Clint Eastwood | The New York Observer

The Week in DVR: Holiday Flicks (Hey Gizmo!), Clint and Malkovich, L.A. Confidential

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 12:38:21 -0500

Monday: In the Line of Fire
With Gran Torino burning up the box office in limited release, it's clear that people can't get enough of Clint Eastwood. So it might be a good time to revisit him in Wolfgang Petersen's 1993 film, In the Line of Fire. The thriller should be as hackneyed as that title, but thanks to the clenched-jawed Mr. Eastwood and a wildly invested and sadistic John Malkovich, the movie...

Clint Makes My Day as Aged Avenging Angel

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:20:17 -0500

Gran Torino
Running time 116 minutes
Written by Nick Schenk
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Starring Clint Eastwood, Christopher Carley, Bee Vang, Ahney Her

Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino, from a screenplay by Nick Schenk, based on a story by Dave Johannson and Mr. Schenk, caps his career as both a director and an actor with his portrayal of a heroically redeemed bigot of such humanity and luminosity...

Clint Eastwood, Once More With Feeling!

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 09:08:17 -0500

Normally, the Best Original Song category at the Academy Awards is the bane of our existence: an overloaded mess of badness that extends an already unending night into ass numbing proportions. No matter how the producers try to gussy up the presentation--"let's have Beyonce sing all the songs!"--the performances invariably stink. Of course the exception to this happened last year when Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova performed the ballad "Falling Slowly" from Once to...

Clint Eastwood's Doing It Again in Gran Torino

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:59:43 -0400

Clint Eastwood is the hardest working septuagenarian this side of John McCain. Fresh off the release of his first Oscar hopeful, Changeling, comes the trailer for his next Oscar hopeful, Gran Torino. Someone tell the man to take it easy! In the film, the 78-year-old Mr. Eastwood stars as a tough and grizzled widower who overcomes his severe prejudices to help the Hmong family next door in their struggle with gang violence. Sounds good...

Opening this Weekend: Saw V, Pride and Glory, Changeling

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:55:56 -0400

As the temperatures slowly lower themselves towards sweater levels, it's time for Hollywood to start the fall season at the box office in earnest. With two highly anticipated genre films hitting screens, this is sure to be the most lucrative weekend since August. Here's a handy guide to the weekend's new releases:

Saw V

What's the story: If you're wondering what the October Surprise is, look no further than Saw V. It's...

Angelina’s a Bit Too Boopish in Clint’s Corruption Chronicle

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:10:24 -0400

Changeling
Running time 140 minutes
Written by J. Michael Stracynski
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Starring Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Amy Ryan, Jeffrey Donovan

Clint Eastwood’s Changeling, from a screenplay by J. Michael Straczynski, takes place in a prodigiously painstaking re-creation of period Los Angeles from 1928 to 1935. To see a trolley car clanging along past neatly spaced Model T-shaped vehicles in Los Angeles is to...

In Like Clint

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:49:55 -0400

Changeling
Running Time 140 minutes
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Starring Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Jeffrey Donovan, Michael Kelly, Jason Butler Harner, Amy Ryan

From chicken shit to chicken salad, don’t miss Changeling, Clint Eastwood’s absolutely true and overwhelmingly gripping saga of how crime and police corruption in 1920s Los Angeles led to a lifelong ordeal for a single mother...

I Am Changeling! This Guy Plays Devil to Angelina

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:04:58 -0400

On Saturday, Oct. 4, the paparazzi were in full blitzkrieg blast outside the Ziegfeld Theatre for the premiere centerpiece of the New York Film Festival, Changeling. Director Clint Eastwood, tall and ever-elegant in a dark suit and blue-printed tie, posed with his film’s star, Angelina Jolie—glam and sultry, and apparently back to pre-twins shape in a black Versace dress. Brad Pitt was beside her, and when they posed together the wall of photographers’ flashbulbs...

Morning Memo: Richard Fuld Gets Hit; Amy Winehouse Maybe Sort Of Okay?; Clint Eastwood's Palin Proclivities

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:24:11 -0400

Someone knocked Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld "out cold" after the company's bankrupcy was announced. Seriously. [Radar]

Ashley Dupre now travels with three bodyguards (does Eliot Spitzer even still have a security detail?). [R&M]

Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani, who co-stars with Leonardo DiCaprio in the upcoming Body of Lies, may be barred from re-entering Iran because of her participation in the film. [R&M]

One piece of good news on the Amy Winehouse front: She is...

