Puerto Rican not ‘that dude’

Los Angeles – Freddy Rodriguez has gone from undertaker to A-lister.

The 31-year-old actor, who played embalmer Frederico “Rico” Diaz on the HBO hit “Six Feet Under,” has two movies opening this month.

Rodriguez plays the best pal of a former Army ranger gone wrong in the gritty crime drama “Harsh Times.” In “Bobby,” about the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Rodriguez plays Jose, a compassionate busboy who came to the aid of the fallen senator. Both films are in theaters now.

In his next role, Rodriguez plays a tattooed bad guy in Quentin Tarantino’s “Grindhouse,” due next year.

The youngest of three sons of first-generation Puerto Rican immigrants, Rodriguez says it’s important for him to mix things up and not play into stereotypes.

“As long as there is truth, there’s going to be stereotypes in films, and actors who are going to play them. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that,” he said.

“But I always felt like my game plan was different. There just needs to be somebody who stands up and says, ‘I’m going to take a stand and not be that dude.”‘

One more war movie for filmmaker Burns

Walpole, N.H. – Ken Burns thought he was done with war movies after his series “The Civil War.” But he says two troubling statistics fueled the creation of “The War,” a 14-hour documentary about World War II.

“It was really a couple of statistics that got me,” Burns said. “One was that we’re losing a thousand (World War II) veterans a day, and the other is that our children just don’t know what’s going on.”

Burns said he was astonished at the number of high school graduates who believe the United States fought with the Germans in World War II.

“That to me was terrifying, just stupefying,” said Burns, who will show the first two-hour installment of “The War” to Dartmouth College on Dec. 1.

The series follows four American towns – Waterbury, Conn., Mobile, Ala., Sacramento, Calif., and Luverne, Minn. – through the war years, focusing both on the soldiers from the towns sent to war and the families and friends left behind.

“The point of view is from ordinary people, who do the fighting and who do the dying in all wars,” Burns said.

Tenor promotes project ‘Hear the World’

New York – Placido Domingo’s latest project is music to the ears of the hearing-impaired.

The tenor, paired with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, is speaking for a global effort called “Hear the World” to raise awareness about hearing loss and to offer the latest technology to those in need – especially in developing countries.

Hearing aids will be delivered to poor children in the Guatemalan jungle; hearing-challenged youths in Pretoria, South Africa, will be taught how to function alongside classmates who hear; and youngsters in remote parts of the island of Fiji will be tested for the first time.

“Music is my emotional need. I therefore feel sad for anyone who cannot hear music,” Domingo told The Associated Press. “Science has made incredible strides in helping people with hearing trouble, but the majority of the world’s population is still unaware of this fact.”

Domingo was expected at a Carnegie Hall news conference on Tuesday to announce the new, nonprofit Hear the World Foundation, based in Switzerland. The effort is sponsored by the Swiss company Phonak.