Roman Polanski

Ben Kingsley sits uncomfortably in a stiff chair, hands tied behind his back, movie blood streaming down his shaved head. Pointed at his head is a gun held by Sigourney Weaver, a look of satisfaction on her face. Suddenly, someone cinches the rope tighter around Kingsley's wrists. "Hey, those hands aren't props," he complains. Roman Polanski looks up from behind the chair, where he has been kneeling to retie the rope. "Sorry, Ben," the director says, with concern. "Oh," says Kingsley, softening in surprise.

Philip Vannatter, the Los Angeles police detective who led the investigation of the 1994 slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, has died. Vannatter died of complications from cancer Friday in Santa Clarita, his wife, Rita, said. He was 70. "He was a real blue-collar detective," O.J. Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden said in an emotional interview Sunday. "He did his job the best he could and he was a fine detective, one of the best. " Vannatter was among the first detectives to arrive at former football star Simpson's mansion in June 1994 after the stabbing deaths of Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend, Goldman.

Roman Polanski returned to the Zurich Film Festival on Tuesday to accept the lifetime achievement award he was unable to pick up two years ago after being arrested for a decades-old sex-crime case in Los Angeles. The Polish-French director of "Rosemary's Baby" was detained on arrival at Zurich airport in 2009 on charges of having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977. He spent months in prison and later house arrest, but successfully avoided extradition to the United States after the Swiss government declined to deport him. Now able to travel unhindered to Switzerland, Polanski, 78, arrived at the festival hall on Tuesday to a standing ovation.

When stage-bound plays become cinematic, expanding them to the broader canvas that film allows is often the order of the day. But not with Roman Polanski and not with "Carnage. " In fact, one of the things that attracted the veteran director to Yasmina Reza's award-winning "God of Carnage" was the chance to make a film in the real time of the excruciating evening two couples — Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz — spend in a Brooklyn apartment. So not only is "Carnage" not opened up, it feels even more intensely focused on its quartet of protagonists than the play was. The tight close-ups of cinematographer Pawel Edelman, the way his camera moves within the detailed living space designed by Dean Tavoularis, adds to the let-me-out-of-here claustrophobia of the scenario co-written by Reza and Polanski.

Roman Polanski committed a serious crime in 1977, pleading guilty to sex with a 13-year-old girl as part of an agreement that spared him from a charge of drugging and raping his victim. In refusing to extradite Polanski to the United States, the government of Switzerland has substituted its judgment for that of the U.S. legal system. It's a usurpation that trivializes Polanski's wrongdoing in the cause of twisted notions of "good faith" and the requirements of "international public order."

Roman Polanski's been in the news a lot lately but not for the best of reasons. Between his September arrest in Switzerland and the media rehashing of the case that made him flee the U.S. in the first place, it's been possible to forget that his powerful gifts as a filmmaker were what made him famous in the first place. With the deliciously unsettling "The Ghost Writer," however, a dark pearl of a movie whose great flair and precision make it Polanski's best work in quite a while, the 76-year-old director forcefully reminds us what all the fuss was about.

The director's movies, such as his Oscar-winning 2002 film 'The Piano,' may reflect his world view on morality and the role of the artist in society. |Reed Johnson Should great artists be treated differently from ordinary mortals? Does a musician, painter, writer or filmmaker who creates soul-stirring and sublime works deserve a free pass, special dispensation, a get-out-of-jail card, so to speak? I raise these questions in regard to Roman Polanski, the French-Polish director who soon may be extradited back to Los Angeles to face the consequences of a crime he committed in 1977, then fled from -- but not in connection to his sordid legal situation.

I was sitting in a show-business bar with friends recently, discussing the article your magazine printed on Roman Polanski's possible return. The consensus was that if Stacy Keach could do nine months in an English slammer and Sean Penn could do 30 days in Los Angeles County Jail, then Roman should certainly do time as well. He engaged in unlawful sexual activity with a minor, then jumped bail and spent the past several years in Paris. Such an "exile" is hardly a hardship. Jon Erik Beckjord Malibu

Yasmina Reza never planned to make a film of her international hit play "God of Carnage," a hair-trigger drama about a playground scuffle between two boys that escalates into a bitingly funny, primal struggle among their parents. But when a longtime friend proposed making a movie, the Paris-based playwright knew exactly the type of director the film needed: a master of macabre humor, an expert at raising the tension inside tight psychological spaces, a connoisseur of the darkest recesses of the human heart.

It's a dog-eat-dog world in "Carnage," Roman Polanski's film about a playground brawl between two boys that mutates into a psychological knock-down between two sets of parents. In one corner are Penelope (Jodie Foster), a high-minded liberal writer, and her husband, Michael (John C. Reilly), a seemingly easygoing housewares wholesaler. In the other are Nancy (Kate Winslet), a high-strung investment broker, and Alan (Christoph Waltz), a corporate lawyer noisily preoccupied with taking his clients' cellphone calls.

Roman Polanski returned to the Zurich Film Festival on Tuesday to accept the lifetime achievement award he was unable to pick up two years ago after being arrested for a decades-old sex-crime case in Los Angeles. The Polish-French director of "Rosemary's Baby" was detained on arrival at Zurich airport in 2009 on charges of having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977. He spent months in prison and later house arrest, but successfully avoided extradition to the United States after the Swiss government declined to deport him. Now able to travel unhindered to Switzerland, Polanski, 78, arrived at the festival hall on Tuesday to a standing ovation.

Paying for his crime Re "D.A. furious as Swiss set Polanski free," July 13 Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley needs to admit that Roman Polanski continues to experience a punishment that truly fits him while not costing the taxpayers a dime, except for the recent failed extradition effort. For more than 30 years, Polanski has been unable to work in this country, the most important and lucrative place for any movie director. It may not be the punishment that the law demands or allows, nor does it give Cooley the bragging rights he seeks, but it's effective and cost-efficient.

My plan for vacation was to tune out entirely. No e-mail, no phone calls, no thoughts of work for two weeks. But when you live in Los Angeles, you can never really leave. In England, I opened a newspaper and saw a mocking column asking how L.A. could dare send a poor, sobbing Lindsay Lohan to jail for blowing off rehab and violating probation. Hey, doesn't Britain have enough of its own judges to insult without picking fights from across the pond with ours? In France, I opened a newspaper and read that the Dodgers had paid $400,000 to a team honcho out of their Dream Foundation charity.

The Swiss government's decision not to extradite Roman Polanski to Los Angeles means the famed director can travel freely in France, Switzerland, Poland and other countries without extradition agreements with the United States. But some legal experts said the Swiss justice ministry's legal rationale for rejecting the extradition request could make even countries with extradition treaties think twice before arresting Polanski. The Swiss government on Monday, in explaining its decision, cited the way Polanski's case was handled in 1977 when he had sex with a 13-year-old girl.

1977: The LAPD arrests Roman Polanski on suspicion of "unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor." Polanski, 44, pleads guilty. 1977: Released after a 42-day psychiatric evaluation, Polanski enters a guilty plea in exchange for "time served" as a sentence. A judge rejects the prosecution agreement and Polanski flees to France. 2003: Victim Samantha Geimer writes that what Polanski "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."

Roman Polanski committed a serious crime in 1977, pleading guilty to sex with a 13-year-old girl as part of an agreement that spared him from a charge of drugging and raping his victim. In refusing to extradite Polanski to the United States, the government of Switzerland has substituted its judgment for that of the U.S. legal system. It's a usurpation that trivializes Polanski's wrongdoing in the cause of twisted notions of "good faith" and the requirements of "international public order."