During the promotion of The Nice Guys (’16) Ryan Gosling called Abbott & Costello‘s Hold That Ghost (Universal, 8.6.41) “kind of a masterpiece.” I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s an agreeably silly deal — sloppy but lively, fast-paced, everyone’s on mescaline including the tough-guy gangsters**. On top of which I’m a fool for handsomely mastered 1080p versions of silvery black-and-white films of the ’40s. Which is why I’d love to get my hands on a Hold That Ghost Bluray.

The problem is that it isn’t selling or renting as an individual unit. You have to shell out $105 for an Abbott & Costello Complete Universal Collection box set. I wish the Universal home video guys would ease up and issue a stand-alone Bluray. That’s all I have to say.

Herewith a brief encounter with the legendary David Ogilvy, the Godfather of all Mad Men and the poet laureate of ’50s and ’60s smooth-as-silk advertising.

It happened in June of ’76 at Chateau de Touffou, a medieval French mansion Ogilvy had purchased in 1966. He had once been married to Anne Cabot, the sister of the mother of my girlfriend at the time, Sophie Black (a descendant of the Cabot family, later to become a fairly renowned poet), and so during our European travels Sophie arranged a drop-by.

Ogilvy was about 65 at the time. He was a wise, learned, blue-blood type with a capacity for snooty bon mots (he described his castle as being located “in the South Dakota of France“) but was quite friendly and gentle and polite. We got along pretty well. I told him my father had been a J. Walter Thompson exec back in the ’60s, and then a Direct Marketing pioneer in the ’70s.

Ogilvy spotted right away that my French was all but non-existent (if it had existed it would have been called moronic), and considerately told his wife Herta that we should only speak English.

David and Herta were as kind and gracious as they come. A delightful interlude. Ogilvy died in July 1999.

Chateau Touffou’s garden had the most luscious, apple-sized strawberries I’ve ever seen or tasted in my life. There was also an underground jail (a leftover from the middle ages) with tiny little cells…horrid.

The strawberries grown at Chateau Touffou were huge, almost apple-sized. If I had to classify their shape, I would say they were long-wedge

Friendo #1: “Kudos to the N.Y. Times for publishing Michael Powell‘s story about the Smith College kerfuffle surrounding Oumou Kanoute (“Inside a Battle Over Race, Class and Power at Smith College“). How this got published is a miracle. We need more journalists with brass balls to keep writing about this. PBS should do a Frontline on it, or will they be too afraid? This story reads straight out of Salem in 1692.”

HE to Friendo #1: “Smith College is, plainly and simply, nothing less than an insane asylum. Because the consciousness of the student body is clearly over the waterfall. As in stark raving mad. Oumou Kanoute is a fanatical paranoid — in a fair and just world she would face consequences.”

Friendo #2: “It’s the new cult consciousness, and it’s on college campuses everywhere. It’s about race and gender and fear and paranoia. ‘[Fill in the blank] is attacking me and/or making me feel unsafe!” It’s an absolute mental illness, and it’s spreading like wildfire.”

Two nights ago Woody Allen defender Robert Weide called out the Allen v. Farrow team — producer Amy Herdy, co-directors Amy Zeiring and Kirby Dick, HBO Docs — for the Episode #4 challenge to Moses Farrow‘s claim that there was no functioning electric train set in the attic crawl space where the alleged offense took place.

Weide called the doc’s presentation of a schematic drawing of the attic, allegedly supplied by Connecticut police, a “failed hat trick”. It suggested two possibilities, he said — Herdy, Zeiring and Dick are “really half-assed investigators” or “are inherently manipulative and dishonest.” He asked if they wanted him to reveal what he knows from court transcripts or if they’d prefer to do it themselves — “your move.”

After which, he said, “we can move onto all the other falsehoods you’ve jammed into your 4-hour hatchet job, [which] I can disprove without breaking a sweat.”

So when will someone (Weide, Allen v. Farrow producers) expand upon this? It’s been almost 48 hours. Hubba-hubba.

Friendo: “How long is Weide going to tease us about this? His implication is serious — that Herdy, Zeiring and Dick basically lied about the train set. If proven, this would blow a fatal hole in their reputation as filmmakers. I assume he’ll explain soon.”