Morning Memo: Jude Law's Love Nest; Paris Hilton Plans a Family; Is Chloe the New Beatrice?

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 09:39:02 -0400

Jude Law spent three days last week holed up in the Gramercy Park Hotel with a dancer he met at The Box. [P6]

The Lower East Side's Chloe may be the new Beatrice Inn--plus, they're considering serving a full menu until 2 a.m. [Grub Street]

At the New Yorker Festival, Clint Eastwood compared Angelina Jolie's talent to Meryl Streep's but added that she is "hampered by her gorgeous face." Meanwhile, Ms. Jolie told reporters that...

Dispatches From The New York Film Festival: Changeling

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:08:39 -0400

Security was nutty this morning (bag searches and wands?) up at the Walter Reade Theater for the first American screening of Clint Eastwood’s Changeling. Based on a true story, the film is about Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), a single mother who returns home from work in 1928 only to discover her son has vanished. After five months, with lots of publicity, the LAPD reunites mother and son--only problem is that Christine knows the boy...

Changeling Trailer Appears; Angelina Looks Fab

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 11:59:00 -0400

It's just a couple more weeks till Clint Eastwood's Changeling opens as the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival, and today Variety has posted the trailer and the Todd McCarthy review written back in May when the film premiered at Cannes. Based on the real Wineville Chicken Murders in 1928, Angelina Jolie plays Christine Collins, a single mom whose son Walter mysteriously disappears. When the police bring back the boy they claim to...

Morning Memo: No Cosmos for Kristin; Eastwood Thinks Clinton's a Million Dollar Baby

Wed, 21 May 2008 12:48:16 -0400

Kristin Davis, whose character on Sex and the City downs Cosmos, often gets sent the cocktail at restaurants, but never drinks them because she is a recovering alcoholic. [P6]

More secret weddings! Jessica Alba and her longtime boyfriend, Cash Warren, wed on Monday before the arrival of their first child. [NY Daily News]

McCain supporter Clint Eastwood thinks Hillary should hang in there. [NY Daily News]

Lydia Hearst...

Girl on Film: Saw, Again, Carell in Dan in Real Life, Clint Eastwood's Spawn, and Bacon—Mmmm, Bacon

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:04:35 -0400

This weekend we’ll be treated to a blessed break from the heavy-duty Oscar-hopeful onslaught of late. If, like us, you have barely been able to breathe under the weight of recent movies (see Reservation Road, Rendition, Things We Lost in the Fire—ouch! It hurts!), Halloween torture flicks might actually feel like relief. The folks at Lions Gate are hoping that Saw IV (we know, we know … do you need to go back and...

Clint's Flags Flying High

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 20:00:00 -0400

Airplanes crashing into New York apartment buildings. Teenagers shooting up their classrooms. Rising death tolls in a meaningless war nobody understands. New dance companies that require audiences to watch their ballets on iPods. Millions of dollars spent on—and miles of newsprint devoted to—time-wasting junk Web sites like YouTube. And have you even tried to reach a human voice on the phone to book an airplane ticket, check your bank balance, get an appliance repaired...

Clint’s Flags Flying High

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 20:00:00 -0400

Thank You, Mr. Reitman! Gives Smoking Colbert-Style Wit

Sun, 26 Mar 2006 19:00:00 -0500

Jason Reitman’s Thank You for Smoking, from his screenplay, based on the novel by Christopher Buckley, may turn out to be a star-making vehicle for erstwhile character-type Aaron Eckhart, here in the unlikely role of Nick Naylor, a 90’s lobbyist for the presumably now discredited and besieged tobacco industry. Strange as it may seem, the movie itself plays out as a sparkling reverse-psychology satire, written, directed and acted on a level of wit and...

Generous, Vital, Enthusiastic, Wallach Lives to Tell the Tale

Sun, 22 May 2005 20:00:00 -0400

The Good, the Bad, and Me: In My Anecdotage, by Eli Wallach. Harcourt, 320 pages, $25.

