The Screengrab : roman polanski: wanted and desired

DVD Digest for January 27, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:00:00 GMT

This week, a whole bunch of late-summer/early-fall releases are coming on DVD to help soothe the midwinter moviegoing blues.

Of this week’s bumper crop of recent theatrical releases coming to DVD, the most noteworthy is Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Genius Products, also Blu-Ray), which became the Woodman’s biggest hit in years due in no small part to the promise of hot Penelope Cruz-on-Scarlett Johansson action. That it was also a welcome change of scenery for the filmmaker- shooting for the first time in Spain- helped matters somewhat as well. It’s definitely worth a look if you haven’t seen it yet- come for the sexy stuff, stay for the memorable performances by Oscar nominee Cruz, Javier Bardem playing a character 180 degrees removed from his Anton Chigurh, and the ever-dependable Rebecca Hall.

Also this week, Warner unleashes the cops’n’robbers trifecta of Edward Norton and Colin Farrell in Pride and Glory (also Blu-Ray), Neil LaBute’s Lakeview Terrace (also Blu-Ray), and Guy Ritchie’s Rocknrolla (also Blu-Ray). Other releases include: Rainn Wilson in The Rocker (Fox, also Blu-Ray); Kirk Cameron’s inspirational melodrama Fireproof (Sony), the Iraq War drama The Lucky Ones (Lionsgate); Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (Image), a docuymentary about the filmmaker’s controversial court case; the French thriller Tell No One (MPI); the babes-and-binge-drinking comedy College (Fox); and a pair of direct-to-DVD animated releases, Hulk Vs. (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray) and Open Season 2 (Sony, also Blu-Ray).

This week’s selection of classics coming to DVD is highlighted by MGM’s The Pink Panther Film Collection (MGM), which includes all of the films including a new pressing of the original, also available in separately as The Pink Panther (1963) Collector’s Edition (MGM, also Blu-Ray). There’s also The Pink Panther Classic Cartoon Collection (MGM), a nine-disc set of the televised Pink Panther shorts. All of this Pink Panther news might be happier if it didn’t portend the release of the second crappy remake starring Steve Martin, but what can you do. Also this week: Mary Poppins 45th Anniversary Edition (Disney).

Finally, the big Blu-Ray only news this week is the release of Universal’s The Bourne Collection, which includes all three theatrical features (sorry, no Richard Chamberlain TV movie), along with a raft of extras. Also this week: Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday Director’s Cut (Warner), the college band drama Drumline Special Edition (Fox), and the annual release of Groundhog Day (Sony).

Breaking News in Roman Polanski Case

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Roman Polanski didn’t make the top five in our Screengrab Person of the Year awards for 2008, but it’s a safe bet he was in the top ten. We’ve been covering each new development in his quest to end his exile from the United States stemming from his 1977 arrest on charges of drugging and raping a thirteen-year-old girl, and now there is breaking news that may bring the 75-year-old director a step closer to returning to our shores.

According to CNN, “The alleged victim in a 1977 sexual assault case against director Roman Polanski has filed court papers seeking dismissal of the charges against him. The woman's declaration seeking dismissal was filed Monday in Los Angeles, California, in connection with Polanski's efforts to have the 31-year-old case dismissed.”

It was last year’s documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (due later this month on DVD) that re-opened the debate about the case. The alleged victim, Samantha Geimer, would prefer to close down the discussion once and for all. “I am no longer a 13-year-old child. I have dealt with the difficulties of being a victim, have surmounted and surpassed them with one exception. Every time this case is brought to the attention of the Court, great focus is made of me, my family, my mother and others. That attention is not pleasant to experience and is not worth maintaining over some irrelevant legal nicety, the continuation of the case.”

Polanski’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the charges in December. A hearing is scheduled for January 21st. Tune in here for further developments.

