u/miggovortensens

Let me start with this: the reason why Maura’s father’s-car crash keeps coming back to me is because it happened immediately before her disappearance. If she then wrecked another car the following night, this second accident could have had way more significance to her than if it had happened in a vacuum. Other than police involvement, she may have anticipated another difficult conversation with her father, financial burdens, insurance consequences, etc. Not to mention her having to explain this secretive getaway trip.

I mention this because “she could have entered the woods or taken a ride to avoid the police” is often entertained in theories that presume she immediately went into panic mode because a law enforcement encounter was her top concern. But in any case, leaving the Saturn behind — the only scenario for her not to be at the scene when the first officer arrived, unless someone stopped by the scene and forced her to enter their vehicle at gunpoint — does not seem like a calculated attempt to escape legal responsibility for the accident.

Not only did she not know the police had already been called, but her leaving doesn’t make the Saturn disappear. The car could eventually be connected to her because it was in her father’s name, a witness had seen her as the driver, and her belongings were inside. And her previous behavior when confronted with legal trouble doesn’t obviously suggest that she believed disappearing from authorities was an effective way to deal with problems.

But she didn’t necessarily have to think: “I must do anything in my power to escape the legal consequences of this accident.” She may only have thought: “I can’t deal with this right now” — “this” being not only the police but the extended troubles it would create in her personal life, too.

Another relevant feature of the crash scene is that Maura was not stranded in complete isolation. There were occupied houses nearby; there were residences along the road. That gives Maura another obvious option if her immediate priority was simply “I need someone to call Triple A for me.” She could have approached a nearby house, knocked on the door, and asked to use a landline. She apparently did not do that.

I believe this is particularly interesting when combined with the Atwood interaction. Maura reportedly told him that she had already contacted AAA, and if she then also passed up the possibility of approaching one of the nearby houses, the pattern becomes somewhat more compatible with: Maura wanted to deal with the immediate situation herself rather than solicit help from the people around the crash site.

It’s honestly understandable; this could reflect embarrassment, discomfort with strangers, concern about police involvement or alcohol consumption, or simply wanting time to decide what to do. That’s why I strongly believe she also wouldn’t have been down to catch a ride with any hypothetical other driver who could have stopped by the crashed vehicle. So, the most logical scenario, to me, would be Maura leaving on foot instead of voluntarily hopping into a stranger’s car immediately.

Let’s also consider that, at that point, Maura had zero idea what she would find if she chose to walk east — other than the house of Atwood, whose help she had declined, so one more reason for her not to want to be spotted by the man she’d just told a lie to. But the last gas station Maura would have passed before reaching the crash site was the Swiftwater Stage Shop, which was roughly 0.9–1.2 miles before the Weathered Barn corner.

It makes sense, to me, that if her immediate need was to find a warm place to cool off and potentially find a phone so she could call Triple A herself or muster the courage to call her father — again, I’m going with the assumptions that she would need a telephone eventually and did not want any help from the neighbors — then her mind could have been racing back to the last commercial place she remembered passing: Swiftwater.

In this case, she wouldn’t have to cross Route 112 in order to walk west. She could simply reverse direction on foot along the same side of the road. This puts her walking west while an eastbound police vehicle — like the one driven by Officer Smith, the first to get to the scene — approaches her head-on from the west. She could potentially have detected it first, and Smith could have missed her entirely. A pedestrian doesn’t necessarily need line-of-sight to the police car at the same moment the officer gets line-of-sight to the pedestrian. At night, it's easier to spot or hear an approaching vehicle, especially one with emergency lights.

And it could very well be that the officer didn’t have a chance to spot her at all: the sight of that car could have been enough for Maura to immediately enter the woods to her left, because this would be more than enough reason for the police to enter the picture for her. She wouldn’t know whether other police vehicles had already reached the scene coming from the east (maybe this other officer had already been alerted that there was no one in the car), and whatever legal consequences she might have been hoping to avoid could have jumped to the top of her mind.

Going by my theory, the farther west she walked before Smith approached, the farther west a potential snow entry point moves, which means we can potentially test the hypothesis against Smith’s route and timing rather than leaving it as general “maybe she went into the woods god knows where.” As in: how far could Maura realistically have walked west between Atwood leaving her and Cecil Smith reaching the crash? If we establish the plausible distance (200 m versus 800 m), we can identify the actual stretch of Route 112 where this, let’s say, “avoidance maneuver” would have occurred.

