Thanks to the ongoing marvel that is Netflix Streaming, many previously hard to find and slept-on films are finding their way to our televisions, in fairly stunning quality. Recently I stumbled upon a movie I’d been seeking out for years and had basically given up on, Robert Culp’s 1972 detective film Hickey & Boggs.

Hickey & Boggs was one of a spate of revisionist private-eye movies that proliferated in the late 60s and early 70s, along with better known examples like The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973), Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975) and Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974). For years I only knew of it because it was always referenced in books about 1970s cinema, genre revisionism or neo noir – I’d never seen it on TV or in a video store. To me, Hickey & Boggs only existed as still photographs of director-star Culp and his co-star, Bill Cosby, holding .44 Magnums, so I was more than happy to find it available for instant streaming.

Despite the presence of Culp and his I Spy co-star Cosby, the film, written by then-rising star Walter Hill, is a downbeat affair. Al Hickey (the Cos) and Frank Boggs (Culp) are partners in a two man Los Angeles private eye firm, ex-cops and divorced losers. Boggs is an alcoholic whose stripper ex-wife likes to taunt him from the stage (“Eat your heart out.”) and Hickey is desperate to repair his family and be a father and husband again, but his ex (Rosalind Cash) is having none of it.  Hickey and Boggs are broke, financially and spiritually.

The two are hired by a creepy, possibly pedophile lawyer named Rice to find a missing girl, which brings them deep into a web of gangsters, thugs, black militants and stolen mob money.  The closer they get to cracking the case, the deeper the hole they dig themselves. The bad guys want them dead and the cops want them out of the way or in jail. What’s worse is that they can’t even figure out why they’re putting themselves through all of this. “It’s not about anything,” Hickey repeatedly complains. And while they carry the same enormous, deadly pistol as Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan, they don’t share his deadly accuracy. “I gotta get a bigger gun,” Boggs complains, “I can’t hit anything anymore.”

Hickey & Boggs was the only film Culp directed, and it’s a pity he didn’t go behind the camera again. The film is well-paced, well-acted and Culp has a good sense of the city and the contrast between the dark places the characters go and the bright, sun-bleached, wide open expanses the action often plays itself out in (the L.A. Coliseum, the beach, a collapsing hillside mansion). Hill’s script was supposedly written for Jason Robards and Strother Martin, which makes one wonder if the original intent was to get Culp’s good friend Sam Peckinpah to direct. No matter, Culp makes the most of the material and gives a very generous performance, allowing for really nice work from the rest of the cast (including a very young James Woods and Michael Moriarty) to shine.

The biggest impression is made by Cosby. Cosby gets a couple sardonic one-liners in, but this is a straight dramatic role, with his character going to some pretty dark places emotionally, and he’s excellent. He’s always believable and always seems to be giving each scene the proper energy.  Sadly, the film didn’t do well, and Cosby spent the bulk of the remainder of the 1970s in silly (albeit fun) comedies with Sidney Poitier. What a shame that he wasn’t given more of a chance to shine as a dramatic actor during those peak years. Hickey & Boggs provides a tantalizing “What if?”

For fans of Cosby, Culp or neo-noir, Hickey & Boggs is a must-see.

Louie Malle’s “Pretty Baby” is playing at BAM tonigh at 6:50.

Bowie Friday.

Next Monday, the Doughnut Plant will open a second location. This one will be in the Chelsea Hotel.

Be warned, these aren’t your average treats. They’re so stupid they’ll make you use a word that don’t mean nuthin…like looptid.

[Photo Credit: The Gourmetro]

Not only was Danny Kaye a brilliant performer but he was a wonderful cook too.

Over at The New York Review of Books, Daniel Mendelsohn tackles the “Mad Men” craze:

Since the summer of 2007, when Mad Men premiered on the cable station AMC, the world it purports to depict—a lushly reimagined Madison Avenue in the 1960s, where sleekly suited, chain-smoking, hard-drinking advertising executives dream up ingeniously intuitive campaigns for cigarettes and bras and airlines while effortlessly bedding beautiful young women or whisking their Grace Kelly–lookalike wives off to business trips in Rome—has itself become the object of a kind of madness. I’m not even referring to the critical reception both in the US and abroad, which has been delirious: a recent and not atypical reference in the Times of London called it “one of the…best television series of all time,” and the show has repeatedly won the Emmy, the Golden Globe, the Screen Actors Guild Award, the Writers Guild of America Award, and the Producers Guild of America Award for Best Drama Series. (A number of its cast members have been nominated in the various acting categories as well.) Rather, the way in which Mad Men has seemingly percolated into every corner of the popular culture—the children’s show Sesame Street has introduced a Mad Men parody, toned down, naturally, for its tender viewers—suggests that its appeal goes far beyond what dramatic satisfactions it might afford.

