Today was a stuff-to-do-in-Los Angeles day — meet with accountant, banking matters, rent, auto mechanic consultation, etc. (Necessitated in part by a recent decision to temporarily move back here later this month.) It began at a friendly Starbucks in a Malibu shopping center. I was halfway into my “Chill The Eff Out” summary when all these kids came in and started singing Sound of Music tunes. A perfect moment.

Movieline‘s Stu Van Airsdale has written a brief but amusing summary of the severe turns, lungings and lurchings in the Oscar race over the last week or so, and advised everyone — perhaps sagely and perhaps not — that “it’s a long race, and it’s closer than you think. Stuff you never thought could happen can happen and will happen.” (Like what, for example?) “Because anyone who insists he or she has the answer is, in reality, the most clueless one in the bunch,” he proclaims.

Quoting recent postings by myself, Tom O’Neil, Sasha Stone and Scott Feinberg, Van Airsdale describes the “torrent of shock that washed away so much of peaceful, quiet Oscar Village after The King’s Speech‘s DGA and SAG two-fer last weekend” as a case of “mass panic.” I wouldn’t call it exactly that. I would call it mass shock, mass resignation and mass bitterness all thrown into the blender….ruuuhhrrrggghhh!

Either way it’s premature, Van Airsdale insists, because “excuse me…Oscar voters haven’t voted! The aforementioned guild overlap aside, there are literally hundreds of thousands fewer actors and directors in the Academy than in those guilds combined, and they don’t even have ballots in their mailboxes yet!”

“So float all the theories you want about Speech‘s ascendancy, sling all the mud you can at the new front-runner, and indulge all the hindsight you can muster. You may be right! But if this week has shown us anything, it’s that you never know. Either way, everyone — deep breaths! We’ve got three more weeks of this crap.”

How sad and curiously timed that Last Tango in Paris costar Maria Schneider, 58, has died only a few days before the 2.15 release of Bernardo Bertolucci‘s landmark film on Bluray, apparently from cancer. I’m sorry. Condolences to friends, family, fans.

Anyone looking for a first-hand sense of what’s happening in Egypt right now needs to read this 2.2 Pajamas Media column by Roger Simon, and especially listen to an mp3 interview with the Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey — “an extremely cynical, snarky, pro-US, secular, libertarian, disgruntled” — that Simon has embedded within.

“The witty and courageous Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey is currently in hiding in his native city of Cairo, moving from one friend’s apartment to another, as supporters of Hosni Mubarak pursue him and other democracy demonstrators,” Simon writes.

“I had been trying to reach Sandmonkey — who has written for Pajamas Media — ever since the demonstrations broke out, because I suspected he would be in the thick of things. But as most know, the internet was cut in Egypt until Wednesday.

“When I finally got through to him late Wednesday night Pacific time, I discovered that, boy, were my suppositions ever correct. Sandmonkey was indeed in the thick of things and his on-the-ground observations that I recorded in this Skype audio-only interview were in many ways surprising and contradicted what we are hearing in our media.”

Final graph from Sandmonke’s latest posting: “The End is near. I have no illusions about this regime or its leader, and how he will pluck us and hunt us down one by one [until] we are over and done with and 8 months from now will pay people to stage fake protests urging him not to leave power, and he will stay ‘because he has to acquiesce to the voice of the people.’ This is a losing battle and they have all the weapons, but we will continue fighting until we can’t. I am heading to Tahrir right now with supplies for the hundreds injured, knowing that today the attacks will intensify, because they can’t allow us to stay there come Friday, which is supposed to be the game changer. We are bringing everybody out, and we will refuse to be anything else than peaceful.

“If you are in Egypt, I am calling on all of you to head down to Tahrir today and Friday. It is imperative to show them that the battle for the soul of Egypt isn’t over and done with. I am calling you to bring your friends, to bring medical supplies, to go and see what Mubarak’s gaurantees look like in real life. Egypt needs you. Be Heroes.”

As I wrote on 1.22, Tom McCarthy‘s Win Win (Fox Searchlight, 3.18) “is a wise, perceptive and affecting little family-relations flick that works just fine. If only more films labelled ‘family-friendly’ were as good as this. McCarthy is always grade-A, and this is more from the same well. Win Win is warm but not sappy, smartly written, very well acted and agreeable all the way.”

Earlier today Anderson Cooper, Katey Couric and Christine Amanpour were all threatened, shouted down, pushed and/or (in Cooper’s case) punched by supporters of Hosni Mubarak in Cairo on Wednesday. Cooper was reportedly slugged in the head several times.

Rightwing goons are always pulling this crap. They beat up anti-government protestors during last year’s street demonstrations in Tehran. They were shown doing the same thing in Costa Gavras‘ Z. What are the odds that what they’re doing isn’t being directed and/or coordinated by you-know-who?

Beginners (Focus Features, 6.3) doesn’t look half bad. The trailer contains tenderness, whimsy, empathy and dog conversations. Oliver (Ewan Mcgregor) falls in love with Anna (Melanie Laurent ) only months after his father Hal (Christopher Plummer) has died, and out comes all the memories of Hal having come out of the closet at age 75 and all that happened as a result.

