Everything Nonfiction

Reviews

By Leave a Comment

Review of the Last Duel Book vs Film

The Last Duel written by Eric Jager rating ****
The Last Duel written by Nicole Holofcener, Matt Damon, and Ben Affleck directed by Ridley Scott
Rating ****

Book or film? I chose to do both. It’s been a while since I had a chance to read a book and then head out to a theatre to see the film version. I’m glad I did. I enjoyed both.

I’m not a fan of this era. The whole knights and armor thing just doesn’t appeal to me. But I was interested to see how this particular story would play out in the adaptation. The book by Eric Jager walks the reader through the quarrels, disagreements, and the alleged rape that led to the duel between Jean de Carrouges and Jacques la Gris. The author presents the accusation from Carrouges’s wife, Marguerite. He also describes several other alternatives to what may have happened.

The screenwriter Nicole Holofcener, along with help from Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, attempted to do the same thing but with mixed results. When you boil it down to its essence, this is a story of he said she said. So, either La Gris raped Marguerite, or it was a consensual relationship. In the film version, however, they decided to tell three versions. The problem is that in all three versions a rape occurs.

Adding to the confusion is an early scene in Jacques la Gris’s version where there seems to be a consensual relationship between La Gris and Marguerite, making the later rape scene seem implausible.

In my mind, they should have stuck with two versions. In one, there is rape. In the second, La Gris and Marguerite have consensual sex.

Visually the film is stunning, despite the darkness and muted colors. Ridley Scott knows how to make movies. I got to watch this sixty-million dollar movie on the big screen with only one other person in the theatre, which doesn’t bode well for the film’s financial return. That’s a shame, too. We need more films that tell stories that don’t involve special effects and superheroes.

The performances by Matt Damon and Adam Driver are noteworthy. Jodie Comer as Marguerite is also very good, though she stands out in the film like a spec of color and a sea of black and white.

By Leave a Comment

The Christian “Kit” Martin story

I’ve now watched the Dateline episode The Evil That Watches three times. While I gained a little more insight with each viewing, there remains a host of unanswered questions. I hope that supporters of Kit Martin will provide more clarity. If you know the answers to some of my questions or can provide additional information, please respond in the comments section. My knowledge of this case is based solely on the Dateline episode. I was not present at trial, nor have I read any trial transcripts.

As someone who writes about wrongful convictions, I feel that I can sense when someone is lying. I didn’t sense any deceit in Kit’s interview with Keith Morrison. But I know from past wrongful conviction cases that overturning a conviction is difficult and time-consuming. I believe his best chance for a reversal is by arguing that he had ineffective counsel. More on this later.

First, I do not believe that the evidence used against Kit at trial was planted, as suggested by his attorney—for example, the dog tag evidence. If you were going to plant evidence incriminating someone else, you wouldn’t use a dog tag on a string. That would be like painting on the wall that “Kit did it.” That makes zero sense. Additionally, if I’m planting evidence, I wouldn’t place it on the top of a bookshelf hoping that someone might find it. That’s nonsense. Now the defense attorney argued in court that Joan, Kit’s ex-wife, had access to Kit’s belongings, including his dog tags. In his interview with Keith Morrison, Kit claimed that those were not his dog tags. That his dog tags would not have had his nickname on them.

Did the defense attorney challenge the authenticity of the dog tags? Did he explain to the jury that dog tags don’t use nicknames? Did he provide Kit’s actual dog tags? Did he conduct any research on where the dog tags might have come from? Dateline was able to reproduce the dog tag.

Next, we have the shell casing. Once again, the defense attorney claimed that the evidence was planted. The police searched the house, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have missed the shell casing. Once again, if you are planting evidence, you would not plant it at a later date in the hopes that someone might find it.

The prosecutor had an expert witness say that, in his opinion, the shell casing came from a gun owned by Kit. Did the defense attorney challenge that? Did the bullets that killed Cal come from the same gun? Was there any ballistics evidence at all?

Then there is Kit’s alibi. He says that his security video evidence proved that he was home the whole time. He claims that he could not use the front door because it didn’t work and was nailed shut. On the Dateline episode on this topic, the prosecutor stated that there was nothing wrong with the front door.

Did the defense attorney challenge this? Did he provide any evidence that the front door was, in fact, unusable and nailed shut? Did Laura Spencer testify at trial that Kit was with her at home during the time of the crime?

These are just a few of the questions I have about this case. Below are a few more.

There were apparently two guns used in the crime – a 22 and a 45. Would one person commit a crime with two different guns? Did they find the 22?

The police found a gun and phone near Ed’s house. Was the gun and phone Ed’s?

