Some highlights…

Cold Open—A “crazy-ass fantasy,” brought to you by Newt Gingrich: As Obama’s raging socialist agenda destroys the earth, Newt Gingrich (Bobby Moynihan) leads his “AdMoonistration” to a better future in space. (“May divorce be with you…”). Featuring Kenan Thompson as Vice Admiral Herman Cain, Kristin Wiig as Callista, Bill Hader as the Reagatron 3000 Droid, and Jason Sudeikis as cross-dressing stowaway Mitt Romney:

Lana Del Rey (Kristin Wiig) drops by Weekend Update to respond to her critics. (“I failed to reach the high bar set by past guests like Bubba Sparxxx, the Baha Men, and Shaggy…”)

The Food Network’s Guy Fieri (Bobby Moynihan) offers recipes for perfect 2012 Super Bowl party snacks (including Tom “Brady Bunch” Hot Dogs served in a men’s Ugg boot, the Madonna-inspired “Weird Bucket of Mussels,” and a tower of dueling chowders served in a toilet bowl with fighting lobsters).

Getting Freaky With Cee Lo Green—A scantily-clad Matthew McConaughey (Channing Tatum)—sporting gold lamé briefs and strategically placed bongo drums—joins forces with Cee Lo Green (Kenan Thompson) and “Colonel Nasty” (Bill Hader) to fix lesbian couple Nasim Pedrad and Vanessa Bayer’s troubles in the bedroom:

Bobby Moynihan steals Tom Brady from Gisele Bundchen on the eve of Super Bowl XLVI:

Also: (Not currently online) Spike TV, the channel that brought you UFC Unleashed and 1000 Ways to Die introduces Downton Abbey (a.k.a. “Fancy Entourage”).

Musical guest Bon Iver performed “Holocene” and “Beth/Rest.”

NEXT, on FEBRUARY 11: Zooey Deschanel, with musical guest Karmin.

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This weekend you’ll see actor Channing Tatum as the guest host on Saturday Night Live. Next week he unveils “The Vow,” and next month he’ll be stopping in Austin for South By Southwest.

Tatum tell us he’ll be on hand to premiere the upcoming action-comedy “21 Jump Street.”

South By Southwest recently announced the movie’s world premiere as the Centerpiece of March’s film festival. Co-stars Jonah Hill and Ice Cube are expected to attend as well.

Tatum also stars in the upcoming romantic drama “The Vow.”

It’s based on the true story of a man whose wife doesn’t remember him after a serious car accident.

“The Vow” opens in theaters next Friday. South By Southwest begins March 9th.

YNN’s Victor Diaz chats with Tatum about his latest role in the video above.

Back in 1988, three gray whales, named Bamm-Bamm, Fred and Wilma (after the famous “Flintstones” characters) were trapped beneath Alaskan ice that was quickly thickening. Their one small breathing hole in the ice was freezing over. While environmentalists rallied to find a solution and free the whales, a herd of TV journalists rushed to the scene to record the outcome… and build their careers. In the new movie Big Miracle, ambitious Jill Jerard played by Kristen Bell is among them.   

Kristen, well-loved from her TV role as “Veronica Mars” and from tons of feature films, is now starring on the Showtime series “House of Lies”. She was happy to talk about how TV news has changed since way back in the ’80’s and how she got into the head of her ambitious young journalist character. Hey, her dad ran a TV newsroom! She is also a big fan of animals and the great outdoors.

Q: Do you think because there wasn’t the wide use of the Internet or multiple news outlets in 1988 that this story was able to be a bigger deal than it might be today? There are so many world-wide stories to distract us.

Kristen: Yeah, I think that too much stimulus can make you feel crazy. Nowadays, it’s harder to tell what is important because there is so much news on the table. In a way that is really good because we all feel a little bit more connected.

The interesting thing about this piece for me was not only did everyone in the world seem to connect with the emotion behind this story and wanting to save the whales, but everyone also came on board and decided to drop all their differences and work together for a common goal, which almost never happens. (Note, native Alaskan people, Russians and several nations helped).

Q: Many of the characters in this film are based on real people but your character is really a representation of the many different competing journalists who covered the story.  Is that more freeing to be playing a fictional character rather than someone who actually exists?

