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Dustin Hoffman Thinks This Dog Sounds A Bit Pitchy

Douglas Reinhardt — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:05:00 EDT

At the AFI Night At The Movies event held at the Arclight, beloved Hollywood icon Dustin Hoffman broke into a rather pitchy rendition of “Hound Dog” with Bullseye, the Target mascot. Hoffman and Bullseye fielded some requests from the crowd, but due to Bullseye’s limited vocal range, they were forced to perform “Hound Dog” one more time. After the encore, Hoffman hoped that Bullseye expand his song category in the future. Hoffman said, “I would love to do some old standards one night with old Bully. A night of Cole Porter? Bully is good, but he has a long ways to go."

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

AFI Recruits Storied Cineaste Jessica Alba To Deconstruct Film's Greatest Treasures

STV — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Everybody loves lists, right? Especially those mystifying annual tallies compiled by the American Film Institute, which lumps together 100 films by style or some other vague calculation of merit upholding AFI's profile in cultural irrelevance. Its latest list mixes things up a little, however, featuring a who's who of talent ruminating on the 100 best "genre" films — from Westerns to sci-fi to mysteries, 10 at a time. But for every Clint Eastwood commentary about The Searchers or Roman Polanski insight about Chinatown, we've got Sean Astin chiming in about Judgment at Nuremberg and Jessica Alba weighing in on... well, we've assembled the greatest hits after the jump. Let it suffice to say that Annie Hall is closer than you might have thought to Alba's self-described, "stomach-turning" neurosis and that Cher is... yeah, she's the best. [AFI]

AFI Mounts A Night For Unabashed Beatty Fetishism

Seth — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:05:14 EDT

Calcifying Hollywood icon Warren Beatty, the legendary playboy auteur famous for having created some of the most lauded and influential films of all time (as well as having slept with approximately 48,000 aspiring actresses between the years of 1967 and 1979), received a lifetime achievement award from the American Film Institute at a gala reception held at the Kodak Theatre last night. Here's a round-up of the goings on:
· Jane Fonda, Dustin Hoffman, Diane Keaton, Quentin Tarantino, and Steven Spielberg were among those in attendance. Jack Nicholson showed up a little late, looking crestfallen behind his sungalasses as he congratulated Beatty on winning "eight times as many awards as he's made pictures." [ABC/AP]
· Beatty was upstaged by another "aging ladies man and charismatic charmer," Bill Clinton, who surprised the crowd midway through the tribute with a recollection of the time at the 1972 DNC, when he shyly asked Beatty to walk "100 yards on the beach" with a woman to win her vote. Not only did Beatty comply, he brought her all the 100 yards back first thing next morning. [USA Today]

· Robert Downey Jr. enjoyed himself immensely, delighting the crowd with his take on the famous goosestepping sequence from Shampoo. [ONTD]
· Jane Fonda recalled her first impressions after having screen tested with Beatty in the '50s, "I thought he was gay. He was so cute, and all his men friends were gay, and brilliant. He had a way of collecting really brilliant gay men friends. And he liked to play piano in a piano bar – I mean, what were the odds he was straight? Shows you how dumb I was." [People]

AFI Finally Learns That Top 10 Lists Perform Better Than Top 100 Lists

Mark Graham — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:52:08 EST

The venerable and undeniably relevant American Film Institute has brought us hours upon hours of pleasurable television viewing in the past with their not-at-all boring "100 Years" series. We just KNOW that each and every one of you found your pants simultaneously bursting at the seams when our great nation finally found out which sidesplitting film reigned burrito supreme in their "100 Years ... 100 Laughs" poll, and of course we're all well aware of the important role that our No Child Left Behind funding has played in encouraging schoolchildren to memorize the AFI's "100 Years ... 100 Passions" list. Though we will certainly gather our grandchildren 'round the fire one day and regale them with the many thousands of memorable moments that these television specials provided for us, we understand that the AFI must too progress, lest it suffer the fate of irrelevance in these ADD times of ours. Hence, it's bye-bye Top 100 and hello Top 10.

As that young rapscallion David Letterman discovered long ago, Top 10 lists are gold! Everybody loves lists! And what's the only thing better than one long list? Yep, you guessed it, ten smaller ones! When the "AFI's 10 Top 10" special debuts in June, our long national nightmare of not knowing which films to add to our Blu-Ray collection will finally come to an end. They will be awarding prizes in the categories of animation, fantasy, science fiction, gangster, Western, sports, romantic comedy, courtroom drama (come on, Star Chamber!), mystery and epic film genres. But what we're REALLY excited for is next year's special, which is set to include the categories of volcano movies, body switch flicks, fish out of water tales and cop-and-K9 pictures. Set your TiVos, people!

AFI's '100 Years' focusing on genres [VARIETY]