To hear it from Deadline‘s Pete Hammond and In Contention‘s Kris Tapley, Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street (which was screened three times yesterday at 10 am, 12:30 pm and 6:30 pm) is a double-definite Best Picture contender — uncorked, operatic, bacchanalian, Goodfellas-like, flagrantly and very accurately un-p.c. in its depiction of how financial finagler Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his homies enjoyed women, and basically an adrenalized bitch of a toboggan ride. It’s qualudian madness, giddy euphoria, high-wire unicycle daredevilry…and then the Feds and the fall. Is it really a “comedy”? Yes, apparently — the diseased, dark and unzipped-pants kind. But at the same time no more of a comedy than Goodfellas was so you tell me.

It would seem, also, that DiCaprio and Jonah Hill are cast-iron locks for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor noms, respectively. Which means that one of the five current Best Actor favorites is going to get bumped. Two or three weeks ago I would have said the bumpee would be Nebraska‘s Bruce Dern but his campaign has been too brilliant (“Vote for where I am now as a 77 year-old actor experiencing a major resurgence first, and…uhhm, vote for my performance also”) to deny. So my spitball presumption is that the Best Actor bumpee will be Captain Phillips‘ Tom Hanks. The Phillips acclaim will now transfer down to his already likely shot of a Best Supporting Actor nom for his Walt Disney performance in Saving Mr. Banks.

Director Wayne Kramer also replied in the early morning to my message about Paul Walker‘s sad passing. He referred me to his Facebook tribute:

“It’s truly been a devastating day for Paul Walker’s family, his friends and his fans all over the world. I still haven’t begun to process it. It doesn’t seem real.

“I had the great privilege to work with Paul twice, most recently last year on a little seen film called Pawn Shop Chronicles (which came and went) and in 2004 on a film I hold closest to my heart, Running Scared (’06). A filmmaker could not ask for a better or more supportive collaborator than Paul. So many people who knew him will talk about what a great human being he was, and they would be right — everybody who met him instantly loved him — but I want to talk about what a great actor he was.

Last night I asked director Rob Cohen (’01’s The Fast and The Furious) if he felt like sharing about the death of Paul Walker, who had co-starred in TFatF as well as Cohen’s The Skulls (’00). His reply was there when I awoke this morning:

“I’m still in shock and hurting. Paul was a beautiful man inside and out. We were both in Maui for Y2K and ran into each other. We had done The Skulls together and formed a deep connection. He used to call me his ‘Movie Dad.’ He introduced me to surfing for which I’ll always be grateful. The ocean was the core of him, and his beauty and harmony came from that connection.

Vin Disel, Paul Walker in Rob Cohen’s The Fast and the Furious (’01).

In the wake of tonight’s announcement that Fast and the Furious costar Paul Walker was killed this afternoon in a car crash in Valencia, I tried to get in touch with Wayne Kramer and Rob Cohen, two directors I know slightly who directed Walker in the two critically respectable films he made over his nearly 30-year career as an actor. But the email addresses and phone numbers I have for both are out of date. It’s been a few years since I’ve spoken to them. Sympathy and condolences, gentlemen, if you’re reading this. Obviously a terrible thing to handle.

(l.) The late Paul Walker; (r.) the late Roger Rodas.

Photo of Rodas’s destroyed and burned Porsche Carrera, initially posted by Perez Hilton.

Kramer directed, wrote and produced Running Scared (’06), which Walker was the sole star of and which was probably his best-ever film. Cohen directed the original The Fast and the Furious (’01), which seemed to “recapture that old Sam Arkoff-ian, American International Pictures B-movie vibe,” I wrote in my Reel.com column.

Some friend of Hitfix‘s Kris Tapley got him into a SAG screening (presumably today) of Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street, and he doesn’t even hint about whether he was dumbstruck, delighted, pleased, mezzo-mezzo’ed or underwhelmed? Not even a whiff of a hint at what his scholastic or numerical grade might be? C’mon, Kris…give that shit up. All he’s saying is “big pop for Jonah Hill“…duhh, kinda knew that! And “standing O for Leonardo DiCaprio (naturally).” I’m very disappointed. If I’d been the lucky one I would have divulged more than this, you bet.

