“The Avatar battle scenes are spectacular and thrilling,” writes Envelope/Gold Derby’s Tom O’Neil, “but the movie’s greatest fight lies ahead at the Academy Awards.” O’Neil’s Oscar pundit polls, conducted today, suggest that Avatar is suddenly a likely Best Picture contender, but James Cameron‘s film “will probably trip up in the home stretch” due to the Academy’s old-fart contingent.

“Last year’s critically cheered blockbusterThe Dark Knight didn’t even get nominated for best picture,” he notes. “But now there are 10 slots in a weak year, so Avatar can’t be denied its due place on the derby track.

“But Oscar voters are stubborn, narrow-minded graybeards. Computer-generated fantasy films, however amazing, aren’t ‘important’ in their eyes. They like their best pictures real. Sure, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King won the top prize and indeed went undefeated in all 11 categories, tying the record for most wins held by Ben-Hur and James Cameron’s Titanic, but that was only because the franchise wore voters down over the years.”

I hated, hated, hated the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I sympathized with the resistance to it. I mostly found it agonizing to sit through

Fox Searchlight threw a slate-promoting holiday party early this evening at Soho’s recently opened Crosby Street Hotel. Attending talent included the Crazy Heart team — Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, director-writer Scott Cooper — and Fantastic Mr. Fox director Wes Anderson. I got some face time with all four plus prolific screenwriter Ron Bass, with whom I discussed college experiences, sons and hallucinogens.

Crazy Heart star Jeff Bridges holding court in Crosby Street Hotel lounge — Friday,12.11, 6:10 pm.

I also discussed drug adventures with Bridges, who partially based his acclaimed performance as Bad Blake on his own bad-boy history (which happened in either the ’70s or ‘early ’80s or both). He also pigged out two months before shooting began, eating mostly greasy high-calorie foods, and drank a little more than usual and got into smoking, etc.

Bridges performance is “honestly scuzzy…his best since The Big Lebowski but tonally opposite and much harder hitting, of course,” I wrote on 11.13. “He really swan-dives into the toilet. No sweeteners, no movie-star charm moments, no winking…except when he’s on-stage. The fact that Bridges doesn’t seem to be ‘acting’ is what makes it great acting.”

I had to compete a little bit for Bridges’ attention with a very fetching CNN segment producer sitting to his right. She wore an alluring black and white dress with a red scarf and red-suede boots. I can be a fairly spry conversationalist and managed to steer Bridges away for brief discussions of the late Harry Nilsson, the Santa Barbara Film Festival and the old Chez Jay restaurant in Santa Monica, but the segment producer…

Cooper and I discussed cinematography, mostly. Having never gone to film school, he educated himself in the look of ’70s movies, which he wanted Crazy Heart to resemble. He sank into a slew of ’70s films (Terrence Malick‘s Badlands, etc.) and took it from there. I told him I’m a huge fan of the look and pacing of Crazy Heart, but that I’m doubly impressed by the fact that Cooper doesn’t seem to be advertising to the audience how visually clever or gifted he was — he knows enough to stay out of the way of the story (which is based on Thomas Cobb‘s book and partly, Cooper said, on his hard-living grandfather).

Anderson and I mostly talked about the pleasures of Paris (he lives in Montparnasse), his girlfriend’s newly purchased home in Kent, England, and the prospect of hosting several guests, my liking of his screenplay adaptation of Patrice Leconte‘s My Best Friend, called The Rosenthaler Suite. It’s just a script for hire, he said. But you’ve really made it your own and it’s really good, I said. Yeah, he said, but I’m not sure what my next film will be.

I took two snaps of Wes and his brother, Eric Chase Anderson, and for some reason the auto-focus function failed both times.

Crazy Heart director-writer Scott Cooper — ditto, 6:35 pm.

Today’s tracking shows that Avatar‘s first choice number has risen to 22 — a one-day bump from yesterday’s 20 figure — and that under-25 women who are definitely not interested has shot up from yesterday’s 18 figure to 23. Do you see what I mean about Eloi girls? Their resistance to this film is very strong right now, or at least it was yesterday. Maybe they’ll chill down once the word seeps through.

The New York Film Critics Circle “has decided against a threatened crackdown on members who report on behind-the-scenes details of voting on awards this Monday,” reports Envelope/Gold Derby’s Tom O’Neil. “Fears ran high that members may be booted if they tattle on vote scores and other details of balloting after leaders responded furiously last year to one member blogging live during the vote session and another blabbing goings-on via Twitter.”

In other words, NYFCC chairman Armond White has waved off complaints voiced last year by Entertainment Weekly‘s Lisa Schwarzbaum. She told O’Neil in late ’08 “that she was so furious about the ‘betrayal of our group’s confidentiality’ that ‘a similar violation of the group’s bylaws would result in a stern response,'” he writes.

