roman polanski Tagged Articles at Cinematical

On a recent visit to the Chicago-based set of the A Nightmare on Elm Street remake, producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form gave us online types a good hour with which to poke and prod about that film and countless other projects in the works. The Elm St. stuff will have to wait until the time is right, but at the moment, you're just a hop, skip and jump away from finding out where Platinum Dunes currently stands with a Friday the 13th sequel, their present involvement in reported remakes of The Birds and Rosemary's Baby, and how exactly the little-seen Horsemen ended up slipping through the cracks last spring...

Read the full interview at Horror Squad!

The Roman Polanski horror movie everyone knows and loves is, of course, Rosemary's Baby (and to some extent The Ninth Gate, except for the "loves" part, though I think that one gets a bad rap). But the seriously scary Polanski film that is criminally underseen -- though generally appreciated by those who see it -- is his 1996 effort Repulsion, the first movie in his "apartment trilogy" that would conclude with Baby and The Tenant. Certainly it's the scariest movie about sex that you'll ever see, putting Teeth to shame. (Any other contenders?) A character study that gradually reveals a very disturbed psyche, it's super-creepy in insinuating, unconventional ways. (Remember the constantly ticking clock in Rosemary's Baby? It's here too. And mysterious bells. And sometimes the sound just cuts out...)

If you've never seen Repulsion -- as I hadn't until very recently -- you might hold out for July 28th, when the wonderful folks at Criterion will release their typically awesome-sounding Special Edition on DVD and Blu-Ray. Among other things, it'll have a full-length commentary from Polanski and Catherine Deneuve, who was barely 20 when the film was shot and is a dead ringer for Gwyneth Paltrow. It'll also have a documentary shot on set in 1964, which should be fascinating.

But even if you don't shell out the $40 bucks for the Criterion set, see this movie. Netflix it or something. It's a master class for admirers of the horror genre. Here's something tantalizing: it has one of my favorite final shots of all time.

Did you know that Roman Polanski directed a short film posing as a perfume ad starring Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams? Well, you know now. Greed is apparently the latest project from the Italian performance artist Francesco Vezzoli, and it's a very short film made to look like a perfume advertisement about two girls who duke it out over the right to wear this new fragrance. Dazed Digital has the short up on their site alongside this description:

"Directed by Roman Polanski and featuring Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams embroiled in a fierce battle over the fanciful scent, the spurious campaign attempts to isolate and imitate the hype created by the promotion of a new luxury product in the mass market."

Truth be told, I was expecting something a bit more than what the final product gives us, but it's Polanski and Portman and Williams (both of whom roll around on the floor together), so perhaps that'll be enough for some people. Check out the trailer below and the entire short film over at Dazed Digital.

Bit by very slow bit, we're learning more about Roman Polanski's next film. Current legal woes might have him occupied, but the world of casting moves on. Variety reports that Tom Wilkinson and Jim Belushi are rounding out the cast of the director's next film, The Ghost.

The feature (previously covered here and here) follows an ex-British Prime Minister who shacks up on an island and writes a memoir while his aide drowns, "triggering political and sexual intrigue." At one time, it was going to be Brosnan as the ex PM, and Cage as the writer. Now, things have changed, and Variety notes that the cast consists of Wilkinson and Belushi, plus Kim Cattrall, Ewan McGregor, and Olivia Williams. I imagine that Ewan is taking over the writerly gig, but it still sucks -- it would've been nice to see Cage putting aside his action and getting creative once again. I guess we'll still have to wait.

Nevertheless, Polanski's film should prove intriguing. Production begins next month in Berlin. Think Polanski will have his legal issues figured out by then?

The last time I wrote about the neverending case against Roman Polanski back in December, he was looking to have that infamous sex charge dismissed. Since then, there have been demands that he surrender to the court, and others to get the case moved out of LA. But this latest twist makes things interesting: Variety reports that Samantha Geimer, the victim in question, has taken her disapproval of the ongoing case a step further by submitting a court filing criticizing the Los Angeles District Attorney.

In the filing, Geimer talks about her disappointment with the DA's refusal to dismiss the case, and how "yet, one more time, given great publicity to the lurid details of those events, for all to read, again." She charges the office with going over those details just to pull attention away from accusations of wrongdoing, and says that Polanski's flight "was not voluntary, it was because the judicial system did not work." Moreover, she claims that the insistence that he return to courts is merely "a joke, a cruel joke being played on me."

Should Polanski not show up himself when the hearing begins on January 21, Geimer says she will be there to beg for dismissal. I doubt old Roman will be heading for Los Angeles any time soon, so do you think Geimer will be successful?

