Aurora Colorado Police Murder Elijah McClain And Make Jokes

So many Black men and boys are accosted, harassed, assaulted, and murdered by their local police departments that it's difficult to keep up with the numbers and stories. Somehow Black men and boys lack any patriarchal privilege to protect them. More on that later.

One August night in Aurora, Colorado in 2019, an anemic massage therapist and violinist named Elijah McClain was walking home from the convenience store, having just purchased an iced tea for his brother. Unfortunately Mr. McClain was Black. McClain was wearing some sort of face covering to protect himself against the cool night air. That was enough for some other citizen to call the police and report McClain as suspicious. Aurora's finest rushed to the scene and choked out McClain as he begged for his life.  

The police called paramedics, who injected McClain with the sedative ketamine. McClain had a heart attack and died three days later. McClain was unarmed and as far as I know had no criminal record. Unsurprisingly the coroner claimed that the cause of death was undetermined, while the district attorney promptly declined to charge any of the police or paramedics involved. 

Move along folks, nothing to see here. We didn't kill him. All we did was cut off his airflow and overload him with sedatives. Him dying is between him and God. Apparently irritated by any grief over McClain's death murder, some other police officers thought it would be insanely funny to take pictures of themselves mocking McClain's death near a memorial set up to honor McClain.

Three Aurora, Colo., police officers have been fired over photos that show two of them grinning and mocking the death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old massage therapist who was arrested and placed in a chokehold last August. Mr. McClain died several days later.

Donald Trump and Chuck Woolery are Evil Stupid People

/sarcasm on
I don’t know about everyone else but whenever I encounter a strange new easily transmitted deadly virus for which there is no cure or vaccine I ALWAYS check with game show hosts, not doctors or scientists, to find out the real deal.

It gives me a warm happy feeling that our President is spending time retweeting game show host and certified nutjob Chuck Woolery instead of telling people what they could do to stay safe, asking scientists what they need to speed up vaccine availability, or reviewing some best practices from nations who have slowed transmission.
/sarcasm off

Donald Trump defended his retweet this week of Chuck Woolery’s claim that Centers for Disease Control officials and others are “lying” about the coronavirus.CBS News Catherine Herridge asked Trump, “You reposted a tweet yesterday saying that CDC and health officials are lying. You understand this is confusing for the public. So who do they believe? You, or the medical professionals like Dr. Fauci?”

“I didn’t make a comment,” Trump told Herridge. “I did. I reposted a tweet that a lot of people feel. But all I am doing is making a comment. I’m just putting somebody’s voice out there. There are many voices. There are many people that think we shouldn’t do this kind of testing, because all we do, it’s a trap.”

In a tweet on Sunday, Woolery wrote, “The most outrageous lies are the ones about Covid 19. Everyone is lying. The CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors, not all but most, that we are told to trust. I think it’s all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election. I’m sick of it.”

Movie Reviews: The Loft

The Loft
directed by Eric Van Looy
"If you don't like my loving woman, you sure don't have to stall/Cause I can get more pretty women than a passenger train can haul!"

This is an English language remake of the Belgian film of the same name helmed by the same director. It shares some DNA with similar late 80s and early 90s erotic thriller films starring such women as Shannon Tweed, Shannon Whirry, and Tanya Roberts among others. 

It tries to be a little smarter than such films but only briefly succeeds. The film can't rise above what I thought was a silly premise and a few wooden acting performances. It was a little fun until the melodrama became terminal, resulting in an ending that saw all involved competing to chew up the scenery.

As recent revelations about certain couples' private lives have shown you never know what's going on behind closed doors. Some people aren't meant for monogamy though they may otherwise be great spouses. Some people would say that it's by definition impossible to be a good spouse, let alone a great one, if you can't devote yourself to one person, forsaking all others. It's in the freaking wedding vows, for goodness sakes. 

Some think that providing a stable lifestyle for the children and the spouse is all that anyone can expect, especially once the initial infatuation has disappeared. Some people would forgive their spouse his or her (non-public) trespasses. Others wouldn't forgive a single doggone thing. If their special rider steps out he or she better keep on walking and never come back. Other husbands or wives don't ask what their spouse gets up to on long business trips or overseas assignments. And their spouse certainly doesn't tell.

Movie Reviews: A Good Woman Is Hard To Find

A Good Woman Is Hard To Find
directed by Abner Pastoll

This is yet another entry in the "slight woman is underestimated by everyone and takes bloody revenge" genre so if that theme leaves you cold then you know what to do. 

