Free Republic

At the risk of spoiling a 50-year-old film, the most efficient way to introduce The Cowboys, a 1972 western produced and directed by Mark Rydell, is that it's the one where John Wayne gets killed. To be sure, Wayne died in more than just one film, but of the ten where he does, five of the deaths are offscreen and one of them is so early in his career that his unfortunate character doesn't even have a name (1933's Central Airport). But The Cowboys was notorious for Wayne's death, one full act before the film's finale, as it had been...

Heath Ledger's win wasn't the only thing that got stars emotional backstage at the Globes Prop 8 did it, too! "It's un-American," Tom Hanks, who nabbed a Globe for producing the terribly popular John Adams, told me. I asked Hanks, one of the Biz's most politically astute members, why he thought the gay-marriage-banning proposition had passed, helped largely by huge sums of media money funneled through the pro-Prop 8 Mormon church. "You put some good commercials on the air," deadpanned (accurately) the two-time Oscar winner, "you can convince anybody of anything."

As its title suggests, Ben Harper’s ambitious new release “Both Sides of the Gun” has a split personality. Divided into two unlabeled nine-song discs (a special boxed edition contains a third CD of alternate takes and a live version of his 1999 “Burn to Shine” album track “Beloved One”), the set favors softer, acoustic-oriented and more personal songs on one program, harder-edged topical rockers on the other. It further separates the joy of his recent marriage to actress Laura Dern and his concern over current events like the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina.