Review: `Bucket List' Survives Gimmicks

The Bucket List

Facing terminal illness, we all should get to experience a no-costs-barred world tour to do everything we ever wanted.

Most of us don't have the convenient bottomless wallet that allows Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman to do just that in "The Bucket List," a comic drama that puts director Rob Reiner back in commercial if not artistic form.

Unlike Reiner's string of duds the last 10 years or so, the movie is easily accessible, with Nicholson and Freeman elevating a story overloaded with cliched life lessons and self-help slogans into a tolerable, relatively painless way to go.

Nicholson and Freeman are so lovably companionable, they almost make you forget the glaring contrivances screenwriter Justin Zackham concocts to bring these two mismatched cancer patients together, making steadfast buddies out of men who never would have met and connected in real life.

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Wrapup of Entertainment Quotes

"Let me just say this, it's gotten out of hand. I want nothing, nothing more than that dog returned to that family. But you don't resort to violence. So anybody out there, please stop that." Ellen DeGeneres, on her canine controversy. A pet rescue agency received death threats this week after taking back the dog that DeGeneres adopted and later gave away to her hairdresser.

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"I don't feel that kind of passion to do a role and be great coming from those guys, because if it was there, they would do it! I mean, they're all in a position to do it." Francis Ford Coppola, on Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson.

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"I don't just love him, I like him. We are an oddly good match." Pamela Anderson, on her husband, Rick Salomon, who is best known for making a sex tape with Paris Hilton.

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"I'm saddened anytime I hear of a hip-hopper being locked up or somehow stunted in his life or his growth. I hope he wasn't into nothing crazy." Rapper KRS-One, on fellow rapper T.I.'s arrest on firearms charges.

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"In the beginning part of wanting to be a director was just a natural extension of acting. But now this feels like what I am, or what I want to be, it's so satisfying and exhilarating." Ben Affleck, on his new role as director.

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"I can't stop touring, and I won't. I believe I have a responsibility to play for people." Eric Clapton.

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"After nearly 15 minutes of soul-searching, I have heard the call." Stephen Colbert, announcing his candidacy for president on "The Colbert Report."

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"I've had my heart broken since my divorce. That's OK. I believe you fall in love more than once and get your heart broken more than once." Jessica Simpson, in an interview with In Style magazine.

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"Every single person in the music industry knows if they had a chance like (`American Idol'), they'd take it. And I'm sorry, anybody who says I took a shortcut, they are insane." Carrie Underwood, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly magazine.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Stars Present Their Films at AFI Bash

Warren Beatty leaned down to chat face-to-face with Kirk Douglas. Sylvester Stallone chomped on pineapple and glanced across the bar at Clint Eastwood. Angela Lansbury gawked at Jack Nicholson. Julie Andrews laughed with Billy Crystal. The American Film Institute threw itself a 40th birthday party on Wednesday night, inviting 11 Hollywood luminaries to introduce screenings of their classic films at the ArcLight Theatre.

Oh, and movie fans were welcome, too tickets were $25 including popcorn and soda.

Reporters prodded Nicholson to measure the significance of the movie he was there to introduce, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975).

"It certainly is one I get complimented on a lot of the time," he said. "But I personally don't make lists."

Douglas, likewise asked about "Spartacus" (1960), said the film was most memorable for him because screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who had been on Hollywood's McCarthy-era blacklist, used his real name in the credits.

But the emphasis for the invitees was on catching up with, in Beatty's words, "old friends." At a theatre bar before the screenings, Douglas sat as Andrews and others sidled up to say hello. Stallone posted up by the fruit plate before shaking hands with Lansbury, who popped a cheese square into her mouth.

George Lucas called the invitees "an august crowd."

"Being from San Francisco, I don't get down here very often, so I don't really get to see a lot of these people except once in a while at big events like this," he said. "We had time to chat, so that was good."

After the chats, the projectors rolled. In his introduction for "Star Wars" (1977), Lucas was accompanied by two storm troopers.

"When the movie came out all these people said, 'Oh, it's all about special effects, special effects. That's why everybody wants to see it,'" Lucas remembered. "I said, 'That has nothing to do with it. It really does have to do with the story, the psychological underpinnings and the fun characters.' And obviously after that they made about 500 bad special effects movies. ... And even today, they don't seem to get it."

Andrews was there for "The Sound of Music" (1965), Beatty for "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967), Crystal and Rob Reiner for "When Harry Met Sally ..." (1989), Douglas for "Spartacus" (1960), Eastwood for "Unforgiven" (1992), Tippi Hedren for "The Birds" (1963), Lansbury for "Beauty and the Beast" (1991) and Stallone for "Rocky" (1976).

AFI is a national institute promoting film education and recognition. The event was sponsored by Target.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com