Latest news with #VonTrier
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
All Milwaukee Pizza Hut locations have been temporarily shut down, health department confirms
All six Milwaukee Pizza Hut locations have been shut down for operating without licenses, confirmed the Milwaukee Health Department. Health officials told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in an email the department issued closure orders to the chain's locations after learning the restaurants' new owners had not yet received food dealer licenses. The chain's Bay View location closed earlier this year after its owner withdrew the restaurant's renewal application. Food dealer licenses are legally required for any person or business selling, serving and storing food in Milwaukee, according to the Office of the City Clerk License Division. Milwaukee's Pizza Hut franchises are now owned by PHZ. Previous owners EYM Pizza "relinquished control several weeks ago," the health department said. Five of the six restaurants are currently undergoing the application process, according to the city health department. "Once those licenses are approved, the businesses will be eligible to reopen," it said. The health department said the temporary closures are consistent with its standard procedures. "MHD's role is to ensure that businesses are in compliance with licensing requirements that help protect public health," it said. Pizza Hut did not immediately respond to the Journal Sentinel's request for comment. Here are the six Milwaukee Pizza Hut locations, according to its website: 2340 N. Farwell Ave. 1840 S. 15th St. 5704 W. Capitol Drive 3921 S. 76th St. 3555 S. 27th St. More: Milwaukee's Von Trier German bar to host party before closing temporarily for renovations This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee's Pizza Hut locations shut down over lack of licenses
The Guardian
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Morally questionable': inside the epic Lars von Trier exhibition in Copenhagen
I am not even inside the building but a creeping sense of foreboding has already set in. As I try to find the entrance to Nikolaj Kunsthal, a gothic-style former church in Copenhagen, I hear the lamenting strings of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde – the soundtrack to Lars von Trier's 2011 end-of-the-world film Melancholia. Inside, I take a seat in a tent-like structure, similar to the one in the film, and watch as a planet hurtles towards Earth, Wagner still blasting away. Nearby lies a long table, covered in white linen and laid out for the celebration of a lifetime – but clearly abandoned midway, and now adorned with dead flowers and burnt-out candelabras. Upstairs, black and white projections – a ticking clock, trains moving through postwar Germany, scenes of sex and drowning – play as the ominous male voice that features in Von Trier's 1991 film Europa does a countdown. 'On every breath you take, you go deeper,' he says. 'On the mental count of 10, you will be in Europa.' With the world still reeling from the arrival of Trump 2.0, and Europe at war amid increasing polarisation, looming AI takeover and the escalating climate emergency, the experience feels strangely current, even though it is intended to take viewers back to the visual world of the notorious Danish film-maker, and immerse them in it. 'It is almost a new paradigm,' says Helene Nyborg Bay, artistic director of this arts venue, as she takes me round Breaking Darkness, the Von Trier exhibition she has curated. 'We had this belief in one united country or the United Nations after the second world war. Now we see there are new thoughts coming through, unfortunately. Lars von Trier shows some of these.' But in other very important ways, Von Trier is deeply irrelevant in 2025. As well as attracting criticism for the treatment of women in his films, he has been involved in multiple scandals. In 2011, while promoting Melancholia, he told the world's press at the Cannes film festival that he was a Nazi and 'understood' Adolf Hitler, after which he was banned. He later apologised, saying: 'I am not antisemitic or racially prejudiced in any way, nor am I a Nazi.' Six years later, amid the rise of the #MeToo movement, musician and actor Björk, who starred in his 2000 musical film Dancer in the Dark, said he sexually harassed her during its making, claims he has denied. But despite this, the exhibition has attracted unprecedented interest, with record numbers at the opening – 2,000 in three hours – including younger generations. Why? 'Lars von Trier is such a strong film-maker with such a strong aesthetic sense that he could be a visual artist,' says Bay who, despite the controversies, believes that Von Trier's work and its themes – love and despair, good and evil, faith and human choice – have a lot to offer contemporary audiences. 'We live in new times,' she says. 'On the other hand – he might have been ahead of his.' Personally, this longtime Von Trier fan says she 'was never offended by his way of looking at women', although she concedes that some younger women have been. Rather than avoiding the subject, she says: 'It's interesting to have this dialogue.' Clips from the films have been combined with designs and installations – even incorporating the architecture of the building – to recreate the themes and moods of five films made between 1991 and 2011: Melancholia, Europa, Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves and Dogville. There are a few props dotted around, including a fur coat worn by Nicole Kidman in Dogville, and the wedding dress worn by Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia, which is displayed entwined in roots that climb the walls. But film memorabilia is by no means the focus of the show. The exhibition doesn't just fill the space, it also spills up into the clock tower which, via steep stairs, visitors are led up to by a white line, like the