Roman Polanski arrested in Switzerland
Looks like Hollywood’s favorite kid rapist may be looking at the inside of a prison cell afterall. Director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland on an international warrant shortly after arriving in Zurich for a film festival featuring his work.
From the New York Times:
Mr. Polanski was detained by the police Saturday upon his arrival at the Zurich airport, said Guido Balmer, a spokesman for the Swiss Federal Justice Department. The director was being held in provisional detention in preparation for a possible extradition to the United States based on an arrest warrant dating to 1978.
Mr. Polanski, 76, was convicted that year in a California court of unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl whom he had lured to the home of Jack Nicholson and drugged. Faced with a prison term, he fled the United States just before his sentencing.
Polanski has been living in France since he fled the United States. Polanski is a French citizen and France has a very limited extradition policy with the United States. Go figure.
At the time of the sexual assault, Polanski was 44-years old. He was photographing the 13-year old girl for the French edition of Vogue. After giving her a combination of champagne and quaaludes, he performed a series of sex acts upon her.
Needless to say, Roman Polanski is a dirtbag. Shame on him, shame on France for protecting him all these years, and shame on those that continued to employ him to direct movies.
Cops finally solve Adam Walsh murder case
In 1981, 6-year old Adam Walsh was abducted from a Sears store in a mall in Hollywood, Florida. His decapitated head was found two weeks later. They never did find his body. His father, John Walsh, went on to host of the television program America’s Most Wanted.
The murder of Adam Walsh had remained an open case until today. The Hollywood police department held a press conference today with the Walshes to announce that the case has finally been closed. Ottis Toole, a convicted serial killer who died in prison twelve years ago, has been conclusively tied to the murder.
What that exactly means the Hollywood police aren’t saying. They botched this case from the very beginning. The police “lost” a piece of blood stained carpeting from Toole’s car before a DNA test could never been done on it.
Yet another Hollywood strike?
One might think that after the recent Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike and the blow back it caused to the TV industry, it would be a very long time before anyone in Hollywood wanted to go on strike again. It would seem that thought would be wrong.
The Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG) is planning on seeking authorization from it’s members to go on strike. From Vanity:
SAG hasn’t yet disclosed exactly when it will send out the authorization, which will require a 75% approval from those voting to go on strike. The guild will need at least three weeks to conduct the vote, so it’s still unclear whether SAG could be on strike in time to disrupt the Jan. 11 Golden Globes.
SAG members have been without a contract for months now. Why doesn’t SAG just agree to the same deal that the other six (6) Hollywood labor unions got? I thought that was why so many actors supported the WGA during their strike. They knew that they as SAG members would be getting the same deal as the WGA got.
Evidently they want more.
SAG president Alan Rosenberg insists that SAG members are different. From The Hollywood Reporter:
“Management continues to apply its one-size-fits-all demands to SAG actors,” he said. “And we continue to stress that actors have unique, reasonable needs that are different, not better, but different than writers, directors and crewmembers.”
The SAG should just take the same terms that the other unions got and be done with it.
Now I know what it feels like to be offended
The new Get Smart movie offends me. It really, truly offends me. It bothers me that anyone would take a true masterpiece of comedy goodness from the 60’s and rehash it into a movie for theater goers in 2008. If there was ever an old TV show that should have been exempt from a do over it’s Get Smart.
I understand that Hollywood is filed to the brim with uncreative hacks that must constantly tap into the creations of yesteryear to make a living. When they remade The Beverly Hillbillies, Dukes of Hazzard, Bewitched, or even McHale’s Navy, I of course didn’t watch these movies, but it didn’t bother me that they had been made.
Get Smart should have been off-limits.
The gang from The Office explain the WGA strike
I think I understand the Hollywood writers strike much better after watching this YouTube video. Some of the cast members of The Office who also write the episodes give clear and concise reasonings behind the strike.
The great Hollywood writers strike of 2007
Talks between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers ended with the two sides not being able to agree to a new contract, resulting in television and movie writers going on strike. The conflict seems to be over on how to divvy up money generated from DVD sales and the Internet.
Much of the disagreement seems to be over how earnings will be generated in the future using technology or mediums that may not even exist today.
Jay Leno and David Letterman will be in reruns until the strike comes to an end. Evidently they both need their zany wisecracks written out for them before hand. The same applies to The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. No new episodes until the strike is over.
I’ll be perfectly honest and admit that I don’t understand the concept of residuals and perpetual earnings. I’m a simple electronics technician. I repair frequency drives used to power three-phase AC electrical motors. I work for the company that makes these drives. When I repair a drive and ship it back to it’s owner, I don’t continue making money from the profits generated from the drive I repaired.
I don’t understand why somebody that wrote something for Jay Leno to say on TV should be paid more then once. I don’t understand why they should continue getting paid for said writing on a continuous basis. Its hard for me to grasp.
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