I hated when they did it to Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Cagney (Diet Coke) and Fred Astaire (Dirt Devil vacuum cleaners, for God's sake).

Now they're doing it to classic movie star Marilyn Monroe and murdered musical genius John Lennon. Using film of them in commercials. All to sell a squat little Citroen car. Yuck.

The irony is that in both clips, the stars are rejecting nostalgia, embracing the new, the groundbreaking. And then, with a burst of cool music, this little car that looks like a malformed VW bug shows up.

Monroe's image continues to make millions for the people who control it, and I guess Lennon is going to be one of those icons who earns just as much in death as he did in life, if not more.

The whole thing creeps me out.

Lennon's glasses and a photo from a 2007 charity auction in New York, by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

Huge hat tip to Peter Hartlaub, pop culture critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, for this collection of Orson Welles's weirdest gigs.

It's beyond the drunken Paul Masson. It's more over the top than the famous frozen peas.

If you see only one time-wasting YouTube video today, let it be this featurette about how the classic movie director and star came to do an animated Transformers movie as one of his final roles. It's kind of touching, actually. A genius, and utterly fascinating, to the end.

(The Dark Tower commercial is a stone hoot as well.)

The director in 1937/Wikimedia Commons

Remember that old joke about why Ginger Rogers was a better dancer than Fred Astaire?

She did everything he did, but backwards in high heels.

Now that's the title of a stage show in Los Angeles about the life of the classic Hollywood hoofer, who once won a Best Actress Oscar but is still best remembered as the dancing partner of the debonair Mr. Astaire.

Backwards in High Heels is getting mixed reviews, but you can't beat the music. In between old standards, it focuses on Rogers' relationship with her mother and her four husbands, and features a parade of folks playing legendary stars from Ethel Merman to Jimmy Stewart.

And then there' s the dancing. Sounds like a charming evening out on the town in a city that usually pays more attention to movies than the stage.

Ginger on an old Hollywood magazine cover.

This is one documentary I've got to see. Suppose you're the less-gorgeous, less-likeable sibling forever overshadowed by your popular football star brother.

Who then becomes a stunning lesbian and comes back to Montana for a high-school reunion and some family reckonings. Meanwhile, you have a terrible accident that leaves you brain-damaged and prone to horrifying outbursts.

Then you find out that you're the biological grandson of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth.

Whoa.

It's not a ridiculously bad attempt at fiction. It's bizarre truth, and the compelling story of Prodigal Sons, a documentary by Kimberly Reed, one of the family members.

Maybe a double feature with Citizen Kane?

The filmmaker and her brother/First Run Pictures