ROMAN POLANSKI

Started by modage, June 26, 2003, 01:44:22 AM

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SHAFTR

Sadly I've only seen Chinatown.  I remember seeing the beginning of Frantic years ago and not being impressed.  Anyways, I should really see more of his films.  Chinatown was entertaining but I didn't get the 'great' sense that others have pinned on it.  It is a solidly constructed film though.

About the whole rape thing...I was just upset that he won an Oscar at a ceremony he could not attend b/c he has a fled the country to escape further prosecution.  Sure, your films should be exhibited, but he should not even be looked at by the Academy.  If he comes back and this whole thing is finally settled, fine.
"Talking shit about a pretty sunset
Blanketing opinions that i'll probably regret soon"

meatwad

i saw The Tenant last night, and i must say i did not enjoy it. It seemed like it could have ended earlier. And the starring role should have been played by someone else the polanski himself. The whole film seemed like it was building up to something big, and then the ending was exactly like i perdicted.

Pastor Parsley

I just purchased the criterion Knife in the Water a few days ago.  I hadn't seen it before and really liked it.  It was IMO one of his best.  The second disc has all of his short films on it as well.  Some were school assignments others were obviously experiments.  I'm really happy with the purchase.  I can definitely recommend it.

I Chinatown was great but I agree with Onomo that it's overrated.  I can appreciate it, but it's regarded as one of the best films.

The Tenant, although it has some interesting parts is pretty bad.  I bought it a Wal-mart for $5 and I don't think it's worth much more.

As far as his raping fiasco, none of us were there, it's hard to make a judgement either way.  I wish he would have faced up to it instead of fleeing the country.  18 year olds are young enough, why would you need to go lower?

I do think art stands by itself regardless of the artist who created it.

MacGuffin

Ben Kingsley Starring in Polanski's Oliver Twist
Source: Variety

Variety reports that Ben Kingsley will play Fagin and 10-year-old English actor Barney Clark will essay the title role in Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist. Polanski has also cast Jamie Foreman as Bill Sykes and Frank Finlay as Mr. Brownlow in his adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel.

The film, which starts a four-month shoot July 12 in Prague, is produced by Alain Sarde and Robert Benmussa, the team behind Polanski's The Pianist. It will be shot entirely in the Czech Republic, with interiors and exteriors built on Barrandov Studios' backlot.

Many of the key creatives also worked on The Pianist, led by screenwriter Ron Harwood, lenser Pawel Edelman, costume designer Anna Sheppard, production designer Allan Starski and editor Herve de Luze.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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Spike

Yeah, some of his movies are really outstanding. Especially I love "The Fearless Vampire Killers" and "Chinatown".

BTW, you all should read Polankis autobiography. It's really very, very interesting and gives you also an interesting look at the film industry in Hollywood in the late 60s / 70s.
It also has some really funny parts, esp when Polanski took LSD for the first time or had huge partys with lots of drugs together with Jack Nicholson and Bob Evans. That must've been a great time.
Anyway, he DIDN'T rape the girl. He tells the whole story in the book and I definately believe him. And Jack wasn't in the house at that time, only Anjelica Huston came in after Roman and the girl had sex. She was an experienced girl and when they started kissing each other after swimming in the pool she took off her clothes and they had sex, he didn't rape her.
"We're gonna celebrate St. Suck-My-Big-Fat-Fucking-Sausage'a!!!"

molly

i've read in the newspaper today that Polanski's producer, or "The pianist"'s producer was indicted of/for corruption.

MacGuffin

Polanski Asks UK Lords to Let Him to Sue from Afar

Lawyers for film director Roman Polanski will ask England's highest court this week to allow him to sue for libel while avoiding the risk of being extradited to the United States for child sex offences.

The case is being widely seen as a test action on the rights of libel claimants to sidestep the need to attend court to give evidence in person.

Polanski, a celebrated director who fled the U.S. in 1977 after admitting having sex with a child, wants to sue America's Vanity Fair magazine over an article he says defamed him by accusing him of seducing a woman who was with another man.

The article claimed he propositioned the woman in a New York restaurant when he stopped there on the way to the funeral of his actress wife, Sharon Tate, who was murdered in 1969.

