Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood was proclaimed a national treasure Wednesday by the American Film Institute. The tribute came as the institute released its annual list of the most significant events of the year in "the world of the moving image." It listed eight of them for 2006, including praising Eastwood for directing two films that presented opposing points of view of the same event, "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters From Iwo Jima."

The late entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. left the bulk of his estate to his widow, Altovise, but he also left a "Gary Cooper" gun to actor Clint Eastwood and $100,000 to his housekeeper, his will showed Tuesday. The will filed in Superior Court listed $2 million in personal property and $2 million in real estate. Davis, who died May 16 of cancer at his Beverly Hills home, named longtime friend and business associate Shirley Rhodes and lawyer John Climaco as executors. The will was signed March 12.

As a director, Clint Eastwood leans far more toward austere storytelling than pure spectacle — in films such as "Unforgiven," "Gran Torino" and "Mystic River," the most memorable visuals are the emotions that play across the faces of actors. It's interesting, then, to see that with his 32nd feature film, "Hereafter," the ultimate old-school director presents a massive natural disaster that required the sort of computer-generated effects and elaborate stunt work that are usually associated with contemporary popcorn movies.

For the third time in seven years, a Clint Eastwood-directed movie has made its world premiere as an official entry in the Cannes Film Festival. Whether the third time proves a charm, Eastwood says he's charmed by the attention. "I came here twice before and enjoyed it both times," Eastwood said, gazing out at a press conference crowd that was spilling out of a beachfront ballroom. "It was a wonderful, responsible time, so it was fun to be invited back."

ABOUT halfway through Clint Eastwood's new film, "Letters From Iwo Jima," Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe) is shown receiving a handgun as a gift at a prewar American dinner party. It's the kind of scene that in any other filmmaker's hands would become a splashy set piece: a parade of vintage cars, scores of women in fancy dresses, a big crane shot of a magnificent hotel, elaborate trays of passed hors d'oeuvres.

If, as Shaw said, loyalty in a critic is corruption, then Richard Schickel is rotten. Schickel's "Clint Eastwood--A Biography" clocks in at 537 dense pages. There is scarcely a negative word or opinion about Eastwood in the entire volume. "There are strangers," writes Schickel, a veteran film critic for Time magazine, "who continue to resent and reject his message." (You get the impression that the "his" should have a capital H).

Clint Eastwood is a man of action, and not just on the screen. That was clear to songwriter Carole Bayer Sager when she picked up the phone a few months ago and Eastwood was on the line, calling from his car. After some chitchat, he explained that he was scoring a new independent film, "Grace Is Gone," and wanted to know if Sager would consider collaborating on a song. "He said he wanted to come by and play it for me and I said yes, of course, I would be honored," Sager said.

In most youth-oriented Hollywood circles they would probably be considered "The Over the Hill Gang," but to Clint Eastwood they are the go-to team he counts on whenever he makes a movie: cinematographer Tom Stern, editor Joel Cox, stunt coordinator Buddy Van Horn and production designer Henry Bumstead. Stern is the baby of the group at 58; Bumstead will turn 90 next month.

The occasion was a CD-ROM demonstration at Georgia, the exclusive restaurant on Melrose Avenue. At the podium was a techie from Seattle. On the screen was an interactive retrospective of Clint Eastwood's career. And at the bar was the debonair film icon himself--blushing bright red.