If you’re halfway honest with yourself, you’ll admit that what The Guardian‘s Toby Young recently wrote about Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity reflects your views, your friends’ views…everyone’s. Why, then, does the Best Picture race seem (emphasis on that word) to be leaning in Gravity‘s favor? “Technically awesome” alone should never assure Best Picture glory, but in this, one of the all-time banner years for quality-level cinema, orbital verisimilitude seems to be winning the day. “Everything you’ve heard about Gravity is true,” Young wrote in a 2.7 piece about BAFTA nominees. “I actually paid to see it at the cinema in spite of being sent the DVD and it lived up to the hype. It’s mesmerizing, spellbinding, thrilling. A thing of beauty. But I can’t see it winning many of the big awards because, essentially, it’s a popcorn movie. Yes, yes, Sandra Bullock is good in the central role, but she’s not that good and I doubt there’ll be enough feminists among BAFTA’s membership who’ll vote for her because, you know, she’s proved that you can still be a female movie star after the age of 40. Best Director? Too much competition in that category. As for the script…no. It’s rubbish.”

Sunday’s Berlinale schedule involves three films, one press conference and 14 hours. First is a noon press screening of Lars Von Trier‘s Nymphomaniac, Volume One (the skankier 145-minute version). I don’t trust Berlinale organizers to handle the large crowd (not after suffering through that mob scene prior to Wes Anderson‘s film last Thursday) so I’ll be there at 11 am if not before. The comes a Nymphomaniac press conference at 2:45 pm. I’m planning to write between 4 pm and 7 pm (as I’m definitely not interested Pascal Chaumeil‘s A Long Way Down at 6:30 pm) before catching Hossein Amini‘s The Two Faces of January, an adaptation of a 1964 Patricia Highsmith novel, at 8 pm. The final screening will be Benjamin Naishtat‘s History of Fear at 10:30 pm. (It’s now 11:40 pm on Saturday.)

I wondered this morning about the significance of Captain Phillips‘ Christopher Rouse winning the dramatic feature Eddie Award, and/or about American Hustle editors Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers and Alan Baumgarten winning an Eddie for best comedy or musical feature editing. Editing awards are supposed to be significant bellwethers. Does this indicate that Hustle might push aside Gravity and 12 Years A Slave for the Best Picture Oscar? Or that Phillips might be a stronger contender, especially considering that it won the WGA’s Best Adapted Screenplay award last weekend? I don’t know anything. Nobody does. Certain Oscar bloggers (I suppose this includes myself) are leaning toward Gravity winning the Best Picture Oscar at this stage but…who knows? “I wish you was a wishing well so that I could tie a bucket to ya and sink ya.” — James Cagney in William Wellman‘s Public Enemy (1931).

In a curiously undated (but presumably recent) q & a with Wag’s Revue contributor Matt Siegel, Sandra Bernhard rips into the politically correct manic-obsessives who vent on comment threads. I know whereof she speaks, having been taken to task by these ranting mullahs myself. Then again if you’re going to initiate any sort of high-profile conversation or debate you have to accept that flak of this sort will come your way.

The things that I liked and loved about Joe Johnston‘s Captain America (’11), particularly the unabashed retro-vibe patriotism and the amber-lighted 1940s-era production design, are obviously absent in the forthcoming sequel, which looks too bright and flashy and CG-ish in this recently-posted trailer. If a movie features a leather-clad Samuel L. Jackson glaring or scowling in an action context, forget it. If Captain America: The Winter Soldier doesn’t turn out to be jizz-whizz I’ll be hugely surprised.

Here I am at the 2014 Berlinale, all robust and credentialed and ready to go on a Saturday (i.e., the third day of the festival), and I’m not seeing a single film on the public or press schedule that (a) I want to attend or (b) that I’m able to attend due to not having a ticket. If you want to catch a public screening you have to request a ticket the day before, and that means an early wake-up and showing up at Berlinale press headquarters between 8 am and 9 am and getting in line and hoping for the best. If you go there much after 9 am the tickets start to dry up. In other words if you’re a credentialed press person you need to participate in a daily Darwinian struggle to see the films you want to see. I would love to see all the goodies and perhaps a surprise or two but why all the grief? Cannes and Sundance are far more hospitable environments. I’m not sure I’ll want to attend the Berlinale again. Too few screening opportunities, too much work, too many lines. I’m moving out of the Grand Wyndham today and into my Airbnb apartment in Charlottenburg, but my screening options are pretty much zilch.