#is every male agent just otto now

[timmythetimesheep]

ODD SQUAD MENTIONED PART 2 ‼️

YES for us odd squad fans this is about THE playing dumb plot twist villain, aka my glorious king ohlm. but damn. the ppl in the comments know too much. they are getting too smart. it’s time for them to be apart of the silly agent fandom.

there was def a lot of ppl trying to say ohlm i think

ngl even I forgot about the spoon turning scene. had to think abt that one for a bit

[the-penny-dreadfuls]

Donna Sue Davis was considered “the darling of the neighborhood”. That, in fact, is what everyone called her. The happy baby was adored by those living in Sioux City, Iowa and was especially beloved to her family. It was hard not to love Donna Sue. With her blonde curly lochs and sparkling blue eyes, she looked every bit of a living Kader baby doll. At twenty-one months, Donna Sue was the youngest of James and Mary Davis’ three children. They lived together on the first floor a neat, white duplex on Isabella Street. It was considered the ideal place to raise a family. Carefree children would run up and down the streets under their mothers’ watchful eyes. Summertime had always been considered a favorite season due to its jovial nature, but the summer of 1955 would change the neighborhood forever.

On the night of July 10th, 1955 Mary Davis tucked Donna Sue into bed. She placed some favorite toys - a teddy bear, a doll, and a red purse - inside the crib just in case the baby woke and needed comfort. Donna Sue was never far from her mother, though, as the crib was set at foot of her parents’ bed. After kissing her daughter goodnight, Mary opened the bedroom window in hopes of catching a breeze amidst the sweltering temperatures. Then, she goes to the living room to sit with her husband while she reads the paper.

Just after 9:30 PM George Berger, the Davis’ neighbor, notices a man cut through the hedges at the Davis house. It was dark, and too difficult to see exactly what the man was doing, but he seemed to be walking along the South side of the house. For a few short minutes the man disappears. Berger is about to brush off the incident when the man reappears. He walks across the yard in a hunched over position, now carrying a bundle in his hands. Berger is not the only neighbor to see him. Mr. and Mrs. Fjeldos, the couple living behind the Davis family, is alerted by the loud barking of their dog. Mrs. Fjeldos turns on their back yard light to see what all of the ruckus is about. The light reveals a strange man creeping down their alley way. Quickly, she alerts her husband, who goes after the man with a flashlight. The stranger tries to hide behind some bushes, but does not manage to escape. Mr. Fjeldos passes the flashlight off to his wife while he runs back inside to alert the police. Before the police can arrive, the man jolts through the alley, with Mr. Fjeldos right on his heels, and runs a block before he once again disappears into some bushes. He is never seen again.

A worn out Fjeldos returned to his home. He was standing outside, still waiting for the police to arrive, when a crowd of curious neighbors began to gather. Fjeldos was in the middle of telling them what had just happened when he was interrupted by a shrill scream. “My baby is gone!”

At 9:40 PM Mary Davis returned to her bedroom to check on Donna Sue. All she found was an empty crib. She and James search through the room just in case Donna Sue managed to climb out, but the baby was nowhere to be seen. What they did discover was the screen to the bedroom window was completely removed. James bolted downstairs to report the kidnapping.

Several other neighbors reported seeing a white male skulking around the neighborhood that night, but none were able to give a clear description of the suspect. He was believed to be in his 30’s, of average height, and wearing a white shirt with khacki pants. A man fitting this description was was seen by a Sioux citizen as he was driving near a motel. He passes a man in a white shirt and khaki pants standing by a black Charlovet van beside the road. In his arms was a baby. The scene was rather unusually considering it was past 10 PM, but the man drove on without giving it a second thought. He was not aware of the significance of that moment until he learned about the kidnapping. He was, however, able to remember the car had a Nebraska license plate.

