Books, 9/27.

Introducing an excerpt from Christine Vachon's A Killer Life: How and Independent Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and Beyond, Eugene Hernandez pronounces it a "must read." Eugene's got more recommendations at his blog.

There's a chapter in A Killer Life that's "an hour by hour account of a day at Cannes," notes David Lowery, and so, from the set of Yen Tan's Ciao, "I thought I might give a similar breakdown of an average shooting day, from the editor's perspective."

In the New York Observer, Scott Eyman reviews Donald Spoto's Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn, whose "performances in Funny Face (1957), The Nun's Story (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Two for the Road (1967), Robin and Marian (1976) and, yes, Love in the Afternoon have a luminosity that's nowhere to be found in this book." Well, except on the cover. Related: Dan Glaister reports in the Guardian that "Audrey Hepburn has been reincarnated as the latest muse for Gap, brought back to life to help sell one of the clothing chain's staple products - skinny black pants."

DK Holm at Quick Stop Entertainment on David Thomson's Nicole Kidman and Lee Server's Ava Gardner: Love is Nothing: "Thomson's Kidman is a happy narcissist who loves the camera. Gardner was a woman with animal charisma who personally didn't know what all the fuss was about. Once Mickey Rooney introduced her to sex, her life was changed, and she appeared in movies primarily to fund her hedonism and work in political causes. She rejected America, hated the movie business, and was kicked out of more European hotel bars than a drunken sailor on a binge." Heavens, no wonder God doesn't want us having sex. And probably especially not with Mickey Rooney.

At Zoom In Online, Annie Frisbee talks with Blake Snyder about his Save the Cat!, "a screenwriting book that goes beyond the same old reworkings of three-act structure to get to the heart of the matter: what is the movie about?"

Posted by dwhudson at September 27, 2006 9:00 AM