Kristen:  It’s better and it’s worse at the same time. You don’t have anyone specific to draw on so you’re not sure that you are doing it right. But at the same time, I can certainly identify with the idea of competition. My existence is in a business where there is always someone better than you right around the corner. So the idea of that competition and that hunger and that aggressive dedication I could identify with because I have wanted jobs so badly.

I feel that Jill Gerard was just a mish-mash of all these journalists that thought that this was the story that would make or break them and that they had to do a great job.

Q: She has a moment in the film where she contemplates giving it up and going into teaching. Have you ever had a moment where the competition was too high and you thought about doing something else?

Kristen: Yeah like legitimately every five minutes. It’s something that I’ve learned to deal with over the last couple of years. I find my sanity because I evaluate my self-esteem based on the integrity of my actions versus the jobs I get. There was a huge portion of my life where whatever job I was getting was who I was. Whatever job I had was my entire existence.

I think that since I’ve grown up I’ve realized that I’m a human being that likes acting a lot, but I love being a human being. So it’s a really delicate balance to stay sane and not think that that one job that you might obtain could make or break your life.

Q: Good lesson to learn. Did you study different newscasters to really get your character right?

Kristen: A little bit. My dad is a news director so I had kind of grown up with it. I tend to speak in sound bites, because I’m trained by him. I did hang out at his news station a lot and I was excited because I knew the local celebrities that were the anchors and I played around with the teleprompter.

When journalists would submit their tapes and he had to hire a new producer or on-camera person, I would watch them with him and I say “It makes me uncomfortable that the weatherman is in a sweater. Number one, he is too comfortable, I want a professional delivering my news. Number two; it makes me feel like it’s going to be cold and it’s not good news”. I always felt like my dad was really open to my feedback in creating a good station.

Q: What was it that originally drew you to the Big Miracle script?

Kristen: Initially, the fact that it was about animals. I thought, in simple terms, “Oooh, I like animals”. Then upon reading it, the complexity of the story, it seemed almost unbelievable to me. I was like, “Oh really, a hundred and eighty journalists from different countries flew in and two million dollars was spent on this, really”? People got married who met talking about the whales. The most outrageous portions of the movie are the truth. It’s incredibly rare to have everybody check their baggage at the door and work together and it is so powerful I think.

Q: And, on a lighter note, you really rocked the ‘80s look.

Kristen: I tried. Thank you very much. That was also exciting because I grew up in the ‘80s but that wasn’t like my prime. My prime was definitely like 95-96. I had older sisters and I definitely looked up to the way my mom dressed.  It was really fun working with the costume designer to create all these amazing shoulder pads and cool pastels. Her hair obviously had to be big, so we did hot rollers every day, which was really fun. I teased the c**p out of it and I wore press-on nails because everyone had long pink fingernails in the ‘80s.

Q: Hilarious. What was it like filming in Alaska? And it’s a very male dominated cast with the exception of you and Drew, what was that like?

Kristen:  Truth be told, the guys are pretty much sissies on this film and Drew and I are way stronger so that is how it breaks down. No, this cast got along really well because everyone is kind of a goofball. No one in the cast or crew had friends or family in Alaska that I knew of, and no one could really travel because there were icy winds all the time, so we visited a lot of pizza joints. We saw a lot of movies; we played a lot of poker in each other’s rooms.

Q: When the whales poke their heads up out of the ice, it is a big animatronic whale that was really there for the actors to act to. Did that help?

Kristen: For me, yes. I’m kind of an idiot but when I was looking at those whales. I’ve been whale watching a few times and been in Capetown where the Southern White Whales come from. It’s extraordinary. You look into their eyes and you just feel something magical.

I hate to say it but I kind of felt the same thing when I was looking at these [animatronic] animals. It was sad, visually how small the hole was for them to come up [to get air] and when you see the three of them surface together, just the story that the picture told, kind of devastated you.

Q: Do you consider yourself an outdoors person and a nature and animal lover to begin with?