The Franco-Polish director is seeking to use the English courts for the libel action -- which Vanity Fair's publishers Conde Nast are contesting -- but is scared to come to Britain for fear of being extradited to the United States as a "fugitive from justice."

Media law experts say Polanski chose to use the English justice system because UK libel laws are more advantageous to litigants than those in the United States.

Polanski pleaded guilty in a California court 27 years ago to having unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. Soon afterwards, before the court had handed down a sentence, he fled the United States and has not returned since.

Since Britain has an extradition agreement with the U.S. Polanski risks arrest and extradition were he to set foot on English soil.

The Court of Appeal ruled last year that Polanski should not be allowed to give evidence via video link from Paris, where he now lives, since this would be allowing him to use judicial process when it suits him, but avoid it when it does not.

"The court should not be seen to assist a claimant who is a fugitive from justice to evade sentence for a crime of which he has been convicted," Lord Justice Jonathan Parker, one of the Court of Appeal's three judges, said at the time.

"Clearly, the court's general policy should be to discourage litigants from escaping the normal processes of the law, rather than to facilitate this," the appeal court ruling said.

But Polanski's lawyers will ask five law lords sitting in England's highest court, the House of Lords, on Wednesday to overturn previous court rulings that he must appear in person.

David Hooper, a media law specialist with leading law firm Reynolds Porter Chamberlain, who are advising Vanity Fair, said the Appeal Court decision could, if upheld by the law lords prove a "knock-out blow" to Polanski's case against Vanity Fair.

The law lords are expected to hear the case for two days, then reserve their judgment and give a decision in writing early next year.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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Bethie

Last night I played a game of Trivial Pursuit (Fourth Edition) with a group of friends. I was the only team member to earn pieces of pie for my team. Our first question asked something like what Roman Polanski film had to do with an investigation of the water supply in California? I screamed, "Chinatown!"

I was the only one in the room that had even seen it. Hooray for me.

Note- The group of friends I played with was my group of friends from History of Film Class. Shows what they know or lack there of.
who likes movies anyway

Ravi

Quote from: BethieLast night I played a game of Trivial Pursuit (Fourth Edition) with a group of friends. I was the only team member to earn pieces of pie for my team. Our first question asked something like what Roman Polanski film had to do with an investigation of the water supply in California? I screamed, "Chinatown!"

I was the only one in the room that had even seen it. Hooray for me.

Note- The group of friends I played with was my group of friends from History of Film Class. Shows what they know or lack there of.

Sorry, the correct answer is "Moops."

Bethie

There's NO moops. YOU IDIOT!
who likes movies anyway

MacGuffin

Polanski's sex life under spotlight in libel case

Roman Polanski's personal life was put under the spotlight on Monday at the start of a libel trial in which the director testified via video link from Paris to avoid extradition to America for sex with an underage girl.

Polanski is suing the publishers of Vanity Fair magazine for an article in July 2002 alleging he tried to seduce a woman while on his way to his slain wife's funeral in 1969.

He was speaking from Paris to avoid the risk of extradition from Britain to the United States, where is he wanted after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977. He cannot be extradited from his native France for the crime.

"You are a fugitive from morality," said lawyer Thomas Shields, representing Vanity Fair publishers Conde Nast.

Polanski had just admitted having "casual sex" with other women before and during his marriage to Tate, as well as once four weeks after her murder and at least one incident of having sex with two females at the same time, one of them aged 15.

"You are putting it in a grotesque way," Polanski responded, before proceedings were adjourned until Tuesday.

Lawyers expect the trial, the first in which a libel claimant has sued via video link, to last about a week.

Hollywood actress Mia Farrow and Tate's sister Debra are expected to take the witness stand on Tuesday.

Earlier in the proceedings, Polanski choked with emotion as he described his love for Tate, who was murdered by followers of the Charles Manson clan when eight-and-a-half months pregnant.

"Sharon was sweet, bright, brilliant. She had a great sense of humour ... she was in my eyes the perfect woman," he said.

The 71-year-old also described his reaction to reading the Vanity Fair article, which includes a passage quoting him telling the "Swedish beauty" he was trying to seduce: "I will make another Sharon Tate of you."

"I was in a state of shock," he said. "This was the worst thing ever written about me. It's absolutely not true. But I think it was particularly hurtful, because it dishonors my memory of Sharon," he added.

