Science Current Events | Science News | Brightsurf.com
 

View Larger Image

Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy


by Greg Barker
Directed by Greg Barker, William Cran
Starring Tony Benn, Stephen G. Breyer, Barbara Castle, Milton Friedman, Newt Gingrich
WGBH Boston

List Price: $39.95
Price: $34.99
You Save: $4.96 (12%)
Available: Usually ships in 24 hours
Sales Rank: 4598
Release Date: July 30, 2002
Rated:  
Running Time: 360 minutes
Theatrical Release: January 09, 2009
Studio: WGBH Boston


FORMATS

  • Closed-captioned
  • Color
  • DVD-Video
  • Full Screen
  • NTSC


EDITORIAL REVIEWS

Description
Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy confronts head-on Americans' critical concerns about the new interconnected world. Based on the best-selling book by Pulitzer Prize-winner Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, this groundbreaking series explores our changing world—the great debate over globalization and the future of our society.

Commanding Heights reunites the team that created The Prize— award-winning producer William Cran (From Jesus to Christ) and Daniel Yergin—and is the first in-depth documentary to tell the inside story of our new global economy and what it means for individuals around the world. Filmed on five continents, the powerful narrative combines stunning film footage with dramatic stories and extraordinary interviews with world leaders and thinkers from twenty different countries, including: Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, Mexican President Vicente Fox, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, Rep. Richard Gephardt, and President George W. Bush's Economic Advisor Lawrence Lindsey.

Commanding Heights dramatically captures the issues that have defined the wealth and fate of nations and shows how the battle over the world economy will shape our lives in the twenty-first century.

Special DVD Features Include: ? Access to the Commanding Heights Web site, including: ? An exclusive time map, which provides an interactive atlas of economic history ? Comprehensive transcripts from on-camera interviews, and biographies of the people who played significant roles in the development of the modern global market ? An online teacher’s guide that provides suggestions for applications of the Web site in classroom instruction ? An excerpt from the companion book to the series ? A complete list of interview subjects included in the series ? Chapter breaks ? English audiotrack and subtitles ? On three DVD5 discs.


Amazon.com
The history and impact of the new global economy are made clear--and compelling--in Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy. This three-part, six-hour documentary does an astonishingly thorough job of dissecting and explaining macroeconomics and their current political and social importance without ever causing a loss of consciousness for the viewer. Part 1, The Battle of Ideas, chronicles the history of economic thought from the start of the 20th century and its socialist reforms right through the deregulation of the 1980s. Part 2, The Agony of Reform, explores the upheavals that such deregulation caused, focusing primarily on economic growth and gains and touching briefly on the wrenching consequences for the poor. Part 3, The New Rules of the Game, explores the consequences of globalization, including terrorism and the contagion of market collapse. The series makes good use of both large- and small-scale examples, and features interviews with several major world leaders. There is a slight teenybopper feel to The Battle for the World's Economy's admiration for today's celebrity economists, but the contagious enthusiasm is part of what makes the series so interesting. Big ideas are made extremely accessible to the average viewer (without condescension). Well worth watching. --Ali Davis


CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 68 reviews)

????  
What I want from a Documentary is the truth. Does this documentary give you the truth? And, when I say the "truth" I mean the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If you want to make good financial/economic decisions you need to have good information,the facts (the truth), on which to base your decisions. Don't be misguided by politicans or other talking-heads; look where they have positioned America for competing in the global economy at this point in time!!!! Let's see, we have the European Union, China and/or possibly, some day, an Asian Union, plus most of the rest of the world hates us...DUH? To the spoiled and are misguided Americans: it really is a dog eat dog sorld out there... it's time to wake up and smell the trouble...I cite OPEC and rest my case.


December 24, 2008

Good product and Number 1 Amazon service  
I am satisfied at the commanding heights, stories and images are better than expectation. I am very happy because you, amazon send the product to me as soon as possible after it had been lost while sent to me.

It was good and happy experience that I ordered and received good for the first time with Amazon.com. I wish your prosperity.
October 10, 2008

Primer on modern economics  
This documentary is fantastic overview of the two conflicting economic models that have largely shaped the last century. Captialism vs. socialism, free markets vs. protected economies are explored thorougly. I highly recommend this for anyone who is interested in understanding the forces that have shaped world economies over the last century.
July 26, 2008

Commands attention  
I dont purchase CD's or DVDs anymore. I think they are overpriced, and specially now that you can download almost anything, i find it difficult to spend my green in any DVD.

Then i read the reviews that this documentary had , based on the book. I thought the premise was really interesting. So i bought it, and i watched it. I didn't feel ripped off after, and i still watch it! (and in fact bought another set for my sister)

This is truly the best analytical documentary ever devised. It is such a piece of art, it stands on its own and has no other real similar.

I read other reviews and i concurr that sometimes it seems as if the analysis doesn't go deep enough. BUt that's the beauty of the narration. It never inserts its tilt or spin - it just tells you the facts and shows how things unfolded, only getting interviews to add color to the scene at hand but always letting the viewer come to its own conclusions.

I own this and Blue Planet. Once i buy Cosmos, i think i have all the DVD's i could ever need.


May 26, 2008

Extremely well done!!!  
This is an excellent historical overview of how The Chicago Boys were able to influence the developed world away from Keynesian philosophies.
May 21, 2008


SIMILAR PRODUCTS

The Commanding Heights : The Battle for the World Economy
by Daniel Yergin, Joseph Stanislaw

Life And Debt
by Alex Nepomniaschy, Kyle Kibbe, Malik Hassan Sayeed, Richard Lannaman, Stephanie Black, Sarah Manley, Jamaica Kincaid
Directed by Stephanie Black
Starring Belinda Becker, Buju Banton, Horst Köhler, Michael Manley, Stanley Fischer
New Yorker Video

Guns, Germs, and Steel
Starring Braden Doane, Mason Graham, Katy Kastner, Stacy Blunt, Santa Clause
National Geographic Video

The Corporation
by Mark Achbar, Mark Achbar, Bart Simpson, Maureen Levitt, Harold Crooks, Joel Bakan
Directed by Jennifer Abbott, Mark Achbar
Starring Jane Akre, Ray Anderson, Maude Barlow, Chris Barrett, Carlton Brown
Zeitgeist Films

NOVA - World in the Balance: The Population Paradox
WGBH Boston

© 2009 BrightSurf.com