Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Boxoffice.com‘s Phil Contrino and I discussed the state of things this morning — the post-depression, no-more-bargaining, post-anger “acceptance” of the forthcoming Oscar wins by The King’s Speech (“a very good B-plus movie”), a little Cedar Rapids riffing, choosing the likely Oscar winners on a category-by-category basis, how The Social Network is a kind of comfort-blanket film, etc. The iTunes link is above; here’s a non-iTunes link.

After recording Oscar Poker #20 this morning with Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone and boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino, I ran up to the Hotel Andaz (Fifth Avenue and 41st Street) for a Cedar Rapids press conference with star-producer Ed Helms, director Miguel Arteta, and costars Anne Heche and Isiah Whitlock, Jr.

The Cedar Rapids gang at this afternoon’s press conference (l to. r.): Anne Heche, Ed Helms, Isiah Whitlock, Jr. and director Miguel Arteta.

I asked two questions: (1) Did Helms or Arteta or screenwriter Phil Johnston ever literally say to themselves “let’s try to go in a Billy Wilder and/or Preston Sturges direction here” (which I feel they absolutely did, given the proof on the screen) or are just guys like myself bringing up this analogy? And (2) are they in any way concerned that the Sundance stamp on the film’s one-sheet might persuade Eloi popcorn types that Cedar Rapids isn’t low and common enough in a Hangover sense — i.e., that it might be too hip for the room in an indie-movie sense?

In the view of some I spoke to during Sundance Cedar Rapids isn’t indie-dweebie enough — it’s a very mainstreamy-type comedy — but some people, I’m guessing, are spooked by the name “Sundance.”

41st Street exterior of the Andaz hotel.

Yesterday morning at 8 am, fresh off the L train from JFK, I walked into El Brilliante cafe for some breakfast. The food is decent but they’re always playing Latin music — loud, throbby, bassy — at unacceptably loud levels. Who enjoys getting their ears pinned back by barrio music during breakfast? An eggs-and-bacon experience should never be accompanied by anything more than mild chit-chat, soft talk-radio and the rustle of newspapers.

Two weeks after the end of Sundance 2011, NYC-winter-blizzard short-film guy Jamie Stuart emerges with a definitive fragment montage.

According to a 2.14 New Yorker profile called “The Apostate,” director Paul Haggis got a surprise when he forwarded his August 2009 Scientology resignation letter to “more than twenty” Scientologist friends, including Anne Archer, John Travolta and Sky Dayton, the founder of EarthLink. “I felt if I sent it to my friends they’d be as horrified as I was, and they’d ask questions as well,” Haggis says. “That turned out to be largely not the case. They were horrified that I’d send a letter like that.”

We’re all got lively opinions about Kevin Smith these days, particularly over the last year between his anti-Southwest Airlines rant, his decision to go more or less anti-press in the wake of Cop Out, and last month’s Red State auction-that-wasn’t-an-auction at Sundance.

Smith really hasn’t subjected himself to a longish on-camera interview in quite some time, and that, I’m told, is what Horowitz will be doing with him tomorrow. We’re talking about an hour-long streaming interview on MTV.com from 3 to 4 pm. Horowitz is asking for questions to be tweeted to him with the hashtag #askkevin. (Meaning that anyone who wants to ask a question should tweet it with “#askkevin” in the message. That allows MTV staffers to find it more readily. Questions can be tweeted anytime — now, during the show, whenever.)

Miguel Arteta‘s Cedar Rapids (Fox Searchlight, 2.11) is the year’s first above-average, highly engaging, studio-generated comedy. Armed with a funny-clumsy Ed Helms performance and a rollicking one from John C. Reilly, Cedar Rapids is about facing reality and choosing your friends in an ethically clouded world. It’s partly warm and reflective realism, and partly intelligent ape humor.

I’m serious about Reilly’s howlingly funny performance. I wrote last month that “it’s good and triumphant enough to be called the first Best Supporting Actor-level turn for 2011. The man is a genius at this sort of thing. The second he arrives on-screen you’re going ‘uh-oh, here we go.'”

My other Sundance verdict was that Cedar Rapids could have been even more if the third-act was more successful, but that, to me, was only a mild regret because at least it’s operating in the ethical comedy realm that Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges used to excel at.

Marshall Fine has called it “the first worthwhile comedy of 2011 – funny, dirty and full of heart. How can you beat that combination?

“Despite some of the raunchiest dialogue in recent memory, there’s an undeniable sweetness to Cedar Rapids that makes it hard to resist. The fact that it is consistently, inventively funny doesn’t hurt.

“Much of that sweetness – and yes, even innocence – can be credited to Helms’ performance as Tim Lippe, an innocent abroad, or as far abroad as Cedar Rapids is from his hometown of Brown Valley, Wisconsin. Helms is the new master of playing naive guys who aren’t as dumb as they look but also aren’t as smart as they think. He stole The Hangover from Zach Galifianakis and regularly finds comic gold in episodes of The Office.

“He’s not exactly Candide, but there’s a sheltered, optimistic quality to Helms’ [character] that goes beyond the writing to become something identifiable and worthy, as well as quite amusing.”