Defense rests in Bankman-Fried trial

The defense has rested in the Sam Bankman-Fried trial. He was the only defense witness.

According to The Washington Post:

In his own retelling, he only learned that his hedge fund, Alameda Research, had spent $8 billion in customer deposits from his crypto trading platform, FTX, by overhearing a conversation among his employees in September 2022. He said when he confronted them, he was told to stop asking questions and that they were busy.

Tomorrow there will be closing arguments then the jury will deliberate and render its verdict. Guess what it's going to be!

Not Quite Hollywood (documentary, 2008)

Until the 1970's, Australia had the strictest movie censorship in the western world. I guess it's in the western world. When censorship was finally lifted, they started churning out very seedy, violent, sex movies. I don't know what it tells you. Either Australians NEEDED censoring, or they were kept in a state of childlike innocence so long that they didn't know how to handle their newfound freedom.

Or maybe the crap they made was of great artistic merit. Quentin Tarantino seemed to think so.

Australia made perfectly nice movies, too.

An Australian girl in my high school gave a presentation to the class about her country and a boy asked about something he saw in an Australian movie, a scene with sweaty girls in a classroom doing breathing exercises. She said, no, they don't do that. He was talking about the movie Walkabout.

Focuses only on Australian exploitation films. It didn't make me want to watch any of them. I usually find movies about foreign national cinema interesting, but this got dreary. 

Available on Pluto.

Fantastic Journey (TV pilot, 1977)

Something possessed me to watch this on Tubi. I had watched the show some in the '70's. It was on less than one season, ten episodes. It was a little strange that child actor Ike Eisenmann, then 13, was its big star. Was probably a wise move since child actors are more affordable. Roddy McDowell joined the cast later.

Researchers enter the Bermuda Triangle. One brought along his tween son. They're attacked by a big green cloud and find themselves shipwrecked on an island. In each episode, they pass through time portals into different periods in the future. 

It was pretty cheap which might have been less of a problem if it hadn't dragged on for two hours. Even in the '70's it bothered me that people from the future had 1970's hairstyles. 

The Wackiest Ship in the Army (1960) Jack Lemmon, Ricky Nelson

I had seen this on TV a few times when I was a kid in the early '70's. I knew who Jack Lemmon was but didn't recognize Ricky Nelson. I must have been drawn to it by the title and the cartoony opening credits. It was like a Disney version of The Caine Mutiny. Jack Lemmon as a bad Navy captain. He had been a yachtsman in civilian life, so the Navy puts him in command of a small sailing ship during World War Two. The crew doesn't know what it's doing. Turns out they're on a secret mission no one was told about. It wasn't really funny and it becomes a war drama toward the end. Based at least loosely on a true story.

There was a wave of these movies---Operation Petticoat, Father Goose, Mr. Roberts among others. 

Ricky Nelson has a song. With Alvy Moore from Green Acres; The Six Million Dollar Man's Richard Anderson appears briefly. There's a Japanese officer who speaks perfect English because he went to college in Ohio.

It did turn me off to any thought I might have had as a child about joining the military. They can just order you to do something and you have to do it, like climbing the mast and even "funny" officers were rotten people.

Free on Tubi.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop

Saw something on YouTube about embarrassing things young people write in college admission essays. A girl trying to get into film school said she developed a deep love of cinema after watching Paul Blart: Mall Cop. I'd never seen the movie. It didn't interest me, but there it was, free on Pluto. 

From Columbia Pictures. Adam Sandler's production company was behind it. Starts out as a Marty thing about a lonely mall security guard (Kevin James) living with his mother and daughter (Raini Rodriguez). 

Pretty well-made. Nothing wrong with it technically. It got terrible reviews but made a fortune at the box office. A young person seeing it and deciding to go into film made more sense than Steven Spielberg watching Lawrence of Arabia and thinking he could do better. 

I never understood what was funny about Segways. 

Romney tells Biden to take longer steps

Mitt Romney reportedly told Biden that he looks old when he shuffles. I found this surprising coming from him. Several years ago, and I posted this years ago, an elderly relative pointed out how Romney minces around.

"I've never seen a man walk that way," she said. 

Someone may have told Romney to stop doing it which could be why he was conscious of it watching Biden. In fact, the other kids may have pointed this out to him in high school which was why he started physically attacking kids he imagined were gay. He had something to prove.