POLANSKI: A RESPONSE TO TRAGEDY

During Shield's cross examination, Polanski defended his promiscuity after his relationship with Tate.

"The death of Sharon ... was an immeasureable shock to me, and in such moments some people turn to drugs, some to alcohol, some go to a monastery, for me it was sex."

He also recalled the media reaction to Tate's murder, which he said implied that it was the moral bankruptcy of her and her friends that was to blame.

"I felt they were being assassinated for the second time," he said.

The jury watched a recording of a 1969 press conference Polanski gave shortly after Tate's murder and a 1984 interview during which he discussed sex and his days as a boy in Poland fleeing the Nazis at the start of World War II.

Polanski's mother died in a concentration camp.

Both sides in the case now accept Polanski was not at the restaurant, as alleged, en route to Tate's funeral in Los Angeles, but was there within three or four weeks of the murder.

Vanity Fair says the gist of the article is still correct. Polanski says no such incident took place.

Polanski's lawyer, John Kelsey-Fry, drew a distinction between his client's sex life and the alleged incident in Elaine's restaurant in New York 26 years ago.

"This case is not about sex," he said in opening arguments. "It is about that breathtaking and callous indifference to her death and memory that such conduct would require."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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Pubrick

Quote from: MacGuffinPolanski had just admitted having "casual sex" with other women before and during his marriage to Tate, as well as once four weeks after her murder and at least one incident of having sex with two females at the same time, one of them aged 15.
truly one of the greatest.
under the paving stones.

Stefen

At least she wasn't their Nanny.
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

modage



how could you cheat on her, really?
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

MacGuffin

Mia Farrow in court recalls distraught Polanski

Hollywood actress Mia Farrow said on Tuesday Roman Polanski was in "really bad shape" when he was alleged to have tried to seduce a woman in a restaurant while on his way to his slain wife's funeral.

In a libel case that has shone a spotlight on the film director's promiscuity, Farrow described him as distraught during an evening they spent together in 1969 at Elaine's restaurant in New York.

Polanski is suing the publishers of Vanity Fair for a 2002 article which alleged he tried to seduce a "Swedish beauty" at Elaine's, although the magazine now admits the incident took place several weeks after Sharon Tate was buried.

"He was in really bad shape at that time," a soft-spoken Farrow told a packed London courtroom. Farrow starred in Polanski's 1968 film "Rosemary's Baby."

Wearing a black trouser suit and gold blouse, the 60-year-old recalled how she and Polanski left the restaurant and walked around the block.

"He was unable to talk about anything else. When we walked around and around, he kept saying 'Why?' and 'Who could have done this?"'

Under cross examination from Vanity Fair's lawyer, Thomas Shields, Farrow admitted there were parts of the evening that remained hazy in her mind, although she insisted she remembered the "central part."

Shields suggested Farrow may have left Polanski at Elaine's, and that the alleged incident may have taken place then.

When asked what she thought about Polanski's own admission of having casual sex with women shortly after Tate's murder, she replied:

"I feel there's a big distinction, especially for a man, between relationships and having sex. I could never pass judgment if someone in that frame of mind seeks comfort in any way that does not harm anyone."

TEARS, TRUTH

Polanski has appeared in the London courtroom via video link from Paris as he is wanted in the United States after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

He would risk extradition if he came to England to fight his case but cannot be extradited from France, where he was born.

Shields has focused on Polanski's private life and patchy memory of the late 1960s to undermine his objections to the article.

Addressing Polanski, Shields said he had an "inability to tell the truth when it matters," and added: "The line between fantasy and reality has been hopelessly blurred."

The director responded by questioning the memory of those who said the incident took place at Elaine's.

"I am more and more astonished by this phenomenal memory these people have," he said.

Polanski has admitted in court to having sex with a woman within one month of Tate's death, and within four months of the murder seeking solace in sex with "nubile" teenagers from finishing school in Gstaad, Switzerland.

Tate was stabbed to death in 1969 by followers of the Charles Manson clan when she was eight-and-a-half months pregnant.

He burst into tears on Tuesday when questioned about photographs of the murder scene he was shown by police in 1969. Debra Tate, Sharon's sister, also cried in court.

In the witness box, she described Polanski as an "absolute wreck" around the time of Tate's death.

"He was heavily sedated to the point that he couldn't walk without assistance."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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