News briefs the classic movie way

I suppose that the title of this post really ought to refer to the way old movies would use made-up newspaper front pages to show a headline that oh-so-conveniently advances the plot. Either that, or a post about movies involving the newspaper business, of which there were a lot during the studio era. (His Girl Friday might be my favorite among them, but that's a topic for another post.) No, not having much to blog about right now, I find myself thinking about classic films that would go well with events in the news. And thankfully, it's not the obituary page.

One of the most wanted generals from the Bosnian civil war, Ratko Mladić, was captured recently. If he had made his way to the west, the obvious film to select would be Orson Welles' The Stranger. He'll get put on trial at the international court in the Netherlands, for which the obvious film analogy is Judgment at Nuremburg.

Yesterday saw the coach of one of the top college football programs resign amidst a slew of corruption allegations that the players were basically receiving in-kind payments. My first thought: John Wayne in Trouble Along the Way, although there are a lot of movies dealing with the corruptitude of college football.

Late last week, the Supreme Court ordered California to deal with its overcrowded prisons. One thing in watching old prison movies is that the cells almost always have two, if not three men in each cell, with the exception of the women's prison movies that have women in the cells. Caged doesn't seem to have cells, but barracks-style prison rooms that hold a few dozen women each. More interesting is that in large part the prisoners sardined into these cells always seem to get along surprisingly well, at least until one of the important characters violates the criminal code.