Apparently Romney and Biden are friends now. It shouldn't be surprising. Biden is in the extreme right-wing of the Democratic Party and Romney hates Trump.

Sam Bankman-Fried parents

In 1990, Charles Keating, Jr, a devout Catholic and anti-porn crusader, was convicted of defrauding  customers of Lincoln Savings & Loan. He stole $250 million selling junk bonds he claimed were low risk. Mother Theresa sent a letter asking the judge for leniency. Keating had donated money to her. The prosecutor in the case wrote to Mother Theresa, explained Keating's crimes and asked that she return the stolen money he gave her. 

Part of the letter said:

My experience has been with the ‘con’ man and the perpetrator of the fraud. It is not uncommon for ‘con’ men to be generous with family, friends and charities. Perhaps they believe that their generosity will purchase love, respect or forgiveness. However, the time when the purchase of ‘indulgences’ was an acceptable method of seeking forgiveness died with the Reformation. No church, no charity, no organization should allow itself to be used as salve for the conscience of the criminal.

It was kind of him to suggest Keating had a conscience.

So what about Sam Bankman-Fried's parents? They're being sued by FTX for the return of the stolen money their son gave them. 

It seems like putting up the money for their son's legal defense violates everything they pretend to believe. The father claimed to be a utilitarian, in doing whatever will help the largest number of people, and they believed in "Effective Altruism", throwing their money around where it will do the greatest good, yet they're spending millions of dollars trying to keep a single obviously guilty psychopath out of prison. 

They spent $50,000 a year sending their son to an elite private school. And he had a brother and sister so they may have been squandering $150,000 a year on that when public education was free for the taking.

"That's what money's for," the father said about their big flabby son's legal defense, trying to make it sound like money meant nothing to them, like they hadn't greedily lapped up millions in stolen customer funds.

It's different seeing an entire bourgeois family wrapped up in a massive criminal enterprise. Bankman-Fried's brother and sister were involved in it, too. And the parents still try to pass themselves off as moral paragons. Are they now grappling with this blow to their self-image, or were they consciously trying to conceal their true selves all along?

The Old Dark House (1932)

I can't imagine going to a strange house in the middle of the night and asking if I could stay there until the weather improved, but the movie made this seem perfectly plausible. Driving in a rain storm in a 1920's convertible looked terrible. There were no windows on the sides and the road wasn't paved or marked and the headlights weren't that good. And the couple's wise-cracking friend in the backseat wouldn't shut up.

It may have been less plausible that the eccentric old brother and sister who lived there employed a hulking mute butler (Boris Karloff) who turns violent and attacks women when drunk. They mention the family members locked in rooms upstairs. 

For the first 50 minutes, it was more social awkwardness than horror. They're eat dinner. An obnoxious couple comes to the door and burst in without being invited. They hang around and hang around. One of the women goes to a bedroom to change her clothes, leaves the window wide open with wind and rain blowing in and doesn't tell anyone. They're not good guests. 

There's a nice scene of one of the women who starts doing shadow puppets. They stole that scene in cheap slasher film, set in the U.S. but filmed in New Zealand. I can't remember the title or why I turned it on.

Things start to go wrong in the last 20 minutes.

Available on The Criterion Channel and on Tubi.

Robert Bresson's The Devil, Probably (France, 1977)

Cute long-haired French youth walks around thinking about suicide. I'm not giving anything away. The opening shot is newspaper headlines saying he killed himself. Another headline says that the "suicide" was murder.

Like Bresson's other movies with actors delivering their lines unemotionally. It worked quite well. More directors should give it a shot. It called attention to itself when he says "He told me off," to describe a calm, lifeless conversation he had earlier.

France always looks like a hell hole in the movies. In this, a cop knees the young fellow in the back while he's being questioned by police.

Released the same time as Star Wars and Smokey and the Bandit.

Available on The Criterion Channel. 

The Most Dangerous Game (1932)

I read the short story this was based on in junior high school. There was also an episode of Gilligan's Island based on the story. I assume this means that EVERYONE reads this in junior high. Like "The Monkey's Paw", "The Gift of the Magi" and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery". Everyone must have read them or they wouldn't be used as references on The Simpsons.

