In one of those news stories that I like to believe have been generated only because the people involved knew how badly I needed to be reminded how lucky I am to be alive at this moment, a German court has ruled that the movie Rohtenburg, which was "inspired by" the story of the convicted murderer Arwin Meiwes, can be shown in that country. The movie was banned in 2006 in response to a complaint filed by Meiwes himself, who is serving a life sentence. Rohtenburg, which was released outside Germany under the title Grimm Love, was directed by Martin Weisz, who later made The Hills Have Eyes 2. The film stars Keri Russell as an American graduate student whose research in criminal pathology leads her to study "Oliver Hartman" (played by Thomas Kretschmann, of The Pianist, King Kong, and Valkyrie). Meiwes argued that, despite the fictionalization of the case, the movie was still close enough to his case that it "infringed" on his "personal rights."

Meiwes, known to tabloids as the "Rotenburg Cannibal", enjoyed a vogue as an Internet cause celebre when word got out that he had killed and eaten a man he had arranged to meet for this purpose through a website called the Cannibal Cafe, which advertised itself as being strictly for fantasy role-playing. Disregarding the fine print, Meiwes and Bernd Jürgen Brandes, who had answered his ad looking for "a well-built 18 to 30-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed", got together in Meiwes's apartment in 2001 and proceeded to videotape their encounter, so that no one would later get the wrong idea.

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Last week brought a measure of closure, if something less than perfect justice, in the case of the murder of actress-filmmaker Adrienne Shelley. Shelley's death was first reported as a possible suicide some fifteen months ago, after her husband found her hanging by a bedsheet in the bathroom of her Tribeca office. The police subsequently arrested Diego Pillco, a construction worker who claimed that he had gotten into an argument with Shelley over the noise he was making at his job; he said that he had punched her, knocked her unconscious, and, thinking she was dead, had panicked and staged the suicide. In court last week before Judge Carol Berkman, Pillco changed his story; speaking through a Spanish-language interpretor, he claimed that Shelley had caught him stealing money from her purse and that he had choked her to death when she tried to phone for the police. The change was part of a plea agreement that Pillco, who can be easily distinguished from a five-foot piece of shit in that a five-foot piece of shit would spend less time whining like a stuck pig, worked out with the district attorney's office, in exchange for his agreement to plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter, with a fixed sentence of twenty-five years.

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Sweeney Todd:  The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

When it was announced that Hollywood was finally going to adapt Steven Sondheim’s hit musical, it seemed a no-brainer for Tim Burton to be tapped to direct. Yet judging by the trailer, I’m not sure he was the right choice. Sure, Burton has become the go-to guy for dark-yet-commercial, but Sweeney Todd is unpleasant stuff, and Burton’s tendency towards cartoonish style and scary-yet-sensitive man-children may lead him to soft-pedal the story’s less savory aspects. Too bad, because Sweeney Todd could be a hell of a movie if made right. Jury’s still out on the singing voices of the actors — Sweeney’s a demanding role vocally, and Depp mostly speak-sings his one song in the trailer.  But let’s not forget that (a) a really strong voice isn’t altogether necessary when you’ve got multiple takes and post-production facilities at your disposal, and (b) for whatever reason Hollywood studios are still reluctant to give musicals an all-out singing-and-dancing push.  Perhaps they’ve realized that the core audience for musicals is both older and more female than the demographic of teenage boys they court so aggressively?

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