Last Monday I tapped out a piece called “Brand Name Preferences,” and the next day I wrote some of my journalist pallies looking for responses. The two best responses came from Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson and Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil. But first a portion of my letter to these guys:

“What I wrote on Monday is a description of the essence of what’s wrong if not malignant concerning the Hollywood awards-following community — when faced with a choice between STANDING UP FOR THE REALLY WOWSER EXCEPTIONAL PERFORMANCE THAT DESERVES AWARDS ATTENTION (at least in the early stages between now and, say, late November or better yet December) and hanging back and going “YEAH, OKAY, BUT IT WON’T WIN OR EVEN GET NOMINATED BECAUSE A FEW BRAND-NAME ACTRESSES HAVE A BETTER SHOT”, too many of you guys almost ALWAYS choose the latter. You’re birds sitting on the fence going “caw! caw! caw!”

So if the U.S. Army had adopted a more sympathetic or supportive attitude toward PFC Bradley Manning’s gender identity disorder he wouldn’t have passed along 700,000 secret files, videos and diplomatic cable to Wikileaks? This morning on the Today show Manning’s attorney announced that his client, recently sentenced to 35 years in Fort Leavenworth prison for the biggest breach of classified documents in U.S. history, said on Thursday he is “female” and wants to live as a woman named Chelsea. Before passing along the material did Manning tell Julian Assange, “Look, I need to be straight with you…I’m really not happy over being a man and I want to be a woman, and to be honest if this issue were resolved I probably wouldn’t be giving you this material.” And did Assange say, “I support you, Bradley, in your plan to eventually switch genders, but in all honesty…what the fuck does this have to do with you feeding me classified material? Actually, don’t answer that. Doesn’t matter. I just want the materials…whatever.”

It’s already been determined who dies in Act Three, right? Wait…has it? I have this memory of Morgan Freeman being the most likely but maybe…my God, a thought just hit me. It couldn’t be Douglas, could it? The 60-something bridegroom with the the 32 year-old fiance, and he keels over? One thing’s for sure. A nicely trimmed white beard is cool if you’re Donald Sutherland or Victor Hugo, but scraggly white whiskers make you look like hell, like a derelict.

Last May I visited the Studio Babelsberg set of Brian Percival‘s The Book Thief (20th Century Fox, 11.15). Two sets actually — an outdoor set on the old European street set (which was scheduled to be torn down, I was told) and a sound-stage interior set of the little house that Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson and Sophie Nelisse share. At the time producers Ken Blancato and Karen Rosenfelt told me the film would most likely be released in early 2014, but now it’s slated for November. Things must have turned out well in post, right?

On 8.5 I ran a fast riff on James DiEugenio‘s “Reclaiming Parkland,” which questions the “Oswald did it alone” theology in Vincent Bugliosi‘s “Reclaiming History” and more particularly Parkland (Open Road, 9.20), which uses the Bugliosi book as a basis. It also goes after producers Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman for being overly susceptible to Bugliosi’s research or whatever. I haven’t read “Reclaiming Parkland” but I’ve read a partial summary. DiEugenio is a good writer. He knows his JFK assassination data cold. And he’s tenacious. And convinced he knows what’s what.

Last night some snarky Twitter guy named “Baggy Moon Rock” asked for a Best Picture prediction and for whatever reason I blurted out what I’ve been holding in for fear of getting slapped around by Cynthia Swartz. Unless it sucks or under-performs on some level, American Hustle will take the Best Picture Oscar and David O. Russell will probably win Best Director. Because of the earned-credits payback factor. Academy members are going to say to themselves, “How many times can we turn this guy down? This is the third bulls-eye in a row — The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and now American Hustle. He’s alpha-vibed into this new guy and we can’t tell him ‘sorry’ for a third time straight.” Unless, of course, AH doesn’t quite cut the mustard. In which case all bets are off.

