Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Wolf of Wall Street performance is the most award-worthy of his 21-year film career, hands down. Pogo-stick, crackling, blitzkreig. Chalk up another proud moment for the Academy when they deny him a nomination. Whenever anyone asks me what his best work is, I’ll always say Wolf but I’ll also mention his performance= as Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries (’95), which I’ve only seen once. And which is also animated by depictions of drug addiction. Here’s a small-time robbery scene he shares with Mark Wahlberg and…what’s his name, James Madio? This “ma, please let me in” scene is also classic. First-rate ’90s indie. Whatever happened to Scott Kalvert, the director?

My JFK-to-LAX flight got in around 10 pm last night. It feels dead here. It’s not but it feels that way. The only things going on are (a) an opportunity tomorrow (12.31) to watch the 20 Feet From Stardom gals rehearse “The Star Spangled Banner” prior to their real-deal appearance at the Rose Bowl game on Wednesday, (b) a possible interview opportunity with Philomena star-cowriter Steve Coogan, and (c) the start of the Palm Springs Int’l Film Festival on Friday (1.3), which I’m planning to cover for two or three days. The 20 Feet girls are also performing at a Broadcast Film Critics Association celebration of Black Cinema at the House of Blues on Tuesday, 1.7. The Golden Globe award ceremony will happen on Sunday, 1.12. I leave three days later (Wednesday, 1.15) for the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Which means I’ll miss the BFCA Award ceremony on Thursday, 1.16. The 2013 Oscar nominations will be revealed that morning. No Best Picture nomination for The Wolf of Wall Street? Fine, Academy — enjoy your everlasting infamy.

Almost eleven years ago I wrote a complaint piece about the “tedious” and “narcotizing” pronouncements of box-office analyst Paul Dergerabedian (formerly of Exhibitor Relations and Media By Numbers, currently with Rentrak). At the time Dergarabedian was the default quote guy among the big-time industry reporters (New York Times‘ Rick Lyman, USA Today‘s Scott Bowles, AP’s Dave Germain) when they wrote their Monday morning box-office stories. I said that Dergarabedian’s “almost oppressively mundane” analysis was driving me insane.

I’m not saying that In Contention‘s Kris Tapley is the new Dergarabedian. His film reviews and award-season analysis pieces over the years have always been greater in scope and have cut much deeper than mere box-office analysis, and I respect his comment that “few [seem to] have really gotten into the formal elements of the film, lost in a fog of their own farts.” But I got a faint whiff of that old Dergarabedian blandness when I read his 12.29 Hitfix piece called “Wolf of Wall Street Dispute Reminds Us That Martin Scorsese Is No Stranger To Controversy.”

“I suppose that in certain quarters, the only thing interesting about a movie, or the launching pad for anything interesting about a conversation or consideration about a movie, is how the moviemakers feel about their characters. Golly, the Coen brothers sure hate their characters, don’t they? But that David O. Russell, he LOVES his characters — characters who, like those in The Wolf of Wall Street, are criminals — but they’re NICE criminals, they’re passionate, they’re in love, they’re cuddly, and Jennifer Lawrence is AWESOME.

“Gosh, when did the critical class become so (a) filled with flowery feeling and (b), for lack of a better world, thick? [Luis] Bunuel wouldn’t do well with this crowd at all. “Hey…he’s…he’s…he’s making FUN of us!” — from Glenn Kenny‘s 12.26 Some Came Running piece about the whys, wherefores and rationales of the ensconced opponents of Martin Scorsese‘s masterpiece.

After reading last night’s rave tweet about The Wolf of Wall Street, I asked LexG to write a full-out review. His response: “I don’t think you’d wanna hear my take [as] I loved it mostly for the expected/probable ‘wrong reasons’. If I can whip something up in the next day or two I’ll e-mail it, but I can’t promise. I just KNOW it’s gonna lead to commenters pissed at you for giving me a forum and the expected nobodies ragging on me endlessly about what a loser I am, which always makes me feel doubly shitty. In a weird way WoWS is one of those movies I loved SO MUCH [and] am so excited about that I LOATHE even arguing about it with people, and thus the inevitable 23 brusque comments from Dulouz Gray about how much it sucks and how stupid we are is only gonna cheapen the movie for me by engaging [in] that kinda thing. We’ll see.”

