I did a quick sitdown this afternoon with Zero Dark Thirty star and guaranteed Best Actress contender Jessica Chastain (“Maya”) and costar Jason Clarke (“Dan,” the likable, even-keel CIA torture-and-Lamborghini-buying guy). Alert and yet settled, easy to talk to, right on it…snap. This is their third film together, having previously costarred in Lawless and Texas Killing Fields. I’ll be hitting the ZDT premiere and after-party tonight for more of this. Again, the mp3.

(l.) Zero Dark Thirty star Jessica Chastain; (r.) Jason Clarke.

“The Hobbit barely leaves the driveway. It lasts for 11 minutes short of three hours, and takes us to the end of chapter six in Tolkien‘s original novel, which falls on page 130 of the official movie tie-in edition. That’s half an hour per chapter, or one minute and 20 seconds per page. The work of the sombre Hungarian auteur Bela Tarr, whose grinding tale of apocalyptic poverty The Turin Horse ran to a mere 155 minutes, feels nippy by comparison.” — from Robbie Collin‘s 12.9 Telegraph review of Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

In this precise order here are Hollywood Elsewhere’s 20 Finest Films of 2012 by the measurings of verve, pizazz, stylistic audacity, blood-rushing excitement and/or sheer emotional enjoyment: 1. (Tied for first place) Silver Linings Playbook and Zero Dark Thirty. 2. Anna Karenina, 3. Holy Motors, 4. The Master, 5. Amour, 6. The Dark Knight Rises, 7. Argo, 8. Arbitrage, 9. Beasts of the Southern Wild, 10. Les Miserables (because of the last 40 minutes), 11. Magic Mike, 12. Moonrise Kingdom, 13. The Sessions, 14. Bernie, 15. Rust and Bone, 16. On The Road, 17. Trishna, 18. Killing Them Softly, 19. Lincoln, 20. God Bless America,

Special Indie Commendation: Ava Duvernay‘s Middle of Nowhere and the lead performance of Emayatzy Corinealdi.

Runner-Uppers: Rampart, Side by Side, Haywire, Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir, The Three Stooges, Michael, 21 Jump Street.

Oh, and forget the sloppy and indulgent Django Unchained. It works more or less for the first hour but then it’s pretty much downhill.

Any complaints about mistakes, omissions, duplications are welcome and in fact requested.

The American Film Institute has announced its top ten movies of 2012 which are (obviously listed alphabetically) Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Dark Knight Rises, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Moonrise Kingdom, Silver Linings Playbook (will Glenn Kenny and Kris Tapley take the AFI to task? are you guys men with serious backbone or are you scurrying mice?) and Zero Dark Thirty. The picks largely reflect the taste of AFI vice-chairperson Tom Pollock, but he’s a wise and perceptive (if political-minded) fellow so that’s cool.

While hiking yesterday afternoon in Runyon Canyon a friend and I ran into Willow the wolf, a nearly-four-year-old female, and her owner Ted Shred. Willow is a big girl — she’d be taller than me if she stood on her hind legs — but she’s gone to behavior school and was interacting gently with other dogs.

I asked Shred, an actor-stuntman, if Willow had been approached or interviewed about “acting” in Joe Carnahan‘s The Grey, and he said “naah, the wolves were all CGI in that film” plus it shamelessly lied, he said, by pushing a bullshit myth about wolves being snarly monsters who couldn’t wait to slaughter Liam Neeson and his pallies.

At that moment I was reminded what bugged me about The Grey all along apart from the nothing ending (“Whoa, I’m about to die…adrenalin!”). It is mostly if not all-but-totally full of shit about wolf behavior. In a 2.3.12 National Geographic interview, wildlife ecology prof Daniel MacNulty says that “most people don’t realize this [that] wolves are wimps.”

Willow has big paws and friendly eyes and beautiful white and light gray fur. Here’s her Facebook page.

Why is the word “gray” spelled with an “e” as well as an “a”? What’s the point of that?

In my view the most significant aspect of Dexter Filkins‘ 11.17 New Yorker piece about Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow (“Bin Laden: The Movie“) is the illustration by Tom Bachtell. Because it partially revives an allusional slander tweeted last week by Bret Easton Ellis . Bachtell clearly thinks the attractiveness aspect applies. Remove Ellis from the equation and there’s nothing in and of itself “wrong” with being a fetching Oscar contender.

The second significant part of the piece is the following passage: “[Zero Dark Thirty] includes wrenching scenes of a terrorist suspect being waterboarded and subjected to other forms of torture by C.I.A. operatives; the suspect eventually surrenders information that helps lead to bin Laden. Bigelow maintains that everything in the film is based on first-hand accounts, but the waterboarding scene, which is likely to stir up controversy, appears to have strayed from real life.

“According to several official sources, including Dianne Feinstein, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the identity of bin Laden’s courier, whose trail led the C.I.A. to the hideout in Pakistan, was not discovered through waterboarding. ‘It’s a movie, not a documentary,’ Boal said. ‘We’re trying to make the point that waterboarding and other harsh tactics were part of the C.I.A. program.”

The film clearly says that water-boarding results in a lead and then to a guy who knows a bit more about same, and that this eventually points to a bit more information that leads to a woman in Kuwait who’s the mother of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, and getting information about this woman after Jason Clarke‘s CIA officer buys a Kuwaiti informant a Lamborghini in the middle of the night. So maybe ZDT has “strayed from real life” to some extent, but are you going to tell me that shaking loose important information about anti-U.S, terrorists is best extracted through the application of Lamborghinis and martinis and high-priced prostitutes and that torture never helped at all?