A massive search carried out all of Sioux City. Everyone was desperate to help. Despite the tireless work of the police officers and many volunteers, little Donna Sue was not returned home. That afternoon a farmer by the name of Ernest Oehlerking was heading to Sioux City when a bright pink garment lying in the ditch caught his eye. Oehlerking stopped his tractor and got out to investigate. It was a pair of small pajama bottoms with a pair of rubber pants. Immediately, Oehlerking cancels his trip and hurries back home to alert the authorities. It would be his wife that would find Donna Sue. During the late afternoon of July 11th, 1955 Ernest’s wife, Genevieve, set out with Florence, her sister-in-law, set in their cars to search the area of William Oehlerking’s farm. With their daughters in tow, the drove along the road while keeping a sharp eye for another possible clue to the baby’s disappearance. The temperature that day blazed up to 96 degrees, but the women were determined to help a fellow mother, who was braving a nightmare miles away.

The quiet concentration is broken when one of the girls screams. Through sobs, she frantically tells the other passengers that she saw the baby’s body on the edge of a cornfield. They pull over to investigate. The girl was right; there, lying amongst broken corn stalks, was Donna Sue’s battered body. It takes only a glance for the Oehlerkings to know little Donna Sue had not died peacefully. Her body and face was littered with bruises, many of which are centered near her eyes. The pink pajama top that her mother had put on just the night before was wound tightly around her neck. The autopsy report would later reveal more grim and horrific details. In addition to the beating, the one-year-old suffered from a broken jaw. There were multiple cigarette burns on her buttocks, and she had been raped. The final cause of death was ruled as blunt force trauma. Investigators believed that the murderer threw Donna Sue out of his car as he drove away. The impact from the body broke several cornstalks. By the time she was found, Donna Sue had been dead nearly twelve hours when she was found.

Quickly, Genevieve and the children drove home to call the police. Florence remained in the cornfield, waiting, beside Donna Sue. She tore up a paper sack that she found nearby, and used it to cover up the baby in attempt to salvage her some dignity.

Once the case became a homicide the FBI became involved. Six federal agents were brought into investigate. J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director at that time, made a public comment that, although simple, perfectly summarized the feelings of those in Sioux City. “Get him!”

Days after Donna Sue’s body being recovered, investigators interviewed several men that fit the description of the man who was seen prowling around the Davis’ neighborhood. One of these men were Otto Wennekamp, a thirty-year-old, who sometimes worked as a farm hand. He was taken in for questioning on July 13th after he attempted to trade in his car for a rental. An employee at the car rental business noticed that there were cigarette burns on the dashboard of Wennekamp’s car, and promptly contacted the police. Wennekamp was interviewed by FBI agents, but was ruled out as a suspect by his air tight alibi.

Because the case had become incredibly well known to the public, investigators received an overflow of tips. There were also confessions. A drifter appeared at the police department and began to tell officers how he killed Donna Sue. While his confession was disturbing, a further investigation proved that the drifter was in another state where he was working at carnival. He later recanted his confession.

A break in the case occurred six months later on December 10th, 1955. Thirty-two-year-old Virgil Vance was arrested for intoxication and disorderly conduct in Reno, Nevada. While in custody Vance, an Iowan native, told police that he had raped and murdered a little girl during the previous summer after stealing a car. The confession shared some strikingly similar details to what happened to Donna Sue. The FBI met with him, but just as it was with the drifter Vance changed his story. He was officially cleared as a suspect on December 20th.

After the summer of 1956 leads lessened and the case went cold. James and Mary Davis would not live to see justice for their baby girl. James passed away in 1996 at the age of seventy-nine. Mary passed away after a long battle of illness on February 13th, 2006. She was eighty seven-years-old. As of September 2018th the murder of Donna Sue Davis remains unsolved.

Photos from the Sioux City Journal

[filmcave]

A Conundrum

Here’s a quiz that will try to offer a set of questions using (as John Rawls would say) a “veil of ignorance”. What do these movies have in common?

K-19: The Widowmaker

American Psycho

Wayne’s World

Awakenings

Twilight

To some, the answer will jump right out (if I didn’t know the answer, I wouldn’t get this). It’s kinda tough to construct the logical story here. Fantasy and the other worldly? Action/Suspense? All made in the same decade? Nothing??

How about this riddle: Which film DOESN’T fit in the following list:

Valley Girl

Julie & Julia

The Notorious Betty Page

The Hurt Locker 

Laura (1944 version)

This one’s actually a bit tougher because it’s been spiked with a red herring.

