Product Description

Universal Ray - HD-DVD
Jamie Foxx ("Collateral") stars asthe one-of-a-kind innovator of soul who overcame impossible odds to become a music legend. "Ray" isthe triumphant and remarkable story of one of America's true musical geniuses, Ray Charles. From his humble beginnings in the South through his meteoric rise to the top of American music charts, Ray's inspirational journey is a tale of hope, redemption and the power of the human spirit. "'Ray' is Electrifying" hails Peter Travers of Rolling Stone.Witness the incredible true story of a musician who fought harder and went further than anyone could imagine.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14409 in DVD
• Brand: Universal
• Released on: 2006-08-08
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 3.00 pounds
• Running time: 153 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

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

Ray: Miss the Movie, Hear the Music
In the opening scene of the 2004 docudrama "Ray" we see a tree hung with bottles to trap evil spirits, and Ray's mom Aretha telling him "Don't let nothin' or nobody make you no cripple." He didn't, but director Taylor Hackford did. It's certainly tough for anyone to tranform the 73 year life of the genius of Ray Charles into a two hour movie and make it work. Still, a whole lot more of that great music and a whole lot less of his failings would have gone a long way toward fixing a movie more interested in the evil in the bottles than the beauty of their sound.

Through a series of flashbacks, done in the vivid color of the then-seeing Ray, we learn about his personal "demons". Well, the first of them anyway. At the age of 5 he saw his brother drown, although in autobiographies he tells of trying to get him out unsuccessfully. Water seems to follow screen Ray everywhere after that, done to death at the mercilessly artful hands of Hackford. In an autobiography, Mr. Charles said that although the tragedies of losing his brother and then his mother were the worst things in his life, they were "strangely enough, extraordinarily positive for me." Typical, remarkable Ray. It wasn't the guilt, but the humility and drive that made Ray, RAY.

There are scenes of great courage and strength, especially those involving his mother, Aretha, played with amazing poise by actress Sharon Warren. These scenes go a long way to helping the movie because we get a sense of where Ray got his inner voice, the voice that helped him become and play and sing and "see". Jamie Foxx is totally believable in his role as Ray Charles. It's his fingers we see playing, and his eyes we believe really cannot see. Curtis Armstrong gives a fine performance as Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records, the man who saw the spark and encouraged the originality of the flame in Charles's music.

Ray Charles had some remarkable people in his life. He was a magnet for them through his music and his can-do attitude. Hackford, however, tries to convince us that he was much more a magnet for his vices: heroin and women. We're shown the sweet Ray and talented Ray, then lots and lots of the broken, addicted, nasty Ray. Oh, and then there's some music, too. The great songs are in there, of course, "Hit the Road, Jack", "What'd I say", "It's All Right" and some others. But we're talking about an original inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, creator of over 250 albums, and the inventor of Soul. Hollywood moral: Music is nice, but drugs sell tickets.

Taylor Hackford describes the movie he has made as an "odyssey" with "certain events fictionalized" and "condensed". To those, I'd have to say "for whom?", "no kidding" and "miniaturized". It sugar-coats the ending with kicking his drug habit, dealing with his brother's death and making up with his wife (who he later divorced) all in the last five minutes. And the last 40 years of his life, when some of his best work was produced? Read about it in the blurbs at the bottom while you watch the credits.

In truth, this docudrama serves to introduce Ray "The Genius" Charles to people who, bizarrely, may not know of him. While he overcame the potentially crippling effects of tragedy, blindness, racism, drug abuse, and infidelity, a proper "life story" of this man should focus on his real triumph--his music. Mr. Hackford should remember Aretha's words to Ray at the end of the movie: "You may be blind, but you ain't stupid." Neither are we.

