American Cinematheque Organization

The American Cinematheque's "Outside Looking In: A Tribute to Malcolm McDowell" at the Egyptian is highlighted by two premieres: Paul McQuigan's corrosive and compelling "Gangster No. 1" (Friday at 7 p.m.) and "The Assassin of the Tsar," an ambitious 1991 British-Russian co-production never before released in the U.S. "Assassin" screens Saturday after Nicholas Meyer's beguiling "Time After Time" (1979), in which McDowell plays H.G.

Following the success of its Mods & Rockers Film Festival in July, American Cinematheque has scheduled what it is billing as a "coda" in October: a five-day event that includes the premieres of documentaries about musical greats Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding and Nick Drake. The festival begins Oct. 5 with a screening of "A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake," about the English jazz-folk singer and songwriter who died of a prescription medication overdose in 1974 at age 26.

In a restructuring move following the death of two of its founders, the American Cinematheque board of directors has named Barbara Zicka Smith as executive director of the organization dedicated to the showcasing of American film and video. Smith had been managing director and was a founder of the Cinematheque with artistic director Gary Essert and marketing director Gary Abrahams, both of whom died last year. Cinematheque president and prominent show business attorney Peter J.

The spirits of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin were very much in evidence Friday evening at an American Cinematheque tribute to George Clooney. The witty valentine to the Oscar-winning actor, political activist, producer, director, writer and heartthrob felt more like an old "Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts" or a vintage live Rat Pack album than a tribute.

Director-producer Ron Howard has been named the recipient of the American Cinematheque Award for making an ongoing contribution to the film industry. Howard, the director of "Splash," "Cocoon" and "Parenthood," will be honored March 23 at the organization's Moving Picture Ball in the Century Plaza Hotel. Since 1986, the evening has been attended by hundreds of Hollywood's insiders to raise funds for American Cinematheque and honor an active entertainment figure.

The American Cinematheque this weekend presents "Orson Welles: The Actor," composed of nine features, three of which Welles also directed. The retrospective begins tonight at 7 with "The Lady From Shanghai" (1948), to be followed at 9 by the double feature "Jane Eyre" (1944) and "The Stranger" (1946). "Prince of Foxes" (1949) and "The Third Man" (1949) will screen Saturday as a double feature commencing at 6 p.m., with "Touch of Evil" (1958) screening at 9:30.

One time-tested way to measure the worth of anyone in Hollywood is to honor that person at the annual Moving Picture Ball. The ball's organizers pride themselves on tapping the hottest talent of the moment--Robin Williams last year; Bette Midler in 1987, and Eddie Murphy in 1986. If Steven Spielberg's ability to draw ticket buyers is any indication of his worth, he is hotter than Williams, Midler or Murphy.

For a while it looked like tonight's American Cinematheque premiere screening of Paul Schrader's "Light Sleeper," the first event of a following three-night retrospective, might be one of those only-in-Hollywood moments. A movie with an undone deal. A dressed-up event for an awaited movie, but a movie with no place to go. The producing studio in deep financial troubles, its distribution company listed among the missing. For Schrader, though, the question naturally becomes, what else is new?

The American Cinematheque is back on track, two years after a much publicized plan to house it in the Pan Pacific Auditorium fell apart. The basic plan hasn't changed: The facility will be a living museum of movies, using state-of-the-art technology and theaters to present films from all over the world to the public. It will also include a book store, a cafe and bar and lecture halls, providing a center for artists to talk about film with each other and the public.

And here you thought music video was just glamour boys with poufy hair preening behind blemish-obscuring smoke--money for nothing, as it were. But this relatively recent genre represents something else entirely to the American Cinematheque, which, in conjunction with the Long Beach Museum of Art, has scheduled this weekend a mini-festival whose brave assertion--as stated in its printed program--is nothing less than that "music video is the art form of the '80s."

The American Cinematheque's "Outside Looking In: A Tribute to Malcolm McDowell" at the Egyptian is highlighted by two premieres: Paul McQuigan's corrosive and compelling "Gangster No. 1" (Friday at 7 p.m.) and "The Assassin of the Tsar," an ambitious 1991 British-Russian co-production never before released in the U.S. "Assassin" screens Saturday after Nicholas Meyer's beguiling "Time After Time" (1979), in which McDowell plays H.G.

British actors are compulsive worker bees, and they often build up fat filmographies that contain a bewildering mixture of masterpieces and glaring missteps. Michael Caine has admitted that he has a string of stinkers on his resume, and even Laurence Olivier was pretty undiscriminating in the roles he chose in his later years. Malcolm McDowell belongs to this category of indefatigable, sometimes indiscriminate thespians.

Long before Kevin Spacey won his Oscar for "The Usual Suspects," he used to sneak in the back gate at Universal Studios so he could watch movies being made. A superb actor even then, he used to strap a hammer to his side and play the role of studio carpenter to perfection. When Samuel L. Jackson was a young man, he wanted to be one of the Merry Men in the Errol Flynn swashbuckler "The Adventures of Robin Hood."

Thirty years before Austin Powers uttered his first "Yeah, baby, yeah!" or danced the frug with a group of "birds" down Carnaby Street, people were grooving to a diverse, often outrageous crop of movies that came out of the swinging England and hip, hot Hollywood of the '60s. These flicks ran the gamut from freewheeling musical comedies to head trips into the world of psychedelia to plotless excursions into surrealism. They proved to be an inspiration--and not just to Austin.

When American Cinematheque officials went to James Cameron asking permission to stage a retrospective of his films to launch their 1999 programming at the newly refurbished Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, the director of the Oscar-winning "Titanic" seemed surprised. Cameron, they recalled, was on the set of the all-time box-office blockbuster at the time, wearing hip waders as he filmed flooding sequences below deck with stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

All glamour fades. In Hollywood, there are few greater sins. But only those who accept the fact of decay are able to transform it. In the design for the renovation of Sid Grauman's once-fashionable Egyptian Theater, the L.A.-based architectural firm Hodgetts & Fung has avoided the false nostalgia that marks many restoration projects today. Nor did it erase the original vision by forcing the movie palace into the present.

Robin Williams may have exited this year's Academy Awards Oscar-less, but he was hailed like a conquering hero Friday night at the American Cinematheque's third annual Moving Picture Ball. Williams, 34, received the film society's achievement award, several standing ovations and a sound roasting from Johnny Carson, Billy Crystal, Chevy Chase, Martin Mull and others during the festivities at the Century Plaza Hotel.

British actors are compulsive worker bees, and they often build up fat filmographies that contain a bewildering mixture of masterpieces and glaring missteps. Michael Caine has admitted that he has a string of stinkers on his resume, and even Laurence Olivier was pretty undiscriminating in the roles he chose in his later years. Malcolm McDowell belongs to this category of indefatigable, sometimes indiscriminate thespians.

Until Trent Reznor or Glenn Danzig commandeers the nation's airwaves, music videos such as Nine Inch Nails' "Happiness in Slavery" and Danzig's "It's Coming Down" will never air on MTV. The stark Nine Inch Nails clip shows a man submitting himself to a chair studded with probes, pincers and automated prongs that poke and prod his chest, abdomen, limbs and genitals at an increasing rate until, finally, the machine pulverizes his flesh.

In what is widely viewed as a significant boost for the redevelopment of Hollywood, the American Cinematheque today unveils its proposal to make its permanent home in one of Hollywood Boulevard's most famous landmarks--the closed and run-down Egyptian Theatre.