During a 1995 CSPAN2 interview for his book, Oswald’s Tale, the late Norman Mailer said the following about the culture of Minsk, the Russian city where Lee Harvey Oswald lived for a couple of years: “If you were an intellectual, doctor, professor, manicurist…everyone lives in the same level [in Minsk]. I lived in a relatively ordinary apartment house. The difference in Minsk, is that if you were an intellectual or a doctor or scientist, you lived no better than a worker and perhaps in some cases not quite as well as a worker, but what you did have, you had your superiority. You had your essential class superiority, which is that you were cultured and they were not. You had this incredible snobbery, this incredible class system. People had to find a vein of social superiority, no matter how.”

If there’s one thing I’m 100% dead certain of, it’s that I will never, ever watch even a snippet of any Asian-produced or Asian-set film involving the brandishing of swords. Ever. Even watching this trailer for Criterion’s Zatoichi collection puts me off. I’m saying this as an owner of an authentic, razor-sharp samurai sword, which I keep in my living room for worst-case protection. I hated Blind Fury (’89) also. I’m not even sure I could sit through Sydney Pollack‘s The Yakuza again.

As crude and simplistic as this seems at first (dreadful title design, cheap-ass music), I honestly felt more engaged by this short than by Jonathan Glazer‘s Under The Skin, which comes from a somewhat similar place (i.e., an alien life form dabbling in human sexuality). It works because of two elements. One, the sharp knocking on the door with no one found in the hallway. And two, the lights flashing off and on about halfway through. Even the shit-level FX at the end isn’t that much of a hindrance.

“13th of July, 4:50 pm. I’m sorry. I know that means little at this point. But I am. I tried. I think you could all agree that I tried. To be true. To be strong. To be kind. To love. To be right. But I wasn’t And I know you knew this, in each of your ways. And I am sorry. All is lost here, except for soul and body. That is, what’s left of them. And a half day’s rations. It’s inexcusable, really. I know that now. How it could have taken that long to admit that, I’m not sure. But it did. I fought to the end. I am not sure what that is worth, but know that I did. I have always hoped for more for you all. I will miss you. I’m sorry.” — Spoken by Robert Redford at the very beginning of All Is Lost. Roughly 90 seconds. Approximately 130 words. (Dialogue recorded from screener, which arrived yesterday.)

“The general consensus among pundits, with which I agree, is that American Hustle is immensely entertaining, features terrific performances across the board (led by supporting actress Jennifer Lawrence, who steals every scene in which she appears) and should score a bunch of Oscar and Globe noms, but is ultimately a light caper — sort of a higher-brow Oceans 11 — and may lack the gravitas necessary to pull off any major wins.” — from 11.27 posting from Hollywood Reporter award-season analyst Scott Feinberg.

Amy Adams, Christian Bale in David O. Russell’s American Hustle.

I caught David O. Russell‘s American Hustle last night inside DGA theatre #1, and I guess my reaction had something to do with the positive but somewhat tempered responses to last Sunday’s first-time-anywhere screening for a few L.A. bloggers. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would, given the reaction from Hitfix‘s Kris Tapley. It may lack Best Picture gravitas, but it doesn’t lack for tingling texture or intrigue or exceptional flavor. I decided to tap out a letter to Russell directly this morning, and here’s some of what I said:

“David — The initial reactions to American Hustle were within the usual prism of ‘how award-friendly is it?’ I don’t give a shit about that calibration any more, but the person whom I asked last Monday morning ‘what is this film about?’ said ‘I honestly don’t know.’ And I said “you don’t know?” You saw the movie and you don’t know what it’s about?

“As you said last night during the q & a, American Hustle is obviously about (a) we all play roles and (b) who are we really, and who do we want to be? This is also a movie in love with the occasional sweep and elevation of cinematic pizazz…when music and emotion and camera-ecstasy just fuse and click together in the right mood-trip way, like that moment you described at the end of Mad Men‘s 2012 season when Don Draper walks off the commercial set to the strains of ‘You Only Live Twice.’ Your movie has at least four or five moments like this. Okay, three or four.

I don’t get to see Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street until Friday, December 6th, but the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will have a looksee the day after tomorrow (Sunday, 12.1) and the New York Film Critics Circle, I’m informed, will see it a day later (Monday, 12.2). Presumably the National Board of Review will have a screening before voting also. LAFCA will catch it on Friday night. So whatever the reactions, everyone will be up to speed.

Although the mystery of how Noah managed to get himself a perfect buzz cut lingers…