Ivan Reitman‘s original Ghostbusters came out 35 years ago. I can still feel the hate. Some of Bill Murray‘s quips were amusing, but I despised the third act with a passion — that idiotic demon dog, Sigourney Weaver‘s possession by “Gozer” and especially that huge marshmallow monster clomping around Manhattan’s Upper West Side. GTFO.

A woman I was seeing at the time, a marketing exec, found it delightful. I think on some level this may have contributed to our eventual breakup. I remember taking a walk one afternoon and realizing that her Ghostbusters worship was a bridge too far.

Jason Reitman‘s Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Sony, 7.10 20) is obviously not an urban thing, and looks heartland picturesque a la Andrew Wyeth.

Boilerplate: “After being evicted from their home, two teens (Mckenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard) and their single mom (Carrie Coon) move to Summerville, Oklahoma after inheriting property from their late grandfather. Paul Rudd is a local egghead professor who gradually hooks up with Coon. When the town experiences a series of unexplained earthquakes, the kids discover their family’s link to the original Ghostbusters”, blah blah.

Quickie cameos from original cast members Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and Annie Potts.

Reitman co-wrote the screenplay with Gil Kenan (Monster House, City of Ember).

There’s one interesting thing about Jay Roach‘s Bombshell (Lionsgate, 12.13) that I haven’t mentioned, and it’s a pretty good trick when you think about it.

There’s no disputing that Fox News has been a malevolent cultural force in this country, generating rancid rightwing spin for over 20 years now, and that the late Roger Ailes did everything possible to trash President Barack Obama during his two terms and block every initiative of his center-moderate agenda. Worst of all, Fox News did more than any other entity to inflame rural bumblefucks and pump them up for the candidacy of Donald Trump.

Look where we are now, thanks to the Foxies — the country convulsing over the criminal reign of the most destructive sociopath president in U.S. history.

Megyn Kelly, Gretchen Carlson.

What Bombshell manages to do, then, is present lead protagonists Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) and Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) — a pair of charismatic on-camera professionals who contributed to the anti-Obama poisoning of the political waters and blew toxic rightwing smoke on a daily, dedicated basis…what Bombshell manages to do is make you forget that these women are no one’s idea of noble or heroic or even fair-minded as far as disseminating the news was concerned.

Any viewer would and should feel empathy for Kelly and Carlson’s situation with the sexually predatory Ailes, but it’s hard not to feel conflicted at the same time. Because Kelly and Carlson served an agenda that pushed racist, highly questionable, xenophobic propaganda.

Slate‘s Dana Stevens: “I can think of more important whistleblower stories than Megyn Kelly’s. A person with a platform that size who uses her on-air time to argue vehemently that Santa Claus is white just isn’t that exciting to root for. No one deserves to be harassed at work, and the fact these women banded together to bring down an enormously powerful and malignant man is admirable. That doesn’t mean I want to spend two hours gazing at Megyn’s seemingly poreless face as she wrestles with whether and how to tell her truth, while continuing to play a highly public part in a media ecosystem based on lies.”

Progressive Hollywood and “gender equity watchdogs” are raging over four top-ranked female directors — Little Women‘s Greta Gerwig, The Farewell‘s Lulu Wang, Hustler‘s Lorene Scafaria and It’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood‘s Marielle Heller — not being nominated for any significant Golden Globe awards. Not for Best Director, I mean, and not for Best Picture in either dramatic or comedy/drama categories.

If you leave aside notions of quotas and gender equity, the truth is that three of these films — Gerwig’s, Heller’s and Scafaria’s — could be fairly described (and are generally regarded) as somewhere between agreeable, good and better-than-pretty-good.

Neighborhood has a fine supporting performance (Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers) and a great third act scene (Rogers visits Lloyd’s dying dad) but the rest is just…well, good enough. Gerwig’s Little Women is very well liked in certain quarters, I realize, but it has struck more than a few as somewhat flawed and occasionally irksome. Scarfaria’s Hustlers is a fine, feisty, fact-based thing about Scores dancer scamming Wall Street wolves, but it’s an A-minus at best and realistically more of a B-plus. Be honest.

I believe that Wang’s The Farewell is a fresher, stronger, more emotionally gripping film than The Two Popes, so if you’re talking about switching out one of the five nominees for Best Motion Picture, Drama, there’s your trade — The Farewell goes in and The Two Popes drops out.

But as God is my witness, there’s no way in hell that one could make a reasonable argument for Little Women, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood or Hustlers being more transporting or historic or eye-opening than Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman, Sam Mendes‘ 1917 or Todd Phillips‘ Joker.

You could make an argument that Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story is a candidate for possible substitution, but tell me how the arguments would go that Little Women, It’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood or Hustlers are fuller meals or more humanist or more grounded in human vulnerability. I’d really like to hear those arguments.

