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Anjelica Huston

September 27, 2009 by · Comments Off on Anjelica Huston 

Anjelica-Huston

Anjelica Huston,  The daughter of director John Huston and his fourth wife, ballerina Ricki Somma, Anjelica Huston spent a privileged but troubled childhood in Ireland. Although her father didn’t really want her to be an actress, he gave her substantial roles in his films Sinful Davy and A Walk With Love and Death (both 1969). The actress did little movie work during the ’70s, choosing instead to pursue a successful, albeit short-term, career as a model before returning to films with a vengeance in the ’80s, diligently studying with famed drama coach Peggy Feury.

In 1985, Huston earned an Oscar for her performance as the vengeful girlfriend of hit man Jack Nicholson in Prizzi’s Honor, making her the first third-generation Academy winner in history. Other worthwhile roles followed in her father’s final directorial effort, The Dead (1987), and Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). She was also rewardingly directed by her half-brother Danny Huston in Mr. North (1988). Huston earned additional Oscar nominations for her outstanding dramatic work in Enemies: A Love Story (1989) and The Grifters (1990). On a lighter note, she was ideally cast as Morticia Addams in the two Addams Family movies in the early ’90s; neither was recognized by the Academy, although both earned her Golden Globe nominations. Despite her breakup with long-time companion Nicholson (she went on to marry Robert Graham in 1992), Huston still occasionally acted opposite him, most notably in Sean Penn’s The Crossing Guard (1995). Other notable roles for the actress during the late ’90s included her turn as the wicked stepmother in Ever After (1998) and a hilarious portrayal of a football-obsessed, dysfunctional mother in Buffalo ‘66.

In addition to her work on film, Huston accumulated an impressive roster of television credits during the 1980s and ’90s, including her powerful performances as frontier woman Clara Allen in the 1989 miniseries Lonesome Dove and the beleaguered mother of an autistic child in the two-part Family Pictures (1993). She also had a supporting role in the widely acclaimed 1993 production of And the Band Played On. In 1996, Huston made her directorial debut with Bastard out of Carolina, a praised adaptation of Dorothy Allison’s novel of the same name, and followed that up with another behind-the-camera effort, Agnes Browne, in 1999. She played Gene Hackman’s estranged wife in the critically-acclaimed The Royal Tenenbaums in 2001. She appeared opposite Clint Eastwood in his police drama Blood Work. She continued to appear in a wide variety of films including an officious antagonist in Daddy Day Care. In 2004 she reteamed with Wes Anderson for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and played in the made for cable historical drama Iron Jawed Angels. In 2006 Huston took on a small role in Terry Zwigoff’s Art School Confidential, and appeared in Martha Coolidge’s Material Girls opposite Hilary and Haylie Duff. Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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Roman Polanski Arrest

September 27, 2009 by · Comments Off on Roman Polanski Arrest 

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Roman Polanski Arrest, ZURICH, Sep. 27, 2009 (Reuters) — Film director Roman Polanski, whose turbulent life has come close to resembling the violent, perverse world of his movies, was arrested in Switzerland on a 1978 U.S. arrest warrant for unlawful sex with a 13-year-old.

Polanski, 76, had been due to receive a prize for his life’s work at the Zurich Film Festival on Sunday evening, opening a retrospective of his film career but was arrested on arrival at Zurich airport on Saturday night.

Calling Polanski, who won Best Director Oscar for “The Pianist” in 2003, one of the greatest film directors of our time, the festival directors said they had “received this news with great consternation and shock.”

Polanski’s Los Angeles agent and the U.S. embassy in Zurich were not immediately available for comment.

Zurich Cantonal Police spokesman Stefan Oberlin said Polanski’s arrest had been carried out on instructions from the Federal Justice Department in Berne.

Polanski was arrested in the United States in the late 1970s and charged with giving drugs and alcohol to a 13-year-old girl and having unlawful sex with her at a photographic shoot at Jack Nicholson’s Hollywood home.

Maintaining the girl was sexually experienced and had consented, Polanski spent 42 days in prison undergoing psychiatric tests but fled the country before being sentenced.

Considered by U.S. authorities as a fugitive from justice, Polanski, whose films include “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Chinatown,” has lived in France avoiding countries that have extradition treaties with the United States.

TURBULENT LIFE

Few lives have turned into the macabre public spectacle that Polanski’s has, first after the gruesome murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate in 1969 by the Charles Manson murder gang, and again eight years later when he was arrested for the statutory rape of the 13-year-old girl.

But few directors have laid bare their inner fantasies and fears like Polanski in films such as “Repulsion,” “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Tenant” — films of disturbing brutality shot through with voyeurism and dark humor.

From early childhood when he escaped the Nazi holocaust in Poland, Polanski’s life has appeared, like his movies, to hover precariously on the brink of tragedy.

Born Raymond Polanski to Polish-Jewish parents on August 18, 1933, he spent the first three years of his life in Paris before the family returned to Poland.

When the Germans sealed off the Jewish ghetto in Krakow in 1940, his father shouted to Roman to run and he escaped. His mother later died in an Auschwitz gas chamber.