Kristen:  A wood nymph? Yes! Yes, I do like being outdoors a lot. I hike a lot, and I’m a huge animal lover. So Alaska was a really wonderful location for me because we really got a chance on the weekends to explore its majesty and it doesn’t disappoint. It’s kind of hard to articulate, because it is so untouched. Like, we hiked to the top of [a mountain]. You are actually above the clouds and you are able to take pictures.

Q: Is it safe to say that you would go back to Alaska again?

Kristen: I would yeah, I really would. I didn’t get to see the Northern Lights or go up to Fairbanks when I was there and a lot of the cast did. I drove down to Seward and saw the aquarium where they rescue or rehabilitate otters, seals, and damaged wildlife. I would definitely go back to Alaska. There is a harmony up there that is non-existent in LA.

Three new movies were released into the marketplace yesterday, with two of them smacking of desperation. Those two features, One for the Money and Man on a Ledge, both utilized coupon sites for last minute ticket sales, which is the box office equivalent of begging for change. The third is the highest profile of the group as well as the latest proof that the early portion of the year belongs to Liam Neeson.

The Grey opened to $6.5 million on Friday, easily good enough for first place. The social media crowd had been mocking the man vs. wolf premise for several months now, but fledgling distributor Open Road is having the last laugh. With a modest production budget of $25 million, this title is certain to be a profitable endeavor and the latest example that consumers love to watch Liam Neeson kick ass whether the enemy is a white slavery ring, a group of assassins or a wolf pack of much more than one.

Of course, Taken is the movie that fundamentally altered the perception of Neeson as an action hero. That January release earned $9.4 million on its first Friday on the way to $24.7 million for the weekend. Last year’s Unknown, a mid-February release, started in the same range as The Grey. It debuted to $6.7 million and wound up with $21.9 million over opening weekend. While The Grey has significantly better reviews than Unknown (77% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes versus 55%), I do not expect it to hold up quite as well over the weekend. A weekend of $17.6 million is in store for the title, which is another solid performance for Neeson. He has become what Jason Statham has been trying to be for years now, a reliable action movie draw.

The second “most popular” new release this weekend is One for the Money, a Katherine Heigl comedy based upon the popular Janet Evanovich book series. Suffice to say that books two through 18 are looking unlikely to get the big screen treatment as One for the Money is so awful that it was not screened for critics. Out of the 26 who have watched it thus far, exactly one enjoyed the movie. This doesn’t seem to be a surprise to Lionsgate, either. In the middle of the week, the studio fretted over the tracking enough that they decided to run a Groupon ticket deal.

This was a tactic implemented somewhat successfully last year with The Lincoln Lawyer, a title that earned $4.1 million on its first Friday, $13.2 million over its first weekend and $58 million overall. While these 50% off sites are waning in popularity only a year later, One for the Money has matched The Lincoln Lawyer’s first day with $4.1 million. It is highly unlikely to approach the $58 million final tally due to the venomous word-of-mouth, but a $12.5 million weekend is better than expected for a movie tracking poorly.

Of course, there is a lot of debate about how much the box office aids the studio as exhibitors get the lion’s share of the Groupon profits (theater owners have indicated to me that they get all of it). So, the tactic in and of itself is questionable in every other regard save for box office reports/publicity. Without the Groupon, One for the Money would have been an unqualified disaster. As it is, we are writing about how the losses were mitigated rather than the movie itself, which doesn’t strike me as forward progress.

Then again, Man on a Ledge did even worse than One for the Money. In fact, it lost to last weekend’s openers as well. One of the final Summit Entertainment releases before they are merged with new owner Lionsgate, Man on a Ledge managed a paltry $2.5 million. Even scarier is the thought that this film offered a competing LivingSocial deal yesterday. Almost no consumers were willing to watch Man on a Ledge even at a discounted price of $6 a ticket. That statement says everything about this title, which should earn about $6.7 million this weekend. Man on a Ledge was just pushed off the roof.

Last weekend’s most popular releases, Underworld: Awakening and Red Tails, fell 63% and 53% respectively. Keeping in mind that Underworld 4 earned 50% more last Friday, these declines are roughly similar. Underworld edged out Red Tails in actual Friday box office, $3.4 million to $2.8 million. Underworld is ahead in terms of domestic box office by almost $10 million overall.

