Quote of the Day- Lars von Trier

Today, we begin our series of quotes from famous Scandanavians with a quip from the provoacative, innovative and highly controversial Danish film director Lars von Trier, who has directed plenty of subersive films, usually with over political themes, including "Dogville" with Nicole Kidman and more recently "Anti-Christ."

The later film about a married couple with a fairly messed up, kinky relationship (to put it mildly) starred Willem Dafoe and the great Anglo-French actress/singer Charlotte Gainsbourg.

We are highly jealous of her long-time romantic partner actor/director Yvan Attal, whom she apparenly has never officially married. The couple had their second child on July 16, just five days before Gainsbourg turned 40.

Here is the quote from von Trier, which seems ironic, since one would never accuse him of modesty:

"I grew up in a culturally radical home, where strong emotions were forbidden."

SIDEBAR: As the six people who regularly read this blog know, we have a series that deals with countries that were once republics of the Soviet Union. Tomorrow, we are hoping to profile yet another one of these countries, perhaps Tajikistan, unless we've covered them before.

But, we learned today from the public radio show "The World" (we were alas not able to listen to the broadcast) that the Chu River Valley, which borders Kazakhstan and Krgyzstan, two former Soviet republics with mostly Muslim population that we have featured so far in the series, happens to ironically be a vast haven for marijuana growth!