Daily Archives: June 22, 2017

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How brainwashing works: I began my formal research in 1999, eight years after battling my way out of a secret, so-called Marxist-Leninist group whose leader controlled my life in its most intimate details. He determined what I wore: a version of the advice in John Molloys bestseller Dress for Success (1975), featuring tailored blue suits and floppy red silk bowties. More significantly, he decided when I could marry, and whether I might have children. The leaders decrees were passed down via memos typed on beige notepaper and hand-delivered to me by my contact. Because I was a low-ranked member, the leader remained unknown to me. I joined this Minneapolis-based group, called The Organization (The O) believing I was to contribute to their stated goal of social justice, a value instilled in me by my family.

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Julian Assange is a staunch supporter of free speech except when its about him: WikiLeakss young spokesperson in those early days, James Ball, has recounted how Assange tried to force him to sign a nondisclosure statement that would result in a 12 million penalty if it were breached. [I was] woken very early by Assange, sitting on my bed, prodding me in the face with a stuffed giraffe, immediately once again pressuring me to sign, Ball wrote. Assange continued to pester him like this for two hours. Assanges impulse towards free speech, according to Andrew OHagan, the erstwhile ghostwriter of Assanges failed autobiography, is only permissible if it adheres to his message. His pursuit of governments and corporations was a ghostly reverse of his own fears for himself. That was the big secret with him: he wanted to cover up everything about himself except his fame.

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Revisiting Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy at 60: His working class world is one in which people may well be living intuitively, habitually, verbally, drawing on myth, aphorism and ritual which makes them sound practically Lawrentian yet are also prone to cruelty and dirt of a gratuitously debasing coarseness. That Hoggart can be so even-handed towards a social class that simultaneously entices and repels him is a mark of his inseparability from the things he is writing about and the moral attitudes at their core.

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Emily Dickinsons hope.

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Matisses objects.

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Chuck Palahniuks coloring books.

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Essay of the Day:

If you didnt read The New Atlantiss blockbuster report on gender and sexuality this past fall, you should. Theyve published a follow-up on the problems of treating gender dysphoria by suppressing puberty. Here are a couple of snippets:

In 2016, the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT advocacy group, partnered with the American Academy of Pediatrics the nations most prominent professional organization for pediatricians and the American College of Osteopathic Pediatricians to publish a guide for families of transgender children. The guide says that to prevent the consequences of going through a puberty that doesnt match a transgender childs identity, healthcare providers may use fully reversible medications that put puberty on hold. Delaying puberty, according to the guide, gives the child and family time to explore gender-related feelings and options.

Reading these various guidelines gives the impression that there is a well-established scientific consensus about the safety and efficacy of the use of puberty-blocking agents for children with gender dysphoria, and that parents of such children should think of it as a prudent and scientifically proven treatment option. But whether blocking puberty is the best way to treat gender dysphoria in children remains far from settled and it should be considered not a prudent option with demonstrated effectiveness but a drastic and experimental measure.

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The use of puberty suppression and cross-sex hormones for minors is a radical step that presumes a great deal of knowledge and competence on the part of the children assenting to these procedures, on the part of the parents or guardians being asked to give legal consent to them, and on the part of the scientists and physicians who are developing and administering them. We frequently hear from neuroscientists that the adolescent brain is too immature to make reliably rational decisions, but we are supposed to expect emotionally troubled adolescents to make decisions about their gender identities and about serious medical treatments at the age of 12 or younger. And we are supposed to expect parents and physicians to evaluate the risks and benefits of puberty suppression, despite the state of ignorance in the scientific community about the nature of gender identity.

The claim that puberty-blocking treatments are fully reversible makes them appear less drastic, but this claim is not supported by scientific evidence. It remains unknown whether or not ordinary sex-typical puberty will resume following the suppression of puberty in patients with gender dysphoria. It is also unclear whether children would be able to develop normal reproductive functions if they were to withdraw from puberty suppression. It likewise remains unclear whether bone and muscle development will proceed normally for these children if they resume puberty as their biological sex. Furthermore, we do not fully understand the psychological consequences of using puberty suppression to treat young people with gender dysphoria.

