The Blotter Presents
The true crime worth YOUR time, reviewed weekly. Sarah D. Bunting, desk sergeant.
Episodes
August 19, 2020 • 69 mins
Nope, that's not a typo: Best Evidence publisher Eve Batey joins me to talk about a movie that's still in "theaters," Most Wanted. Featuring Josh Hartnett's foxy 'stache and a breakout ugly performance from Jim Gaffigan, Most Wanted interrogates the role of budgetary concerns in law-enforcement corruption and/or incompetence...and we interrogate the crusading-reporter subgenre and whether it's true to life.
We do it ...
We do it ...
Mark as Played
August 12, 2020 • 66 mins
[CW: The episode reviews series that discuss sexual assault, harm to children, and suicide. Please listen with care.]
Omar Gallaga returns to discuss two very grim and infuriating properties, starting with Lifetime's Surviving Jeffrey Epstein, which centers the survivors of Epstein's monstrousness while also indicting a society that let him manipulate it with shocking impunity. It's a good docuseries that's also a dif...
Omar Gallaga returns to discuss two very grim and infuriating properties, starting with Lifetime's Surviving Jeffrey Epstein, which centers the survivors of Epstein's monstrousness while also indicting a society that let him manipulate it with shocking impunity. It's a good docuseries that's also a dif...
Mark as Played
August 11, 2020 • 7 mins
Wondery’s Even the Rich gives you a behind-the-scenes look at the stories of some of the greatest family dynasties in history. This season, three siblings — Gianni, Donatella, and Santo Versace — built one of the greatest fashion labels the world has ever seen. But when Gianni is murdered on the front steps of his Miami Beach mansion, the label loses its visionary. Can the House of Versace survive? On this four-episode series,...
Mark as Played
August 5, 2020 • 84 mins
Two guests, no waiting this week, as ...These Are Their Stories co-host Kevin Flynn joins me to talk about Ann Rule's Sleeping With Danger, starring Elisabeth "Serena Southerlyn" Röhm and Leslie "ME Rodgers" Hendrix. It's a thumbs-sideways from both of us on the movie, which is not quite good, but not all that bad, and has some anachronism issues and PSA pacing that undercut surprisingly decent acting. Grab a Smoothie Of Doom ...
Mark as Played
July 29, 2020 • 51 mins
Is this the widest gulf in quality between the two shows under discussion in Blotter history? Maybe! But Netflix's new three-part series on the "Commission Case" that brought down the New York Mob is disciplined, compelling, and reminds me and guest Jeb Lund that Rudy Giuliani didn't always completely suck at everything...and that barbers really have a challenging job sometimes.
The Perfect Murder, meanwhile, is also...
The Perfect Murder, meanwhile, is also...
Mark as Played
July 22, 2020 • 75 mins
Filmmaker and baseball-Twitter-improver Randy Wilkins joins me to talk about Netflix's The Business Of Drugs, a six-part series hosted by Amaryllis Fox that tries to take a value-neutral look at the economics of black-market substances. But is it TOO neutral? Does it try to do too much in each episode? Might it have been better off only following a single figure through each drug's "story"? And what do coverage of cocaine cart...
Mark as Played
July 15, 2020 • 55 mins
[content warning for discussions of child sexual abuse, suicide]
Stephanie Green ventures back into the grim case against Larry Nassar with me this week, this time with Netflix's Athlete A, which sets itself apart from other properties by also making a case against USA Gymnastics, the Karolyi Ranch, and the messed-up ways we think about child athletes. If you watched At The Heart Of Gold, do you "need" to watch this o...
Stephanie Green ventures back into the grim case against Larry Nassar with me this week, this time with Netflix's Athlete A, which sets itself apart from other properties by also making a case against USA Gymnastics, the Karolyi Ranch, and the messed-up ways we think about child athletes. If you watched At The Heart Of Gold, do you "need" to watch this o...
Mark as Played
July 1, 2020 • 65 mins
[content warning for sexual assault, neonaticide, truly egregious Foley design]
When the subject is the Golden State Killer, the guest is Mike Dunn, who's back to talk about the first three episodes of HBO's I'll Be Gone In The Dark. Directed by Oscar-winner Liz Garbus and others, the six-part docuseries seems to struggle to integrate two narrative styles: a straight-ahead true-crime tale, and a "crimoir" about the we...
When the subject is the Golden State Killer, the guest is Mike Dunn, who's back to talk about the first three episodes of HBO's I'll Be Gone In The Dark. Directed by Oscar-winner Liz Garbus and others, the six-part docuseries seems to struggle to integrate two narrative styles: a straight-ahead true-crime tale, and a "crimoir" about the we...
Mark as Played
June 24, 2020 • 51 mins
How to describe Miles Hargrove's documentary about his father's kidnapping by FARC guerrillas in 1994 -- a kidnap memoir? Found footage meets ransom procedural? It's all of that, and it's unique in the genre; my guest Jeb Lund and I don't know when you'll be able to watch it, but if it comes to VOD or Independent Lens, Jeb and I agree that you should check it out.
