I’m really going to miss those “Sweet Spot” pre- and post-Oscar chats between N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott and the late “Media Equation” columnist David Carr. Scott should continue to do them with the current bagger, Cara Buckley, who today has posted a sad tribute piece to Carr. “Whatever ‘The Sweet Spot’ was, it had a much simpler reason for being,” Scott has written. ” It guaranteed that I would have a few hours a week in the company of David Carr. For anyone who cared about journalism, there was simply no better place to be.” And I’m really, really going to miss Carr’s wonderfully hale and hearty Oscar-race reports from Times Square….pure heaven.

From the good side of the imagination of Guillermo del Toro, a gothic, seemingly Henry James-like horror tale more in the vein of The Devil’s Backbone, Chronos or Pan’s Labrynth than any of GDT’s big whopper monster franchise films…thank God. Perhaps even a touch of Robert Wise‘s The Haunting? Jessica Chastain and Tom Hiddleston as brother and sister. Mia Wasikowska plays a young innocent, recently married to Huddleston, whose last name is Cushing — obviously an homage to Peter Cushing in the Hammer films. Charlie Hunnam plays Dr. Alan McMichael, a “quiet, shy, thoughtful kind of stoic, taciturn, very learned guy who is madly in love with the female hero.” Universal is opening Crimson Peak on 10.16.

The high-water mark for this kind of character-rooted action comedy is, of course, Martin Brest‘s Midnight Run (’88). I don’t want to stick my neck out based on insufficient evidence and/or indications, but it’s probably safe to say that Anne Fletcher‘s Hot Pursuit (originally titled Don’t Mess With Texas) is not on Midnight Run‘s level. But it might be stupidly amusing. A witness needs to be protected from a murdering Mexican drug cartel and Reese Witherspoon‘s superiors figures she can handle it alone? Reese is playing Robert DeNiro, but does her character have any significant character issues that need to be recognized and solved by the end of the film? Sofia Vergara is playing Charles Grodin except she screams and rants and brays instead of doing the dry sardonic thing. If you saw Fletcher’s The Proposal you know there’s legitimate reason for concern. Written by David Feeney and John Quaintance. Opening on 5.8 via Warner Bros.

Because of his knockout direction of Open Your Eyes (Abre Los Ojos, which Cameron Crowe remade as Vanilla Sky), The Others and The Sea Inside, Alejandro Amenabar deserves everyone’s respect and attention. Ditto his latest film Regression (Weinstein Co. 8.28), a psychological thriller costarring Ethan Hawke, Emma Watson and David Thewlis. It’s obvious where the tale will take us. Amenabar directed and wrote. Grim up.

For what it’s worth I’m sorry for the Amy Schumer sturm und drang of the last couple of days. She’s a first-class talent and deserves more respect than what I gave her. I know I’m not thinking wrong but I’m probably saying it wrong from time to time. ”It’s hard to grow up…it doesn’t stop when you’re 40…a hard row to hoe.” These words were shared a few nights ago by Ethan Hawke during a Charlie Rose interview, and they got to me. So I’m sorry, truly, for not dealing my cards with a little more compassion and gentility. I wasn’t incorrect in saying that social attractiveness standards have changed over the past decade or so, largely due to the creations of one Judd Apatow and those who’ve climbed aboard his ferry boat. But I could have put it a bit more delicately and diplomatically. Then again that’s not what the HE brand is about, is it?

It’s in my Hollywood Elsewhere nature or karma to get beaten up once or twice each year by the moshpit beasts of the Twitterverse. Long is the road and hard that out of darkness leads up to light — that John Milton quote has my name on it. Sobriety (my third anniversary is a month away) has bestowed a sense of peace and even serenity at times, and it has toned down or modified the ever-present anger in the belly. Which I’m not at all sorry about as anger has been the eternal fuel of my writing career, born of an alcoholic father, a bordering-on-evil public school system and the awful repression of a whitebread, middle-class suburban upbringing that I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy. Add to this a growing notion that I’ve learned a thing or two plus my natural inclination to shoot my mouth off first and think about it later, and wham…every now and then I poke a hornet’s nest or step on a landmine and the raptors parachute down upon Maple Street.

The great N.Y. Times “Media Equation” columnist and all-around sage David Carr died Thursday at age 58. Just like that. Collapsed inside the Times newsroom, found around 9 pm and pronounced dead at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital. A Houdini punch in the stomach. Devastating. Words fail. Shocked.

Solemn, pained condolences are offered to David’s many friends and colleagues at the Times (particularly Tony Scott, with whom David taped several “Sweet Spot” video discussions) and especially his wife, Jill, their daughter Maddie and David’s twin daughters from a previous marriage, Erin and Meagan.

I became friendly with David during his run as the Times‘ Oscar-beat guy (a.k.a., “the Bagger”) from…was it ’05 to ’09? I know that Melena Ryzik took the reins in late ’09. Carr was taxed and tested by Hollywood, but he was absolutely the greatest at that gig. I loved his wit, his bon mots, his columns, his insights into the game, his Times Square video interviews. I loved his personality, his scratchy voice, his pencil neck, his laser brain. I loved that he found Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln tedious and said so during one of his “Sweet Spot” chats.

He treated me like a regular hombre colleague and took me to lunch once in Manhattan, at a haunt on West 44th. Or was it twice? We saw each other all the time at the same Oscar-season parties on both coasts, one after another after another. And he did a video interview with me on Park City’s Main Street during an ’06 or ’07 Sundance. But he was closer buds with Sasha Stone.

