hanyuning

Every once in a while a movie comes along that truly allows you to understand a person's life. *We are human, and as humans we react more to human emotion more than anything. *Ray Charles's life was a roller-coaster of drugs, sex, music, and business, but Jamie Foxx portrays this role in probably the best acting of his career.


The Story


"Ray" does an excellent job of immersing us in Ray Charles’ life. *The movie begins showing Ray as he's leaving the south for the upper-midwest to begin his career. *In a time when blacks were still segregated to the back of the bus, I felt drawn into the era through the use of era-footage. *While I'm not a real fan of Jamie Foxx's past work, I have to say that after about 15 minutes of this movie I had forgotten that Jamie was even in the movie, and was lost in the story that is Ray Charles.


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The story continues as he works his way up the corporate band wagon, by not letting people take advantage of his disability. *He met his future wife and finally came into his own when he mixed Gospel with his unique music to create a sound that was both soulful and sinful.


*


The main protagonist of this movie is Ray's battle with heroin, which he started early in his career and continued for years as he watched good friends leave the band, get fired, and old flings die from overdosing. I think the movie kept a good line between showing us the wonderful brilliance of a music legend and his battle with addiction. *I came away from this movie knowing that he truly had a deep love for his family, friends, and his music. *Addiction is a hard thing to battle, but this movie handled it well. *the movie concludes as ray finally overcomes his addiction by going to rehab, then uses text to detail the remaining parts of his life.


Bonus Features


This disc is a "flipper" meaning you have to flip the disc over to get to many of the bonus features. *On side A is the main feature, shown in 1.85:1 anamorphic glory. *When you begin playing the movie you can choose Theatrical or Extended cut. *


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The extended scenes mainly show more detail into Ray's heroin addiction and the effects it was having on his various relationships with friends, family and coworkers. *I recommend someone watching this for the first time *watch the Theatrical edition, as the Extended scenes require a rather long pause as the disc searches for the data. *It got to be annoying watching the extended scenes jump into play over and over again. *Also, the scenes are not color corrected nor the audio balanced with the rest of the movie. *Once you've watched the movie and want to learn a little bit of the life of Ray, I found the scenes worth watching.


*


The Experience


The colors (other than the extended scenes) looked very good. *The filmmaker included quite a few scenes from the mid 1900's to help immerse you in the moment. *Even though these scenes were obviously not the same footage, I think they flowed well and helped contribute to the overall feel of the movie.


*


Audio was very well done. *Much of the movie is just listening to Ray singing (he sung all the songs for this movie, btw). *Surround was good and I felt very well immersed in the movie. *Much of the movie is either singing or dialogue, and I doubt my subwoofer even bothered to come out of sleep mode for this movie.


The Verdict


Overall I really loved this movie. *It is usually a good sign when I'm weeping at the end. *While I'm not one that really enjoys seeing people in pain, humans relate to that more than anything else and "Ray" allowed an intimate glimpse into the father of soul. *I felt like I really got to know Ray Charles's life and his struggles that many famous musicians have, trying to juggle family, sex, the road, producers, fans, and drugs. *Throw into that mix the fact that Ray was blind, and the racial problems he faces by having to sit at the back of the bus and being banned from Georgia. *I think he led an amazing life and this movie truly brought his life together for everyone to enjoy. *I highly recommend this movie for everyone. *Truly one of the best movies to be released in the last year. *I give it four stars for the amazing portrayal of Ray’s life. *While I loved this movie, it’s personally not something I’d watch over and over again, so it doesn’t quite get five for me. *If you love Ray’s life, or especially the music he sang, then add another one on.


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-Tom Hansen

hanyuning

so no-one has any comments on my review? was I too nice? did I not provide enough in-depth info? am I completely off my rocker here? Me need feedback :P

matome

Nice review!

Randy Miller III

Not bad. You might want to beef up the technical portions of the review (what kind of sound mix, etc.). What's with all the *'s though?

Randy Miller III

Thanks for the vote of confidence, devil, but I'm hardly a professional writer (unless our editor has been holding out on me ). I write for fun and practice. If anyone wants to post an honest effort and request feedback, what's the harm in that?

Edit: It looks like devil's post has vanished. Spooky...

Rogue588

hanyuning

thanks for the input. I actually write this up in another application then pasted it into the forum. Not sure where the *'s come from, but I'll check that on future ones. I also post them on my website and the formatting works out pretty good (though the pdf version I created originally is the best looking of the bunch.)

