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Post by KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!! on Dec 23, 2010 18:08:36 GMT -5
Just through watching this and wow! The acting was great! Its easy to see why this was such a big event when it first aired in the 1970s. I first watched parts of it back on the history channel maybe when I was around 10 or so, but don't think I ever watched the whole thing.
I think Louis Gossett Jr. gave the best performance. Just the way Fiddler transforms from a character that is kind of unlikable at the beginning to being a character you almost have to love by the end. Just a great performance. I also really liked young Kunta (though I like John Amos too, I thought young Kunta was more interesting). So weird that the biggest acting role he got after Roots was as the black guy on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
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Grendel
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
But ... why is all the rum gone?
Posts: 17,593
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Post by Grendel on Dec 23, 2010 18:32:01 GMT -5
I watched the whole thing when I was a kid. Since we had 3 channels and they advertised the hell out of it, everyone in the area saw it. And then it caused me hell for several years, since I was called a few of the character names for quite some time afterwards.
It was a great miniseries, but imagine my surprise when I found out years later that Haley plagiarized large tracts of the book (he paid out $650,000 in hush money) and out and out fabricated others. There is supposed to be a BBC documentary about all of it that is supposed to be good that we never got to see in the states.
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mattperiolat
King Koopa
Thank you, Brodie... for everything.
Posts: 11,046
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Post by mattperiolat on Dec 23, 2010 20:27:08 GMT -5
I watched the whole thing when I was a kid. Since we had 3 channels and they advertised the hell out of it, everyone in the area saw it. And then it caused me hell for several years, since I was called a few of the character names for quite some time afterwards. It was a great miniseries, but imagine my surprise when I found out years later that Haley plagiarized large tracts of the book (he paid out $650,000 in hush money) and out and out fabricated others. There is supposed to be a BBC documentary about all of it that is supposed to be good that we never got to see in the states. *jaw drops* I never heard that about Haley. I'm honestly shocked, given the status and esteem Roots enjoys as a book and as a miniseries. It ISN'T as good as Roots, but I do recommend Queen. Introduced the world to Hallie Berry (pro or con, I'm honesty not sure), but is also a great story about where the other half of Haley's family tree comes from.
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Post by thesam07 on Dec 23, 2010 21:16:36 GMT -5
I watched Roots for the first time last year. And it still holds up today. Great series.
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darthalexander
Hank Scorpio
I have a feeling I may end up getting banned soon.
Posts: 7,030
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Post by darthalexander on Dec 24, 2010 1:07:32 GMT -5
The book was awesome. I was shocked as well to hear about the plagarism taint about it. It's too bad because the book was a hell of a read.
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Post by Captain Patren Fenderbaum-X on Dec 24, 2010 1:13:52 GMT -5
I watched this the first time in school way back in probably 6th grade is memory serves correctly and i thought it was the single most borrrrrring thing i had to sit through same with just about everyone else in the class at the time , and not to mention all the kunta chop off my foot jokes , and chicken george lines etc.
Yea immature times but i watched it again sometime not too long ago and found it much better the second time around.
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Grendel
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
But ... why is all the rum gone?
Posts: 17,593
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Post by Grendel on Dec 24, 2010 2:35:26 GMT -5
I too was shocked to find out those allegations. I looked at several sources, and it looks like Haley wasn't exactly the man I thought he was. It made me a bit sad to find out that stuff as well. The more I read about the man, the more allegations I found out about some other stuff he wrote, as it wasn't the first time he was accused of plagiarizing something. I almost wish that I had never done the research.
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mattperiolat
King Koopa
Thank you, Brodie... for everything.
Posts: 11,046
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Post by mattperiolat on Dec 24, 2010 3:20:44 GMT -5
I too was shocked to find out those allegations. I looked at several sources, and it looks like Haley wasn't exactly the man I thought he was. It made me a bit sad to find out that stuff as well. The more I read about the man, the more allegations I found out about some other stuff he wrote, as it wasn't the first time he was accused of plagiarizing something. I almost wish that I had never done the research. Can't say I blame you. Then again, I remember being shocked that Stephen Ambross stole some of his material and he wrote some GREAT American history books. Would you care to cite your sources? I'm actually morbidly curious now.
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Grendel
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
But ... why is all the rum gone?
Posts: 17,593
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Post by Grendel on Dec 24, 2010 4:34:35 GMT -5
I too was shocked to find out those allegations. I looked at several sources, and it looks like Haley wasn't exactly the man I thought he was. It made me a bit sad to find out that stuff as well. The more I read about the man, the more allegations I found out about some other stuff he wrote, as it wasn't the first time he was accused of plagiarizing something. I almost wish that I had never done the research. Can't say I blame you. Then again, I remember being shocked that Stephen Ambross stole some of his material and he wrote some GREAT American history books. Would you care to cite your sources? I'm actually morbidly curious now. The Village Voice did an article back in 93 about it, after which Investigative Reporter Phillip Nobile was raked over the coals for what I will refer to as "political reasons." I've dug through various sources on the web trying to get some great material, but they all repeat pretty much the same thing. I believe he was first accused of plagarism in an article he did for Playboy in which he did an interview with Miles Davis. I hate to say this (because I hate the place), but I imagine that his Wikipedia page has some mention of the plagiarism suit he lost. Anyway, digging around on the web, it's hard to say exactly what happened, but these conclusions I came up with: Alex Haley paid out $650,000 to another author for using complete passages from the other man's book in his.
A 1997 BBC Documentary about this very thing was not played over here in the USA on Public Television, and as far as I can tell it hasn't been shown here yet.
Historians have questioned the authenticity of his research into his genealogy, alleging that a slave named Kunte Kinte died as much as a couple of decades before the events in the book.
And no matter what I come up with to question the authenticity of his work, I myself have been raked over the coals by a few others out in the real world for my views. Everyone here has been great, but I myself have been verbally attacked for questioning this. But by nature I'm a bit of a skeptic so I question a lot of things. If you yourself have questions, simply Google the words Alex Haley Fraud and dig through the articles that come up. Now I always caution not to believe everything you read online, but regardless of what I think, it does speak volumes that he was sued in Federal Court and had to pay out $650,000 dollars and I never heard of it until decades later. What kills me is that if there were questions of the authenticity of the book, they could have just published it as fiction. Instead, they went the nonfiction route. There would be no questions of fraud if it had been published as fiction, but I doubt they would have made anywhere near as much money on the whole franchise.
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