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Photo: Kites

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Poem: Susan Donnelly: Mrs. Maher's Iron

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Prufrock: How Brainwashing Works, Julian Assange's Nihilism, and Emily Dickinson's Hope - The Weekly Standard

The most violent of the violentest crimes we give life to If these Queensbridge kids dont like you We bring drama of the worst kind to enemies Your first time will be your last Earth memories Its only your own fault, I gave you fair warning: Beware Of killer kids who dont careShook Ones Pt. 1

He put his lifetime in between the papers lines, but not autobiographically, as most rappers of renown do. Instead, Albert Prodigy Johnson pioneered an extraordinary rap flow full of cold-eyed nihilism that presented death as the only meaningful framework for life.

Prodigywho passed away in Las Vegas this week at age 42was one of hip-hops Three Ps. Along with the late Sean Price (who died in his sleep at 43 in 2015) and Pharrell Williams, he was one of few rappers whose name could be filed down to a single letter. Butunlike Price, who needed his first name to accentuate himself, or Williams, who characterized his name with modifiers (like Skateboard P)Prodigy was simply P. And with good reason. Even as half of one of the genres most vaunted duos (along with Kejuan Havoc Muchita), P was a singular character in hip-hop, a rule-breaker and world-creator, weary and grounded even as he threatened to stab your brain with your nose bone.

The legacy of Prodigyand by extension Mobb Deepmay be a hip-hop case of Seinfeld is Unfunny; an act whose ethos has been so influential that looking back in an archival sense robs listeners of the first night chills that came in on those Queensbridge winds.

Its almost impossible to recapture the impact of Prodigy and Havoc, donned in Hennessy football jerseys, without realizing that less than a decade earlier, at a a time when professionally recorded rap was still novel and change was slow, Heavy D & The Boyz were dancing in Coca-Cola sweatshirts as a representation of an affront to the status quo. But Mobb Deep werent dancingthey were the stone-faced super-predators that First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton would decry the next year: They are not just gangs of kids anymore, shed say at Keene State College in New Hampshire. They are often the kinds of kids that are called super-predatorsno conscience, no empathy.

I got you stuck off the realness; we be the Infamous. You heard of us: Official Queensbridge murderersShook Ones, Pt. II

Ps opening lines were things of depraved beauty. Take the start of Shook Ones, or the beginning of its more well-known sibling, Shook Ones, Pt. II, both quoted above. These are not threats, but declarations of self as fair warning from real n-ggas who aint got no feelings. These words represent what was important to him; this is how he wanted to introduce himself as a greeting: Hello, my name is P. I am only 19, but my mind is old. I represent death, violence, and the Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing development in North America. This is the start of your ending.

It was as if he was saying to other rappers what Bane said to Batman in The Dark Knight Rises: Oh, you think darkness is your ally? But your merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by itI didnt see the light until I was already a man. By then it was nothing to me but blinding. He was Nietzsche in construction Timberlands and an Army-certified suit; New Yorks harshest Darwinist.

Ps bleakness wasnt just depressed ghetto existentialism expressed via hyperbole, but something in his bloodliterally. His lifelong war against sickle cell disease made death a more pressing inevitability for him than most and rooted his worldview that only the strong survive, but also that the strong would also perish. (See: Infamous Prelude.) He would drink away his pain with Ease-Us Jesus (E&J brandy) or Dainy (thats St. Ides and Pina Colada champales in dunn language), but not without pouring some out for the fallen and sharing the bottle with the standing. In his early rhymes as part of Mobb Deepwhich were separate from his Michael Jackson dancing days, his stint as Jive Records artist LordT (The Golden Child), or his time as part of Poetical Prophetstheres nary a verse without the mention of the tightly wrought struggle between living and dying. Beyond simply detailing crime, Prodigy showcased depression, dysfunction, and self-medication.