I'll keep in mind putting more technical things into future reviews. I also realized I didn't talk about any of the other special features included on the DVD.

Thanks for the input!

RyoHazuki

Booya! More AZ dvdtalkers.

Al Padrino

Complaining about lack of feedback is pretty lame.

As for the review itself, it was okay, but the writing wasn't very tight and tended to be sloppy at times. You should try and be a bit more original, too. Cliche lines like "I highly recommend this movie for everyone" should be excluded. Otherwise, the review comes off as too wooden and void of any real life of its own.

hanyuning

Lame? When your post gets 100+ views, but no-one bothers to post even that they agreed or disagreed with my view I thought was more lame.

Forgive my "wooden and void of any real life" reivew. It takes a lot of time to write up a decent review and trying to keep up with 3-4 movies a week and posting them up on the web. I do this in my spare time for the benefit of my friends and family who have been requesting I provide a little more in-depth reviews of the movies I buy, because many of them base their DVD purchases off my reccomendations. I figured if I'm going to do the work for friends/family I'd post them here for the benefit of others who might like another opinion about the movie.

I'll work on my reviews, but given that I don't have an editor to preview my work, I'll just have to hand in my slightyl-edited first draft ;-)

Thanks,

devil

I deleted it because i though "hanyuning" may take it the wrong way and from reading the his response, it looks like i made the right decision.

hanyuning

well, I'm sorry for taking it the wrong way. Maybe I was a bit frustrated. The problem with forums is that there isn't a face-to-face feelings. People can post things w/out thinking about the consequenses. I was hoping to get a little bit of feedback, and most of of it was constuctive critisism.

However Al's post to me was pretty harsh. I felt that rather than give me some ideas on how to improve my future reviews, the just tore into my writing in general, which doesn't give me any good feedback on what to improve on... since this is the second one I've ever done, that's fine, I need to improve, I agree with that.

I was just trying to put together something nice, and not seeing anyone posting to something you spent hours working on was frustrating.

Thanks for reading. though.

Rogue588

OR one can misinterpret what someone has written..

hanyuning

very true.

Al Padrino

How was it harsh? It wasn't like I said it sucked and left it at that. I specifically told you what was wrong with it. It was sloppy at certain points and the writing wasn't very tight. Beyond that, there wasn't anything unique about the review, which I assume is the reason you didn't get any feedback to it. These are all things that you have to work on. I'm not sure what you expected me to say beyond what I did. You have to find your own special approach to writing, otherwise, it's just like everyone else's. If it's not tight and concise, it can get monotonous to read.

Finally, you shouldn't write to get feedback. It's a nice perk, but you should write first and foremost for yourself. Constructive criticism is helpful, but you shouldn't be doing this just for the feedback. If you are, you should probably look into doing something else with your time, since receiving feedback is usually a rarity, even for great work.

hanyuning

Points well taken Al. I wasn't writing the review to get feedback. I have other avenues I can take if I really wanted feedback on my writing skills I just figurd with as much traffic as this board gets I was suprised that no-one had any comments on something I had just spent two hours working on. (I know, two hours and my writing is still that bad). I've only recently at the bequest of my friends and family (mostly my wife nagging me to do something with the thousands of dollars I spend on DVD's) writing reviews. I had just finished up the review and posted it on my website and decided to post it on this forum to see if anyone had any comments. I didn't get any, I wondered if anyone was out there,and that's when I started wondering what was wrong.

I don't pretend to be any great writer, but it does come as a blow when something (you think) you worked real hard on gets shot down by some unknown passer-by. I wasn't expecting any rave reviews, but I also wasn't expecting to be told that my writing is merely mediocre.

Harsh feelings aside, I do appreciate yours and everyone's feedback and I'll try next time to make a concerted effort to put out better work. I only have so many hours in a week and watching DVD's already takes up what precious hours I have for myself, so QC on web posting gets a back seat to merely getting it done.

Thanks,

hoop

I've got the R1 Two-Disc Limited Edition!
It's a nice movie!

ams

Now that is a review to be proud of!

pcdoctor

I just watched Ray yesterday.
The first annoying pause occured at Ch 1 at 4:10 on the extended version.
I tried two dvd players and I'm not satisfied at how switch over for the extended version extras.
I wish they would have just cut out the musical notes and just made it one seamless movie.
Do you think if we complain enough they will do another disc with the extended version without the musical notes?

Thx