The Japanese collector who purchased Sam’s upright piano from Casablanca ‘s Parisian flashback for just $154,000 in 1988 is putting the piece of cinematic history up for auction. And as time goes by, movie memorabilia appreciates: On the auction block in December, the Casablanca piano could sell for as much as $1.2 million. Per THR and Gothamist , the piano from one of cinema’s most romantic films of all time appears in the Paris flashback scene as Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) prepare to part ways and he toasts, “Here’s looking at you, kid.” Just in time for Casablanca ‘s 70th anniversary , the piano is expected to sell via Sotheby’s on December 14 for “somewhere between $800,000 and $1.2 million.” A hefty price tag for most folks, but for the billionaire romantic out there it’s the perfect conversation piece for raising a glass, pulling a date close, and whispering “Is that cannon fire, or is it my heart pounding?” It could even be used as a (rather expensive) prop for Casablanca 2 … [ THR , Gothamist ]
Hugh Jackman is in talks for the role in the film that is looking like an X-Men: First Class sequel. Also in the news, Angela Bassett is joining Gregg Araki’s latest; Plans are in the works for a Humphrey Bogart Film Festival; China’s box office set to surge to number one; And the Hamptons International Film Festival gets new leadership. Hugh Jackman Eyes Reprising Wolverine in New X-Men Movie Jackman is in negotiations to reprise the role in the movie with is shaping up as a sequel to X-Men: First Class , featuring actors from the first X-Men trilogy – the first two of which were directed by Bryan Singer. Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult are also on board, THR reports . George Clooney, Paul Greengrass Plot Crime Thriller Greengrass will direct and produce the project along with Clooney and Grant Heslov, with writer Chris Terrio. Clooney will star in the project which re-teams some of the main figures behind Argo , Variety reports . Angela Bassett Joins Gregg Araki’s White Bird in a Blizzard She joins Gabourey Sidibe and will play Dr. Thaler in the indie drama about a young woman whose life spins out control when her mother disappears, Deadline reports . Humphrey Bogart Film Festival to Host Film Noir And, of course, a parade of Humphrey Bogart films are also on tap for the event taking place – naturally – in Key Largo, FL. The inaugural edition will be held on May 2-5, 2013. The festival will be hosted by Stephen Humphrey Bogart, the son of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and will feature preeminent film historian and critic Leonard Maltin. China Box Office Expected to Surpass U.S. by 2020 China has already surpassed Japan as the number 2 movie market. It’s media and entertainment industry is expected to grow 17% annually through 2015, Deadline reports . Hamptons International Film Festival Appoints New Head Longtime advisor Anne Chaisson has been named the festival’s new Executive Director. She has been an advisory co-chair since 2003. Director of Programming David Nugent, meanwhile, has been promoted to Artistic Director at the organization.
Steel yourself, cinephiles: A sequel to the 1942 classic Casablanca , one of the greatest films of all time , could happen in the near future. But while practically 99 percent of all Hollywood sequels and spin-offs seem like cash-grabs that have no good reason for existing, is there a case to be made for revisiting the saga of star-crossed lovers Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca 2 ? Consider the source of said would-be sequel, per the New York Post : Original Casablanca screenwriter Howard Koch, who shared the Oscar for Best Writing with fellow scribes Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein. Blacklisted a few years after Casablanca became a hit, Koch penned a sequel in 1980 revolving around the grown son of Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), who goes searching for his father in the Middle East. Unearthed by The Post ‘s Lou Lumenick, Koch’s 1960s-set Return to Casablanca synopsis goes a little something like this: “[Laszlo and Ilsa] attempt to locate Rick after he and Renault left to join the Free French forces opposing Rommel in North Africa. They have had no success. After leaving Casablanca for America, Ilsa learned she was pregnant. She gave birth to a boy who grew up in America. The real father of the boy, it turns out, was not Laszlo but Rick. He was conceived the night Ilsa came to Rick’s place to plead for the Letters of Transit . . . The secret was not kept from Laszlo, but being the kind of man he was and owing so much to Rick, he adopted the child and treated him as his own son. The boy was named Richard, and he grew up to be a handsome, tough-tender young man reminiscent of his father. He had been told the truth about his origin and has a deep desire to find his real father, or at least more about him, since Rick’s heroic at actions in Casablanca have become legendary. Richard finds himself very much a stranger in the Arab world, a world now under Arab rule since the expulsion of the Germans and Vichy French who occupied Casablanca during the war.” Richard