Related:
Roman Polanski: Wanted in Los Angeles, Desired in Turin
Polanski Sexual Assault Victim Gives Thumbs Up to "Polanski: The Movie"

Roman Polanski: Wanted in Los Angeles, Desired in Turin

Phil Nugent — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

For almost a year now, Marina Zenovich's documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which deals with the Los Angeles criminal case that turned the director of Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby into a fugitive from American justice, has been kicking up dust in both film and legal circles. In 1977, Polanski was arrested on six felony counts arising from charges that he had drugged and raped a thirteen-year-old girl at a private photo shoot he had arranged at his friend Jack Nicholson's house. In a plea bargain, Polanski, who had been staring down a possible life sentence if convicted on all counts, pled guilty to a single count of "unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor", and expected to receive probation, a sentence that would have been in keeping with recommendations made by psychiatrists advising the court. In the end, Polanski fled the country, though only after spending 42 days locked up in a maximum-security prison where he was to receive a "psychological evaluation." What the documentary, which draws on interviews with both defense and prosecution attorneys involved in the case, makes clear is that Polanski skipped out only after deciding that he couldn't trust the judge, Lawrence J. Rittenband, a starstruck jackass whose delight at being at the center of a high-profile case had turned to distress over the bad publicity he was getting from Hollywood reporters chastising him for going easy on a rich pervert filmmaker with a "Children of the night!" foreign accent. (The subtitle of Zenovich's film is a sly reference to the different ways that Polanski was regarded in America and in Europe.) On two occasions, Rittenband demanded that the lawyers play-act scenes with him for the benefit of the reporters, and reneged on deals he'd made when he didn't like his press clippings. (Rittenband has since died, but in the movie, retired Deputy District Attorney Roger Gunson, who speaks about Polanski as if he were something he'd found sticking to his shoe, recalls warning Polanski's lawyer about Rittenband and says that if he'd found himself at the legal mercy of a freak like Rittenband, he probably would have been on the next plane himself.) Now lawyers for Polanski have filed a request the dismiss the outstanding warrant against him, citing the evidence of "a pattern of misconduct and improper communications" revealed in the film. If the charges are dropped--a move that Polanski's alleged victim calls for in the film--the 75-year-old winner of the 2002 Academy Award for Best Director (for The Pianist) will finally be able to visit the U.S. for the first time in thirty years. A spokeswoman for the District Attorney's office told reporters that she couldn't comment on the new developments because the D.A. was s till waiting to be served with the motion. She knew all about it, though. Saw it on the TV news.

While he waits for the results of the Los Angeles Superior Court hearing scheduled in January, Polanksi is maintaining his regular schedule of getting his feet kissed in Europe. He recently showed up at the Turin Film Festival, site of an enormous career retrospective thrown in his honor. Neil Harris reports that "At the nearby Museo Nazionale del Cinema, the gantry that snakes around its spectacular five-storey exhibition hall is decorated with blown-up photographs from the director's own collection. Viewed together, they offer fascinating insights into the making of such iconic masterworks as Repulsion, Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby. A snap from the latter's set sees its star Mia Farrow visibly delighted by a chart breaking down her performance into separate components. Polanski, whose directing style has not always inspired descriptions of his actors as being "visibly delighted", rolled into town to co-star in a Q & A session with director Nanni Moretti (The Son's Room), the festival's artistic director. Describing the challenges he's placed in front of himself on some projects, Polanski said that "Telling stories is not enough. I need something more difficult to achieve." He also admitted to the odd failure or two. The most spectacular of these on his resume is Pirates, the $40 million bellyflop that Polanski had actually been working on before his arrest and that was finally released in 1986, only to serve as a reminder to the world that if you're working on an expensive project that you've conceived for Jack Nicholson to star in and find yourself making it with Walter Matthau in the lead, something has gone terribly wrong. "It was a nightmare from beginning to end. Every day something new would go wrong," Polanski recalled of the shoot, adding, "I should have got a special award just for finishing it." Or maybe, as Chico Marx might put it, he should have been offered a really special award in exchange for agreeing not to finish it.

