28 or 29 days after Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln debuted at the NY Film Festival, two days before it opens commercially and with nearly everyone in my realm having already reviewed it, my looksee finally happens Wednesday night.

President Barack Obama‘s re-re-election was called at 8:13 pm when MSNBC declared that he’d won Ohio and gone over 270 electoral votes. A little earlier than I expected. All along I predicted that Obama would squeak through to a victory….nope. Nate Silver’s arithmetic is going to prove prophetic. The popular vote, apparently, will go for Obama also — 51,504,366 (49.4%) vs. Romney’s 51,269,650 (49.1%) as of 10:10 pm Pacific. Romney’s concession speech was classy.

“The story of this election…is demographics,” MSNBC’s Chuck Todd said a little while ago. “The Republican Party has not kept up with the changing face of America. That explains what’s going on in Florida. That explains what’s going on in Colorado. That explains, frankly, what’s going on in Virginia and North Carolina. The Obama campaign was right. They built a campaign for 21st century America. The Republican Party has some serious soul-searching to do when you look at these numbers…they are getting clobbered among non-white voters.”

I voted around 3:15 pm today. I didn’t stride into the 2nd floor polling room at Le Parc Suites like Lee Marvin in Point Blank. Far from it. I walked in slowly and almost cautiously, stopping every few steps to make sure of my bearings. I spoke quietly and clearly and bent forward slightly when speaking with the somewhat elderly volunteers. In the booth I referred to a sample ballot on my iPhone, and I voted straight Democratic Lefty all the way. Back now with my MSNBC pallies. Time to shower and settle in for a fairly long night. Biggest pain-in-the-ass slowpoke states: Ohio, New Jersey (excused due to Hurricane Sandy), Florida.

The missing portion of the Lawrence of Arabia “balcony” scene, never seen by anyone, is viewable on disc #3 of the new Lawrence of Arabia 50th Anniversary “Collector’s Edition” Bluray, which will set you back $65 bills on Amazon. Here’s a brief taste of that scene. Jack Hawkins‘ dialogue was dubbed by a guy who didn’t sound much like Hawkins.

I haven’t seen Crossfire Hurricane but I’ve fallen in love with the Bluray of Charlie Is My Darling, a 1965 black-and-white Rolling Stones-touring-in-Ireland movie that runs only 65 minutes but is, I feel, a perfect capturing of a fascinating moment in time — concise, unforced and almost mild-mannered. This is the marijuana calm before the storm, before the ’60s went mad. It’s been beautifully restored with surprisingly punchy, thumping sound.

Thanks to the guys at ABKCO for sending it along. I wasn’t expecting all that much but wow. I could watch it again and again.

Jay Bulger‘s Beware of Mr. Baker may or may not screen in Los Angeles and other pulsing cities, but it’s definitely set for a run at Manhattan’s Film Forum (11.28 to 12.11). It’ll soon screen for NY press. LA screenings are still being figured out. I always got a bigger charge out of Keith Moon‘s pounding and crashing than I did from Ginger Baker‘s, great as he was and is. Partly because Moon was crazier. But also because Moon’s snare-drum hits always struck me as metronomically and microscopically more highly charged (and occasionally even more precise) than Baker’s…just by a tad. To me great drumming isn’t about being a wild man from Borneo…it’s about hitting the beat exactly dead center, exactly right.”

Here’s an E.T. teaser of a preview of an advance trailer of an official non-trailer hors d’oeuvre for the severely troubled World War Z, the Brad Pitt/Marc Forster CG zombie movie. Reshoots, rewrites, multiple screenwriters, Damon Lindelof, hair-pulling, etc.

A Les Miserables TV spot ran this morning on MSNBC. Vivid, special — it woke me up. The finely textured 19th Century atmosphere and the exquisite, carefully composed, grimy-beautiful visual scheme is clearly top-of-the-line, but the emotional atmosphere seems to be (duhh) largely about pain, anguish and affliction more than anything else. Which isn’t necessarily what the film finally is, or what it will finally feel like.

It was observed three weeks ago that the Les Miserables material is familiar and classic and not exactly thrilling in and of itself, and that the stage musical is over 25 years old and quite traditional and retro-defaulty by today’s standards, and that Tom Hooper‘s innovation of having the actors sing live on the set is (this was a Glenn Kenny riff) doesn’t necessarily mean that the film will work splendidly. Live singing may seem to some like an exciting new approach to shooting movie musicals, but what will finally matter is whether or not Les Miserables works altogether…whether the entire working mechanism harmonizes in a way that inspires “wow, that was truly exceptional!” or “that was an entirely respectable rendering of a classic musical that was all the rage in London and Broadway back in the ’80s.”

If the latter impression dominates and Les Miserables becomes merely one of the Best Picture contenders then we’ll have an uncertain and perhaps even mysterious Best Picture race on your hands — an egalitarian race without a frontrunner or heavyweight contender, a competition among jacks and knaves and outliers without a big gorilla (or gorillas) that everyone’s looking to beat.

Yesterday Bleeding Cool‘s Brendon Connelly posted a list of 91 Regal theatres in the U.S. that will be Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbitt in HFR 3D — i.e., 48 frame-per-second and in the best-looking 3D your eyes have ever beheld — trust me. Regal is the first cinema chain to so announce.

The only L.A. location I’m spotting is downtown’s LA Live.

I’ve seen three of the four major titles opening over Thanksgiving weekend (Silver Linings Playbook, Life of Pi, Red Dawn, Rise of the Guardians), and there’s no question that SLP delivers the most in the way of robust, live-wire, audience-friendly satisfaction. But tracking stats indicate that the awareness levels aren’t there yet, hence the Weinstein Co.’s decision to open SLP limited on 11.16 to get the buzz going.

One rule-of-thumb is that total awareness needs to be above 50 if a film is going to make more than $10 million over the Thanksgiving weekend. Right now or very recently total awareness for Life of Pi is/was at 57, Red Dawn is/was at 58, and Rise of the Guardians is/was at 58. Silver Linings Playbook is (or was very recently) at 30. Everything will turn around once it opens and the word spreads, but right now Joe and Jane Popcorn are looking at that obviously referenced and complex-sounding title and going “wait…what’s that again?”

Right now Pi, Dawn and Guardians are first-choice picks ahead of SLP, but awareness is the key problem.

I haven’t seen Red Dawn but I’m not hearing many good things. Paramount’s Rise of the Guardians is a highly spirited, razzle-dazzle animated family flick. Life of Pi is Ang Lee‘s visually ravishing, somewhat meditative, prestige-level adaptation with a spiritual current or after-glow. Silver Linings Playbook is one of the best date movies I’ve ever seen in my life and a guaranteed Best Picture contender.

A semi-intimate screening of a major Thanksgiving release has been arranged for next Monday night (11.12) at a very high-end Santa Monica location, and I’m looking for a few highly movie-literate, alive-on-the-planet-earth HE readers to attend. You’ll be expected to bang out two or three graphs the next day so I can post some reactions. Food and drink will be served. Ample parking. I have to know today. Email me at gruver1@gmail.com. I can’t guarantee that everyone who responds will be invited but I need a good selection of sharp tools to attend, and where better to find these than among the HE community? Include your HE nom de plume when you respond.