Clint Eastwood, O.J. make AFI’s year-end list

Clint Eastwood was proclaimed a national treasure Wednesday by the American Film Institute.

The tribute came as the institute released its annual list of the most significant events of the year in “the world of the moving image.” It listed eight of them for 2006, including praising Eastwood for directing two films that presented opposing points of view of the same event, “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters From Iwo Jima.”

Some other events on AFI’s list included the emergence of YouTube as “the awakening of an age when the audience is both producer and distributor”; the passing of filmmaker Robert Altman; the demise of the VHS cassette; the power of the documentary “to bring us together as a global audience -- and, with hope, to effect change”; and Fox’s decision to cancel an interview with O.J. Simpson, which demonstrated “that a moral standard still exists for television.”