Yeah, Nelson Mandela, man….trending! Some FinkeObit tweets resulted. I’ve pasted three on the jump.

N.Y. Times “Carpetbagger” columnist Melena Ryzik is a sharp operator and a first-rate journalist. And every year she earns the column’s reputation by stepping into award-season coverage late in the game…fine. But for whatever reason I felt more than slightly irritated by her 12.4 post called “Eyes On the Prize: Oscar Season Preview.” Hardcore awards-tracking watchers and handicappers like myself and Sasha Stone and Scott Feinberg have been riding the rails for over seven months now (i.e., since the 2013 Cannes Film Festival) and humping it extra-hard since Telluride, Venice and Toronto (or for the last 13 weeks), and then Melena comes breezing into the room with her video crew and writes, “The Oscars are not until March but the jockeying for position has already begun.” Early December is “already”? If you count Cannes the jockeying for position has been going on since last spring or certainly since Labor Day, and Melena knows that. And yet she’s….what, dumbing her coverage down because she has to keep it brief and simple because the typical N.Y. Times reader doesn’t want award-season coverage to sound too complex?

“I don’t look at the whole Oscar thing at all. I don’t know what campaigning means. I’m not here campaigning. I’m not on the road to campaign. I’m on the road to get people to see the movie. Because we’re kind of the little engine that could, if you would.” — Nebraska‘s Bruce Dern to HuffPost‘s Ricky Camilleri. Mr. Dern knows exactly what campaigning means and how the game works, trust me.

For any of us to discover or develop even a portion of the cojones, character and conviction that Nelson Mandela showed throughout his life…by any yardstick that would represent a kind of fulfillment or spiritual completion that would any of us would be proud of and grateful for. I had my Nelson Mandela moment 23 and 1/2 years ago at the L.A. Colisseum. Me, my ex and the two kids (aged 2 and 8 months) sitting on the concrete stands, gazing at the bandstand about a quarter-mile away, speeches and more speeches, singers and celebrities and hip-hop groups, etc.

I saw August: Osage Country for the second time last night, and it played a little better than when I caught it in Toronto about three months ago. Meryl Streep‘s performance as Violet Weston seemed funnier, flintier, a bit sadder. There’s a portion of the fabled dinner scene in which Chris Cooper‘s character offers a rambling and digressive grace, meandering to little if any effect, and Streep’s exasperated expressions are flat-out hilarious. I actually laughed out loud, which is more than I did during the Toronto screening, probably due to festival fatigue. Here’s a taste of this scene via an Entertainment Weekly exclusive video.

I don’t know who Cubeyou.com is but they’ve offered “new consumer research comparing fans of the Hunger Games, Thor and The Hobbit.” One tidbit is that 67 % of Hunger Games fans are under 21 and female (no shit?), and are also “hardcore gamers and basketball fans.” Another is that Hobbit fans are “socially conscious, [and attuned] to documentaries and news.” Another is that Thor fans are into “fine art as well as action movies.”

I need to re-process this: “Thor fans are into fine art as well as action movies”? What kind of fine art would that be exactly?

My favorite part: “All of these movie fans are predominantly empathetic and loyal as ISFJ personality types (i.e., Introverted Sensing with Extraverted Feeling), as measured using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).”

If I were drinking and into hitting the clubs, I would probably use this line. “Yeah, I’m one of those ISFJ guys, more or less. I’m sensitive but large of spirit. I have multitudinous realms living inside me.” Unless, of course, the woman is a hardcore gamer and basketball fan. In which case my interest levels would plummet if not evaporate altogether.

12 Years A Slave “is in no trouble at all,” declares Grantland‘s Mark Harris. “At this moment, I would still call it the favorite for Best Picture and Best Director.” Okay. That’s not what I hear but…you know, great. No one wants Slave to win Best Picture more than me. It’s a humanist masterpiece. But I keep hearing it’s definitely in trouble, that it can’t win Best Picture. Respect but no love. Sorry. I hope everyone except Mark Harris is wrong.

I got a call earlier today from a smart movie guy, and he knows this phantom-like Oscar oddsmaker…a kind of consultant who sees everything and talks to a lot of Academy members and probably wears pricey suits but who shuns the spotlight and doesn’t give his phone number out. The guy funnels his information to…you tell me, maybe exhibitors or gambling operations or whomever. The point is that my movie pal says this guy, whom he’s known for years, has been “Nate Silver-like” and even “spookily accurate” in predicting Oscar winners. And this fucking guy (i.e., the phantom) is saying, believe it or not, that Saving Mr. Banks is going to take the Best Picture Oscar and that Emma Thompson, portrayer of P.L. Travers, is going to win for Best Actress.

Aarrrgghhhh!

I asked if I could speak to this guy and so my friend made the call right away, but the guy hasn’t responded so far. I laughed loudly and feigned shock when he dropped the bomb. “It’s the Driving Miss Daisy syndrome!,” I groaned. “Daisy, The King’s Speech, Argo…always the least offensive, most mild-mannered film with a poignant little emotional tug and the least amount of baggage. Plus it’s Hollywood factory-friendly. The sugarcoat syndrome wins out in the end and the artist goes home in frustration and the movie is a hit.”

I don’t skim lists of just-announced Sundance films and go “okay, here are highlights and here are a couple of apparent themes this year” and blah blah blah blah blah blah. Well, okay, I do skim lists of just-announced Sundance films and then go “okay, here are highlights and here are a couple of apparent themes this year” but I don’t do it right away. I like to think about it for a day or so. The easiest thing is to go from title to title and make snap judgments about which ones I won’t see because they sound repellent or awful or tedious or too Sundance-y, but that’s a little sloppy and haphazard. What I like to do is call two or three buyers and ask if they’ve heard anything. All I know is that I’ve got a place to stay all locked down and that I bought my ticket earlier today.

I’ve received a lot more than just these, of course. These are just the recognizable titles. Still looking for Inside Llewyn Davis and Wolf of Wall Street screeners. What I really want is a Bluray of the XXX-rated, four-hour or five-hour version of Wolf — that would be a real blast of whipped cream on the shortcake.

To the surprise of at least some in the awards-handicap racket, the National Board of Review has handed its Best Film award to Spike Jonze‘s delicate and affecting Her, and awarded Jonze as Best Director. This is a very welcome thing as Her has so far been simmering at best among the Guru-roovies and the Gold Derby-ites. I’ve never felt such rapport with or respect for the National Board of Review as I do right now. Give me a few days and I’ll revert to my default position of not thinking much of this group, but for now they’re very cool.

Spike Jonze‘s Her, trust me, is one of the two great love stories of 2013, the other being Blue Is The Warmest Color.