Born on Feb. 20, 1925, Kansas City, Missouri, native Robert Altman died on Nov. 20 — less than a year after accepting an Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement, and a few months after the release of his last film, an affectionate adaptation of Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion. Altman had a heart transplant in 1995, keeping the surgery quiet while continuing to undertake demanding projects such as Dr T and the Women, Gosford Park and The Company. Altman began his long career directing industrial films on the order of "How to Run a Filling Station," graduated to episodic television (where his credits included Peter Gunn, The Millionaire and Alfred Hitchcock Presents), and then forged a feature directing career that produced some of the finest films of the 1970s, notably MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Nashville. Altman was famous for his deft use of large ensemble casts, overlapping dialogue and an intricate network of overlapping story lines that come togeth...
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What is it about Gina Gershon? I mean she just oozes sensuality... edginess... all kinds of things that can be wicked in excess. Even the press notes for her new film, One Last Thing (in theaters now), peg the actress as possessing "uncommon presence" — a boast that stymies even Gershon.
"I have no idea what that means. Like, I'm an alien or something?" she laughs as TVGuide.com points out her "uncommon" classification. Or, she suggests while motioning to an imaginary appendage, "It's my 'tail' that makes me different?"
Working to take an introspective look at herself, Gershon later cops to filling "uncommon" roles. "Listen, I definitely
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Jon Stewart did his best, but it wasn't good enough. There are limitations in being a clever, self-deprecating master of irony, when what the job of Oscar host truly demands is being a showman. Which Stewart would probably be the first to admit he's not.
His humor, politically barbed but never obnoxious, was possibly a bit too sophisticated for that cavernous room. But what really defeated him, as it has almost every modern-day Oscar host except for Billy Crystal, is the deadly monotony of the Oscar show itself. What a fossiled relic. The Oscar broadcast is a classy but inert dinosaur, and this year's was more forgettable than most.
Stewart gamely tried to deflate the evening's pomposity whenever he could — after a montage on message movies, he quipped, "and none of these issues were ever a problem again" — but still, we had to sit through it all anyway.
Even with a last-minute shocker, as Crash
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The 78th Annual Academy Awards 8:01: The opening scene just demonstrates why we love Jon Stewart: No one does self-deprecation so funny. Not even George Clooney. I think my dog would look great in a Steve Martin wig.
8:05: At first, the Hollywood royalty aren't laughing quite as hard as I am at Jon's jokes — especially not at the one about the suffering caused by movie piracy. But nothing brings people together like a Bjork joke. (She was trying on her gown and Cheney shot her!) And then the gay Western montage. Not even Stewart knows how to follow up that hilarity, so I'm not even gonna try. Brilliant.
8:16: Nicole Kidman's weird intro for the best-supporting-actor nominees has me thinking right away that Clooney will win. And then he does; self-deprecation keeps working wonders. "So I'm not winning director." The music starts after about 10 sec
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Question: It seems like every other movie I see advertised is based on a TV show, like The Dukes of Hazzard. But what about the other way around? I know there was a series based on My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but what other TV series have been based on a movie, and were any of them good?
Answer: There have been a handful of top-notch TV shows based on movies. The flop Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) was revived as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003); Robert Altman's acerbic M*A*S*H* (1970) became the long-running M*A*S*H (1972-1983); Neil Simon
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