SAN DIEGO – “In The Family,” the tour-de-force debut film by Patrick Wang, who is the star, screenwriter, director and producer, returns to San Diego on Friday, Dec. 7, for an encore performance. The movie also opens that day in San Francisco and San Jose, Calif.

Wang’s film was a big hit at the 2011 San Diego Asian Film Festival, where it was named Best Narrative Feature. And Wang was selected by festival programmers to receive the George C. Lin Emerging Filmmaker Award for his stirring drama.

This election is one of these moments in time when you have to look yourself in the mirror and ask the reflection you see just what it is you believe in.

You have to ask yourself if you want to keep perpetuating the anger and hate and blame and bigotry and homophobia, or do you want to rise above that and vote for acceptance and tolerance and citizenship.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The gloves are off and the masks have been removed in the United States as apparently it has become acceptable, even fashionable, to bully your fellow citizens — or better still, hang an effigy of your president, who happens to be black, with a noose, and in a part of the country where not too long ago, that in of itself was quietly approved.

Just last week, the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., hung an effigy of President Barack Obama from a gallows on its front lawn, accompanied by an upside-down rainbow Pride flag.

There’s a frenzy surrounding the blockbuster film and book "The Hunger Games." But the fan attention around the movie has taken a decidedly different turn from the fervor the book caused.

The schism originates from the difference between reading ­— where one’s visual images of characters can be both personal and individual — and watching — where the film’s visual images of characters are a literal representation.