“When asked if that meant that a member who reveals vote scores would be ousted from the circle, she avoided a direct answer, saying, ‘Reporting the vote scores will not be tolerated.’

Last year’s uproar was caused by N.Y. Post critic Lou Lumenick, who was live blogging last year during the NYFCC voting session. Lumenick confided last night that he intends to run right back to his office on Monday after voting ends and post all of the scores in detail at his blog, so that’s where everyone can get the inside scoop fastest on Monday — who came in second place, third place, etc.

For whatever reason, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association award winners will be “announced” in two separate statements on Sunday, 12.13. The secondary awards (supporting actors, screenplay, cinematography, etc.) will be announced at 12:30 Pacific, and then the primary awards (best picture, director, actor, actress, etc.) will be announced at 2:30 pm Pacific.

Wouldn’t it be simpler to just post the winners on the LAFCA site as they’re decided upon, category by category in real time, the way the New York Film Critics Circle webmasters have been doing for years? Who cares about press releases? When I hear the term I think of announcements printed on paper. Quaint.

The “announcements” will also be simultaneously available via Twitter @lafilmcritics (http://twitter.com/LAFilmCritics) or www.lafca.net.

I loved how Windex-clear and transporting Avatar looked in 3-D last night, but I can’t get over the fact that 20th Century Fox publicity decided to show it to the creme de la creme of Manhattan journalists on a non-IMAX-sized screen, and within a steep-angled theatre that was rather small considering the event-styled superflick being presented.

My first thought when I walked into this AMC Empire theatre on the third or fourth floor and saw maybe 140 seats with 55 or 60 journalists sitting in them was “this?” Think about it. Cameron spends five years on this film, talking about how he wants everyone to experience the ultimate 3-D IMAX presentation when it opens — the coolest way to see this exotic eye-popping fantasy flick — and all the hot-shot NYC critics are gathered together to finally see Avatar and they’re screening it in a glorified shoebox?”

I went outside and asked a couple of ushers if the AMC Empire has a real IMAX theatre. “Yeah, downstairs,” one of them said. I asked how many seats it had. “About 285,” she said. (Or so I recall.) So, like, it’s not as big as the IMAX theatre at the Lincoln Square? “Nope,” the usher said. But at least it’s a got a fairly big screen and all? “Yeah.” So are you guys using that IMAX theatre to show something else tonight? “Nope…empty. But we’ll be showing Avatar there when it opens.”

So Fox could have screened Avatar in an actual IMAX theatre but something couldn’t be worked out or whatever. Amazing. They had months to prepare for the big all-media showing and they couldn’t do it right. I guess I’m going to have to pay to see it in IMAX on 12.18, but if I were Fox I’d schedule a gratis critics’ screening at the Lincoln Square to make up for the AMC Empire snafu.

“Avatar is hardwired to its creator in a way films of this size simply cannot be due to reality and the nature of the business,” writes CHUD’s Nick Nunziata. “But it is. That’s why the film took so long to reach screens. That’s why it apparently may be one of the costliest films ever made if not the costliest. That’s why on many levels this is an impossible dream of a film, something that could never meet expectations or justify its own existence under the weight of its ambitions.

“But it does and make no mistake, this is a film worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings. It’s epic, visionary, breathtaking, and as immersive as any tentpole film in recent memory.

“And no trailer, teaser, or sizzle reel can do it justice until you see it living and breathing on a very big screen in 3-D. As I sat in the theater my doubts, suspension of disbelief, and cynicism melted away as Pandora came to life and took me in her arms.

“Avatar is not the future of storytelling or the reinvention of the wheel. It’s pulp, but pulp done with the best toolbox Hollywood can offer and pulp created by someone who knows and loves pulp like very few others. It has as much in common with Edgar Rice Burroughs as it does with Dances with Wolves. It has elements of the work Frank Herbert, Hayao Miyazaki, George Lucas, David Lean and William Wyler, and yet is unmistakably James Cameron.”

This may be the best-written Avatar review in a formally composed sense that I’ve read thus far.

“James Cameron is a brick-and-mortar storyteller. As Sigourney Weaver has said, he’s in touch with his inner 14-year-old, and instinctively knows what moviegoers all over the world want to see.” — from Anne Thompson‘s Indiewire Avatar review/video interview with Cameron, posted early this morning.

“While it is unlikely that any movie will unseat Cameron’s last fiction feature, 1997’s Titanic as the biggest blockbuster of all time ($1.8 billion worldwide), Avatar will be huge; I’ll bet this picture, which defines ‘event movie’ and probably cost $300-million (more than any other film) gets past a billion worldwide.”

“As I’ve been suspecting for a while but have now confirmed, we’re looking at an Oscar first,” Variety‘s Todd McCarthy just wrote in a message. “Best Director Battle of the Exes — Cameron vs. Bigelow.”

Hilarious! But he’s right, I think. Cameron is now a Best Director contender, along with Avatar for Best Picture and — believe it — Zoe Saldana for Best Actress.

