Awards juggernaut arrives

The Life After: Just as Philip Seymour Hoffman did the year before with “Capote,” Forest Whitaker dominated the recent awards season with his towering performance in “The Last King of Scotland,” which comes out Tuesday on DVD.

Whitaker received almost every major award, including the Oscar, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and BAFTA, for playing the infamous Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. (Whitaker is the fourth African American performer to win a best actor Academy Award.)

Based on the novel by Giles Foden, the thriller examines the dictator’s brutal, bloody reign during the 1970s through the eyes of a young and ambitious Scottish doctor (James McAvoy) who becomes one of Amin’s trusted advisors. Directed by Oscar-winning documentarian Kevin Macdonald (“One Day in September”), the film was made on a shoestring budget -- approximately $6 million.

Despite its critical acclaim and Whitaker’s accolades, the film earned only $17.3 million domestically.

Oscar winner’s

bizarre foray

Calling Alan Smithee: Arthur Hiller received an Oscar nomination for best director for the 1970 sudser “Love Story.” And over the decades he’s directed such black comedies as “The Americanization of Emily” and “The Hospital” as well as the box-office hits “Silver Streak,” “The In-Laws,” “Teachers” and “Outrageous Fortune.”

Hiller was president of the Directors Guild of America and president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as well as the recipient of the academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

So how did he end up directing “National Lampoon’s Pucked,” which arrives Tuesday on DVD?

At least he took his name off his 1997 project, “An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn,” but his moniker is still on the credits of this R-rated comedy. Filmed in 2004 and released briefly in theaters in February 2006, “Pucked” stars -- of all people -- rocker Jon Bon Jovi, who plays a former lawyer-turned-failed entrepreneur who decides to launch the first all-women ice hockey league, using credit cards. Estella Warren, David Faustino, Curtis Armstrong and Cary Elwes also star. Extras include two featurettes with less than appetizing titles: “PooNanny” and “Dirty Old Man.”

Early milestone

in a stellar career

Vintage Altman: “Thieves Like Us,” one of Robert Altman’s seminal movies of the 1970s, finally makes its digital bow on Tuesday. Produced in 1974, the romantic melodrama is an exceptional reworking of Nicholas Ray’s first feature, “They Live by Night,” based on the book by Edward Anderson.

Set in rural Mississippi during the Depression-era 1930s, the film revolves around convicted killers (Keith Carradine, John Schuck and Bert Remsen) who escape from prison and quickly become media sensations as ruthless bank robbers.

Between the violence and mayhem, the youngest of the trio, Bowie (Carradine), enters into a doomed romance with an uneducated farm girl named Keechie, played by Altman favorite Shelley Duvall.

“Thieves” marked the film debut of Louise Fletcher, who was then married to “Thieves” producer Jerry Bick. Remsen had been a well-regarded casting director until he joined the Altman stock company.

Joan Tewkesbury, who would pen Altman’s 1975 masterwork “Nashville,” wrote the screenplay with Altman and Calder Willingham.

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-- Susan King