If it came down to some psychopathic hooligan aiming a pistol at me and saying “let go of your dogs or you die,” I’d probably let go. The dogs would obviously be traumatized but they’d probably live and could possibly be recovered. Dog loyalty goes only so far in this corner. The soprano-voiced Ryan Fischer, an employee of Lady Gaga‘s, was walking three (or was it two?) of the singer’s French bulldogs. It happened last night on Sierra Bonita Ave. around 9:40 p.m. Lady Gaga, currently in Italy, is reportedly offering $500K for the dogs’ return.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg and David Rooney have posted a “should win” / “will win” piece about the Golden Globe awards, which will happen on Sunday, 2.28. Rooney offers the shoulds; Feinberg projects the wills.

Herewith are HE’s reactions with a particular focus on two questions in the matter of Best Picture, Drama. One, does the viewer want to “live” in the world of a given film or performance? (A major consideration that journos almost never ponder.) And two, what does the film in question say about life on the planet earth right now that strikes a resonant chord?

Best Picture, Drama

SHOULD WIN: Rooney says Nomadland
WILL WIN: Feinberg says either The Trial of the Chicago 7 or Nomadland.
HE SEZ: Nomadland is a sad, sporadically spirited mood poem about “houseless”-ness — about good people who’ve suffered blows and lost the battle but continue to push on like the Joad family. The cultural/political winds obviously point to a Nomadland win. We all feel the heart current, but who wants to “live” in this world of roaming 60-plus vagabonds who exchange stories, sit around campfires and take care of business in buckets? Answer: Nobody. Which is why The Trial of the Chicago 7 might win because hanging, strategizing and arguing with the likes of Hoffman, Kuntsler, Hayden, Rubin, et. al. is a more vital way to be.

What does Nomadland say about our current communal state that’s real and truthful? Thank God for strength, reaching out and resourcefulness in this most brutal difficult soul-draining of realms, but who rejects a good deal (safety, security, better hygiene, a bathroom) when it’s offered? What does Chicago 7 say? We may have our strategic differences and combative personalities, but there’s the spit and spunk of it all. Fight on!

Best Picture, Musical or Comedy

SHOULD WIN: Rooney says Hamilton (“In a weak category this year, it has to be Thomas Kail‘s performance-capture recording of the Broadway juggernaut that bottles the thrill of live theater with rare skill,” he says.)
WILL WIN: Feinberg says Borat 2.
HE SEZ: Hamilton is a play that was captured by cameras…period. Borat 2, a film that ridicules red-hat bumblefucks and Rudy Giuliani, will win. What does Borat 2 say about our current communal state that’s real and truthful? Answer: There are assholes aplenty out there (including the medieval sexists of Eastern Europe), and it’s fun to laugh at them. No harm, no foul.

Who wants to “live” in the world of Borat 2? Answer: No choice — we are living in that world.

Best Actress, Drama

SHOULD WIN: Rooney says Carey Mulligan.
WILL WIN: Feinberg says Mulligan. “Frances McDormand and Viola Davis won recently,” Scott reasons, “whereas Mulligan never has.”
HE SEZ: Mulligan. She’s good in Promising Young Woman in a dry, brittle, controlled fury way. She was at least five if not ten times more affecting in Sarah Gavron‘s Suffragette, Thomas Vinterberg‘s Far From The Madding Crowd, Lone Scherfig‘s An Education, in 2015’s Skylight on Broadway, in BBC/Netflix’s Collateral, etc. And she’s very good in The Dig. But sometimes you win for the performance that you win for — just happens that way. Mulligan won’t thank Variety‘s Dennis Harvey, of course, but that whole kerfuffle probably did a lot to cement her winer’s circle status.

Who wants to “live” in the world of Promising Young Woman? Answer: Not this horse. Young men are pigs, but I’d prefer to live in a realm in which guys who resemble Bo Burnham‘s pediatrician stay the way they were written for the first seven-eights of the film, and don’t pull a last-minute switcheroo to satisfying some arbitrary “we need a twist” requirement.

