Shia LaBeouf barely back in the press

It seems that any violent racist wino can crawl out of the gutter and freely enter the United Kingdom. The British will reportedly let recidivist criminal Shia LaBeouf into the country for the 2018 Manchester film festival. He and some other "performance artists" made a video. Britain is known for having surveillance cameras everywhere. I hope British cops have body cams.

For some reason, there have been a couple of stories in the press about LaBeouf. They're suggesting that he starting a daring new fashion trend by wearing Crocs, a brand of shoe. Who do you think put out that press release?

Rose McGowan, Victor Salva, Justin Timberlake

Rose McGowan in an August, 2011 interview in The Advocate:

You're starring in the upcoming thriller Rosewood Lane, which was written and directed by Powder's Victor Salva, whose films often reflect his gay sensibility and outsider mentality. Is that the case with Rosewood Lane?

I don't think so. And I do not have good clothes in that film either; I had to wear office-lady clothes and it killed me. That was an interesting dynamic, because Victor had never done a movie with female lead, and he was uncomfortable. He really doesn't relate to women well. He was open about that, which was slightly jarring, because I don't really know what to do with that information.

Well, Salva is a convicted and registered sex offender, which might account for some social awkwardness.

Yeah, I still don't really understand the whole story or history there, and I'd rather not because it's not really my business. But he's an incredibly sweet and gentle man, lovely to his crew, and a very hard worker.

Salva got a couple of years in prison for molesting a 12-year-old boy who appeared in one of his earlier films. He videotaped himself committing the crime. I don't know why McGowan was defending him or what she couldn't understand about it.

It's a little strange to read The Advocate referring to a pedophile as having a "gay sensibility" after the attacks on Kevin Spacey for coming out as gay while responding to an accusation that he climbed on top of a 14-year-old boy.

Now McGowan is smearing actors who appeared in Woody Allen movies. She attacked Justin Timberlake for appearing in The Wonderwheel. The accusations against Allen have been proven false---in Salva's case the crime was on videotape. There's something wrong with McGowan.

Natalie Wood: New evidence probably false

About the re-opened Natalie Wood death investigation. It's based on statements by Dennis Davern, the "skipper" of the yacht they were on when Wood drowned.

From the Seattle Times review of Davern's book:

"Davern said he later heard Wagner and Wood screaming at each other on the yacht. Davern said he underwent hypnosis to recall what he witnessed."

And from The Independent, an article on hypnosis used in criminal investigations:

However, laboratory studies have shown three main problems with hypnosis. First, increases in correct recall are often associated with very great increases in incorrect recall (ie accuracy declines). Second, confidence often increases regardless of accuracy (eg subject-eyewitnesses are often very confident of the accuracy of incorrect information). Third, subject- eyewitnesses often show increases in suggestibility to leading questions and misleading post-event information (eg subject-witnesses are more likely to incorporate suggested details in their accounts). Clearly, these problems could have an adverse effect on a police investigation.

Ironically, the problems associated with hypnosis contribute to the impression that it is a useful technique. Forensic hypnosis is likely to produce more information, but much of this is likely to be incorrect. Hypnosis is usually used when the police have no other leads, and so checking the information an eyewitness gives is difficult. Therefore, without verification, it creates the appearance of memory enhancement when in fact it is creating memory distortion. In addition, when facts cannot be checked we tend to use witness confidence to determine accuracy. Because confidence typically increases with hypnosis, it appears to produce more accurate testimony.

So if the guy's testimony is allowed in court, but it shouldn't be.

Hart to Hart, Charlies Angels

Those were grim years for TV.

Hart to Hart was an amateur detective series about a wealthy couple, Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers, who go around solving murders they keep stumbling onto. I didn't like rich people so I never watched it, but I did watch the beginning of one episode.

The Harts are going to a fancy French restaurant that just opened. They're friends with the chef, so they want to support him. They go to the restaurant which seems to be a storefront. They go in and sit down in a booth. The place has booths and cheap wood paneling on the walls. I don't remember if they had napkin dispensers on the tables. Apparently the chef is the only one who works there. There's cheap hollow door with a door knob that leads from the dining room to the kitchen.

The Harts hear something. They rush back to the kitchen and find the chef has been murdered.

