I’m almost teary-eyed with nostalgia for time I spent in New York City during the 2013 Christmas holiday. Six or seven days, whatever it was. I took a friend to see The Wolf of Wall Street at the gone-but-not-forgotten Ziegfeld on a Saturday night, and it was just heaven. The whole night was actually. The energy, the air, the aromas…all of it. Christmas isn’t really Christmas unless you’re roaming around midtown and lower Manhattan at night, and then maybe taking a train to visit friends in the suburbs for a day or two. Or if you’re roaming around London, which I was lucky enough to do in December of ’80. Nippy weather, overcoat, gloves, etc. The chillier the air, the better the holiday.

Remember those dim-bulb Academy members who harangued Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio after that first Academy screening because they didn’t get the satirical thrust behind all the coarse vulgarity (which was delivered both literally and within “quotes”)? And how Scorsese and DiCaprio had to attend screening after screening and patiently explain that they were depicting the louche adventures of Jordan Belfort and his cronies to make a point about the character of the buccaneers who have fleeced this country and will definitely fleece again? Remember the brief shining moment of Hope Holiday?