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The Corporation (Widescreen Edition) | 
| Studio: Mongrel Media
Category: DVD
List Price: CDN$ 14.95
Buy New: CDN$ 9.98
You Save: CDN$ 4.97 (33%)
New (2) from CDN$ 9.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 3458
Format: Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language)
UPC: 629159032368
EAN: 0629159032368
ASIN: B0007LEMQ0
Theatrical Release Date: June 4, 2004
Release Date: March 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships within 1 - 2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new Item, factory Sealed. Buy direct from the U.S. and save! We only ship airmail to Canada (7-15 days).Caiman, les prix qu'on aime! Tous nos produits sont neufs. Envoi par avion des Etats-Unis
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From Amazon.com
An epic in length and breadth, this documentary aims at nothing less than a full-scale portrait of the most dominant institution on the planet Earth in our lifetime--a phenomenon all the more remarkable, if not downright frightening, when you consider that the corporation as we know it has been around for only about 150 years. It used to be that corporations were, by definition, short-lived and finite in agenda. If a town needed a bridge built, a corporation was set up to finance and complete the project; when the bridge was an accomplished fact, the corporation ceased to be. Then came the 19th-century robber barons, and the courts were prevailed upon to define corporations not as get-the-job-done mechanisms but as persons under the 14th Amendment with full civil rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (i.e., power and profit)--ad infinitum. The Corporation defines this endlessly mutating life-form in exhaustive detail, measuring the many ways it has not only come to dominate but to deform our reality. The movie performs a running psychoanalysis of this entity with the characteristics of a prototypical psychopath: a callous unconcern for the feelings and safety of others, an incapacity to experience guilt, an ingrained habit of lying for profit, etc. We are swept away on a demented odyssey through an altered cosmos, in which artificial chemicals are created for profit and incidentally contribute to a cancer epidemic; in which the folks who brought us Agent Orange devise a milk-increasing drug for a world in which there is already a glut of milk; in which an American computer company leased its systems to the Nazis--and serviced them on a monthly basis--so that the Holocaust could go forward as an orderly process. The movie goes on too long, circles too many points obsessively and redundantly, and risks preaching-to-the-choir reductiveness by calling on the usual talking-head suspects--Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Moore. And except for an endlessly receding tracking shot in an infinite patents archive, there's scarcely an image worth recalling. Still, it maps the new reality. This is our world--welcome to it. --Richard T. Jameson
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 How did corporations come to dominate? April 9, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
A great testament to the way the corprate world has influenced and shaped our societies and, perhaps, ourselves. We are all bombarded with advertisments from big corportations everyday and we would like to think we can easily give and take from any company that which we will. But is that the case? Do we really have free will when pummelled with advertisments 100 times a day? Wear this brand or drink this drink we are told. What about all the hidden effects corporations have on our world and society that's hidden to most of us behind pretty faces and frosted glass? Why has the modern corporation been able to garner such an enormous clout of power and influence in our economics, politics, and international affairs? This dvd answers all those questions and many many more. Filled with experts from all different fields we get a history lesson into the corporation and the realites of it's effect on our lives and the lives of the rest of the world, both enviromentally, economically, and politically. A must see dvd.
 Irresponsible nonsense that hurts its own cause July 8, 2006
5 out of 22 found this review helpful
This film could easily be part of a right-wing conspiracy to simultaneously lure left-wingers into a sense of "woe-is-me" helplessness AND to make them look unfocussed, hysterical and uninformed to everybody else. It was a superficial, inadequate tut-tut towards all the real problems that do exist with corporate opacity and non-accountability. SO superficial and inadequate!
For example, I'm in critical market research, so I know there are a lot of specific nasty things you can point a finger at and describe coherently and briefly about advertising. But the gist of the advertising section of this documentary? "There's too much advertising. We're influenced by it." Bravo, Archimedes. You could have used some of the time you spent on visuals of apples being vacuumed off trees and babies dressed as McDonald's fries to address why and how that is.
If this film was preaching to the socially critical choir it was far too airy-fairy and non-committal about solutions to society's problems, and if it was on a mission to convince complacent conservatives it was far too subjective and boring. God, the useless minutes upon minutes of meaningless visuals and redundant talking heads! This would have been an exponentially better movie if the makers had had that bald commodities trader talk for the whole 145 minutes about the ecstatic way different clients reacted to different cataclysms jacking up commodity prices. That would have been interesting and informative, unlike the hypno-disks and the Michael Moore that got way more time.
And the idea of consumer accountability, that we as members of this society can make a difference with our purchasing power, was left almost completely out, even dismissed. The only presented deliverance from the perils of capitalism was a fundamental shift in government powers, so the film came off as soft-revolutionary pop commie and totally unrealistic.
Finally, they shouldn't have put a devil tail AND a halo on the Corporation Man on the DVD cover, because it made me think I was going to get at least a pretence of objectiveness. Apparently, it's not just the Corporations who are into false advertising.
For an immeasurably superior film on corporate accountability, watch "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room".
A COMPELLING TRUTH ! June 5, 2006
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Contrary to the misinformed review by an anonymous "customer" (December 2005), The Corporation video tells it like it is. The truth is not always pretty, but it is necessary to know. Corporations are not benevolent institutions (their primary 'legal' responsibility is to maximize profits for their shareholders). If anyone thinks I'm not telling the truth, you know my real name and my city ... so find me and sue me!
This is one DVD which MUST be shown to every secondary school student before they are allowed to graduate. Not only is it educational and topical, but also highly entertaining! I wish I could give it MORE than 5 stars!
Weak and simplistic December 23, 2005
1 out of 34 found this review helpful
Highly simplified view of the world sure to please socialists - an unbalanced and silly view towards real world economics and human behaviour. Save your money and donate to charity if you want to make a difference.
Time to increase liability August 12, 2005
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
The book and the film is not about eliminating the profit motive, despite what the authors of The Rebel Sell (Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter) have said. This is about passing laws to ensure that corporations are not only accountable to their shareholders, but to all stakeholders as well - a corporation's employees and all the people its business affects. Limited liability and the fact that corporations are seen as people by the law have made corporations, especially multinationals, far too powerful. The film offers a potent political starting point to ensure greater social justice and environmental protection in a world that is increasingly bought and sold by corporations.
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