Roman Holiday

Roman Polanski returns to the U.S. in a short film called "Two Men and a Wardrobe in California." Well, it's not precisely Polanski. But producer-director Peter Rosevski, who claims the film is "80% completed," said that his star, Chris Cuyler, is a dead ringer for the fugitive director, now living abroad since fleeing before his sentencing for having sex with a minor.

Did the devil make her do it, or was it her publicist? Normally, it's a compliment to say that a female singer performed like a woman possessed. But that may not be the case for singer Nicki Minaj's Linda Blair-like turn — minus the head-twisting and projectile vomiting — at the Grammy Awards, particularly among Roman Catholic viewers. In an over-the-top unveiling of her latest single, "Roman Holiday," toward the end of Sunday's telecast, Minaj acted out a prime-time exorcism on herself (or perhaps her alter ego, Roman Zolanski)

Whoever coined the phrase "holiday madness" was no doubt cooking a meal for company. Given the demands of the season, laboring in a hot kitchen--particularly when a winter day may reach 90 degrees--is about as festive s shopping on Christmas Eve. What home chefs need for times like these is a modern-day miracle: the cook-ahead holdiay feast.

Love is always lovelier some place other than home. Well, at least in the celluloid universe. Traveling by boat, train or even bus can lead to romantic entanglements in the movies, as does visiting über-romantic locales such as Rome, Paris and Venice. Of course, these romances may not last, or they may even end tragically - just think of poor Jack and Rose in "Titanic" - but it doesn't matter. Movie audiences crave these idealistic, sexy trysts. Here's a look at some of the best films in the romantic travel genre: All aboard!

"Roman Holiday" is remembered as the lovely 1953 film that introduced a striking new star. In "Backstory," the pilot for a new AMC cable series, we learn about darker aspects of the memorable fairy tale. Sunday's enlightening prototype looks at behind-the-scenes travails linked to the light, lyrical romantic comedy about a pretty princess (Audrey Hepburn, in her beguiling Hollywood debut) who falls for a commoner (Gregory Peck).

Your report that the Writers Guild of America is investigating Dalton Trumbo's contribution to the classic 1953 film "Roman Holiday" (Calendar, Aug. 13) allows me to discuss a subject I have kept confidential for more than two decades. As a Ph.D student and then junior faculty member at UCLA, I spent the last half of the '60s producing a scholarly study of the Hollywood blacklist.

Why remake "Roman Holiday" (9 tonight, Channels 4, 36 and 39)? Writer/producer Jerry Ludwig and director Noel Nosseck haven't come up with any compelling reason. Instead of Audrey Hepburn, who was introduced to America in the 1953 original and won an Oscar for her performance, the remake gives us the blank, anonymous beauty of Catherine Oxenburg.

Under a full moon on Piazza Navona, hundreds of people were engaged in Rome's most popular entertainment, watching each other. Most watched among them were two innocents abroad, Danny Ferry and Brian Shaw, who have been here scarcely a month but already are known to every friend, Roman and countryman old enough to lend their eyes to the newspapers. Their pictures are in one of them, Il Messaggero , almost daily.

Congratulations to Howard Suber for honoring Dalton Trumbo's request not to disclose Trumbo's connection with the screenplay for "Roman Holiday" ("Dalton Trumbo's Real Role in 'Roman Holiday,' " Counterpunch, Aug. 19). Apparently his ethics overruled his journalistic desire for a timely scoop. The truth is that the story is just as interesting today as it would have been at the time it occurred. Also, the delay in the story's publication has injured far fewer people than if it had had a more timely release.

NBC is planning a remake of "Roman Holiday," with Catherine Oxenberg starring as Princess Alisa, the role played by Audrey Hepburn in the 1953 film. Tom Conti will play the Gregory Peck role in the two-hour movie, which will be filmed on location in Lisbon and Rome.

Three memorable Oscar-winning performances. Janet Gaynor The diminutive Gaynor won the first lead actress Oscar in 1928 for "Seventh Heaven," "Street Angel" and "Sunrise. " (The Oscar that year was given out for multiple roles, the only time that was done). Audrey Hepburn After "Gigi" on Broadway and a few films, Hepburn became an overnight sensation, winning a lead actress Oscar as a princess on the lam in 1953's delightful "Roman Holiday. " James Cagney Though he came to fame in the 1930s for his tough guy gangster roles, he returned to his song-and-dance man vaudeville roots in 1942's "Yankee Doodle Dandy," winning an Oscar as George M. Cohan.

There are movie stars and then there are movie stars -- performers who have such a unique and often indescribable quality that their very name connotes the magic of the cinema. Audrey Hepburn was definitely a movie star . "Everybody loves Audrey," says Ian Birnie, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's film department. "No one ever looked or sounded like Audrey Hepburn -- not even remotely. She stood in complete opposition to the '50s bombshell women -- the Marilyns, the Jane Russells and Janet Leighs."

The gladiators charge each other with a great clashing and crashing of arms and armor. It's hard to say who looks more fearsome: Atropo or Taurus. Atropo, the towering Germanic barbarian, wears a mask of black war paint, a headband over her blond hair and a brown tunic and leggings. She wields a trident in one hand and whirls a net in the other. Taurus, the compact Roman, is a tattooed mass of muscle beneath a battered metal helmet that covers all but his eyes.

HERE IN THE MODERN United States, we tend to believe we've achieved a kinder, gentler workplace that honors 9-to-5ers with a special day off in early September, especially when compared with the workaday world of the past. But 2,000 years ago, workers in Athens, Rome and other cities around the Mediterranean got far more recognition -- and time off -- than we do. Their calendars were crowded with occupation-specific festivals.

Tuscany's out; Lazio's in. Lazio, in case your geography's rusty, is the region halfway down Italy's western coast, in the middle of which sits Rome. Rome isn't known as one of the world's -- or even Italy's -- great food cities, perhaps because the cooking's fairly simple, and there's a shortage of the kind of restaurants the Michelin guide would want to shower with stars. But visit Rome and you will eat very, very well.

Super Bowl? How could anyone possibly be interested in oversized, sweaty men butting heads when AMC is offering an Audrey Hepburn marathon at the same time? "Breakfast at Tiffany's," "Roman Holiday," "Sabrina," "My Fair Lady" and other Hepburn hits will be broadcast throughout Super Bowl Sunday, so why not gather some friends for an all-about-Audrey party? Here are suggestions for ways to kick-start the fun.

There are horror stories surrounding the fate of the original film negatives of some of cinema's best-loved classics. Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" and the Gene Kelly-Stanley Donen musical "Singin' in the Rain" were both lost in a fire. Numerous other negatives shot on unstable nitrate stock -- all films before 1950 were shot on nitrate -- disintegrated, and others have just been lost over the years.