It was five years after Hurricane Katrina. Then here comes the BP oil spill messing things up and adding insult to injury. I saw that 11 men had died and oil was just everywhere. Residents were still putting their lies back together and this happens. You start to hear about residents with FEMA trailers getting sick from Formaldehyde. St. Bernard Parish disappears with this so-called "mixed income community" which is ridiculous. Ray Nagin's criminal activity was also a negative, I am just at a lost. I still give praise to people who are working hard to get back on their feet and are not giving in. The Army Corps of Engineer and BP should do as much as possible to help with the damage done. I gave props to Saints for winning the championship and uplifting everyone. New Orleans has that fighting spirit no matter what!!!!

So I watched Spike Lee's documentary "if god is willin' and the creek don't rise". It is his follow up to the documentary he did a year after Katrina called? So was it good, well it is four hours long, at times a little racist, at times a little confusing, but in general is a good look at a city that has struggled for years with corruption and poverty, before Katrina, after Katrina, and will keep struggling for years to come. It was good not great and I think has broad appeal, with the exception of maybe "Sarah Palin" types. I wouldn't say skip this but, I also don't think it is necessarily a must watch, it covers a lot of ground that I have seen short news stories on the same subject cover in far less time. I am not sure really what Spike Lee added to the debate. However, maybe several years from now, individuals wanting to learn about how America failed one of own cities in the midst of a natural disaster, and also see how corporate greed can be dangerous on a grand scale, should watch BOTH his movies on this subject to gain some insight and perspective ("When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts" was really awesome). if you like concise reviews of interesting films please read my other reviews at http://raouldukeatthemovies.blogspot.com/

I was working at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston in the days after Katrina, which is where the government sent the NOLA people once Reliant Stadium filled up. I've lived in Houston for over 30 years and am a longtime member of Second Baptist Church, which was mentioned in the documentary.Yes, Louisiana suffered cataclysmic damage from Katrina and the surge. No one is denying that. But it has been five years now, and many of the people in this documentary still haven't gotten their lives back together. I realize many of them are poor and never had much to begin with, but the constant finger pointing and complaining about the government is tiresome and simplistic. I know plenty of people who lost everything in the storm. They came to Houston, got jobs, got their kids in school, and started over. And these aren't rich people. If they could do it, why can't these "activists" and "poets" do it? I'll tell you why. Being a "Katrina survivor" is now their job. If they had gotten on with their lives, they wouldn't be featured in documentaries and have a soapbox on which to cry about racism.And in this documentary, even those who have gone on with their lives still complain. The two sisters who now live in Humble, a suburb north of Houston, talk about how the autistic son of one of them receives a far superior education here than he ever did in NOLA. But then the other sister, the one without the son, talks about how she "hates Texas" and "no one lives out here where we do." I strongly suspect that when she says "no one," she means "no one from New Orleans." They now live in a very nice neighborhood in a lovely brick home. Talk about ungrateful! Perhaps if she stopped going around telling everyone how much she hates Texas and sporting such a bad attitude, she might make a few friends. Just a thought.The venom aimed at the federal government is misplaced, too. Did the government do a good job dealing with the situation? Hell, no. But the LOCAL and STATE authorities were the immediate culprits. Nagin refused to use available buses to move people out of harm's way; Blanco spent her time worrying about what she was going to wear on-camera rather than enacting a mandatory evacuation; Landrieu sat around in D.C. and did nothing, then used Katrina as an excuse to get hundreds of millions for pork barrel projects rather than using it to help those who needed it.The documentary spends a lot of time castigating Haley Barbour for using his connections to secure money for Mississippi in the aftermath. Perhaps if the politicians in Louisiana had spent less time complaining about everything and more time working the system, they would have gotten more help. If you slap someone with one hand while holding out the other for money, don't be surprised if you come up empty. Not only that, but much of the money that was funneled to NOLA was wasted on special projects and lined people's pockets. They mishandled the federal aid they received, but that doesn't stop them from whining for more.In other words, no new ground was covered here. It's all been said before, ad nauseum. Those who refuse to move on continue to blame the government and racism for all of their problems, and Spike Lee eagerly gives them a way to spread their hate.

When the Levees Broke is going to be viewed as one of the great documentaries so I was eager to watch this one. Unlike many people I have enjoyed Spike Lee's films over the years. I don't always agree with him but he is one of the few American directors today doing anything though provoking.His segments on BP were really the strongest and most compelling. He probably could have done a two or three part film: one documenting police corruption in NOLA which was legendary prior to Katrina and one about the BP disaster which taught us that when a mega corp screws up we really are impotent. I think he over stretched on Haiti. That could have also been another documentary. Spike Lee is a man with a point of view but he lets his subjects speak for themselves and weirdly enough I found Micheal Brown less the villain than I would have thought. Of course he was self justifying. Wouldn't we all in his position.Worth watching. Kudos to HBO for even slapping documentaries on during prime time.