Hooray for Bollywood!

May 7th, 2014

I haven’t paid much attention to Nate Silver or fivethirtyeight.com, but this story (by way of the Y Combinator Twitter) pushes a couple of buttons.

What’s the worst movie ever, according to IMDB? Not “Exterminator City“, Lawrence. IMDB’s bottom ranked movie is something called “Gunday“, which David Goldenberg describes as “a pretty silly, over-the-top Bollywood action flick about gun couriers that features a love triangle and lots of comical misunderstandings typical to the genre“.

Is it that bad? 1.4 bad? Worse than “The Hottie and the Nottie” bad?

“Gunday,” which came out of the huge Bollywood studio Yash Raj Films in February, isn’t that bad. There are a few large plot holes and unconvincing character motivations, but the dance sequences are top-notch, the costumes are fun, and Irrfan Khan’s portrayal of a world-weary policeman is as good as his fans have come to expect. In India, it’s the top-grossing February movie in Bollywood history. The New York Times’ Rachel Saltz ended her review of “Gunday” by calling it “downright enjoyable.” RogerEbert.com gave it three out of four stars. Variety called it “a boisterous and entertaining period crime drama.”

(The RogerEbert.com review was written by Danny Bowes, for what it may be worth.)

So, if mainstream critics don’t think “Gunday” is so bad, how did it end up at the bottom of the IMDB rankings?

One word: crowd-sourcing.

Two words: Gonojagoron Moncho.

What? Gonojagoron Moncho is a “Bangladeshi nationalist movement” (the name translates to “National Awakening Stage”) that got very offended by “Gunday”. Specifically, they object to “Gunday”‘s depiction of the “Bangladesh Liberation War”:

On Twitter, activists used the hashtag #GundayHumiliatedHistoryOfBangladesh to get the word out about the protests and to ask supporters to bury the film on IMDb. (By using a quarter of their character allotment on the hashtag alone, though, there wasn’t much room for the activists to elaborate.) Facebook groups were formed specifically to encourage irate Bangladeshis and others to down-vote the movie. (A sample call to action: “If you’re a Bangladeshi and care enough to not let some Indian crappy movie distort our history of independence, let’s unite and boycott this movie!!!”)

So “Gunday”‘s low ranking is the result of a concerted political campaign, not because it actually is a crappy movie. And what does IMDB say about this?

“Our approach is not to focus on individual titles or incidents, but to analyze this behavior whenever it occurs and to apply any new learnings to strengthen our voting mechanism, so that the resulting improvements affect all titles/votes in our system rather than just the ones specifically affected by these isolated situations.”

Posted in Clippings, Movies | Comments Closed

Notes from the legal beat: May 7, 2014.

May 7th, 2014

Hand to God, I thought this was a joke at first: Bernie Tiede, who killed his “long-time companion” Marjorie Nugent and inspired Richard Linklater’s movie “Bernie”, has been freed from prison.

Special Judge Diane DeVasto agreed to let Tiede live with filmmaker Richard Linklater, who co-wrote and directed the movie and volunteered to take Tiede into his Austin home. Tiede will be under strict bond conditions.

In other news:

The decades-old murder convictions of three half brothers whose arrests were facilitated by a now discredited homicide detective were vacated in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Tuesday, as prosecutors acknowledged that the men had been deprived of fair trials because of a questionable witness.

And who was the “now discredited homicide detective”? Louis Scarcella. (I’m starting to think I need a “Scarcella” sub-category. And maybe an NYPD one as well.)

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law, Louis Scarcella, NYPD | Comments Closed

We’ve got questions.

May 4th, 2014

Over at the other blog:

What types or styles of food are missing in Austin?

What Austin restaurants do you miss?

Posted in Admin, Food | 4 Comments »

Obit watch: May 3, 2014.

May 3rd, 2014

Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (Edited to add: NYT obit.)

I was five months old when it first aired, and nine years old when it went off the air, so the show is kind of at the fringes of my memory. But I remember thinking “The F.B.I.” was a swell show.

And, of course, it was a Quinn Martin production.

Posted in 1970s, Clippings, Obits, TV | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: May 2, 2014.