Best Actor, Drama

SHOULD WIN: Rooney says Ma Rainey‘s Chadwick Boseman.
WILL WIN: Feinberg says Anthony Hopkins (“Only Hopkins’ The Father is up for best pic, plus the HFPA adores him…eight noms going back 42 years!.
HE SEZ: Boseman might win, but a Best Actor trophy should be about more than expressing a great collective sadness about a young actor’s untimely death. The finest performance of Boseman’s career was James Brown in Get On Up. Plus “everyone knows that Boseman’s ‘Levee’ doesn’t blow the doors off the hinges — not really. It’s a poignant performance (especially during the scene in which Levee recalls a sad episode involving his mother). I understand the sentiment behind giving Boseman a special tribute, of course, but giving him a posthumous GG award for a performance that is no more than approvable feels like a disproportionate thing to do.” — posted on 2.10.21. The GG trophy should go to either Hopkins or Sound of Metal‘s Riz Ahmed.

Who wants to “live” in the world of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Father and Sound of Metal? Answer: Ixnay on the first two, but the world of Sound of Metal is vast and cosmic and full of wonder.

Best Actress, Musical or Comedy

SHOULD WIN: Rooney says French Exit‘s Michelle Pfeiffer (“Her withering hauteur and spent surrender elevate every moment”).
WILL WIN: Feinberg says Borat 2‘s Maria Bakalova.
HE SEZ: Rooney is right — the award should go to Pfeiffer. Critics have been hailing Bakalova’s praises all along, and she’s totally fine in the film but the fact that she’s won 19 Best Supporting Actress prizes around the country is, like…what? Strictly a falling-dominoes dynamic.

Best Actor, Musical or Comedy

SHOULD WIN: Rooney says Borat 2‘s Sacha Baron Cohen. (“Andy Samberg‘s role in Palm Springs doesn’t extend his range, Lin-Manuel Miranda isn’t Hamilton‘s strongest player, and James Corden is abrasive in The Prom.”)
WILL WIN: Feinberg says Cohen
HE SEZ: Cohen.

Last weekend I re-watched the extended cut of Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy‘s The Counselor (20th Century Fox, 10.25.13). It runs around 138 minutes, or 20 minutes longer than the theatrical cut.

I hadn’t watched the long cut in roughly seven years, and I’m telling you it’s aged beautifully — it’s a ruthlessly brilliant, ice-cold film about irrevocable fate and death by way of the Mexican drug cartels. And yet The Counselor‘s throat was cut by most critics, earning a meager 33% and 48% on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, respectively.

The Counselor Bluray includes an excellent “making of” documentary that lasts around…oh, 45 minutes or so. For whatever reason it’s not on YouTube.

Initial HE review: “I was so impressed by the profound assurance, philosophical authority and thematic clarity in Ridley Scott‘s The Counselor (20th Century Fox, 10.25), which I saw last night, that I pleaded with Fox publicists to let me say a few things despite the Thursday afternoon review embargo. They gave me permission to do so.

“I was also very taken by the visually seductive stylings (the dp is Dariusz Wolski with editing by Pietro Scalia) and what I would call a bold but almost reckless indifference to conventional audience expectations for a film of this type.

“I asked to speak to Counselor producers Nick Wechsler and Steve Schwartz, and they called about an hour later and we talked for…oh, 15 minutes or so.”

“Ignore Counselor Naysaysers,” posted on 10.24.13:

“Take no notice of The Counselor‘s 34% Rotten Tomatoes rating. It simply means that a lot of reviewers found the movie unlikable or unpleasant. Or they found it too scary to handle — they had to push it away in order to go on living their lives. But shame on those reviewers who are calling it a bad or poorly made film, or that ‘everyone’s speech is awash in gaudy psycho-blather and Yoda-like observations,’ which is blind bullshit. Or that ‘you can’t believe a word of it.”

“Yes, you can. You can believe every word. You simply have to understand and accept that The Counselor is expressing a cold and clear-eyed view of the Mexican cartel drug business with a very blunt and eloquent voice. It is an undistilled visit to McCarthyland, which is to say the bleak moralistic realm of novelist and (in this instance) first-time screenwriter Cormac McCarthy. You can say “wow, that’s one cold and cruel place” and that’s fine, but you cannot call The Counselor a bad or negligible or sloppily made film. I hereby declare these viewpoints anathema and excommunicate.

“Consider instead the praise from Toronto Star critic Peter Howell and St. Louis Post-Dispatch critic Joe Williams. Or the two hosannahs I posted yesterday. Or consider the words of N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis, who calls Ridley Scott‘s film “terrifying” and “implacable.”