His first full-length feature film after graduation, “Knife in the Water,” won awards and, most important for Polanski, was his ticket to the West.

As his reputation grew — first with “Repulsion,” his study of a woman terrified by sex who becomes a psychotic murderer, and then with the absurdist masterpiece “Cul de Sac” — Polanski developed a taste for the high life and beautiful women.

In 1974 Polanski had another major Hollywood success with “Chinatown,” a stylish thriller starring Nicholson, but his private life stayed unsettled as he drifted between Paris, Rome and Los Angeles and embarked on numerous short-lived affairs.

In 2003, he won the Oscar for “The Pianist.”

“I am widely regarded, I know, as an evil, profligate dwarf,” Polanski wrote in his autobiography. “My friends — and the women in my life — know better.”

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Samantha Geimer Picture

September 27, 2009 by · Comments Off on Samantha Geimer Picture 

samanthaSamantha Geimer Picture, Filmmaker Roman Polanski has been arrested on an arrest warrant stemming from a decades-old sex charge, Swiss police said Sunday.
The Academy Award-winning director pleaded guilty in 1977 to a single count of having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, acknowledging he had sex with a 13-year-old girl, but fled the United States before he could be sentenced. U.S. authorities issued a warrant for his arrest in 1978.

He was taken into custody trying to enter Switzerland on Saturday, Zurich police said.

Polanski, 76, has lived in France for decades to avoid being arrested if he enters the U.S. He declined to collect his Academy Award for Best Director in person when he won it for “The Pianist” in 2003.

He was en route to the Zurich Film Festival, which is holding a tribute to him, when he was arrested by Swiss authorities, the festival said.
Polanski was nominated for best director Oscars for “Tess” and “Chinatown,” and for best writing for “Rosemary’s Baby,” which he also directed.

“Roman Polanski, who is one of the greatest film directors of all time, would have been honored for his life’s work in Zurich today,” the film festival said in a statement.

“It is possible to appeal at the federal penal court of justice against an arrest warrant in view to extradition as well as against an extradition decision,” the spokesman wrote. “Their decisions can be taken further to the federal court of justice.”

Polanski was accused of plying a 13-year-old girl with champagne and a sliver of a quaalude tablet and performing various sex acts, including intercourse, with her during a photo shoot at actor Jack Nicholson’s house. He was 43 at the time.

Nicholson was not at home, but his girlfriend at the time, actress Anjelica Huston, was.

According to a probation report contained in the filing, Huston described the victim as “sullen.”

“She appeared to be one of those kind of little chicks between — could be any age up to 25. She did not look like a 13-year-old scared little thing,” Huston said.

She added that Polanski did not strike her as the type of man who would force himself on a young girl.

“I don’t think he’s a bad man,” she said in the report. “I think he’s an unhappy man.”

Polanski pleaded guilty to a single count of having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.

There have been repeated attempts to settle the case over the years, but the sticking point has always been Polanski’s refusal to return to attend hearings.

Prosecutors have consistently argued that it would be a miscarriage of justice to allow a man to go free who “drugged and raped a 13-year-old child.”

Polanski’s lawyers tried earlier this year to have the charges thrown out, but a Los Angeles judge rejected the request.

In doing so, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza left the door open to reconsider his ruling if Polanski shows up in court.

Espinoza also appeared to acknowledge problems with the way Polanski’s case was handled years ago.

According to court documents, Polanski, his lawyer and the prosecutor thought they’d worked out a deal that would spare Polanski from prison and let the young victim avoid a public trial.

But the original judge in the case, who is now dead, first sent the director to maximum-security prison for 42 days while he underwent psychological testing. Then, on the eve of his sentencing, the judge told attorneys he was inclined to send Polanski back to prison for another 48 days.

Polanski fled the United States for France, where he was born.

In the February hearing, Espinoza mentioned a documentary film that depicts backroom deals between prosecutors and a media-obsessed judge who was worried his public image would suffer if he didn’t send Polanski to prison.

“It’s hard to contest some of the behavior in the documentary was misconduct,” said Espinoza.

But he declined to dismiss the case entirely.

Legal experts said such a ruling would have been extremely rare.

Polanski’s victim is among those calling for the case to be tossed out.

Samantha Geimer filed court papers in January saying, “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.”

Geimer, now 45, married and a mother of three, sued Polanski and received an undisclosed settlement. She long ago came forward and made her identity public — mainly, she said, because she was disturbed by how the criminal case had been handled.

Following Espinoza’s ruling earlier this year, Geimer’s lawyer, Larry Silver, said he was disappointed and that Espinoza “did not get to the merits and consider the clear proof of both judicial and prosecutorial corruption.”

He argued in court that had “Mr. Polanski been treated fairly” his client would not still be suffering because of publicity almost 32 years after the crime.

Polanski was arrested two days after one of his wife’s killers died.

The director’s pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, and four others were butchered by members of the Manson “family” in August 1969. Polanski was filming in Europe at the time.

By her own admission, Susan Atkins held the eight-months-pregnant Tate down as she pleaded for mercy, stabbing the 26-year-old actress 16 times.

Atkins, 61, died Thursday. She had been suffering from terminal brain cancer.

Source : CNN

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