After catching Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska at the Cannes Film Festival, I wrote that Bruce Dern‘s portrayal of the snarly, alcoholic, partly deluded Woody — good as it is — is essentially a supporting performance. It doesn’t matter if it resulted in a Best Actor prize at Cannes. A lead actor shoulders the burden of the story and conveys some kind of meaningful arc, and Woody doesn’t shoulder anything in Nebraska — he is, in fact, the burden. Woody doesn’t man up or chicken out. He doesn’t carry the weight or fail to do so. He is strictly color and consternation and snarl-crackle-pop.

Bruce Dern, Will Forte in Alexander Payne’s Nebraska.

But In Contention‘s Kris Tapley disagrees, and so, he says, does Paramount’s marketing team. They intend to run Dern for Best Actor. Due respect but they should reconsider. Really. I love Dern as a guy to shoot the shit with and I fully admire and respect his Woody performance and I’d really like to see him win. Woody + career achievement award = good vibes all around. But it has to be for Best Supporting Actor. Why make it tough on yourselves? Dern will be a slam-dunk in that category.

Here’s how Tapley and I kicked it around. I also asked Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone to jump in at the last minute:

In my 2.9.13 review of Peter Landesman‘s Parkland script, I wrote that “some of the descriptions of JFK’s wounds and certain procedures followed in the trauma room indicate that Parkland (Open Road, 9.20) will be fairly bloody and graphic here and there. Not for the squeamish unless, of course, editing intercedes.” Apparently editing has interceded because the Parkland trailer is announcing a PG-13 rating. That or the MPAA guys weren’t that riled about gobs of blood and brain matter spilling onto Zac Efron‘s operating table.

In Bennett Miller‘s Foxcatcher (Sony Classics, 12.20), Steve Carell plays chemical heir John du Pont who went to prison for the 1996 murder of former Olympic wrestler David Schultz (Mark Ruffalo). “Carell’s face is changed and his physicality changed,” Miller tells Entertainment Weekly. “If I say I’m going to make a movie about a guy who’s a schizophrenic murderer, there are probably a dozen actors who would immediately appear on anybody’s casting list. And Steve would not be on any of [them]. And that’s a good thing. Because it’s unexpected.”

(l.) Steve Carell as John du Pont in Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher (Sony Classics, 12.20); (r.) the real du Point in 1996 after two-day standoff with police following murder of Olympic gold-medal wrestler Dave Schultz.

For the first time I have an idea of what Ridley Scott‘s The Counselor (20th Century Fox, 10.25) will actually sound and feel like, dialogue- and behavior-wise. The previous trailers have been all moody whirlysmash cut-cut-cut impressionism. Brad Pitt‘s line about how drug dealers “don’t believe in coincidence” was, of course, first spoken by John Vernon in Don Siegel‘s Charley Varrick. What is this, the sixth or seventh trailer we’ve seen for this film?

The American rural right showed its racist colors when Barack Obama began running for president in ’07. Then came the Tea Party, a rural-southern-white movement that was more of a response to the Obama metaphor (multi-culturalism is the new reality, whiteys don’t exclusively run the show any more) than Obama himself. Obama has been in office five years now. Is there anyone who thinks that it’s a “whoa” to talk about the racist under-agenda in this country? Yes — The Butler director Lee Daniels. When CNN’s Piers Morgan asks if he thinks America is a more or less racist country since Obama’s election, Daniels says, “Wow…that’s a powerful question!”

A little while ago Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone mentioned a form of pushback that I’m calling the Perv Retort. If you’re a straight male columnist and you’ve gotten really riled up by the performance of a young and beautiful actress (like Blue Is The Warmest Color‘s Adele Exarchopoulos), it’ll be presumed by the community at large that you’re expressing a form of libidinal arousal and are therefore off-balance to some extent. Therefore your opinion has to be at least partly discounted because you’re probably using one hand to write and the other hand to do something else.

Same thing if you’re a gay male columnist and you’re really taken with a performance by a young male actor or a really good-looking actor in his 30s or 40s, even. It will be widely presumed that your perceptions have been colored by your day-dreaming about this actor in a certain context, and therefore your opinion about his performance being award-worthy goes right into the trash can.