"Cronicas" and "Awful Normal"

I’ve seen two films about child molesters in the past two days, which makes for depressing viewing. The first is Cronicas, directed by Sebastian Cordero and starring John Leguizamo. I remember hearing an interview with Leguizamo about this movie — he speaks Spanish throughout most of the movie, which, if I remember correctly, is a relatively new experience for him — and thinking that the premise was intriguing.

A man in an Ecuadorian town accidentally kills a boy with his truck. Leguizamo is a star reporter from Miami on assignment in Ecuador to report on a serial child rapist and murderer. While Leguizamo is out chasing interviews, he witnesses an angry mob try to lynch the man who struck the boy. He interferes, saves the man’s life and is subsequently hailed as a hero. But that proves to be just the beginning of the story.

The movie’s a thriller, but it also concerns the power of the press and the role of journalists.

The second movie that I saw is Awful Normal, directed, written and produced by Celesta Davis. The movie’s a personal documentary of sorts, as Davis prepares to confront the man who sexually abused her when she was five.

Unfortunately the film has not gotten much of a distribution because Davis has not been able to secure insurance covering possible lawsuits brought against the film. Apparently theaters and cable channels won’t show any films that don’t have this insurance. (The movie is being released on DVD, however, which are available here.)

The movie is powerful, though, and important I think because so many children are abused and so many people who have been abused as children have never reported it. I’ve read about the numerous lawsuits involving priest molestation, but this movie made it personal by allowing me to understand what the individual sexual abuse victim goes through. It’s really amazing that the viewer is with Davis every step of the way as she talks about the abuse with her family, makes a plan to confront the man and then puts the plan in motion. By granting viewers such access, she will hopefully make it easier for other people to come forward with their stories.

Stanley Kubrick’s "Lolita"

Note: My thoughts on Lolita were originally posted in my sidebar and was written a few weeks ago.

I really enjoyed Kubrick’s 1962 version of Lolita. Shelley Winters blew me away as Charlotte Haze, Lolita’s mother. I’d seen Winters in The Night of the Hunter, another great movie, but she wasn’t onscreen for very long. Winters played Charlotte as both a disgusting and pitiful woman.

James Mason was also excellent as Humbert Humbert. His Humbert struck me as being a much more despicable than Jeremy Irons’s Humbert in Adrian Lyne’s version of the story. Now that I think about it, I would say the same goes for the two Lolitas. I could sympathize with Dominique Swain’s Lolita, but as far as I can remember, Sue Lyon’s Lolita was closer to the precocious brat depicted in Nabokov’s novel.

"Shiri" and "Lost"

I was rewatching the Korean movie Shiri last night, just the conclusion — so sad — and realized that the actress who plays the movie’s female protagonist is on the show “Lost.” Though Yoon-Jin Kim speaks with a foreign accent on “Lost,” she grew up on Staten Island, attended the High School of Performing Arts (the school in Fame) and earned an acting degree from Boston University. Anyway, I thought that was interesting how an Asian-American actress would end up playing a foreigner on an American show. At least “Lost” is careful with character development, and I appreciate the fact that two Asians feature so prominently on a primetime sitcom.

"WAL-MART" Documentary to Be Released

“Wal-Mart Memo Suggests Ways to Cut Employee Benefit Costs” has been a popular article to e-mail this week on the New York Times Web site. Which reminds me that the documentary “WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price” will be released the second week of November. The film is directed by Robert Greenwald, who also made “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism” (which I haven’t seen). What I find exciting about “WAL-MART” is that it’s coming out on DVD, and Greenwald is encouraging people to host screenings in their towns. According to the screening list on the movie’s official Web site, “WAL-MART” will be shown in churches, schools, cafes and living rooms across the country. You can sign up to host a screening or register to attend one through the movie’s Web site.

The News Today

I’m baffled by this article on IMDB, titled “Grace Horrified by Holloway Robbery.” Here’s an excerpt:

Josh Holloway’s Lost co-star Maggie Grace is horrified to learn of the actor getting robbed in his home, because she knows he only just completed work on the dream property. … And Grace, who learned of the incident during her current visit to New York City, knows just how much the home and vehicle mean to Holloway.

There’s a brief description of the robbery and an even longer quote from Grace about her reaction to the incident.

Either the article should have been about the robbery and about how Holloway feels, or the article should have mentioned that Holloway could not be reached for comment. Instead, the article ends up sounding like it’s trying too hard to make something (a robbery) out of nothing (comment from a person who did not witness the event and was not in the area at the time).

Maybe this was just an excuse to put up a portrait of Grace, who’s in a movie that came out the same day this article was posted?

On a lighter note, I saw a commercial for an upcoming episode of NOVAscienceNOW that will feature a segment on fish surgery (!). Incidentally, I just read about fish surgery in Herd on the Street: Animal Stories from The Wall Street Journal, which I picked out from the library today.

According to this 2002 Wall Street Journal article reprinted in the book, there are only 20 or so vets in the entire country who operate on pet fish. The number of such vets might have grown since then, as the reporter noted that demand for such services is rising as increasing numbers of people install backyard ponds with fish.