Entertainment wRap: Crimes and controversies

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Sex crime arrest, anti-Putin clip in Russian news, political controversy in Bollywood spy film, Bolshoi acid attack case

MANILA, Philippines – Here are entertainment stories from the week of August 5 to 11.

Australian entertainer arrested again for sex crimes

RE-ARRESTED. Harris had been tracked by the police

Australian entertainer and artist Rolf Harris was re-arrested by police in Britain on Monday, August 5, over further allegations of sexual offenses.

Harris, 83, was first arrested in March amid claims of sex abuse were made against the late BBC TV star Jimmy Savile.

Harris’s arrest was unrelated to Savile, who police now believe was a serial abuser of underaged girls and boys.

London’s Metropolitan Police said Harris had been “further arrested in connection with further allegations,” and re-bailed until a date in August that was not divulged.

He was detained under Operation Yewtree, which was set up following Savile’s death in 2011.

The police did not name Harris, but he was widely identified in media reports.

Harris came to Britain in 1952 and has been a popular entertainer since the 1970s. He appeared on stage at a pop concert in front of Buckingham Palace to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee last year.

Bollywood spy film courts political controversy

New Bollywood spy thriller “Madras Cafe” has raised concern in India’s large Tamil population due to its depiction of rebels in the Sri Lankan civil war.

Director Shoojit Sircar describes “Madras Cafe” as a “hardcore political film which examines conspiracies, espionage, how information is coded, decoded, and passed through”.

The movie, which opens in India this month, is set shortly after peace-keeping troops sent by New Delhi to Sri Lanka were forced to withdraw in 1990, following a 3-year battle with separatist Tamil rebels.

India has a large and politically active Tamil population in its south and South Indian activists have already raised concerns over the movie’s depiction of the rebels in the bloody conflict.

But Sircar insists the movie, set in the early 1990s, “does not take sides.”

“The bigger message is that in a civil war, civilians suffer the most,” he told AFP.

Although the movie has passed India’s censors board, the film may still face hurdles in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

Activist group Naam Tamilar (We Tamils) has asked the state government to stop the film’s release, unhappy that the trailer depicted the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam as “terrorists,” according to Indian media reports.

While the film’s main character is fictitious, Sircar said he had “used real references, portrayed rebel groups, revolutionary freedom fighters, Indian Peace Keeping Forces [and] shown how India got involved in the chaos.”

The Tamil drama “Kutrapathrikai” (“Charge Sheet”), a film based on the killing of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the spy thriller “Vishwaroopam” are films that have been blocked from Indian cinema for their controversial and political content.

Russian TV accidentally airs anti-Putin clip

'EPOCH OF PUTIN.' Workplace conflict led to stray broadcast

A Russian television channel accidentally interrupted its evening news with a report criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The clip was reportedly slipped on air by a disgruntled employee, who had quarreled with the management, reported regional news website Znak.com.

The female newsreader on the Eastern Express channel, based in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk, read an upbeat item about new medical equipment in regional hospitals, only for her broadcast to be interrupted by an item saying that “the epoch of Putin… brought Russia criticism from every international rights organization.”

The planted news item went on to link Putin to the 2006 murder of journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya and attack corruption that had reached “unimaginable heights.”

The broadcast material came from a Russian-language channel, TV PIK, based in Georgia, which fought a brief war with Russia in 2008, according to Gruzia Online news website.

The broadcast was on July 31 but the story only caught national attention this week after a video was posted on YouTube.

Valery Shagiyev, head of Eastern Express channel and head of a supporters’ group for Putin in the 2012 elections, called the stunt an “act of hooliganism,” reports regional news site Uralpolit.ru. According to the report, the director responsible will be sacked.

Watch the Russian news clip here:

Bolshoi dancer denies acid attack, alleged culprit admits to crime

SCANDAL-PLAGUED INSTITUTION. The Bolshoi

Pavel Dmitrichenko, a Bolshoi dancer suspected of organizing a violent acid attack against the Moscow ballet company’s artistic director, denied the allegations against him on Thursday, August 8.

Dmitrichenko, who has been charged together with two suspected accomplices, told a Moscow court that he deeply regretted the acid attack on Sergei Filin and was happy the director plans to return to work in September.

The dancer admitted he had artistic differences with Filin but said he had never wanted him to be so badly hurt.

Dmitrichenko told the court he had agreed to a “proposal” by the suspected perpetrator, unemployed ex-convict Yury Zarutsky, to “hit” Filin but nothing more.

“I did not imagine that this person [Zarutsky] was capable of such a cruel and inhuman crime. Now I understand that I should not have done this,” Dmitrichenko told the RAPSI legal information agency.

In a dramatic day in court, Zarutsky assumed full responsibility for the crime and told the court that Dmitrichenko should not be behind bars. 

Zarutsky said he flung a mixture of battery fluid and urine at Filin’s face on the night of January 17.

The crime further complicated tensions in the already scandal-plagued Bolshoi.

Filin is currently in a clinic in Germany, trying to recover his eyesight after being almost completely blinded by the attack.

In an interview last week, he told Russian television he was hoping to return to Moscow for the new Bolshoi season which starts September.– With reports from Agence France-Presse/Rappler.com

Rolf Harris photo, Bolshoi theater photo, Vladimir Putin photo all from Shutterstock

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