After watching Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston do his thing on location in New Mexico for the upcoming final season of the AMC program, in the bitter January cold, visiting LA reporter Ruben Nepales sat down with the actor in a nearby hotel suite. What followed was a most unusual line of questioning:

I told Bryan what his co-star Aaron Paul (Jesse Pinkman) told me earlier. “No one knows this,” Aaron said, relaxing with a drink after a day’s shoot, “but Bryan never wears pants in close-up shots. He is very proud of what is happening down there and he thinks it is intimidating for all of us, in a loving way. From the belly down, he has nothing on.”

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A different kind of conversation flow is possible when a fellow filmmaker rather than a journalist interviews a Hollywood director. Witness the Interview magazine Q&A between Ben Affleck, whose critically hailed Argo opens tomorrow, and Gus Van Sant, the man who guided him through 1997′s Good Will Hunting.

Affleck admits he watched a number of classic American movies for stylistic research purposes. Cassavetes was instrumental for the California scenes, while 1982′s Missing greatly helped inform the Iran sequences. As far as the cloak and dagger stuff, he told Van Sant he reached back to arguably the best film ever made about American print journalism:

“I wanted the CIA stuff to feel like All the President’s Men (1976) – not the sexy CIA, but the CIA where papers are piled up on desks and there’s cigarette smoke everywhere. Bryan Cranston’s character in Argo is also a bit like the Ben Bradlee role played by Jason Robards in All the President’s Men. I thought that if what we did reminded people of movies from that era that were in the collective consciousness, then the subconscious would believe that our movie was actually taking place in the 1970s.”

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This would seem to be a perfect premise for some memorable banter at the 64th Annual Primetime Emmys. Especially if – as the experts are predicting – Breaking Bad pulls off the upset and unseats Mad Men as Best Drama Series.

Long before Bryan Cranston became known as Walter White and Jimmy Kimmel as late night’s most capable celebrity interviewer, the former coached the latter’s son in Little League baseball. As Kimmel told ABC colleague Katie Kindelan, the host will naturally be pulling for the actor to take home a fourth consecutive Best Actor, Drama:

“Bryan Cranston, a little-known fact, was my son’s Little League coach,” Kimmel said. “I would like to see him win.”

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Funny skit on last night’s Jimmy Kimmel show, going behind-the-scenes on the trailer for his non-movie Movie: The Movie. We especially like how Bryan Cranston doesn’t just love jalapenos, he loves “the wiener” too.

We promised ourselves we would stop posting these “shit such and such say” videos. But dammit Eric Stonestreet and Bryan Cranston, you won us over with your jalapenos.

With no Bryan Cranston in this year’s Best Actor Drama category, thanks to Breaking Bad‘s year-long hiatus, we were sure this was Jon Hamm‘s year to win his first Emmy. And so was pretty much everyone else who watches television. Everyone who watches television, that is, except the Emmy voters. Kyle Chandler inexplicably won for his work in Friday Night Lights.

Look, we’re sure Chandler’s work is great. But Don Draper is a cultural icon. Plus Mad Men is on hiatus for a year. It was Hamm’s time. You blew it Emmy’s!

We’re hoping Hamm will take some solace in the fact that he’s rich, attractive and successful.

Full list of winners after the jump:

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Does the world really need another Hollywood-centric talk show?

Well, when the person behind it is Tom Hanks and the length of the weekly Wednesday online-only program is limited to a deliberately condensed six minutes, the answer to the above question can perhaps be yes. The first two episodes of The 3 Minute Talk Show with Barry Sobel debuted online today at LStudio.com, the online content venture from Lexus.

Fred Willard is the 3 Minute sidekick; stand-up Barry Sobel (who coached Hanks for the film Punchline) is the host; and producer Hanks, whose Playtone is underwriting, laughs it up as Guest #1:

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The Hollywood Foreign Press Association broke their own record for donations at their annual Installation Luncheon last night.

Release in full:

Hollywood Foreign Press Association Donates Over $1.5 Million at 2010 Installation Luncheon

Financial Grants Given to 41 Film Schools and Non-Profit Organizations

BEVERLY HILLS, CA–(Marketwire – July 28, 2010) – The Hollywood Foreign Press Association celebrated their annual Installation Luncheon today at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. The star-studded luncheon presented a record $1,541,000 in financial grants to 41 film schools and non-profit organizations. The event also celebrated the election of the HFPA’s 2010-2011 officers.

Eva Longoria Parker joined returning HFPA President Philip Berk to announce grants. Acceptance remarks on behalf of the grants were made by Nicole Kidman (The Film Foundation), John Slattery (UCLA), Annette Bening (Sundance Institute), Aaron Sorkin (Higher Education Fellowships & Institutional Support Grants), Bryan Cranston (Professional Training & Mentoring Grants), Ryan Phillippe (FilmAid International), Jane Lynch and “Glee” Co-Creator Ian Brennan (Outfest), Carla Gugino (LA Conservancy, MOMA, UC Berkeley, LACMA and other Preserve The Culture & History Of Film Grants), Matthew Fox (American Cinematheque, Levantine Cultural Center, and Latin American Cinemateca), and Jim Parsons and Kaley Cuoco (Pre-Professional Training & Education Grants)

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