roman polanski Tagged Articles at Cinematical

This month is all about villains on Cinematical, and thankfully, October seems flush with folks who fit the bill: horror movies, often released in anticipation (if not exploitation) of Halloween, usually offer at least one person, creature or entity that qualifies as an adversary to be fled from or feared. But the sad truth is that not a whole lot of them have particularly great theme music, which brings us to this week's Cinematical Seven.

To be fair, these folks don't often have the luxury of choosing said music themselves, so if they get a crappy rock song or some kind of dumbass lullabye, it's not their fault. But after revisiting a number of classic horror series and the movie monsters they immortalized, we've put together what we think is a pretty good collection of themes that folks can and will still find scary. (And while some of this music may or may not be specifically associated with the individual character or creature, the guideline to which we held ourselves was the association of the music with that particular monster.)

Suffice it to say there are a number of other great horror movie themes, and we're just scratching the surface with a list of seven, but check our list of some of the most famous, memorable, and yeah, terrifying, with or without some dude in a mask bearing down on the bathroom door where you've found temporary safe haven.

The complicated story of Roman Polanski and his flight from the US over 30 years ago is starting to get very, very simple – at least when it comes to the law. The NYT reports that Polanski (and his legal representatives) have lost the appeal to have the director released from a Zurich jail following his arrest for a 2005 international warrant. The appeal was rejected by the Swiss Justice Ministry and a spokesperson for the ministry was quoted as saying the reason they rejected the request was that they felt "there is a high risk of flight" -- and it's not like you can blame them, the man does have a habit of disappearing when in the middle of a sticky situation.

That hasn't stopped his legal representatives from asking Switzerland's highest criminal court to free Polanski, but representatives from the Justice Ministry even submitted letters explaining their opposition to freeing the director. However, there is still a chance the director could be freed, and according to the NYT, "The Federal Criminal Court has said it will rule in the case in the "next weeks," and a verdict in either direction can be appealed to the country's highest judicial body, the Federal Tribunal."

If you've been arguing with your friends and family about the arrest and detainment of Roman Polanski in Switzerland last week, don't feel bad -- you're not the only one with an opinion. There's a debate brewing in Hollywood over the acclaimed director and his current legal predicament, and everyone has jumped into the fray. Polanski fled from the US after a conviction for unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor back in 1978, and with his recent arrest some of the biggest names in Hollywood have been publicly showing support. Recently, filmmakers like Michael Mann, Darren Aronofsky, Terry Gilliam, and Woody Allen (ahem, yes, even Woody Allen) signed a petition demanding the filmmaker's release from a Zurich jail. On the other hand, there is a very real possibility that not everybody is on board the love train, and the problem is that those people aren't talking.

Hollywood is a business, and just like in any other business, reputation can be everything. If you think of Hollywood as the world's biggest high school, then you can see how nobody wants to be excluded from the 'cool table' -- and it doesn't help that the pro-Polanski faction has Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, and the opposition has Sherri Shepherd and 'Nellie Olsen'. In a piece for the LA Times, writer/blogger Melissa Silverstein said, "I think people are afraid to talk in Hollywood. They are afraid about their next job." Sure, that might sound slightly paranoid, but power players like Harvey Weinstein are writing op-eds in support of the director, so maybe she's not completely off the mark.

After the jump: making excuses and Hollywood vs. Middle America...

The New York Post is reporting that Brett Ratner wants to make a sequel to Marina Zenovich's documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. The Rush Hour 3 director was talking about the project on "Movie Geeks United" before Polanski was arrested in Switzerland so we can just chalk it up to really serendipitous timing (for Ratner, at least).

Ratner and Polanski have worked together before; besides casting Polanski in a small role in Rush Hour 3, the directors went on a road trip that culminated in a visit to Auschwitz for the Notorious Issue of Heeb Magazine, which Ratner guest-edited. Ratner told Contact Music he didn't realize they were headed for the concentration camps; "Little did I know Roman was going to take me to Auschwitz on an incursion through his Jewish history. Roman's mother perished at Auschwitz."

Ratner told Movie Geeks United, "The family has forgiven [Polanski]. The victim has forgiven him. The rest of the world has forgiven him... "The LA judicial system is corrupt. It's horrible."

Ratner also says Polanski has expressed interest in participating in his documentary -- something he didn't do with Zenovich's doc, which was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2008.

As of this writing, there's no news about the doc since Polanski's arrest.

Above: A still from the 2008 documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

BBC News is reporting that famed writer-director Roman Polanski has been taken into custody in Switzerland on a 31-year-old US arrest warrant for having sex with a 13-year-old girl back in 1977. Polanski was traveling from France -- where he fled to 31 years ago to escape a shady judge and possible jail time -- to the Zurich Film Festival to collect a lifetime achievement award. Polanski will now remain in Switzerland to await possible extradition back to the United States, where he was originally indicted on six counts and faced up to life in prison.

Last year Polanski's lawyers filed to have the case dismissed and to have a hearing moved out of an LA court. While the judge agreed that there was misconduct on the part of the original judge, he still found that Polanski would have to return to the United States to apply for a dismissal. Polanski, afraid he'd immediately be arrested as a fugitive, decided not to return. Two years ago the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (later airing on HBO) and re-opened this case to an audience that wasn't as familiar with what all went down between Polanski and the victim, Samantha Geimer, who, in recent years, has asked the court to drop the charges.

Roman Polanski's masterpiece Repulsion comes out on Criterion Collection DVD and Blu-Ray today. Because of its subversive, suspense/horror nature, it has never truly been counted as a proper cinema classic until now; that Criterion packaging has a way of turning any film into a classic. In it, Catherine Deneuve stars as a sexually repressed young woman who is left alone in a London apartment for a weekend. Before long she begins to experience all types of horrible images, from hands sticking out of a wall to rape and murder.

The great thing about Repulsion is that it's a perfect summation and distillation of Polanski's pet themes: the single, lone hero against the world; maybe it's paranoia and maybe it's not, but the battle remains the same. (Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.) Like Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang and Brian De Palma, Polanski has made a career of exorcising his inner demons on film, and the result has been remarkably consistent, even though he has touched upon many different genres. Unlike his three colleagues, however, Polanski has come the closest to mainstream acceptance, in that he won the 2002 Best Director Oscar for The Pianist. Despite that, however, he remains an outsider, a marginalized figure, rather than the world master he should be.

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?