The decision of the Florida Film Critics to give Peter O’Toole a kiss-of-death, gold-watch, career achievement award is unfortunately symptomatic of the thinking out there, which is that O’Toole can’t win against Will Smith and/or Leonardo DiCaprio in the Best Actor competish, but let’s gather round and show our respect, etc. O’Toole’s decision to wait until mid-January to show up in Los Angeles probably sealed his fate. I wish it were otherwise and I’m genuinely sorry, realizing he’s been coping with forces beyond his control. All hail Becket!

Variety‘s Ian Mohr on the box-office implosion of Apocalypto following a surprisingly strong opening weekend. I love how Mohr sidesteps the matter of Apocalypto‘s Oscar-nom prospects (saying”it remains to be seen,” blah blah) when Mohr and everyone else knows full well that no one outside of the Latino community truly enjoyed Apocalypto, and that while some Academy mainstreamers may feel respect for Mel Gibson‘s visceral filmmaking chops, they’re strongly inclined to blow it off anyway (and we all know why), not to mention Gibson’s “sugartits” problem with women voters.

It’s good to read that Manhattan is marginally less dead than Los Angeles this week, since HE is heading back there this morning and staying through January 4th or 5th. Seeing the final version of Factory Girl, visiting the Bob Dylan exhibit at the Morgan Library, probably paying to see Rocky Balboa, etc.

With the news of the passing of former president Gerald Ford — in office for 896 days from 8.9.74 to 1.20.77 — my mind rewound the following clips/impressions: (a) Chevy Chase‘s falling-down routines on Saturday Night Live, (b) the dutiful apparatchik who pardoned Richard Nixon, (c) the way he looked totally wrecked and red-eyed the morning he conceded the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter; (d) Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme‘s apparent intent to shoot Ford in front of San Francisco’s Fairmount Hotel in ’75, (e) that N.Y. Daily News headline: “Ford to City: Drop Dead“, (f) Saying “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe” during a ’76 election debate with Carter; (g) his fascinating defense of the Warren Commission’s “magic bullet” theory and particularly his explanation that JFK fell back and to the left after being shot the second time because of “a neuromuscular reaction“; and (h) saying “I am a Ford, not a Lincoln.” Correction: It was Sara Jane Moore who tried shoot Ford (on 9.22.75) outside the St. Francis (not the Fairmount) hotel in San Francisco; “Squeaky” tried to shoot Ford in Sacramento 17 days earlier, on 9.5.75.