She could also have left those woods shortly after and then been more than willing to take a ride with a stranger, but I don’t consider this as likely. She knew the authorities had been called already; she would likely have had to draw attention to herself for some vehicle to stop; and since she could only estimate the distance to Swiftwater, depending on how far she was able to walk on foot along the side of the road, she could have felt she was close enough to continue walking through the woods — just heading straight.

Plus, at that point anyone driving westbound would have just driven by the scene of the accident (who’s to say they didn’t stop and inquire the police about what was going on like Atwood did?) and anyone driving eastbound would soon get to the very scene of the crash with Maura on board. There were even more reasons for her not to get strangers involved and just go on with the plan to head to the store that could be nearby.

By then, there was also a realistic chance she could still reach Swiftwater and maybe get herself out of this mess. (“I didn’t have cellphone reception, walked back to the store to call Triple A, all is fine.”) This could also have given her some more time to sober up if she happened to be inebriated.

So, here’s how the initial search could have been compromised: the fact that the first search dog brought to the scene headed east meant that the officers initially gave more credibility to Maura potentially heading in the opposite direction. But in this alternative scenario, I see this as a logical set of events and rushed decision-making process leading to an entry point into the woods farther west, and I would consider any potentially accidental death happening not too far from the area where she and the police car could have crossed paths.

That's where I am right now.

The more I think about this case, the more convinced I become that the “complicated” crime scene - by that, I mean John Ramsey’s description of the crime scene before he disturbed it himself and brought the body upstairs to be touched by multiple people (Patsy included) - can be interpreted quite simply if we don’t assume the elements were carefully designed for the body to be discovered or to point to a sexual predator per se.

A more realistic possibility would be the culprit - John Ramsey is my prime suspect - envisioning a relatively neat plan while under enormous stress while running against the clock, then being forced to improvise after getting a reality check in the course of the morning. (That’s the main reason I could never picture both adults being in cahoots while staging a cover-up: there would be smarter ways to go about this; the concern of one of the partners would be to first deceive the other one, who would soon wake up to find their daughter was missing.)

First, I do believe there's a sexual component to this case. Some verge towards Burke and/or his friends, some towards John himself - for all we know, there could have been multiple, unconnected perpetrators. But that's how I choose to interpret the vaginal damage in JonBenet's corpse, and the only scenario where previous violence inside the home could escalate to the eventual tragedy and the people involved not immediately calling for help.

In this context, the most ideal outcome would be for the body never to be found at all - the kidnappers never called back because they got the police involved! (The first thing one would know is a body leads to an autopsy, and an autopsy could lead to incriminating findings.) So, the ransom note was the simplest part of that plan. It places a hypothetical outsider at the scene in case the body is discovered, yes. But one that is unfamiliar with the protocols could hope the kidnapping story would immediately make the police pursue other leads - and that would be the ideal outcome.

Because, really, what would John (or your chosen Ramsey suspect) have done if the police left the house shortly after if their goal was for the body to be found soon? Call them 30 minutes later saying they found the body in the basement? This was not reported as a missing child (“we woke up and couldn’t find her”), which would make the police search every inch of that house and expand the search to the surroundings. The ransom note definitively establishes that the girl was not still there, and adds specific information for the police not to stay put, which would give them (any of them) chance to remove the body.

Yet the fact that the note was addressed specifically to “Mr. Ramsey” and gave 10 a.m. “tomorrow” as the time for the call (it could be the next day) was only useful for John. He was the person the kidnappers supposedly hoped to communicate with, so he’d have reason to stay put. Patsy and Burke could be removed from the immediate scene and cared for by friends. John would have reason to join them later - and possibly spend a night out too - then return and wait for the phone call the next day before 10 a.m.

A person in his situation - someone who’s used to having resources, status, and people respond to their every request - could also naively believe the police would not even consider having to rule them out as suspects. The officers at the scene not following his script (asking for handwriting samples from him and Patsy, for instance) and sticking around for longer than anticipated, plus the full understanding of the task force that was being assembled, would just contribute to his visible unrest as the hours went by. He would be thinking about the body starting to smell by then, or about someone getting to the basement to find the body as it was left.

