Bordertown or Boredertown?

It looks like Mexican Amereican filmmakers, Gregory Nava and Lourdes Portillo, are circling each other, with Nava on the inside, more traveled track and Portillo on the outer, less-traveled road. Both dedicated movies to the slain Tejana diva, Selena, an icon amongst Chicanos who was moving to that crossover superstardom shared by Jennifer Lopez, who plays Selena in the film, Lopez' husband, Marc Anthony, and a growing host of other mainstream Latino performers. Nava's Selena takes the typical tear-stained, slick Hollywood freeway--no real ruts, bumps or grit along this road--while Portillo's Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena acts as an antidote to the sugar overload, tackling the more nettlesome issues of Latina femininity and the need for cultural standard bearers.

Nava again shadows Portillo with the release, last Thursday at the Berlin Film Festival, of the feature, Bordertown, the story explored and nearly broken over 5 years ago by Portillo, of the hundreds, yes hundreds, of young Mexican girls come to the sin and maquiladora city of Juarez, Mexico, looking for work and finding fiendish, ritualized murder. Jennifer Lopez returns, this time as an intrepid reporter out to break the story. (Antonio Banderas adds his creds to the movie.) I suspect that the trailers flaunting an infinitely unconvincing Lopez beset by an incessant breeze and icy law enforcement officers, are a portend of even less satisfying fare to come. Senorita Extraviada, on the other hand, is, as a documentary immensely provocative and wide-ranging. It makes us all think deeply, again, about the image of women in Latina society, and of people's motivations for doing all the many noble and nefarious things we all do.

See my review of Senorita Extraviada on the Hispanic American Village
And let me know what you think of Bordertown.

Bill Richardson at "Meet the Candidates"

From the weekend's DNC Winter Meeting in Washington, DC, a video of Bill Richardson.

[We were having trouble with the display on the DNC blog tonight, but they also provide a link for direct download of the WMV format file (Right-click and "Save As").]

Other recent readings of interest at HAV: Richardson: Candidate (?) with portfolio
Though overshadowed by Hillary and Barack, Bill Richardson's chances at the Dem nod are not so slim