The third most significant aspect is Bigelow telling Filkins that she “hasn’t decided” what to do after Zero Dark Thirty. “Usually what happens is something will reveal itself,” she says. “And then there will be an urgency, and then I can do nothing else but that.” In other words, she and Boal have shelved or otherwise bailed on Triple Frontier, the South American drug-gangster movie that Tom Hanks agreed to star in a couple of years ago until something-or-other slowed it down and put it on hold?

If Triple Frontier is really moribund, then I have a suggestion for Bigelow. Make a relationship comedy about a woman artist living in lower Manhattan and edging her way into films in the ’70s and early ’80s.

I could never sink into the 1973 film of Bang the Drum Slowly (Michael Moriarty, Robert De Niro), and I never read the original 1956 novel by Mark Harris, and until last night I’d never seen the 1956 U.S. Steel Hour TV version with Paul Newman and Albert Salmi. Back then it was “rag on” but in a one-on-one context; these days “hate ons” are a form of performance art & entertainment — online blitzkriegs against actors, films, directors.

In the mid ’50s individually ragging on someone was cruel; these days hating on is par for the ironic course, gladiatorial combat for the chortling multitudes.

I’ve said before I would like to see Tom Cruise calm down and make films that don’t involve shoot-outs or CG or alien worlds or the energizer bunny’s legs furiously pumping. Adult, moderately budgeted, life-sized movies. I’d like to see him in a remake of Louis Malle‘s Damage. It’lll never happen.

The Boston Society of Film Critics has given Zero Dark Thirty their Best Picture trophy, ZDT‘s Kathryn Bigelow has taken their Best Director award, and ZDT editors William Goldenberg and Dylan Tichenor have also been honored by the BSFC. So this is starting to look like another Social Network-type deal, right? The critics groups praising ZDT almost unanimously and the rank-and-file Academy people going “okay but we’d rather give our Best Picture prize to something warmer and more emotional.”

Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln also took three prizes — Daniel Day-Lewis for Best Actor, Sally Field for Best Supporting Actress and Tony Kushner for best screenplay. (I’m good as long as the film itself and Spielberg don’t win anything.) Bigelow’s has also won Best Picture from the New York Circle of Film Critics, the National Board of Review and the NYFCO.

The Boston crickets also went for Ezra Miller for Best Supporting Actor in The Perks of Being A Wallflower. They gave the Best Cinematography to The Master‘s Mihai Malaimare Jr., their Best Documentary award to How To Survive A Plague, and their Best Animated Film prize to Frankenweenie

LAFCA has given its Best Picture award to Michael Haneke‘s Amour.

Earlier: I have to go for a hike now, but the Los Angeles Film Critics Association has given Paul Thomas Anderson their Best Director prize for The Master. Which means they’ll be giving The Master their Best Picture award…right? I’m off for Runyon Canyon. I’ve earned a semblance of a life.

Earlier: The Los Angeles Film Critics Association has split its Best Actress vote between Silver Linings Playbook‘s Jennifer Lawrence and Amour‘s Emmanuelle Riva — a tie.

Earlier: The Los Angeles Film Critics Association has defied conventional wisdom by giving its Best Actor prize to Joaquin Phoenix for acting as an alcoholic alien reptile in Paul Thomas Anderson‘s The Master.

I wrote the following on 9.27: “I suspect that one of the things that Paul Thomas Anderson whispered into Joaquin Phoenix’s ear when they began working on The Master was ‘don’t be overly literal or derivative but think of Dwight Frye‘s Fritz character in the 1931 Frankenstein…think of his grovelling manner, those gleeful little giggles, the little serpent with the tongue flicking in and out.”

LAFCA also gave their Best Screenplay award to Chris Terrio for Argo. (The runner-up was David O. Russell for his adaptation of Silver Linings Playbook. Hey, doesn’t LAFCA realize that Silver Linings has too many problems to be given any awards to? The LAFCA members who voted for SLP need to check with Glenn Kenny and Kris Tapley and all the other Silver Linings sourpusses and get their heads straightened out, for fuck’s sake.)

Earlier: With all due respect I strongly disagree with the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s decision to give their Best Supporting Actor award to Beasts of the Southern Wild‘s Dwight Henry. His character is called Wink, and all he does is drink, rant at Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis), lecture, admonish, drink and rant some more.

Here’s how I put it 11 months ago after seeing Beasts at Sundance: “Henry’s dad, who cares for Hushpuppy in his own callous and bullying way, is a brute and a drunk and mostly a drag to be around, and after the fifth or sixth scene in which he’s raging and yelling and guzzling booze, there’s a voice inside that starts saying ‘I don’t know how much more of this asshole I can take.'”

1:25 pm Update: Today I turned in my Broadcast Film Critics vote just before the noon deadline, and top three selections were (in this order) Robert De Niro (Silver Linings Playbook), Tommy Lee Jones (Lincoln) and Nate Parker (Arbitrage).

I’m down with LACFA giving Amy Adams their Best Supporting Actress award for her performance in The Masters. (Les Miserables‘ Anne Hathaway was the runner-up.) And good on Tim Burton‘s Frankenweenie for winning LAFCA’s Best Animation. Skyfall‘s Roger Deakins took the Best Cinematography award.
Dror Moreh‘s The Gatekeepers won for Best Cinematography. (Runner-up: Searching for Sugar Man.