Paul Newman Tribute DVD Set Due in September

It's hard to believe that Paul Newman died almost a year ago. He was the last specimen of a certain breed of actor, as well as being a pretty damn charitable human being. He didn't care about fame and couldn't be bothered by its many trappings, although he absolutely loved the work. Anytime you give great performances over five decades - and he did right up through his TV movie Empire Falls - you don't get there by accident.

Fox Home Entertainment will release a massive Paul Newman Tribute Collection on September 22nd. For the time being, it's just a standard format DVD release, because some of the movies it includes aren't ready for Blu-ray yet. A lot of times, these movie star collections have one good flick and a bunch of B-movies or films you already know you want to avoid. Because stars make movies for different studios, it's tough for Fox to grab, say, Cool Hand Luke, which was a Warner Bros. film. On the plus side, maybe we'll get a Warner Bros. box set, too. Fox has included the one you really want from its vaults, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, along with The Verdict, The Hustler, Hombre, The Long Hot Summer, Buffalo Bill and the Indians - or - Sitting Bull's History Lesson, Quintet, Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys, Exodus, From the Terrace, and The Towering Inferno.Inferno, Hustler, Butch and Sundance, and The Verdict are included in their previously released collector's edition forms.

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'Butch Travolta and the Sundance Cruise'?

If you have a grain of salt handy, now would be a good time to use it. A British tabloid cites unnamed sources who claim that Tom Cruise is remaking Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, in which he would star opposite John Travolta. Reportedly, Cruise got Paul Newman's blessing to take on the project in the months before he passed away last year.

I have heard Cruise talk about Butch and Sundance before in interviews, but as for remaking it with Travolta? I just don't think this sticks. I would be more apt to believe that Cruise was looking to produce the film with a couple younger stars. Redford was 13 years younger than Cruise is now when the original was made, and Travolta's not convincing enough anymore that anyone would believe him in a wild west role. Still, the source claims that Cruise in interviewing screenwriters to tackle William Goldman's genre-bending script, and from the sounds of it, this isn't something Cruise is hypothesizing. “It has been a pet project of his that has been on the back-burner for years, but now he’s ready to go, and will most likely happily eschew the enormous salary that he normally commands.”

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'Slap Shot' Remake Gets a Director, Scorn

Because I am not against the practice of remakes in theory, I can't demand that they stop remaking Slap Shot before they even begin. But I still hate to see it happen.

The script for the remake of one of the all-timers is being crafted by Peter Steinfeld (21), and now they've hired director Dean Parisot, who is probably not a fair approximation of George Roy Hill. Parisot's last movie was also a remake - Fun with Dick and Jane - and because Variety mentions the nostlagia craze that accompanied The Longest Yard with Adam Sandler, I'm even less inclined to be excited about this.

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Is Clint Eastwood the Longest-Running Movie Star Ever?

With Clint Eastwood's return to the top of the box office courtesy of Gran Torino, I thought it might be revealing to see what movie star had the most box office clout the longest. In order to determine a winner, we're relying heavily on end-of-the-year box office numbers, and then digging a little deeper beyond that.

This is not a list of who's made the most money. That's a completely different argument, especially because the industry has changed so much in just the past 20 years in terms of what actors get paid. We want to know which actor or actress most consistently produced big hits the over the longest period of time. Keep in mind that Tom Hanks hasn't even been a top ten draw for 25 years and you begin to see how difficult this list is to crack. Realistically, Harrison Ford can qualify, thanks to the success of the last Indiana Jones. But that still only puts him at 35 years, thanks to American Graffiti. Nicholson's a real possibility, and we'll explore his credentials in a bit. Clearly, Eastwood has to be near the top of the list. After all, his first film to crack an annual top ten list was, somewhat embarrassingly, Paint Your Wagon, the western musical in which both Eastwood and Lee Marvin sing showtunes. They call the wind Mariah, indeed. It may not seem like much, but 40 years ago, $14 million was a lot of money at the box office. Paint Your Wagon was the seventh-highest grossing film that year, and only three movies made over $20 million. While Eastwood's new movie probably won't wind up in the top ten of 2009, we're counting it for the sake of argument because it inspired this whole thing. Million Dollar Baby was a $100 million movie in 2004, good enough for 24th that year. And that's the sort of thing that makes this list so tough to break into. Eastwood has a 40-year run as a major box office star. The 70s, 80s, and 90s all feature films that hit number one for multiple weeks, and he's had plenty of top ten annual finishes, too. So in that respect, the sheer number of times he's managed to do so well has to account for something.

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Turner Classic's Classy 2008 Tribute

Though it hasn't been updated to reflect the passing of Eartha Kitt, here's the impeccable 2008 Turner Classic Movies tribute to the stars and artists we lost in the past year. There are, of course, many heavyweights - Newman, Carlin, Ledger, Heston - and then there are some you might not recognize simply by their names, but then you see them on screen and an old memory becomes a new one. We found the video over at Cinematical, which points out the beautiful song is "God Only Knows" by Joe Henry. And if you're interested in the tributes from previous years, the Cinematical article has links to the past five.