Not going great guns: Stephanie (Katherine Heigl) and Ranger (Daniel Sunjata)

By  Roger Moore

M cCLATCHY-TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE Saturday January 28, 2012 8:04 AM

On today’s edition of Smart Women, Stupid Choices: Katherine Heigl.

The actress left a half-decent medical soap opera for a string of increasingly mediocre, decreasingly romantic “comedies” pairing her with increasingly bland leading men.

She might have thought she’d landed a plum (ahem) when she secured the rights to Stephanie Plum, the New Jersey bounty-hunting heroine created by Janet Evanovich. But One for the Money, which Heigl also produced, is a malnourished exercise in star vanity, a film built around an actress so insecure that she surrounds herself with non-threatening no-name actors who make no impression at all.

And didn’t Jennifer Aniston already do a bounty-hunter movie?

Not to pick on TV actor Jason O’Mara, playing the cop and ex-beau whom newbie bounty hunter Stephanie dogs in the film, but — who? She has gone from co-starring with Gerard Butler, Josh Duhamel and Ashton Kutcher to O’Mara, who is competent and easy on the eyes. But charisma and chemistry are MIA.

Heigl traded down to television and Last Song sob sister Julie Anne Robinson for a director, then let her pack Stephanie’s world with the blandest supporting cast ever.

Stephanie has lost her job selling lingerie at Macy’s in Newark and just lost her car to the repo guys. She needs cash — or something, at least — to share with her dull, stereotypical blue-collar family. Her loony granny (Debbie Reynolds — not her finest hour) is the only one who understands.

“Good judgment is for sissies!”

So the hot lingerie saleswoman hits up a relative (Patrick Fischler) for a piece of his bail-bond business. She needs a big score, so she tackles killer cop Joe Morelli (O’Mara), whose bond was pretty steep and with whom she has a history. Yeah, she lost her virginity to Joe back in the day. Trenton is a small town, and Jersey girls and Jersey boys swim in a tiny pond.

“We’re ancient history,” Joe says with a smirk upon seeing his pursuer — “like the Pyramids, baby!”

Stephanie learns on the job, chasing Joe. Sometimes, he schools her: You’re coming after a bad cop; you’d better have cuffs and a gun. More often, she’s taught by a commandolike bounty hunter who likes to be called “Ranger” (Daniel Sunjata), a potentially fun character who sets off no sparks in the story or with Stephanie.

There’s a menacing mixed-martial-arts star, a few glorified cameos (John Leguizamo, Fisher Stevens) and a lot of blander-than-bland narration.

Heigl could be commended for giving lesser lights in the acting universe their shot, for entrusting this down-market heroine to female screenwriters and a female director. But, when you’re given a big break, you need to deliver. These women — to a one — fail to do so.

And there is Heigl, the center of it all, stupidly thinking an array of skintight jeans and a couple of scenes showing a lot of skin make One for the Money worth our money.

Incoming search terms:

TORONTO – She left the set of “Grey’s Anatomy” for good in March 2010, but Katherine Heigl began to feel as if she’d stepped back into Seattle Grace when she started shooting “One for the Money.”

In theatres Friday, the romantic comedy has a hearty list of “Grey’s” talent, including director Julie Anne Robinson, who helmed several episodes of the hit medical drama from 2006 to 2009.

Several of the film’s co-stars have also been on “Grey’s”: Jason O’Mara played a patient with a brain tumour in two episodes in 2008; Debra Monk was cast as George O’Malley’s mother in several instalments; and Daniel Sunjata plays nurse Eli (although he didn’t sign on to the show until shooting wrapped for “One for the Money”).

“It was crazy. So weird,” Heigl, 33, said in a telephone interview of the multiple “Grey’s” ties. “I didn’t even realize it when I first met Jason and we were talking about the part.

“Julie Anne I knew, of course, because we had done a few episodes together and I had just really loved working with her, so that was a big part of why I wanted to work with her on the film as a director. And then she was like, ‘Hey, remember when Jason was in “Grey’s?”‘ And I was like, ‘No. What role?’” Heigl recalled with a laugh.

“I was so embarrassed by myself for not remembering, but his storyline was with some of the other actors and I hadn’t had any scenes with him. I don’t know if I missed the episode or what. And then Daniel, of course, goes on (‘Grey’s') as a regular as soon as the movie wrapped.

