This, I realize, is not anyone’s idea of an exceptional video clip. But if you’ve never been to Vietnam and you want a little taste of what it’s like to be driving back to Hoi An from My Son around 6:20 pm (it gets dark here fairly early) just as you’re turning onto Route 1A, here you go. This delivers about 33% of what it really felt and looked and sounded like. This is travel as it should be. Raw, robust, chaotic, aromatic, tingly.

For whatever reason I can’t load the Les Miserables rave posted by Hollywood Reporter award-season columnist Scott Feinberg, and I’ve got really great wifi over here. The Universal release is going to win Best Picture apparently, and hats off to Tom Hooper and the gang if it does. If it’s over, it’s over. I can live with this, and perhaps I’ll celebrate it. The proof is in the pudding.

I actually felt the wave coming a week ago when a lady friend told me she and her daughter can’t wait to see Les Miserables “because I know I’m going to melt.” That convinced me more than Feinberg’s report.

Just keep in mind that it’s natural for trade reporters to feel flattered and excited at having been given a first-anywhere peek at a heavily hyped Oscar-bait release from a big studio, and that this can sometimes result in a more enthusiastic response than you might get from a dispassionate, even-keel viewer at another venue. I’m just saying.

L.A. Times reporter Glenn Whipp writes that “granted, the reaction mirrored the rapturuous tweets that greeted the year’s other high-profile festival films such as Lincoln, Argo and The Master, and should probably be taken with a grain or two of salt. At these early screenings, haters are few and far between.

He also noted that L.A. Times film writer Steven Zeitchik “apparently was the only one keeping his handkerchief in his pocket.”

“Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables [is] a very well done if methodical take on the musical staple,” Zeitchik tweeted. “Hathaway is a stand-out, albeit in very few scenes; Jackman and Crowe singing is solid but doesn’t reach for as much.”

The screening happened Friday afternoon at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. It’s now 8:27 pm in Manhattan and 8:27 am (Saturday) in Hoi An.

Data Lounge’s “Lyn Stairmaster” reports as follows:

“It’s 100% successful, absolutely great on every level. It will be hard to beat for Best Picture, Best Director (Tom Hooper), Best Actor (Hugh Jackman) and Best Supporting Actress (Anne Hathaway). The little kid who plays Gavroche should be up for Best Supporting Actor. The one new song ‘Suddenly’ is lovely and could be up for Best Song if there’s a category.

“There was huge applause after pretty much every musical number, particularly Jackman’s and Hathaway’s. Russell Crowe (Javert) is the only one I had a teensy problem with because he’s not a singer like the others but he still looks great and acts it well.

“Hooper, Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne (Marius), Amanda Seyfried (Cosette) and Samantha Barks (Eponine) did a q&a afterwards. Hooper gave a speech before the screening, telling us he had only put the finishing touches on it at 2 am on Wednesday morning.

“Questions, bitches?”

Before heading out to My Son Binh took me to the modest manufacturing headquarters of Ha Linh, the longest-running, most established maker of bamboo lanterns in the area. 15 or so employees, age-old craftsmanship, beautiful vibe. I bought three mid-sized lanterns for about $3 a pop…or was it less? Wires and bulbs included.

Yesterday afternoon Binh (my brilliant Vidotour travel guide) and the driver took me about 45 kilometers southwest of Hoi An to the hallowed shrine of My Son, a cluster of ancient Hindu temples built between the 4th and 14th Century. The trip meant driving for an hour through a symphony of rural atmosphere and flavor and cultural detail. I felt like a wide-eyed lad of five. Everything was new. To die for.

Hindu temple at My Son — Friday, 11.23, 3:55 pm.

Vidotour guide Nguyen Thai Binh (just call him Binh) at the entrance to the shrine.

I sat in the back seat and drank it all in. Earthy aromas, water buffalos, fields and rice paddies, three or four lively ragtag villages (which weren’t even acknowledged on the iPhone 5’s map app), dense forest, hundreds on scooters and bicycles.

The valley at My Son was a site of religious ceremony for kings of the ruling dynasties of Champa, as well as a burial place for Cham royalty and national heroes. The Cham (who still live and maintain a marginal culture in Vietnam) more or less ran the show in what we now call Southern Vietnam until the 15th Century of thereabouts.

