It meant something that Exorcist, French Connection and Sorcerer director William Friedkin hauled himself down to the Vista past his bedtime last night to introduce a midnight showing of Jennifer Kent‘s The Babadook. Friedkin doesn’t know Kent, has no relationship with IFC Midnight, came on his own dime. The Babadook is “one of those restrained, character-driven, less-is-much-more horror films that pop up once in a blue moon — a mix of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby plus Juan Antonio Bayona‘s The Orphanage plus a dab or two of F.W. Murnau‘s Nosferatu,” I wrote five weeks ago. ‘Almost everything in-camera, super-meticulous design, no cheap jolts, no conventional gore to speak of…but scary as hell.”

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.

Less than 90 seconds after the guy dropped off the box I was gobbling one of the chocolates without thinking, like a starved animal. I ate my first Cake cupcake after an 11.23 screening at West Hollywood’s Pacific Design Center.

If I was playing a Roman soldier in a costume flick I wouldn’t want to walk around with sandals and bare calves, or more precisely sandals and leather calf straps like George Clooney is doing in Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Hail, Caesar!, which is now shooting. Exposed calves are fine on the beach or the couch or sitting around an outdoor cafe but in a Roman costume pic they convey vulnerability or weakness if you’re wearing military garb. Bare calves somehow work against that studly Roman general thing that we all want. I for one would demand to wear those leather calf-coverers that Rex Harrison wore in Cleopatra. [Go to jump page.] There’s nothing frail about Clooney’s calves, mind — he obviously doesn’t have Paul Newman legs — but the general look of sandals and leg straps looks too…unfortified? They seem vaguely Greek, which is to say somewhat frolicsome. If I’m not mistaken Sir Laurence Olivier wore leather calf-coverers when he played General Marcus Licinius Crassus in Spartacus (’60).

George Clooney as movie star Baird Whitlock in Hail, Caesar!.

I don’t have any strong arguments against Ramin Setoodeh‘s Variety piece about the apparent likelihood of Boyhood winning the Best Picture Oscar (“12 Reasons ‘Boyhood’ is the Frontrunner for Best Picture“). I would only add another reason why people might want to give Richard Linklater‘s film a double-down vote or, perhaps, vote for a Best Picture contender with a little more sting and snap (Birdman, A Most Violent Year, Gone Girl) or one with a bit more social gravitas (Selma).

That reason is Likely Voter’s Remorse, or the vaguely embarrassed feeling that many Academy members feel today (whether they admit it or not) about having voted for The King’s Speech, The Artist, Chicago or Crash, to name but four. Who out there will admit to being genuinely proud of the Academy’s embrace of these films as Best Picture winners? Just because “it’s a shitty year for the Oscars,” as one Academy member confided to Setoodeh, doesn’t mean that a soft, squishy, not-bad-but-not-great film has to win Best Picture.

Emotional default impulses always age badly, but tough, flinty films only get better with the passing years. Vote accordingly.

No film critic wants to be seen as insensitive or unsympathetic to characters suffering from a disease, especially well-off victims with a restrained and dignified air. And so Still Alice (Sony Pictures Classics, opening today in N.Y. and L.A.), a drama about a brilliant college professor (Julianne Moore) suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, is getting a 71% pass on Metacritic and an 86% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But a few bold fellows have stepped up and called Alice a Lifetime movie — a mediocrity — ennobled by Moore’s touching performance.

We all know this won’t get in the way of Moore’s Best Actress Oscar. She’s due and all that. Plus she doesn’t have a heavy competitor to really worry about. But the reality can’t be waved away. Still Alice is a drag, man. It’s tedious and painful to sit through, and I don’t mean “painful” in an empathizing sense. I mean “oh, shit, I’m stuck here in this seat and I can’t get out until this movie comes to an end.”

But the right guys are standing up and calling a spade a spade, and right now you could almost use the metaphor of a small snowball starting to roll down a steep, snow-covered slope.