Although, I wonder now if there are literary references they keep showing that I always miss, like there's some story everyone else read in school while I was skipping class.

A David O. Selznik production, so it was beautifully shot and stuck closely to the story. Filmed on sets later used in King Kong with some of the same cast. 

Joel McCrea and Fay Wray are shipwrecked on an island and find a rich guy living there, an avid hunter who had gotten bored shooting stupid animals. Hunting wasn't intellectual enough. He wanted to hunt a high IQ animal of some kind.

On the Criterion Channel for Halloween.

Come to think of it, when I was a kid, I saw this on PBS which showed Criterion collection movies in the afternoons. 

"Who is Killing Cinema?"

Something I watched on YouTube. Some if it I was aware of. I mentioned the lack of new movie stars on here, although I read about it online---it wasn't a personal observation. But I was fine with Netflix killing off Blockbuster and Hollywood Video after those two chains wiped out local video stores. I haven't been to a movie in years. I was critical of Woody Allen for not wanting to make movies unless they were shown in theaters. I thought he and Spielberg were devoted to the "theatrical experience" because they got a cut of the gross, and that's probably true. I don't believe either one of them has been to a movie in decades.

I had a friend whose aunt was a film writer. His aunt and uncle went to some event in New York and sat in a theater right behind Steven Spielberg, 

"I could have hit him over the head and killed him," his uncle said.

So, yeah, I wouldn't go to movies either if I were him.

But I only have a two streaming channels I pay for, I don't watch made-for-streaming movies except for that Prince Harry thing, I don't watch superhero or Pixar movies, or Star Wars.  

The guy was only talking about Hollywood and didn't go into the effect any of this might have on the rest of the world. It could be a boon to mankind. And if it's not, would it really be that awful?

From The Onion

Yes, I know it's not real, and I don't know what it says about changing attitudes in the U.S., but The Onion's satire really surprises me sometimes.

'New York Times' Issues Apology For Reporting Palestinian Deaths

NEW YORK—Claiming that the humanizing of occupied peoples is not what the newspaper stands for, The New York Times issued an apology Tuesday for reporting on Palestinian deaths. “Our thoughtful and accurate coverage of the Palestinian death toll in no way met our editorial standards for obfuscation, and for that we sincerely apologize,” said executive editor Joseph Kahn, explaining that the article marked the first such mention of Palestinian suffering in the Times’ 172-year history, and it would certainly be the last. “Rest assured, the individual responsible for bringing to light the atrocities perpetrated on the Palestinian people has already been terminated. We will use this as a teachable moment and redouble our efforts to conceal the anguish of all marginalized and oppressed peoples going forward.” At press time, the Times issued a retraction for incorrectly identifying Palestinians as “human beings.”

Stupid young man, Monstrous old woman

As far as I know, Justin Bieber had tutors but hasn't been to school since the 6th grade. He apparently got this from the ghastly Hillsong megachurch he's part of. The dullard posted a picture of the destruction Israel inflicted on Gaza and announced he was praying for Israel for some reason:

Jaimie Lee Curtis, meanwhile, posted a photo of terrified Palestinian children looking up at incoming Israeli missiles. Put a little Israeli flag at the end. She was either showing her support for the murder of Palestinian children or she thought they were Israeli. Or both. People pointed out that the children in the picture were Palestinian and Curtis took the post down.
 

The photographer posted on her Instagram page wrote "Palestinian famlies seek refuge with their children from the Northern Gaza Strip to UNRWA schools inside Gaza City." They're right to be afraid. Israelis have already bombed the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza and they have a history of targeting schools.  

13 West Street (1962)

Alan Ladd as a rocket scientist. He's attacked one night by a group of bourgeois juvenile delinquents driving a pretty good car. They check his ID as he lies unconscious and they begin threatening him and his wife. 

Rod Steiger as a police sergeant trying to find the assailants. 

Alan Ladd's penultimate film. He was forty-eight and hadn't aged well, poor devil. Although, in fairness, the "teenagers" were no spring chickens either.

Ladd put more effort than most people would have into finding the hooligans who attacked him, and the kids stayed fixated on him as well. Since they were obviously rich, they could have given Ladd the added motivation of wanting to sue the crap out of their parents.

With Bernie Hamilton in a small role.

Free on Tubi.