You just complain cause you stressed N-gga, my pains in the flesh And through the years, that pain became my friend, sedated With morphine as a little kid I built a tolerance for drugs Addicted to the medicine You Can Never Feel My Pain

No one did more to present NYC housing projects as a world within in a world than Mobb Deepnot the Wu-Tang Clan, not M.O.P., not the Boot Camp Clik. And no one did as much to present the Queensbridge as a land of its own rules and morality as Hempstead, Long Islands Prodigy. Not even Nas with his clear-eyed insight, Tragedy with his hard-earned wisdom, nor Capone with his in-the-trenches war reportage ever came close depicting the defeatist maladjustment borne of poverty and closed quarters the way that P did. Not even Havoc, with his trife life and times and proximity to his partner, could capture the front lines of hell on Earth like Prodigy. There are no bars to depict thisone simply has to give over to the experience of listening to the H.N.I.C.s bleak worldview at length.

If there was joy to be found in Ps music, it was in his literary specificity and the way he viewed the world as an enemy and other rappers as nuisances. His appearance on Hell On Earths Nightttime Vultures exemplifies both strengths. He begins by awakening and recounting the prior nights violence: Bullets flew, I had to drag my man behind a wall/Left a wet trail, delivered these slugs like air mail/Directly at the cat that made my man blood spill. But then hes quickly on to stoically boasting about his rap prowess:

I kick that '98 shit for your ears to list N-gga P way ahead of his time, surpass kids Kickin' rhymes that's true lies Let me break 'em down to size, minimize they air time After this you never will go back to that which Sit back an' write half-ass shit At last, the official taking out the artificial Let me relieve you, replace that shit with some lethal Mobb, remember the name it's been along Yall n-gga's shook to death from the first fuckin song

Beef with other rappers seemed to be in Prodigys DNAfrom Keith Murray to 2Pac to Saigon and Jay-Z, to spats with Noreagea, Nas, and eventually Havoc, Prodigy spent his careers enmeshed in conflicts that often turned bloody and felt more dangerous than garden variety hip-hop squabbles. Though he often emerged from the losing end of these disputes, there remained a sense of unbeatability about him. Through it all, he stood tall at five feet and six inches, resolute in himself, if nothing else.

Battle-scarred and wizened, Prodigy lived long enough to see himself become a grand antihero of sorts. Following his deal with 50 Cents G Unit and a three-year prison bid, he came back to rap in 2011 more as a solo act than group member. He embraced his veteran status, co-authoring an autobiography and a prison-centered cookbook, and focused on his physical health in the way the Black men need to as they approach their 40seating better, working out, moving away from alcohol. He became a working rapper, leaning on his legacy without resting on his laurels or reliving his glory dayshe pushed forward and kept himself current by acknowledging ascendant talents, releasing songs with Troy Ave and Buffalos Conway. Right up to his death, he was workingcreating new music and touring.

At the same time, he could be a bit of a drunk uncle. He released a classic blog rant demanding homage (to be fair, shook would not be a colloquialism without Mobb Deep) and delved deeper into his arcane fascinations (his latest album, released this past January was titled Hegelian Dialectic (The Book of Revelation) as part of trilogy that was set to include The Book of Heroine and The Book of the Dead). His belief that the Illuminatia secret society that wanted his mind, soul, and his bodywas actually a thing became more pronounced.

In 2011, he appeared on Alex Joness Infowars, claiming that President Barack Obama was part of a bloodline that made him cousins with the Bushes and Dick Cheney. Whether he knows it or not, hes down with this whole conspiracy to rule the world, Prodigy asserted of Obama. Basically, hes a part of itto brainwash people and to kill people, genocide. Everything thats going on out there that is just so fantastic [that] you really dont want to believe it, Obama is down with it.

To his credit, he knew how he sounded: This [is] what I was promoting to people and they tried to, like, almost demonize me or say, Oh, Prodigys crazy. Whats wrong with this guy? Hes just ranting and he doesnt know what hes talking about. Hes a conspiracy theorist and he does this and he does that. Im like, Wow. Theres that many crazy people in this world, for real.

Spaghetti-head Mobb n-ggas is full-bred Fully-blown melanin tone I rock skeleton bone shirts and verses But thirst for worse beats So I can put more product out on the street Get respect and love all across the board We've been adored for keepin' it raw Nothin' less or more I score every time for sure While the rest of y'all n-ggas just nil Quiet Storm

It may be impossible to overstate Mobb Deeps importance to hip-hop as a whole, and to New York hip-hop in particular. Theyalong with the Wu-Tang Clan and Boot Camp Clik were responsible to defining what is now undeniably referred to as an East Coast sound: chopped dusty jazz and soul samples over big drums, accompanied by gritty and grimy rhymes about urban despair. Mobb Deep created headphone musicengrossing and encompassing analog mood music thats sonically distinct from pristine, dignified earbud sounds of today. Its the banner carried by acts like Roc Marciano, Ka, Westside Gunn, and Conwayand the reason why those artists exist at all.

As conversations about these things go, its become a shortcut to a point to describe Mobb Deep as a duo where Prodigy was the rappers rapper and Havoc was the producers producer, but the truth is more intertwined than that. Prodigy constructed bars of theretofore unforeseen formation that remain some of raps most iconic verses. And its true the Havocaided by the tutelage and assistance of A Tribe Called Quests Q-Tip on The Infamousbuilt incomparably dour grooves of head-nodding moodiness. But, when I was interviewing the group shortly after the release of The Infamous, two things stood out to me that I have thought about often in the 20-plus years since.

The first was when I commented on the groups vocabulary. They seemed to not know what I was talking about as I was telling them about the way they used wordsnot just slang, but terms like butter-soft leather upholstery, their internal rhymes, their novel ending couplets. I asked them if there was something in the water in Queensbridge. Havoc doubled-over cackling and P, sunken on a couch giggled and smirked to himself as they both repeated: He said something in the water

Theres no replacement for Prodigy.

At that early stage, there was no narrative that said that P was the rapper of the group. He was undoubtedly the stronger and more gripping writer of the two, but Havoc wasnt just there for dressing. Especially on the first two Mobb Deep albums, he more than holds his own.

The other thing I think about gives lie to the idea that Havoc was the lone architect of the groups sound. As we spoke during that interview, there wasnt any indication that the musical process was anything but a joint affair. At one point, P was talking about how they had to rework some samples due to clearance issues and he played an invisible keyboard in the air. It never left me how nimble and articulate his fingers wereit was the movement of someone familiar with keys, not a haphazard plunking of digits. Its something that makes sense in the face of Prodigys lineagehis mother was a member of the 60s girls group The Crystals, his father was part of a doo-wop act, his grandfather was a jazz musician. Not only was P the driving force between many of the Mobbs narrative ideas, he was instrumental in charting the course for their sound, and his solo albums revealed his ear was as crucial and influential as Q-Tips fifth Beatle role on The Infamous.

Mobb Deeptitans of rap with a decades-long career that few could have predictedwas a coming of two halves to create a whole. Its doubtful that either member would have reached the rarified heights that they had without the other, or had the confidence to place their big pre-release single as the next-to-last cut on their debut album. And its without question that Mobb Deepafter all of the internal and external dramais over. Theres no replacement for Prodigy.

For most acts that debuted in 1995, this would be a career retrospective with no thought of future endeavors. But Mobb Deep was just not any act. They may have peaked a handful of projects ago, but there was always the possibility of new greatness. Unlike rapping, production is not necessarily a young mans game and Havoc still has the potential to create transformative soundscapes. And Prodigy was in continued development as a writer; he still had interesting things to say. Its not a stretch to believe he could have further spearheaded into old-head chronicles, filled with rewarding revelations.

But, with his death, the books are closed on the Official Queensbridge Murderers. While they were here, they put their lifetimes in between the papers line and into our ears, minds, and souls. And rap was never the same.

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Why Prodigy Was A Once-In-A-Generation Rapper - Complex

Video rental stores are dead. Its sad from a nostalgic perspective, but it was inevitable once Netflix, Hulu, and other on-demand streaming services came out. In some parts of the country, you can still glimpse the desiccated husks of old Blockbusters, rustling with the whispers of dead business models.

