The Santa Barbara Int’l Film Festival announced today that Wolf of Wall Street director Martin Scorsese and producer-star Leonardo DiCaprio will sit for a q & a on Thursday, February 6th at the huge Arlington Theatre. I may not be able to attend as I’ll probably be leaving on Wednesday, 2.5 for a two-day Grand Budapest Hotel press event in Berlin. I’ll also miss the SBIFF tribute to All Is Lost star Robert Redford on Friday, 2.7. I will, however, be catching the more-than-five-hour version of Lars von Trier‘s Nymphomaniac at the Berlinale (2.6 to 2.16), for which I’ve been press credentialed. If the SBIFF had stuck to their usual schedule of starting right at the tail end of Sundance, they would begin on Thursday, 2.23 and there wouldn’t be any Berlin conflict at all.

A shallow CNN report about the Wolf of Wall Street controversy aired an hour ago. Anchor Jake Tapper mentioned the usual surface-skimming references — Christina McDowell piece in L.A. Weekly, some bloggers “calling on people for boycott the film,” Hope Holiday, Leonardo DiCaprio video praising Belfort, etc. I for one was hugely irked by the “industry perspective” provided by TheWrap‘s Sharon Waxman, who said that Wolf “clearly does not come down in judgment upon Jordan Belfort…at the end of the film he gets off, he’s teaching seminars.” Really, Sharon?

Earth to Waxman, Tapper: Wolf doesn’t “judge” Belfort in the Stanley Kramer sense of that term, but you’d have to be a drooling moron not to perceive where DiCaprio and director Martin Scorsese are coming from. Not once did Waxman mention the drop-dead-obvious fact that the film is a metaphor for flamboyant 1% greed, or that it clearly portrays Belfort and his cronies as arrogant degenerates. Nor did she mention the final shot of the Aucklanders raptly listening to Belfort’s lecture about selling techniques. She just played right along with the report’s “oooh, controversial movie!” theme.

I watch HBO, mainly. Occasionally. Bill Maher, a film now and then. I watched Mad Men on AMC, of course. I watch MSNBC and CNN occasionally, but not that much. I loved watching House of Cards on Netflix. But mainly I watch movies on Bluray and DVD, and I love watching high-def films on Vudu. I naturally want my high-speed Time Warner wifi plus my digital land line. But I’m really not interested in 95% of cable programming. I find it stupid, pandering, soul-sapping. It’s mainly aimed at ADD people with limited education and simplistic attitudes. What I’d like to do is not subscribe to anything (including basic cable) and just pay for the stuff I watch on a piecemeal basis. I’m guessing I would wind up paying a lot less. Time Warner, my provider, is an old-model provider. It’s selling programming I ignore for the most part. The game has to change.

It’s great to hear that unemployed film critic Craig D. Lindsey (cut loose from the Raleigh News & Observer in 2011) has been sent $4 thousand by supporters after lamenting his sorry state on Indiegogo. “There are several things I’ve learned during this whole thing,” Lindsey wrote. “For one, I’ve learned that people aren’t awful. Secondly, while no one wants to be seen as a pitiful charity case, sometimes you need help.” Indeed. I’ve been there. I was in a terrible spot in the mid ’90s and didn’t know what to do. Then a screenwriter pal (Robert Towne if you must know) lent me a grand (which was worth a lot more in ’96) and it got me through the rough patch. I was going to give Lindsey some money myself but then I saw a photo of him. My honest reaction? He might be in dire financial straits, but he doesn’t seem to have cut back on food. Or whatever it is that has led to his bulky appearance.

Craig D. Lindsey

The Producers Guild of America (PGA) announced their feature film and long-form TV nominees about an hour ago, and most of their ten movie noms are right-on. They actually included the brilliant but heavily besieged Wolf of Wall Street! Cojones! But there’s a problem with (a) Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis being blown off and (b) Saving Mr. Banks being included.

