Bruce Willis

A proud Hollywood pop looks for role models in the documentary True Dads With Bruce Willis (9 p.m.-11 p.m., Spike TV). Included is a one-time addict and deadbeat dad who pushes Baltimore fathers to connect with kids. Also features the Today show's Matt Lauer. At a glance NOW With Bill Moyers (9 p.m.-10 p.m., MPT, Channels 22, 67) - In his farewell show, the newsman looks at media deregulation. A new host takes over next month. PBS. Secret Santa (8 p.m.-10 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11) - Reporter seeks town's secret benefactor, finds holiday spirit.

Pulp Fiction 7 p.m. [AMC] You know why it's included: Bruce Willis (right) plays a fighter, and there's a boxing scene. Oh, and Harvey Keitel sort of drives like he's in NASCAR. However, I think AMC scheduled this for a little early in the evening.

HOLLYWOOD -- Wonder how Bruce Willis ended up at the Republican National Convention, joining a host of other action-adventure heroes such as Chuck Norris and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the camp of President Bush?The scenario begins in mid-August on the Pittsburgh set of Columbia Pictures' "Three Rivers," a summer 1993 release directed by Rowdy Herrington ("Gladiator" and "Road House"). Mr. Willis, who stars with Sarah Jessica Parker as a couple of river patrol cops, puts through a call to the White House and asks to speak to Bush.

Capsules by Michael Sragow unless noted. Full reviews are at baltimoresun.com/movies. Bolt: *** 1/2 ( 3 1/2) This animated tale of a dog who thinks he's a TV superhero and the girl who loves him just for being a dog is the best Disney film in years. It's filled with winning characters, clever dialogue and thrilling action, all leavened by a heart that's always in the right place. PG 96 minutes (Chris Kaltenbach) Eagle Eye: ** 1/2 ( 2 1/2) A mysterious woman who seems able to control any electronic device coerces a slacker (Shia LaBeouf)

Yippee-ki-yay, Baltimoreans! If you see an intense hard guy with a sardonic grin and a slick bald pate tooling through Baltimore this week, for once it may really be Bruce Willis. The star is scheduled to come here beginning this weekend to film Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth Die Hard movie and the first since Die Hard With a Vengeance in 1995. (All told, the first three films grossed more than $740 million worldwide.) The production has set up headquarters for a weeklong shoot in the city, starting Saturday.

With the release of Live Free or Die Hard drawing near, Bruce Willis finds himself reaching out directly to angry fans to keep the fourth Die Hard film from, well, dying hard. One reason fans are angry is 20th Century Fox's decision to make this a PG-13 film unlike the first three, which were R-rated. This decision -- blasphemy to many fans -- was made public in this month's issue of Vanity Fair, in which Willis expressed his disappointment in the movie's new rating: "I really wanted this one to live up to the promise of the first, which I always thought was the only really good one," he said.

New York-- --Bruce Willis is not a happy man. Which is why he found it pretty easy to play a washed-up, burned-out, alcoholic cop in his new film 16 Blocks. That look in his eyes, resignation mixed with fear, that look of a man convinced things can only get worse -- it wasn't like Willis had to dig down deep to find that character. "I don't like the world," insists Willis, holding court before a roomful of reporters and wrapping up about 10 minutes of relentless negativity, albeit leavened with Willis' trademark wisecracks ("I don't know what this has to do with 16 Blocks," he admits at one point, "but I'm in the mood")

Bruce Willis laughs. "If anyone said this career was going to happen," he says, "if anyone said I was going to make moremoney on one picture than anyone in my county in New Jersey made in their entire lives, if anyone said I'd have people trying to take pictures of me when I walk outside and wackos following me around . . . I would have said, 'Hey, you're out of your mind.'"Mr. Willis' newest film, "Striking Distance," is No. 4 at the box office this week, a testament to the movie star's drawing power, and certainly not to the reviews, which were modest at best.

What happens when a tragic burnout meets a determined optimist? Well, we all know the answer to that, right? The optimist wins, the burnout is revived and all is well once again with the world. That's a pretty standard Hollywood formula, which makes 16 Blocks a pretty standard Hollywood picture. But in the capable hands of director Richard Donner (Die Hard) and screenwriter Richard Wenk, that's a very good thing - especially when the resulting movie marks an intriguing new chapter in an established actor's career and an exciting milestone in that of a relative newcomer.