Then, driving through Atlanta last week, I found the new flesh. There is one great video rental store out there, and its in Atlantas Little Five Points neighborhood. That store isVideodrome, and its fantastic.

You know its special from the title itself, referring to the David Cronenberg classic and one of James Woods best roles next to him playing a nihilism-fueled omnicidal parallel universe Batman. The logo of a head with tape reel glasses over the eyes is pretty strong, too. And once you walk in and see the shelves, you immediately understand how it still exists and why its great.

The new releases wall has some big blockbusters (which, after theyre taken off that shelf, get relegated to their own section with appropriate commercial reverence), but theyre surrounded by the obscure, indie, foreign and just plain weird. May 23rds new releases includeGet Out,Logan, andGreat Wall, alongside the all-female horror anthologyXX, a French drama about Tamil refugeesDheepan, and the new Blu-ray releases of the 1975 Yakuza filmCops Vs. Thugsand 1988 Frank Henenlotter comedy horrorBrain Damage.

Havent heard of those films? Neither have I, and thatsgreat. Its a taste of the full spectrum of art house and schlock that Videodrome offers. If you want the full meal, you need to dive into the different sections.

First, there are the Asian films. Its more than just Kung Fu movies (though there are plenty). There are Japanese, Chinese, and Korean comedies, dramas, and horror movies, both new and old. Do you want to binge on Kim Ki Duks classics? He has half a shelf. And dont worry, several-of-my-jaded-coworkers: Anime is in another section, along with kaiju films.

The international movies dont stop in Asia. Denmark, Finland, Holland, Ireland, Norway, and Serbia all have shelves. Yes, there are more Serbian films thanA Serbian Film, and theyre not all like that one.

If you have favorite directors, they probably have shelves, too. Carpenter, Cronenberg, Gondry, Jonze, Lynch, you name it. If they made something with a vision, especially if that vision was weird, theres a section in Videodrome.

Beyond the artsy, foreign, indie, and films made by filmmakers movies, theres the shlock. The delicious, delicious shlock. Videodrome lets you start atSweet Sweetbacks Baadasssss Song and work your waydown. You bet theres a Blaxploitation shelf. Its two shelves above the Ausploitation shelf. And its across from the really, really gross Italian horror movies. You can binge on Lucio Fulci and Dario Argentos films, and watch as manyZombi sequels as there are alternate titles on IMDB.

To enjoy this great wealth of esoteric cinema, you need to live in Atlanta or otherwise be staying there for a few days. Besides a small stack of DVDs and Blu-rays you can buy, Videodrome is rental-only. That means you pay a few dollars, take the video for a few days, then bring it back. Which seems like a really weird concept in 2017, but its the best way to find and enjoy new and obscure movies that youll never stumble upon with Netflix.

Videodrome is a marvel of weird movies of all stripes and from all ages. If you love foreign films, if you eat up obscure movies from the silent era to the 80s, if you have a favorite director who hasnt generated a billion dollars for his studio, or if you recognize the names Rich Evans, Diamanda Hagan, Brad Jones, or Kyle Kalgren. If you find yourself in Atlanta, you owe it to yourself to visit Videodrome.

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Atlanta's Videodrome is the Last and Greatest Video Rental Store - Geek

(Courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

(Courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

To begin with, the title for Transformers: The Last Knight is incorrect. There are several knights to be found in this movie, all of whom interact with other knights throughout the movie. There is nary a final knight to be found in this movie, making the title the warning sign for a wretched movie that sucks the energy right out of its audience.

The Last Knight is a dire experience. It has so little going for it that the asinine madness Sir Anthony Hopkins inserts out of his general lack of interest in the material is the best thing the movie has going for it. Everything else is garbage, detritus spawned by barely earned nostalgia and producers sucking those happy thoughts for all the money they are worth. And that's how a movie like this come to be, prepackaged as a big budget experience targeted at people who care little for the value of their entertainment. The old-fashioned way of describing them are rubes, making director Michael Bay, producer Steven Spielberg, and everyone else involved in creating this rubbish high-priced grifters.