The temples (made of brownish, orange-y brick) are located in a valley surrounded by two mountain ranges. The area is roughly two kilometers wide (although it felt smaller), and is close to Duy Phu in the Quang Nam district, and about 10 kilometers from the historic town of Tra Kieu. The temples dedicated to the worship of the god Shiva.

I told Binh that I was a bit of Hindu in my early 20s due to a series of LSD meditations with readings of the Bhagavad Gita.

Most of the temples were destroyed by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War. That’s really something to be proud of, U.S. Air Force! There are four or five huge bomb craters in the vicinity. Binh isn’t sure precisely what year this happened, but the planes were apparently trying to kill some Viet Cong who were hiding in or near the temples for shelter. Binh’s grandfather, Vo Trong Khiet, was a Vietcong solder from 1965 until his death in the mountainous area near Laos sometime around 1968 — Binh isn’t sure exactly when.

It’s quite a feeling for an American walking through and knowing that your guys did this. Hell, they weren’t my guys. They never have been. Yes, war is war and you do what you can do lay waste the opposition, but you’d think the guys dropping the bombs would’ve thought twice.

One of the bomb craters from the U.S. aerial attack.

There’s a bit in Silver Linings Playbook when Bradley Cooper walks into his analyst’s office and hears Stevie Wonder‘s “My Cherie Amour” — a “trigger” song that he danced to with his estranged wife on their wedding day — and he solemnly asks the receptionist, “Is that song really playing?” I’ve been saying almost the same thing to myself since I’ve been in Vietnam: “This is real…I’m here. Not a dream, not a Travel Channel doc…snap out of it!”

I do this in Los Angeles also. I’ll be lost in a thought while driving on Pico Blvd. or walking around the Farmer’s Market or inside a food court and I’ll tell myself, “hello…green light!” or “you’re looking for a table to sit down at…wake up!” My thoughts take me away to such an extent that I half-forget that I’m doing what I’m doing. Which is why I lose stuff sometimes. It’s why I lost my iPhone 4S a few weeks ago. I zone out.

The people of Vietnam are exceedingly gentle and polite and always bowing slightly when they greet you (which I always return). Always smiling and extending the most serene alpha vibes. They have ways of living and being that are very special and comforting. But the merchants across the street from the Palm Garden Resort don’t seem to be all that economically flush, and they let you know it. Not a complaint — just an observation.

By this I mean they come outside and hit on you when you come near their store (as I just did a while ago to buy some Diet Cokes). All you have to do is smile and say “no thanks” and that’s the end of it. But in this sense Vietnam is a bit like Morocco. The Vietnamese are less pushy, but they want those tourist dollars!

It’s fascinating to be lying on a reclining chair under a palm-frond umbrella and watch fishermen spreading nets from their put-put sampans as well as pairs of guys wading waist-deep in the water and throwing nets. It’s hot out there and the air is quite humid. Muggy but not buggy.

The story of Estibaliz Carranza, a 34-year-old Mexican-Spanish woman known as the “Ice Lady,” is a metaphor for women everywhere being let down and betrayed by deadbeat men, and it could be turned around into a black Pedro Almodovar comedy. Penelope Cruz or Angelina Jolie could play Carranza. Chainsawed bodies buried under the ice cream parlor…are you kidding? Sex, lunacy, infidelity, the general deflation of modern relationships, a bit of Arsenic and Old Lace…bingo.

Right away I’m thinking that this Paul Weitz film is way too in love with the idea that feeling or showing awkwardness is funny. That it has far too much faith in coy quirk. That “a quick-witted, slightly older woman is suddenly confronted with motherhood” is not, for me, an intriguing premise. That the trailer is giving every impression that the film, which costars Tina Fey and Paul Rudd, is a second-tier sitcom.

I took a brief nap at 7 pm last night, planning to have dinner around 8:45 or 9 pm at Dao Ten in Hoi An. I woke up at 1:45 am and couldn’t get back to sleep. I wrote all night and watched Flirting With Disaster on Netflix, and then went for a walk around 6 am. The Hoi An scooters are out in force at that hour. What a gloriously exotic environment — a paradise of vibrant color, very subtle aromas, heavy sea air and abundant vegetation. And friendly people everywhere you turn.