We're less of a mind about Netflix's exploration of qu...
We're less of a mind about Netflix's exploration of qu...
Mark as Played
June 17, 2020 • 34 mins
[CW for references to domestic violence, racial violence, and medical malpractice.]
The podcast staycations on the doc-festival circuit this week with a couple of films from the Human Rights Watch Film Festival: Belly Of The Beast, a harrowing account of involuntary sterilization in the California penal system, and the sickening persistence of eugenics in the U.S.; and Coded Bias, which explores the capitalist algorit...
The podcast staycations on the doc-festival circuit this week with a couple of films from the Human Rights Watch Film Festival: Belly Of The Beast, a harrowing account of involuntary sterilization in the California penal system, and the sickening persistence of eugenics in the U.S.; and Coded Bias, which explores the capitalist algorit...
Mark as Played
June 10, 2020 • 95 mins
The Dirty John franchise, clumsily named though it is, is back -- and Marcia Chatelain is back to talk about it. It doesn't feel "necessary," in These Times...and yet we're both planning to keep watching, thanks to Amanda Peet's fearless performance; the comparisons we can make with Mrs. America; and the fond memories it recalls of Meredith Baxter's definitive version.
Later, we're digging into a Lifetime movie about...
Later, we're digging into a Lifetime movie about...
Mark as Played
June 3, 2020 • 73 mins
First-time guest and Best Evidence contributor Margaret Howie joined me to talk about Quiz, the miniseries about the UK Who Wants To Be A Millionaire scandal now airing on AMC. Is it as good for what it leaves out as what it puts in? Are there class issues at work that non-Brits can't get at? And how does Matthew MacFadyen manage to play Charles Ingram so neutrally?
Later, we talk about the great Alex Gibney's not AS ...
Later, we talk about the great Alex Gibney's not AS ...
Mark as Played
May 25, 2020 • 22 mins
Mobbed Up: The Fight For Las Vegas drops Tuesday, May 26. I interviewed producer and host Reed Redmond about the podcast, interviewing Mob enforcers, mid-century nostalgia, and NOT watching Casino.
SHOW NOTES
SHOW NOTES
- Mobbed Up at the Las Vegas Review-Journal
- Tour the Mob Museum virtually
Mark as Played
May 20, 2020 • 69 mins
After our plans to cover Amazon docuseries The Last Narc got disappeared along with the show, Jessica Liese and I pivoted back to familiar ground: Fake Heiress, a late-2019 pod on everyone's favorite art-foundationing NYC scammer, Anna Delvey/Sorokin. The podcast isn't good, and across-the-pond class issues read weirdly to us North Americans...but is it a fast and fun enough listen for us to recommend? Or are you better off re...
Mark as Played
May 13, 2020 • 69 mins
Allison Lowe Huff returns for a UK docudrama two-fer, starting with A Confession, ITV's miniseries from last year about the murders of Sian O'Callaghan and Becky Godden, and the confession to them that cracked the cases but ruined a detective's career. Did we need more than six episodes with these people? Did Steve Fulcher's book have more crackpot theories than the TV adaptation allowed for? And is anyone worse than Pete? (Sp...
Mark as Played
May 6, 2020 • 86 mins
Piper Weiss returned for a 1993 Lifetime movie about Tennessee baby broker Georgia Tann, Stolen Babies, that won Mary Tyler Moore an Emmy. Is this a notch above the usual '90s Lifetime fare, or do the accents ruin the relatively snappy pacing and shockingly direct villainy of Tann's actions?
We dug into the Tann story thanks to the second part of the podcast: Kevin Smokler's conversation with Criminal and This Is Lov...
We dug into the Tann story thanks to the second part of the podcast: Kevin Smokler's conversation with Criminal and This Is Lov...
Mark as Played
April 29, 2020 • 63 mins
Toby Ball takes a break from refilling the Clorox shot-ski to talk about HBO's ripped-from-the-2004-headlines docudrama, Bad Education, in which Wolverine and CJ Cregg defraud the Roslyn school district -- and Toby and I really liked it, but did it need a stronger or more singular point of view? Should it have embraced its All The President's American Vandals nature more openly? And what is Janney's accent doing?
Late...
Late...
Mark as Played
April 22, 2020 • 56 mins
Australio-Irish icon Ned Kelly got the very first big-screen treatment in 1906, and now the director of Snowtown is back with yet another one. Does Justin Kurzel's time-shifted "punk" take on Peter Carey's novel hold Alex Segura's and my interest? Later, we'll talk about whether The Catch & Kill Podcast With Ronan Farrow needs to exist, what we'd rather have heard instead, and text niftinesses that don't translate. Grab a ...
Mark as Played
April 15, 2020 • 71 mins
A new hour-long documentary confronts the deaths of Jen and Sarah Hart and their six adopted children in A Thread Of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy -- but did this doc need to exist? And does it do anything the Broken Harts podcast didn't? Later, we'll talk about a docu-nactment hybrid, American Animals, from the director of The Imposter, and whether this genre-buster works where the Transy book heist did not. (Uh, spoiler.) ...
Mark as Played
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