6:02 pm:  Listening to post–screening cast discussion of Silence. Everyone knows LAFCA chose Moonlight, Barry Jenkins and Isabelle Huppert for Best Picture, Director and Actress.  Full respect, hats off, good work, no fishnets.

1:48 PM: Insisting on eccentricity, LAFCA members have named Paterson‘s Adam Driver as their Best Actor choice over the runner-up, Manchester By The Sea‘s Casey Affleck. LAFCA, trust me, is just looking to attract attention. Don’t misunderstand — Driver delivers a gentle, honestly spiritual vibe as a mild-mannered, bus-driver poet in Jim Jarmusch‘s much-admired film. There’s nothing slight about his accomplishment. But it’s nowhere near as shattering or dig-down or bi-layered as Affleck’s performance, not to mention Denzel Washington‘s Fences‘ performance as a bitter father. LAFCA is totally image-obsessed — these choices are all about promoting themselves, their brand, their contrarianism.

1:25 pm: There’s a report that a team of men in white coats carrying large fishnets are heading out to the private home where the Los Angeles Film Critics Association is currently assembled and voting.

1:16 pm: This is getting more and more laughable. LAFCA has awarded its Best Screenplay award to The Lobster, penned by Efthymis Filippou and Yorgos Lanthimos. HE to LAFCA: It wasn’t just my impression that The Lobster withers and dies around the 75-minute mark — a lot of Cannes viewers held the same view. Do you think the screenplay might have had something to do with this? Flip us off, LAFCA! Throw your heads back and shriek with laughter as you (a) revel in contrarianism while (b) giving the finger to the keepers of the reasonable flame (i.e., the Gold Derby/Gurus gang).

12:08 pm: Raoul Peck‘s I Am Not Your Negro, a intelligent recap of the life of the legendary James Baldwin, is a fine if somewhat rote-feeling documentary. But it can’t hold a candle to Ezra Edelman‘s O.J. Made In America. The LAFCA perversity continues unabated. And…it’s lunch time!

Pickles, potato chips, mozarrella, potato salad, roast beef and white wine — terrific. Get yourself a little buzz-on, guys.

11:54 am: Certain Women‘s Lily Gladstone, who has generated zero buzz among the Gold Derby and Gurus of Gold critics & blogaroos, has won LAFCA’s Best Supporting Actress award. C’mon! This settles it — LAFCA is on a total contrarian p.c. jag. They’re just being different to be different. Yes, I was aware that Gladstone was generating a persistent emotional undercurrent as she stared longingly and obsessively at her object of desire, Kristen Stewart. Yes, I felt all that. And yes, she does a good job taking care of the horses. LAFCA can discount Fences‘ Viola Davis over a conviction that she’s really playing a lead, but choosing Gladstone over Manchester‘s Michelle Williams is nothing short of perverse. This is just a nyah-nyah game to them, led by the Jen Yamato crowd, LAFCA is flipping us off. The word has gone out betweens bites of lox and bagels — if it’s a Manchester nom, it’s a no-go.

11:38 am: LAFCA’s Best Editing award goes to Ezra Edelman‘s O.J.: Made in America; runner-up tally earned by La La Land.

11:29 am: LAFCA’s Best Production Design winner is Ryu Seong-hee‘s work on The Handmaiden. It’s getting close to noon, guys. How many different kinds of cream cheese are being served, or are we just sticking to generic Philadelphia brand? Matt Neglia tweet: “LAFCA reeeeaaalllyyy likes La La Land, Moonlight & Silence.”

11:14 am: LAFCA, totally kowtowing to p.c. consensus, hands Best Supporting Actor award to Moonlight‘s Mahershala Ali, who gives a fine and memorable (if less than magnetic) performance. This is because he taught “Little” to swim in the ocean, right? Already things are feeling too Moonlight-y, too foo-foo. Silence‘s Issey (also spelled “Issei”) Ogata was voted first runner-up.