becomes involved with an Arab guerilla fighter named Joan as he searches out the truth of his father’s fate in the script, which Warner Bros. passed on in 1989. Producer Cass Warner, grand-niece of Jack Warner, took up Koch’s cause and brought it back to the studio, who turned it down again – but, she says, left open a window of opportunity. “Warner Bros. passed on it a year, a year and a half ago,” Warner told The Post. “But they indicated they were willing to revisit this if I could find a filmmaker they were interested in working with.” And who in young Hollywood could play the son of Rick and Ilsa today? Let Casablanca expert Aljean Harmetz weigh in: “Certainly not Robert Pattinson , though maybe that guy who’s popping up everywhere, Joseph Gordon-Levitt .” Yes, “that guy” Joseph Gordon-Levitt would be a solid choice. He could even sing an acoustic cover of “As Time Goes By” for the sequel soundtrack! Or, you know, David Thomson’s pick : Tom Hardy . But seriously, as perfect as Casablanca ‘s wonderfully ambiguous, utterly romantic unhappy ending is, don’t we all wonder what became of Rick and Ilsa? (And their respective chosen life partners, Laszlo and Renault?) A part of me loves the idea of finding out that they waited out the war and found their way back to one another again, the way we always hoped deep down inside that they would, pulled by that invisible thread that time, place, and violent world-changing upheaval couldn’t sever. Or maybe, probably, that wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying as it sounds now. How would you like to see a Casablanca follow-up unfold, if at all? [ New York Post ]
Thanks to absolutist firebrands such as Rand and Ron Paul , laissez-faire economic sentiment has been gaining momentum in the GOP for some time. But with the nomination of deficit hawk wunderkind — and notable Ayn Rand devotee — Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney’s running mate, movement libertarianism has officially been added to the Republican presidential platform. Regardless of whether Romney is elected and Ryan’s controversial budget proposals are made law, the rebranding has already created two decisive effects: first, it has excited the fiscal-conservative base enough to warrant representation at the penultimate level; and second, it has convinced swaths of more marginal voters, who vaguely recall skimming through Atlas Shrugged as undergrads, that they were ardent “objectivists” all along. In honor of the libertarian strain of Republicanism getting its RNC coronation this week, here are the top nine films that evoke a reverie for free markets and, in some cases, the dystopian nightmare that’s sure to follow if we ignore Rand’s literary prophecy. 1. Top Gun (1986): Many conservatives credit Ronald Reagan with bringing down the Berlin Wall and ending the Cold War. Cineastes know it was Maverick and Goose. The recently deceased Tony Scott’s pop art masterpiece did for capitalism what Eisenstein’s innovation of montage did for Bolshevism. (Just substitute the jittery stomping of horses with more photogenic F-16 fighter jets. Today’s audiences smirk at the towel-clad locker-room romping and blue-jeaned volleyball homoeroticism , but the convergence of “Danger Zone” aerial balletics and the mega-wattage of a then 23-year-old Tom Cruise is still enough to raise long-dormant goose-bumps for American exceptionalism.) 2. Casablanca (1942) : Humphrey Bogart’s Rick runs the best casino-bar in town, traffics in guns for African rebels, and appeases the Nazi occupation just to keep it all in the black. He is the archetype of the cutthroat entrepreneur: “I stick my neck out for nobody,” he unhesitatingly declares. Randians will rejoice as Rick wheels and deals in dubious moral territory with the stoic confidence of a man who believes doing what makes sense for Rick is the only true imperative. Just make sure to tune out before the last act when Bogey’s iconic hero contrives a plot for the good of humanity capped with the ultimate act of altruism: saying goodbye to Ingrid Bergman. 3. The Dark Knight Rises (2012): Yes, Christian Bale as Batman selflessly gives nearly everything to save his fellow Gothamites in the concluding chapter of Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus trilogy – including an attempt to develop a MacGuffin fusion technology. Free socialized energy for the whole world! Yet, the politics of Nolan’s franchise are more inscrutable than Bane’s face mask-muffled line readings. A short list of the thematic evocations, in no particular order, include: 9/11, the subprime crash, Occupy Wall Street, kangaroo-court tyranny, class warfare and vigilante justice. Alas, none of these threads cohere into a mission-statement that that transcends the film’s deafening soundtrack, or its grimly self-serious hero mythology. Because the leftist aspirations of Bruce Wayne are so dwarfed by the narrative’s hodge-podge of political themes, avowed libertarians should simply enjoy this film’s spectacular set-pieces while delighting in the bleak vision of a militarized proletariat revolution. Hint: it mostly involves sending the “productive class” on a short-walk over a thinly frozen East River.
