A vested but very sharp publicist friend who saw Wolf of Wall Street yesterday is wondering also if Leonardo DiCaprio‘s wild-ass performance as Jordan Belfort will necessarily result in a Best Actor Oscar nomination. “For me the movie is off the rails, in a good way — I dug it — but it may be too nuts/druggie for the Academy,” he writes. “And DiCaprio’s performance lacks any type of shading or nuance or subtlety or emotional range — it’s pretty much all gonzo, all the time, and the character is an unredeemable prick. Fun to watch but it may be a challenge for the oldies and women. I think it’s a well-constructed three hours, and Jonah Hill is amazing. The SAG Film Society audience at DGA laughed throughout but applause at end was tepid, even when Dicaprio’s name came up. I know that goes counter to what was reported from the SAG screenings that happened last weekend. I’m also hearing the HFPA was very negative on Wolf — many found it offensive, which means absolutely nothing as they like to have Leo and Scorsese in the room.”

12:15 pm: David O. Russell‘s American Hustle has won the Best Picture award from the New York Film Critics Circle. I wouldn’t have called this — it’s quite a surprise. 12 Years A Slave was obviously a contender but…well, we can guess what happened and why. I can’t wait to hear the backstory. How strong was Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street? How staunch was the resistance to it? A voice is still telling me that Hustle won partly due to an “anything but 12 Years A Slave because it’s too punishing to sit through” sentiment. I don’t know anything, haven’t been told this. Hustle is a very good film. I’m just talking about insect antennae vibrations.

11:29 am: Robert Redford, HE’s personal favorite, has won the NYFCC’s Best Actor award for his performance in All Is Lost. Okay, now he’s rock solid with the Academy. He’s not going to get bumped. An Academy guy told me last night he thinks Wolf of Wall Street‘s Leonardo DiCaprio might not push his way in after all…what?

10:53 am: The generic, across-the-board default choice for Best Actress — Blue Jasmine‘s Cate Blanchett — has prevailed among NYFCC members. Congrats to Cate, and a respectful salute to her (and Woody Allen‘s) decision to perform that third-act scene with unmissable underarm perspiration stains. Earlier: I’m going to lose it if the NYFCC “softie” contingent pushes through a Best Actress won for Philomena‘s Judi Dench.

10:46 am: Twitter outrage about N’yongo snub + white guilt kicks in among New York Film Critics Circle, and the beneficiary is 12 Years A Slave helmer Steve McQueen winning for Best Director. Fine, approved — they got this one right. Obviously this indicates a 12 Years A Slave Best Picture win but…

10:17 am: American Hustle‘s Jennifer Lawrence takes the Best Supporting Actress award. No strong argument against this but I was expecting 12 Years A Slave‘s Lupita N’yongo to win. There is clearly a level of anti-Slave sentiment poking through here. Again — no dispute with Lawrence winning, but the soul and ache and gravitas delivered by N’yongo is undeniable. I for one would have voted and lobbied for her.

This John Curran film, due for release next year, covers roughly the same turf as the forthcoming Reese Witherspoon-Jean Marc Vallee version. Costarring Mia Wasikowska and Adam Driver. I tried to see it at Telluride and…I forget what happened. No excuse.

The latest Wolf of Wall Street complication is that despite the feverish, super-ecstatic, Marty-firing-on-all-cylinders quality, the soft-minded farts are going to go “no, no…too cold, too vulgar…the new Casino…doesn’t make us feel good.” Every year Academy deadwood types pooh-pooh brilliance and vote for the soft consensus alternative. A filmmaker friend saw it Monday evening and posted the following on his Facebook page: “Wolf is everything you’d expected it to be and everything you’d hope it would be. It’s got Tom Wolfe on the brain and Hunter S. Thompson in its veins. You get the sense as you’re watching it that Marty Scorsese has never been happier in his career making a movie. It’s got verve and energy and there isn’t a split second that is not somehow engaging you and daring you. It seems to be the work of a man much younger than the maestro in question.”

In an interview with HitFix/In Contention‘s Kris Tapley, dp Emmanuel Lubezski praises Gravity‘s Alfonso Curaon and To The Wonder‘s Terrence Malick as directors who “don’t use cinematography as an illustration to text,” Lubezki says. “I would say 99 percent of the directors don’t know the value or don’t know the power of visual storytelling,” he explains. “[But] for Alfonso and Terry, cinematography and visuals are not a branch, are not a part of the movie, but are the movie — as important as the actor, as important as the location, as important as the music.”

And yet any honest person who’s kept up with Malick since his return to filmmaking 15 years ago (and who has contemplated the three Malick films shot by Lubezki — The New World, The Tree of Life and Into The Wonder) would have to admit that Malick has all but destroyed his once-potent mystique because he’s placed too much emphasis on the purely visual. He doesn’t give enough consideration to script and dialogue matters, and seems to have more or less abandoned conventional narrative. This plus his now-customary prolonged fiddle-faddling in post-production has fed a growing notion that Malick is a gifted but flaky eccentric — i.e., Mr. Wackadoodle.

If the members of the New York Film Critics Circle have any balls at all (which of course they don’t), they’ll follow the lead of the Gotham Awards and give their Best Film of the Year trophy to Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis, a desaturated, somewhat morose but note-perfect, chiselled-to-perfection masterpiece that people will be savoring 25 or 50 years from now, which is more than you can say for…I don’t want to go there right now.

The NYFCC will convene tomorrow morning at 10 am, and should be finished voting by 1 or 2 pm, I’m guessing.