At first glance, this appeal seems to have a lot to do with the show’s much-discussed visual style—the crisp midcentury coolness of dress and decor. The clothing retailer Banana Republic, in partnership with the show’s creators, devised a nationwide window display campaign evoking the show’s distinctive 1960s look, and now offers a style guide to help consumers look more like the show’s characters. A nail polish company now offers a Mad Men–inspired line of colors; the toy maker Mattel has released dolls based on some of the show’s characters. Most intriguingly, to my mind, Brooks Brothers has partnered with the series’s costume designer to produce a limited edition Mad Men suit—which is, in turn, based on a Brooks Brothers design of the 1960s.

I’ve only seen a few episodes. I’ve talked to some people who say the show is spot-on; others say it is contrived.

What’s all the hubbub…bub?

Yesterday, a couple of people hipped me to this terrific site of Hy Peskin’s photography.

Go, you won’t be disappointed.

Here’s a good movie blog, Some Came Running, by Glenn Kenny. Check out this post about Martin Scorsese’s Vanishing New York.

Homemade Nutella from David Lebovitz.

Yes, please.

M’enfin.

From Matt B…

Best Worst Movie

As I’ve probably mentioned at some point, for the last year and half or so, I’ve been meeting up with a few friends every Tuesday for Bad Movie Night. We have a few beers, order pizza, and sit around and laugh/cringe/stare in disbelief at a lousy or confusing or misguided movie: Highlander II: The Quickening; Howard the Duck; Bionic Ninja; Gladiator Cop; Body Rock… we’ve been doing this for a while now and the list is extensive. But one of our all-time favorites (“favorite” being a relative term here) is a real classic of the genre, Troll 2. It’s hilariously inept, with laughable costumes, some of the worst acting ever put to film, and a ludicrous plot that not only has nothing whatsoever to do with Troll 1 but is actually about goblins. It’s about a family that makes the mistake of vacationing in a town called Nilbog… which is, of course, “goblin spelled backwards!”

Troll 2 is so much fun in its way that it’s developed quite a cult following, with midnight screenings and gatherings around the country. Best Worst Movie, directed by Michael Stephenson (the now-grown child actor who played the son in the movie) and focusing on the small-town dentist who played his father, is a fascinating look at the bad-movie-loving subculture, and at how the people involved in a film react to having it become famous – or infamous – for all the wrong reasons. It’s alternately very funny and, at times, touching, sad, and uncomfortable. And it’s well worth a watch.

In case you were wondering, tonight’s Bad Movie selection will be Robot Jox.

Hua Hsu on audio cassettes:

There is nothing magic about a cassette, nothing bewitching about an object that can be taken apart and reassembled or fixed with a pencil. A small rectangular box of plastic in which magnetized tape moves back and forth between miniature spools, it is, from today’s vantage, a hopelessly antiquated format. At a time when most of us listen to music that exists only as data, on soundless players that cannot be pried open, the cassette displays its modest mechanics all too transparently. Peer inside the deck as you slide in a tape in, and you see a tiny, busy factory world of belts, wires, and interlocking gears. Press play, and even before the first track begins, you hear a series of hisses and squeals and the faint whir of the motor. When the side ends: a harsh click. Even in the 1980s, when the cassette tape represented the apex of consumer technology, its advances—the workmanlike auto-reverse button; various gradations of Dolby; “IEC Type II High (CrO₂) Position,” whatever that means—seemed puny, stopgaps to tide us over until we could engineer more elegant solutions.

Given that the cassette is widely regarded as a nostalgic curio today, few people were surprised when Sony discontinued production of the Walkman, their once-iconic portable cassette player, last April. The greater shock, for many, was the realization that Sony was still manufacturing Walkmen at all. While we mourn the player’s death and await the iPhone 5, it would be a mistake to dismiss the cassette as merely a transitional technology. Rather, it offered its user a previously unimaginable degree of autonomy, a freedom that is today familiar to us, and was the first music format to raise thorny questions about the concept of fair use and about what it means to own a piece of music.

The L.A. Times Magazine has a photo gallery of the 50 most beautiful women in film:

Plenty of hits and misses in there.

Where are these lovelies?

Over at the New York Times, Jordan Michelman asks, “Who makes the best Vietnamese banh mi sandwich in America?”

Peep, don’t sleep.

[Photo Credit: Plate of the Day]

The 8th Wonder of the World…

Bow down.

The one and only…Drew Friedman. (Thought I was going to say Hackenbush, didn’t ya?)

Over at Food 52, here’s a quick lesson on how to segment and slice an orange.

How to Cut an Orange from Food52 on Vimeo.

These ladies rock.

From the New Yorker’s Photo Booth blog, dig this gallery of Sam Shaw’s photography: