Chicago 10

In 1968 thousands of young people got angry and rioted as an unpopular President expanded an unpopular war overseas. As Ryan Harvey sung recently "The Times They *Aren't* A Chaning". The documentary footage from the protests is amazing, timely, and very reminiscent of news footage from recent political protests in North America. The animated sequences could have been better. They have the look of a very low budget show on Cartoon Network. Occasionally, a different kind of animation is used and this one is less realistic but much more effective. I'm not sure why this type of animation wasn't used throughout the trial sequences.

Roy Scheider I must add was very effective and creepy as Judge Hoffman, the authoritarian and one-sided judge who presided over the trial.

The movie is a reminder that things aren't changing but it's always important to fight.

I just attended a screening of Chicago 10 at Sundance. Wow. What a unique and important movie. The mix of archival footage and animation blend together much better than I anticipated. The animated scenes are primarily courtroom scenes. The dialog during the animated courtroom scenes are taken directly from the court transcripts. The soundtrack is perfect. There is a combination of old and new including songs from contemporary artists such as Rage Against The Machine & Eminem. Although archival footage was used, and court transcripts were used as dialog, I'm not too sure that I'd call this film a documentary. This film was moving, powerful, and well worth seeing. I thought that the film was such a gem that I'm trying to get a tickets to see it again during the festival.

Just saw this at the Sundance opening. An absolute life changing film. There aren't words that could ever describe the feelings evoked by this extraordinary film. You could feel the heart and soul poured into every frame- and the mix of animation and incredible soundtrack was so moving. An absolute must see for anyone who needs to be reminded that they are the difference that is needed to stop the current war and the violence that is inherent today and since the beginning of time. This film leaves you feeling like standing up and taking flight and making a move toward what is truly important- the pursuit of peace and all that comes with-it- making a stand, courage, understanding yourself and your place in the world and knowing when to say when. I truly believe this film will change many lives.

CHICAGO 10 (2008) ***1/2 (Voices of: Hank Azaria, Dylan Baker, Nick Nolte, Mark Ruffalo, Roy Scheider, Liev Schreiber, James Urbaniak, Jeffrey Wright) Fascinating history lesson by way of state-of-the-art rotoscope animation about the infamous Chicago 10 trial of the 1968 anti-war demonstration at The Democratic National Convention led by "yippie" Abbie Hoffman curtailing into a monkey trial with dubious results and if anything a clear-eyed viewpoint of just how radical things were then and how it eerily reflects America's politics today. While the animation is hit-and-miss (and a bit eerie ala "Heavy Metal") the archival footage of the real-life instigators/participants is truly remarkable and should be seen by all who wondered what it was to live during a revolution. (Dir: Brett Morgen)

This is a really poorly movie. It may have been an interesting time in Amerikan history but this movie is far from interesting.

The makers chose to use really bad cartoons and actors to play the Chicago defendants. It doesn't work. The cartoons look nothing like the characters and their dialog is forced.

Frankly, a way better movie could have been made using only archival footage of the characters involved. It could have been truly compelling. Instead we got a really boring piece of celluloid that isn't even truthful to the events at hand.

Throughout the movie there are shots of the characters speaking to "crowds" and shots of massive numbers of people rallying. This is phony. It never happened. They inserted footage from other rallies to try to pretend these guys had such a following!

Shame on you.

And of course they never even mentioned that Jerry Rubin became a rabid capitalist after jail time ( I met him during his networking days in NYC) and Abbie Hoffman (who I always thought was the real deal) started dealing coke big time, went on the lam for years.