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Gordon Glantz is the managing editor of the Times Herald and an award winning columnist.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Limelight

If you are still frustrated about the Studio Centre movie studios filed in the burgeoning phone-book-sized volumes of recent Norristown missed opportunities, fret not.
A movie -- "Silver Linings" -- was being filmed today on the grounds of the Norristown State Hospital.
It must be a big deal, because it stars Bradley Cooper. While I wouldn't know Cooper if he walked up and punched me in the nose, I'm told he is a big star with Montgomery County roots.
The plot of the movie is apparently that of a former teacher, Cooper, who comes home to live with his mother after spending time in a mental institution.
I wish the makers of the film would have reached out earlier. If they wanted to tape a scene in a real live nuthouse, we could have taken care of them here in our newsroom.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Knock Three Times

Upon further review, Amanda Knox and her one-time boyfriend, Raffaelle Sollecito, are not guilty in the brutal murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher in the Bohemian Italian town of Perugia.

Sadly, there are so many unanswered questions.

Not that I really care about a case that got too much media coverage when crimes like this happen all the time, but I couldn’t even tell you if Knox and friend got off on a technicality or were railroaded from the jump.

All the American media coverage was about how her “four-year nightmare is over” and how she is “free to go home.”

Check out the BBC or CNN International coverage, and the slant was much different (Kercher was British). It was more about the victim, her family, an unsolved crime and the fact those at least partially responsible were allowed to walk.

But no network really broke down the crime itself, at least not in a coherent fashion, and instead took the easy road of focusing more on the immediate reaction and hyperbole.

My years of training from watching old-time detective/police shows tells me that Knox and Sollecito were not involved in the murder, and that Rudy Guede (serving a 16-year term, which was less than Knox’s before it was overturned) acted alone or with someone yet unknown.