The lesson here is clear: if you are a minority without a lot of money and a prosecutor wants to put you in prison, you will be imprisoned.
The Central Park Five is the story of the five young men who were wrongfully convicted for the 1989 rape of a jogger in Central Park. It examines how the legal system's rush to judgment - fueled by a city racially divided and fearful of crime - resulted in false confessions and no reassessment of the charges as conflicting evidence came in. This left a brutal rapist on the streets and robbed five innocent kids of their youth, all of whom served out their full terms. District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, after directing a thorough re-investigation when the actual rapist came forward and confessed, and realizing his office's mistakes, joined with the defense to request that the convictions be vacated, which was instantly granted by Judge Charles Tejada.
Set against a backdrop of a decaying city beset by violence and racial tension, The Central Park Five tells the story of that horrific crime, the rush to judgment by the police, a media clamoring for sensational stories, an outraged public, and the five lives upended by this miscarriage of justice.
The Central Park Five Read the rest
[Video Link] Grand Theft Auto V is likely to come out in late 2012. Read the rest
[Video Link] The Elephant in the Living Room is a 2010 documentary that "exposes the controversial American subculture of raising wild predators as common household pets." It's not on Netflix yet, but you can buy or rent it on Amazon. Read the rest
[Video Link] This 1968 piece of schlock isn't John Carradine's finest moment, but the trailer is entertaining! "The Astro-Zombies are a strange, weird, unbelievable breed of living dead in human form. Their deranged transplanted brains could only lead them to murder... watch as the Astro-Zombies attack with maniacal fury!"
Listen to the Misfits and Joan Jett playing "Astro Zombies"
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[Video Link] Who needs Glengarry Glen Ross when you can watch the Maysles Brothers' fantastic 1969 documentary about door-to-door Catholic Bible salesmen and their impoverished, reluctant, guilt-racked customers?
Vincent Canby, film critic for The New York Times, wrote, "It's such a fine, pure picture of a small section of American life that I can't imagine its ever seeming irrelevant, either as a social document or as one of the best examples of what's called cinema vérité or direct cinema... It is fact, photographed and recorded with extraordinarily mobile camera and sound equipment, and then edited and carefully shaped into a kind of cinematic mural of faces, words, motel rooms, parlors, kitchens, streets, television images, radio music -- even weather."
The entire documentary is on YouTube. Read the rest
[Video Link] "These are the Born Losers. The sickest sicko gang that ever terrorized a town, while the law stood helpless." It stars Tom "Billy Jack" Laughlin.
Wikipedia has a good article about the movie:
Born Losers is a 1967 action film and the first of the Billy Jack movies. The film introduced Tom Laughlin as the half-Indian Green BeretVietnam veteran Billy Jack. Since 1954 Laughlin had been trying to produce his Billy Jack script about discrimination toward American Indians. In 1967 he decided to introduce the Billy Jack character in a quickly written script designed to capitalize on the then-popular trend in motorcycle gang movies. The story was based on a real incident from 1964 where members of the Hells Angels were arrested for raping two teenage girls in Monterey, California.
Born Losers Read the rest
