Good Movies and Bad People

Haven't blogged much lately since the kids are here; between making paper dolls with Demi and convincing Aaron that water will not make him melt (he's 15 and seems to like being a dirtball), I've been a wee bit busy. Other than that, not much going on. I'm distributing resumes and trying to finish Harry Potter books 4 & 5 before embarking on 6, though Aaron told me the biggest plot point already. He can be a stinker in more ways than one, heehee.
I've seen some good movies lately. Wedding Crashers is hilarious, if a little too long; finally saw O Brother Where Art Thou? which I loved; and got Cinemania from the library. (It's a weird documentary about guys who spend all day every day going to old movies, using their unemployment or disability checks to pay for a neverending roll of tickets. It's a lot like Fast Cheap and Out of Control.) Aaron brought The Life Aquatic, and I'll have to show him Rushmore because he's never seen it.

In connection with Satanic Panic research I'm reading a book on Yaron Svoray's investigation into snuff films. Svoray is that guy who infiltrated a violent neo-Nazi group in Germany even though he's Jewish; HBO made a movie several years ago about him called The Infiltrator, with Oliver Platt and Alan King. Svoray was forced to view what he believed to be a snuff film while he was with the neo-Nazis and later decided to track it down. Like most people, I suspect that snuff films don't actually exist, because one has never (to my knowledge) been discovered. I think Svoray's was genuine, however, because it featured a little girl who wasn't more than 10 years old. She looked terrified and didn't seem to be acting.
This is a very disturbing topic. I think the librarian freaked a little when I checked this book out of the library. But many claims of Satanic ritual abuse involve allegations that snuff films were produced. For instance, Paul Bonacci of Nebraska claimed as part of a lawsuit against his alleged abusers that he was flown to California's Bohemian Grove as a youth to appear in a snuff film with another young boy, and he claims Hunter S. Thompson (who recently committed suicide) was the cameraman. I'm not going to delve deeply into this topic as part of my research because it is tangential and there is very little evidence for the existence of snuff films, yet I don't feel comfortable saying they aren't being made because I have no idea. I do know that fake snuff films are everywhere. In my friend's microscopic town of Devlin, Ontario, a man and his wife were charged with obscenity for creating and distributing such movies (note to Mom: They were counselled by Pastor Belding, like that could possibly help...). I don't know if prosecution is the answer to sick garbage like this, but I can't honestly say I'd fight for their freedom of expression in this case.