USA Today‘s Susan Wloszczyna (a.k.a. “Suzie Woz”) today ran the umpteenth King’s Speech vs. Social Network Oscar culture war story. I wouldn’t have paid much attention (no offense) except that she said I was “among the most vehemently appalled” by the prospect of Speech beating Network, and also ran my quote about “comfort, contentment and middle-class Masterpiece Theatre milquetoast values [having] prevailed…kick me, shoot me, run me over with a double-decker bus.”

The fact that it’s 10:58 am means I have to get over to the Beverly Hilton right now for the 48th Annual ICG Publicists Awards, which “recognize excellence in movie and television showmanship and publicity.” John Lasseter and Sylvester Stallone are the big name presenters. Tony Angellotti, veteran publicist Murray Weissman and Jerry Bruckheimer Films publicist Michael Singer are among the nominees for the Les Mason Lifetime Achievement Award. Press award nominees include L.A. Times reporter Geoff Boucher, EW‘s Jeff Jensen, Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil, TheWrap‘s Sharon Waxman and yours truly.

An unlikely quintet of critics — Lou-Lou Lumenick, Drew McWeeny, Pete Hammond, Jolene Mendez and Ethan Alter — are standing by Hall Pass, which otherwise has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 24%. I panned it in my Wednesday, 2.23 review.

You have to hand it to Cameron Diaz for having cornered the market in term of unabashed “this is who I am” talk-show rap. She has serious cojones. Intuition tells me Bad Teacher is going to be big. Side-issue: There are few things that I despise more than embed codes that go on for seventeen or eighteen lines. As far as I can discern the principal offender is brightcove.

Roadside Attractions, distributor of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Biutiful and Debra Granik‘s Winter’s Bone, threw an exceptionally smooth, not-too-crowded, just-the-right-size party last night at Soho House. Hotshot attendees included Inarritu, Granik, Biutiful Best Actor nominee Javier Bardem, Fighter director David O. Russell, director Michael Mann, Inside Job co-dp Svetlana Cvetko, Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow, Hurt Locker producer-writer Mark Boal, Circumstance director-writer Maryam Keshavarz and costar Reza Sixo Safai.

At last night’s Roadside/Soho House soiree (l. to r.): Biutiful star Javier Bardem, Inside Job co-dp Svetlana Cvetko, Deadline‘s Pete Hammond — Thursday, 2.23, 9:20 pm.

(l.) Winter’s Bone director Debra Granik, (r.) director Michael Mann.

(l. to r.) Mann, Bigelow, Inarritu, Granik.

(l) Circumstance director-writer Maryam Keshavarz; (r.) costar Reza Sixo Safai

Javier Bardem, TheWrap‘s Steve Pond — Thursday, 2.23, 9:35 pm. Bardem was expressing his delight with the supportive words Pond had written about the worthiness of his Biutiful perf. I got into it also, but Pond got all the credit.

Soho House screening room — easily the swankiest, pure-luxury screening room I’ve ever seen in Los Angeles or the continental United States, for that matter. There’s a screening room in Paris that resembles this (I saw The Breakup there), but the Soho House theatre is larger. It only seats 50. Each chair has an ottoman and extra pillows.

Ten months ago The Playlist‘s Kevin Jagernauth reported about a possible 12.10 DVD release of Rick Schmidlin‘s four-hour reconstruction of Eric von Stroheim‘s Greed (1924). Irving Thalberg butchered the epic-length classic down to a 2 1/2 hour cut. So far Schmidlin’s four-hour version has appeared on iTunes but not on a small disc.

I don’t know why I’m posting this (an L.A. virus has begun to affect my brain?), but this and other similar tutus worn in Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan will be on display at L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art starting on 3.4.

I happened to glance at The Piers Morgan Show a little while ago, and I couldn’t recognize the woman being interviewed. My first thought was Faye Dunaway but I discarded it a second later– this lady has had “work” done, but her face doesn’t have that extreme, over-stretched quality. Then I thought it was Alana Stewart Hamilton, Rod Stewart‘s ex. Wrong again. And then a title card appeared: Sharon Stone. She’s had decent work done, I’ll give her that, but she’s become someone else entirely. She physically no longer exists.

Any comedy that shows two characters fainting and falling backwards at the same instant is dealing really cheap cards. Any alien-encounter comedy that mentions Reese’s Pieces is looking to appeal to the lowest and stupidest people out there. It’s hard to understand how Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland) could decide to willfully devalue his brand by making something like this. I can’t wait to see this with the hoo-hoo crowd at South by Southwest.

Last night I attended a q & a at the Writers Guild theatre with Susanne Bier, renowned director of the Oscar-nominated In A Better World (Sony Classics, 4.1), which had just screened. One of her most interesting answers came when a guy asked about the film not really saying one precise thing about pacifism vs violence and forgiveness vs. revenge, and whether her views on these subjects were less ambiguous than those in the film.

In my Sundance review I said that World “is like a moralistic cousin of Clint Eastwood‘s Unforgiven” in that Bier “shows us how violence can sometimes feel better and more ‘right’ than gentleness and compassion and turning the other cheek.

“By the finale Bier has shown us the upside and downside of gentleness and patience, and of angry brutality and push-back action. She’s clearly saying that we need to be strong and wise enough to not surrender to violent impulses, but she doesn’t make it an easy choice. Sometimes the Clint Eastwood blow-em-away approach is the right (or at least the understandable) thing to do, and sometimes not.”

In A Better World director Susanne Bier and composer husband Jesper Winge Leisner — Wednesday, 2.23, 10:10 pm.

Interviewer Pete Hammond (l.) and Susanne Bier (r.) — WGA theatre, Wednesday, 2.23, 9:40 pm.

Scott Feinberg‘s “Narratives & Precedents” piece explains that over the last several decades performances that convey simple but appealing narratives have tended to win Oscars. Another conclusion is that inhabitings of selfish pricks — “a man experiences professional successes but personal shortcomings” is the narrative — tend to get nominated but don’t usually win.

Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network is this year’s model. Feinberg mentions earlier manifestations like Orson Welles in Citizen Kane (’41) and Broderick Crawford‘s Oscar-winning turn in All the King’s Men (’49), but overlooks Kirk Douglas‘s Oscar-nominated performance in Champion (’49) — my all-time favorite prick — and Humphrey Bogart‘s in Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

The difference between these ’40s incarnations and Eisenberg’s performance is that the older guys paid a much heavier price for their selfishness. Welles’ Charles Foster Kane ended up lonely and isolated, Crawford’s Willy Stark was shot to death, Bogart’s Fred C Dobbs was killed by banditos and Douglas’s Midge Kelly died from injuries in the ring. Eisenberg ended up feeling badly about the girl he lost in the beginning of the film (and had always wanted to get back with) and was minus his best friend, but otherwise he ended up with billions. So the punishment was rather mild.

What I’ve always liked about Eisenberg’s performance is that you can feel all kinds of lonely hurt behind those curt phrases and chilly expressions, although he doesn’t overtly “express” them. It’s always the things that aren’t precisely said or performed that linger in the memory and seep in the deepest.