Banks is a corporate-fellating, pro-Disney propaganda fantasy piece that maligns the memory of P.L. Travers by mis-portraying her as a clenched and joyless scold. And Davis is a note-perfect, multi-layered (if melancholy) period art film of the absolute highest order.

Why did the PGA wave it off? One theory is that the struggle of a somewhat asshole-ian artist to survive is not exactly a relatable subject. Producers have never been fans of sardonic despair — they believe in go-go-go. Remember, also, that the only producer type in the whole film is F. Murray Abraham‘s Bud Grossman (based on Bob Dylan‘s real-life manager Albert Grossman), a blunt and somewhat chilly-mannered sort. I’m not saying this is the whole magilla, but on some level I suspect that the PGA didn’t vote against Inside Llewyn Davis as much as vote against this sort of characterization, which reiterates the cliche that producers and managers and money men are basically pricks. Okay, “practical-minded businesspersons” who don’t bullshit around, but not exactly radiators of warmth.

You know what I don’t do? Take dismissive “go fry in hell!” shots at other journalists. The out-of-the-blue kind, I mean. Get up, shower, brush your teeth, go to your computer and write “journalist X is a foul scourge and an evil spawn!” If they take shots at me I’ll let them have it with both barrels, but with very, very few exceptions I’ll never go after someone else preemptively, and certainly not judgmentally when it comes to their values or moral philosophy. The worst I’ll do is crticize a viewpoint that I strongly disagree with. The world is cruel and predatory enough without savaging your own. You don’t eviscerate a fellow journo unless they’ve been found guilty of some appalling crime against humanity and even then you need to think it over before hitting “save.” Journalists are grass-eating cows on my my side of the fence. If they behave like p.c. brownshirts or fang-toothed wolverines I’ll get my rifle out and do what I can to cause them pain. But I’ll never draw first blood. Well, hardly ever.

If it was my call, I would have chosen this photo for the Bringing It All Back Home cover rather than the one with Dylan holding the cat (another Inside Llewyn Davis echo?) and the splotchy roulette wheel effect. The woman in red is Sally Grossman, 25 in ’65, now 73 and a former owner of the Woodstock-based Bearsville Studios, an adjunct of Bearvsille Records founded by her late husband, Albert Grossman, who was Dylan’s manager for many years. F. Murray Abraham‘s Bud Grossman, the Chicago-based manager of the Gate of Horn in the Coen brothers film, is based on Grossman, who passed in ’88.

“It was a great year for films, which seems odd given the shrinking film economy. What I think has happened is that the need to event-ize a film has crossed into the area of content and performance. Predictable mainstream drama (watching stars do what you’ve seen them do before, watching familiar plot lines) has been driven into long-form TV drama, which means that for a film to compete theatrically it must be an event. Ergo the glut of megabudget IMAX 3D CGI epics. But the need to event-ize also is affecting story and performance. ‘Stunt’ performances which were once relatively rare (DeNiro in Raging Bull, Cage in Leaving Las Vegas) are becoming a necessary audience hook: emaciated McConaughey, comb-over Bale, silent Redford as well as stunt themes: merciless look at slavery, nonjudgmental view of Wall Street immorality, computer love story. In some ways it is reminiscent of 1929, another great year for films. That year silent films broke boundaries trying to fight off sound. This year they broke boundaries trying to fight off multi-media competition for eyeballs. Every theatrical film has to be an event. I don’t know where this leads, but it’s been great for movies this year.” — from Paul Schrader‘s Facebook page.

The usual seven or eight high-intrigues or must-sees (possibly Calvary, The Voices Inside, White Bird In A Blizzard, A Most Wanted Man, They Came Together, The One I Love) will emerge from Sundance 2014, which begins a couple of weeks hence. And then comes the seven-month slog of winter, spring and summer, during which an occasional pop-through might happen — maybe. The only guaranteed goodie going to Cannes will be Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Birdman. (A list of other likelies will emerge around mid-March, I’m guessing.) Anyone can recite the big-studio releases but which among these are likely to assemble a strong critical following? Okay, Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Inherent Vice, Bennett Miller‘s Foxcatcher, Ridley Scott‘s Exodus, Michael Mann‘s Cyber, Tim Burton‘s Big Eyes, Spike Lee‘s Sweet Blood of Jesus, David Fincher‘s Gone Girl and Christopher Nolan‘s Interstellar. But what else? Things always look hazy at this stage but right now? Honestly? It looks like a middle-range lineup. Which isn’t so bad. As long as it’s not flat.