Earlier: Does LAFCA want to be brave and historic in its choice of Best Supporting Actor? Ralph Fiennes for A Bigger Splash. Manchester‘s Lucas Hedges, Fiennes’ only strong competition, would be my choice. The go-along pick would be Moonlight‘s Mahershala Ali, who projects a kindly vibe but has too little screen time (he’s gone after Act One).

10:53 am: Justin Hurwitz‘s La La Land score wins LAFCA’s Best Music award; Mica Levi‘s striking Jackie score is runner-up.

10:43 am update: LAFCA hands Best Cinematography award to Moonlight‘s James Laxton with La La Land and Silence as first and second runner-ups. This obviously indicates that Moonlight could take Best Picture. That or Barry Jenkins for Best Director. Or both. 10:40 am: Between LAFCA’s tortoise-like efficiency (took them 40 minutes to decide cinematography award) and the 30-minute brunch break, will they finish voting before I have to leave for the 3 pm Silence screening in Westwood?

Down to it: If LAFCA doesn’t give its Best Actress award to La La Land‘s Emma Stone (who gave far and away the most openly pained and affecting performance), the question will be “what non-industry group, if any, will give it up for her?” But honestly? If they give the prize to Elle‘s Isabelle Huppert, HE will approve. Within that Verhoevian realm, the red-haired mouse killed it.

Wait…Certain Women‘s Lily Gladstone as a dark horse contender for Best Supporting Actress? She (a) took care of the horses and (b) stared longingly and obsessively at Kristen Stewart without saying boo. She left a memorable impression, agreed, but let’s not get carried away.

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) is the only prestigious film critic group that brazenly, even proudly interrupts its voting process halfway through so the members can chow down on bagels, scrambled eggs and whatnot. Other groups, mindful that people like myself are waiting with bated breath to report their winners, get down to business and do the job. If past procedure is any guide, LAFCA will cast a few votes this morning (starting around 10 am Pacific) until someone says “bagel and cappuccino time!” and the process stops in its tracks for 30 or 40 minutes. I know that guys like Daily News critic Bob Strauss derive great pleasure from goading blogaroos with this delay, but it’s a solemn duty, I feel, to hold LAFCA’s feet to the fire on this issue.

LAFCA members chowing down during 2015 voting — will someone please send me a photo or two of this year’s mid-vote food binge?

Late Saturday afternoon I attended a 90-minute American Cinematheque chat between director Martin Scorsese and producer Irwin Winkler, who teamed on New York, New York (’77), Raging Bull (’80), Goodfellas (’90), The Wolf of Wall Street (’13) and the soon-to-be-released Silence. The moderator was Jim Hemphill (knew his stuff, kept the ball in the air). Towards the end the trio was joined by Silence costars Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver and Issei Ogata (“Izzy” to his American friends) along with producer Emma Tillinger Koskoff. Silence screens for journos and industry types tomorrow afternoon (Sunday, 12.4) at 3 pm.

Jim Hemphill, producer Irwin Winkler, director Martin Scorsese — Saturday, 12.2, Hollywood’s Egyptian theatre,

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In raw form, this morning’s Oscar Poker chat, during which Sasha Stone and I discussed the usual range of topics, ran over an hour. I have to attend a 4:30 pm Martin Scorsese-Irwin Winkler thing at the Egyptian so I haven’t time to listen to Sasha’s edit, but it was one of our better chats. Not just Oscar spitballing but “where is it all heading?” stuff. Here’s the raw version.

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Yesterday Daily Beast contributor Lewis Beale reminded that a Donald Trump-like demagogue and presidential candidate was imagined by revered 20th Century novelist Sinclair Lewis in a 1935 novel called “It Can’t Happen Here.” Lewis’s cautionary tale about a hate-monger and resentment-exploiter named Berzelius Windrip, who mouths Trumpisms chapter and verse, recently became Amazon’s number one bestseller in the Classic American Literature category.