Bruce Willis, who not long ago said he was going to take a year off from the film business, has changed his mind. With a string of super-expensive disasters behind him ("Hudson Hawk," "The Bonfire of the Vanities"), his new film ("Billy Bathgate," in which he plays Bo Weinberg) plagued with problems from the start, and his Dec. 13 release ("The Last Boy Scout") getting not-so-great word-of-mouth, Willis will try to redeem himself and his box-office clout with a black comedy from director Robert Zemeckis ("Who Framed Roger Rabbit")

Ben (Robert De Niro), the producer in the middle of the Hollywood comedy What Just Happened?, always has to push ahead, even when he's not sure where he's going and even when he regrets leaving something behind. Enormous projects such as Hollywood movies or American political campaigns require a propulsive, never-say-die attitude just to cross the finish line. At the moment this movie picks up Ben's life story, he's not sure he's going to make it there on any front. He's still in love with his second wife (Robin Wright Penn)

Of course, the most brutish part of my job is having to sit with men like George Clooney and Bruce Willis for dinner. But somebody has to do it and that lucky somebody is sometimes me. The other night in 21, after the feisty Leatherheads movie premiere at MOMA, Oscar winners and glamorous VIPS were mixing it up with millionaires and their rich wives. Nay, some were billionaires! I did spy David and Julia Koch, Joan Ganz Cooney and Pete Peterson, Woody "he owns the Jets" Johnson and Suzanne Ircha, Samantha Boardman and Aby Rosen, Jeanne and Herb Siegel and John and Susan Gutfreund.

THE QUESTION The fourth installment of Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis, came out this week. What is the continued allure of this series, which follows the heroics of police officer John McClane? WHAT YOU SAY I believe that the continued allure of the Die Hard series, starring Bruce Willis as police officer John McClane, is the belief, deep down in the American psyche, that one hard, righteous, determined average American working man, placed by fate in harm's way, can stand toe-to-toe with the evil terrorist legions, take everything they can throw at him and still, in the end, defeat them and emerge victorous.

With the two successful Underworld films under his belt, director Len Wiseman was ready to talk turkey about his next project. Sitting down with some executives from Fox, he says, he was open to all sorts of suggestions. Save one. "I couldn't see myself doing a straightforward action cop film," Wiseman, 34, says over the phone from his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles. "That's not really something I'm in to." What he was in to, or at least what he was known for, were Underworld (2003)

Bruce Willis sightings. Traffic jams that left drivers fuming. Helicopters whizzing through the city sky. A heavy dose of moviemaking razzle-dazzle, right here in Charm City. It all started with a cell phone call. Maryland Film Office director Jack Gerbes was preparing to take off for last year's Fourth of July holiday when some folks from 20th Century Fox put a call out. They were getting ready to film Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth film in the blockbuster Die Hard franchise, and were looking for a location to shoot a few big scenes.

With the release of Live Free or Die Hard drawing near, Bruce Willis finds himself reaching out directly to angry fans to keep the fourth Die Hard film from, well, dying hard. One reason fans are angry is 20th Century Fox's decision to make this a PG-13 film unlike the first three, which were R-rated. This decision -- blasphemy to many fans -- was made public in this month's issue of Vanity Fair, in which Willis expressed his disappointment in the movie's new rating: "I really wanted this one to live up to the promise of the first, which I always thought was the only really good one," he said.

In "Color of Night," Bruce Willis makes the most pugnacious, irritable therapist in the annals of psychotherapy. He thinks he's still in "Die Hard": Tell him your dreams and he'll punch your teeth out.Willis' unsuitability is merely the most obvious difficulty in what is a very troubled movie. Meant to be a steamy erotic thriller, it's more annoying than anything else. Surely you will see its Big Surprise coming by the first 15 minutes, and it never begins to achieve the kind of sultry, mesmerizing fascination it so desperately needs.

Just a few years ago, he was known as ''The Wild Man.'' Today, he is married to actress Demi Moore and is the father of a 2 1/2 -year-old daughter who will any day now have a sister or brother.Have marriage and fatherhood sobered Bruce Willis? It would seem so. On television, he laments the excesses of his 20s. ''They were a waste,'' he said.In person, in New York, he smarts when Kitty Kelley's name is mentioned. ''What a parasite,'' he said. ''It's terrible when your crowning achievement is to pick up a lead pencil and write those things,'' he said.

No one is who they seem in Perfect Stranger, but the promise of the unexpected comes across as a boast, not a challenge. Instead of heightening the intrigue in this psychological thriller, the labored twists and out-of-leftfield turns will leave audiences more weary than wary. Halle Berry, in her most challenging role since Monster's Ball, for which she won an Oscar, is Rowena Price, who opens the film as one seriously ticked-off investigative journalist.

Eric Buarque hears it all the time: He looks just like that actor from those Die Hard films. You know, Bruce Willis. "One time I was traveling, I can't remember what airport it was, I had a bunch of young girls who were literally trembling who came up to me," the Columbia resident says. "I had my picture taken with them; it kind of made their day. As far as they know, they had their picture taken with Bruce Willis. They were happy." This week, Buarque has turned his resemblance to the rich and famous into a profit-making enterprise, landing a job as the actor's stand-in during the Baltimore shoot of the fourth Die Hard film, Live Free or Die Hard, which pits Willis' NYPD Detective John McClane against terrorists looking to wreak havoc on America via the Internet.