Product Description: Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 08/26/2008 Run time: 90 minutes Rating: R
Amazon.com: Some documentaries endow historical events with context, while others recreate them in all their messy glory, leaving viewers to organize the chaos themselves. Brett Morgen (co-director, The Kid Stays in the Picture) takes the latter tack in his multi-media reconstruction of the protests during 1968's Democratic National Convention. Using the ensuing conspiracy trial as a framing device, he assembles archival footage and animated sequences into a Rorschach-type pattern (the title refers to the eight defendants and their attorneys). Further, he turns to blistering tracks from the Beastie Boys and Rage Against the Machine to distinguish his doc from the usual nostalgia parade--sprinkled with period-appropriate selections, like Black Sabbath's 'War Pigs.' In the motion-capture portions, actors voice the primary players: Yippie leaders Abbie Hoffman (Hank Azaria) and Jerry Rubin (Mark Ruffalo), Black Panther Bobby Seale (Jeffrey Wright), Prosecutor Thomas Foran (an ultra-raspy Nick Nolte), and Judge Julius Hoffman (Roy Scheider, in one of his final roles). Until the tone darkens towards the end, Chicago 10 is almost too diverting for its own good. Hoffman and Rubin come across as charismatic comedians rather than committed activists, though there’s nothing funny about their furor over the conflict in Vietnam. If Morgen spends too much time on their Marx Brothers-like antics--in attempting to expose the ridiculousness of their plight, they sometimes seem more like petulant pranksters than First Amendment champions--Chicago 10's contemporary relevance makes it necessary viewing for free-speech proponents and anti-war protestors alike. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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Rating: - The future world will watch
"Chicago 10" is the best documentary I have ever seen of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention protest. That I'm aware, it's also only the second movie of the Chicago 7+1 trial, which grew out of the U.S. government's attempt to justify the use of excessive force against convention protesters. Counterproductively for the government, the trial immortalized the eight defendants and their two lawyers for which this movie is named.
I've never seen most of this filmed protest footage. At last, there is enough original 1968 material organized in one movie, to visualize the Chicago physical situation experienced by perhaps 40,000 people on all sides. The documentary is presented by sequential intercutting of trial transcript and recreation video animations, with 1968 actuality films, TV, radio, and audio recordings. Historians can now see what was happening almost sequentially in several large outdoor venues. ... Read More
Rating: - The Hazy Crazy Days of the Summer of '68
"Chicago 10" uses a curious mix of animation and actual footage to tell the story of the demonstrations at the site of the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention and of the conspiracy trial that followed. The story interweaves the conspiracy trial of Yippie leaders Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin (and others) with material about the demonstrations that landed them in hot water.
As a person who grew up in the 1960s with the same inchoate rage expressed by many of the demonstrators, I came to the film with sympathy for their goal of opposing America's attempts to extend its power overseas by demanding an end to an unpopular and unjust war. But in spite of their intentions, the filmmakers crafted a document with a very different conclusion.
There's something touching and maddening about the defendants. Except for Bobby Seale - the only one who seems to appreciate larger issues and forces at play ... Read More
Rating: - Great Docu-Drama About the 1*9*6*8 DNC March.
The CHICAGO 10 DVD is a gripping movie about the 1968 trial of the "Chicago 8" (later the Chicago 7 when Bobby Seale was separated from the others) who were charged with conspiracy and inciting a riot, among other charges, for the massive demonstrations that took place during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. People, especially young people, from all over the USA convened to protest the Vietnam War when the massive march went awry and cops began attacking the marchers.
Anyway, the movie combines animation and archival footage of the events that took place during that August 1968. The animation is mainly in the courtroom, which is based on the court transcripts. Everything else is shown through footage either from news feeds or amateur video.
I found the movie gripping as the action switches back and forth from the court house trial to the actions happening during the marches etc., ... Read More
Rating: - Allow me to demonstrate
In September of 1969, Abbie Hoffman and fellow radical activists Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner were hauled into court along with Black Panther Bobby Seale on a grand jury indictment for allegedly conspiring to incite the massive anti-Vietnam war protests and resulting violent mayhem that transpired in the Chicago environs during the 1968 Democratic Convention. What resulted is arguably the most overtly political "show trial" in American history.
Using a mélange of animation, archival footage and voiceover re-creation by well-known actors, Brett Morgen expands even further on the eye-catching multimedia technique that he and co-director Nanette Burstein used in their 2002 doc The Kid Stays in the Picture.
The bulk of the animated sequences are re-enactments from the trial itself, with dialog lifted directly from courtroom transcripts (and trust ... Read More
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- The Hazy Crazy Days of the Summer of '68 
- Great Docu-Drama About the 1*9*6*8 DNC March.