Burt Balaban's Mad Dog Coll (1961)

Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll was an Irish-born mobster in New York.who became big in the late 1920's and early '30's. The movie didn't follow the true story that closely. In real life, Coll murdered one child, a five-year-old. In the movie he kills two pre-teens. 

The actor playing Coll, 26-year-old John Chandler, had kind of Steve Buscemi feel to him. With a young Jerry Orbach who kept the same hairstyle the rest of his career. Telly Savalas as a police detective.

Directed by Bob Balaban's cousin, Burt. 

Kind of a middling gangster movie. Went lighter on the submachine guns than some.

Free on Tubi.

The Strange Dr. Weird

I had to google it. It turns out that Weird is an actual surname of Scottish origin.

It was a twelve minute radio show, 1944 to 1945. Dr Weird lives in a house by the cemetery. He invites us in and tells us another story. Each episode also has a cheery commercial for men's hats, so the story itself is pretty short, but you know where each episode is going so there's no point dragging it out.

In one episode, a couple, desperate for cash, go to visit the husband's only living relative, a wealthy recluse living in a swamp where he says he's protected by his "friends", the snakes and alligators. The old timer leaves them alone in his shack, they find his money box and murder him when he returns, but they're eaten by alligators as they try to get back. 

It was interesting to listen to a show that required so little apparent effort, but that might have been deceiving. Even the title seemed lazy, although it did capture the flavor of the program.

They were shortened versions of stories from a half hour anthology series called The Mysterious Traveler.

I don't know what else to tell you.

You can download it here:

https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Strange_Dr_Weird_Singles 

 

Murders in the Zoo (1933)

One of the pre-code horror movies featured on The Criterion Channel. I wondered if it really qualified as a horror movie. It was about a jealous husband who murders any man he thinks is interested in his wife, but I watched the opening scene, and, okay, it was a horror movie. A rather shocking image even by modern standards. 

Randolf Scott was the only actor I recognized.

A big budget Universal horror movie, just over an hour long. It had lions, poisonous snakes, a big giant boa constrictor. A woman eaten by alligators. Just over an hour long.

 

Thirteen Women (1932)

An astrologer sends twelve women letters warning them that their horoscopes predict someone will die because of something they did, that they'll kill someone else or will kill themselves. They turn out to be self-fulfilling prophecies.

One of the women was a trapeze artist. She reads the letter just before going out to perform. It was disturbing to watch. 

The astrologer is under the spell of the thirteenth woman, an old classmate out to get even. You have to have to admire that to one degree or another.

A lovely movie. Well made. An early David O. Selznick production. One of the pre-code horror movies featured on The Criterion Channel for Halloween. They have a 59 minute version. Originally 73 minutes. Fast moving. They only have five minutes to kill each one, although a couple are just newspaper headlines.

With Irene Dunne, Ricardo Cortez.

I'll give away one thing from the ending: It turns out that the killer had been abused in school by her "victims" because she was mixed race. The movie was sympathetic to her which is interesting coming from the producer of Gone With the Wind.

Netflix quits DVDs

Netflix has given up on the DVD business. It's all streaming now. I had signed up for their cheapest DVD plan, could get one at a time. Got an email from them telling me not to bother sending their DVD back. It's all over which is kind of too bad. Streaming video probably causes more environmental damage.

I've written this before. Blockbuster and Hollywood video had killed off the local video stores. The local stores were more interesting. There was one that specialized in high brow and foreign films, one rented out nothing but crap---cheap horror movies or not-very-good westerns. I was able to rent spaghetti westerns there that I heard about but couldn't find anyplace else.

The big chains had a lot of copies of popular titles and a limited selection of everything else and I assume Netflix would be like them only more so. 

But I was at work one day. I mentioned a movie to co-worker. I couldn't remember the title, but it was about a wealthy woman in France who was in love with a chimpanzee. He wandered off to a computer, checked Netflix, came back and told me it was Max, Mon Amour.

I signed up. Saw movies I read about but had never seen and stuff I'd known nothing about. It turned out there was something called "nunsploitation", exploitation films about Catholic nuns. Watched some very good Japanese gangster and juvenile delinquency movies, the films of Luis Bunuel, Soviet films, post-Soviet Russian films, cheap exploitation films. I couldn't get enough of them.

Now what do I do?