Lou Lumenick‘s 9.21 N.Y. Post story about a Lincoln sneak last Tuesday night in Paramus, N.J. story was up yesterday afternoon and then it went down, apparently due to a software upgrade. And then it re-appeared early this morning. I thought it might be a little snarky to quote one New Jersey guy who might be the new Andre Bazin (who knows?) or some Jersey Shore Guido about Steven Spielberg‘s latest, but Lumenick has definitely posted his story — that’s a fact — so let the cards lay and the chips fall.

Andre Guido Bazin praised Daniel Day Lewis‘s lead performance but he called Lincoln boring and suffocating with too many low-lit interior talking scenes — no slaves, burning of Atlanta-type scenes, no battles, no Civil War horrors, no cranked-up thrills.

“What an absolutely disgusting, loathsome, toenail-fungus lowlife!,” a colleague more or less said after reading the Lumenick story last night, reflexing trying to protect the Spielberg brand. “What a wretched piece of stinking scum he must be!”

Lumenick is more even-handed in his story.

“Please keep in mind that changes — possibly substantial ones — can be made right up until its world premiere at the AFI Fest in Los Angeles on November 8, the day before Lincoln’ opens wide in theaters,” Lumenick cautions. “So take this with at least a grain of salt.

“‘The performances of Daniel Day-Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones, and Hal Holbrook were great,’ wrote this person, a passionate moviegoer who is not connected with the film industry. He flatly predicts that Day-Lewis will get a Best Picture nomination in the title role, and says that Sally Field was miscast as Mrs. Lincoln, [and that] Joseph Gordon Levitt as Lincoln’s eldest son was okay but he really didn’t add anything to the story.

“‘My biggest issue with the film as a whole was, it was boring,” the civilian viewer wrote. ‘With the film centering on the vote for the 13th amendment, ending slavery and the Civil War, you’d think Spielberg would have made a more exciting, riveting film. So much of the story takes place in small, smoky dark rooms with Lincoln talking to one or two people, that my mind began to wander. It felt claustrophobic.

“”If he had shown the horrors of slavery and the Civil War, it might have evened out the story. They pretty much kept the film centered around the politicians.’

Lumenick concluded the story by writing “I’m a big Spielberg fan, and I hope Lincoln works. If there are indeed problems with Lincoln‘ — and, keep in mind, this is one nonprofessional’s opinion — Spielberg has seven weeks to try and fix things like, say, the pacing. And as Spielberg [once noted], test screenings can be deceiving. Close Encounters certainly worked out okay.”