I’ve just forwarded my revised Buzzmeter calls to Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil and I inserted Avatar as my third most-likely Best Picture nominee (right behind Up In The Air and The Hurt Locker) and put in Cameron for Best Director and Saldana as Best Actress. Seriously, no foolin’, I mean it.

Yes, Saldana’s manner seems a little broad at first but then you begin to settle into her acting style (the CG morphing demands a certain emphasis — almost akin to silent-movie acting — and de-emphasizing of subtlety) and begin to realize that she’s really good, and that she really brings it home at the end. There’s a blending-of-souls, Na’vi-hugs-human moment at the finale between Saldana and Sam Worthington that you don’t see coming but which feels right and true. It’s the big symmetrical emotional-payoff moment in Avatar that stays with you. (And I don’t care if Armond White agrees or not.)

There’s no question that Avatar deserves a Best Picture nomination. It is exactly the kind of film — magnificently made, audience-friendly, rousing, populist, fun factor — that the Best Picture nominee expansion was intended to accomodate. So now we’re talking two “people” movies that are likely to make the List of Ten — Avatar and The Blind Side.

I think once the word gets out on what a rousing and splendorific LSD eyeball-fuck movie Avatar is that the ambivalance will melt right away and the first weekend will indeed hit the low 70s, and maybe higher…who knows? And once younger Eloi females…naah, I take that back. I was going to say that once they see that the loyal and passionate relationship between Sam Worthington‘s Jake Sully and Zoe Saldana‘s Neytiri actually registers and sinks in (okay, perhaps not on a Leo-Kate-Titanic level, but you can really feel it toward the end) that they might start to get into it, but young Eloi women are too shallow and comfort-driven and into nail polish to embrace a mad spirit-of-the-jungle movie like Avatar.

Avatar is primarily a guy movie — let’s face it. We suspected it all along and now the proof is there on the screen. It’s for guys of all ages and X-factor women of all shapes, sizes and cultures. But women who live, breathe and dream about the culture of the mall will feel threatened by it.

The political import of Avatar — and there’s no waving this aspect away because it’s right in your face start to finish, and especially in the third act — is ardently left. It is pro-indigenous native, anti-corporate, anti-imperialist, anti-U.S. Iraq War effort, anti-U.S.-in-Afghanistan (and anti-troop-surge-in-that-country, or strongly against the thinking of President Barack Obama and Gen. Stanley McChrystal), anti-rightie, anti-Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, etc.

Yes, it’s very teenaged adolescent in its super-imaginative wacko visions and exuberant energy levels, but politically it’s pure Che Guevara (more the Motorcycle Diaries or Che-in-Cuba version than Che in Bolivia), Naom Chomsky, Hugo Chavez, Howard Zinn, Gore Vidal, Oliver Stone, etc. Cameron is an earth-hugging lefty from way back (the flagrant despise-the-arrogant-rich current in Titanic being but one example) so this should come as no surprise to anyone. I for one am cheered and heartened.

If Sarah Palin sees Avatar and then sits down and actually thinks about what it’s saying (which is always a dicey proposition, I admit), she’ll hate this movie. Because Avatar hates her and her kind. Some righties will pretend to like it (“great popcorn flick! took my kids!”), but they’d have to be in major denial mode not to recognize that Avatar is much more MSNBC than Fox News. It really spits on the Fox News philosophy/worldview. If Cameron had for some inane reason put a Fox News-type character in the film, he/she would end up with a Na’vi arrow through his/her chest, trust me.

Call it the most flamboyant, costliest, grandest left-liberal super-movie anyone’s ever seen — a political tract that cost Rupert Murdoch God knows how many hundreds of millions to make and yet is totally pro-loincloth, pro-native, despise-the-greedy, hug-the-earth, worship-the-earth, down with the soulless short-end, down with the us-first, masters-of-the-universe thinking behind the Goldman Sachs/Timothy Geithner culture and up with the eternal/spiritual in all cultures and all corners of the globe. The tragedy of the Vietnam War echoes all through this film. Somewhere Ho Chi Minh is smiling.

Cameron explains the anti-imperialist current to John Anderson in a forthcoming N.Y. Times Sunday piece: “I’m…a child of the ’60s. There’s a part of me who wants to put a daisy in the end of the gun barrel. I believe in peace through superior firepower, but on the other hand I abhor the abuse of power and creeping imperialism disguised as patriotism. Some of these things you can’t raise without being called unpatriotic, but I think it’s very patriotic to question a system that needs to be corralled, or it becomes Rome.”

Spoiler: I leave it to the community to decide whether there’s a huge 9/11 metaphor in Avatar or not, but I felt one (although politically it makes no sense in the context of the film.) Call it a reverse 9/11 image. I’m not talking about the destruction of a man-made super-structure but a natural one. I’ll leave it at that and wait for reactions.