Child abuse allegations rock Danish town in Thomas Vinterberg’s Cannes entry ‘The Hunt’
Posted on | May 20, 2012 | No Comments
Thomas Vinterberg is aware his new movie, “The Hunt,” may touch a raw nerve. Several, in fact.
The Danish director’s Cannes Film Festival contender, the story of a small-town witch hunt triggered by a child’s allegation of abuse, takes in sensitive subjects including masculinity, male-female relations and the presumed innocence of children.
Danish star Mads Mikkelsen — “Casino Royale”’s Bond villain Le Chiffre — plays Lucas, a kindergarten worker ostracized from his close-knit community after he is falsely accused of abusing a pupil.
Vinterberg said Sunday that in Denmark “we have a saying that children and drunk people always tell the truth.”
“We are claiming that this is not always the truth,” he told reporters in Cannes. “We are saying that sometimes people lie, also kids, but we are saying they are lying to satisfy the grownups around them.”
“They say there’s no smoke without fire,” added actress Susse Wold, who plays the kindergarten principal. “This film is about smoke without fire and how dangerous that can be.”
The film, which unfolds with the tension of a thriller as Lucas’s world crumbles, has had a positive reception at Cannes, where Vinterberg’s 1998 feature “Festen” (“The Celebration”) won the third-place Jury Prize.
That film was a product of the pared-down Dogme 95 movement founded by Vinterberg and fellow Danish director Lars von Trier.
Vinterberg later abandoned the strict filmmaking rules of Dogme, which banned constructed sets, action sequences and special effects.
“I picked the fruit and there was no more fruit left on the tree,” the director said. “So I had to abandon this way of filmmaking and look for other stuff.”
But he is still drawn to muscular filmmaking and to dark tales from his homeland, whose writers and directors have a reputation for somber subjects.
“Denmark and Scandinavia in general have always been telling these dark tales,” Vinterberg said. “This is not an entire image of our country. This is a dark tale from our country, which is a shire of happy little Hobbits — sometimes very stern Hobbits, but quite happy people in general.”
“The Hunt” is one of 22 films competing for the Palme d’Or at the festival, which runs to May 27.
Dominicans choose between ruling party’s choice or past president whose term ended in crisis
Posted on | May 20, 2012 | No Comments
Polling stations are largely calm and orderly as voters in the Dominican Republic choose a new president.
There were no reports of major problems though several voters in one district of the capital told The Associated Press that backers of ruling party candidate Danilo Medina were offering people payments of $13 to vote for their candidate or to withhold their vote for his opponent. Organizers of the Medina campaign denied the allegations.
Medina is hoping to succeed President Leonel Fernandez, who spent billions on such major infrastructure projects as a subway system, hospitals and roads. His main opponent is Hipolito Mejia, a brash former president whose term ended in 2004 with a deep economic crisis brought on by the collapse of three banks. Preliminary results were expected late Sunday.
5 dead after plane carrying skydivers crashes in Bosnia, police say
Posted on | May 20, 2012 | No Comments
Police say five people were killed when a small sports plane crashed in Bosnia’s northwest.
Mirna Soja, a spokesperson for Banja Luka police, told the AP on Sunday that the Cesna plane burst into flames on landing, killing the two pilots and three skydivers aboard.
No further information was available.
Bosnian police say 5 people die as Cessna plane carrying skydivers crashes near Banja Luka
Posted on | May 20, 2012 | No Comments
Police say five people were killed when a small sports plane crashed in Bosnia’s northwest.
Mirna Soja, a spokesperson for Banja Luka police, told the AP on Sunday that the Cesna plane burst into flames on landing, killing the two pilots and three skydivers aboard.
No further information was available.
Bosnian police say 5 people die as Cessna plane carrying skydivers crashes near Banja Luka
Posted on | May 20, 2012 | No Comments
Bosnian police say 5 people die as Cessna plane carrying skydivers crashes near Banja Luka.
At least 4 killed after magnitude-6.0 quake strikes region around Bologna in Italy’s north
Posted on | May 20, 2012 | No Comments
A strong earthquake shook northeast Italy early Sunday, killing four people, tearing off chunks of church facades and sending panicked residents into the streets. Aftershocks wreaked more havoc in the region, including knocking down a clock tower and injuring a firefighter.