It never mattered whether the part was big or small, whether the movie was wonderful or execrable, Eli Wallach always approached acting like Albert Finney approached eating in Tom Jones: The job wasn't finished until the last bit of meat and marrow had been sucked from the bones. Mr. Wallach's gusto could have led to his being lumped in...

Why Clint Eastwood's Baby Knocked Me Down, Not Out

Sun, 16 Jan 2005 19:00:00 -0500

If you haven't yet seen Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby and have every intention of doing so, I respectfully advise you to read no further. Just save this column for after you've seen it, because I intend to explain why-unlike my esteemed colleagues-I don't share their enthusiasm for this film. So I'm going to have to give away more than a few plot details in order to support my case.

Let me begin by saying...

Clint Eastwood's Swanky Knockout

Sun, 19 Dec 2004 19:00:00 -0500

Last week, I wrote that in the largely disappointing year-end movie gridlock, the best was not saved for last. My denouncement was premature. At least three total surprises have suddenly arrived that are intelligent, refreshing, admirable, artistically sound and worthy of the most serious attention. Two of them, Spanglish and In Good Company, are comedies, which shocks me even more; the third, Million Dollar Baby, is a drama by Clint Eastwood that scales some...

DVD's, Videos, TiVo, Downloadables

Sun, 13 Jun 2004 20:00:00 -0400

'Mystic' Pizazz

One can understand why critics received Mystic River so rapturously, and at the same time be completely baffled as to what is so great about the film's story, which reads more "made for TV" than "silver screen." Clint Eastwood directs the rather unremarkable crime narrative about three longtime friends from a lower-class Boston neighborhood who drift apart, but are reunited later in life after the murder of one's teenage daughter. Based on the...

Mystic River Drifts Into Dark And Deep Waters

Sun, 12 Oct 2003 20:00:00 -0400

The more complex movies become in the commitments they demand of their audience, the harder it becomes to describe them for readers who might want to become potential members of that audience. Clint Eastwood's challenging and interesting new drama, Mystic River , is a good example. A dark and lurid exploration of violence, retribution and the inhuman cruelties committed under the masquerade of friendship, it is so complex it defies linear explanation. That should...

It's True: A Charming German Love Story, With Great Food

Sun, 18 Aug 2002 20:00:00 -0400

Sandra Nettelbeck's Mostly Martha, from her own screenplay, is a minor miracle: a German movie that is at the same time a literally and figuratively delicious entertainment of prodigious charm, warmth and decency. Granted, this is a film that tells us absolutely nothing new about the problems that face us and is shamelessly hedonistic about the obsession with preparing gourmet food of the protagonist, Martha Klein (Martina Gedeck). But it is still delightful.

Martha works...

Eastwood Shows He Still Has Heart

Sun, 11 Aug 2002 20:00:00 -0400

Stoic and wooden as a totem, Clint Eastwood is back. In a time of need, he's the man. Another serial killer is on the prowl, and the star, producer and director plays a retired F.B.I. profiler with a heart transplant who takes on the dirty job despite the obvious danger to his health, searching for clues that leave him clutching at his leaky aorta in every scene. Hey, in the absence of Maltese falcons,...

A Drooping Dream Team … Whole Town's Gone to Pot

Sun, 06 Aug 2000 20:00:00 -0400

A Drooping Dream Team With so many irritating movies aimed for the horny teenage market in this summer of shameless schlock, it's a welcome relief to see a few liver spots. Space Cowboys , produced, directed by and starring the ruggedly perdurable Clint Eastwood, really mixes up the demographics, reminding us all that there is still a target audience of people in this world who are old enough for bus passes. Now let's see...

If Truman Had Known-And Had a Sex Life

Sun, 28 Mar 1999 19:00:00 -0500

Ron Howard's EDtv , from a screenplay by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, based on the motion picture Louis XIX, Roi des ondes (1994), written by Emile Gaudreault and Sylvie Bouchard and directed by Michel Poulette, will inevitably be compared with last year's Pirandellian mock-media offerings, The Truman Show and Pleasantville , and found wanting. The critics at least are sure to dismiss its more tolerant attitude toward television and its audience, as well...