Certainly an effective presentation could be made for Latin American viewers, showing such things as environmental destruction or environmentally destructive practices in Amazonia and elsewhere in Brazil, as well as in eastern Ecuador and the Galapagos, the effects of global warming in Patagonia and in the mountains of Costa Rica, and pollution, including carbon emissions, in over-crowded Latin American cities.

Also, it would not be at all surprising if force-feeding An Inconvenient Truth on non-American viewers would result in reinforcing the Bush-era image of the neo-Ugly American.  That is hardly a consequence that Al Gore himself would approve of.

The only Latin American country that I have visited and know at all well is Mexico.  Mexico City, which must have been one of the most beautiful and pleasant capitals in the world in the 19th and early 20th centuries, has dreadful air pollution, from a number of sources.  Things seem to be improving, thanks to reforms begun by the former mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.  But it is hardly out of the woods.  And I have choked on tail-pipe emissions in other large Mexican cities too, Cuernavaca and Puebla.

It may have been my imagination, but I got the impression, during visits to parks in Chihuahua, Michoaca'n and Vera Cruz, that Mexicans are rather more cavalier about littering in such public places, than Americans, Canadians and Europeans.  That impression pained me, I certainly did not want to have it, and I very much hope that I am greatly mistaken.

In Malcolm Lowry's great novel, "Under the Volcano," his hero, the British consul to Cuernavaca in the 1930s, during one of his drunken ambles through what was then a rather smallish city, is amused by a sign that he sees in a public garden or small park:

"¿Le gusta este jardín, que es Suyo?  ¡Evite que Sus niños lo destruyan!"

"Do you like this garden, which is yours?  Prevent your children from destroying it!"

I actually saw a sign very much like that, in Tepoztla'n, a beautiful town a few miles east of Cuernavaca, closer to the foot of the volcano, Popocate'petl.  It bespeaks a certain sense of civic pride and civic responsibility.  Of course, in every society, the conscientiousness of parents in reining in their children and not indulging them in their anti-social and obnoxious conduct waxes and wanes.

I am happy to report that I saw no noteworthy litter during the spectacular, difficult, long up-the-mountain hike to the pre-Columbian pyramid overlooking Tepoztla'n.

On another matter: Yes, Keanu Reeves is a great disappointment, artistically.  But physically, just as a temporary decoration, he sometimes makes up for his talentlessness.  My favorite scene in "The Matrix" (which is not saying much, I admit) is when he is in the back of the car, and they grab him, throw him on his back, pull up his shirt and send a robotic arthropod to penetrate his belly button.  I find that scene incredibly sexy.  Oddly, I keep forgetting to mention it to my shrink ...

Not to doubt Jessica's judgment, but I would have thought that "My Own Private Idaho" was more of a breaking-out vehicle for Keanu than was "Speed."  The latter, in fact, was the first time I saw Sandra Bullock, who is wonderful in that, and it may very well have been HER break-out movie.

Back to Mexico, in a Keanu-related way: He did a movie which was not well liked, "A Walk in the Clouds," but which I think is very sweet, in which he is received into a Mexican-American land-owning family in, I guess, the Napa valley, or somewhere in California where they have vineyards.  The ever charming, late Anthony Quinn is the wise, all-knowing grandfather of the female lead character, in one of his very last movie roles.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Have you ever stopped to think that it's universal appeal lies in its very smart use of images, and the fact that US media is so all-pervasive that people all over the world 'get' its cultural biases?

Perhaps earnest 'developing world' filmmakers don't understand that Hollywood is successful not because of 'imperial hegemony' in movie distribution, but tbecause mainstream Hollywood knows how to tell compelling stories via images better than anyone else?

Maybe the other films you cite are just boring?

Whiskerfish in Africa