Spielberg

HOLLYWOOD -- American presidents can serve only two terms. In baseball, even a great slugger is lucky to get a seven-year contract. But at Viacom, Sumner Redstone is apparently king for life. In recent days, the media have been roiling with a new round of eye-rolling tales about the cantankerous Viacom chairman's fights and feuds, from an ugly dispute with his daughter Shari over her succession, to reports that Dream- Works founders David Geffen and Steven Spielberg are still seething over perceived snubs since being acquired by Paramount, a Viacom subsidiary, in late 2005.

A free-lance journalist who taped an intercepted telephone call from actress Nicole Kidman to her husband, actor Tom Cruise, and sold the tape to a tabloid newspaper was sentenced yesterday in Los Angeles to six months in a halfway house. U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter also sentenced Eric Ford, 27, to three years of probation, fined him $3,000, ordered him to perform 150 hours of community service and ordered him not to possess any more electronic scanning devices. Ford pleaded guilty in March to a single federal wiretapping charge in a plea bargain arrangement.

Imagine if you had only five minutes to leave your home. You're not sure you'll ever return, and everything you take must weigh less than 55 pounds.For the five Hungarian Holocaust survivors interviewed in the film "The Last Days," being marched from their homes was only the beginning of the horrors.Survivor Renee Firestone, who was a teen at the time, grabbed her swimsuit at the last minute and put it on under her clothes. She said in the film that the beautifully patterned suit was a gift from her father and represented happier times with her family.

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. -- Steven Spielberg could be overheard telling friends it didn't really bother him, but his "Saving Private Ryan" losing out to "Shakespeare in Love" in the best picture race kept the celebration a little muted at Monday night's Dreamworks/ Paramount post-Oscar bash.The gathering at Barnaby's near Beverly Hills was far from funereal: Spielberg got to hold court with his best director Oscar, and a host of other statuettes could be seen accompanying their tuxedo-clad new owners.

Citizen lawmakers can make difference in legislative ethicsThe editorial series regarding legislative ethics contained several useful suggestions for reform.The most essential reform cannot be achieved by legislation and regulation but by a change in the political and public mind-set. We need to return to the concept of the citizen-legislator and escape the current situation where public office is often seen as a steppingstone to afflluence rather than true public service.While the sorry spectacle of the Larry Young case may represent an extreme, there were other recent incidents where legislators seemed to be feathering their own nests.

For Howard Jones, it was an overnight success story that took a decade to happen.When Oxford University Press published his book "Mutiny on the Amistad" in 1987, it bought a few ads in academic journals but did little else to promote it. The book sold modestly, mostly at colleges and law schools, and earned Jones a few invitations to small academic conferences.Today, Oxford is flying Jones around the country on a tight schedule of appearances at bookstores, universities, historical societies, TV studios, even the Macy's department store in Manhattan.

I suppose it was inevitable. Sooner or later someone would start kvetching about Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan." I figured someone would complain the film was either too white or too male. I figured right."Where were the blacks who landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day?" folks have asked. In fact, the all-black 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion did storm the beach June 6, 1944, and suffer heavy casualties like Spielberg depicted with terrifying effectiveness in his film.But the U.S. Army -- and all the country's military, for that matter -- was segregated at the time.

Spielberg war realism is needed to illustrate carnage of Civil 0) WarSteven Spielberg could do an additional good service as he has done with his realistic and historically accurate presentation "Saving Private Ryan" by producing a lifelike film about the U.S. Civil War.I would encourage him to use the Battle of Antietam. Here, he could debunk any romanticism and glory of marching into a corn field, point blank, into Confederate guns.Mr. Spielberg could show the genuine horror of the "Sunken Road" as soldiers lay helpless, trapped by a superior force, or he could depict the futility of sending young men to their deaths across a narrow bridge.

As far as historian Stephen Ambrose is concerned, the verdict is unequivocal: "Saving Private Ryan" is the greatest war film ever made. Not simply from an artistic perspective, although Ambrose has nothing but praise for the artistry of director Steven Spielberg. Not simply because Tom Hanks' portrayal of the enigmatic Capt. Miller is as good as it gets."Saving Private Ryan" is the greatest because it rings the truest, says Ambrose, who served as a consultant on the movie and accompanied Spielberg and Hanks on a trip to Washington last week.

WASHINGTON -- Director Steven Spielberg and star Tom Hanks are pretty much in sync when it comes to "Saving Private Ryan," a film they both proudly insist shows combat during World War II for what it was, not what Hollywood wanted it to be.In sync, that is, except on who should be allowed to see the film."

