This morning I suggested to a columnist pal that he needs to focus “on the surging of The Fighter as a Best Picture contender. This is a really well-made, deeply populist, authentic blue-collar drama that’s much better and far less sappy than…I don’t even want to mention Sylvester Stallone‘s Rocky because it just diminishes The Fighter‘s brand when I do that.

“I think you’re going to find that ticket buyers will start responding to it big-time…maybe. This could be the compromise Best Picture choice — the happy middle-ground contender that could/should satisfy the King’s Speech and Social Network camps.”

Strange as this may seem to some, the term “Best Picture” actually does mean that. It doesn’t mean “Best Liked” or “Most Comforting” or “Most Emotional” or “The Movie My Cleaning Lady Likes The Best.” THerefore The Social Network really and truly happens to be the best film of the year, but — I’m saying this carefully — if it were to lose to The Fighter, I would not collapse on the floor in spasms of grief and protest and outrage.

“Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, taking a radical step backward from his Oscar-winning debut The Lives of Others, The Tourist illustrates what happens when you cast two giant, self-orbiting stars and then are either too intimidated or too confused to actually direct them,” writes the Star-Telegram‘s Christopher Kelly. “It also illustrates what happens when you compound a bad idea with poorly telegraphed twists and no dramatic tension whatsoever.

“Von Donnersmarck has conjured up a movie in love with its own Hollywood artificiality; at one point, and for no discernible reason, Jolie is dressed up to look like Sophia Loren and attends a formal ball. But there’s nothing to care about here, and the action is all ineptly staged. Paul Bettany and Timothy Dalton end up leading Keystone Kops routines that are funny for all the wrong reasons. The movie sputters to a conclusion so predictable you first feel embarrassed for all involved, until your embarrassment turns to indignation: How stupid does Hollywood believe audiences to be if they think they can put a turkey like The Tourist over on us?”

I’ve just about had it with listening to “The Little Drummer Boy” under any circumstance, and especially while sitting in Starbucks. “Bah-rumpa-pum-pum,” my ass. Wouldn’t the racket of a drum upset a just-born child? Maybe if the drummer boy had brushes, but of course they hadn’t been invented 2010 years ago. I’m down with Christmas Carols as far they go, but this is one of the all-time dumbest. It bothered me even when I was an eight year-old.

Watch these silent acting-sample videos from the N.Y. Times Magazine site, and particularly Lesley Manville. The idea, apparently, is to simulate silent-film acting…but not entirely. They’re all pretty amazing.

Popeater‘s Gary Susman, following the lead of a 12.2 L.A. Times piece by Stephen Zeitchick (among others), is asking why an oral sex scene in Derek Cianfrance‘s Blue Valentine resulted in an NC-17 rating while a lesbian/bisexual oral sex scene in Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan resulted in only an R rating. I think we all know why.

Cianfrance’s film is essentially being punished for being more honest and realistic in its depictions of sexuality than Aronofsky’s. Black Swan‘s oral-sex scene has been primarily interpreted as a nice hot fantasy that straight males in particular can watch without discomfort whereas Valentine‘s, driven by the emotional dynamics of a failing marriage, is a bit more unsettling and/or uncomfrtable.

Regardless of the MPAA’s historical record, straight-laced American milquetoast types (such as those on the MPAA’s ratings board) have always felt far less threatened by hot girl-on-girl action than heterosexual couplings. As Susman writes, “The ratings board may have muddled standards regarding female sexual pleasure, profanity and violence, but at least it’s no longer quite so fearful of lesbianism. So long as the lesbians are played by household-name actresses in MPAA-member films, and they’re not totally naked, and they’re not necessarily enjoying themselves, and they might just be fantasizing, that is.”

Tough but necessary words yesterday about the plutocracy-favoring tax-cut deal from MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. “It is not disloyalty to the Democratic party to tell a Democratic president he is goddamned wrong,” he notes, “[And] it is not disloyalty to remind the President that he was elected by people to whom he had given a clear outline of what he would do for them” and that me may “not only not be re-elected — he may not even be re-nominated.”

Obama, he said, “negotiates down from a position of strength better than any other politician in recent history.”

N.Y. Times columnist Frank Rich offered a similar opinion two days ago when he noted that “a weak Barack Obama has been spiritually kidnapped by Republicans and is now suffering from Stockholm Syndrome which allows him to sympathize with his captors.”

Appearing recently on MSNBC’s “Jansing & Company,” former CBS newsman Dan Rather called this “a political nightmare for Barack Obama as president…politically, within his own party, if this goes through, Barack Obama will be in a position to have his shirttail on fire, his back to the wall, and the bill collector at the door. Which is metaphorically a way of saying he’s almost guaranteed — if this goes through — to have a serious challenge in a Democratic primary for president in 2012.”

“Rather went on to add that ‘the perception of [Obama] is that he won’t fight for anything.” He also noted: ‘Many of the heavy contributors to the Democratic Party are beyond shock about this happening, and are saying to themselves, ‘This guy…has about four to six months to turn the perception of him and the party around or we’ve got to start thinking about somebody else in 2012.'”

A portion of Matt Bai‘s 12.8 Times story about a possible liberal challenge to Obama in the 2012 primaries notes that “three liberal writers made the case for taking on Mr. Obama in 2012. Michael Lerner, longtime editor of Tikkun magazine, argued in The Washington Post that a primary represented a ‘real way to save the Obama presidency’ by forcing Mr. Obama to move leftward. Robert Kuttner, co-founder of The American Prospect and one of the party’s most scathing populist voices, issued a similar call on The Huffington Post, suggesting Iowa as the ideal incubator.