The Roman Exile: 30 Years and Counting

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:40:00 GMT

After a very brief theatrical run, Marina Zenovich's documentary on the infamous Roman Polanski statutory rape case, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired -- which resulted in his 30-year exile from the United States -- makes its cable debut this week, and far from simply rehashing the facts of the past, it has cast severe doubt on what most people think they know. It's even brought up a fresh new wrinkle in the case, which is already causing a war of words between people on all sides of the event.

Cinematical covers the new twist (in an article with the yawn-inducing headline "Roman Polanski Doc Still in Dispute"). When Wanted and Desired tipped Monday night on HBO, it wasn't the same version that filmgoers in New York and Los Angeles saw during its limited big-screen run; the film's producers, under pressure from the Los Angeles County Superior Court, deleted a portion of the documentary in which it is claimed that in 1997, a judge newly assigned to the case offered to drop the charges against Polanski and allow him to return to the U.S., on the condition that the hearing be televised. Polanski refused, and spent ten more years in exile.

What's most astonishing about the claim isn't that court officials denied it and pushed the filmmakers into dropping the scene; it's that attorneys on both sides of the case -- both the defense and the prosecution -- say the documentary is correct and that L.A. County is lying. In a joint statement -- the first issued in the history of the case by both defense and prosecuting attorneys -- they claim that "Monday's false and reprehensible statement by the Los Angeles Superior Court continues their inappropriate handling of the Polanski case."

In the Washington Post, William Booth interviews Zenovich and examines the film in some depth, finding that the director attempts to show how celebrity and greed conspired to botch and misdeal the case against Polanski while never exculpating the director or forgetting the victim. Whatever the ultimate outcome of a situation in which no one emerges looking particularly good, Polanski himself maintains the same distance he always has: he refused to attend a screening of Wanted and Desired, and, given a DVD of the documentary, asked only what Zenovich's next film project might be.

Jailbait Cinema, Part 3

Polanski Sexual Assault Victim Gives Thumb's Up to "Polanski: The Movie"

Phil Nugent — Fri, 09 May 2008 13:30:00 GMT

When Roman Polanski won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Pianist, he became the first filmmaker to win that Oscar while a fugitive from U. S. justice. In 1977, Polanski was arrested and charged with rape and drugging a minor after Samantha Geimer (or Samantha Gailey, as she was then known), a thirteen-year-old girl who he wanted to photograph for French Vogue, claimed that he had plied her with champagne and quaaludes and then assaulted her at the private shoot he had arranged at Jack Nicholson's house. Polanksi, who has always maintained that he was set up as part of a scheme by the girl's mother to blackmail him, arranged a deal to plea to a lesser charge, only to flee the country after being advised that the judge intended to set aside the plea bargain and throw the book at him. (He faced a possible prison term of fifty-years.) He hasn't been back to the States since, though Samantha Geimer, interviewed in the wake of The Pianist's release, said that as far as she was concerned, "Straight up, what he did to me was wrong. But I wish he would return to America so the whole ordeal can be put to rest for both of us."

All this and more is covered in the eagerly awaited HBO documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which had its premiere showing in New York this week. Jada Yuan of New York magazine's "Vulture" blog reports that one party of three that showed up for the event were: Samantha Geimer, accompanied by her mother and husband. Geimer, who lives in Hawaii, has three kids and works for a real estate developer, agreed to let the filmmakers interview about what happened thirty years ago because, ""Generally for me, it's just easier that if people want to talk to me, I talk to them. That way they don't sit out in front of my house and wait for me." Still, you might think that she wouldn't have been up to flying in from the big island to see it all gone over again onscreen. On the contrary, "We thought this would be really fun. We don't get many chances to come to New York, so I was really happy to come and see the city and do all this fabulous stuff. Got to be back to work on Friday or the boss will fire me." As for the movie, she endorses it heartily, and maybe, a bit, to her surprise: "I didn't think somebody could make it that interesting."