It is a little bit different than many other similar films in that the violence, even when deserved is NOT played for laughs or shown as explicitly being some sort of political statement. 

This movie does make a link between committing violence and being willing to stand up for yourself in some very dodgy situations but in some ways that's true in real life isn't it. Although we all hope not to, sometimes we run across people who mean us harm and simply won't be deterred by kind words or appeals to morality. 

There's only one language that they understand. Also the film spends a lot of time showing the basic challenges a young widow with two small children might face, whether it be dealing with her bossy judgmental mother or needing batteries in a hurry.

This movie is set in the UK. I think it's supposed to be in Northern Ireland somewhere but I am not familiar enough with the various accents to state for sure exactly where the events are taking place. That's not really that important. What is important is that Sarah Bolger (Sarah Collins) is an impoverished widow who lives on an estate (public housing). She has two small children, a boy and girl. The boy saw his father Stephen, Sarah's husband, murdered, and hasn't spoken since then. 

Movie Reviews: The Quarry

The Quarry
directed by Scott Teems

This movie teams up two very good character actors who have occasionally ventured into leading man territory. Michael Shannon and Shea Whigham have often worked together, most notably in Boardwalk Empire. 

They are two actors who I am always interested in watching because they bring depth and realism to their characters. 

No matter how over the top or strange the character may be written, these guys find a way to ground their depiction and make you feel that you know their character, even if on balance the person is despicable. Each man shines in this movie. However the film is slow moving. It's as if the writer/director decided to just throw these actors in the Texas setting and told them "Do something!"

The results were mixed. I thought a while about this review because I initially thought I might be judging a slow neo-noir thriller by action film standards. And upon further reflection I decided that no I wasn't. 

Even by the standards of thrillers aimed at adults with attention spans longer than thirty seconds The Quarry meanders and wanders. One might argue that the seeming pointlessness of many occurrences is actually the movie's entire point and that yours truly was just too dumb to see it. Perhaps. Perhaps not. 

Lives can be changed by just one random decision. I have a relative who delights in pointing out what he considers to be Christian hypocrisy. He thinks that Christians should always turn the other cheek no matter what, have no business accumulating wealth of any kind, and should never resist those who would do them evil. 

Movie Reviews: The Hunt

The Hunt
directed by Craig Zobel

This is another film that (a) had a female lead and (b) had its debut delayed and possibly ruined by the emergence of the coronovirus pandemic and (c) was seized upon by some conservatives, especially the dummy-in-chief, who thought it unfairly demonized them.

This last point is almost too stupid to comment upon but it's worth mentioning that this movie is in part a satire of fraught relationships between conservatives and liberals. The Hunt doesn't actually endorse kidnapping your political enemies and hunting them for fun anymore than the Godfather movies suggest to people that they should build a multi-generational international criminal empire. Given some recent real life incidents one might even argue that this satire doesn't go far enough.

If you have to explain satire, you've likely already lost half the audience. Much as Blazing Saddles used jokes about racism, anti-semitism, and stereotypes in general to suggest that those things were, you know, actually harmful to human beings, The Hunt uses political and regional stereotypes to suggest that sometimes conservatives and liberals share negative traits. This could be read as a both sides cop out. One film writer said as much.

Movie Reviews: The Gentlemen

The Gentlemen
directed by Guy Ritchie

Guy Ritchie is a predictable writer and director, particularly when he's examining the milieu in which he made his name, the British underworld. Depending on how much you enjoy this style you might consider this film a welcome return to form. 

Or you might decide that fast paced tough guy (tough gal) banter, sudden ultraviolence, music video style quick cuts, British slang, double crosses hidden inside triple crosses, and racial/ethnic/sexual slurs played for jokes is overdone and last year's (last decade's) news. I generally enjoyed this movie but I have a tolerance for some of these otherwise problematic things in movies if I don't think they're coming from a place of contempt or hatred. 

Presumably Ritchie and/or the other writers would say they're making fun of everyone. I'm not so sure about that, watching it a second time. Still, this is light entertainment, not anything award winning or something that is supposed to make anyone think too much. 

Michael "Mickey" Pierson (Matthew McConaughey) is an American former Rhodes Scholar, who upon arriving in Merry Olde England, soon discovered that he could make more money and meet a higher class of people by selling marijuana than by hitting the books. Fast forward about twenty five years and the middle aged but still trim Mickey has become a multimillionaire marijuana producer and distributor. He has avoided heroin and cocaine because of their associations with violence and because he thinks those drugs are too addictive. Mickey is a nice guy.