“On the same site, Clarence B. Jones, a one-time confidant of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., suggested that liberals should break with Mr. Obama now, just as Dr. King and others did with Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968. ‘It is not easy to consider challenging the first African-American to be elected president of the United States,’ Mr. Jones wrote. ‘But, regrettably, I believe the time has come to do this.'”

I see the names Hammond, Appelo & O’Neil and for some non-relative reason I think of Beck, Bogart & Appice — go figure. So I’m listening to these guys talk about the Best Actress race and asking myself, “Which one is Jeff Beck? Which one leads with his heart and soul and plays some of that crazy flash guitar?”

And I’d have to say it’s Gold Derby maestro Tom O’Neil in this instance because he’s the gabbiest and the jabbiest and the bluntest, and seems the most receptive to underground tremors while at the same time understanding the whole political equation. The Hollywood Reporter‘s Tim Appelo is bassist Tim Bogert, I think, because he’s steady and solid and pays as much attention to politically feasible possibilities as the drummer, Deadline‘s Pete Hammond, who’s mainly about long-view wisdom and community sensitivity and putting out that steady conciliatory political beat.

Natalie Portman, Annette Bening, Lesley Manville, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicole Kidman, Michelle Williams, Tilda Swinton — which two won’t make the cut? My personal preferences at this stage are (in this order) Portman, Manville, Kidman, Williams and Lawrence.

Good as she is, I would honest put The Kids Are All Right‘s Bening in sixth place right now — no offense. I’m sorry but you have to choose and Bening, having gone with the advice of husband Warren Beatty, has been blowing off the press in favor of talking to the guilds. Will she get a Best Actress nomination from SAG and the Academy? Will she win with either voting body? If it happens, fine and good. I can only emphasize I’d much rather see Portman or Manville win. Portman gives by far the most committed and incendiary performance, and Manville the saddest and most touching.

A lot will depend, I think, on the Best Actress choices from The Los Angeles Film Critics Association this Sunday, and from the New York Film Critics Circle on the following day. Portman, Bening, Manville, Lawrence, Kidman, Williams, Swinton…which of these? I foresee Another Year‘s Lesley Manville winning with the NYFCC, and Black Swan‘s Natalie Portman perhaps being chosen by LAFCA…no?

Any way you slice it, it’ll be a shocker and a miracle if Bening wins with either group. Because I personally believe (as I’ve said before) that she’s somewhere fading and over. And if I’m proved wrong, okay. I’ll be on the floor but fine.

It’s the fair-minded Hammond, ironically, who passes along the most withering comment when he says that an industry person recently told him that Bening “peaked with The Grifters.” Whoa…not nice. And not true. She was close to perfect in Sam Mendes‘ American Beauty and searing and straight-on in Rodrigo Garcia‘s Mother and Child.

Currently on a slow A train out of Howard Beach, trying to get to a 6 pm Tron: Legacy screening at Lincoln Square.

In this, a sharply defined generation-gap year in the Best Picture race (The Social Network and Black Swan for the hipper under-45s, The King’s Speech for the elders), the MCN Gurus of Gold have again shown themselves to be mainly receptive to the old-fart view of things. Meaning, of course, that they’re sticking to predictions of The King’s Speech winning the Best Picture Oscar. These guys are as terrified of making a wrong call as Soviet apparatchiks of the 1930s were terrified of being allied with anti-Stalinist cabals, hence their totally conservative “don’t risk it!” default thinking.

But when The King’s Speech doesn’t win with the L.A. Film Critics (voting Sunday, 12.12) or the New York Film Critics Circle (voting Monday, 12.13), which is what I suspect will happen, will the Gurus finally rethink things? They ignored last week’s symbolism of the National Board of Review voting big-time for The Social Network, and since then the D.C.-area film critics have also toppled for David Fincher‘s film. The King’s Speech acolytes are Kris Tapley, David Poland, Dave Karger, Pete Hammond, Eugene Hernandez, Anne Thompson, Steve Pond, Susie Woz, Greg Ellwood and Peter Howell. You know what could happen? The Fighter could happen. It’s a compromise candidate admired by all ages, all demos, all persuasions.

For a while it looked as if a plane reservation I made on Sunday to evacuate the wifi dungeon of Marrakech on Tuesday morning and arrive at JFK around 3:45 pm that afternoon might be kaput. A Royal Maroq Air rep told me on Sunday that my reservation was totally safe and locked down, but I was told early this morning this might not be so. Nothing of a bureaucratic nature is dependable in this country. Dealing with the powers-that-be (security guards, wifi guys in swanky hotels, etc.) is often a game of pure whimsical mindfuck torture. For a while it seemed as if I was being held hostage here. You can only leave when we deem it convenient for us! But late this afternoon I was told I’m good to go tomorrow morning. Sigh…thank you!

If I never return to the Marrakech Film Festival it’ll be too soon, but not everything has been bad. Yes, the wifi problems have been unrelenting but everyone you run into is is polite and calm and gentle to a fault. There’s apparently no such thing as an impolite Marrakech resident. (Okay, I did run into a couple of ruffians on a bike on Saturday night who tried to assault me and steal my wallet — I later named them Dick and Perry — but I pushed one of them in the chest and told them both to fuck off and then ran in the opposite direction and they were good enough not to follow, so even the thieves and the roughnecks are polite.) And there’s no indoor smoking ban. And there are no helmet laws so you can scooter down the street with the wind blowing through your hair. And the food is wonderful. And the energy in the main old-town square is so exciting and heavenly. And there are horse carts all over the city, and sometimes as you’re driving down the street you can smell horseshit, and that is a very good thing. The older you get and the more plastic and corporate the world becomes, the better horseshit smells.”