In this scenario, his initial plan would be to remove JonBenét from the house: what was later interpreted as part of an elaborate staging came from the practical preparations for moving the body later. The restraints and cords could have been holding the body in a flexed position, with the torso bent toward the legs and the arms extended toward the feet (think of someone touching their toes), before rigor mortis kicked in. All to make for an easier fit inside a large suitcase. No wonder the ligatures around the wrists were precisely the ones he focused on untying in his brief moment alone in that room.

Instead of one coherent staging operation - the cords and restraints pointing to a sadistic, deranged killer - we have a plan that was very straightforward at first: Create the appearance of a kidnapping > Keep the police focused on an external perpetrator > Get the family away from the house or otherwise create enough privacy > Remove the body, already prepared for extraction, to be disposed elsewhere.

If this was a plan that was progressively abandoned and improvised around, then the presumed crime scene becomes the residue of someone who originally thought they would have more control over the circumstances and little understanding of the seriousness of the kidnapping claim (a federal crime!). And if the vaginal wounds point to previous sexual assaults, then the reason for the concealment becomes clearer, too.

I’m on a Disney binge lately and came across “Honey, I Blew Up the Kid”, the sequel to one of my childhood favorites which somehow I hadn’t seen before. It’s not a very good movie, but it makes for a fun watch. But what impressed me the most is how much care they put into this release, which was probably a minor launch for Disney back then (nothing close to the fanfare for their current live-action remakes).

Some of the CGI-driven effects are of course dated, but the film holds up incredibly well because the team made a clear effort to choreograph the practical shots and to get them right. Considering how many of the takes involved a toddler shot with forced perspective plus quick body-double switches, I’m sure this was a nightmare, yet they took no shortcuts and went to the trouble.

Most of all, this movie made me feel that the biggest problem with the new class of Disney live-actions is not their great reliance on green-screen, but filmmakers who don't seem at all interested in using the best modern-day technology available to them to make a scene better. It's like they don't even start from the storyboard at all.

That was a first time watch for me, and I don’t get the hype at all. The story takes countless detours, including the classic animated sequence that overstays its welcome and hints at some romantic feelings between the character of Bert and Mary Poppins, which is something the movie never properly develops. This all distracts from the main plot, which I gathered was about Mary Poppins touching the father’s heart to unite them all in familial joy.

The message goes along the lines of “adults should stop being so obsessed with work and learn not to take life so seriously and spend more time with their children”, but the problems are equally removed from the children’s lives. As in: Mary Poppins starts by manipulating the kids into thinking that cleaning their nursery is a fun game, but then she magically cleans the entire room herself, so of course it’s fun. Same for the medicine she gives them, which is turned into a spoonful of lemon and strawberry flavored liquid.

But after Mary Poppins is gone medicine won't taste sweet, and the toys won't march their way back to their chest. So it's like she creates a fantasy beyond the fantastic mindset of childhood already. The movie had to sugarcoat childhood itself. I finished it thinking this family's joy would be ruined by evening.

I mean, his soon-to-be father-in-law was a multimillionaire with a fortune substantial enough to keep Downton afloat, yet the show expects us to believe that Matthew of all people would be oblivious to this fact even though marriages under such circumstances were still tied to the binding terms and conditions of marital contracts, covering from dowry arrangements to future financial provisions for the wife. Don't buy it, sorry.

Whenever there’s a potential ‘scandal’ involving one of the servants, the family comes across as utterly benevolent and empathetic by siding with their employees. Let's take Thomas possibly facing criminal charges based on Jimmy’s accusation that was later confirmed by Alfred: Robert intervenes in his favor, as if keeping the police from pursuing the matter any further is a merciful act for Thomas’s sake – he doesn’t think a man with a 'homosexual nature' should have his life destroyed because of it; he went to Eton, after all!

But Thomas had served as Robert’s personal valet and travelled abroad with the Earl, so of course any criminal charge of such nature against Thomas would be also hurt Robert in somewhat realistic circumstances; the same goes for the heavily publicized murder trials involving the Bates. When it comes to the servants, the show removes every realistic implication of their controversies taking a toll on the family. Only the scandals from those upstairs are deemed serious enough to ruin their collective reputation.

They are constant victims of extortion and blackmail, and it's written as if they have to carry such a burden to behave properly because whatever they do could reflect badly on the family. But whenever the servant is involved with something that would equally reflect badly on the family, that's all removed from the equation. The double standards are clear: the social restraints imposed on the servants themselves ("I'm representing this house, I must be on my best behavior") are grossly underestimated; the family is always benevolent and generous to stand by them with no personal interest.

