Word: conned
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...requiring that action. Hastings also offered a parade of 50 witnesses, including three judges who testified to his integrity. Borders, concluded the defense, was simply engaged in the time-honored legal scam of "rainmaking," in which bribe money is smoothly returned if the judge fails to do what the con man guessed he would...
...gets the benefit of the doubt in this case, since the translation is probably to blame for taking away the meaning of the scene. Some of the lines and gestures, though, can only be schmaltz in any language. At one point, Dini is at a bar with an old con; after explaining his feelings, the con mutters. "And as for women ... ", and the two clink their glasses together...
...WHOLE, the movie suffers from overnarration--too much tell, not enough show. Time really does stand still when the old con begins to tell the Koves boys about his "purification" in prison. A dramatic moment hovers in the wings, but the talk degenerates into a discussion of the con's agricultural opinions and the potential disappears. Such subtlety may tell us more about the "purification" than a blown-up scene, but man cannot live on realism and understatement alone. "Boredon is itself boring...
...when the Robert Redford and Paul Newman characters turn out only to be feigning death, the twist is a shock because those actors portray such genuine. killable men. The viewer believes he is watching real-world scenes in which such a tragedy could occur. The movie itself is a con game, the audience its victims, and everyone falls...
...turmoil in Scientology began to intensify with Armstrong's scrutiny of Hubbard's private papers. "I went from being a devotee to realizing I was the victim of a con game," he says. Archivist Armstrong concluded in his court statement that Scientology is "behavior therapy masquerading as a 'church' and making a mockery of honest religious practices." His wife Jocelyn, also a former leader in the church, agrees. She declares, "Most Scientologists simply have no idea of what goes on or how the church is really...