May 2nd, 2014

The NYT is reporting the death of Walter R. Walsh on Tuesday at the age of 106.

I linked to the American Rifleman‘s profile of Mr. Walsh some time ago. That article is still up, and I commend it to your attention.

On Oct. 12, 1937, Mr. Walsh was in the sporting goods store Dakin’s in Bangor, Me., posing as a gun sales clerk and waiting for Public Enemy No. 1, Alfred Brady, and two gunmen, James Dalhover and Clarence Lee Shaffer.
Wanted for four murders, 200 robberies and a prison breakout, they had been in the store days earlier and were returning for Thompson submachine guns. But a large force of federal agents and state and local police officers were waiting in ambush, hidden in cars, storefronts and offices across the street.
The gang’s car drew up at 8:30 a.m. Dalhover got out and entered the store. He was immediately seized and disarmed by Mr. Walsh and taken to the back by other agents. Shaffer and Brady, sensing something was wrong, emerged with guns drawn.
Mr. Walsh, meanwhile, approached the store’s front with a .45 in his right hand and a .357 Magnum in his left. But as he reached the door he realized he was looking through the plate glass at Shaffer. The glass exploded as both men fired simultaneously.
Shaffer fell, mortally wounded, to the sidewalk. Mr. Walsh, although hit in the chest, shoulder and right hand, stepped outside firing his Magnum at Brady, who was cut down in a thundering fusillade from all sides as he shot back wildly. Witnesses said he was still moving as Mr. Walsh put another bullet in him.

Edited to add: tribute from the American Rifleman.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Guns, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Random notes: May 1, 2014.

May 1st, 2014

Hooray, hooray, the first of May!

Happy Victims of Communism Day, everyone.

My first encounter with Bob Hoskins wasn’t “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” or “Super Mario Brothers”. I encountered him through Siskel, Ebert, and a low-budget crime film that nearly didn’t get a theatrical release:

I’m going to have to watch that again, soon. (The Criterion edition is out of print, but Amazon has two in stock. Just saying.)

NYT. LAT. A/V Club.

Also among the dead: Al Feldstein, who made Mad what it was in the 1960s and 1970s.

He hired many of the writers and artists whose work became Mad trademarks. Among them were Don Martin, whose cartoons featuring bizarre human figures and distinctive sound effects — Katoong! Sklortch! Zazik! — immortalized the eccentric and the screwy; Antonio Prohias, whose “Spy vs. Spy” was a sendup of the international politics of the Cold War; Dave Berg, whose “The Lighter Side of …” made gentle, arch fun of middlebrow behavior; Mort Drucker, whose caricatures satirized movies like Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters” (“Henna and Her Sickos” in Mad’s retelling); and George Woodbridge, who illustrated a Mad signature article, written by Tom Koch: a prescient 1965 satire of college sports, criticizing their elitism and advocating the creation of a game that could be played by everyone. It was called 43-Man Squamish, “played on a five-sided field called a Flutney.” Position players, each equipped with a hooked stick called a frullip, included deep brooders, inside and outside grouches, overblats, underblats, quarter-frummerts, half-frummerts a full-frummert and a dummy.

Posted in Clippings, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Quote of the day.

April 29th, 2014

Oh dear god, they have half-lives for the unstable elements.

–one of my cow orkers, in reference to this.

Posted in Geek | Comments Closed

Banana republicans watch: April 29, 2014.

April 29th, 2014

Richard White Piquette admitted in a document filed in federal court last week that he manufactured a Noveske Rifleworks N-4 .223-caliber rifle with an eight-inch barrel. Under federal law, the rifle’s barrel length should have been at least 16 inches, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

So what?

Mr. Piquette is a deputy with the LA County Sheriff’s Office.

Mr. Piquette also has admitted to possessing a shotgun “that had been stolen from the Sheriff’s Department” and “three assault weapons that are banned under California law”.

“A lot of these criminals are carrying these types of weapons on the street,” [Ronald] Hedding [Piquette’s lawyer] said, adding that Piquette was a jail deputy but had done training stints on patrol.

Really? There’s a lot of short barreled ARs on the streets of LA? I’d love to see some evidence of that.

