Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil has written that Lincoln is “looking good” for the Best Picture Oscar, “but don’t wager money on it…it’s not a lock. Lincoln will probably have the biggest tally when nominations are announced on January 10th and that’s key. The movie with the most bids wins the top Oscar about 75% of the time. However, it’s very vulnerable and its rivals are strong.”

O’Neil suspects that Lincoln won’t win Best Picture from the Critics’ Choice Awards on January 10th “and that usually matters a lot,” he writes. “Over the past 10 years, that trophy has successfully forecasted the top Oscar seven times.” O’Neil looks at average 2012 scores given to the Best Picture nominees by members of the Critics’ Choice voting group (i.e., the BFCA) and notes that Argo, Zero Dark Thirty and Silver Linings Playbook have scored higher than Lincoln.

With all the online-voting issues going on, you’d think the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would extend the balloting deadline by 72 hours, or to Monday, January 7 at 5 pm. Give people a bit more extra time to watch those screeners, etc. But no — they’ve decided to bump it a mere 24 hours. The new deadline is Friday, January 4th, at 5 p.m. Pacific.

Those who can’t finagle their way through the Academy’s much-lamented online voting software will have the option of submitting a paper ballot. They can buy #2 pencils and erasers at CVS or Walmart.

“By extending the voting deadline [by 24 hours] we are providing every opportunity available to make the transition to online balloting as smooth as possible,” Academy COO Ric Robertson said in a statement. In other words, extending the deadline to Monday at 5 pm would’t be feasible? The nominee announcement happens at 5:30 am on Thursday, January 10th, so the Academy would have a full two days to tabulated the votes of the last-minute stragglers. That’s obviously more than enough time.

Today and yesterday friends and readers have told me they’ve gone to the site and seen nothing — a blank page. Or they’ve gone to the site, seen the front page but gotten nothing when they click on a jump page. I noticed this myself early this morning while using Firefox and Google Chrome browsers, and occasionally with Safari. (I don’t use IE or Opera.)

I naturally took this up with the all-but-worthless, know-nothing techies at my appalling internet service provider known as Softlayer. I started a trouble ticket with them but it took hours to find a tech support person whose vocabulary and attitude indicated even a glimmer of intelligence and/or a willingness to try and solve the problem.

This is my fault, of course, because I didn’t ditch these guys last year. My life becomes a head-throbbing hell when this stuff happens. And it totally turns off the juices that need to flow in order to think and write articles.

I tried to enlist my regular tech-support guy but he’s got a full plate and a family and so on. About 25 minutes ago I finally found a very nice, intelligent-sounding Softlayer techie named Nicole who is now trying to figure out the coding problem that is causing the white-page Janusz Kaminski appearance.

The second splitting headache has been caused by Firefox. A bug in Firefox 17 (i.e., the current version) has retained the malware warning that was going up when I got attacked by a Kazakhstan trojan on 12.24. Hollywood Elsewhere is totally free of trojan infection — Google has issued a clean bill of health, the ad server where the infection was centered has been updated with the password changed, and the password to the guts of the site has also been changed — and yet Firefox is still warning people about nonexistent malware.

There’s no way to remedy this as long as Firefox 17 is current, but the situation will be fixed when Firefox 18 is made available sometime between January 6th and January 9th. So the Firefox malware flag will allegedly disappear when you go to Hollywood Elsewhere IF you start using Firefox 18 a week from now, but it will hang around if you stay with Firefox 17. Firefox 19 will be released on 2.19, it says here. Many thanks & Happy New Year, Firefox!

I was working on a Most Noteworthy HE Jottings of 2012 piece. Pick and highlight the best stuff posted throughout the year, month by month. But that was too hard to do in a single day. I should have begun a few days ago — my bad. And then some more technical crap happened. Awful stuff. I’m glad I don’t own a gun. Sometimes I just want to inject opiates. But there’s comfort, at least, in knowing I’ll remember Fake Armond’s “fine mulled wine” tweet for many years to come.

It’s being reported that Republican intransigence will cause Congress to miss the fiscal cliff deadline, and so the country technically will go over it tonight…but with a bungee cord. So forget crashing on the rocks.

2012 began with the depression of The Artist being the all-but-guaranteed Best Picture winner, and it’s ended with the depression of Oscar handicappers (Gurus of Gold, Gold Derby guys) lazily forecasting with all the vim and vigor of a 74 year-old fat man that Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln has the strongest head of steam, blah blah. Please don’t listen to their tired consensus thinking, which is a kind of virus that spreads from one lazy mentality to the next.

Not Lincoln — I’m down on my knees — and anyone but King Poobah Rajah Sultan Spielberg. Zero Dark Thirty‘s Kathryn Bigelow, Silver Linings Playbook‘s David O. Russell, Amour‘s Michael Haneke…please! And dear merciful God, not Quentin Tarantino!

There is something so profoundly passive and deflating with the idea of choosing a rotely admirable procedural about passing a certain piece of legislation as The Year’s Finest Film. History demands that you bring something more than droopy eyelids and tired blood to the debate. Lincoln is almost the President Mubarak of Best Picture contenders. I say “almost” because it doesn’t espouse venality and corruption. But it’s certainly the safe, traditionalist choice. Civic-minded and old-schoolish, heavily funded, nicely crafted except for Janusz Kaminski‘s milky lighting…a nice, easy, retirement-village pocket drop.