“It was so funny. I was like, ‘How random!’”

Heigl, who played Dr. Izzie Stevens for six seasons on “Grey’s,” said she hasn’t had a chance to talk with Sunjata about being on the show, but she added: “I hope he had as great an experience as I did. I think he was great.

“I didn’t get to see much of his (role) because I don’t watch much anymore but he’s such a great actor and such a great guy, I hope it was a positive experience.”

Despite rumours that Heigl quit “Grey’s” on bad terms, she has said she left to focus on her family, which includes her adopted daughter Naleigh and actor-musician husband Josh Kelley.

In recent days, Heigl has been quoted as saying she wants to return to the series. But during a round of telephone interviews on Thursday, a publicist warned not to ask about the show, noting the actress did not want to discuss it.

Instead, she kept the focus on “One for the Money,” which is based on the first book in Janet Evanovich’s popular Stephanie Plum mystery series.

Heigl co-produced the film and stars as the lead heroine, a New Jersey lingerie salesperson turned bounty hunter assigned to chase down former cop and murder suspect Joe Morelli (O’Mara).

In online chat forums, Stephanie Plum readers have engaged in heated debates about whether Heigl fits the role, and the Connecticut-raised actress said she felt the pressure to live up to fans’ expectations.

“I knew that I was going to really do my absolute best to get as close as I could to her because I feel the same way that the fans of the books do, and I’m a fan of the books,” said Heigl, who’s won an Emmy and been nominated for two Golden Globe Awards for her work on “Grey’s.”

“It was nerve-racking and it is scary and hard to take a book that is so popular and that has so many fans, and go out on a limb and turn it into a film. And a lot of these fans have been waiting for a film for a long time, so you don’t want to disappoint.”

Heigl wore a curly brunette wig, worked with a dialect coach on a New Jersey accent, and learned how to shoot a real gun for the part. Her daughter was on set during shooting in Pittsburgh in the of summer 2010, but she didn’t “get too freaked out by the wig or anything like that,” said Heigl.

“I think she’s sort of used to it by now. I’ve changed my hair colour and style, like, six times in her short little life,” she added with a laugh.

Other stars in “One for the Money” include John Leguizamo, Sherri Shepherd, Debbie Reynolds and Fisher Stevens. The screenplay is by Stacy Sherman, Karen Ray and Liz Brixius.

The film is just one of several Heigl has co-produced with her mother and producing partner, Nancy Heigl, under their Abishag banner.

Heigl said she enjoys producing because it’s a unique creative outlet.

“It’s a different challenge and it has a different set of obstacles that I just found really interesting and exciting, and I just love having more control,” she said. “I love being able to have a voice when it comes to sort of the bigger creative decisions.

“And producing, too, is an opportunity for me to sort of actively seek and create art and roles and stories for myself instead of just waiting for them to come to me.”

Heigl said she’s constantly looking for new projects to produce, noting “the business is changing and making less and less films now.”

“Hollywood is an interesting place. If one thing is successful then you get a slew of scripts that sort of mimic that one project that did well,” she continued.

“So if you want to get outside the box at all or tell a different story, you know, I tend to read a lot. I love to option books and go from there.”

Heigl would “love” to do another film in the Stephanie Plum series, “It just really depends on whether or not this one does well enough to get the big finance guys to get onboard,” she said with a laugh.

The Giants won a nailbiting NFC Championship game in overtime in San Francisco thanks to a 31-yard field goal.

They will now face New England in Indianapolis at Super Bowl XLVI on February 5 after the Patriots clinched their place earlier in the evening with an equally tight 23-20 victory at home to Baltimore.

New England fans were also left on the edge of their seats after Baltimore spurned the chance to take the game into overtime when kicker Billy Cundiff MISSED a short-range field goal with 11 seconds left.

The big match-up is a repeat of the title game in 2008, when hot favourites New England were denied a perfect season by a shock touchdown in the final minute as the Giants recorded a famous 17-14 win.

Quarterback Manning, who was the Super Bowl MVP four years ago, made sure the New Yorkers would get another chance at glory by throwing two touchown passes and then guiding the team to the clinching field goal by their Scots-born kicker.

