Last year, Julia Roberts presented the American Cinematheque award to pal George Clooney. This time it was her turn to receive the honor.

The smile, the laugh and the looks that have become familiar to movie-goers were on full display on Friday as Roberts was recognized for her contributions to the film industry. On hand were Tom Hanks, Natalie Portman and Sally Field. Roberts said she came along at the right time to turn into an A-list actress.

“I think I came along at a kinder time in the business,” Roberts said. “It wasn’t about fashion, and there weren’t so many media outlets, it was just kind of different. You could really cultivate your work a little more gently.”

Roberts’ portrayal of crusading legal advocate “Erin Brockovich” won the actress an Oscar and a Golden Globe. The actress’ film credits also include “Pretty Woman,” “Steel Magnolias” and “Mystic Pizza.”

Other notable Cinematheque Award recipients include Steven Spielberg, Nicole Kidman, Sean Connery, and Al Pacino.

Renowned filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock has landed the top slot in a poll, naming the greatest directors of all time. The legendary filmmaker topped the poll beating ‘The Departed’ director Martin Scorsese, who came second, followed by three time Oscar winner director Steven Spielberg, who stood third.

‘Scarface’ director Howard Hawks bagged the fourth place, while ‘Godfather’ director Francis Ford Coppola landed the fifth position, in the poll conducted by British magazine Total Film.

‘Citizen Kane’ filmmaker Orson Welles came sixth and Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman stood seventh.

The eighth slot went to ‘Killer’s Kiss’ director Stanley Kubrick while ‘The Lord of the Rings’ director Peter Jackson and ‘Fight Club’ director David Fincher got the ninth and the tenth position respectively.

The top ten greatest directors ever are:

1. Alfred Hitchcock
2. Martin Scorsese
3. Steven Spielberg
4. Howard Hawks
5. Francis Ford Coppola
6. Orson Welles
7. Ingmar Bergman
8. Stanley Kubrick
9. Peter Jackson
10. David Fincher

Other winners included Adam Sandler as favorite male movie star, Dakota Fanning as favorite female movie star and Ben Stiller as winner of the night’s top honor, the Wannabe Award, for the celebrity kids most want to be like.

“I can’t believe this, oh my goodness,” said Fanning, who giggled her way through her acceptance speech. “I want to thank all of you out there, and at home, who voted for me. “I consider all of you my friends!”

The Kids’ Choice Awards are Hollywood’s messiest, most raucous celebration honoring kid viewers’ personal picks for best movies, music and TV shows. Timberlake, this year’s host, delivered on a pre-show promise to make this year’s version the slimiest ever.

The show’s hallmark is the drenching of a celebrity in green slime, but this year hundreds of celebrities and audience members got the treatment.

The show began with Timberlake descending from the ceiling on a large orange Nickelodeon blimp, and breaking into a Broadway show tune in which he taunted the audience, saying he was too famous to be slimed.

“You’ll never get a drop of slime on old J.T.,” he sang.

By the end of the song, of course, he had been drenched in the green goo. So had actors
Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker.

Timberlake, the only person to win the show’s celebrity burp-off twice, defended his title this year against all 12,000 people in the audience at Pauley Pavilion, who burped simultaneously in a mass belch that sounded like it was augmented by special-effects. He was roundly defeated.

In a speech mocking awards speeches, Sandler put on his “Happy Gilmore” voice as he thanked the inventor of the potato chip bag and the pillow, and everyone in the audience “for not making fun of me for talking like this every speech I do.”

The show closed with Vince Vaughn and Timberlake being soaked in slime again. When the audience roared its approval, they pulled out firehoses and sprayed hundreds of people in the audience that included such celebrities as Steven Spielberg, Nicole Kidman, Queen Latifah and numerous others.

The award presentations have always been an afterthought on the light-hearted show, which also included musical performances by Gwen Stefani and Maroon 5.

Other award winners were Black Eyed Peas for favorite musical group, American Idol for favorite TV show and Drake Bell for favorite TV actor. Bell also won that award last year.

Kids vote online to select the winners in each category. Approximately 25 million votes were cast last year, according to Nickelodeon.

Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks company has committed to produce at least one movie on the famed Belgian cartoon character Tintin, the head of the Tintin studio announced Thursday.

Nick Rodwell of Herge Studios said the Hollywood company will go into preproduction on a film, which should be in theaters in about two years.

It was unclear which of the 24 cartoon books of Tintin’s adventures would be picked for a first movie script, he said. “If movie No. 1 works, we will continue.”

Talks about a Hollywood movie on the intrepid reporter who saves the lives of countless people and makes sure criminals end up behind bars has been talked about for a quarter-century.

The first plan surfaced just before Tintin’s creator, Georges Remi, aka Herge, died in 1983. But financial and production issues have kept Tintin from landing a role in a Hollywood production.

Norman Rockwell paintings often resonate because of their depictions of everyday life, but the life of one of his paintings has been anything but mundane.

