Utah high court pauses firing squad execution of man with dementia

Utah high court pauses firing squad execution of man with dementia

Lower court to decide if Ralph Leroy Menzies, who killed Maurine Hunsaker in 1986, is competent to face execution The impending execution of a man by firing squad in Utah was blocked by the state’s supreme court on Friday after his attorneys argued he should be spared because he has dementia. Ralph Leroy Menzies, 67, was set to be executed on 5 September for abducting and killing Utah mother of three Maurine Hunsaker in 1986. When given a choice decades ago, Menzies selected a firing squad as his method of execution. He would have become only the sixth US prisoner executed by firing squad since 1977. Continue reading...

Megadoc review – absorbing account of an impressive and indomitable Francis Ford Coppola at work

Megadoc review – absorbing account of an impressive and indomitable Francis Ford Coppola at work

Venice film festival Mike Figgis’s valuable documentary shows how Coppola worked with actors on his $120m passion project Megalopolis When Francis Ford Coppola finally started work on his retrofuturist ancient Rome drama-parable Megalopolis (the self-funded passion project he had been nurturing for decades), he invited another director to be a fly on the wall and make a record of his work in progress. This was Mike Figgis , whose limber digital film-making skills were ideal for the task. The result is a thoroughly watchable, respectful, valuable and intimate account of a great film-maker at work – particularly rehearsing actors, a part of directing very rarely shown. (Coppola takes his cast through some wacky exploratory games, like an experimental theatre company.) It’s always impressive to see the indomitable Coppola in full rhetorical flow: holding forth, opining, schooling one and all on what happens when a film is made and how glorious it is to spend and even lose money in the service of cinema. Coppola is always entrepreneurially magnificent on this subject. And before this documentary, I had thought that Alfred Hitchcock was the last director on earth who came to work in a collar and tie. No: it’s Coppola. Continue reading...