David Letterman's 'Great Moments' segment to end as Bush leaves office The end of the Bush administration also marks the end of "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches," an enduring feature on David Letterman's Late Show that pokes fun at the president's vocal stumbles. Late Show writer Tom Ruprecht may remember Tuesday as the day he was sprung - from hours spent in his office watching Bush speeches to find those magic moments. The first "Great Moment" came on March 30, 2006; it was followed by 377 more.

64 Keith Richards Rock singer 61 Steven Spielberg Movie director 44 Brad Pitt Actor 29 Katie Holmes Actress 27 Christina Aguilera Singer

Everyone knows him as "Jerry." But when asked what a critic should call him, he doesn't miss a beat. "Sir Seinfeld. Even though I have not been knighted, it is what I prefer," he says like a true master of his domain, be it stand-up or sitcom or, now, animated movie. Jerry Seinfeld in conversation is an easy, playful ironist. When celebrated by Chris Rock, Garry Shandling and Robert Klein before accepting HBO's first Comedian Award this year, he expressed shock that Shandling had prepared some notes for the occasion.

HOLLYWOOD -- American presidents can serve only two terms. In baseball, even a great slugger is lucky to get a seven-year contract. But at Viacom, Sumner Redstone is apparently king for life. In recent days, the media have been roiling with a new round of eye-rolling tales about the cantankerous Viacom chairman's fights and feuds, from an ugly dispute with his daughter Shari over her succession, to reports that Dream- Works founders David Geffen and Steven Spielberg are still seething over perceived snubs since being acquired by Paramount, a Viacom subsidiary, in late 2005.

This year's roster of Oscar nominations has been hailed for introducing a new flock of talent to the Academy's ranks. But Oscar 2005 still looks a lot like Oscar 1975. Steven Spielberg's Munich has earned multiple nominations (including best director). Robert Altman will be getting an honorary Oscar for his body of work. Woody Allen has received a nomination for writing Match Point. In 1975, the Altman of M*A*S*H and McCabe and Mrs. Miller was the master gambler of American filmmaking.

When the movie gods conspired with Edison and others to create the cinema, they gave us two great gifts: Life recorded so keenly that common joys and tragedies - and uncommon ideas or emotions - became miraculously vivid and lasting. Illusions conjured so divinely that they took audiences out of this world and into arenas of pure magic or wild conjecture. For movies that opened in Baltimore this year, documentary-makers and fact-based filmmakers amazed us with a stream of nature sagas that were hair-raising (Grizzly Man)

The best gag in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park came when the T. rex popped up in the rearview mirror of a speeding Jeep over the words, "Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear." In their turgid, sermonizing anti-thriller Munich, Spielberg and Tony Kushner (Angels in America) look in history's rearview mirror and aim for the same effect. Their movie is ostensibly about the aftermath to the Palestinian terrorist slaughter of 11 members of the Israeli Olympic squad during the 1972 Summer Games.

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas: good friends, collaborators, and Mr. Nice Guys no more - at least in their moviemaking. Spielberg and Lucas will duke it out this summer with two apocalyptic sci-fi fantasies: Lucas' Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith opens today, and Spielberg's War of the Worlds opens June 29 worldwide. It's a clash of titans. No other directors have the knack of consistently delivering entertainment that satisfies huge audiences and invades their collective consciousness.

It's always nice to be an overnight sensation, even if you're bald and old enough to have been inspired to become a fashion photographer after seeing Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up in the 1960s. Just ask Paul Haggis, the Canadian-born writer-director who's so hot right now that he has Steven Spielberg pitching him story ideas and Dustin Hoffman taking him to lunch. What makes the 52-year-old's success so satisfying is that he earned it the hard way. After years of toiling in relative obscurity in TV, where he was beloved by critics but spurned by audiences - the show he considers his greatest achievement, EZ Streets, was canceled the week it debuted - he has suddenly emerged as Hollywood's go-to guy for dark, difficult material.

Playing Viktor Navorski, the hero of Steven Spielberg's new comedy-drama The Terminal, Tom Hanks pays homage to heart-tugging, acrobatic silent clowns like Charlie Chaplin and to absurdist, dough-bodied farceurs like Peter Sellers. Whenever the script gives him a chance, Hanks balances sentiment and slapstick as a traveler from the fictional Eastern European country of Krakhozia who gets stuck at New York's JFK airport indefinitely because rebels have toppled his home government and the United States hasn't recognized the new regime.