The list of Hollywood Film Festival award winners is winding down. Today’s announcement brings the Hollywood Supporting Actor prize for Christoph Waltz in “Inglourious Basterds,” making this officially the widest possible net festival brass could have cast. But Waltz will be going into the season with two wins under his belt already, here and in Cannes, so it’s safe to say we have a frontrunner in the supporting actor category (until Stanley Tucci comes along in a few months, that is).
Meanwhile, Father Rick Frechette will receive the festival’s Hollywood Humanitarium Award. From the press release:
Father Rick Frechette is currently the Director of Medical Services of Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos International and a priest who has devoted his life to the medical needs of children in the Caribbean and around the world. He is NPH’s Regional Director of the Caribbean, the Haiti home’s National Director and a member of the NPH International Health Services Team, which oversees the medical needs of the children in nine countries.
To make a difference, Frechette went to medical school to learn how to minister to the children’s physical needs, which resulted in his medical degree in 1998 from the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine and his becoming a general practitioner licensed in New York and Florida. “The poor people have scant access to medical care. Even if they are lucky enough to get evaluated at a clinic, both scarcity of medicines and their relatively high prices prevent their getting treatment. Our own working conditions, especially in the poorest areas of Port-au-Prince, are tragic and are deplorable. We have little water, no electricity, few medicines and supplies,” says the doctor-priest.