Q: I recently watched "Gran Torino" for the first time. Trying not to be a spoiler here, so I will try to phrase my question carefully. Toward the end when Clint Eastwood was lying on the grass, his open hand had some kind of medal. What was the medal and its significance?
A: Since that movie is more than a dozen years old, I am going to be bolder about a spoiler. At the end, Eastwood's character, Walt Kowalski, confronts a gang of hoodlums. He puts a cigarette in his mouth, says menacingly that he has a light for it and reaches into his jacket; the gang thinks he is going for a gun and shoots him dead. But he has in fact reached for a lighter (with a military insignia on it), and the gang members are arrested for killing an unarmed man.
By the way, Eastwood, now 91, has a new movie arriving Friday: "Cry Macho," which he directed and stars in.
'Talent' contestant
Q: On the "America's Got Talent" auditions, a male singer went through, I thought. His wife died in the crash with Kobe Bryant. Did he decide not to go on?
A: You are remembering Matt Mauser, husband of Christina Mauser, an assistant basketball coach at Bryant's Mamba Sports Academy. She died in the helicopter crash that also killed Bryant, Bryant's daughter Gianna and six others. Matt Mauser did not advance to the live shows.
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