Did Kit have an explanation for the person who testified that he saw Kit a few days before the murder in the vicinity of where police found Pam’s burnt-out car?

Was the damage to Cal’s face caused before or after he was shot?

Did Kit appeal his conviction on the court marshall? Was there any attempt to question the children Kit supposedly abused?

Kit claims that he thought Cal would be helpful to his case with the court marshall because he claimed on audio that he never saw any abuse, but the audio has Cal saying that one of the kids told him that Kit abused him. That is just as damaging as witnessing the abuse.

At one point, Joan claims to have found a phone in her yard that later proved to be Pam’s phone. What yard did she supposedly find the phone?

A two-hour Dateline episode can not distill all the information about a case that took four years between crime and trial. My take is that the defense attorney should have spent more time attacking the evidence and less time talking about planted evidence. I do not believe the evidence was planted.

One last note. If you go to the site map page on this site and type in wrongful convictions in the search box, you will see that I have been covering this topic for a while. My last book, Scapegoat, tells the story of a flight crew wrongly blamed for causing a near-fatal crash. I’ve been looking for a story for my next book. As a professional pilot (soon to be retired) and author, this is a story that has piqued my interest.

To Kit’s supporters, please take as much space as needed to respond to this post. I will approve the response as soon as I can.

You can watch the Dateline episode here Watch Dateline Episode: The Evil That Watches – NBC.com

Update

I’ve now had a chance to watch the entire trial. My initial impression from the Dateline episode about Kit’s innocence remains. There’s no way he could have been involved. The security video and his alibi witnesses clear him of any involvement. As for the many questions I had after the Dateline episode, I now know the answers to all of them.

I won’t go over all of the questions and answers here, but I do want to address the comments I made about planted evidence. I still believe that the shell casing and dog tag were not planted, however, the defense attorney made some persuasive points in defense of his planted evidence theory. I only wish he would have emphasized that there were other possibilities. There was one piece of evidence, though, that I do believe was intentionally staged – the subpoenas. If you saw videos of the residence, you might agree. The house was a cluttered mess. What are the chances that amongst all that clutter the two subpoenas would be laid out on a table for investigators to find?

Lastly, I need to address my comment about the defense attorney. The Dateline episode only showed snippets of the trial. I suggested that he had ineffective counsel. After watching them in action, I now believe that the defense team gave everything they had. There were points in the trial where I feel could have been handled better, but overall I give them high marks. I thought the lead defense attorney did a great job in his closing statement. I thought the Prosecutor’s closing was a joke. She tried to paint Kit as a military killing machine who also happened to be a cell phone tower expert. It was a ridiculous theory of what happened.

Lastly, I have decided that this story is worthy of a book treatment. Stay tuned.

By Leave a Comment

Review of The Premonition

Review of The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis Rating ***

I’m a Michael Lewis fan. Premonition, however, fell short for me. The book lacked a narrative focus. Instead, it read more like a series of loosely connected anecdotes. I would have preferred more insight into how the Trump administration dropped the ball.

Trump’s initial reaction to the pending pandemic was to kill the messenger. Career civil servants tried to raise alarm bells, but Trump and his Republican allies did their best to silence those who didn’t fall in line with their nothing to see here approach. Take, for example, Trump’s solution to rising covid numbers, which was to reduce testing. Yeah, this guy was President.

When Trump saw the positive press that Governor Cumo received from his daily press conferences, Trump decided that he would be the new front person. That’s when we started getting nonsense like Trump’s suggestion to inject disinfectant.

The people who knew what steps the administration should have taken must have felt enormous frustration with the total lack of planning and foresight. But, unfortunately, I didn’t get that sense of frustration from the characters with whom Michael Lewis chose to focus.

Some give Trump credit for the rapid development of vaccines. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that Trump was more concerned about getting the pandemic behind him because of the upcoming election.

I believe Micahel Lewis missed the bigger picture. I wanted to know what Fauchi thought as Trump mucked things up. I wanted to know more about the CDC’s mishandling of covid tests, the mixed messages over masks. I would have liked more on the economic impact of completely shutting down the economy for nearly a year. That history has yet to be written.

By Leave a Comment

Review of LuLaRich

Review of LulaRich Directed by Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason Rating *****

This four-part documentary series covers the rise and fall of LuLaRoe, a multi-level marketing company that mainly catered to white working moms. Part one covers the backgrounds of company founders DeAnne and Mark Stidham. Interspersed throughout the series are interviews with past and current employees, consultants, and legal experts. The term consultant refers to women whose primary source of income came from recruiting other consultants.