Possibly Good, Agreeable or Passable 2014 Films (maybe, here’s hoping, bending over backwards, all CG fantasy and superhero crap automatically excluded): George Clooney‘s The Monuments Men, Jose Padilla‘s RoboCop, Akiva Goldsman‘s Winter’s Tale (probably not that good, to judge by the trailer), Paul W.S. Anderson‘s Pompeii (video game crap), Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel, Jason Bateman‘s Bad Words, Joe Carnahan‘s Stretch, Diego Luna‘s Cesar Chávez, Darren Aronofsky‘s Noah, Richard Shephard‘s Dom Hemingway, Ivan Reitman‘s Draft Day (beware-of-Reitman factor), Ted Melfi‘s St. Vincent, Wally Pfister‘s Transcendence, Nick Casavetes‘ The Other Woman, Amma Asanate‘s Belle (mezzo-mezzo?), Nicholas Stoller‘s Neighbors (likely crap), Craig Gillespie‘s Million Dollar Arm, Seth McFarlane‘s A Million Ways to Die in the West, Doug Liman‘s Edge of Tomorrow, Phil Lord and Chris Miller‘s 22 Jump Street, Clint Eastwood‘s Jersey Boys, Matt Reeves‘ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Andy and Lana Wachowski‘s Jupiter Ascending, Luc Besson‘s Lucy (probable crap), Phillip Noyce‘s The Giver, Shawn Levy‘s This Is Where I Leave You, Antoine Fuqua‘s The Equalizer, David Ayer‘s Fury (probable crap) and Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken (adapted by Joel and Ethan Coen).

Eight days ago The Atlantic‘s Tim Wainwright delivered the most arresting and insightful analysis of the Inside Llewyn Davis cat dynamic that I’ve read so far. “The theory that the cat is an extension of Llewyn also helps put the ending of the movie in context. When Llewyn leaves the Gorfeins’ for the second time in the final scenes of the film, he keeps the cat inside. This comes after he’s finally learned its name: Ulysses. By doing so, I think the uncontrollable, unpredictable Llewyn also comes to terms with a part of himself. He has been awoken from the dream that he’s an undiscovered genius, and from the erroneous notion that talent exists in a vacuum — that any of his poor decisions and arrogant assholery wouldn’t somehow limit his success.”

Various articles about negative reactions to The Wolf of Wall Street have been posted by bored entertainment journalists over the last three or four days. This has led to at least one article (by Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson) about why everyone is piling on. The snake is eating its own tail. The more these pieces appear, the more Average Joes are probably saying to each other “gee, negative reaction…maybe we should take a pass?” Once this syndrome starts, there’s no stopping it. Self-perpetuating.

Point #1: It’s probably true that older conservative types, a certain percentage of women and various none-too-brights have a problem with Martin Scorsese‘s film, but it seems inconceivable that viewers with a smidgen of smarts and social perspective wouldn’t be allied with the 75% of Rotten Tomatoes critics who admire it. Point #2: The heart of the afore-mentioned articles is Wolf‘s C grade from Cinemascore respondents. Cinemascore staffers always talk to viewers on opening day/night, and it’s likely that a good percentage of those who saw Wolf on Christmas Day were soft impulse types who went looking for a fun crazy comedy, or because they’re fans of Leonardo DiCaprio or Jonah Hill or whatever. The vast majority of moviegoers don’t read reviews, are under-educated and under-read, and they don’t want to know from metaphors about America’s financial elite. But that’s okay. By the slovenly standards of American culture it’s perfectly acceptable to misinterpret or flat-out miss the point of the best film of the year.