Diane Keaton’s nail clippers for $960: what’s behind the new boom in celebrity estate auctions?

With beloved stars’ personal items increasingly up for grabs after they die, a new generation of fans are bidding on everything from bowler hats to dog bowls From Diane Keaton’s bowler hats and polka dot scarfs, to Gene Hackman’s used paint brushes, to Terence Stamp’s love letters from Jean Shrimpton and even Matthew Perry’s black leather wallet (his credit cards and AAA membership card still inside), fans are being offered – at a price – increasingly personal items from the estates of dead celebrities. The growing trend for auctions of deceased famous people’s personal items – which has boomed ever since the hugely popular Marilyn Monroe estate sale in 1999 – has even attracted its own portmanteau: “deleb” as in dead celebrity. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/4Yh215g via IFTTT

Visions of America: 25 films to help understand the US today

From The Apprentice to 13th, our critic selects titles that shed light on the US under Trump. Alex Gibney, whose new documentary examines how ‘dark money’ became part of the American system, introduces the list

This is a dire moment in the US. It’s a moment where there’s an opportunity for people with a lot of money to rip apart all of the guidelines enacted by the Roosevelt administration, way back in the day, to guard against the brutality of unfettered capitalism. Capitalists like to have all the power that they want, whenever they want it. They’re not much interested in democracy either, it turns out. Nor, apparently, the rule of law. The government is not the solution – it’s the problem. And now a vengeful president who just wanted a get-out-of-jail-free card is going to punish his enemies and show us all how to destroy the American administrative state by using the big stick of Elon Musk’s chequebook.

It reminds me of that moment in Once Upon a Time in the West, when Henry Fonda sits behind the rail tycoon’s desk and says: “It’s almost like holding a gun, only much more powerful.” The US has always been about money. That’s been our blessing and our curse. It’s the land of great opportunity, but that obsession with money over everything else has now taken us to a very bad place. We’ve reached the dark side of the American dream.

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