Hedding said he believed it was common practice for sheriff’s deputies to have weapons like the ones his client possessed.

Then again, given that this is the “first plea agreement by one of 20 sheriff’s officials charged or indicted since December”, Hedding may be right, and the “criminals” who are carrying these types of weapons on the street work for the LA County Sheriff.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Guns, Law | Comments Closed

Random notes, some administrative, for April 23, 2014.

April 23rd, 2014

Apologies for the extended radio silence. The past few days have been busy.

As many of the Whipped Cream Irregulars know, Sunday was my birthday, as well as Easter. This will not happen again until 2025.

Anyway, Mike the Musicologist came up late Friday night, rented a Silvercar, and we drove down to San Antonio on Saturday to do some gun shopping, tour Ranger Creek (which will be the subject of another post), and have dinner with Andrew and Lawrence at Bohanan’s (which may be the subject of another post).

I spent Easter Sunday with family, eating an excellent ham from the Noble Pig and a very good cake baked by my sister. (I don’t remember which cookbook she got the recipe from, but I thought it was very good; perhaps she’ll post here and update.)

Then on Monday, MtM and I took the Silvercar to Dallas, where we did some more gun shopping (including a stop at Cabela’s, but not that one), had a very good lunch at Chop House Burgers, and did some shopping for tacky souvenirs of pre-revolutionary America at the 6th Floor Museum shop.

So Saturday through Monday were jam packed. (For the record, I did not buy any guns. Though I was really tempted by the Sig Sauer 1911 22 at GrabAGun. I was also tempted at one of the San Antonio gun stores that had a couple of Nylon 66s, but I just can’t bring myself to pay $350 for one, even if it did have a scope.)

(Edited to add: Also, $1,300 for a K-22, even if it was an early post-war gun with the box, seems really really high.)

Anyway, I’m back and trying to get caught up on blogging. Profuse thanks to MtM for organizing the weekend.

Posted in Admin, Clippings, Endorsements, Firings, Food, Guns, Mixology, Sports, Thanks | Comments Closed

Márquez.

April 18th, 2014

NYT. Tribute from Michiko Kakutani.

LAT.

A/V Club.

WP. WP original 1970 review of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Edited to add: “Love in the Time of Cholera: why it’s a bad title“.

Funny thing: I’ve never read any of Márquez’s work. I have One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera on my bucket list of books to read before I die, but I just haven’t gotten around to them yet. And for some reason, I’m also intrigued by News of a Kidnapping.

I actually went by one of the Half-Price Books locations last night looking for Márquez’s works. They had nothing. Nada. Zero. Surprising: I would have figured they’d have some copies of Love or Solitude at least.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Obits | Comments Closed

Books in brief: The Power Broker.

April 17th, 2014

This won’t be a review. Reviewing The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York would be superfluous; Robert Caro won the freakin’ Pulitzer Prize for it, for crying out loud.

These are a few random thoughts:

1. The Power Broker deserves all the acclaim it has gotten. Caro’s a great writer, and the story of the rise (and eventual fall) of Robert Moses is a compelling one. I kind of expected it to be slow moving and a little dull; how do you make urban planning interesting? But Caro found a way to do that. I got caught up in the sweep of the book, and found myself wanting to read more about Al Smith and La Guardia and other background characters.
There are a few places where I have reservations about Caro’s conclusions. The largest reservation I have is Caro’s emphasis on mass transit, and Moses’ failures in that regard. I’m not as much of a believer in mass transit as Caro seems to be, but I’m willing to concede Caro might be right. Given the population density (both at the time and projected for the future) mass transit may have been the only workable alternative for NYC’s traffic problems.

