Junketeers gathered this morning at Manhattan’s Ritz-Carlton hotel for a Django Unchained press conference. The stars were director-writer Quentin Tarantino + Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Don Johnson, Walton Goggins and Jonah Hill. The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Scott Foundas moderated.

For whatever idiotic reason the sound file conversion is way too problematic. It should be a simple process but it’s not. My fault entirely. I lack the patience. Next time.

From HE correspondent Clayton Loulan: “Tarantino made no promises about releasing a longer cut of the film” — WHAT? — “and said he fully stood behind this cut and wanted the film to play around the world before making any decisions that might change the story.

“QT spoke of Sidney Poitier as a ‘father-figure’ who had to remind him ‘you can’t be afraid of your own movie,’ as he weighed the idea of shooting some of the scenes with slaves in other countries such as the West Indies of Brazil, because he was troubled by the idea of asking hundreds of American actors to walk around through the mud, in chains.

“Waltz gave the least canned answer of the morning in response to a question regarding if there was any hesitation about working with Tarantino so soon after Inglorious Basterds. “There was no reunification, and there was no working again,” said Waltz. “[There] was just another mushroom of the fungus that was growing subcutaneously in me, all the time.”

“The conference ended, in an unlikely fashion, with everyone singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Sam Jackson, Jonah Hill, Jamie Foxx and Don Johnson. They were all brought cake that nobody touched, until the junketeers wondered aloud if they could take it home with them.”

Loulan warning: “There are a few spoilers in the recording and it does begin in the middle of a response from DiCaprio.” Wells interjection: If you can hear it.

As far as I can foresee we’re looking at 16 possible Oscar-calibre films due in 2013. I can predict one thing for sure: between his lead roles in Saving Mr. Banks and Captain Phillips Tom Hanks is looking at an almost certain Best Actor nomination. The only other guarantee is that Lee Daniels’ The Butler will be a fiasco, but you knew assumed that going in.

In the order of likely quality, the probable picks of 2013:

(1) John Wells‘ August: Osage County;

(2) Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska;

(3) Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity;

(4) George Clooney‘s Monuments Men (a.k.a., cousin of The Train);

(5) Paul Greengrass‘s Captain Phillips;

(6) Martin Scorsese‘s Wolf of Wall Street;

(7) Jason Reitman‘s Labor Day;

(8) Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis;

(9) Bennett Miller‘s Foxcatcher;

(10) John Lee Hancock‘s Saving Mr. Banks;

(11) Ridley Scott‘s The Counselor;

(12) Spike Jonze‘s Her;

(13) Spike Lee‘s Oldboy;

(14) Luc Besson‘s Malavita;

(15) Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave;

(16) Baz Luhrman‘s The Great Gatsby (which might have issues).

If you want to be liberal about it there is also Terrence Malick‘s two ventures — the film formerly known as Lawless plus Knight of Cups (neither of which might not be released until 2014 or 2015…you know Malick).

One could also include Ben Stiller‘s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Nicholas Winding Refn‘s Only God Forgives, Ron Howard‘s Rush and David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars. (Thanks to HE readers bfm and Jeremy Baril.)

Not to mention Neill Blomkamp‘s Elysium, Joseph Kosinski‘s Oblivion, Robert Schwentke‘s R.I.P.D., Steven Spielberg‘s Robopocalypse, Sam Raimi‘s Oz: The Great and Powerful, Ruben Fleischer‘s The Gangster Squad, Guillermo del Toro‘s Pacific Rim and David Fincher‘s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea: Captain Nemo.

The critics, columnists and commentators who’ve trashed the 48 frames-per-second (i.e., HFR) presentation of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey should be ashamed of themselves. They are simply about blocking the doorway, and to me that’s reprehensible. For me, 48 fps greatly lessened the agony of sitting through Peter Jackson‘s 166-minute-long film because the added detail is at least something to sink into in the absence of the usual basics that make a film enjoyable.

The naysayers know this and they still put the process down because it’s new. They want to bathe in familiar bathwater. That’s really the only reason.