At first it seemed as if the ranks of Silver Linings haters were extremely marginal if not microscopic, like the carriers of an extremely rare disease. But others have pushed through (notably and bizarrely New Yorker critic David Denby, whose brief pan of David O. Russell‘s film is roughly similar to Bosley Crowther‘s dismissal of Dr. Strangelove), and with, it has to be acknowledged, remarkable levels of battery acid.

One in ten reviewers, I’d say, are in the hater camp. Their stuff reads like Sean Hannity rants on Fox News. Never have so few worked so hard and whipped themselves into such a strange lather about such an expertly assembled, deceptively good-timey, emotionally grounded, once-in-a-blue-moon payoff film.

The haters know SLP is nudging a 90% Rotten Tomatoes approval and is made of the stuff that works with people who are open to its manic charms and currents so they’re focusing on trying to wound its award potential. Their need to take this extraordinary effort down is, I feel, far more pathological than my mostly respectful and fair-minded remarks about Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln.

I’ve recognized all along that Silver Linings Playbook winning the Best Picture Oscar is unlikely given the general prejudice against comedies or spirited dramedies (regardless of whatever emotional truths, heart, edge and wit they may deliver), but the sentiments of the anonymous secreter known as Oscar Tipster…words fail. Guys like this are actually walking around.

Some are having problems with the treatment of mental illness or the hyper personality of Bradley Cooper‘s Pat Solitano during the first half. Cole Smithey called it “a Hollywood romantic comedy made to mask the horrific downside of mental illness while still giving the audience a little sense of superiority as they walk out of the cinema.” Russell has a son with Asperger’s Syndrome. Think about that for five or six seconds.

But primarily the haters seem locked into the idea, to paraphrase Rotten Tomatoes fan reviewer Nate Zoebl, that enjoyment and creative accomplishment are, in fact, opposing forces and that being a rousing, crowd-pleasing sort of movie is, in fact, a yoke that weighs down its artistic integrity. Tell that to The Lady Eve, The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, My Man Godfrey and Some Like It Hot.

The key thing, of course, is that Silver Linings Playbook is offering a lot more than just feelgood vibes, and if that’s all you’re getting from it, God fucking help you and any kids you might have. Repeating from 11.16: “The real lame-itude is dismissing or marginalizing a film because it’s buoyant and screwball-intense and furiously spirited and is all about want and need and dealing with recognizable demons, and is therefore not the equal of more steadily (or more slowly) paced solemn-attitude Best Picture contenders that are about real pain, real loss and are therefore truly serious.”

Denby actually called SLP “pretty much a miscalculation from beginning to end…it just feels worked up — an exercise in which actors can blow off steam.”

I don’t believe that many more people are on my side of the fence — I know it. I know that guys like =Detroit News critic Tom Long, who writes plainly and frankly, know whereof they speak. But what a gulf between the camps.

“It’s your boy-meets-girl formula at heart,” Zoebl wrote on 11.21, “but the execution is so extremely sure-footed, so exceptionally handled, that the movie leaves you buzzy and beaming. Once it ended, I wanted to run around, shouting from the rooftops for people to run out and see this movie. I freely admit that Silver Linings Playbook is a masterful movie that knows what it takes to get an audience cheering, and I was thrilled to be part of that cheering throng. Here is a movie that just makes you feel good. I was so happy after my screening that it felt like a high I didn’t want to come down from.”

A friend wrote the following last night: “There you are in Vietnam while Thanksgiving Day is underway in the States. Which offers a faint touch of irony if you weave in memories of Arthur Penn‘s Alice’s Restaurant. Arlo Guthrie‘s original ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ song, released in ’67, is about a couple of guys dumping garbage ‘by the side of the road’ on Thanksgiving Day back in ’65. The song became an anti-war anthem because it told about Guthrie’s rejection from the military service in Vietnam due to littering,” etc.

My response: “So it’s Thanksgiving and I’m in Vietnam and…where’s the irony again? I don’t feel tied to or particularly moved by what happened 43 or 45 or 47 years ago…sorry. My life began with having kids in the late ’80s and then getting the online column in the late ’90s and into the aughts.

“‘Alice’s Restaurant‘, a 1967 ‘anti-stupidity’ song (in Guthrie’s words) that equated petty, scolding, conservative small-town values with kneejerk support for the scorched-earth ravaging of Vietnam, was becoming a huge hit, and therefore…I don’t feel it. The actual garbage-dumping incident happened in ’65, the song came out in ’67 and the film was released in ’69.

