blanche-2 "Tabloid" is a very well done, entertaining documentary by Earl Morris, who profiles Joyce McKinney, a woman accused of kidnapping a Mormon, Kirk Anderson. Yes, you read that right. I've got another one for you. She also had her dog cloned in Korea.Joyce McKinney's story in the late '70s was the talk of the UK. She was on television, the cover of magazines, and the queen of the tabloids. Her side of it is that she, a Miss Wyoming, fell in love with Mormon student Anderson whom she planned to marry. One day, he disappeared, and Joyce worked three jobs in order to hire a private detective. Must have been some jobs (and, as we learned later, they were) because the detective found her beloved in England, so Joyce hired a pilot, two bodyguards, and brought a friend along, and headed for England.The rest is a little murky. She did find Anderson and according to her, kidnapped him from what she discerned was a cult, and the two spent some idyllic time in a cottage. I'll leave it to you to decide if it was by mutual consent.This story has to be experienced to be believed. I don't want to give too much away, but there are lots of surprises in store for the viewer of this DVD. Enjoy it.

Neil Welch Back in 1977 the British press had great fun with a story concerning Joyce McKinney. A former Miss Wyoming, Miss McKinney pursued her boyfriend to the UK, kidnapped him, and proceeded to try to de-programme him for the Mormon Church by way of chaining him to a bed and inflicting a week of sex on him. He turned out to take exception to this, and Miss McKinney went to court.This film revisits the story, principally by way of giving over centre stage to Miss McKinney to tell her story, interposed with contributions from other participants (though not the victim, who declined to participate), contemporary clips and images etc. Miss McKinney is an engaging and intelligent speaker, though effusive to the point of verbal incontinence. She gives every impression of believing every word of her incredible narrative.I found her story much more difficult to credit, however, and when I use the word "incredible" I use it in its literal sense - "not believable." Every viewer is, of course, going to form their own conclusion, but I am inclined towards the newspaper man who regards her as barking mad - at the very least, she seems unable to recognise the contradictions inherent in her own story.This unusual documentary is entertaining though somewhat worrying, and with an underlying sadness to it.

bandw This is the eighth documentary I have seen by Errol Morris. His "Gates of Heaven" is my favorite, while this one is eighth on my list. The story is that of Joyce McKinney, once a Wyoming beauty queen, who (she claims) fell obsessively in love with a young Mormon man named Kirk Anderson. She was later charged with kidnapping this man and forcing him to have sex.I can see where this might appeal to Morris; after I had seen all his interviews with McKinney, a couple of news reporters with differing views, an airline pilot, and a Salt Lake City radio host I was left with no clear idea of exactly what happened. Oddly, documenting materials from one of the newspapers disappeared and the documentation in McKinney's possession was supposedly stolen. Another person who was closely involved in the escapade was Keith May, who had since died.Most of the movie is taken up with Miss McKinney talking at us. The only thing I found to be true for sure is that she is a real space cadet. She admits to having had acting experience and you don't know whether to believe a word she says. She claims to have an IQ of 167, but I saw no evidence that she was above average in intelligence (in fact I would think the contrary). Some of the clips used to illustrate the dialog were pretty silly, like some stock footage of a guy ripping a phone off the wall when one of the interviewees was talking about a phone cord having been pulled out. And I found the cutesy little cartoons particularly lame. Also, I was never sure whether I was seeing original footage or reenactments. For example, Kirk Anderson was described as being a very large man, but the clips we see of him show him to be of fairly normal weight.The biggest weakness I found was that neither Kirk Anderson not Kieth May was interviewed (Anderson declined and May was dead). So, we never got the story from the only other people closely involved. I like stories that leave some ambiguity as to what happened, but stories like this where you don't have enough information to make an informed speculation are not satisfying.

anthonydavis26 This film was reviewed for Cambridge Filk Festival (UK) - 15 to 25 September 2011 I was not really of an age to have known about Joy(ce) McKinney at the time that she rose to prominence, but, as the former Mormon who was used in the documentary to explain various things remarked, what she said was one thing, what the Mormons said was another, and maybe what actually happened fell in the middle somewhere.Be that as it may, it is a curiosity of this subject that The Daily Mirror says that (as a result of what happened to Mirror Group Newspapers) it no longer has much of the evidence showing that she performed sexual services (although not intercourse) for money before meeting her ideal man, and that Joy herself says that a large amount of original material that proved the contrary was stolen from a vehicle of hers. She states that the material that the Mirror used at the time was faked, whereas its photographer says that he saw the negatives and prints, and the magazines in which the images appeared.Altogether intriguing, though nothing was as significant, for me, as the account of the cloning in South Korea of five puppies, all with sub-names from their beloved 'parent' Booger, and courtesy of some tissue from his stomach. The practitioner who had performed the procedure said that he wasn't playing God, because he wasn't creating life – well, you could have fooled me, if that's not what those five Booger replicas were…!