Beale’s opening paragraph: “It’s an election year, in a time of economic uncertainty. Running for president is a ranting populist type who has a bestselling book that is part biography, and part shameless boasting. He promises to ‘make America a proud, rich land again,’ rails against blacks, Jews, and Mexicans, and makes it a point of criticizing the press, whose editors he accuses of ‘plotting how they can put over their lies, and advance their own positions.'”

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Up until the 1:41 mark this is one of the most affecting, perfectly assembled high-school relationship shorts I’ve seen in a long time. A terrible shock happens at the 1:38 or 1:39 mark, and it hangs in the air until 1:41. But at 1:42 until the finish it suddenly becomes a PSA spot about how school violence can be prevented. Which is obviously an important message, but before 1:41 the piece is operating on a more intriguing and sophisticated level.

Once a year I’ll say something nervy or cutting on Twitter in the wrong way, and for a few hours and sometimes for as long as a day or two the Twitter dogs decide that I’m a howling, salivating, razor-clawed Beelzebub — a voice and a mentality so monstrously evil that I need to be bitten and bloodied and ripped to pieces. That or someone who needs to immediately slit his throat or drown himself or jump off a ten-story building at 3 am so as to not hurt any passing pedestrians. Make no mistake: Twitter is an evil, stinking place — an outlet for the acidic, festering rage that is churning inside millions and is probably getting worse as we speak. I’m not going to dignify yesterday’s disgusting conflict by explaining my side of the matter in three or four paragraphs, but here’s a verbal explanation that I shared with Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone this morning during a podcast recording.

A 12.2 Elle article about a three-year-old confession by Last Tango in Paris director Bernardo Bertolucci ignited a firestorm yesterday. Written by Mattie Kahn and posted on 12.2, it contained Bertolucci’s admission that during filming he and Tango star Marlon Brando, 48, decided to cruelly surprise costar Maria Schneider, 19, with the famous anal rape scene — no preparation, here we go, wham.

The article was based on a 2013 televised interview with Bertolucci that was somehow ignored or overlooked before the Elle piece. A regretful Bertolucci said that he wanted Schneider to react “as a girl, not as an actress.” Schneider, who died of cancer in 2011, was naturally shocked, humiliated, appalled.

But right away an impression began to spread yesterday that Schneider might have been literally raped by Brando with Bertolucci egging him on. That’s not what happened, but once Twitter gets hold of a story or an event, the wildfire spreads.

Last night Jessica Chastain tweeted the following: “To all the people [who] love this film, you’re watching a 19 yr. old get raped by a 48 yr. old man. The director planned her attack. I feel sick.” This inspired Octavia Spencer to tweet the following this morning: “This is BEYOND disturbing. Rape!!!! So, in the director’s mind order for an actor to play a killer does he actually need to kill? Yikes!”

This morning Variety‘s Seth Kelley, summarizing the Elle piece, wrote that Bertolucci had confessed that he and Marlon Brando “conspired against actress Maria Schneider during a rape scene in which the actor used a stick of butter as lubricant.” That wording half-suggests that the rape scene might have been real. Which it wasn’t — it was total simulation. Obviously a cruel strategy on Brando and Berlolucci’s part, but the scene in question was still about pretending.

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Best Actress contender Isabelle Huppert has changed the chemistry of the race by recently nabbing trophies from the Gotham Awards and New York Film Critics Circle. Now the question is when presumed La La Land front-runner Emma Stone will actually win something from a major critics group. LAFCA, Boston, National Society of Film Critics, BFCA…anyone? I’m presuming that Jackie‘s Natalie Portman has the #2 slot on the strength of her fine performance plus the fact that she and director Pablo Larrain have been making the rounds like ribboned showhorses. Besides her 20th Century Women performance being regarded as her best since The Kids Are All Right, Annette Bening‘s advantage is that she’s been collecting acting nominations since 1990 (Valmont, The Grifters, The American President, American Beauty, Open Range, Being Julia, et. al.). You could definitely argue that “she’s due.”

