Jeep fun for young filmmaker

Twenty-year-old Zachary Miller is a mini-movie mogul in the making. The second-year media studies major at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., just won a 2007 Jeep Compass in a contest where entrants made a commercial that was then voted on by viewers online. Miller's piece, which runs over a minute, features several guys with a cardboard cut-out of the new SUV running through rugged terrain acting out its features. (One guy has a water bottle, another a portable stereo, and another has a big backpack .) But don't expect the Newton South grad to be tooling around in his new ride. Miller plans to sell the Jeep to pay his actors and crew -- including Massachusetts native Boa Simon, a Chapman University student who was the director of photography . With the rest of his winnings, Miller says he'll fund his next project. He got into the Jeep contest after winning a $7,500 second prize from Paramount Studios for a 15-page screenplay about HIV and AIDs and the teen community ; that award partly funded the Jeep spot. But he's savoring his win right now. "I thought, how can I show a Jeep I don't have access to, and it just evolved," said Miller, who worked on the movie "Normal Adolescent Behavior ," which was shot over the summer in Rhode Island and stars Amber Tamblyn . "I think it turned out all right. Everything came together."

Wankum weathers move to Ch. 5

After 13 years as chief meteorologist at the now shuttered WLVI-TV, Mike Wankum will join the WCVB-TV ( Channel 5 ) weekend newscasts. David Epstein, who held the weekend weather post for 14 years, requested to scale back his role to pursue other interests including teaching, writing, and gardening. Yes, gardening. Epstein, who will still fill in at Channel 5, will speak on meteorology and gardening. . . . NECN reporter Ally Donnelly is now its health reporter, replacing Anya Huneke, who married a Vermont businessman last year and will now work from the station's Burlington, Vt., bureau. Josh McElveen, most recently NECN's Vermont reporter, will work out of the station's Newton headquarters as a reporter and Sunday anchor. Also, Jack Gray, producer of NECN's "The Chet Curtis Report" and "Wired With Jim Braude and Leslie Gaydos," leaves today to be an associate producer at CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360."

Doll on the town

After the Dresden Dolls finished their run of "The Onion Cellar" at the American Repertory Theatre Saturday night, Amanda Palmer, sans Brian Viglione, headed over to Conundrum restaurant in Harvard Square. . . . Arriving at the Golden Globes ceremony last night, Mark Wahlberg, nominated as best supporting actor in a drama for "The Departed," said that he jumped at the chance to do a movie with Martin Scorsese and that he was equally glad to work on the Boston-set film because it brought Wahlberg back to his "neck of the woods." Of the film, which shot in 2005 in Boston and New York, Wahlberg, who plays a cop, said: "I have a lot of experience with the police in Boston. Not usually on the right side of the law."

Dutton, Andrews join Wilson tribute

Actor Charles S. Dutton, who got two Tony Award nominations for appearing in August Wilson pieces, and Dwight Andrews, who was musical director for several of Wilson's Broadway productions, were joined by NPR entertainment critic Elvis Mitchell at the Kennedy Library yesterday for a tribute to the late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. . . . DJ AM was back in town over the weekend spinning at Gypsy Bar. Nicole Richie's former sweetie stayed for a couple of hours. we're told, rather than abbreviated shift he pulled during a Boston visit last fall.

After playing the Roxy on Saturday night, former Red Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo was in Concord, N.H., for a concert Sunday night to benefit the Thomas Edward Fogarty Memorial Fund, a scholarship established in the name of a 9-year-old New Hampshire boy who was killed in a December accident. . . . Perhaps still smarting from Ohio State's loss to Florida in the BCS championship game five days earlier, QB Troy Smith wasn't exactly a guarantee to show at the 40th annual Walter Camp Football Foundation All-America dinner. The Heisman Trophy winner made it to Saturday night's event in New Haven to pick up his player of the year award, but only after a private jet took him to the black-tie affair. Other award winners included former Super Bowl-winning coach Dick Vermeil, Rutgers football coach Greg Schiano, former Detroit Lions offensive lineman Mike Utley, who was paralyzed during a game in 1991, and The Globe's Al Young, a copy editor who was recognized for his previous work as a sports reporter.

Names can be reached at names@globe.com or at 617-929-8253.