Innsmouth_Apprentice Part 1 of The Corporation is the build-up. You listen to them talk about the origin of corporations, and notions like sense of community. You're sympathetic, but at times it seems a tad too idealistic, and moralistic, and vague.Then Part 2 starts, and all the threads regarding corporate greed and destructive nature come together, and it's like someone front-kicks you in the solar plexus full-force, because the sudden and total horror of it all makes it hard to breathe. You realize where Part 1 was going with all of its sentiments, and it's a shock. There are a couple of moments when it seems like you can see all of social reality as the true Hell.What really got to me was the patenting of human and other genes by corporations. Did you know about this? In a nutshell, in 1980 an industrial chemist went to patent a microbe he cooked up in a lab, and after a brief fight, the judges, - obviously ignorant of stuff like biology, but authorized and ready to make rulings on biological issues nonetheless, - ultimately allowed this. After that, for more than 3 decades, companies in USA have been busy cutting out bits of the human genome, and getting patents on individual genes. Yup, it's insane, I know. The most they do is cut out the introns (extra bits interspersed with the gene) - and then say: "We own this". Well, imagine that companies would have patented organelles in human body cells when scientists first gained the capability to go that small? Patenting of genes is the same thing! (I'll do a small October 2014 update for you: The only small consolation is that The Corporation was made in 2003, and a decade later, - in 2013, - the US Supreme Court finally ruled that individual genes cannot be patented. The reason: the company Myriad owned patents on certain cancer-related genes, and was therefore the only entity legally allowed to work with those genes in ways like running prophylactic tests. Neat, right?However, the Supreme Court judges still showed considerable ignorance of the issues, - souring the potential victory of common sense in the ruling, - because they added: "cDNA can be patented...cDNA does not present the same obstacles to patentability as naturally occurring, isolated DNA segments." Just so you know: cDNA is simply a type of copy of genetic material. So essentially there is a door-sized loophole in the ruling that potentially renders it pointless. The Myriad stockholders, for example, celebrated upon hearing the verdict.Be informed. This theme might affect you and your family members and friends, should the horror of cancer suddenly become relevant for you... and thanks to our world being poisoned with chemicals, the chances of that are rising fast.) This is just one of the absolutely infuriating examples examined in The Corporation. They also talk about corporate whistle-blowers, Nazi-business collaboration, child labor, and so on. Trust me - you need to know this stuff, because the prevalence of narrow-minded, short-sighted behavioral patterns among mankind's leaders concerns every being on the planet in a profound manner. 100/10.

MrGKB ...for anyone interested in the nature of our current planetary economic malaise, and what we might actually be able to do about it. "The Corporation," which illustrates and expands upon writer Joel Bakan's concurrently-written book, makes strong argument for the complicity of that economic entity known as the corporation and its inherent psychotic nature, and remains as trenchant now as it was nearly a decade ago when first made and exhibited/published, perhaps even more so in the light of the current swell of OWS demonstrations and other manifestations of global stress. It ought to be required viewing in high school classes across the land.Presented in a chapter format, this fascinating (often akin to the hypnotic lure of viewing the aftermath of an automobile accident) documentary details the rise of the modern corporation from its beginnings as a state-sanctified entity intended to fulfill specific public functions, which is to say serve the public good, to its current domination of the global economic engine, i.e. the oligarchical behemoth that President Eisenhower warned us about decades ago. Through the extremely well-edited use of interviews and pointed visuals, the film presents an unnerving canvas of institutionalized rapacity, fecklessness, callousness, perfidy and prevarication, all in the name of the holy grail of maximizing profits; in short, institutionalized psychopathy. It's chilling stuff, quite thought-provoking.A number of the "usual suspects" are a part of this dissection of trans-national corporatocracy: Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, and Vandana Shiva; still, a fair representation of corporate interests are represented as well. Beyond that, it's a cast of multitudes, befitting the subject matter, which ranges across a broad swath of corporate malfeasance: pollution, market manipulation, complicity in war crimes, exploitation of workers, sheer greed, the shrugging off of "economic externalities" on the public, and much else. Anyone who's paid even cursory attention to the politico-socio-economic scene over the past decades will be at least passingly familiar with these topics, but "The Corporation" does a nice job of bringing everything together under one roof, so to speak.The deluxe DVD edition, which I found at the library, is chock full of additional interviews, commentary, and the like. It's almost a bit of overkill, but then again, it's hard to ignore as well. Like the saying goes, "hold your friends close, but your enemies closer." Need I also say, highly recommended.

Rick Conrad Succeeds on countless levels. A groundbreaking work which is as important and significant as any of which I'm aware, and theatrically perfect. So brilliant, absorbing, enlightening, and enabling, is this documentary; that in my opinion, it ranks with The Beatles, Shakespeare, sex, whipped cream, kittens, and the mini-skirt. The audience with whom I first saw it (Philadelphia Film Festival) immediately stood and applauded at the films end. I myself had tears of satisfaction and felt inspired by it beyond any telling. The 2-part DVD-set version will continue to educate one for many hours on end. So, please, please, please; everyone, see "The Corporation" and then pass it around. You really must do this thing!!

ERJD60657 As you can read from the other posts, most viewers will fall into one of two camps. Either they are business sensitive and thus are repulsed by the slant of the documentary/propaganda, or they are frustrated by the sense of lack of control over the undesired consequences of some business activity and thus cheer the big business-bashing. But what can centrists get out of the film, and can a productive message be derived from this stylish, intensive work of art with its overly ambitious agenda and misguided message? First, be forewarned that the filmmakers at numerous instances were either naively uninformed or willfully attempting to deceive their audience. Unless you are knowledgeable of terms such as deregulation, public-private partnerships, corporate and other business entities, privatization and above all, externalities, this film will try to force-feed you a limited, self-serving definition.Second, the film is spread too thin. It tries to cover monopolies, sustainability, child labor laws, consumer protection, racism and military collateral damage, to name just a few subjects, in only the first twenty minutes! Each a fascinating subject worthy of discussion, but more focus would have produced a higher quality documentary and not left it feeling more like a slick rally cry for the left.Third, the film is misnamed. It is primarily about activities of big business (which essentially means publicly-traded corporations, but not necessarily). The film does not explain what a corporation is and makes only a superficial effort to describe how it developed historically.High points. Raising issues, such as 1) are fines large enough to deter undesirable consequences, thus insuring long-term balance in the drive to raise quality of life?, 2) are virgin materials priced correctly to insure sustainability?, and 3) how do companies market products subliminally (the "nagging" angle)?; Noam Chomsky, who although described by some as the ultimate leftist, is always lucid, intelligent, and not necessarily political; and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, who must have a soft spot for the producers.Low points. The "boxes" ('layoffs', 'union busting', "sweatshops'); the psychopath analogy; the overseas sweatshops; the Bolivian water episode; US businesses in Nazi Germany; the glorification of ignorance (the WTO protests); and Michael Moore. Although I personally find Mr. Moore's films entertaining and thought-provoking on public policy issues, he is simply out of his league when it comes to economics. He appears awkward and is utterly dead wrong in a number of his statements.This film could have been about raising the standard of living by generating enthusiasm at a grass-roots level for better government with which to manage the externalities generated by prosperous business. In that way, it would have still become a "message" film, as it had intended, but in a more productive, realistic and honest fashion. Instead, it spits on the word "externality" and launches a frontal attack on the principal means of producing goods and services. Nonetheless, I give it some credit for looking good and titillating the senses.