If I were an Academy member and filling out my nomination ballot this weekend, as I presume hundreds are right now, I would go with The Wolf of Wall Street, 12 Years A Slave, Inside Llewyn Davis, Her, Dallas Buyer’s Club, American Hustle, Gravity, Nebraska, Captain Phillips and Before Midnight in my top Best Picture slots, in that order.

I hope it’s understood that any rationale or pretense for even half-respecting the Academy’s tastes will be null and void if voters don’t at least nominate Wolf for Best Picture. I know it can’t and won’t win, but Academy members will look like absolute fools (to history if not to the present-tense community) if they ignore it altogether. It’s the only world-class nitroglycerine movie out there, not to mention the only one that’s saying anything important in an immediate social-calamity sense.

WoWS is not about the big Wall Street players and the schemes that all but levelled the U.S. economy in 2008, but it’s certainly about American morals and values as they presently exist among the under-40 go-getters, and about a manifestation of the biggest social cancer afflicting this country today — the concentration of 1% wealth and general income inequality.

I was beaten up pretty badly on Twitter yesterday, but mainly because a lot of people out there assume that anyone using the term “ape” is throwing a racial slur. I never even glanced at that allusion. I’m so far away from that pathetic mindset that it doesn’t exist in my head, although I recognize it’s a sore point with others. So I guess I’m apologizing but on some level it almost feels chickenshit to do so. The allusion in question is so Jim Crow, so foul, so Duck Dynasty — why even acknowledge it? Why live in the primordial past by admitting that the association means something or matters to anyone with a brain?

Yesterday I spoke to Morgan Neville, the veteran documentarian who’s been riding the high of a lifetime since 20 Feet From Stardom ignited 11 months ago at the Sundance Film Festival. A bliss-out by any yardstick, 20 Feet is now one of the 15 shortlisted docs that may become a finalist at the 2014 Oscars. Partly or largely because it reflects Morgan’s music-industry fervor and his amiable alpha-guy vibe. Conversationally he’s cool and down-to-it. We covered the usual bases, had a nice easy chat.

Dana Williams (I think), Judith Hill, Tata Vega, Merry Clayton, Morgan Neville at last January’s Sundance Film Festival.

The most important thing to get about 20 Feet From Stardom is that it’s not just a film about backup singers Darlene Love, Lisa Fischer, Merry Clayton, Judith Hill, Claudia Lennear and Tata Vega. It’s a story about dealing with the frustration of not being fully heard, of not quite reaching your goals, of having to grim up and persevere for decades until it finally happens. The “it”, semi-ironically, is Neville’s film. The acclaim for 20 Feet plus the Oscar attention has put these ladies — all back-up singers in a sense — over in a big way.

Proof will come on New Year’s Day when the best-known of the four — Love, Clayton, Hill and Fischer — sing “The Star Spangled Banner” before the big game between….hold on…need a second…between the Stanford Cardinals and Michigan State Spartans. If this doesn’t rouse slumbering Academy members who still haven’t popped in the 20 Feet screener then I don’t know what.

There are 50-plus songs here in The Wolf of Wall Street but the soundtrack album has only 16 tracks. And the song that pops through the most, the one I was humming after I saw it the first time, is Jimmy Castor‘s “Hey, Leroy, Your Mama’s Callin’ You.” It’s on Track #10. Fun, cool, danceable…a spry cousin of “El Watusi.”

Yesterday the first photo from David Fincher‘s Gone Girl, an adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s psychological thriller about an apparently sociopathic husband (Ben Affleck) who has issues with his wife (Rosamund Pike), was posted on 20th Century Fox’s Twitter page. Pic has been rolling in California and Missouri (Cape Girardeau is one location) since last month. Tyler Perry, Neil Patrick Harris, Missi Pyle, Patrick Fugit, Casey Wilson and Emily Ratajkowski costarring. “Gillian adapted it and I think it’s very, very faithful to her book,” Affleck told EW‘s Jeff Lebrecque last month. “If you read the book and liked it, you will definitely like the movie.” (Flynn is a former EW writer.) Fox will open it on 10.3.14.

Affleck is just doing the scene and no biggie, but the 60ish couple (apparently the parents of Rosamund Pike’s character) are noticably “acting.” The husband’s left hand on his wife’s left arm conveying concern, alarm. I don’t like that shit. Don’t “act” — behave.