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Monday, January 31, 2005

Francis Ford Coppola Makes a Friend of Horror 

Russian president lauds Coppola
Apocalypse Now director Francis Ford Coppola met Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday and was praised for films that show "the horrors of war".

Coppola visited the Kremlin while in Moscow to pick up the Golden Eagle award from the Russian Film Academy.

"Your works are well-known and greatly appreciated in Russia," Mr Putin said.

"Not only on account of The Godfather, but of other examples of your work, especially your work that faithfully recounted the horrors of war."

The president said he hoped the visit would "provide a reason for resuming and developing co-operation in the field of film-making" between the two countries.

Mr Coppola gave Mr Putin a DVD of his daughter Sofia's movie Lost in Translation and praised the president for his recent speech marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

"Excellent speech," he said. "But in person you look much younger than you did on TV."
(emphasis mine)

Putin reportedly watched the DVD with a cold, glassy stare, then appeared on state television to announce that while it was sorta funny, it didn't recount the horrors of war as faithfully as Stripes.

In other, entirely unrelated news, pro-Russian forces "disappeared" 1,700 Chechens in 2004, including, most recently, a 49 year-old human rights attorney.

And Augusto Pinochet just loved Sideways.
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