“And the Oscar goes to…(tear, rip, shocked expression)…oh, God…the Oscar, ladies and gentlemen, goes to someone that Scott Feinberg and Michael Musto were predicting to win but which almost everyone else felt was a long shot, at best!”

All I want from the 3.2 Oscar telecast is an upset. I want someone to win that most of the Gurus of Gold and the Gold Derby gang never saw coming. One would be nice, two would be better.

Punishing Cate Blanchett for the Woody Allen contretemps is absurd, but a part of me will be delighted if Amy Adams takes the Best Actress Oscar from her. Because upsets are exciting!

I know Leonardo DiCaprio isn’t going to win the Best Actor Oscar but if he does (because he effing deserves to, because his Wolf of Wall Street performance is landmark)….well, okay!

What upsets are at least a bit more than possible? Which ones might actually happen? I’m asking.

[My British Airways flight is about to take off from JFK as we speak. Six hours of wifi flatlining await.]

Since the Dylan Farrow letter was published people have noted an inconsistent posture on Mia Farrow‘s part — condemning Woody Allen for allegedly abusing Dylan as well as cradle-robbing Soon-Yi but being a friend and supporter of Roman Polanski, who’s had similar mud thrown his way. Two days ago Farrow tweeted that she’s “not” Polanski’s friend. Really? Pop in the Criterion Bluray of Rosemary’s Baby (released on 10.30.12) and watch the “making of” documentary, in which Farrow speaks very admiringly of Polanski’s method and artistry in the directing of that 1968 film. Maybe they don’t converse regularly and have dinner every other week, but Farrow is obviously in RoPo’s corner. What, did she change her mind after taping her interview? The proof is in the pudding.

This morning a Hollywood Reporter/Scott Feinberg piece appeared about Paramount’s “It’s Awesome!” billboard on behalf of The Wolf of Wall Street. Obviously this isn’t intended to reach Academy voters who might be dithering about whether to vote for Gravity or 12 Years A Slave or American Hustle. Okay, maybe it is but it seems aimed at the “too shallow to get it” crowd. — i.e., .the popcorn-munchers who have been enjoying Martin Scorsese‘s film for “the wrong reasons.” If it was my call I would have had the poster say “It’s Effing Brutal!” Meaning, of course, that it uses Jordan Belfort‘s saga to characterize the one-percenters and the Wall Street community as contemptible thieving pigs. Three other Wolf billboards praise the film in a more traditional fashion, calling it “The Movie Of Our Time,” “Bold Brave Classic” and “His Best Performance Ever.”

“No aspect of the Beatles first U.S. visit looms larger in legend than their initial appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, a performance (actually two performances, since Sullivan was cagey enough to put them on at both the beginning and the end of the program in order to keep the audience tuned in throughout) witnessed by an estimated 73 million television viewers — about 38% of the entire U.S. population at the time. Legends that large often spawn their own sub-legends, in this case the claim that the Beatles so transfixed and charmed their youthful audience that the entire teenage population of the U.S. remained on its best behavior for that one hour, and not a single hubcap was stolen anywhere in the country between 8:00 PM and 9:00 PM on February 9, 1964.

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“Now that [Phillip Seymour Hoffman] is gone, much has been said about his failure, about his fall,” writes N.Y. Times columnist David Carr in a recent post. “I don’t really see it that way. He got in the ring with his addiction and battled it for two decades successfully, doing amazing film work for years and doing the hard stuff to keep ambitious theater alive in in New York.

“And then something changed and he used. Everyone is surprised when that happens to someone famous, but it happens routinely everywhere else. Rooms of recovery are full of stories of people with long-term recovery who went back out and some of them, as a matter of mathematics and pharmacology, don’t make it back.

“I have no certainty about what went wrong, but I can tell you from personal experience that what happened was not the plan. I have been alone in that room with my addled thoughts, the drugs, and the needle. Addicts in the grip always have a plan. I will do this, get this out of the way, and then I will resume life among the living, the place where family, friends and colleagues live. He didn’t make it back to that place.”

