — a real eye opener for those of us who have never seen how animals are treated before they end up on our fork. Highly recommend.