Jason Baldwin, Jessie Misskelley  & Damien Echols at the time of their arrest in 1994. Image via webpronews.

Having watched the other two documentaries in the ‘West Memphis 3 – Paradise Lost’ trilogy, I was fairly sure there weren’t going to be too many surprises in store when I sat down to watch the third.

I was already aware of the inconsistencies in evidence gathering, the frequently bizarre interpretations of information collected and witch hunt-like tone to an investigation that had resulted in eighteen-year -old heavy metal fan Damien Echols being sentenced to death for the murder of three eight-year-old Arkansas boys, while his friends, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr (sixteen and seventeen respectively) received life for their involvement.

If that wasn’t enough, my interest in the case after watching the Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky directed films ‘Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills’ & ‘Paradise Lost 2: Revelations’, was such that I learned through their support network that the men had been freed as part of a plea bargain in August 2011.

I was confident that my shock and awe muscle would remain relatively unmolested throughout the viewing.

Wrongly.

Continue reading “Movie Watch: ‘Paradise Lost 3 – Purgatory’” →

Image via imdb

Crime specialists maintain that their job is made appreciably harder by the number of police procedurals on TV that are essentially ‘how-to’ guides for budding villains. Despite this, plus an advertising industry with a global spend of approximately $503 billion per year, a persistent school of thought still insists that violent & sexualised games, films, TV and adverts do not cause psychological problems.

Continue reading “Movie Watch: I Want To Be A Soldier” →

‘Robert Blecker Wants Me Dead’ is a 2008 documentary about two men. One is the Robert Blecker of the title, a law professor from South Manhattan, who campaigns for the death penalty. The other is Daryl Holton, a former Gulf War veteran and (current) death row inmate who murdered his four children and is waiting for his sentence to be carried out.

Through his work, Blecker ends up visiting Holton in prison, and is surprised by how emotionally engaged he is with the man. The film is the story of their cautiously developing friendship and it’s context within their apparently diametrically opposed worlds.

Continue reading “The Deaf Penalty: ‘Robert Blecker Wants Me Dead’” →

I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to watching Channel 4’s four part drama ‘Top Boy’ this week for the insight it was likely to give me into South London drug culture. I was rather more intrigued by how the white, middle class TV reviewers for broadsheet British newspapers might handle the show. Would they really have anything useful and/or constructive to offer on a subject matter so far removed from their own comfy cubby holes on Buckingham Palace Road?

I, on the other hand, once stood near someone as they carried out a transaction for a small amount of cannabis in Mitcham, so am far more qualified to comment.

Continue reading “‘Top Boy’ – Food For Thought” →