For the restaurant kitchen, they used the set for some cooking show. It was made up to look something like a home kitchen with brightly colored appliances, a four unit electric stove and a double oven. There were frilly curtains on the fake window. This was what was supposed to pass for a restaurant kitchen.

Charlies Angels

I didn't watch the old Charlie's Angels when it was on in the '70's. I watched a little of one episode, realized it was a scene-for-scene copy of an old Mod Squad episode which I hated in the first place---it was the one where Julie is shot in the head by an autistic kid she nicknamed "Cricket". This so offended me I never watched it again until years later when it was on in syndication.

One of the "angels" was going undercover in a women's prison. The scene where she enters the prison was apparently filmed in a dentist's office waiting room. It was decorated with commercial "wall art", there was the window to the receptionist desk and chairs and tables around the room. They may have removed the magazines.

The scenes in the prison yard were filmed at a public swimming pool. Pools have high fences topped with barbed wire to keep drunks and teenagers from climbing in at night and drowning, so it looked a little like a prison, I guess. But they made no attempt to conceal or explain the presence of the swimming pool. The "angel" gets in a fight with another inmate and knocks her into the pool.

I would admire their thrift if the show hadn't been so bad.

But zero-budget filmmakers should look at '70s TV for inspiration in much the same way that The French New Wave looked to American B movies from the 1930's.

Natalie Wood case re-opened

Weren't they talking about re-opening the investigation of Natalie Wood's death a few years ago? My memory is that one of the witnesses "remembered" new details while under hypnosis. If this is correct, their testimony is now inadmissible. Memories that come up through hypnosis tend to be unreliable, but the hypnotized witness is more convinced they're true.

Now they're reporting that Wood's husband, 87-year-old Robert Wagner, is a "person of interest" in her death because someone said they were arguing the night she died. They were both drinking heavily that night as was Christopher Walken who was there with them. A drunk falling off a boat and drowning doesn't seem like much of a mystery and I can't imagine anything coming of this now.

Wagner has always been very well-liked in Hollywood if that makes a difference.

When she died in 1981, I had only a vague idea who Natalie Wood was. I wouldn't have recognized her. I knew a guy who worked as a busboy in Lake Tahoe and spilled coffee on her.

I wonder if there was any truth to the rumor that Kirk Douglas raped her when she was sixteen. He's 101-years-old. If he did it, you could beat the crap out of him pretty easily, but if he didn't do it you'd be a monster for even thinking about it.

Finn Wolfhard, music video from some time last year

 I came across a crowdfunding thing for Finn Wolfhard. It was from last year. I don't keep up with things. He wanted to raise $5,000 to make a music video for one of his friends and ended up raising over $13,000. It shows the advantage of being a teen idol with mostly adult fans. I can't imagine very many kids sending him their allowance.

Did the boy really not have $5,000? Are they not paying him? I know there's the Jackie Coogan Law, but are these shows he's in filmed in California, and does the law apply to him since he's Canadian?

Well, he wanted to direct and maybe raising money was part of the educational experience although he didn't put much effort into it. He made a video of himself holding the camera at arms length as he walked around explaining what he wanted the money for.

Anyway, I watched the video. He gave himself a lot of close-ups. He's a beautiful kid, but I'm not kidding, those cheekbones look painful.

A boy rescues his girlfriend from her abusive father. He wears a cowboy hat and rides around on a bicycle. It was well-made, but I would have told him to make thirteen videos for a thousand dollars each.

Judd Apatow attacks Woody Allen

So Judd Apatow has attacked Woody Allen, not accusing him of molesting Dylan Farrow but for ignoring Mia Farrow's other children during the time he was with her. And then for sleeping with Soon-yi.

Soon-yi is now a 47-year-old millionaire with a masters degree from Columbia. If she was a victim, she can say so herself. She and Allen have been together over 20 years, longer than all of Mia Farrow's marriages combined, so it turned out well in any case.

Allen ignoring Farrow's children during the years they were together always bothered me, but it's nothing to boycott him over, especially since it was 25 years ago. I don't think Woody Allen ever struck me as an especially nice guy. But it raises more doubts about Mia Farrow. If she was such devoted mother, what was she doing with a guy who had no interest in her children?

Apatow himself is a devout Zionist, one of the writers for the explicitly racist Don't Mess with the Zohan. I'd boycott him just for that.