From the first glimmer of inspiration from DeAnne, there is a sense that her idea for colorful maxi dresses and leggings had potential. She had a unique concept. But rather than focus on the product and the brand, she chose to grow her company by enlisting DeAnne clones. The resulting business turned into a very successful pyramid scheme.

DeAnne had great success selling her product directly to consumers through one on one interactions. At that point, she could have turned her company into a brand as relevant as Spandex or any other unique clothing company. Instead, she tried to duplicate her success by enlisting other women to do direct selling. In addition to earning income from the sales of LulaRoe clothing, women who signed up early on earned even more money in bonuses and commissions from women they recruited.

As the company expanded, thanks to social media platforms like Facebook live and Instagram, problems arose. It’s one thing when one person uses Facebook live to have pop-up sales events. It’s another thing when thousands of other women try to duplicate that success. Women who came in late to the process had to invest ten thousand dollars and up for inventory. They couldn’t order what they wanted. They had to sell what was shipped to them, which may not have been something they could sell. The quality of the product suffered. Design patterns passed off as LuLaRoe originals used patterns taken from other designers. Complaints grew.

At this point, the mostly family-run business let greed and self-importance interfere with their original intent, which was to empower women. Rather than admitting their mistakes, they accused others for their problems. They forced their religious viewpoints and values on their workforce. They tried to silence dissenters and voices of opposition. The result was a landslide of lawsuits and lost momentum.

This isn’t a story about a scam. LuLaRoe still has a unique product that has an audience. This story has more to do with what can happen when ambition gets in the way of ethics.

Catch this series on Amazon Prime.

By Leave a Comment

Review of the Netflix Film Worth

Review of the Netflix Film Worth written by Max Borenstein and directed by Sara Colangelo rating **** 1/2

This film proves that you don’t have to have a big budget and special effects to tell a compelling story. Michael Keaton plays Ken Feinberg, the lawyer tasked with administrating the victim’s compensation fund for family members of those lost on September 11.

It starts with Ken and his law firm taking on the task pro bono. He’s not out to take advantage of the situation. At first, it seems like a relatively cut and dry problem. You take a person’s current income projected over their expected lifetime, and you come up with a number of that person’s financial worth. The loss to a family member whose wife or husband was a CFO making 750,000 a year is worth more than someone who lost their retired father living on social security. It’s not the first time lawyers have had to deal with this type of situation. There have been other incidents involving victim’s compensation funds. It doesn’t take long, however, to realize it’s not quite as simple as looking at a table of numbers to find out what your loved one is worth.

People at the low end of the payout rightly argue that their loved ones meant just as much to them as those looking at receiving much higher amounts. Other issues arise. What about domestic partners who are not legally married? What about illegitimate children? How do you handle first responders suffering from health problems due to the effects of toxic dust?

Family members of 9/11 victims had three years to decide to either accept the government’s offer or join a class-action lawsuit. As the deadline nears, only 1200 families out of 7,000 families agree to the payout. Something has to change. At that point, Ken Feinberg realizes that trying to fit everyone into a spreadsheet isn’t the way to go about it. Instead, he decides to hold private meetings with family members and treat each case individually.

I don’t know if this film had a theatrical run. I’m guessing if it did, it was limited. But that doesn’t matter. It’s a story worth telling, especially with the twentieth anniversary of 9/11. It’s the number two movie on Netflix. It’s worth your time.

By Leave a Comment

Review of the Netflix Documentary Series Turning Point

Review of the Netflix Documentary Series Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror
Rating *****

If you can watch only one 9/11 documentary, make it this one. This five-part documentary series expertly encapsulates the mistakes made before and after that terrible day.

Rather than focus solely on the events of 9/11, this documentary series examines the Bush Administration’s flawed response: the missed opportunity to get Osama Bin Laden when he was still in Afghanistan, the lies and deception that led to the invasion of Iraq, the misguided justification for the use of enhanced interrogation techniques (torture).

One fact that I was not aware of concerned the motivation to go after Sadam Hussain. I always believed, and still do, that the entire Iraq invasion had more to do with a failed assassination attempt on George H. W. Bush than any claims of supposed ties to Al-Qaeda and the possession of weapons of mass destruction. It turns out, however, that part of the justification came from an Al-Qaeda operative who provided false information while undergoing torture by the CIA.

After watching this documentary series, I agree that it was time to leave Afghanistan. We let 9/11 happen partly due to a lack of governmental interagency communication. We tried to force American values on a nation that was only somewhat receptive. We stayed too long. We spent too much money for what we got in return. This documentary series demonstrates the truth behind the statement “elections have consequences.”