I grew up in a suburban neighborhood in which cats used to roam around. Ever since I’ve had this idea that cats should be allowed outside if the immediate environment is at least somewhat safe — no fast cars, relative peace and quiet, nice homes with lawns, trees and bushes, squirrels scampering up trees, etc. Which is why I decided after moving back to West Hollywood last February that Mouse, my three-year-old Siamese, should be let out in the evenings. My other feline, a white munchkin named Aura, is afraid of the outdoors, but Mouse wants to feel the air and look up at the stars and sky. And I can’t abide the thought of keeping him inside.

I realize this means he might one day get hit by a car, God forbid, but Siamese cats are more intelligent than other breeds (or so I’ve always sensed) and I think there’s a 97% chance that he’ll be okay. No, I don’t like living with that 3%, but the alternative — i.e., in effect sentencing Mouse to a life of indoor imprisonment for the rest of his days — is something I just can’t do. Every now and then a neighbor will run into Mouse, read his name plate and call and ask “excuse me but do you know your cat is out?” They’re concerned. Cats are generally kept inside as a rule. Last summer a pretty lady called to say that Mouse had been hanging in her two-bedroom apartment across the street and did I want to come pick him up? Another time a woman called furious that I could be thoughtless enough to expose an animal to possible harm — i.e., “what is wrong with you?”

I obviously got what she was saying but she hadn’t considered the imprisonment thing, so we’re even.

Joe Carnahan‘s The Grey doesn’t open for another 12 days, but I’ll be up to my ears in Sundance starting on Wednesday…okay, it actually begins Thursday…and I’m figuring it can’t hurt to say a few things, at least, because it’s quite a surprise for a Carnahan film. I had him pegged as “over” after the one-two punch of Smokin’ Aces and The A-Team. But The Grey is a complete departure. It’s a good tough film that’s going to sell tickets, I’m guessing, but it’s almost too pure and unsparing to be a big hit.

The Grey is a Jack London survivalist thing. Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo and four other guys vs. hungry CG wolves. I was thinking about the hard terms of London’s “To Build A Fire“. It ends, in a way, like “To Build A Fire”. It doesn’t fool around. This makes it a very significant film for a January release, given that January films tend to be dumpers. Which this is not.

The CG wolves got in the way for me. All CG animals do. Especially one that looked to be the size of one of the Twilight werewolves — i.e., almost as big as a lion. That kind of stuff rips me out of a film. But otherwise it’s solid (well, fairly sold) and hard and honorable. I’m trying to think of a previous instance in which a director started out with a strong, admirable film (i.e., Narc) and then seemed to cash in (if not sell out) and wham…he does a total 180 with a hardcase men-against-the-elements film that no one could accuse of being overtly commercial. And yet it is commercial, if quality means anything to anyone.

That’s all I’m going to say for now. I can post another Grey piece next week sometime.

Deadline‘s Pete Hammond reminds that next Saturday’s Producers’s Guild Awards — the first 2011-2012 awards ceremony that isn’t press-and-media-driven (including the Golden Globes) — is the last chance to stop The Artist . “If someone — anyone — can stop The Artist we have a race,” he wrote this morning at 2:14 am. “But if the latter sails to a win among those all-important and predictive guild’s members, it could be all over even before Oscar nominations are announced January 24.”

I think it’s been over since early December. As sold as many of us are on The Descendants, it has generated more in the way of admiration and respect than heartfelt rocket-fuel passion — let’s face it. But let’s see.

The snaps I took on 2.5.09 of the Lorraine Motel, site of the April 4, 1968 murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, speak for themselves. “The strongest impression I got was that it’s quiet — dead quiet,” I wrote during my Memphis visit three years ago. “The Lorraine stopped being a working motel in ’82 and was soon after bought by the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Foundation and eventually became part of a small network of buildings called the National Civil Rights Museum.

“It’s a queer sensation to suddenly be eyeballing with great concentration a place as famous/infamous as this, and to just…I don’t know, just stroll around and take it all in. I was assessing the distance between the motel’s upper balcony (where King stood just before being shot) and the rear window of a former down-at-the-heels rooming-house from which James Earl Ray fired. Over and over I’ve watched black-and-white photos and newsreel film film (and lately, since the 40th anniversary last year, color video) of this sad place, and it’s just weird to see it live.”

I feel, in a sense, like a West Virginia coal miner trying to fend off black lung disease. For the last two or three years my left eye has been suffering from computer glare — redness, puffiness, watering, pink eye — due to prolonged computer-screen exposure. I’m in front of screens for a good 10 hours a day, and that’s a lot of eye-blasting — 70 hours a week, 280 to 300 hours each month.

My initial remedy was to (a) turn down the brightness levels to one-third and (b) wear sunglasses while working, but it’s hard to find ones that don’t make things look too dark. Then I started being extra-careful about keeping the screen as far away from my eyes as possible. Two days ago I ordered two screen-glare filters. Maybe that’ll work. My right eye, oddly, hasn’t had any difficulty.

I wholeheartedly agree that the best CG fakery is the modest, non-showy kind that you never notice until you see it pointed out in a piece like this. But c’mon…two minutes devoted to how CG bookshelves and other architectural archive elements were created? Plus some train tracks and a slit throat and one or two other bits? The work was done by Stockholm’s The Chimney Pot.

Yesterday’s Oscar Poker was a four-way between Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil, Coming Soon‘s Ed Douglas and myself. We recorded on an outdoor balcony on the third floor of Barnes and Noble at The Grove, with planes droning overhead and three or four kids chattering nearby. It happened about four hours before the Golden Globes began.

The energy never flagged, and a good scuffle between Ed and Sasha materialized about halfway through. Ed was predicting a Meryl Streep Best Actress win and Sasha was pooh-poohing this and saying it was Viola Davis‘s time. Douglas was on the money, it turned out.

Here’s a stand-alone mp3.

There was probably no way, I suppose, for Ricky Gervais to aggressively lambast and offend the way he did during his 2011 Golden Globes hosting gig. Last night’s opening monologue plays slightly better than the second time, for whatever that’s worth. It seemed to me that people laughed a bit more last night — in 2011 a lot of them scowled or looked a bit stunned. The only person Gervais seemed to really piss off was Elton John.