“Russian Schoolroom,” a Rockwell painting stolen from a gallery in the St. Louis suburb of Clayton, Mo., more than three decades ago, was found in Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s art collection, the FBI announced Friday.

Spielberg purchased the painting in 1989 from a legitimate dealer and didn’t know it was stolen until his staff spotted its image last week on an FBI Web site listing stolen works of art, the bureau said in a statement.

After Spielberg’s staff brought it to the attention of authorities, an FBI agent and an art expert from the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino inspected the painting at one of Spielberg’s offices and confirmed its authenticity Friday morning. Early FBI estimates put the painting’s value at $700,000, officials said.

Spielberg is cooperating with the FBI and will retain possession of the Russian Schoolroom until its “disposition can be determined,” the bureau said.

“The second anybody said, ‘I think we have that painting,’ (our) office got a hold of the FBI,” said Spielberg’s spokesman, Marvin Levy.

The oil-on-canvas painting shows children in a classroom with a bust of communist leader Vladimir Lenin. It was nabbed in a gallery heist and then resurfaced briefly in legitimate art forums before disappearing again. At the time of the theft, the work was 16 inches by 37 inches.

Mary Ellen Shortland, who worked at the long-closed Clayton Art Gallery, recalled Friday that someone from Missouri paid $25,000 for the painting after seeing it during a Rockwell exhibition featuring mostly lithographs.

The client agreed to keep it on display, she said, but a few nights later someone smashed the gallery’s glass door and escaped with the painting.

“That was all they took. That’s what they wanted, that painting,” Shortland recalled.

The gallery refunded the client’s money, and there was no sign of the work for years. Then in 1988, it was auctioned in New Orleans.

In 2004, the FBI’s newly formed Art Crime Team initiated an investigation to recover the work after determining it had been advertised for sale at a Rockwell exhibit in New York in 1989.

It wasn’t immediately known whether Spielberg purchased the painting at that New York exhibit.

Spielberg is a longtime Rockwell collector. He helped found the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., where he is also on the board of trustees.

“He’s certainly one of the collectors of Rockwell,” said Levy, who wasn’t sure how many of the artist’s paintings Spielberg owns. “We have a few in our office on the Universal lot.”

Rockwell’s works often capture moments from everyday life, such as a boy watching his father shave, family members saying grace over a Thanksgiving turkey or a young girl having a dress fitting.

The artist died at age 84 in 1978. While “Russian Schoolroom” appeared in Look magazine, the artist is best known for the covers he did for The Saturday Evening Post. More than 300 Rockwell creations appeared on the cover of the publication.

Steven Spielberg became known for his films, but he was honored for his contributions to the small screen during the presentation of the International Emmy Awards.

“I got my start in television,” Spielberg said on Monday at the gala awards ceremony in Manhattan, where he received this year’s International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Founders Award. “I got my first break when I … was 21 years old directing ‘Night Gallery,’ so I owe a lot to television.”

Audience members watched a video tribute that included clips from Spielberg’s TV projects, such as the medical drama “ER,” the animated series “Animaniacs,” and the World War II miniseries “Band of Brothers.”

British television shows swept most of the top honors at the ceremony, which honors excellence in television programming produced outside the US.

The award for best drama series went to the time-shifting police saga “Life on Mars,” while the best comedy title went to “Little Britain,” a satirical look at contemporary life in the United Kingdom.

Presenters included CBS news anchor Katie Couric and CNN international correspondent Christiane Amanpour. Actors Susan Sarandon, Rosie Perez and Lorenzo Lamas also handed out awards.

“We certainly need to be responsible and careful about what we put into that box, because what comes out the other end truly has changed the world and will continue to change the world, for better or worse,” he said. “I’m happy to think it is changing the world for the better.”

The Emmy for non-scripted entertainment went to “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares,” which features celebrated London chef Gordon Ramsay dishing out advice on how to save failing restaurants.

Maryam Hassouni, a Moroccan living in the Netherlands, won for best actress for portraying a Palestinian woman suspected of planning a terrorist attack in the Dutch TV production “Offers.” Ray Winstone was named best actor for the British detective series “Vincent.”

The documentary award went to “Hiroshima,” a BBC co-production with partners in Japan and other countries that looks at the events leading to the first use of an atomic bomb from both the American and Japanese perspectives.

A British series, “Sugar Rush,” which explores the world of a 15-year-old lesbian, won in the children and young people category.

Ronald S. Lauder, a former U.S. ambassador to Austria, received the academy’s Directorate Award for fostering the development of independent television broadcasting in Central and Eastern Europe. Lauder, a former cosmetics executive with Estee Lauder Inc and a noted New York art collector and museum patron, is also founder and chairman of Central European Media Enterprises, which operates stations in six countries.

The academy is the largest organization of global broadcasters with more than 500 members from nearly 70 countries and over 400 companies.