Okay, they have two reasons. One, 48 fps doesn’t look like the cinema they’ve known all their lives. And two, it’s too vivid and detailed and video-like, and therefore not filmy or painterly enough. But for inherently empty and intentionally synthetic tentpole films — lame, insipid, FX-driven, comic-book-based — 48 fps is a Godsend. Empty crap is far more tolerable when you can at least delight in the clarity and the specificity. 48 fps is needless, I feel, when it comes to any kind of quality-level fare, but it’s exactly what the doctor ordered when it comes to movies that are torture to sit through.

And in throwing out the bathwater of 48 fps, the naysayers are also throwing out the baby of HFR cinema by any calibration. This is their greatest sin. Because everyone will be cool with HFR at 30 frames per second (the frame rate used by Todd AO in the mid ’50s), and it will work with any film of any mood, focus or attitude. If everyone is saying “no” to 48 fps, which I strongly disagree with, let’s at least talk about 30 fps. It’s a significantly better thing than 24 fps (smoother, more fluid, less pan blur), and yet it looks cinematic.

I never get a Christmas tree for the holidays. Jerry Bruckheimer used to send a nice big aromatic wreath that I’d hang on my door, but I haven’t been a fan since he stopped making sirloin-steak guy movies (i.e., Con Air) and went all Pirates of the Caribbean so that phase is over. Two days ago I bought this can of Shimmering Spruce and sprayed it around when I got home. I have to admit it put me in the mood. This plus Alistair Sim/Charles Dickens. It’s come down to this.

Tolkien-heads have rushed out to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, fine. A projected $84.7 million by tonight. $37.5 million on Friday, $28.1 million yesterday and a likely $19 million today. What I don’t get is the ‘A’ CinemaScore from audiences. Especially given the 25% drop in business from Friday to Saturday. This is no one’s idea of a satisfying film. It goes on way, way too long, and there are two more to go. Jackson committing to a trilogy is/was about assuring revenue for Weta Digital — let’s be frank.

And what was the Joe Popcorn reaction to 48 fps in and of itself, by the way? Have there been any surveys that focused on this technology alone?

“The people who fight and lobby and legislate to make guns regularly available are complicit in the murder of those children. They have made a clear moral choice: that the comfort and emotional reassurance they take from the possession of guns, placed in the balance even against the routine murder of innocent children, is of supreme value. Whatever satisfaction gun owners take from their guns is more important than children’s lives. That’s a moral choice, clearly made.” — from Adam Gopnik‘s 12.14. New Yorker piece, “Newtown and the Madness of Guns.”

From Danny King‘s review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: “Peter Jackson has already made three of these movies, he’s won a bunch of Oscars for them, and presumably made a shit-load of money in the process. Why in the hell, then, is he tiredly going back to the well for three more? How can he stand to look at this material, this footage — day in, day out — and come to the conclusion that it’s worth another fucking trilogy, nine more hours of the same damn thing?

“I can understand if his experience with The Lovely Bones turned him off to the possibility of changing gears, but then why not just hang up the jersey entirely? Why continue to churn out these products, these mechanical, mindless pieces of trash?

“If I were Jackson, I’d buy a ranch somewhere isolated and shut myself off. I’d drink coffee all day, watch Ingmar Bergman films in the morning, Stanley Kubrick films in the afternoon, maybe a Woody Allen film I’d never seen in the evening. Perhaps I’d read a Raymond Carver short story before going to bed. Then I’d sleep in, wake up, and do it all over again. It would be a rich life, a fulfilled existence. It would be time well spent. It wouldn’t be a Hobbit trilogy. It wouldn’t be wasted time, nonsensical wheel-spinning.

“I don’t know how Jackson can sleep at night after a long day of editing this shit, knowing that there’s a Wong Kar-Wai film out there he probably hasn’t seen. Why not put the camera away for a while and watch it? He needs to wake up and smell the coffee that he should be drinking.”

At first I was irritated and then increasingly angry about those questions reporters have been putting over and over to Newtown residents. All reporters who ask “how did you feel?” in the wake of something ghastly are bloodsuckers. It feels cloyingly pornographic. “How did you feel when you heard the horrible news?,” “What sustains you in this time of grief?,” “How do you wrap your arms around this?,” “Can you tell us about [the six year old who is now dead?] What did you love most about him/her?”