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I’ll be doing the Berlinale for five days (Wednesday through Monday morning), mostly to cover the premiere of Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel but also to hit the festival on my own dime. All Virgin America flights have decent (if costly) wifi so I’ll be in good shape for my 10:30 am JFK-bound flight out of LAX. It arrives at 7 pm Eastern, or roughly two hours before the 9:30 pm British Airways flight to London. American Airlines is offering trans-Atlantic wifi these days but British Airways, alas, doesn’t so I’m looking at seven hours of ennui, isolation and darkness. The flight arrives at London/Heathrow at 9:30 am Wednesday (1:30 am Pacific). The two-hour flight to Berlin leaves around noon and arrives at 3:30 pm (6:30 am Pacific).

I took this shot yesterday afternoon on the 20th Century Fox lot. It occured to me that the artist and Fox management must have argued about including “Die Hard 1988” in the lower left corner. The artist almost certainly felt that the image spoke for itself (art pour l’art) but some tedious management guy wanted the title and the year of release mentioned for the sake of the rubes. “We’re on a high-security production lot!” the artist probably argued. “You have to be a working industry person to be walking around here. Who’s not going to know what this is?” The artist was right, of course. The lower left diminishes the overall.

“The writers who are permitted to ‘columnize’ for The N.Y. Times have a tremendously influential platform, and I wonder whether they should use that platform to advocate on behalf of personal friends, as [Nicholas] Kristof did yesterday. If Dylan Farrow wishes to publish an open letter about her allegations, there are ample forums in this internet age. Should The Times and Mr. Kristof lend their credibility to her argument against Woody Allen?” — N.Y. Times public editor Margaret Sullivan, in an opinion piece posted about five hours ago.

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (especially Brydon) really go to town on Tom Hardy‘s Bane in Michael Winterbottom‘s The Trip to Italy. The scene goes on at least a minute longer than it does in this clip. If this riff starts viralling, people are going to come up to Tom Hardy for years and years, cupping their hands over their face and going “rohhrr-rohhrr-rohhrr!”

The Dylan Farrow letter “has impacted Cate Blanchett‘s campaign,” Michael Musto tells Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil in a recently posted audio discussion. “Blanchett was the biggest lock since Colin Firth when he won for The King’s Speech. [But] suddenly, it’s not cool right now to vote for Woody Allen. Do I think Blanchett will win? I do because her performance is so strong and why would you hold it against her? This has nothing to do with Cate Blanchett, but I think it’s throwing a big wrench into the whole thing. (On Oscar night) if they say the winner is not Cate Blanchett, we’re going to know why she didn’t win.”

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Michael Wolff‘s 2.3 Guardian piece about the Dylan Farrow letter isn’t novel or radical, but it strikes me as the wisest and most comprehensive assessment yet of what’s really going on.

“[This] is a story of interlocking media deals and cultivated media cronies,” he concludes. “Everybody is at work here. Everybody is someone else’s instrument. Everybody is promoting something. Two decades have passed but the Allen-Farrow betrayal, break-up, and molestation charges are somehow, all of a sudden, as vivid as yesterday.

“Here’s a certainty: When you play out your personal dramas, hurt and self-interest in the media, it’s a confection. You say what you have to say in the way you have to say it to give it media currency — and that’s always far from the truth. Often, in fact, someone else says it for you. It’s all planned. It’s all rehearsed. This is craft. This is strategy. This is manipulation. This is spin.”

2013 was the biggest and boldest year for African-American themes and filmmakers in Hollywood history, hence the deserved presence of 12 Years A Slave‘s Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mandela: Long Road to Freedom‘s Idris Elba, Fruitvale Station‘s Michael B. Jordan and Slave‘s Lupita Nyong’o on the cover of Vanity Fair‘s Hollywood issue. But why include Mandela‘s Naomie Harris and 42‘s Chadwick Boseman? VF cover subjects for this annual issue are usually chosen because (a) they’re award-season contenders with serious heat or (b) are breakout types who seem likely to be players for years to come. No offense but very few conversation-starters were extra-lathered about Harris and Boseman’s performances. They may have great careers in front of them but people in my circle were not running around and saying “Naomie Harris is the next thing!” and “Chadwick Boseman killed in 42!”

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