Right now my movie streaming apps include Amazon, Netflix, HBO Max, Criterion, Apple, Vudu, YouTube and Hulu. No Disney or Google Play, and I’m not certain that Paramount (debuting on March 4) is all that necessary.

Charlton Heston‘s career peaked during the ’50s and ’60s — The Greatest Show on Earth, The Ten Commandments, Touch of Evil, The Big Country, Ben-Hur, El Cid, Planet of the Apes. In the ’70s he mostly became a prisoner of sci-fi and disaster films — The Omega Man, , Skyjacked, Soylent Green, Earthquake (1974), Airport 1975, Midway, Two-Minute Warning, Gray Lady Down. It got so I was feeling sorry for the poor guy.

If you ask anyone his performance as the devious and scheming Cardinal Richelieu in Richard Lester‘s The Three Musketeers (’74) and in the Four Musketeers follow-up was easily bis best ’70s performance, and arguably the last really first-rate role that he lucked into. “I did the picture because of Dick Lester,” Heston told the N.Y. Times‘ Mark Shivas.

I got my first vaccine stab (Pfizer-BioNTech) last night around 7 pm. My follow-up is scheduled for Tuesday, 3.16. No after-effects at all. Do I feel safer? I guess but I’ve never felt vulnerable. I happen to have one of those constitutions that repels viruses, or quickly rejects them if they find their way in.

I know, I know….that’s a bad thing to mention. I should just go along with the crowd and say “I’m as vulnerable as the next guy and I’m so glad for my first stab!” But I’m not as vulnerable as the next guy.

It was exactly one year ago today that Donald Trump assured U.S. citizens that everything was jake and under control with the coronavirus. We all started wearing masks by sometime in early March. Things are going to be better by June or July. We might be out of the woods by next fall, but a voice in my chest says we won’t be fully done with this plague until spring of ’22.

Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin‘s Tina (HBORollin’ On Teh Rive Max, 3.27), a life of Tina Turner doc, will presumably explore the occasionally abusive relationship she endured with longtime romantic and musical partner Ike Turner (1931-2007), who struggled with cocaine-exacerbated issues in the ’70s. That’s a polite way of saying he was an abusive dick.

Given today’s climate, the doc will presumably come down hard on Ike — how could it not? But will it show Tina’s microphone fellatio routine that she performed during 1969 Rolling Stones tour? Not cool by #MeToo standards,

Tina, now 81, became a Swiss citizen in 2013. She lives in Château Algonquin, built on the edge of Lake Zurich in Küsnacht, Switzerland.

…that SpiderMan No Home was an oblique tribute to that Chinatown moment when Jack Nicholson pushes his way into Evelyn Mulwray‘s large mansion and notices the Asian-American maid laying drapes over the furniture. He asks what’s going on and the maid says, “Mrs. Mulwray no home.”

Then I thought, “Wait, a movie today can’t have an Asian person speaking imperfect English…the producers would be attacked for racism.” Then I realized the actual title is SpiderMan No Way Home. Oh. That’s a different kettle. Now I hate it. Actually I’ve hated the SpiderMan series for a long time now. Since before I was born.

This, we can confirm. #SpiderManNoWayHome only in movie theaters this Christmas. pic.twitter.com/kCeI8Vgkdm

— Spider-Man: No Way Home (@SpiderManMovie) February 24, 2021

From “Why Spider-Man Will Always Suck Eggs“, posted on 4.19.07:

“I love a good summer popcorn movie as much as the next person. I really do. Except we all know that most of them have been so CG-dependent and drearily formulaic and unimaginative and badly written that “summer popcorn movie” has become a euphemism for ‘big-studio CG piece of shit that makes you feel like a sucker when it’s over.’

“For me, there is almost no difference between watching a Spider-Man movie and reading a year-end profit-and-loss statement from the Sony corporation. They are about connecting the dots in order to connect the dots so the people who greenlighted and made them can make as much money as possible. The problem with that approach is, I don’t care about the bonus compensation deals.

“Spider-Man movies are about sitting through two hours of passable eye candy without any kind of human-scale believability or Raimi-esque personality or anything really ‘real.’ I tried watching the first one on DVD a while back and I couldn’t do it — it was awful.”