It doesn’t look like a steak eater’s movie, and that’s fine. And yet…

Who suppresses their basic nature for 75 years? What’s the point of suddenly being openly and actively gay at that age? If this realization hits me at 75, I’ll pat myself on the back and then resolve to figure out who I am a little earlier in my next life. And then I’d go out and buy a new 60″ plasma and bring home a new stack of Blurays and re-commit myself to fine dining and my regular workout schedule and buy a bunch more books and just totally forget about sex. Because it’s pretty much over when you’re 75. We all enjoy about 50 or 55 years of active rabbit sex, and then it’s olly olly in come free.

Okay, septugenarians and octogenarians “do it,” fine, but none of us want to hear or think about that. And yet I’m interested in seeing Beginners. For the most part. I just don’t want to hear anything about Plummer buying lubricant or anything along those lines.

In addition to previously announced 2011 South by Southwest headliners like Source Code, The Beaver, Paul, The Innkeepers and Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, the remaining narratives and docs were announced this morning.

The dramatic features include Aimee Lagos‘ 96 Minutes, Chris Eyre‘s A Year in Mooring (great title!), Terry McMahon‘s Charlie Casanova, Janet Grillo‘s Fly Away, Robbie Pickering‘s Natural Selection and Anne J. Howell and Lisa Robinson‘s Small, Beautifully Moving Parts. I don’t have any angles or inside-track info so you tell me.

The South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival runs 3.11 through 3.19 in Austin, Texas. Yaw-haw. If I could figure a way to attend without having to part with an arm and a leg I’d probably do it. I’ve never been. Every time I look into it and ask around it’s always described as nothing but bubble and trouble, clutter and crap. And really long lines even if you’re press.

Movieline‘s Stu Van Airsdale is working as we speak on the new Oscar Index graph that he posts every Wednesday. I’m looking at last Wednesday’s chart and thinking how abruptly things can change…wow. It’s so out of date it’s almost endearing.

I have to chuckle at a comment made by Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers in the latest pundits prediction piece by Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil, to wit: “I will not change my Best Picture pick to The King’s Speech. I believe that Oscar voters will come to their senses and see that The Social Network is the best picture of the year even if it’s not the picture that most warmed what passes for their hearts. It’s more than a battle between New Hollywood and Old. It’s a battle to ignore business as usual and put the groundbreaking movie in the Academy time capsule. That’s The Social Network.”

Travers, myself, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Cinematical‘s Erik Davis and NextMovie‘s Kevin Polowy are the only Gold Derby pundits standing by The Social Network. Just call us Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Colonel Travis, Buddy Ebsen and Frankie Avalon. The other 17 are predicting Best Picture Oscar victory for The King’s Speech.

A recent reader comment stopped me short. He mentioned my oft-referenced analogy between Sidney Lumet‘s 12 Angry Men and the changing predictions of Oscar handicappers in recent weeks, and asked if I realized that I, and not David Poland, have been Lee J. Cobb all along? A muffled grenade exploded in my chest.

I’ve been on the side of the Movie Godz with an accurate historical perspective (is there anyone arguing that The King’s Speech is not Driving Miss Daisy in the royal British realm?), and yet I kinda have been Cobb, haven’t I? Sneering and sweating and bellowing with my sleeves rolled up and pulling out photos from my wallet and tearing them into little pieces. And I’m sorry. I know it hasn’t been an attractive spectacle. I’ll try and restrain myself from here on. Well, to some extent.

Can we presume that Woody Allen‘s Midnight in Paris isn’t one of his wipeouts, and perhaps may even be one of his back-in-the-saddle resurgence films? I’m thinking that Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Fremaux, who’s announced that Allen’s latest will open his festival on 5.11…what am I saying? This doesn’t mean jack. Fremaux just wanted a glammy Woody with movie stars (Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody) plus French president Nicolas Sarkozy escorting wife-costar Carla Bruni-Sarkozy on the red carpet.

Midnight in Paris costars Owen Wilson, Marion Cotillard during shooting last summer.

Most Allen films over the past decade or so have felt like first drafts that should have gone through another couple of passes. For all we know Midnight could be on the level of Whatever Works or Scoop or Hollywood Ending . But Allen’s pattern has been to dribble for three or four years between jump shots. His last swish was ’08’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, so maybe.

Fremaux has described Midnight in Paris, which he’s apparently seen in some form, as “a wonderful love letter to Paris.” That in itself gives me the willies. It suggests that Allen will portray Paris in picture-postcard terms, and that we’ll be seeing many, many scenes of Wilson and Cotillard strolling and talking and cafe-sitting in the usual romantic locales.

Fremaux also called it “a film in which Allen takes a deeper look at the issues raised in his last films: our relationship with history, art, pleasure and life.”

Midnight in Paris will open commercially in France on the same day it shows at the Grand Palais. For some reason that sounds like another mild “hmm, really?” Sony Classics, the U.S. distributor, hasn’t announced a domestic release date. Figure on late summer or early fall.

I love Sasha Stone‘s statement in her Awards Daily announcement piece: “I have to say that after the soul-crushing experience that Oscars 2010 has been, I so look forward to Cannes where the thing really is the movie. Daring, visionary films shown many times a day, every day. There is nothing quite like Cannes.”

I love the way Sidney Lumet, the director of this 1982 courtroom drama, holds on the master shot for a fairly long time before finally going in on Paul Newman. Very nice. I also love Andrzej Bartkowiak‘s inky blacks during the opening beer-and-pinball credits sequence.

Until today I never knew that Bruce Willis had a non-speaking extra part as a “courtroom observer.”