If the NYFCC doesn’t give their top award to Davis they should at least consider giving it to Spike Jonze‘s Her or Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street. Then again this is a group that gave their Best Picture award two years ago to that minor curio known as The Artist, and in so doing joined hands with the BFCA, SAG and HFPA. The NYFCC used to be a tough outfit with backbone, but they’ve turned mushy in recent years. How did Crocker Jarmon put it? “Gone soft as an old banana.”

The Gothams’ Best Actor and Best Actress awards went to Dallas Buyers’ Club‘s Matthew McConaughey and Short Term 12‘s Brie Larsen. The Best Documentary award went to The Act of Killing….what? The Breakthrough director award was won by Fruitvale Station‘s Ryan Coogler, and Michael B. Jordan, star of Fruitvale, took the Breakthrough Actor award.

If I don’t fall for Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street when I see it this Friday I’ll be flabbergasted, so let’s just assume it’ll have some prominent position among HE’s revised Best Films of 2013 (features and docs, merit alone, in this order, forget award season for now), and probably among the top five: 1. Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave; 2. Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis; 3. Spike Jonze‘s Her; 4. Jean Marc Vallee‘s Dallas Buyer’s Club; 5. J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost; 6. Abdellatif Kechiche‘s Blue Is The Warmest Color; 7. Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity; 8. Asghar Farhadi‘s The Past; 9. Richard Linklater‘s Before Midnight; 10. Noah Baumbach‘s Frances Ha; 11. Morgan Neville‘s 20 Feet From Stardom; 12. Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale Station; 13. Steven Soderbergh‘s Behind The Candelabra; 14. Paul Greengrass‘s Captain Phillips; 15. Jeff Nichols‘ Mud; 16. Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska; 17. Nicole Holfocener‘s Enough Said; 18. Ziad Doueiri‘s The Attack; 19. Destin Daniel Cretton‘s Short Term 12; 20. Shane Carruth‘s Upstream Color; 21. Gabriela Cowperthwaite‘s Blackfish; 22. John Lee Hancock‘s Saving Mr. Banks; 23. Ron Howard‘s Rush; 24. Henry Alex Rubin‘s Disconnect; 25. Greg ‘Freddy’ Camalier‘s Muscle Shoals; 26. Dror Moreh‘s The Gatekeepers.

I was a little bit suspicious of the euphoric SAG reactions to last weekend’s Wolf of Wall Street screenings. The emotional nature of actors makes them easy lays, for one thing, and like most people they tend to deeply appreciate being shown a hot film before anyone else. So to get an idea of how Martin Scorsese‘s film really plays I spoke today to a discriminating New York critic who caught the three-hour-long film at 3 pm Eastern. And guess what? He was seriously impressed (“Really strong…an amazing piece of moviemaking“) and felt the high-octane quality of the performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill, among others, but he had moral-ethical problems with watching a film about “such a scumbag” as Jordan Belfort, the real-life former Wall Street trader whom DiCaprio reportedly brings to flamboyant life.

(l.) Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street; (r.) Ray Liotta as Henry Hill in Goodfellas.

“This guy is worse than Henry Hill,” the critic said, referring to the gangster played by Ray Liotta in Scorsese’s Goodfellas, which the critic says is similar but “more primal” than Wolf of Wall Street. Belfort is “not killing people, but he’s a thief helping to kill people’s dreams.” Is he as bad as Tony Montana?, I asked. He thought about it for eight or ten seconds and said, “He’s in the same ballpark.”

“I not only didn’t care about this guy,” he said. “I was asking myself, why am I watching this guy’s story? And why should I tell people to go see [this film]?.” He described Belfort/DiCaprio as an obnoxious, drug-cranked, completely un-self-aware guy “with no soul, no vision, no wisdom…I was just repelled by him.”

France Ha‘s Greta Gerwig (what’s with the brown hair?), Afternoon Delight‘s Kathryn Hahn and Drinking Buddies‘ Olivia Wilde are the most intriguing conversationalists in this, The Hollywood Reporter‘s first-ever Breakthrough Performers Panel. The others include Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips), Adele Exarchopoulos (Blue Is the Warmest Color) and David Oyelowo (Lee Daniels’ The Butler). THR‘s Scott Feinberg moderated.

I don’t fret or rant or point fingers when a relationship ends. I just say, “Okay, that happened and it was wonderful while it lasted.” Because I’ve been ready for the demise all along. We all know how to read the tea leaves after two or three weeks. The default assumption is that most relationships won’t last more than a few weeks or months. We tell ourselves the latest hook-up might be an X-factor thing that will somehow defy the odds, but we know deep down that probably won’t happen. And that’s cool. Unlike some women I don’t feel a need to rewrite and revise the history of the relationship. Some women definitely do this. All is bliss and serenity when a relationship begins, but when it winds down they have to go into their angry revisionist mode and say “oh, my God, what was I thinking?…I must have been out of my mind to fall for this guy!” and so on. Everything that was good and alpha-smooth has to be re-written as a moment of weakness or blindness or self-delusion. I always turn that around and ask, “So you were dumb or desperate or foolish enough to fall in love six months ago, but you’re a different person now?”

My first reaction to this video was, of course, “Oh, God…look at that.” It happened in the vicinity of 28300 Rye Canyon Loop, Santa Clarita, or more precisely on Hercules Street. The guy shooting the video wants to see the horror (a common instinct) but he doesn’t want to be in the vicinity if the car explodes. Shards from the Porsche Carrera are all over the place. “Whoa, whoa…not too close, bro!….it might explode!…doooood!” Right away the voice tells you this is an under-educated young guy who probably has some lowly job. The bright blue color of their somewhat inexpensive-looking car…forget it, not important.