Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil has landed Wolf of Wall Street‘s Martin Scorsese for a nice webcam chat — nothing crazy, loose and easy but, as always with Scorsese, nothing but the truth. How can you not love this guy? At 71, Scorsese is probably as alive and hungry and ready to roll as he ever was, and perhaps a bit more so in the heat of the Wolf “controversy.” I hate using that word in general (it sounds like a local TV news term) but especially in this context. When an angry debate is due to a vocal minority either unable or unwilling to get where a film is coming from, it’s not controversial — it’s perceptional or remedial.

Thanks to the gracious Steven Gaydos for ushering me into today’s Variety brunch (11 am to 12:45 pm) at the Parker Palm Springs. Tasty omelettes, fresh fruit, good coffee, agreeable sunshine. The main honorees were Wolf of Wall Street costar Jonah Hill (introduced by Hill’s Cyrus costar Marisa Tomei) and Saving Mr. Banks director John Lee Hancock (introduced by Colin Farrell). Among the ten upcoming directors honored were Ben Falcone (the upcoming Tammy which stars his wife Melissa McCarthy) and Belle helmer Ama Asante.

Around 6:30 pm I drove over to the Rennaissance hotel to pick up my Palm Springs Int’l Film Festival press pass. I didn’t want to park in their main lot because they slap you with a $12 parking fee if you stay more than 30 minutes so I parked at some little office building next door and then climbed through some bushes to get to the Rennaissance. I got the pass, came back out and went back into the bushes again. Except I came out at a different area and had to stumble over a dirt patch and around a wall to get to the parking area. But I didn’t see that a curb with a steep drop was just beyond the wall, and so I went tumbling and crashing down upon the hard rocky pavement. No broken camera or torn jacket, but I bruised my right elbow, bloodied my right hand (vino dripping on the iPhone 5), slightly bruised my right hip and banged my left knee. I should have used the flashlight app on the phone. My fault, not the curb’s.

An hour from now I’ll be attending a nice, civilized Variety brunch at the Parker Palm Springs, and then I’ll be driving all the way back to Los Angeles and then up to Santa Barbara (at least a four-hour drive) for tonight’s Forrest Whitaker tribute at the Bacara Resort and Spa, which is actually in Goleta so make it four and half hours. I might have to crash up there. I’m going to be whipped by 10 pm or whenever the Whitaker thing ends.

I was so taken with my first viewing of Hany Abu-Assad‘s Omar, a Palestinian-produced thriller about betrayal and double-agenting in the West Bank, that I caught it again last night at the Palm Springs Film Festival.

It’s a taut, urgent, highly realistic thriller that squeezes its characters and viewers like a vise.

Omar is among the Academy’s short-listed Best Foreign Language Feature contenders, and with my personal favorites, Asghar Farhadi‘s The Past and Yuval Adler‘s Bethlehem (which is quite similar to Abu-Assad’s film) out of the running, I guess I’m an Omar guy at this stage.

Omar costars Waleed_Zuaiter (l.) and Adam Bakri (r.) following last night’s screening at Palm Spring Int’l Film Festival

I’m a serious admirer of the two leads, Adam Bakri, who plays the titular character, a Palestinian youth whose decision to take part in an assassination with two friends seals his fare, and Waleed Zuaiter, an Israeli agent who presses Omar into his service as an informer.

Bakri and Zuaiter did a q & an after last night’s screening.

Bakri, probably 21 or 22, is making his feature film debut with Omar. He’s currently living stateside (either LA or NY). He was wearing a really handsome military-styled dark blue jacket, and so I asked him where he got it. Zara at the Grove, he said, so maybe he’s living here.

From Jay Weissberg‘s Variety review, filed during the 2013 Cannes Film Festival: “As he did with Paradise Now, Abu-Assad refuses to demonize characters for their poor choices. Only too aware of the crushing toll of the Occupation on Palestinians, he shows men (the film is male-centric) making tragic, often self-destructive decisions as a result of an inescapable environment of degradation and violence.

“With Omar he’s finessed the profile, depicting how the weaknesses that make us human, especially love, can lead, in such a place, to acts of betrayal. It’s as if he’s taken thematic elements from Westerns and film noir, using the fight for dignity and an atmosphere of doubt to explain rather than excuse heinous actions. Viewers with a firm moral compass, who see killing as an act always to be condemned, won’t need Omar to tell them what’s right and wrong.”

Ten years ago the Palm Springs Int’l Film Festival was a respected, smartly-programmed venue for foreign films with a few celebrities and photos ops on the side. Now it’s a star-studded, rock-your-paparazzi, award-season megashow with A-class celebs, limos, security goons and guys like me taking pictures and…uhm, oh yeah, right, a smartly-programmed venue for foreign film on the side.

August: Osage County‘s Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep prior to last night’s Palm Springs Film Festival gala award ceremony. I only attended the after-party. Pic is totally stolen from JustJared.com.

Notice how Today correspondent Gael Fashingbauer Cooper stealthily avoided dicey or inflammatory allusions in her 1.4 piece about insensitive people ruining movies for others in theatres due to talking, texting, bringing babies, etc. This is how it’s done if you want to avoid land mines. Old ladies, babies, texters, etc. Those darn rude people!