Okay, now the Christmas season has officially begun. Moments and shots like this are the things that matter more than anything else. Which is not to discount the value of chilly New York weather, award-season ads, nonalcoholic beer, crowded bars and stores. This was just taken in Jett’s Crown Heights apartment. Joey is a mid-sized pitbull…great personality, four or five years old, likes to wrestle and chew. Eats anything and everything.

I’m a double Scorpio, Libra rising, and I’ve been getting shit for this all my life. I know all about the pain of prejudice because I’ve been dealing with the same crap ever since I began telling women what my sign is. Every astrology guide says the same thing. “Be wary of the Scorpion’s sting”…eat my ass. “The Scorpio man is not to be trifled with…seems to see the world only in black and white”…give me a break. I’ll go along with “his keen sense of intuition helps him unearth the plain truth of things, and he’s a master at asking questions that are both direct and penetrating” but being relentlessly pigeonholed is an awful, cold, stifling, suppressive thing. Franklin D. Roosevelt learned his humanity when he succumbed to polio. I learned mine when I started getting shit about my sign.

This is T2, for God’s sake. They’re serious? Where is their honor? The yellow school bus doing a one-and-a-half-gainer somersault tells you to forget this film right now. No worries. Instant erasure. Forgotten.

I shouldn’t admit this but I’ve pleaded for God’s help twice in my life. I was scared shitless both times. I felt like a hypocrite but I figured it couldn’t hurt. I told myself I was like Jimmy Stewart when he was trying to land the Spirit of St. Louis at Le Bourget field in Paris…”Oh, God, help me.” The first time was in ’78 or thereabouts, when I was truly frightened about my ability to survive as a freelance journalist in the rough-and-tumble, suffer-no-fools environment of New York City. The second was in the summer of ’05, when I was seriously concerned that Hollywood Elsewhere’s meager revenues might not be enough to survive on. I actually went to a Catholic church on Montrose Avenue in Brooklyn (i.e., St. Mary’s) and prayed. I guess my prayers were answered because I was doing okay a year later. If I ever get in trouble again I’ll probably get all penitent and go there again. Spiritually speaking I’m a Hindu — I feel much closer to the Bhagavad Gita than the Bible.

TheWrap critic Inkoo Kang‘s vicious slam of Mike Binder‘s Black or White is another one of those “this movie doesn’t say the right things about race so it needs to be shit-canned” reviews. Don’t kid yourself — the politically-correct liberal culture of the last few years (particularly the Hollywood branch) is not some mildly positive, up-with-people thing. It’s about Stalinist repression of anyone or anything that steps out of line. In any event TheWrap editor Sharon Waxman disagrees with Kang, the evidence being that she posted her own piece about it (“Black or White and What We Mean When We Talk About Race”) yesterday afternoon.

The recent decision of the Academy’s documentary committee not to shortlist Gabe Polsky‘s Red Army is the biggest WTF of the award season thus far. Everyone with a semblance of taste (myself included) has been praising this soulful heartland doc since last May’s Cannes Film Festival. Why didn’t it make the cut? Last night Sony Pictures Classic’s Tom Bernard pointed the finger at Academy dinosaurs who harbor negative Kennedy-era feelings about the Russians, and who probably don’t have clue #1 who or what Pussy Riot is.

“It’s a sign of some really old people in the documentary area of the Academy,” Bernard said during a distribution panel at the Whistler Film Festival. The doc branch, he said, includes “a lot of people who are really up in their years.”

Once again a critics group has championed an under-promoted Weinstein Co. film. Last Monday a James Gray cabal within the New York Film Critics Circle championed Marion Cotillard‘s performances in the Weinstein Co.’s all-but-ignored The Immigrant (as well as her fine work in Two Days, One Night), and yesterday the Boston Online Film Critics Association (BOFCA) named Snowpiercer, which the Weinstein Co. hasn’t been pushing much either, as Best Picture. They also honored Tilda Swinton‘s Snowpiercer performance (which 90% of Academy fogies have never offing heard of, much less seen) as their Best Supporting Actress pick.

The great Tilda Swinton in Snowpiercer — a delicious supporting performance all-but-guaranteed to be blown off by aging Academy farts.

HE loves spirited eccentricity in handing out year-end awards, and BOFCA has certainly offered a taste of that. Along with some perfectly sensible calls like choosing Birdman‘s Alejandro G. Inarritu as Best Director. And Calvary‘s Brendan Gleeson as Best Actor. And Two Days, One Night‘s Cotillard as Best Actress (this plus NYFCC makes two). And Birdman‘s great Edward Norton as Best Supporting Actor. And heralding Birdman‘s Emmanuel Lubezki for Best Cinematography. And naming Jennifer Kent‘s The Babadook as one of the ten best of the year. And honoring James Herbert & Laura Jennings for their editing on Edge of Tomorrow.