ones that represent the set in Dogville, all to a soundtrack of Vivaldi. Although probably the most site-specific of the installations, this feels the least immersive of the five, because it does not have the same emotional power as, say, the Melancholia installation – which is entirely captivating. But absent of moving image, it serves as an effective contrast to the others. Bay invited young designers to interpret the 'universe of Lars von Trier' in such a way as to create an experience that does not depend on the viewer having seen his films – including the generations for whom she believes he has been 'abandoned'. Her inspiration for the show came from an exhibition of photos of Von Trier's work at the Perrotin gallery in Paris. She is particularly interested in seeing how the under-30s who visit her exhibition 'adapt into his universe'. She says: 'It's more like a feeling or an atmosphere. And it is also a subconscious way of understanding some topics in life – or trying to.' Von Trier, who has Parkinson's disease and is now in a care centre, has not been directly involved, but he has given the exhibition his blessing. He attended the opening night on FaceTime with the help of his ex-wife. And, during this launch, Bay noticed a group of producers from Zentropa, his production company, sitting in the shelter in front of the oncoming planet. Unusually, the exhibition also features a critique of the film-maker and his work, by Sofie Riise Nors, a Danish feminist satirical graphic novelist, who has accused him of romanticising and fetishising femicide, while criticising his artist-muse relationships. In a comic strip piece about Von Trier, created for the exhibition, Riise Nors appears as a radio host doing a phone-in about the director and explaining her problems with him. She questions the notion that he creates 'strong female characters' and accuses him of using women's lives as a 'kind of currency'. She also mentions Björk's #MeToo accusations. 'His characters,' this host says, 'seem more like a mirror for his own fantasies about women than they are a mirror for female identification.' She describes Melancholia – which has an 'iconic' scene showing Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg being pulverised by a planetary collision – as an example of 'Von Trier's penchant for staging women's deaths in an artistic and aesthetic way'. She also cites Björk's Dancer in the Dark character Selma, who bursts into song at her execution. It is also worth reminding ourselves that Nicole Kidman gets chained to a giant metal wheel in Dogville, while Gainsbourg cuts off her own clitoris in Antichrist. Could this two-pronged approach, celebration and criticism, provide a model for dealing with the work of more cancelled artists whose work is still deemed worthy of appreciation? Bay says that, even though Von Trier and Riise Nors have wildly different opinions, they share a capacity for self-reflection. 'In that way, it's also a starting point for talk and for conversation.' Riise Nors isn't so sure. 'The fact that we are still creating celebratory exhibitions about Lars von Trier is testimony to the fact that he was never really cancelled – at least not in Denmark.' She thinks the country holds on to such a 'morally questionable' figure because of his huge international success and would have liked to have seen more critical contributions in the exhibition. 'You can still be a great artist,' she adds, 'and very problematic at the same time.' Breaking Darkness is at Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen, until 27 July
The Independent
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Lars von Trier is exciting and enraging – his Parkinson's diagnosis spells doom for cinema
A few years ago I attended a John Lydon concert inside a Somerset covered market. The music was good and the mood was cheerful, with the crowd liberally studded with infirm, ageing punks. There were punks clutching walking frames and punks in wheelchairs. There was even a dead punk in an urn who had requested that the ex-Pistol scatter his ashes on stage. Lydon obliged and pretended to gag. He said, 'No offence, mate, but you taste like Gauloises.' Forget the tired adage about policemen getting young. It's punks getting old that's the real measure of age, at least for those of us who were raised in the afterglow of new wave music and grindhouse cinema. It's seeing the upstarts and berserkers who once electrified the Eighties and Nighties being quietly steered into retirement homes or laid to rest and memorialised. In life these people embodied something wild, dark and delicious. In death they are reduced to a set of smiling memes and inspirational quotes. I'm not sure which is more alarming. Anyone reading the recent tributes to David Lynch, for instance, would be forgiven for thinking of him as America's eccentric, benign uncle, beaming out on his flock with a mug of warm coffee and his daily meditation advice. That was certainly one aspect of the man, although it rather risks glossing over the actual work he produced. Lynch's art wasn't sweet. The Straight Story aside, it was chaotic and savage – meant to chill us to the bone. 'There goes the Willy Wonka of filmmaking,' gushed Lara Flynn Boyle the day after his death, as though he'd just exited stage-left after singing 'Pure Imagination' to a group of starstruck children. One dreads to imagine how Lars von Trier will be described when his number is up. The Just William of filmmaking? Arthouse's Horrid Henry? For the time being, thank goodness, the man is still clinging on – impish and awkward and presumably still raising hell in his immediate circle. But in 2022, Von Trier announced that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Last month his production company confirmed that he is now being treated at a care centre in Denmark. 'Lars is doing well under the circumstances,' said producer Louise Vesth. You could read a whole book into those final three words. 