“If you fear I’m going to make a speech about what we’ve all been going through in politics the last few weeks, my three-word speech is ‘don’t start me!‘ Don’t worry, I’ve got some notes here as I [may] get thrown a curve by myself.” So began Warren Beatty‘s acceptance speech at last night’s Kirk Douglas Award ceremony at the Bacara Resort in Goleta. You know what? We’ve all sat through a thousand award ceremonies, and we all know the drill. And I suspect we’d all like to see something different or even electrifying happen at one of these things, just once.

I for one wish Beatty had thrown caution to the winds and stood up like Jay Bulworth and let rip about the coming Trump catastrophe. This is a longtime tax-and-spend liberal who’s been around since the JFK era and who knows (or has known) almost every big-time politician of consequence in the country, and has been entwined in the American political realm for 50-odd years, and in this, one of the most catastrophic moments in the nation’s history, he decides that it wouldn’t be appropriate to vent some of his concerns, at least for a minute or two?

Beatty could have said anything he damn well pleased and the crowd would have lapped it up and Kris Tapley and Scott Feinberg would have relayed his remarks to the world, and yet he chose to rely on the old gracious-and-humble-and-very-moved routine that a thousand previous award recipients have defaulted to. What does he have to be cautious about? Nothing. But he went marshmallow all the same.

I know who Beatty is and what he feels, but he won’t blurt it out when the mike is on. The man has become brilliant at stepping up to the plate and saying as little as possible at such occasions. I wasn’t there but I was obviously sent the video, and I found his remarks boring as shit.

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In a just-posted article, Toronto Star film critic Peter Howell discusses the gap between popular movies and award-worthy fare, which is more pronounced this year than usual. “We’ve [all] become accustomed in recent years to films that appeal to both art house and multiplex audiences landing on the critical radar for likely Best Picture nominees at the Academy Awards,” he writes. “By this time last year, The Martian and Mad Max: Fury Road had leapt the art vs. mainstream gap, with The Revenant close behind them. All three were eventual Best Picture nominees.

“But that’s not happening in 2016 — not yet, at least.”

MCN’s David Poland agrees with Howell, and so does Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone. “If you ask [non-industry] people, most won’t have seen or even heard of the films that are up for the awards,” Stone observes. “The critics and the Academy tend not to think about whether the public likes the movie or not. But if you flash back to 2000, that mattered a lot. Films were awarded because they were well reviewed and well liked. Now it really doesn’t seem to be a requirement, which I guess is good and bad.”

The reason that the good, award-level stuff isn’t selling as many tickets as CG fantasy crap is partly traditional — Joe and Jane Schmoe have never been much for complexity or subtlety or social undertow. They just want a good ride, a few laughs. But it’s also due to the fact that with the rise of social media distraction and everything happening much faster, audiences are devolving more and more into the ADD realm. They want whiplash immediacy and intense stimulation and sweep-away dynamics, and in large part have simply become too coarsened to pay attention to films that require a little patience.

On 11.25 I posted a list of 26 excellent to very good films that have come out in 2016, and a lot of them haven’t made tons of money. (A few have yet to open.) But they’re not foo-foo films either — Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester By The Sea, Damien Chazelle‘s La La Land, Denzel Washington‘s Fences, David Mackenzie‘s Hell or High Water, Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash, Ezra Edelman‘s O.J.: Made in America, Paul Verhoeven‘s Elle, Peter Berg‘s Patriot’s Day, Robert Eggers‘ The Witch, Gavin Hood‘s Eye in the Sky, etc.

If general audiences wind up shunning or under-supporting some of these, it’s absolutely not the fault of the filmmakers. It’s because many are simply too thick and distracted to settle in, much less buy a ticket in the first place.

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