At last night’s L.A. premiere of 12 Years A Slave, director Steve McQueen, star Chiwetel Ejiofor and costar Lupita N’yongo were asked about Madonna having allegedly texted (and reportedly agitating those sitting near her) during a New York Film Festival screening. I didn’t think it was worth mentioning when I first heard about this. It’s obviously arrogant to text during a film, especially one as great and gripping as 12 Years A Slave. Madonna knows this, of course (she’s not stupid) but headstrong Type A’s sometimes do what they want and to hell with the rules. I’m wondering, however, why Madonna turned on her phone in the first place. I’m guessing she wanted a release from the intensity of the film, and is therefore may be a kindred spirit of the screenwriter I quoted yesterday. Which bothers me somewhat. Texting in theatres is like coughing during a play.

“Your need to take Oprah down is bizarre,” Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone wrote yesterday in response to my “Oprah Facing Reality” piece. It’s not a takedown thing, I replied. I was simply noting the Grand Canyon-sized gulf between a serious award-quality performance like Lupita N’yongo‘s in 12 Years A Slave and a highly respectable performance like Oprah Winfrey‘s in The Butler. I was simply saying (with no neurotic agenda of any kind) that you can’t compare the two — they don’t exist in the same realm.

“Both women give great performances,” Stone wrote. Wells response: Oprah gives a very fine performance in The Butler, but Stone isn’t showing respect for the word “great.” We all need to apply exactitude and proportion in our use of the English language or it just becomes Swahili. “One [performance] happens to be in a film [that] all of the critics and festival goers like so far,” Stone explains. “But that doesn’t mean you can draw such conclusions as this early on. There will be many names bandied about all season long. And it’s really, really early.” Wells response: I’m not sure but I think what Sasha really meant to say was, “It’s September, for God’s sake.”

Is there anyone who’s seen Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave (i.e., not Mark Harris) who doesn’t feel that Lupita Nyong’o‘s performance is searing and breathtaking and yaddah-yaddah? Is there anyone who’s seen 12 Years A Slave and The Butler who believes that Oprah Winfrey‘s very good-but-not-quite-stupendous performance in the latter even approaches the calibre of Nyongo’s, much less competes with it? I’ve been contending all along that if Winfrey wasn’t a super-mogul billionaire she wouldn’t be in the conversation in the first place, but at least now she’s up against someone who’s hit a genuine grand slam. The other contenders in this category are, in this order, Sally Hawkins in Blue Jasmine, Margo Martindale in August: Osage County, June Squibb in Nebraska, Octavia Spencer in Fruitvale Station and (maybe) Carey Mulligan in Inside Llewyn Davis. What does Mark Harris think about all this other than “it’s September, for God’s sake”?

It might be premature to predict that 12 Years A Slave will win the Best Picture Oscar and that its director, star and female costar — Steve McQueen, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong’o — could take the Best Director, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress trophies. But having seen Slave I can say without question that it’s not crazy or unreasonable to imagine this. At all. And if you throw in those other spitball noms for The Butler‘s Forrest Whitaker (Best Actor) and Oprah Winfrey (Best Supporting Actress) and Fruitvale Station‘s Ryan Coogler (Best Director) and Michael Jordan (Best Actor) you’re talking about the strongest Afro-centric presence at the Oscars in Hollywood history.