The magnitude-6.0 quake struck at 4:04 a.m., with its epicenter about 35 kilometers (22 miles) north of Bologna at a relatively shallow depth of 5 kilometers (3.2 miles), the U.S. Geological Survey said. Civil defense agency official Adriano Gumina described it as the worst quake to hit the region since the 1300s.
The four people killed were factory workers on the overnight shift when their buildings, in three separate locations, collapsed, agency chief Franco Gabrielli said, In addition, he said, two women died — apparently of heart attacks that may have been sparked by fear. Sky TG24 TV reported one of them was about 100 years old.
Dozens of people were believed to be injured.
Two of the dead were workers at a ceramics factory in the town of Sant’Agostino di Ferrara. Their cavernous building turned into a pile of rubble, leaving twisted metal supports jutting out at odd angles and the roof mangled.
“This is immense damage, but the worst part is we lost two people,” fellow worker Stefano Zeni said. News reports said one of the dead had worked the shift of an ill colleague. Elsewhere in the town, another worker was found dead under factory rubble.
In the town of Ponte Rodoni di Bondeno, a worker also died as his factory collapsed, news reports said, citing emergency workers.
Nearly 12 hours after the quake, a sharp aftershock alarmed the residents of Sant’Agostino di Ferrara and knocked off part of a wall of city hall. The building already had been pummeled by the pre-dawn quake, which left a gaping hole on one side of it.
The same aftershock knocked down the clock tower in the town of Finale Emilia, injuring a firefighter. Images from Sky TG24 showed the firefighter lying in the street near the rubble. The national geophysics institute assigned an initial magnitude of 5.1 to the aftershock.
The quake Sunday came as Italy was still reeling from Saturday’s bombing that killed one person at a school in the country’s south.
Pope Benedict XVI, in his traditional Sunday appearance from his studio window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, said he was “spiritually close” to those affected by the quake, and asked people to join him in prayers for the dead and injured.
Emilio Bianco, receptionist at Modena’s Canalgrande hotel — housed in an ornate 18th century palazzo — said the quake “was a strong one, and it lasted quite a long time.” The hotel suffered no damage and Modena itself was spared, but guests spilled into the streets as soon as the quake hit, he said.
The fear was palpable in Sant’Agostino. Resident Alberto Fiorini said there was “pandemonium” during the night.
‘I took shelter under the bed and I prayed,” he told Associated Press. His house was not damaged, he said.
Many people were still awake at 4 a.m. and milling about town since stores and restaurants were open all night.
The epicenter was between the towns of Finale Emilia, San Felice sul Panaro and Sermide, but the quake was felt as far away as Tuscany and northern Alto Adige. One woman in Finale Emilia told Sky a child had been trapped in her bedroom by falling rubble for two hours before she was rescued.
The initial quake was followed around an hour later by a 5.1-magnitude temblor, USGS said. And it was preceded by a 4.1-temblor.
In 2009, a temblor killed more than 300 people in the central city of L’Aquila, where the historic center is still largely uninhabited and in ruins.
NATO chief insists no rush to exits in Afghanistan
Posted on | May 20, 2012 | No Comments
The United States and NATO leaders are insisting the Afghanistan fighting coalition will remain whole despite France’s plans to yank combat troops out early, but leaders weary of plummeting public support for the war are using an alliance summit Sunday to show they want to move quickly away from the front lines.
‘Avengers’ sinks ‘Battleship" to remain No. 1
Posted on | May 20, 2012 | No Comments
“The Avengers” continues to muscle out everything else Hollywood throws at it, easily sinking naval rival “Battleship” and other new releases.
Lockerbie bomber Megrahi dies in Libya
Posted on | May 20, 2012 | No Comments
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, the only person convicted over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing which killed 270 people, died on Sunday, almost three years after being freed from jail on compassionate grounds.
Tropical Storm Alberto weakens off Carolina coast
Posted on | May 20, 2012 | No Comments
Tropical Storm Alberto weakened slightly off the South Carolina coast on Sunday, a day after becoming an early first storm of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season.