audrey hepburn Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I get some movie fan extravagance. Who wouldn't want an iconic piece of memorabilia from their favorite star, especially if that star has passed away? But $42,000+ for an 8-year-old stamp? Canoe reports that another Audrey Hepburn stamp is getting auctioned, and the bidding starts at $42k. Why so much for such a young stamp?

See, the German government printed millions of these stamps in 2001, as part of a series featuring stars like Chaplin, Monroe, and Garbo. But since the image is of Hepburn smoking, it hit too close to home. Her son didn't like it and refused to allow copyright. (The actress died of colon cancer in 1993.) The stamps were destroyed, but some had already been delivered to the Deutsche Post, where some of these proofs were stolen by an unknown employee who used them to send mail. I guess he/she didn't think about how rare and desired they'd be. All these years later, only 5 have surfaced, and they're hot commodities. In fact, one sold for $75,000 in 2005.

I always find these sort of auctions to be the most strange and interesting. There's no direct link to the subject of the stamp -- it's not hers. She's not doing something surprising in the image -- there are lots of pictures of Hepburn smoking. It's not from a time when she was alive. It's not a miniscule investment that could become worth a bunch years down the line. Yet collectors are dying for it; fandom and collecting knows no bounds.

How far does (or would, if you were rich) your collecting fandom stretch? Far enough to buy a stamp worth more than a car?

While creepy monsters can send chills straight to the spine, there's nothing quite as thrilling as the perfectly simple fright. Thanks to the master Alfred Hitchcock, as well as a number of other filmmakers over the years, we've been showered in an array of scenarios so believable that every shadow becomes eerie, and every noise, threatening. They're the scares that could happen to any one of us on an unlucky day; they are the dangers that await us when we're alone and in the dark.

For tonight's double feature, I wanted to go old school with chills that go back to the '50s and '60s, centered on New York's Greenwich Village. These films might be decades old, but they hold premises that make them worthy, unforgettable classics. Without further ado, I give you: Rear Window and Wait Until Dark.

• Dino Risi (1916-2008) - Writer, Director - Oscar-nominated for his 1974 Italian film Scent of a Woman (which was remade in 1992 with Al Pacino). His career spans from the 1940s to the 1990s, and he is credited with being one of the masters of the Commedia all'italiana (Italian Comedy). Other films include Pane, amore e..., which starred Sophia Loren and Vittorio DeSica, Poor, But Handsome, A Difficult Life, The Easy Life and Opiate '67 (aka 15 from Rome). In 2002, the Venice Film Festival honored him with a lifetime achievement Golden Lion. He died June 7 in Rome. (Reuters)
• Bobby Anderson (1933-2008) - Child Actor - Played Little George Baily (younger version of James Stewart) in It's a Wonderful Life. He also appears in The Bishop's Wife, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Samson and Delilah, A Place in the Sun and Raoul Walsh's Silver River. He died of melanoma June 6, in Palm Springs, California. (LA Times)
• Saban Bajramovic (1936-2008) - Singer, Composer, Actor - Legendary singer of Roma music (aka Romani or Gypsy music) and star of the 1997 Macedonian film Gypsy Magic. He died June 8 in Nis, Serbia. (Javno)
• Harry Bernsen (1925-2008) - Producer - Associate producer of Andrew V. McLaglen's Fools' Pride, which starred James Stewart, and Something Big, which starred Dean Martin. He also produced Take a Hard Ride and Three the Hard Way, both starring Fred Williamson and Jim Brown, as well as a European stage musical based on Mrs. Doubtfire. He was the father of actor Corbin Bernsen. He died May 31 in Woodland Hills, California. (Variety)
• Richard F. Brophy (1945-2008) - Producer - Line producer for the horror films House and Speak of the Devil and producer of The Boneyard. He died May 28 in Hollywood. (IMDb)

Chemistry. It's a word tossed around in plenty of movie reviews, generally to diagnose whether two actors have it or not. Chemistry can be in the eye of the beholder: some critics may disagree, but if the chemistry is really there, it will show in the way the film catches on. No one can deny that Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan had it in When Harry Met Sally, or that William Powell and Myrna Loy, or Woody Allen and Diane Keaton had it in their many films. But for every hit, there are many, many failed experiments. Here are seven of the most (or least) memorable.

1. Fred Astaire and Joan Fontaine in A Damsel in Distress (1937)
For whatever reason, Astaire decided to break up his hit formula with Ginger Rogers and make this movie without her. His new partner? Joan Fontaine, best known for playing mousy, quietly pretty types (Rebecca, Letter from an Unknown Woman, etc.) and definitely not a song-and-dance woman. Poor Joan was taken to the mat for her lack of singing and hoofing, although the film actually isn't that bad. The ultra-witty P.G. Wodehouse adapted his own novel, it won an Oscar for its dance choreography, and it features another great team: George Burns and Gracie Allen.

2. Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock in Two Weeks Notice (2002)
Every so often some Hollywood executive gets the idea to team up two big stars, hoping that their massive appeal will translate into screen chemistry; it mostly doesn't. These two romantic comedy masters, who have been wonderful in other films with other people, came together like a dull, wet flint, unable to strike even the most meager spark. Another infamous example of this type of casting came in 1986: recent Oscar winners Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep came together for Mike Nichols' Heartburn. Before it opened, it had lots of buzz. After it opened, it had more of a stench.

