DGA NAMES AWARD NOMINEES, SPURRING OSCAR TALK.

Byline: Daily News Staff and Wire Services

Ron Howard, Mel Gibson, Mike Figgis, Ang Lee and Michael Radford were nominated by the Directors Guild of America on Monday for outstanding directorial achievement in motion pictures during 1995.

Only three times since 1949 has the DGA winner not gone on to win the Academy Award for best director.

One of the exceptions was Steven Spielberg, who the DGA honored in 1986 for his work on "The Color Purple." The Oscar that year went to Sydney Pollack for "Out of Africa."

Howard, the former TV child star, is the veteran of the latest group of DGA nominees, with one previous nomination for "Cocoon." He is nominated this time for "Apollo 13."

Gibson - who won the Golden Globe on Sunday for best direction, for his work on "Braveheart" - is up for his second award for that film, in which he also starred. It is his first DGA nomination, which also is true for Lee, Figgis and Radford.

Lee's "Sense and Sensibility" was the only double winner among the film nominees for Golden Globes.

Figgis is nominated for the dark drama "Leaving Las Vegas," which stars Nicolas Cage. The veteran actor won a Golden Globe for his work in that film.

Radford is up for "The Postman (Il Postino)," about a letter carrier whose life is transformed by poetry.

The DGA winner will be announced March 2. Directors covet the award highly, since it comes from their peers.

Rachtman moves in for Kato: Riki Rachtman, co-host of KROQ-FM's (106.7) top-rated "Loveline" teen advice program, will assume Kato Kaelin's afternoon slot at Real Radio KLSX-FM (97.1), both stations confirmed Monday.

That leaves Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew Pinsky as co-hosts of the long-running "Loveline," which is now syndicated to 20 cities.

Kaelin was let out of his yearlong Real Radio contract in order to pursue film and TV roles, his agent said last week. Rachtman's first show in the 2-to-4 p.m. weekday KLSX time slot will be early next week.

There were no immediate plans to replace Rachtman on "Loveline," the program's producer said. The call-in show has consistently ranked first in its time slot with adults ages 12 to 34, and sparked a host of imitators throughout the country.

In the most recent Arbitron radio survey, KLSX's post-Howard Stern daytime ratings were flat, aside from a jump for early afternoon co-hosts Susan Olsen and Ken Ober.

Wedding bells for Eastwood?: Clint Eastwood and Dina Ruiz, a news anchorwoman for television station KSBW in Salinas, have taken out a marriage license but set no date for a wedding.

Ruiz said Friday she could "reluctantly confirm" reports that the couple has a license to marry.

Ruiz, 30, and Eastwood, 65, have been dating for about a year. They have been regularly seen in restaurants in and around Carmel, where they both live, and have traveled together to golf tournaments and to last year's Cannes Film Festival.

Photos of the couple together have surfaced occasionally in tabloid papers.

Their pending marriage was first reported in the London Daily Mail, prompting a flurry of international media calls to Ruiz and Eastwood.

The couple obtained an out-of-state marriage license in December, which is good in that state, which was undisclosed, for up to a year. Ruiz has never been married. She is from Fremont and has been at KSBW for about four years.

Eastwood has been married once before and romantically linked to several other women.

Most recently, he was involved with Frances Fisher, 43, a co-star in his 1992 Academy Award-winning film "Unforgiven."

'Dusk' brightens box office: "From Dusk Till Dawn," a vampire thriller starring Harvey Keitel, Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney, claimed the No. 1 spot at the box office on its debut weekend.

The film earned $10.2 million to edge out "Mr. Holland's Opus," starring Richard Dreyfuss as a music teacher, which took in $9.2 million in ticket sales its first weekend of wide release.

"Mr. Holland's Opus" previously had a one-week showing in Los Angeles beginning Dec. 29 to qualify for the upcoming Academy Award nominations.

"Dead Man Walking," the Death Row film starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, made an impressive showing in its fourth week. Shown on only 180 screens, it averaged $9,571 per screen, highest of the weekend's top 20.

Of the current films out, "Toy Story" is by far the top moneymaker, earning $174.2 million in ticket sales since its release nine weeks ago.

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Photo Clint Eastwood and fiancee Dina Ruiz have a license but no date. Associated Press. Box WEEKEND MOVIE MONEYMAKERS (Box Office)