I only know that I worshipped the guy and that I felt duty-bound to plug the shit out of his Bagger columns during that four-year run, and I just feel awful…shattered. This is beyond any realm that I know. It’s almost like when Elvis died.

There’s talk about suspended NBC anchor Brian Williams possibly going on some kind of “apology tour” as a way of getting himself back into the good graces of the public, NBC and the News Godz. First of all he almost certainly won’t return to NBC…right? He’ll have to take a gig at CNN or someplace else. But he can’t go on the air again until he cleanses himself completely, until he atones for his sins. And the only way to do that is go back to the desert, back to the Middle East conflict where his troubles originated in ’03, and do some hard reporting and place himself in harm’s way. This kind of remedy is straight out of Joseph Conrad‘s “Lord Jim.” If you haven’t read the book then watch the 1965 Peter O’Toole movie.

I’m being perfectly serious here, serious as a heart attack. Williams has to put on the desert boots and the sunblock and go back to Iraq or maybe even Syria and get down on the ground and dodge bullets and this time ride in a helicopter that really gets attacked. Williams’ news industry colleagues would understand this. So would the public. They know from Christian mythology that the only way to purify your soul is to roam for 40 days and nights in the desert. Williams would be risking his life, of course, but people would respect that. They would get the idea.

It’s 50 degrees warmer in Los Angeles right now than the 35 degree temperature in New York City. And it’ll be 85 degrees here tomorrow also. Warm enough to buzz around on the Yamaha without a jacket. Warm enough to sunbathe, to wear nothing but a T-shirt and shorts, to prompt thoughts of turning on the air conditioning (but not really), for all the Drew McWeeny types with unattractive feet to put on their sandals.

In a back-and-forth N.Y. Times discussion piece about the Oscars, which are only ten days away as we speak, critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis avoid talking about likely winners and losers or any of that horse-race jazz. Obviously there’s nothing they can possibly add on that score. But I’ll tell you this and you can take it to the bank. The Oscar blogosphere is doing everything in its power to keep alive the notion that there’s still a neck-and-neck, up-for-grabs Best Picture competition between Boyhood and Birdman with American Sniper possibly in a position….naahh, too many lefties hate that Sniper vibe.

Why is the Oscar-blogging community still calling it a close one? Apart from the fact that it’s good for web traffic to keep the ball in the air? Because some of these guys and gals want their personal pony, Boyhood, to win despite the odds favoring Birdman. All because of the crazy BAFTAs having given their Best Picture award to Richard Linklater‘s film last weekend.

If the situation was reversed and Boyhood had so far won the SAG ensemble, PGA Daryl F. Zanuck and the top DGA award with the BAFTA guys having recently given Birdman its only triumph, some of the Oscar prognosticators would definitely be saying it’s all over but the shouting and that Boyhood pretty much has it in the bag…trust me.

I realize it’s been a weak, crazy-ass year and that it’s possible that Boyhood could take the big prize. But if that happens there will be “so great a cry across the land,” to quote a Charlton Heston line from Ben-Hur. A cry of joy, that is, from all the squares and fuddyfarts who’ve been naysaying Birdman all along, going back to that female Telluride resident who told a couple of visitors in a gondola ride up to the Chuck Jones Cinema that “whatever you do, don’t see Birdman!” Which prompted the guy sitting across from her to smile and say, “I financed Birdman.” (This story came from a Telluride-residing producer friend who got it straight from the woman.)

My heart breaks a little when I see Ethan Hawke doing a paycheck movie. Because he’s so good at “playing” the quintessential New York actor-poet-writer-soul man-confessor that he is 24/7. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Williams, River Phoenix…”It’s hard to grow up…it doesn’t stop when you’re 40…a hard row to hoe.” I’ll never forget feeling blown away by Hawke in two New York stage productions, the 2005 Hurlyburly revival at the 37 Arts complex, and the 2006 Vivian Beaumont presentation of Tom Stoppard’s Coast of Utopia trilogy. He’s on Charlie Rose tonight to plug Seymour: An Introduction, a doc he made about classical pianist Seymour Bernstein.

Nobody loves honestly adrenalized action scenes (fights, shoot-outs, chases, derring-do) more than myself. By “honestly” I mean action scenes you can at least half-believe in. Two default examples are the car chase in Ronin or subway chase sequence in The French Connection. The latest default example of the wrong way is the skydiving car sequence in the forthcoming Furious 7. The real-deal fight scenes in Steven Soderbergh‘s Haywire, for another example, were damn near perfect. Gina Carano clearly had the moves and the strength and the attitude. Many of the geekboy genre zombies didn’t approve of Soderbergh’s exercise, and yet a lot of these same guys are giving a pass to the cynically disconnected, utterly rancid Kingsman: The Secret Service (20th Century Fox, 2.13). I get what the scheme is but it’s not funny, man. Not exciting, not intriguing…a waste of my time, a ton of money down the well…why?

In his quitting announcement, Jon Stewart alluded to spending more time with his family, which includes two kids, aged 10 and almost 9. What’s one of the biggest gripes older, out-of-the-house kids have about their Type-A dads? “He was never there.” But parental love isn’t the only thing that matters in the long run; parents probably influence their kids more profoundly by example. Which is why I believe that Sarah Palin did a terrible thing to her younger kids when she quit her term as Alaska’s governor in order to make money. I’m still presuming that Stewart’s intention is to direct more films. I don’t think for a millisecond that he’d run for political office, much less President…not with his temperament. But what if he does have this in the back of his mind?

Cartoon by Emily Flake — posted on NewYorker.com website.