Product Description

Dramatization of the life and career of popular musician Ray Charles.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 1-FEB-2005
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16857 in DVD
• Brand: FOXX,JAMIE
• Released on: 2005-02-01
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Limited Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, Surround Sound, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 152 minutes

Amazon.com
Jamie Foxx's uncannily accurate performance isn't the only good thing about Ray. Riding high on a wave of Oscar buzz, Foxx proved himself worthy of all the hype by portraying blind R&B legend Ray Charles in a warts-and-all performance that Charles approved shortly before his death in June 2004. Despite a few dramatic embellishments of actual incidents (such as the suggestion that the accidental drowning of Charles's younger brother caused all the inner demons that Charles would battle into adulthood), the film does a remarkable job of summarizing Charles's strengths as a musical innovator and his weaknesses as a philandering heroin addict who recorded some of his best songs while flying high as a kite. Foxx seems to be channeling Charles himself, and as he did with the life of Ritchie Valens in La Bamba, director Taylor Hackford gets most of the period details absolutely right as he chronicles Ray's rise from "chitlin circuit" performer in the early '50s to his much-deserved elevation to legendary status as one of the all-time great musicians. Foxx expertly lip-syncs to Ray Charles' classic recordings, but you could swear he's the real deal in a film that honors Ray Charles without sanitizing his once-messy life. --Jeff Shannon --This text refers to the Theatrical Release edition.

More on Ray Charles

Modern Sounds In Country and Western Music (CD)	The Genius of Ray Charles (CD)	Ray Charles and Betty Carter--Dedicated to You (CD)
Genius & Soul--The 50th Anniversary Collection (CD)	Ray: A Tribute to the Movie, the Music, and the Man (book)	More Albums by Ray Charles

From The New Yorker
Swaying from side to side, his back arched almost to the point of snapping, Jamie Foxx, as Ray Charles, seems pulled upward to the heavens and downward to the keys at the same time. This intelligent and tough-minded bio-pic, written by James L. White and Taylor Hackford and directed by Hackford, tells us a lot about Charles, but it doesn't tell us everything. Though properly awed by Charles's talent, "Ray" refuses to get chummy or possessive. The movie picks up Charles's story in the late forties, when he's an ambitious but wary teen-age musician, and carries him through his musical innovations and his personal pleasures and torments until 1964, when he's a world-famous artist and a miserable heroin addict. There's something both joyous and demonic about this guy, an insatiable energy in his insistence on driving soul and country sounds into the beats of R. & B. For many older people in the audience, the sound of Ray Charles's music is inseparable from memories of dating, dancing, lovemaking, and loss. The movie has the bold good grace to honor the enraptured kids they once were and the sterner but still hungry grownups they became. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

A very good film but an even greater lead performance
This is a very good movie that houses an exceptionally great performance by Jamie Fox as music legend Ray Charles. I must confess that as a genre, the biopic is not my favorite, especially of figures as well known as Ray Charles. We usually receive in such films distorted portraits of them, or undeserved adulation. RAY is one of the more balanced biopics I have seen. Ray Charles is presented as a musical genius who had managed to overcome physical disabilities that would have stopped most others, but it doesn't attempt to mute the serious and unflattering personal moral problems he had with drugs and his exploitative treatment of women. Nor is he revealed as a moral saint or loving person. Though pleasant with others for the most part, Ray is shown as a proud, independent, and slightly self-absorbed, a bit selfish in his treatment of women. As a result, Ray Charles emerges in the film as a believable human being, capable of unfortunate decisions, but also extraordinary music and the occasional powerful moral stand, such as when he refuses to perform in a racially segregated crowd in a venue in Georgia. In fact, the film is built around three foci: his early childhood when he witnessed the death of his younger brother and gradually lost his sight; his musical career from 1948 until the mid-1960s; and his heroin addiction. The film ends with his overcoming his heroin addiction, which also-as numerous music critics have noted--corresponds to the end of the peak of his career as a creative musical performer. Charles continued to make albums after getting off heroin, but all of the great songs that we associate with him were written and recorded while on heroin. For the last forty years of his career, his sets consisted almost entirely of songs he made famous in the fifties and early sixties, with covers of songs by other musicians. There has been a long debate as to whether his addiction somehow aided his musical creativity, but even if so, no one would have wished him to continue to endanger his health and life.

Jamie Fox will without any possible doubt receive an Oscar nomination for this performance. This is considerably more than a good impersonation of Charles: it is almost as if Fox channels him. As much as I loved other biopics of music legends like THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY or WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT, throughout each I was conscious that Gary Busey was playing Buddy Holly and Angela Bassett playing Tina Turner. I completely forgot that Jamie Fox was playing Ray Charles, and despite being quite familiar with him, imagined that I was actually watching Charles onscreen. Yes, he does a killer impersonation of Charles, but he manages that first on top of that provides an amazing dramatic performance. This is great acting, not merely a great impersonation. The only performance of recent years of an actor portraying a prominent entertainer as superb as this is Robert Downey in CHAPLIN.