“Did you know Guthrie has become a registered Republican and a Ron Paul Libertarian?

“It’s cool to spot M. Emmet Walsh in the trailer as a barking military guy during the draft-board scene, but the green values and attitudes of 2012 are prompting me, 45 years after the song, to ask a question. What’s so cool and people-friendly and folksy charming about dumping a truckload of garbage in the Stockbridge woods?

“The song and film versions happened before the first Earth Day in 1970, and it’s obviously a different world now. Dumping waste and polluting nature’s garden…isn’t that what conniving corporations do, dumping their toxic wastes in rivers and polluting the water table, etc.? Same basic instinct. Corporations can’t be bothered to follow rules and regs about respecting nature, and neither could Arlo and his pally (who looked like Kim Hunter in Planet of the Apes).

“On top of which Alice’s Restaurant was not, in my recollection, that terrific a film. A passable, good-natured social satire aimed at a very easy mark. Arthur Penn was peaking big-time when he made it. He’d been going great guns all through the ’60s and would next make the respectable Little Big Man, and then enjoy a relatively fertile and satisfying ’70s, but Alice’s Restaurant was a meh. It sought to toe the line by portraying local authorities in Stockbridge (‘Officer Obie‘) as metaphors for nearly all people in authority, which is to say petty, sour of spirit and asserting a gruff, kneejerk support of traditional apple-pie, World-War-II-generation American values and a loathing of all things long hair-ish, which was to say lefty, communal, pot-smoking and anti-Vietnam War.

“A boilerplate generation-gap movie, in short, with Penn doing what he could to make it into a cultural touchstone film (as the song had been), and not quite getting there. The song was enough.”

I was fairly whipped yesterday afternoon from too little sleep, but Binh (whose full name is Nguyen Thai Binh) was eager to show me the ancient village of Hoi An, and particularly the food market. Portions of the village have been Disneyland-ified, true, but the outdoor food market is a genuine sensual pleasure — an aroma-gasm and a novel learning experience. Everything in the Hoi An market feels warm, organically raw, steamy, fresh, ripe, alive.

There’s a slight downside in that the food sellers and merchants are constantly hitting on you. They have very little money and they know you have a fair amount of it. I don’t think it’s a stretch to describe Hoi An as a relatively poor town for…perhaps not the majority of the residents but a fair portion of them. I’m not trying to romanticize poverty in any way or downplay the downsides, but it seems as if Hoi An-style poverty is — I want to put this carefully — somewhat more manageable or tolerable than the big-city variety.

Life feels very natural and fresh and buoyant and wonderfully atmospheric here, and everyone seems to know each other and the vibe is very enveloping and almost joyous in a way. Okay, not “joyous” but mellow and serene. The community is one big family, or so it seems.

When Vietnamese parents get too old to fend for themselves they live with their kids until the end. This, at least, is what I was told by Binh, who is married with a kid and another — a boy — due in December.

The city is also famed for its 200-plus tailoring shops. You can have a decent business suit made within a day for roughly $120 or so, or so I was told. The actual suit-weaving isn’t done in Hoi An but in out-of-sight sweat shops.

Binh took me for a ride down the Thu Bon River on an African Queen-sized tourist boat. I tipped the boat owner about 50,000 dong, or $2.50.

For whatever reason I haven’t been hungry since I arrived in Vietnam, and I’m feeling really good now because of this mini-fast. That’s a pretty ridiculous thing to say when you’re in one of the greatest food towns on the planet, but that’s where I’m at now.

“Imagine if there was a farmer’s market a few blocks from your house and everything there was in peak season all year round, and also everything was grown within 10 miles of the market, probably organic, and picked less than 24 hours before it went on sale,” a travel writer has written. “Also imagine that everything at the market was so cheap that it might as well be free. This seems to be the case in much of Vietnam, and definitely in Hoi An.

“Another way of thinking about it is, if you were going to prepare a complicated dish that had 5 or 6 different vegetables and herbs in it, and you went to Whole Foods to get the best quality you could find, it might cost $10 or more. If you wanted to make the same thing here it might cost $1 for those same things, and they’d be at least a day or two fresher as well. This helps explain why the food here is so amazing and so cheap at the same time.”

The famed Confucious Cup, which is the only one of its kind in Asia, or so Binh claims. There is another somewhere in Europe, he says.