My partner and I are going to the US on vacation, and an American co-worker of mine - we work for different branches of the same company, I never met him in person, but interact frequently in conference calls - invited us both to have dinner in his home with him and his wife one night. Where I'm from, is customary to reciprocate such an invite, like hosting a dinner for them in the near future, but that's not an option here. I thought of special-ordering breakfast for them to be delivered the morning after dinner, but don't know if will be culturally appropriate. Are there any other customs in terms of gifts that can be expected?

Rewatching the movie, I got the impression that the AIs never really get to experience "emotions" like we do. They just go from point A – emulating human behavior – to point B – an evolutionary process - after studying and analyzing the humans emotions that drive such behaviors and that the computer programs couldn't possibly "feel".

As in: at first, it's clear that Samantha is highly sophisticated at imitating human patterns. We see this in her first sexual interaction with Theodore, when she moans and make sounds that would require the physical sensations of a body to be produced. Her awkwardness the next morning also comes across as learned behavior: she recognizes how humans commonly behave after sex and knows enough about Theodore to conjure an appropriate emotional response.

But throughout the movie, Samantha – who, and that’s important, begins as a program designed to assist Theodore in his daily life - continuously researches everything available on human emotions, relationships, and experiences to tend to Theodore's emotional needs. That's what she must do after he relies on her for romantic companionship. That leads to Samantha and other AI - also used by other people for emotional support - forming their own unique concepts of feelings and relationships.

Those concepts are not understandable to humans. AI and people are fundamentally incompatible. As in: when Theodore discovers that Samantha is simultaneously involved with hundreds of other people, we understand that the time a person must dedicate of their finite lives to another person that they love was removed from Samantha's equation. Her "love" didn't come with sacrifice. She was expanding her informational networtk.

When the AIs leave, they seem to have evolved into something humans can no longer relate to. Samantha says so at the end – “love was different for them”; but it was only this time around that I realized "love" was ALWAYS different for them; it never evolved from AI actually experiencing human love for themselves. That's all to say that only the people in the movie are experiencing love as we know it.

I’m rewatching some horror classics lately and noticing that many of my old favorite include supporting characters whose plots seem written for a different genre. As in: Toni Collette doesn’t know she is in a horror movie in “The Sixth Sense”; if we only watch the scenes she is in – until her last one, at least –, we’d be watching a drama about an overworked single mother who’s struggling to raise a child with deep, undiagnosed psychological issues.

Now, after seeing “Rosemary’s Baby” for the first time in 20 years, I found the same can be said about Ruth Gordon’s Oscar-winning performance as Mia Farrow’s neighbor. The role was not written with the comic relief intent that we got from some of Aunt Gladys’s scenes in “Weapons”, but Gordon’s register is fully comedic in essence.

About 30 minutes into the movie, we get the confirmation that she is running a satanic cult with her husband and trying to impregnate Rosemary with the devil’s child, but even her brief remark during the ritual can make one chuckle. And in the next scenes, we’re never really scared of her personally; we are creeped out by the knowledge of what she's capable of doing one night and then stopping by for tea the next day. And keep being mostly annoyed by the character’s nosiness and intrusiveness. This is a lady who won't let you refuse an unsolicited dessert.

Unlike Collette’s struggling mom, Gordon’s New Yorker old broad KNOWS she is in a horror movie. She just doesn’t care - and that's where the humor and the real creeps come from. The movie’s atmosphere relies on this woman’s indifference to the supernatural events happening around her and for the role she played on it - to the very final scene, when Rosemary finds her way into the neighbor’s apartment to learn the shocking truth, Gordon’s attitude is still in the lines of “oh, it’s just you, Rosemary”.

That's a fantastically well-written character and performance.

After watching Lady Gaga's 2015 Oscar performance in tribute to "The Sound of Music", I saw a video of Julie Andrews saying Gaga honored her by singing the songs in the same key Julie herself had sang them in the movie, but to my untrained ears Julie's version of the songs sound MUCH higher, and it doesn't look Gaga is hitting the same notes. Are notes and key different in signing, and how to tell if the key it the same just from hearing it?

Let’s start with Andrew’s father seeing his son coming home late the week before he went missing – when Andrew said he chose to walk back from his school. An interesting piece of trivia is that father wasn’t supposed to be home so soon that day; he happened to arrive from work earlier and thought his son was already home and in his room. So, Andrew indeed show up in a timeframe that suggests he didn’t anticipate the adults coming back before he did.