2. I haven’t read Caro’s LBJ books. I’m waiting for the series to be completed before I start on them. (I have read excerpts from them in other places.) But I wonder if Caro is drawn to people who were, in some way, corrupted by power. I have the impression that this is a theme in the LBJ books. And as for The Power Broker…

3. You know that quote attributed to Dave Barry? “Someone who is nice to you, but rude to the waitress, is not a nice person?” Robert Moses was a walking example of that. He was an elitist who believed that he and people like him – rich, Ivy League educated – were the only ones who were fit to govern, and everyone else should just get out of the way. He was a racist – he didn’t want the “lower classes” (read: blacks and the poor) using his parks, pools and playgrounds. He treated anyone he considered an inferior like dirt. As for the powerful, his main interest in them was how he could use them to enhance his own power. He destroyed vital and interesting neighborhoods for the sake of new roads, even though those neighborhoods could have been saved by small changes in routes (but those changes would have inconvenienced politicians who were important to Moses). And the new roads and bridges he built were full as soon as they were completed, which Moses saw as a reason to build more. Lather, rinse, repeat. We’re too close to Easter for me to say what I’m really thinking, but you can probably guess.

4. This shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did: there was (is?) a recent Robert Moses revisionist movement. The central thesis seems to be: yes, he was every bit as big a you-know-what as Caro portrayed him. But. He. Got. Things. Done. And “If the ends don’t justify the means, what does?“

Posted in Books, Politics | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: April 17, 2014.

April 17th, 2014

Gabriel García Márquez is dead. Roundup tomorrow.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Obits | Comments Closed

Cue the sad tiny violins…

April 17th, 2014

Second day story on the Robert “Ratso” Rizzo sentencing. Not much new, but linked here for the historical record.

He developed a reputation as a micromanager who pinched pennies even as he burnished the city’s image, adding a miniature golf course and pristine playing fields.

Okay, the miniature golf course is the first good thing I’ve heard about him.

Taylor said most of Rizzo’s money and assets appeared to have been squandered on real estate investments and about 30 racehorses that would have cost more to care for than what they were worth.

I knew about Ratso’s horse racing, but “more to care for than what they were worth”? Hadn’t heard that before.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Horses, Law | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#11 in a series)

April 16th, 2014

Robert “Ratso” Rizzo has just been sentenced to 12 years in prison.

This is breaking news: watch this space for updates and links.

Edited to add: link with more details.

In addition to the prison sentence, Ratso will also have to pay $8.8 million in restitution to the city of Bell: but he will get credit for “money he and the city’s former police chief have already returned to the city”.

The LAT also states that Ratso will be allowed to serve this sentence concurrently with his 33 month sentence on tax fraud charges. One of the LAT‘s editors tweets:

In other news, Superintendent Jose Fernandez of the Centinela Valley Union High School District was paid $674,559 last year. For comparison purposes, the head of the NYC schools made $412,193. The head of the LA school district made $393,106.

The district gave him $230,213 to purchase more seniority in state retirement systems so he would receive a higher annual pension.

Isn’t that kind of “Here, let us give you some money so you can end up taking even more money out of our pockets?”

The FBI may be investigating. Or at least asking questions before they start an investigation. (I’m not sure what laws may have been broken: being paid a lot of money isn’t a crime by itself.)

From 2010 through 2012 he also did well — and progressively better — making $310,965, $382,370 and $407,786 respectively, according to district records Fernandez provided after a California Public Records Act request.

Doesn’t that still seem kind of high? The Centinela school district has “6,600 students, five high schools and a $70-million budget.” There seems to be an argument being made that Fernandez pulled the district out of possible bankruptcy; but at the same time, there are also claims that teachers were being laid off while he was getting paid to purchase more seniority in the retirement system.

Edited to add 2:

“I can’t go anywhere,” Rizzo murmured.

On a completely unrelated note, there’s an iPhone app called “Tiny Violin“.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Banana republicans watch: April 15, 2014.

April 15th, 2014

I have written before about the California city of Cudahy: election fraud, marijuana dispensary bribes, the bimbo and the badge, payoffs in the Denny’s…

Latest developments:

City leaders in one of Los Angeles County’s poorest cities used city-issued credit cards for excessive travel, meals and entertainment, mismanaged state funds and had virtually no internal controls to prevent the misuse of taxpayer dollars, the state controller concluded in a scathing audit released Tuesday.

The city has been ordered to repay $22.7 million in “redevelopment funds”.

On a totally unrelated note, here because I just love typing the name, Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow has pled not guilty to the charges against him.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

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