A heavyweight defensive battle was played in almost constant torrential rain and neither team was able to make much impression for long periods.

But the 49ers — bidding for their first Super Bowl since 1995 — started in style with a sizzling 73-yard touchdown pass from Alex Smith to Vernon Davis after just seven minutes.

The visitors tied the score with Manning’s six-yard pass to Bear Pascoe and then edged in front when Tynes booted a 31-yarder just before half-time.

San Francisco quarterback Smith completed just 12 passes on the night but he did hook up with Davis again in the third quarter for another spectacular score, this time from 28 yards out.

However, the lead did not last long as Manning came back firing and found Mario Manningham in the back of the end zone with an 18-yard bullet to put the Giants back in front 17-14 early in the fourth quarter.

The 49ers then put together one of their best drives of the night only to be halted at the New York seven-yard line.

And they were forced to settle for a 25-yard David Akers field goal that tied the score for the second time.

Neither team could move the ball into scoring range in the final six minutes so the game went into the sudden-death extra period, with New York getting the first possession but unable once again to make any progress against the tough-tackling home defence.

San Francisco’s first drive went absolutely nowhere as the Giants turned up the heat, led by ferocious linebacker Jason Pierre-Paul.

It took a fumble by punt returner Kyle Williams on his own 24-yard line to give Tynes his chance, which the kicker grabbed by landing the heart-stopping kick to send his team to Indianapolis.

Escorting a squadron of bombers, Andrew “Smokey” Salem (Ne-Yo) signals fellow pilots on the way into combat with German forces in the new film Red Tails, based on the experiences of the famed Tuskegee Airmen fighter group.

It took George Lucas more than two decades to bring the movie Red Tails to the screen. It was all the way back in the late ’80s that the man behind Star Wars and Indiana Jones fell under the spell of another story of adventure, this one with real-life heroes — the African-American fighter pilots of World War II.

They were known as the Tuskegee Airmen, and they were as dashing, inventive and brave as any of Lucas’ big-screen protagonists. But they also carried the burden of the unrelenting racism of their day. In an act of defiance and pride, they painted the tails of their planes red — which is how they became known as the Red-Tail Angels.

John Ridley, a longtime Morning Edition commentator and the writer of the Red Tails screenplay, tells NPR’s Renee Montagne that when the Tuskegee Airmen were finally sent to an overseas duty post, they were flying what you might call the jalopies of the U.S. Army Air Forces — planes “plucked from Uncle Sam’s junkyard,” in the words of one airman in the film.

“They weren’t given very good assignments, they weren’t given very good material, they weren’t expected to do anything at all,” Ridley explains. “And of course, their history proved that they exceeded all expectations.”

Once the Red Tails finally saw active combat, Ridley says, their white superiors were astounded by the levels of skill and discipline the Airmen displayed — especially when compared with pilots in all-white units.

“They weren’t innately better, but [the Red Tails] had trained so much longer because no one wanted to assign them [to combat],” says Ridley. “When they got the opportunity, they were among the most trained pilots in the air.”

Having proven themselves, the Airmen were quickly upgraded from their junkers to fly state-of-the-art P-51 Mustang fighters — and they were assigned to more challenging missions, including escorting heavy B-17 bomber planes to their targets.

Up to then, the bombing squadrons had regularly taken heavy losses.

“The large planes would have 10 to 11 men onboard, and there were bomber trains of maybe 100 B-17s,” Ridley says. “You’re talking about a thousand men in the air, and at the time they were losing 20, 30 or 40 of these [planes] per mission. You can imagine what that was doing to the psyche on the homefront.”

Part of the reason so many planes were shot down was the escorts’ tactics. U.S. pilots were trained to pursue German fighters, leaving the bombers open to attack.

In the movie, as in real life, the Red Tails do things differently. In the film, Col. A.J. Bullard (Terrence Howard) warns his men not to chase glory by going after the German planes.

“We count our victories,” he tells them, “by the bombers we get to our targets, by the husbands we return to their wives, by the fathers we get back to their children.”

That speech could be a pep talk from an officer to his men in just about any war film. But in this case, it’s a black officer challenging his men to protect white pilots — many of whom were disdainful of their shepherds.