I also really loved the look of the film. Since it ended in the mid-1960s, the entire film was essentially a period film. There was a sense of visual veracity from beginning to end. I loved the cars, the clothes (especially the ties! - am I alone in thinking that the 1950s was the great decade for neckties?), the interior decors, the furniture. The scenes in the shanty town where Charles was a child were very effective.

The cast aside from Fox was quite strong, made up mainly of relatively unknown performers. There were many other things to enjoy about the film. Of course, the music is absolutely sensational, consisting either of remasters of original Ray Charles's recordings, or new recordings for which Charles provided the vocals. I also loved the relationship in the film between Charles and Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records. There is nothing of the stereotypical relationship between artist and executives that invests so many of the stories of musicians in the 1950s and 1960s. Ertegun is rightfully remembered as one of the truly great figures in the recording industry, someone who was in it more for the music than for the money, and who treated his artists with a degree of respect that was too frequently absent. The film does a good job of presenting Charles's dilemma: ABC-Monument made him an offer that he simply couldn't refuse, yet at the same time we are all aware that Charles was, in a way, screwing Atlantic over by leaving them for ABC-Monument. All in all, I loved this warts and all approach to the subject matter. There is absolutely no question that Ray Charles was one of the most astonishing performers of the fifties and sixties, and doing all he did despite his blindness is an amazing saga. He truly was a genius, even if he was a somewhat flawed person. But you have to love the way that he managed to overcome his personal shortcomings to become not merely one of the most successful but one of the most beloved musical performers of his age.

The Life's story of an imperfect man who did amazing things
I went to see Ray in the theaters last night because my sister suggested it and because I was in a mood to see something "critically acclaimed". For the record, I knew very little about the man and so had very few preconceptions. What I saw made a deep impression in my mind and heart.

Ray Robinson, aka Ray Charles the singer, songwriter and musician, was blind since the age of 7. He had to deal not only with bigotry for his disability but for being black in Georgia before the civil rights movement. Throughout his life many people (both black and white) would try to take advantage of the blind man, ripping him off financially or hoarding his talent for their own gain. Ray had both the blessing and the curse of being a ladies' man, resulting in serial affairs while his wife stayed home and raised their family. It surprised me to learn that he fought an addiction to heroin for well over a decade before finally beating it in the `60s. Nevertheless, Ray carried all this baggage and more through the 40s and 50s as he made a name for himself playing piano in the Country, Jazz, etc. pop music circuits. Eventually of course he rose to become one of the most recognized and beloved musical artists worldwide.

The man that this film showed me was an incredible example of determination, charm and simple human spirit. I have heard others say that Jamie Foxx's acting was so good that they were half-convinced he was channeling Ray Charles' ghost. I'll take their word for it that it was an accurate performance, but regardless, it was also a great performance! Down the line each of the supporting actors was perfectly convincing and real, but none more so than Foxx. I will denounce the Academy if he isn't at least nominated for an Oscar.

The least of Ray's imperfections was his physical blindness --yet he had a powerful gift and the ability to reach into the collective soul of a nation. Over his long career as a musician and songwriter, Ray Charles Robinson created and performed some of the most memorable music to audiences across the country. Your color, age and creed doesn't matter; chances are, you've heard and loved at least one Ray Charles song in your lifetime. We'll never have another like him.
-Andrea, aka Merribelle.

Ray Charles' Complex Life Matched by Superb Jamie Foxx
I like "Ray." The music is strong, using Ray Charles' own tracks for both background and performance shots. The storyline is complex, flashing back to Charles' youth as he reflected on the loss of his eyesight and the death of his brother.

From his days as a child in a poor rural community, through his early days as an unknown musician struggling to get a fair deal, to his mid-career with management problems, affairs, hits, and drugs, and then, finally, as a one of our national heroes, we see Ray Charles in full color.

We learn how he manipulated women, cheated on his wife, became addicted to heroin, found his sound, got his name, and learned to work aggressively as his own musician. He deals with racism at first by avoiding it, and then quickly, takes a harsh stand, shaming the bigots and segregationists. Now, in a state where he was once banned from playing, his work, "Georgia on My Mind" is now the state song.

Biopics of celebrities are difficult to describe because of the chronology required to produce the movies. People don't live out plots written by screenwriters, but lives that have events that do not always make sense. Ray Charles' life didn't always make sense, but he lived it.

We have two views of Ray Charles. One is as a fighter, working hard against adversity to become the musician we now know. The other is as a womanizing addict who used his charm, position and trust of his wife to diminish all that was good about him. He eventually beats the drugs, holds onto his marriage, but these failures brought down my respect of him.

Jamie Foxx never impressed me before this. I found his comedy more off-color than I prefer, and expected that his version of Ray Charles would be mediocre. I heard the hype that his performance was Oscar-worthy, and watched the movie with the eyes of a skeptic. Now, I am impressed.

Jamie Foxx has a new fan. I hope he gets roles that allow him to shine like he does in "Ray."

The DVD for "Ray" adds to the movie. Normally, a DVD brings little extra that is interesting, but watching Jamie Foxx and Ray Charles interact was touching, as was hearing Foxx describe his experience in learning the role. We learn Foxx not only can play piano, but is trained at a high level. Those are his hands on the keys, and not movie magic. He respected Charles and the difficulty of playing an icon, and earned Charles' respect in the process.

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com