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Amelia Earhart May Have Survived Crash-Landing

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12,017
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East of Los Angeles
Yes, 2006. What's frustrating is that they had the technical material to create a great visual of the time period. I'm not sure why the producers had to install a soap story of the two lead characters. The events of the "Black Dahlia" felt as an add-on or after thought. Without a good screenplay or acting this movie appears to have been produced by folks using straws.

Titanic movie. Same thing!
The real problem with The Black Dahlia is that it's based on the novel of the same name written by James Ellroy--a crime fiction novel that uses the discovery of Ms. Short's body as not much more than a plot device. To make matters worse, director Brian De Palma edited the movie's initial cut in order to reduce it's run time from three hours to two, which resulted in the final version being somewhat incoherent.

I agree with your comparison to Titanic. "Hey, let's take a tragic yet compelling real-life event and add a bunch of phony baloney fictional elements to it!" :rolleyes:
 

BlueTrain

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I don't think the History Channel's target audience reads books, so why should they?

I rather enjoyed such episodes of "In Search Of," although I didn't watch that many and I didn't watch them religiously. I thought "Unsolved Mysteries" with Robert Stack was just as good, though. In all cases, however, the reenactments tend to detract from the story, although some may feel just the opposite. But the medium of television calls for something like that. In the same way, local TV news rarely shows events that usually start out the program. There may have been a murder and the on the spot reporter is standing near where it may have happened but that's all you see. TV news is far more entertaining when there's a heavy snowfall and the intrepid reporters are standing in the street around town in places you're actually familiar with, yardstick in hand, talking about what you can see happening right outside your window. But maybe the news isn't supposed to be entertaining.
 

BlueTrain

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In my opinion, the best crime movie ever made is "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." It's a little bizarre, frankly, and not really as satisfying to sit and watch as a Sam Spade movie, a couple which are a little hard to follow, or even an old Charlie Chan movie, which don't take as much effort.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
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33,757
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Try reading a few books about the unsolved murder of Elizabeth "The Black Dahlia" Short that are written by someone who claims he/she can prove who the killer was. They're all essentially the same, and sometimes even use the same evidence to support their claims, but they all make leaps of faith and/or "massage" the facts to fit their theories, and it's almost always a family member who, at best, had a tenuous connection to Ms. Short. :rolleyes:

Hmph. Everybody knows Dagwood did it.
 
Messages
12,017
Location
East of Los Angeles
...But maybe the news isn't supposed to be entertaining.
I think TV news, for quite some time, has been mostly entertainment. They might start off with "breaking news" or some other important issue of the day, but it quickly devolves into discussions about the latest trends, sports events, movies, or whatever else they can think of to fill air time, and then they repeat themselves every 20 minutes, all hosted by "anchors" who are clearly working hard to preserve the image that they're all one big happy family.

One of the local Los Angeles stations recently added two hours to their morning "news" broadcast, extending it from five to seven hours. The problem is that, unless there's actually some event occurring somewhere that demands coverage, the first hour is nothing but reruns of selected segments from the previous day's broadcast, and the last hour is pure filler about the latest bikini trends, "hot" local restaurants with big prices and small portions, interviews with "used to be" celebrities attempting a comeback, and the occasional update from their narcissistic weatherman who has had too many plastic surgeries and probably has it written in his contract that they're not allowed to film him from behind for fear of revealing his bald spot. :rolleyes:
 

2jakes

I'll Lock Up
Messages
9,680
Location
Alamo Heights ☀️ Texas
I think TV news, for quite some time, has been mostly entertainment. They might start off with "breaking news" or some other important issue of the day, but it quickly devolves into discussions about the latest trends, sports events, movies, or whatever else they can think of to fill air time, and then they repeat themselves every 20 minutes, all hosted by "anchors" who are clearly working hard to preserve the image that they're all one big happy family.

One of the local Los Angeles stations recently added two hours to their morning "news" broadcast, extending it from five to seven hours. The problem is that, unless there's actually some event occurring somewhere that demands coverage, the first hour is nothing but reruns of selected segments from the previous day's broadcast, and the last hour is pure filler about the latest bikini trends, "hot" local restaurants with big prices and small portions, interviews with "used to be" celebrities attempting a comeback, and the occasional update from their narcissistic weatherman who has had too many plastic surgeries and probably has it written in his contract that they're not allowed to film him from behind for fear of revealing his bald spot. :rolleyes:

You’ve been to my news station? o_O
 

BlueTrain

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2,073
I have often suggested that TV new and even more so, what is presented on Yahoo and similar internet sites, is ever so much like the old newsreels and hardly more timely. There will be something about national politics, something about war in Europe or threat of war, something about the stock market, something about new hats in New York, something about floods on the Mississippi, something about a movie star in Hollywood, new bathing suits in Florida, unusual weather conditions in the Midwest, new cars, new fashions in Atlantic City and so on. The only things that are different are, the names are different and no one wears hats anymore. Everything else pretty much stays the same, especially the floods on the Mississippi.
 
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Location
My mother's basement
Among some of us in print media the term of endearment for local TV news guys was "haircuts," as in, "get your quotes before the haircuts show up and take over the place."
 

totallyfrozen

One of the Regulars
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250
Location
Houston, Texas, United States

Tiki Tom

My Mail is Forwarded Here
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3,398
Location
Oahu, North Polynesia
Not again! I think these TIGHAR guys need to give it a rest.

The latest (as reported by National Geographic, no less) is that specially trained forensic dogs may have sniffed out where Emilia Earhart died. Supposedly the dogs quickly found a tree where they smelled human remains. Then "On the last day on the island, archaeologist Dawn Johnson and physician Kim Zimmerman donned surgical masks and gloves and filled five Ziploc bags with soil from around the ren tree. Arrangements were being made to send the samples to a DNA lab in Germany."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/forensic-dogs-amelia-earhart-spot-where-died/

However, I am impressed with the "legs" this story has. It just never dies. People can't get enough of a historical mystery, I guess.
 

2jakes

I'll Lock Up
Messages
9,680
Location
Alamo Heights ☀️ Texas
.....People can't get enough of a historical mystery, I guess.

Human nature!

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Screen Shot 2017-07-20 at 2.36.33 PM.png
 
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Tiki Tom

My Mail is Forwarded Here
Messages
3,398
Location
Oahu, North Polynesia

2jakes

I'll Lock Up
Messages
9,680
Location
Alamo Heights ☀️ Texas
Quotes – Amelia Earhart

"Please know that I am aware of the hazards.
I want to do it because I want to do it.
Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail,
their failure must be a challenge to others.
Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I
considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn't any
good reason to refer to it.
Women must pay for everything. They do get more glory than men
for comparable feats, but, they also get more notoriety when they
crash.
In my life, I had come to realize that, when things were going very
well, indeed, it was the time to anticipate trouble.
And, conversely, I learned from pleasant experience that at the
most despairing crisis, when all looked sour beyond words,
some delightful “break” was apt to lurk just around the corner.”
A.E.
 
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