“Good Night, And Good Luck.” takes place during the early days of broadcast journalism in 1950’s America. It chronicles the real-life conflict between television newsman Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. With a desire to report the facts and enlighten the public, Murrow, and his dedicated staff – headed by his producer Fred Friendly and Joe Wershba in the CBS newsroom – defy corporate and sponsorship pressures to examine the lies and scaremongering tactics perpetrated by McCarthy during his communist ‘witch-hunts’. A very public feud develops when the Senator responds by accusing the anchor of being a communist. In this climate of fear and reprisal, the CBS crew carries on and their tenacity will prove historic and monumental.

Produced by George Clooney, GN&GL opens in October. Won’t be a dry eye in the newsroom.

NYPD Blue co-creator Steven Bochco is developing another cop show, this time for the WB. Variety.com describes it as “a young-skewing hourlong cop/mystery show revolving around two Hollywood homicide detectives at the LAPD.” Bochco says the untitled project will be “a little lighter in tone. It’s not heavy-duty or long on procedural. It owes more to ‘Columbo’ than ‘CSI.’ “

Bochco wrote a pretty fair Hollywood mystery novel a couple of years ago (Death by Hollywood) but I’m wondering if what I liked most about NYPD Blue came from the (then) tortured mind of David Milch.

Alien
Aliens
Black Hawk Down
Blade Runner
Jeremiah Johnson
Last of the Mohicans
Manhunter
Marathon Man
Midnight Cowboy
Mississippi Burning
No Way Out
Platoon
Pulp Fiction
Saving Private Ryan
Speed
Terminator
Terminator II
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
The Commitments
The Getaway
The Matrix
Three Musketeers
Four Musketeers
The Professional
The Road Warrior
The Verdict
Three Days of the Condor
Time Bandits
True Romance
WarGames

If I were making a list of the best movie bartenders, Brian Dennehy would be near the top for his wonderfully understated Donald in the 1979 Dudley Moore film, 10. Someone must have compiled such a list already, but I can’t find it. And I’m having a hard time coming up with names and movies. I think you’d have to include Sascha, the bartender in Casablanca (played by Leonid Kinskey). I would not include Tom Cruise (Cocktail, 1988) or any of the girls in Coyote Ugly. So help me out here. Who would you put on the list?

PS: I found Leonid Kinskey in the Find A Grave database. They claim 25,000 people a day search their 8 million grave records.

Update: Thanks to Terry McVey for Nick (Sheldon Leonard) in It’s a Wonderful Life and Lloyd (Joe Turkel) from The Shining.

Excellent piece at nytimes.com by Virginia Heffernan on Jeremy Piven who plays Ari Gold on HBO’s “Entourage.” Love the show. Love the writing. You gotta believe every agent in Hollywood is watching.

To the assistant of an elusive executive, he (Ari Gold) offers dictation: “I want you to pass this message along to Dana. Tell her that I still have the pictures from Cancun. Tell her that I’m going to start a Web site. I’m going to take a full-page ad out in The L.A. Times advertising it. Tell her it will be called I’mahollywoodexecutivewhore.com and that no password or fee will be required. Tell her I want a call back.”

PS: Piven had a small but wonderful part in Grosse Pointe Blank. When I clicked over to IMDB, I was reminded of the great cast of that movie: John Cusack, Minnie Driver, Alan Arkin, Dan Aykroyd, Hank Azaria.

The new season of Reno 911 kicks of June 14th. … Stephen Colbert’s new show on Comedy Central —The Colbert Report— will be a satire of TV talk shows such as The O’Reilly Factor. You can hear the NPR interview here. I’m counting on the show being funnier than the interview.

I never read Frank Miller’s Sin City stories (comic books?) but I did enjoy the movie. Sin City is one of those digital-with-live-actors-not-really-animation movies that –for me– really worked. I was immediately struck by the power of the soundtrack, which showed off all the great voices: Powers Booth, Rutger Hauer, Mickey Rourke, Benicio Del Toro.

I didn’t see any punches pulled but wasn’t offended by the graphic violence. It was all in fun. I’m starting to resent paying $25 to see a movie (for two) but Jessica Alba’s cowgirl dance on the bar was just about worth it. Barb said I moaned aloud. [Sin City website]