The American Film Institute on Wednesday detailed what it is calling the year's Moments of Significance, eight developments that impacted the worlds of TV and film. And they are:— Clint Eastwood's double whammy of Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima— The passing of filmmaker Robert Altman— The influence of documentaries such as An Inconvenient Truth and Iraq in Fragments— The rise of YouTube— The migration of TV news to this "Internet" thing— The death of VHS— The reaffirmation of a moral standard for television, as evidenced by Fox's decision to snuff the O.J. Simpson special— The Big Four networks fighting the FCC's indecency crackdownNo mention of Gwen Stefani's "Wind It Up" video.
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Speaking of the awards season... Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima, the companion film to this fall's earlier-released Flags of our Fathers, has been named best picture by the National Board of Review. Martin Scorsese was named best director for The Departed, while Forest Whitaker (Last King of Scotland) and Helen Mirren (The Queen) nabbed the top acting prizes. Volver won best foreign film, Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was declared top documentary, and Cars led the animated-entries pack.
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Holy hunkitude! Prison Break's Dominic Purcell and Desperate Housewives' Jesse Metcalfe are brothers on a revenge mission who become ensnared in an occult experiment in Town Creek, a vampire flick directed by Joel Schumacher.... Per Variety, Warner Bros. is moving up the release date of Letters from Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood's companion pic to Flags of Our Fathers, from Feb. 9 to Dec. 20, making it, too, eligible for awards consideration.
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Peter Bogdanovich; John Ford on the set
Director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon) pays tribute to a cinema giant in Turner Classic Movies' Directed by John Ford (premiering tonight at 8 pm/ET), an update of Bogdanovich's 1971 profile with new commentary from such filmmakers as Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese. TV Guide spoke with Bogdanovich about remembering Ford, the state of today's Westerns, and his own fate on
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Into each life some rein must fall: Eric Fleming and Clint Eastwood, Rawhide
Question: I used to watch Rawhide as a kid, and I remember trail boss Gil Favor, my favorite guy on the show, leaving near the end and Rowdy Yates taking over. Why did that happen? Thank you, and let me just say that while you recently joked about how you ramble, I appreciate your in-depth answers.
Answer: Why, thanks, Steve — I shall not disappoint on this one. The actors left the show for the usual reasons: money and ratings. Rawhide, a CBS success after launching in January 1959, had gone through a long string of producers and had fallen in the ratings, from sixth in 1960-61 to 13th the next year, 22nd the year after that and 44th the following year, so changes were in order. Eric Fleming, who played Favor, was let go, and a young guy by the name of Clint Eastwood, who played assistant trail boss Rowdy, got a promot
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Cast of characters: Jude Law and Gwyneth Platrow in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (above); Shrek 2
Question: Can you explain what an animated film director does? What I really what to know is whether directors like Shrek 's Andrew Adamson have the same kind of impact on the way the movie turns out as, say, Clint Eastwood, who won the Best Director Oscar last year, had on Million Dollar Baby. Answer: An interesting question. Clearly the director of an animated film doesn't do one of the things we most associate with movie directors, which is working with actors. Though that said, the director of an animated film does work with the voice actors, and more and more the actors doing voice work on major animated films are the same performers who appear in major live-action films. The cast of
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Question: What is a spaghetti Western? And how does it differ from a regular Western?
Answer: The short answer is that spaghetti Westerns are Italian productions set in the American West. The longer answer involves a confluence of historical, economic and cultural forces. The popular reimagining of the American West began as the West was still being won, with pulp novels, Wild West shows and touring theater productions. Movies were the next logical step in the process, and their formative years followed so closely on the heels of the conquest of the frontier that real-life legend Wyatt Earp (1848-1929) lived long enough to act as an advisor on early Westerns. American Westerns ranged from simple adventure fables aimed at children to more psychologically and socioeconomically sophisticated stories. But by the early '60s, after more than 40 years of movies and TV shows, American Westerns were running out of steam. European
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Leading man: Hunter's Dryer and Kramer
Question: Can you tell me who played Hunter on the old TV series by that name? Thank you.
Answer: That was former All-Pro defensive end Fred Dryer, who spent three years with the New York Giants and 10 with the L.A. Rams before grabbing a very big gun and hitting the streets as tough-guy detective Rick Hunter on the NBC series. From the TV house of Stephen J. Cannell (The A-Team, The Rockford Files, 21 Jump Street, Wiseguy), the show ran from September 1984 to August 1991 and initially focused on Hunter, a tough, take-no-prisoners, obey-no-superiors kind of cop and his equally cantankerous, red-tape-hating partner, Dee Dee McCall (Stepfanie Kramer). As the series progressed, however, Hunter ran through a few lady partners, which some said was a result of strife behin
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Isaiah Washington
For the first 23 years of his life, before he embarked on a circuitous two-decade acting career and the breakout role of Dr. Preston Burke on Grey's Anatomy, Isaiah Washington walked a very straight line.
He woke up every day knowing exactly what he was supposed to do and who he was supposed to be. Everyone in his suburban Houston neighborhood — where he did his homework, got good grades and stayed out of trouble — knew he was going to get a football scholarship to pay his way through college. But even when that didn't happen, he simply went to the backup plan and joined the Air Force, where he learned enough about aerospace engineering to land a successful private sector job in Washington, D.C.
Throughout it all, he showed up every day and worked hard, and if he had any questions, he asked someone in charge: a coach, a superior officer, a boss. He got married the day aft
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Actress Hilary Swank is basking in her well-deserved best actress Oscar nomination for Million Dollar Baby. However, the current controversy surrounding Baby's big plot twist sure isn't conducive to a festive mood. Spoiler alert! If you haven't seen Clint Eastwood's film, you dunno what we're talking about and you don't wanna know, stop reading now.
Still reading? OK, then TV Guide Online shall proceed without fear of grumpy "You ruined the movie for me" e-mail.
Some advocates for the disabled community are offended by Baby, which stars Swank as an aspiring female pugilist who, under Eastwood's gruff tutelage, rises to boxing stardom, only to be paralyzed after a freak accident in the ring. After months of suffering, Swank's despondent character asks Eastwood's to assist in her suicide. (In fact, she compares it to euthanizing her lame family dog.) He reluctantly obliges her. Consequently,
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