In both of the above quizzes there is a common theme and one which is invisible to many because of the inherent biases we hold culturally based on our expectations about how films are made and who makes what films

 Working backwards here one might have chosen “The Hurt Locker” as the odd man out. Perhaps because it won an Academy Award, perhaps because it does NOT have a title about a woman or the female gender…perhaps another reason but I am willing to bet anyone who picked Laura probably didn’t because it was directed by Otto Premminger. That’s right it is the only film in the list NOT directed by a woman.

By extension you can guess that the common bond with the first quiz is that all films were directed by a woman.

What should be surprising about both these lists is that except for Laura, it is a non issue that they were directed by a female director. And there’s many more to point to.

Bend It like Beckham, female director (Gurinder Chadha)

Big (the Tom Hanks film), female director (Penny Marshall)

Deep Impact (Robert Duvall, Morgan Freeman), female director (Mimi Leder) 

The reason some of you (many of you?) may not have thought “female director” is what we might call the Jackie Robinson effect. Or for any baseball purists, the Curt Flood effect. Jackie was the first black player to play on a major league baseball team and Curt was the first free agent. Eventually, there’s always a first. And then, again eventually, there are many more.

Hollywood, like Silicon Valley (and like the world at large) seems to have a problem with women. (Remember the Sony Pictures hack of emails detailing Jennifer Lawrence being paid less than her male counterparts?).

In these cases the issue is not enough women directing films. Certainly some of the reasons are biases. The reasons are legion and multitudinous and scores of internet trees would need to be cut down to write about it all.

If you asked people to guess the reasons more women aren’t directing Hollywood films, I have to imagine one would be: “because they do too many ‘girl pictures’”. Yet some of the most humanistic, sensitive and beloved movies—like Shawshank Redemption, Terms of Endearment, Life is Beautiful and The Intouchables—were directed by men. So clearly, sensitive films aren’t only directed by women.

Another might be, they can’t direct a “man’s movie” but as I have already listed: The Hurt Locker, American Psycho and Deep Impact were directed by women.

Yet another explanation (excuse) might be, “they don’t direct successful” films but to that you can look at:

Zero Dark Thirty ($95 million)

The Proposal ($144 million)

Fifty Shades of Grey ($166 million)

Pitch Perfect 2 ($188 million)

Shrek ($267 million)

Frozen ($400 million)

The above six movies, all by women, amounted to ~$1.2 billion dollars in gross box office. That’s real money!

The list can go on in terms of lack of awareness of or appreciation for female directors and I haven’t even mentioned: Sophia Coppola (The Beguiled, Lost in Translation), Nancy Meyers (Somethings Gotta Give, It’s Complicated, The Intern), Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail), Jane Campion (The Piano, An Angel at my Table). And scores of up and comers.

The summer of 2017 has been the worst box office in 25 years for Hollywood. Attendance was down over 10%. According to IndieWire (link below) from now (Sept 2017) to the end of 2019 92% of Hollywood films will be directed by men. Yet the top grossing summer film this summer is Wonder Woman, directed by a female director and clocking in at > $400 million.

Look it, I don’t pick which movies to go to because they were (or weren’t) directed by a woman. I actually don’t care…I just want to see a good movie and female directors are as good as any male directors. I’m just saying, if you look, its hard to miss that women are grossly under represented when it comes to movie making. Do I like every female directed movie listed above? Certainly not, but I don’t love every film directed by men either.

There’s lots of ways to evaluate movies by female directors: style, quality, genre, box office, awards but no matter the metric you choose, they hold up against films directed by men. So why the dearth of films directed by women? That’s a quiz question I don’t have an answer to.

Sources:

Indiewire - http://www.indiewire.com/2017/03/studio-film-directed-female-filmmakers-2017-2018-1201793002/

All time box office - http://www.the-numbers.com/box-office-records/worldwide/all-movies/cumulative/all-time

Films directed by women - http://www.indiewire.com/2017/03/studio-film-directed-female-filmmakers-2017-2018-1201793002/

Highest grossing films directed by women - http://www.thewrap.com/17-highest-grossing-movies-directed-by-women/