None of this really matters though. The Last Knight will make hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly more than a billion dollars, at the box office in the coming weeks. People will watch this despite protestations from many, many people over its lack of quality. This is the dark side of nihilism that doesn't reveal the optimism of nothingness once the absence of importance is accepted. What's being accepted here is bad cinema with too much regard devoted to viewers who take pride in their anti-intellectualism.

To be fair, movies don't need to be smart to have value; the Furious series is pretty great despite how legitimately dumb those films are. Yet they possess both passion and insanity, a desire to entertain their viewers and provide satisfaction for the money spent. The Last Knight does not entertain.

A movie supposedly about giant robots fighting one another somehow cannot provide entertainment, even on the fun side of the puerile level. This movie very much lingers on the dark side of juvenile, with a few bits of casual racism and Marky Mark Wahlberg comparing his female co-star Laura Haddock to a prostitute added in to serve as jokes. That it sexualizes pretty much all of its female characters, including a 14-year-old (played by Isabela Moner), is disturbing but expected for this series.

None of it actually provides an iota of entertainment. Nothing keeps viewers interested in the characters on screen or the fact that, sometimes, giant robots fight one another to the death.

It's about right that The Last Knight only shows its giant robots that morph into cool things fight on just a few occasions, holding franchise stalwart Optimus Prime in the background until the final act. Bay & co. instead toss in some elements that, if one squints hard enough, begin to resemble a story and allow Wahlberg and Haddock to serve as the centers of attention instead of the giant fighting robots. It would have helped if the screenwriters actually tried to keep their narrative logical and create contradicting plot points, or if the haphazard editing had stuck with a logical timeline. There's also some awful, hacky, and terribly worded expositional dialog to move things forward, because this movie doesn't feel the need to show what's happening or allow the actions to guide story.

The selling point for The Last Knight is the action sequences, or at least they would be if viewers could actually follow along with the poorly framed battles. At this point in the series it's tough to find a way to inject interest in seeing the same giant robots fight one another to the death. Bay and crew have effectively run out of ideas on how to make these sequences look cool, which is an odd thing to say considering this is a franchise about giant robots with guns, explosives and swords going at one another.

Bay, for all his faults as a filmmaker, used to create singular, well-orchestrated action sequences that at least came close to making what are otherwise bad movies at least a little fun.

Five films into the Transformers franchise and the thrill is gone for Bay.

Without any redeeming value aside from the scenery Hopkins consumes, The Last Knight is a slog. It leaves viewers drained from boredom and confusion over the preposterous state this film exists in, and the two-and-a-half hours of it to sift through. But, again, none of this really matters. A ton of people will watch this movie, more than enough to fund two more movies in the near future. Critics will rip them apart, too, as Bay, Spielberg and Paramount sleep comfortably in the piles of money they've conned out of audiences everywhere.

Rating: One and a half out of Five Stars

Target audience: Folks who've been roped in to the last few entries in the series.

Take the whole family? This isn't particularly great for the younger kids, with the heavy doses of violence and bad editing creating a less than comforting viewing experience.

Theater or Netflix? Just don't bother with it.

How good is the cast? Of a higher quality than expected, although none of them seem to care. It remains strange how many good actors sign up for these movies. Sir Anthony Hopkins, John Turturro, Stanley Tucci, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Ken Watanabe, and Tony Hale are the highlights for film five. Add them to alumni like Jon Voight, Kelsey Grammer, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Alan Tudyk, and many, many others and there's the making for a really good movie. Even American hero Buzz Aldrin has shown up for one of these movies.

Watch this instead: Best bet is to find a copy of the animated Transformers movie from the '80s it has a surprisingly stellar cast, including Orson Welles, Leonard Nimoy, Robert Stack and Judd Nelson or watch the original animated series. That, or just find your old toys and make up a way cooler story on your own.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 149 minutes

Genre: Action

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'Transformers: The Last Knight' morphs into a clunker - WCTI12.com