Ridley says the Red Tails’ approach made a dramatic difference.

“It was huge. It was a different way of fighting, and it changed the course of the war.”

LucasFilm

Cuba Gooding Jr. plays pipe-smoking, swaggering Maj. Emmanuel Stance in Red Tails.

‘They Were All Real Characters’

Except for the color of their skin, the bomber-jacketed heroes of Red Tails could have stepped out of a John Wayne war movie: the pipe-smoking major, the hot-headed troublemaker. Ridley says their personalities aren’t particularly exaggerated.

“When I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with these Tuskegee Airmen — and this was obviously 60 years on from the war — these guys were all, despite the fact that they were in their 70s, their 80s — they were all real characters,” he says.

Ridley thinks their swagger had its roots in their need to prove themselves on not one but two fronts.

“This was before electronics. Back in the day, you basically had a propeller and a stick, and you were getting in the air … whatever it took — besides trying to prove that you could do it as a black man in America, that you could do it in an airplane. “

Whatever it was, they still had it, even in old age.

“When you sit with them, they’re the same characters,” Ridley says. “If a guy was chewing tobacco back in the day, he’s chewing tobacco now. If he was full of braggadocio back in the day, he had it now. And that’s what we want to do with these characters — not just make them these stoic, quiet black men who were trying to fight for the right to fight. These guys were exciting.”

‘Daddy, I Have A Really Great Idea’

That visceral excitement was key, too, in making a movie whose historical resonance needed to blend with a George Lucas aesthetic — it needed to be an old-fashioned adventure story that a 12-year-old would love. Ridley says it helped that his own son quickly became interested in the project.

“When I started writing this, my son was 7, and when I got the material for Red Tails, some of it was on DVD — old war films and things like that,” he says. “And my son … would get interested. … And I said, ‘If you wanna watch these old war films, do it.’ … And when he came back to me, he said, ‘Oh Daddy, I have a really great idea for how the movie should end.’ And I don’t want to spoil anything, [but] my son actually came up with what should actually be the end of the film.

“One of the things I really enjoy about this film is to be able to, in the slightest way, to do something with my son. It was the greatest moment in my life going to the premiere with my son — being able to point to the screen and go, ‘This is something you helped your dad do.’ “

ACTRESS IN A DRAMA

Meryl Streep, “The Iron Lady”

MUSICAL OR COMEDY

“The Artist”

ACTOR IN A MUSICAL OR COMEDY

Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”

ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL OR COMEDY

Michelle Williams, “My Week With Marilyn”

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Christopher Plummer, “Beginners”

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Octavia Spencer, “The Help”

DIRECTOR

Martin Scorsese, “Hugo”

SCREENPLAY

Woody Allen, “Midnight in Paris”

ORIGINAL SCORE

Ludovic Bource, “The Artist”

ORIGINAL SONG

“Masterpiece” from the film, “W.E.”

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

“The Adventures of Tintin”

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

“A Separation,” Iran

TELEVISION – DRAMA SERIES

“Homeland”

ACTOR IN A DRAMA

Kelsey Grammer, “Boss”

ACTRESS IN A DRAMA

Claire Danes, “Homeland”

COMEDY SERIES

“Modern Family”

ACTOR IN A COMEDY

Matt LeBlanc, “Episodes”

ACTRESS IN A COMEDY

Laura Dern, “Enlightened”

TV MOVIE OR MINISERIES

“Downton Abbey”

ACTOR IN A TV MOVIE OR MINISERIES

Idris Elba, “Luther”

ACTRESS IN A TV MOVIE OR MINISERIES

Kate Winslet, “Mildred Pierce”

SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A TV MOVIE OR MINISERIES

Jessica Lange, “American Horror Story”

SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A TV MOVIE OR MINISERIES

Peter Dinklage, “Game of Thrones”

Cecil B. DeMille Award

Morgan Freeman

Incoming search terms:

lovefilm.com have a cool picture cryptically depicting 100 film titles. See how many you can find. I’ll update this, like I did the Virgin music one with the answers when I’ve got them.

Update: The official answers aren’t out yet, but I’ve added notes for the ones I’ve found.