We all know the triumphs and struggles of Roman Polanski, and how one of the latter has remained a thorn in his side to this day -- the sex he had with a 13-year-old girl 31 years ago. The recent documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (which Erik and Christopher both reviewed) covered the years Polanski has spent avoiding jail and both the US and UK, and ended with word that it could have all come to an end, but that the judge wanted the proceedings televised. That was the end of that until now; Polanski wants it all done with.

The Hollywood Reporter posts that the famed filmmaker has filed papers with the Los Angeles Superior Court requesting that the case against him be dismissed. His reasoning, according to THR: "They list a slew of reasons for the case to be dismissed, including that the victim, Samantha Geimer, has made 'numerous' and repeated requests that the case be dismissed and that Mr. Polanski serve no further term of incarceration, a request that must be considered."

I can't help but wonder: Would Polanski really want to come back? Think about it -- the US he remembers isn't the US of today. I can imagine him coming back, seeing that nothing is as he left it all that time ago, and head right back to Europe. But this all also depends on whether they'll consider wiping it all away without Polanski being present. Think he'll risk it and finally hit US shores again?

Celebrity interviews can be pretty nerve-wracking. The ante is upped even more when the interviewee doesn't give many interviews. You hope for the best, but sometimes that's not what you get. Xan Brooks got a chance to interview Faye Dunaway for The Guardian, and things didn't go so well. It started with a list of ixnayed topics, but one was left off the list -- Roman Polanski and rumors about Chinatown. He asked if it was true that she once threw a cup of urine at the famed director and well, she didn't take too kindly to that line of questioning. Follow the link to see what happened and then comment below: Was it okay for Brooks to ask her about that? Did she overreact?

And then there's a little bit of tennis. Variety reports that Frank Deford's adaptation of his novel Big Bill: The Triumphs and the Tragedy, which focuses on tennis legend Bill Tilden, has been optioned by Baldwin Entertainment. This is a pretty old-school story -- Tilden won six straight U.S. Open singles titles in the 1920s, and was the first American to win Wimbledon. The plus about this feature: there's a lot more to the man than just rackets and balls. "He was also a contract bridge champ, musicologist, novelist, playwright and actor. On the other side of the ledger, Tilden was famously self-destructive, going to jail twice for sexual misbehavior with teenage boys and dying penniless." That should prove interesting.

Finally, Michael Pena told MTV that he'd definitely be in if a feature version of The Shield, if one was schemed up. In fact, he thinks there could be a prequel and that it would be "awesome." Me, I caught some old-school Felicity eps recently, and now I can't see him as anything other than the wanna-be ladies man who lived in the dorm. He's come a long way in 8 years.

Five years ago, Roman Polanski won an Oscar for directing The Pianist. But he couldn't attend the Academy Awards ceremony, because had he entered the United States, he would have been arrested as soon as his plane touched down. Or so the excuse went. While the scenario might have indeed played out that way, the story of his hypothetical incarceration was at that time more a part of the legend of Polanski than it was a matter of truth. More hearsay and speculation than complete fact.

Now the difference between that legend and the lesser-known truth is exposed in the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. And basically it's the gap between a generalized truth and the whole truth. So, yes, as we all heard and/or discussed at our Oscar parties five years ago, Polanski was in fact a fugitive, having fled the United States in 1978 after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl. But there is so much more to the story than just that.

It was just last year that Christopher brought us the news that Roman Polanski had selected Richard Harris' novel, The Ghost, as his next big film project. So even though it took some time to get name actors to sign on the dotted line, the wait is over now that MTV reports that Pierce Brosnan and Nicolas Cage will star in the political drama.

Ghost is the story of a writer hired to complete an autobiography of a soon-to-be ex-Prime Minister (with Brosnan playing the PM, and Cage as the writer). Through the course of the interviews, the ghostwriter uncovers some troubling secrets from the Minister's past that put our writer friend in some high-stakes danger. Rumor has it the original idea for the book was loosely based on former PM Tony Blair, but I would assume that any similarities were kept well in the realm of fiction.

Growing up in suburban Los Angeles, I knew Roman Polanski as a celebrity long before I knew his work as a film director. The murder of his wife by the Manson Family in 1969 and his controversial rape case in 1977 were well covered in the media, and I formed strong negative opinions about him, especially after he fled the US in 1978.

Still, I'd heard such interesting things about Marina Zenovich's doc Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired -- including Erik Davis' excellent, measured review from Sundance -- that I made sure to tune in when it premiered on HBO on Monday night after an extremely-limited theatrical qualifying run in New York and Los Angeles.

Before the broadcast, Slate reported that HBO changed the ending after Los Angeles Superior Courts officials complained. The Los Angeles Times published a similar story on Tuesday. Erik described what he saw at Sundance: "Perhaps the most fascinating fact (and this was something I did not know) came in the reveal that, when a new judge was assigned to the case in 1997, he agreed to throw out the charges if Polanski were to return to the States -- on one condition: that the hearing be televised. Because of that, Polanski decided against coming back."