HFPA president Lorenzo Soria to Variety: “What happened is that we don’t vote by gender. We vote by film and accomplishment.”

Globes exec producer Barry Adelman: “Every year, somebody gets left out. There’s so much talent going on, maybe we need to expand the categories so more people can be part of it. I also think that if you look at some of the other things…a lot of the big television shows are created by women, so I think across the board there is a good representation. Maybe in a couple of those categories, we wish it could be a little different. Who knows what will happen next year?”

These deepfakes struck me as better than decent. Imagine where this can go as the inevitable refinements become common. The creator is iFake, a person (presumably a youngish male) looking for Patreon support. Excerpt: “Deepfaking takes a lot of time and resources to pull off and so I’ve created this page for fellow DeepFake enthusiasts who might be interested in supporting me and my work.”

Atlanta Journal Constitution editor Kevin Riley is concerned about the paper’s reputation having been “severely tarnished” ** by Clint Eastwood‘s Richard Jewell (Warner Bros., 1.13). Hence the AJC has hired Los Angeles pitbull attorney Marty Singer to convey objections to Warner Bros., Eastwood and others involved in the film’s production.

The AJC and Singer are “asking” that the producers “issue a statement acknowledging that some events were imagined for dramatic purposes, and that artistic license and dramatization were used in the film’s portrayal of events and characters,” as Riley has explained in a 12.9 email. “In addition, we’re requesting a disclaimer to that effect be added to the film’s credits.”

The AJC beef is basically about an implication in the film that AJC reporter Kathy Scruggs, portrayed in Richard Jewell by Olivia Wilde, used sexual favors to obtain information from law enforcement sources.

Riley’s email includes an attached a copy of Singer’s letter to WB, Eastwood, screenwriter Billy Ray, etc.

Riley: “We welcome the accurate telling of Richard Jewell’s story. In fact, the AJC worked closely with the Atlanta History Center on a recent program that focused on a definitive new book on the subject by a former Wall Street Journal reporter and the former U.S. Attorney who handled the case. We recognize that the AJC, and the news media in general, are not above criticism.

“We can’t be silent when a film that purports to take the media to task engages in the very behavior that it criticizes. I feel compelled to stand up for the dedicated journalists who work for the AJC — otherwise a deceased reporter will be maligned in movie theaters across the country and around the world. This is especially concerning at a time when the nation’s leading news organizations are being attacked.”

If this morning’s Golden Globes nominations said any one thing, it’s the fact that Netflix has kicked everyone’s ass with 17 nominations (more than double the second-place finisher). Another thing is that we’re all living in a streaming, streaming, streaming world these days, and that images projected out of a theatre booth and onto a big screen in front of popcorn eaters is no longer the primary thing…no longer the dominant way in which the art and transportation of cinema is dispensed and contemplated.

It breaks my heart to say it (although we’ve all felt this building over the last decade or so), but theatres are no longer the churches of our culture, the places where it all shoots out and caresses and coagulates and massages and comes together — living rooms are. For megaplexes are essentially zoos, gladiator arenas, amusement parks, video arcades, comic-book mythology salons. The communal experience survives to some extent, yes, but screening rooms and film festivals are the only decent way to go, certainly for anyone seeking a pure and unsullied experience.

Living rooms diminish the current between filmmakers and audiences, mainly by diluting the concentration levels. Which fits right in with the generally fragmented ADD thing — food breaks, bathroom breaks, walk-the-dog breaks, take-out-the-garbage breaks and deciding to watch the 209-minute Irishman in two or three installments rather than the whole thing in one setting. Not to mention texting and surfing while watching Robert DeNiro pop some guy.

Three Netflix features landed Golden Globes nominations in the Best Motion Picture, Drama category — Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, Fernando Meirelles‘ The Two Popes — and Craig Brewer, Eddie Murphy, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski‘s Dolemite is My Name was nominated in the comedy or musical category.

Many of us were presuming that Netflix would probably do better than anyone else with the GG noms, but I didn’t think Marriage Story would snag more noms than The Irishman. But it did, six to five.

And yet MS‘s Noah Baumbach didn’t land a Best Director nomination, and neither did partner Greta Gerwig for Little Women.

I think it’s vaguely shitty (or vaguely clueless) of the Globe guys to blank Uncut Gems‘ Adam Sandler and The Irishman’s Robert De Niro in the Best Actor, Drama category, but that’s what they did.

The Irishman‘s Al Pacino and Joe Pesci are eyeball to eyeball in the Best Supporting Actor category (and also threatening to cancel each other out), but as Pesci isn’t a campaigner and Al is a brilliant one, we probably know where this is heading.

Ricky Gervais will host the Golden Globes ceremony from the usual Beverly Hilton location on 1.5.20.