I recognize that the Spielberg-kowtow crowd believes that Lincoln is the easiest nod-off (in the same way that Chicago and The Artist were easy-wheelchair picks) and therefore a default Best Picture winner. But why? I am telling you with every fibre and molecule that I can bring to this moment and this sentence that they’ve just slumped into the idea because everyone else has slumped into it. Why do they believe everyone else has swallowed the same sleeping pill? One reason is that the Gurus of Gold and the Gold Derby guys are saying so.

Do you see now what a terrible thing it is to listen to these guys (and I’m saying this as a member of the Gold Derby team)? They propulgate safely mediocre thinking.

As The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a very tedious film to sit through, I find it appalling — almost mystifying — that fans the world over are paying to see it in record numbers. $222,703,000 stateside, $464 million overseas and a general worldwide haul of $686 million. There really is something wrong with spending that much on a film this tiresome and overlong. Taste (even geek taste) has little to do with it. They saw the Rings trilogy so they have to see the new one. Obsessive, sad, depressing. I’m averting my eyes from here on.

New Year’s Eve (i.e., Monday night) is always lame and New Year’s Day is the emptiest day of the year…flatline. The ballot deadline for the Writers Guild awards is at 10 pm on Wednesday, January 2nd with the nominations out the next morning. The Oscar ballot deadline is late on Thursday, January 3rd. And then the National Society of Film Critics will announce their awards on Saturday, 1.5.

And then come the all-important DGA nominations on Tuesday morning, January 8th. The BAFTA nominations will be known on Wednesday morning, January 9th. Oscar nominations happen the next morning — Thursday, January 10th — at the ungodly hour of 5:30 am. That night the 18th Critics’ Choice Movie Awards will broadcast. And then the Golden Globe awards happen on Sunday night, their importance somewhat diminished by the Oscar noms.

So it’ll be a noteworthy six days from 1.8 through 1.13. The most nominations will most likely be collected by Lincoln and Les Miserables, but they have their detractors. I want to see the nominations spread around, please. And there’ll be serious blowback if the DGA doesn’t at least nominate Silver Linings Playbook‘s David O. Russell for Best Director. Just saying.

And then I leave for Park City and the 2013 Sundance Film Festival on Tuesday, 1.15. I like to get up there and settle in and enjoy a full day of peace and quiet (i.e., Wednesday, 1.16) before it all starts on Thursday, 1.17.

When’s the all-media for Gangster Squad (Warner Bros., 1.11)?

Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, my longtime Oscar Poker partner until we split up two or three months ago, accepted my invitation to do another one for old time’s sake. We covered everything, except I thought Sasha was recording and she thought I was recording. We talked for a good 90 minutes or so, and it was all for naught. Then I started recording and we did about 49 minutes’ worth. Happy New Year.

A tweet this morning from The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg asked if Andres Muschietti‘s Mama (Universal, 1.18) might have a Norbit-like affect upon the chances of Best Actress contender Jessica Chastain, who plays Mama’s female lead. Reactions were swift and dismissive. Mama, produced by Guillermo del Toro, is being described as somewhere between good and not half bad.

The following story about Steven Spielberg‘s initial connection with Lincoln star Daniel Day Lewis was apparently included an 11.30 Oprah Now interview. I may have heard it and brushed it aside, but I don’t think so.

“For a time I was going do [Lincoln] with Liam Neeson,” Spielberg explained. “But then, you know, we just decided to move in two different directions. I was sitting around at home one day realizing I’m never going to make Lincoln. It’s just never going to happen.

“And Leo DiCaprio came over for dinner that night. It was just my wife and Leo and myself. We were sitting around and Leo said, ‘What’s happening with Lincoln? You’ve been, what, five years on this thing?’ And I said, ‘Longer.’ I told Leo the whole story, and I told him I had tried to approach Daniel on another screenplay and I wasn’t able to re-approach Daniel.

“And the next day, my assistant said ‘Leo’s on the phone.’ He said, ‘You got a pencil? Write this down. This is Daniel Day-Lewis’s cell phone. He’s expecting your call.’ Leo had gone to bat for me and had called Daniel on the telephone and got Daniel and I together. Everything at that point started really moving quickly.”

Whoa, wait: Spielberg “wasn’t able to re-approach” Daniel Day Lewis because he “tried to approach Daniel on another screenplay”? In response to which DDL was (let’s imagine) so turned off by the initial project that he decided to refuse Spielberg’s subsequent calls? And the all-powerful Spielberg wanted to offer the Lincoln role to DDL but was unable to get his cell phone number? DDL thought he might fail in trying to portray Abraham Lincoln, etc. I’ve read that. But I don’t believe DDL would tell his assistant, “If Spielberg calls, I’m not in.” Bullshit.

Update: “The Spielberg/Day-Lewis story has been everywhere,” a friend days. “They both it in detail at a q & a at the Bruin, and Day-Lewis completely concurred. In fact, they really told much more about it including how when DDL finally accepted the Lincoln role Spielberg couldn’t even speak, so he put the phone down for a few until he could compose himself.” Wells response: I still don’t believe DDL wouldn’t take Spielberg’s calls and/or that Spielberg couldn’t get his cell phone #.

Mom isn’t just weeping after seeing Les Miserables; she’s fairly devastated and having trouble explaining why. Everyone else in the car either has a case of the giggles or is going “okay, I respect your reaction but not so much on my end.” (Tip of the hat to Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone.)