We all know Kirsten Dunst as the former “it girl” in movies like “Bring It On,” the “Spider-Man” trilogy, and my personal favorite “The Virgin Suicides.”

The actress disappeared from the big screen for a while before starring opposite Ryan Gosling in the droll thriller “All Good Things” earlier this year. Although the film wasn’t received well by the critics, we definitely saw potential in the former child actress for a future as an Oscar-winning star.

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Dunst submerges into the acting world again in Lars von Trier’s heavy sci-fi drama “Melancholia.” The film opens with an artistically beautiful summary of events of what is to come for the characters and planet Earth itself.

The film’s focus is Justine (Dunst), a woman suffering from a severe case of anxiety and depression that ultimately affects her wedding day, personal well-being, and the people around her. Her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and brother-in-law John (Kiefer Sutherland) planned and paid for her lavish wedding to husband Michael (‘True Blood’s” Alexander Skarsgard) hoping that the union would make her happy.

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You’ve heard the last from director Lars von Trier – at least outside of what he has to say on the big screen.

TheWrap.com reports von Trier, the combustible filmmaker behind “Dogville,” “Antichrist” and the upcoming “Melancholia,” released a statement detailing an encounter with New Zealand police regarding his infamous Nazi comments back in May at the Cannes Film Festival. At the time, he said he was a Nazi and “understood” Hitler, although he later claimed he was speaking in jest.

He’s not laughing at the latest fallout from those comments.

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To understand if a person or group is on the left or the right, look no further than what outrages them.  If you’re offended by how much tax revenue is squandered year after year, you’re probably on the right; if you are ticked off at the “rich” for not paying their “fair share,” you lean left.  If you have a strong urge to kill or capture evildoers around the world, you’re likely conservative; but if you’re irate that detainees might be water-boarded, safe money is you’re lefty.  If you drive home in your Toyota Prius to pop a Big Pharma-produced Lexapro that gives you just enough vitality to take your ungrateful kids to the Starbucks for a Java Chip Frappuccino®… only to lecture them on the evils of the corporations once you get there, there’s a good chance you’re left-wing.  But if you love capitalism… you get my point.

What inspires your ire tips your hand–politically speaking–and a sanctimonious editorial on Tracy Morgan in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times tells you all you need to know about the staff of SoCal’s leading paper.

For those of you who dropped out of society for the past week, the synopsis is that during a stand-up comedy routine in Nashville, Morgan, of “SNL” and “30 Rock” fame, joked that he would stab his son if he used a “gay voice.”  Word got out and all hell broke loose.  The twitterverse was outraged, celebrities clamored to condemn the comment, and Morgan eventually delivered the obligatory pandering over-apology replete with a commitment to partner with America’s most ironically named advocacy organization: GLAAD.

The story is a social justice cliché.

The courageous editors at the Los Angeles Times joined the fray yesterday, unloading a bold op-ed stating Morgan had crossed the line: (more…)

From AFP:

Danish film director Nicolas Winding Refn said on Friday he was ‘repulsed’ by remarks by fellow Danish director Lars von Trier, who was banned from the Cannes film festival for saying he had “sympathy” for Adolf Hitler. Nicolas Winding Refn is competing for the Palme d’Or with “Drive”, the story of a Hollywood stunt driver who drives getaway cars in the LA underworld by night.

***UPDATE: This article has been corrected to fix a factual error.

The Cannes Film Festival Board of Directors is unwilling to lay out a set of excuses for director Lars von Trier’s pro-Nazi comments yesterday. If memory serves this is the first time Cannes has ever declared “persona non grata” a director of astonishingly dull and pretentious films only liars and masochists claim to have watched all the way through*:

CANNES, France – Danish director Lars Von Trier was expelled from the Cannes film festival on Thursday after remarks he made at a news conference, apparently in jest, in which he declared himself a Nazi and Hitler sympathizer.

“The festival’s board of directors … profoundly regrets that this forum has been used by Lars Von Trier to express comments that are unacceptable, intolerable, and contrary to the ideals of humanity and generosity that preside over the very existence of the festival,” the festival said in a statement.

“The board of directors firmly condemns these comments and declares Lars Von Trier a persona non grata at the Festival de Cannes, with effect immediately.”

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***UPDATE: An emailer just alerted me to the fact that the article referenced here that was published at “Roger Ebert’s Journal” was written by Chaz Ebert, not Roger Ebert. I’ve updated the headline and post to reflect the correction.

If you remember, on Sunday night, film critic Roger Ebert was all excited after Salon’s Joan Walsh and NBC’s David Gregory (two people with racial issues of their own) called Newt Gingrich out for the hideous crime of labeling our failed food stamp president the “Food Stamp President.”

Here’s his tweet:

So “food stamp President” is “coded racism,” but when you fast-forward a mere couple of days to today you’ll find Roger Ebert publishing at his Chicago Sun-Times Journal a report written by Chaz Ebert that contains a lot of excuse-making for a famous director of pretentious films trashing Israel and proudly declaring he’s a Nazi:

[Von Trier] said he grew up thinking he was a Jew, and he was very happy to be a Jew. Then he discovered he was a Nazi, and that also gave him some pleasure. “Yes, I am a Nazi!”, he declared.

While his cast (Charlotte Gainsbourg, Udo Kier and John Hurt) looked on in horror, Kirsten Dunst tapped him on the shoulder and whispered to him to moderate his comments. He looked at her in confusion and said, “But this has a point, it will be okay.”

Then he proceeded to dig himself in deeper, saying that he understood Hitler, and that he could sympathize with his being down in that bunker toward the end. He continued, “Well that doesn’t mean I have anything against Jews, except Susanne Bier (Danish filmmaker, “In a Better World”).

“Well, Israel is a pain in the ass …

“Okay, I am a Nazi…

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From AFP:

Danish film director Lars von Trier stunned his audience at the Cannes film festival on Wednesday by saying that he sympathized with, and understood, Adolf Hitler. “OK, I’m a Nazi,” he told a news conference, which reacted with nervous laughter and surprised silence.

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Antichrist hasn’t even come out in the United States and I’m already bored.  

If you haven’t heard about Antichrist yet, you will.  It’s the latest movie from Danish art film director Lars von Trier, who has made a name for himself with critically-hailed movies that push the limits his audiences’ tolerance for bizarre sex, bloody violence and artistic pretension.  One of his recent movies focused on an American town where slavery never ended, while another had pretty much an entire American village raping Nicole Kidman.  A third film ends with the American authorities hanging Icelandic rock waif Bjork.   Sensing some themes?   By all accounts, Antichrist is a similarly delightful romp.

Naturally, the critics adore him, and combined with the fact that von Trier despises Americans, you would expect that he would get cut some slack by the French audience at Cannes last weekend when the festival screened Antichrist.  Not so – the few cheers were apparently drowned out by a tsunami of boos when the lights went up.  What happened?  

Maybe, just maybe, people are starting to catch on to the fact that shocking art has become anything but.  The problem for Mr. von Trier and those like him who specialize in transgressive art is that there’s really very little in the way of conventional morality left to transgress.  (more…)