These two news stories are a bit of a departure from our regular doings here, but they just go to show what a truly fudged-up year this has been regarding death and the entertainment industry.  A quick perusal of the Dead Celeb Thread will show you that the Reaper has been quite busy this year, taking some notables in the film, television and music industries, including Farrah and Jacko on the same day.  But even outside these spheres, Death has been cleaving a terrible path. 

In American sports, Steve McNair is gunned down in his sleep by his crazy bitch girlfriend, and boxing had probably the most shocking trifecta ever in sports within the span of a month with the killings of Arturo Gatti, Alexis Arguello and Vernon Forrest.  The two Filipino film critics and French director that have recently been killed in separate events and separate countries aren’t as notable as those mentioned above, nevertheless, they’ve been out there doing their thing in the industry and simply lost their lives in such stupid fashion. 

First, there were FilipinoCanadian critic Alexis Tioseco and Slovenian journalist Nika Bohinc, both shot and killed by robbers in their Manila home.  Bohinc, a 29-year-old critic and former editor of Slovenian film
magazine Ekran, had been working as a freelance journalist in Manila
with her partner, 28-year-old Tioseco, founder of online journal
Criticine. Tioseco was a champion of Southeast Asian cinema who did
much to publicize the work of independent filmmakers from the
Philippines.

Secondly, Christian Poveda, 53, was murdered a few miles away from San Salvador, while working on a new documentary.  His most recent doco, La Vida Loca, chronicled several members of Mara 18, a dangerous new street gang in El Salvador.  Poveda was found in a car, shot multiple times in the head, reportedly by gang members, after having just filmed in an area controlled by Mara 18.  Poveda, who was also a photojournalist, had traveled to San Salvador in
the early 1980s to cover the Civil War for Time magazine and returned
10 years later to make a documentary on street gangs. 
La Vida Loca played at San Sebastian and other film festivals and will premiere in France on Sept. 30th.  The trailer is below.

I had a friend in Kenya kidnapped by Somali extremists last year and held for nine months simply for flying aid workers in to try to help people.  I frequently worried about him before he was recently released and returned to his family.  The story wasn’t as happily written for these these folks and these are just some shitty deals all the way around.  Condolences to their friends and families.