'A film should be like a stone in your shoe,' Von Trier used to say, by which he meant that it should be troublesome and annoying and occasionally downright painful. That's not for all tastes – probably it's not for most tastes – but the Dane's best stones were finely cut works of art, like little diamonds, and I can't think of another director from the past 30 years who has been so reliably exciting and enraging. Von Trier's films don't care whether we like them or not. They're provocative and discombobulating. They practically invite our revulsion and rage. Perversely, that's what made them all the more beautiful. For years the most violent audience response I'd ever witnessed came at the Cannes press screening of Antichrist (2009). It was only topped by the Cannes press screening of The House That Jack Built (2018). Fans will no doubt take a crumb of comfort from Vesth's assertion that Von Trier is doing well 'under the circumstances'. But one might argue that this is what he's always done: made lemons into tart lemonade; turned those pebbles into diamonds. He's shot all of his films in the teeth of alcoholism and depression. If there were no impediments to be had, he'd quite likely devise them himself, as he famously did with his infamous Dogme 95 Manifesto. Here, the rules state that the camera be hand-held, that genre movies were unacceptable, and that all shooting had to be achieved on location using natural sound and light. Granted, Dogme 95 was a joke but it made some valid points. A challenge is a privilege. The difficulty is the point. Lars von Trier's films don't care whether we like them or not. They're provocative and discombobulating. They practically invite our revulsion and rage Von Trier is due to direct again this summer – assuming he's not incapacitated; assuming the difficulty can be met. His next film is called After and is reputedly about death. ' After has always been designed to be made based on Lars's physical condition,' explained his friend, producer Peter Aalbaek Jensen. 'He has always used limitations for something creative.' In 2020 the filmmaker Gaspar Noé, the rambunctious creator of Enter the Void, Irreversible and Climax, suffered a near-fatal brain haemorrhage. He emerged from the hospital in a more sombre, reflective mood to shoot the magnificent Vortex (2021), which trailed a dying old couple around a cramped Paris flat. Quiet and stealthy where Noé's pictures had been loud, brash and stroboscopic, Vortex points the direction that Von Trier might choose to go himself assuming he is able to get After off the ground. It shows that it is possible to survive, slip death and make a different kind of film. It may not be as lively as Von Trier's trademark provocations, but it's better than the alternative. I wonder, though, if this might be the endgame for a certain strain of uncompromising left-field cinema. Lynch has already left the building. Von Trier and Noé are ailing. Almodovar and Ferrara have aged. In the meantime Yorgos Lanthimos and Pablo Larraín, their natural successors, appear to have mellowed prematurely. Perhaps disturbing, dark cinema is a luxury we feel we can no longer afford. Not when the US president is sharing his 'Trump Gaza' movie to the fanbase, or Elon Musk is cosplaying The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on stage. But the films of Lynch and Von Trier aren't debasing or poisonous. They're thrilling, galvanising and sometimes maddening, too; the equivalent of those abstracts by Kandinsky, Picasso and Klee that the Nazis chose to label 'degenerate art'. Films can be your best friend, your entertainer, sometimes even your comfort blanket. But we also need those directors who make a different kind of picture: who rattle the cage and break the mould and scatter stones in all our shoes.
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Director Lars von Trier admitted to care facility for Parkinson's disease
Danish film director Lars von Trier has been admitted to a care facility for Parkinson's disease, his producer said Wednesday. 'Lars is currently associated with a care centre that can provide him with the treatment and care his condition requires,' Louise Vesth, a producer at von Trier's production company Zentropa, wrote on Instagram, according to a translation. 'Lars is doing well under the circumstances.' Vesth clarified that she was sharing the news because of speculation in the Danish media, and declined to offer any additional comments. The 'Melancholia' and 'Breaking the Waves' director, 68, publicly revealed his diagnosis in 2022. During an interview with Variety at the time, he opened up on how his condition had affected his work. 'It's a disease you can't take away; you can work with the symptoms, though,' he said. 'I just have to get used to that I shake and not be shameful in front of people. And then continue because what else should I do?' Von Trier, known for his disturbing and stylized work, is one of the most acclaimed film directors living today. His musical-tragedy 'Dancer in the Dark,' starring Icelandic singer Björk, won the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000. Kirsten Dunst won Best Actress at the same festival in 2011 for her turn in the psychological sci-fi drama 'Melancholia.' Von Trier is reportedly working on a new film about death and the afterlife, drawing on his own mortality to inspire the story. The film received a grant from the Danish Film Institute last September. '(The film) has always been designed to be made based on Lars' physical condition,' producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen said this week. 'He has always used limitations for something creative, and now it is his own physical limitation that he incorporates into the creative.' The film, titled 'After,' will be his first since 2018's 'The House That Jack Built,' starring Matt Dillon. _____