If my son or daughter had been killed, I would go right up to these guys and when they pop the question, I’d say “so you’re looking for a nice juicy grief bite, right? How’s that going? Did anyone weep when they tried to answer? No? Well, keep plugging. You’ve got a job to do. We all get that.” Or maybe I’d just say “use your imagination, Lois Lane. You want me to emotionally perform for you so others can sink into what a lot us are feeling so…what, so we can all hug each other?”

AMPAS announced today that seven films are on the Makeup and Hairstyling Oscar nomination shortlist. My three favorites are Les Miserables, Lincoln and Snow White and the Huntsman.

I say no to Hitchcock because Hopkins’ face looks too prosthetic and unnatural, no to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey on general principle, yes to Les Miserables and yes to Lincoln because everything looks right in that film. Rian Johnson won’t like this, but I thought Joseph Gordon Levitt‘s CG makeup in Looper didn’t make him look like Bruce Willis in Moonlighting so I’m going to have say no. Nobody wants Men in Black 3 to win a makeup Oscar. The makeup on Snow White and the Huntsman was pretty good.

“On Saturday, 1.15.13, all members of the Academy’s Makeup Artists and Hairstylists Branch will be invited to view 10-minute excerpts from each of the seven shortlisted films,” the statement reads. “Following the screenings, members will vote to nominate three films for final Oscar consideration.

“The 85th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Thursday, January 10, 2013, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.”

Now we’re hearing that Nancy Lanza, the deceased mother of Sandy Hook elementary school mass murderer Adam Lanza, was a “survivalist” (i.e., she believed that social breakdown was in the offing and that armed self-protection was a vital skill) who taught her sons how to shoot, who reportedly had nothing to do with teaching at Sandy Hook, and had home-schooled young Adam, who was obviously mentally unstable.

In other words, Nancy Lanza, 54, was a paranoid gun nut who, along with her divorced husband Peter (whom Nancy divorced in 2009), reared and educated a child-killing monster.

I’m saying this as a parent who understands that the right kind of parenting really counts, and that the wrong kind can be devastating. Nancy had principal custody of Adam over the last three years. One of her big parenting decisions was to pull him out of high school (“She wound up home-schooling him because she battled with the school district,” said Nancy’s ex-sister-in-law Marsha) and, one presumes, teaching him to be at least comfortable with (if not embrace) the idea that under certain circumstances, firing weapons might be a valid response to this or that threat.

A N.Y. Times story says Nancy Lanza was a “big, big gun fan,” that she seemed “high-strung, as if she were holding herself together,” and that she “often went to a local restaurant and music spot, My Place, where she sat at the bar” and that she “typically came to My Place alone.” High-strung, booze, guns…what does that tell you?

Survivalism is entirely a rightwing NRA backwoods-rube attitude (Nancy came from rural New Hampshire) so let’s call a spade a spade. Nancy Lanza had her friendly, socially positive sides, I’m sure, but she got a taste of her own karma when her son put a bullet in her face yesterday morning. Because she said to her son over and over, “Here, baby…this is a gun, and guns are cool…you need to learn how to shoot it.”

Adam has been described as probably having suffered from a personality disorder, “somewhat autistic” and possibly afflicted with Asperger’s Syndrome. Which is a burden and no picnic but hardly psycho-killer gasoline. I’ve never heard anything about autism and/or Asperger’s Syndrome being any kind of spark or ingredient in the mind of a murderer. Has anyone?

Seriously — someone please explain how Nancy Lanza isn’t the Dr. Frankenstein who created the fiend.

Don’t believe anyone who knew Adam Lanza and claims there were no hints or signs that something dark or malevolent and possibly wicked was brewing within him. Without exception, family members and neighbors always lie after one of their own has been fingered as a psychopathic killer. They always say they never noticed anything strange and troublesome about the trigger-puller because if they had noticed something they would be partly to blame for what happened because they didn’t say anything. So they clam up. It’s that simple.

I for one have said yes, I’ll attend a Candlelight Vigil to End Gun Violence in Studio City (NE corner of Moorpark & Laurel Canyon Blvd.) today at 5 pm. The last time I did this was when I joined a NOW march along San Vicente Blvd. in the wake of the 1995 OJ “Not Guilty” verdict. (I went with the late Julia Phillips.) I don’t care how many people show up today, but everyone should attend a vigil of this type somewhere this weekend. And bring a candle.