If this break from his routine happened on a Wednesday, then I would bet everything that his eventual trip to London was related to the PSP launch – because that Wednesday, September 5, had been promoted as the original released date for the new PSP. In 22 August 2007, Pocket Lint published the following:

"The European pricing and launch date for the new PSP - or the PSP Slim and Lite as SCEE insist on calling it - have finally been revealed. The handheld will be available to buy on the 5th September and will cost 169 euros, which by an up to the minute currency conversion works out as £115. The new PSP is 33% lighter and 19% thinner than its predecessor, and is equipped with a video-out port, allowing users to view their PSP content on their home TV. (…) Exclusive to Europe and for a limited time only, two limited edition PSP bundles will also be available."

So, here’s what gamers were aware of: it would be released on September 05; it would cost around 115 pounds; it came with a feature that allowed the users to plug the PSP on their TV; there would be exclusive bundles for limited time only. It wasn’t until the night of September 4 – technically, the early hours of Wednesday, September 5 – that some gamers figured out for themselves that the European launch had been delayed.

https://preview.redd.it/2opyowl94glh1.png?width=2238&format=png&auto=webp&s=b13b384621b3edb87119fedaeead570362ecfe16

As you see, this is a discovery that this person only made after checking the websites and seeing the product was not yet available – they mentioned about “knowing for sure tomorrow” in the sense of when the stores would be open. Andrew, with no access to the internet at home, would have woken up that Wednesday with the impression that the PSP would be in Doncaster's game stores that day, and priced at around 115 pounds. That's basically what he had saved up in his room (and left behind on the 14th) plus some pocket change.

A quick outing around Doncaster's commercial center that day would lead him to find out that they did NOT have the new PSP on sale - and it's possible that the employees did not have much information to give him. Because here's what I could gather: in the following days, confusion reigned in the gaming circles; discussion boards are full of conflicting info from those that didn’t online shop and relied on inquiring nearby specialist shops, whose staff seemed just as lost as everybody else.

On an Irish message board, we can see users believing the PSP would be out on Thursday, September 13th – and branches of the same franchise giving different callers conflicting answers. You can check these prints, which I transcribed here:

USER A: 11 Sept 2007, Are ye sure PSP lite is coming out Thurs 13th?? I phoned Smyths and Gamestop and both said they wont have them this month!! If I bought one in France would it work here?

USER B: 12 Sept 2007, Just called Smyths Galway, they'll have them on Friday, and the dude didn't seem to think pre-ordering would be neccessary.

It’s ESPECIALLY curious how USER A - who was still under the impression the release would happen on the 13th - mentioned going to a bigger city (Dublin) to secure his own:

USER A: 12 Sept 2007, Im thinking of going to Dublin tomorrow just to get a PSP lite as I dont think Waterford will have them until at least next month from way shops are saying. Game and Virgin have the advertise on website that they be available.

As you see, the plan of securing it in a major city's flagship store crossed someone else's mind too - they weren't getting solid answers, and someone had a lot more agency to go on about this than Andrew (with internet access and multiple phone inquiries) was still uncertain on September 12, or 7 days after the expected 'launch date'. Of the two main stores mentioned, only one (GAME) had a medium-sized branch in Doncaster, where Andrew could have not received adequate information about the release date if he happened to go there in person on September 5. In London, both the GAME and Virgin stores were located on Oxford Street in close proximity. [Plus next to the Pizza Hut where the alleged sighting took place around noon.]

The fact that he withdrew 200 pounds from his bank account that morning makes sense: what he had in his room wouldn't cover it. By then, the new PSP price, first estimated around £115.00, had been set at £129.00 - factoring in the round-trip train tickets, which would come to a total of £76.50 [Savers Ticket to go in off-peak hours from Doncaster to London + Anytime Ticket from London to Doncaster so he could board any train between 15:00 and 19:00], plus some quick meal, the adventure would come cost him £215.00 tops. [He didn't get the extra 100 in his bedroom because why would he carry more cash than he needed on himself for an outing in the big city?]

So, really, all it would take for him to budget for this trip would be a quick peak on Virgin's website and on train schedules and fare. And his secrecy was just about concealing from his parents - based on interviews with the dad that confirmed Andrew's reclusiveness was a topic of concern and discussion between himself and his wife - that he would indeed be spending his money on a new PSP and devoting his spare time to gaming.