Ray: Just Another Life Story of the Lucky
Joel Siegel from Good Morning America calls Ray "One of the best films I ever saw." I couldn't disagree more. Ray is an attempt to present the life story of the musical genius, Ray Charles Robinson. His career all begins in Seattle; his journey to the city from North Florida 1948 served as the movie's opening scene. The plot revolves how a black man was able to become a star in a segregated America. Blind since the age of seven, Ray shows how the musician was able to overcome this disability, and become one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century. However, after the two and a half hours of pure story-telling, viewers of Ray are unable to grasp a unique message. Instead, they are left with the same cliché theme of finding happiness not with fame nor drugs, but within family.
Ever since the beginning of the film, Ray seemed to be a submissive man. He listened to whites, answered questions, and was not afraid of being ridiculed. "We all gotta play Jim Crow down here [in Georgia]" was one of his quotes that depicted him as a passive character that accepted black inferiority. In fact, it seemed like Ray hardly knew who he was. When asked "who is the real Ray Charles", he replied with a simple "Who's he?" and nothing more. Ray eventually strengthens his sense of individuality through the style of his music over the course of the movie.
Ray's blindness serves as his weakness in that it makes him dependent to an extent, but he never fails to give up his ambitions. He tries hard to be a present father, but is often caught up with the inability to live his career and family life at the same time. To the audience, Ray's career may have seemed too easy for him. The only difficulty he faces are the difficulties he inflicts on himself, like getting involved with drugs and affairs. "If I can feel the music, that means it's real" is his excuse for continuing the use of heroine. Offers and contracts are made to him so frequently that he could come and leave whenever he wanted. The racial struggle is not emphasized to the intense point where the audience can see what blacks went through at that point of history.
At the same time of being the subservient yes-man, Ray is presented as almost supernatural. His paranormal hearing skills, making hits off his fingertips, and his overall smooth impression is simply unreal. He is such a suave gentleman that he seems to talk in lines of poetry and never minds about anything. Even when his wife found the drugs in his cabinet, seriousness was the last thing he embraced; he simply dismissed his wife's concern, and left the house for another tour with his band. He is naïve, modest, but most of all unconvincing. In addition, the biography is more from an objective point of view, as opposed to telling his story from one character's eyes. This affects the audience in that viewers may fail to make a connection with Ray's deeper persona because that link was not made accessible.
A notable component of the movie is the incorporation of flashbacks to Ray's childhood. The flashbacks are shot with a more mellow and warm light, indicating a more harmonious atmosphere and nostalgia every time Ray reminisces about his childhood. The scenes sometimes seemed a bit random. The lack of smooth transitions makes portions of the movie choppy, but this may have been intentionally done to portray the incoherence of Ray's life. Specific details include the death of his younger brother that never stops to haunt him, but more importantly, the teachings of independence from his mother, which highly impact his life as Ray faces his challenges. "You won't be no cripple. Won't be no charity case" is the reoccurring message that Ray remembers from his mother, and drives him to stay strong at multiple scenes of the movie.
Ray portrays Ray Charles as a bigger hero than he actually was. In the modern society, overcoming drug addictions are seen as a duty, not deserving respect or recognition. We don't see teenage girls checking into rehab being applauded by the community, but this was not the case with Ray. Ray should not have gotten into his heroine addiction in the first place, but the movie makes the success of him breaking his habit like it was a big feat that he was able to conquer; it as if his blindness becomes a legitimate excuse for his drug use. Apart from the recollection of overcoming substance abuse, the movie is generally able to select the more pivotal moments of Ray's life. These mostly include the entering and leaving of various music deals, and memories with his mother.
The jazz scene during this time period was filled with illicitness. Many whites entered jazz clubs to escape from their realities and immerse into a world of sex and drugs. This guilty pleasure is not clearly portrayed by the movie, as scenes of Charles' performances are always cheerful and in good spirits. The "Rocking Chair" nightclub had performers who seemed like amateurs and didn't have anything better to do. The Chitlin' Circuit and Halfmoon Club were like black hangouts, places to dance and have fun. The true reality of the jazz clubs is not accurately portrayed, and unfortunately lost most of the sensation of forbidden bliss.
The weakest quality of the movie is that it fails to leave a mark on its audience. It is forgettable as the story is developed through the recycled and overused story of any individual. His journey revolves around the same cliché theme of pursuing happiness and not being able to find it in fame or drugs, and finally realizes it's in his family. But even after this subtle realization, the message is conveyed poorly. All his happiness that he found towards the end of the movie was external, such as buying his wife a new house and showering children with presents. The film shows no apparent "internal revelation" that could have been well developed into an inspiring point to the audience.
Despite the overwhelming of unoriginal, repetitive themes, one especially laudable quality of the movie is Jamie Foxx's performance. Through the making of the movie, Foxx actually spent time with Ray Charles, learning of his mannerisms and tones of speech. Without a doubt, Foxx is able to portray a Ray Charles very closely to the real individual. His lip-synched performances highly deserve commendation for being strikingly believable.
Overall, Ray is a movie that was produced with great effort and good intentions. To compress seventy years of life into two and a half hours is indeed a challenge, but the inability of the producers to present an inspiring, distinctive journey of the musician makes the movie dull and insipid. Even with rushed scenes and conversations, the banal idea of internal struggle of searching one's identity and being content with life made the film tedious to watch.

A Legend
Bored, I pulled out this video to watch again. It was better than when I first saw it. I bought RAY when it first hit the video stores. What an outstanding movie about the life of the legendary Ray Charles! Jamie Fox pulled off an extraordinary Academy Award winning performance for his portrayal of the late Ray Charles. This excellent move spans Ray Charles life from the time he was a little boy growing up in Florida, through his rise to fame. The movie does not disappoint. The music is superb, and we get an opportunity to understand the challenges Ray Charles faced in his personal life, and as a musician and entertainer, who ultimately emerged as one of the most important figures in American music. A must have! If you've not yet seen RAY, don't wait. Buy this video.