It's Wednesday, and you know what that means -- time for The Write Stuff! This week Cinematical spoke with screenwriter Captain Mauzner. Mauzner has an interesting perspective on screenwriting because he's written two major films based on true events and actual people. He co-wrote 2003's Wonderland -- the story of the infamous "Wonderland Murders," which starred Val Kilmer as legendary porn star John Holmes. And he wrote last year's Factory Girl, the tale of Edie Sedgwick (played by Sienna Miller), Andy Warhol (Guy Pearce), and a Dylanesque "Musician" played by Hayden Christensen. We spoke about Mauzner's scripts, process, and the trickiness of writing scripts based on fact.

Cinematical: Are you working on anything right now?

Captain Mauzner: I am working on something right now, yeah. I'm adapting a book. It's a small book, it's called The Food Chain, by Geoff Nicholson. A friend of mine runs a small company and I'm adapting it with the hopes of directing it. It's kind of about food, sex, and cannibalism. Revenge, food, sex, and cannibalism.

Cinematical: Well, alright!

CM: It's a little dark comedy. It's fun. And what was nice about it was -- I've written so many things and a lot of them are true life stories, and they all seem to be about kind of deplorable human beings. And I think that my comfort zone is really kind of in the dark side -- the drug addicts, the deviants. And I think that as I've kind of gotten older and left that world myself, I guess you could say I've become less and less interested in it. You see these movies like Wonderland and Factory Girl and you could say "oh, they're like an argument against doing drugs." But I know for myself, there's always a glamorizing element to it. And as much as you want to say this is the downfall of these people, which it is -- and obviously there's nothing glamorous about the drug lifestyle, or the party lifestyle because it does lead to bad things. But just the act of writing about it or making these the main characters or trying to explain these people, I feel like that somewhat glamorizes it, or at least in my mind it was very glamorous. I had a very romantic notion, at like 14-years-old I discovered Bukowski and I was kind of off to the races. So I think that as I get older I'm ready to move on to maybe something light and happy. My family's always like "Why can't you write something that we can take Grandma to?"

Cinematical: So do you find when you're writing about drugs and debauchery, that you're not looking to condemn it and point a finger, you're just looking to present it and let the audience decide?

CM: Absolutely. I'm not looking to condemn it at all. I'm not looking to be moral about it. I believe in experimentation. I believe in doing kind of what you want and not having anybody else tell you what to do. I think that my fascination with it is always the "why." Why do people do this? I think that's kind of the fun of being able to do those kind of things is that you can live kind of vicariously through these people, and try to figure out the "why" without being judgmental.

One of the most iconic actresses to grace the big screen, Audrey Hepburn, stars opposite Fred Astaire in Funny Face, a light-heartened romp about an oh-so-intellectual bookworm who unwittingly becomes the muse for a French fashion designer. Kay Thompson (best known as the author of the Eloise books) has an entertaining turn as Maggie Prescott, the editor of Quality, a fashion magazine. The film has a completely different plot than the 1927 musical of the same name, although it does incorporate four of the George Gershwin songs from the play.

Fred Astaire plays Dick Avery, the fashion photographer who longs for a fashion model who is both beautiful and intellectual, when he happens upon Jo Stockton (Hepburn) working at a bookstore where the magazine descends for a photo shoot. At Avery's urging, Maggie Prescott decides to make Jo the "face" for a new campaign for Quality magazine -- they seek to turn the decidedly unfashionable, book-wormish, headstrong Jo into a fashion icon whether she likes it or not. Before you can say, "how about a rousing song-and-dance number!" the trio are traipsing around the Eiffel Tower singing "Bonjour, Paris" and Dick and Jo are making goo-goo eyes at each other at a photo shoot.

I posted earlier today on Joystiq that a new TV commercial for the role-playing game World of Warcraft hit the airwaves on Monday, which of course means it hit YouTube about .0815 seconds later. I'm waiting for the day that things come out on YouTube before they reach TV or the big screen. YouTube will become self-aware and telepathic and rule the world one day. You think Terminator was just a movie? SkyNet is YouTube, silly rabbit.

Oh, look ... we've veered back on-topic. This commercial features footage from Office Space with everyone's favorite cubicle-slacker Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) playing WoW while Bill Lundbergh (Gary Cole) tries to talk to him about TPS reports. Originally in the scene, Peter was playing Tetris, but they've stuck this footage in pretty seamlessly. Look how they've even littered his desk with the Warcraft box and game discs.

The ad works here because Office Space isn't generally considered a "classic", but how long until companies really screw up something that Cinemaniacs will cry sacrilege over? Come to think of it, it's already happened several times. We've had Gene Kelly selling Volkswagens, Steve McQueen pushing Mustangs, and Elton John plugging Diet Coke with Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Louis Armstrong. The recent Gap commercial starring Audrey Hepburn was funky and fun, but I found myself wondering what she'd think about it. It's hard to imagine that she would be thrilled. Will Apple use Citizen Kane to sell iPods? Matthew Broderick hawking new computers in WarGames? Okay, that last one probably wouldn't really bother me, but when does it end? At what point is too much just too much?


Check out these ads after the jump and let us know what you think.