It’s Valentine’s Day, lovebirds — time to hash out some passionate debate over the films that get your pulse racing and make your chest heave, the romances that get your hankies flying and fill your hearts (and your loins!) with longing. Whether you’re planning the perfect V-Day date or preparing to love vicariously this Valentine’s Day, chime in and tell us which of cinema’s greatest love stories hits you the hardest. Let’s start with a classic, shall we? Casablanca ‘s been named AFI’s greatest American love story of all time, and it’s hard to argue the choice; few films have managed to capture the heartbreak and sacrifice of love than Michael Curtiz’s 1943 romance. The lyrics “You must remember this/a kiss is still a kiss” still conjure the magic of place and time captured at Rick’s Café Americain, where Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman are propelled into each others’ arms in the midst of war, only to be parted again. Sigh. For a long while my favorite romance was An Affair to Remember , the Cary Grant-Deborah Kerr tale that spawned many a fateful meeting at the Empire State Building (and itself was remade from director Leo McCarey’s Love Affair ). It was a movie that insisted that no matter what disfiguring, horrific accident befell you, your partner would love you just the same. Swoon! But then I saw Sleepless in Seattle and got annoyed that Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks were co-opting the classic. Thanks, but no thanks. Ghost features some deliciously melodramatic lovemaking (oh, pottery ) and the added layer of emotion that stems from death coming between two soulmates. Ditto Titanic , which taught a generation of lovers to never let go. At any cost. EVEN IF YOU’RE FREEZING TO DEATH SO YOUR GIRLFRIEND CAN FLOAT TO SAFETY ON SOME SHRAPNEL. Downside to Titanic worship: You’ll just get that damned Celine Dion song stuck in your head again, which is pretty much how I spent all of 1997. Alternately, you may opt to go the lighter route, John Hughes-style, with a selection along the lines of the underrated teen romance Some Kind of Wonderful — the movie that promised tomboys everywhere that our crushes would come to their senses sooner or later and taught boys that meaningful diamond stud earrings (okay, and reciprocated heart flutters) are a quicker way to a young woman’s heart than waking up a girl by blasting Peter Cetera outside her window. I mean, that works, too, but it takes at least one montage more to get to happily-ever-after. Then there’s the entire oeuvre of weepie specialist Nicholas Sparks, who never met a love story he couldn’t ruin with gut-wrenching tragedy. The Notebook ? SHE CAN’T REMEMBER HIM! A Walk to Remember ? SHE’S DYING! Pass the tissues and hit rewind! My favorite film of all time, and one of the most heartbreaking movies about love ever made, is Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg — a movie that could also be considered an anti-romance, depending on how you look at the world and how much you perversely enjoy the visceral sting of heartbreak. Candy-colored palettes and entirely sung dialogue mask this tragically sad tale within the trappings of a musical melodrama, but the stark realities of life and love lost sneak up on you in the film’s final moments when former lovebirds Genevieve (Catherine Deneuve) and Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) meet again by chance on Christmas Eve. After pledging their undying love to one another as youths, they’ve both moved on — even if the memory of what they once had still lingers. It’s something like a French ’60s cinema equivalent of an Adele song, devastating and gorgeous and felt all the more deeply because we feel, acutely, what’s been lost and what might have been. But you tell me, folks — which are your favorite, go-to, can’t miss tales of love, lust, romance, and longing? (And what will you be watching on Valentine’s Day?) Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Design of MJ’s final resting place was inspired by Italy’s Campo Santo and is decorated with ornate artwork. By Eric Ditzian Michael Jackson Photo: Eamonn McCormack/ WireImage On Thursday evening (September 3), during a private ceremony for family and close friends, Michael Jackson was laid to rest at Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale, California, inside an enormous structure called the Great Mausoleum. The building’s architectural design was inspired by the Campo Santo in Italy, an elaborate cemetery constructed in the 13th century and used as a burial ground for Italian elites for hundreds of years.
