The other day I agreed with Self-Styled Siren‘s comment that Alfred Hitchcock‘s Lifeboat (’44) is “very unappreciated” — I assumed she meant “wrongly” — by saying that Tallulah Bankhead, John Hodiak, Hume Cronyn, Henry Hull and Walter Slezak are excellent and that Hitch’s studio-water-tank simulation of the North Atlantic easily out-verisimiltudes Waterworld.

The discussion began with my mentioning the forthcoming Masters of Cinema Bluray version, due in mid April.

Siren said that Lifeboat is “a good example of our mutual pal Glenn Kenny‘s argument that a confined space can still be very cinematic.” Or my view that any limitation (including not having enough money) always encourages creativity. Lifeboat is the first of Hitchcock’s four confined-space films, the others being Rope (’48), Dial M for Murder (’54), and Rear Window (’54).

There are two great moments in the above clip. The first happens at 2:20, just after Bankhead has lost a priceless diamond bracelet after she and the others have tried fishing with it (“I can recommend the bait…I should know, I bit on it myself”). The second happens at 8:55 after a young German sailor, pulled aboard after his ship has gone down, is disarmed after pointing a gun at the lifeboat crew. And Hodiak says, “What are you going to do with people like that?” Cronyn says, “I don’t know…I was thinking of Mrs. Igley and her baby…and Gus.” And Bankhead says, “Well, maybe they can answer that.”

The writers were John Steinbeck, Jo Swerling, Ben Hecht, Alma Reville, MacKinlay Kantor and Patricia Collinge.

Lifeboat is one of many hundreds of films made since the early 1920s that are sharper and deeper and of more lasting value than The Artist. Don’t get me started.

Last night Christopher Plummer sat for a Santa Barbara Film Festival Modern Master tribute at the Arlington theatre. Plummer said he was unsure if the audience wanted to sit for the whole thing, but it was a pleasure from start to finish with Pete Hammond interviewing, and many — well, about 20% — of Plummer’s films getting the once-over.

The above clip was taken by yours truly as I leaned against the theatre wall about 15 rows back. It’s Plummer talking about playing Mike Wallace (“He was a cruel guy but a great TV newsman’) in Michael Mann‘s The Insider (’99).

Plummer is going to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, of course. I pretty much called this four months ago in Toronto, declaring that he had the Oscar more or less “in the bag” and “is going to be awfully hard to beat.”

The general rule is that alcohol abusers, which Plummer has freely admitted to being for two or three decades, tend to pay the price later in life. But not Plummer. He’s 82 and obviously sharp and lucid and in great shape — he ran across the stage last night to accept his SBIFF award. It all comes down to genes.

As of 8:42 pm this evening, the 2012 Sundance Film Festival had given two awards to Ben Lewin‘s much-praised The Surrrogate — the Dramatic Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize for Dramatic Acting (a tip of the hat for costars John Hawkes and Helen Hunt). The film was acquired for distribution during the festival by Fox Searchlight.

There’s a similarity or two, I gather, between Mischa Webley‘s The Kill Hole, which is having its world premiere at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, and Paul Haggis‘s In The Valley of Elah. Some bad Iraq War business haunting a veteran of that blighted conflict (Chadwick Boseman) and some harsh truths gradually finding their way into the light.

The Kill Hole director Mischa Webley — Saturday, 1.28, 2:40 pm.

I won’t be seeing it until Monday night, but I had a chance to speak with Webley this afternoon at a small gathering in downtown Santa Barbara. Nice guy, straight shooter. The principal costars are Billy Zane, Peter Greene, Ted Rooney and Tory Kittles.

No matter how good or pretty good or not-so-hot The Kill Hole turns out to be, I do feel that the title, due respect, should be given some more thought. It just has too much of a foul sound. Think of all those other terms that end with the word “hole.”

The same steamroller-lemming-mob mentality that has pushed The Artist all through awards season has presumably sunk in among the Directors Guild membership. It is therefore likely that Artist helmer Michel Hazanasidvicious will take the top prize at this evening’s DGA Awards. The “anything but The Artist” contingent (i.e., myself and I don’t know who else) is hoping for an extremely unlikely upset by Hugo‘s Martin Scorsese.

The 2012 Santa Barbara Film Festival’s “It Starts With The Script” happened at 11 this morning at the Lobero Theatre. The paneiists included JC Chandor (Margin Call), Jim Rash (The Descendants), Mike Mills (Beginners), Will Reiser (50/50) and Tate Taylor (The Help). IndieWire columnist Anne Thompson moderated. For the first time since I’ve attended this festival I missed it, but at least I got some photos.

(l to. r) J.C. Chandor, Will Reiser, Anne Thompson, Mike Mills, Jim Rash, Tate Taylor, Roger Durling.

SB Film Festival director Roger Durling, Descendants co-writer Jim Rash.

All day long I felt last night’s Moet & Chandon circulating through my system. Moet & Chandon is sponsoring the 2012 Santa Barbara Film Festival so the stuff is abundant. The waiters kept filling my glass at last night’s Viola Davis after-party, and I kept slurping it down like a fool. A champagne hangover is like a disease. Puffy face, a distinct sense of having been pleasurably poisoned, a lack of concentration, depleted spirit.

Deadline‘s Mike Fleming has posted an R.J. Cutler tribute to the late Bingham Ray that will be shown at tonight’s Sundance Film Festival awards ceremony. Cutler has basically dusted off a 15 year-old piece about October’s success with Mike Leigh‘s Secrets and Lies. I tried to find an embed code and gave up after five minutes or so.

Bingham Ray after hearing that Secrets and Lies, which October Films distributed, had been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

Here’s a riff on Favorite Conservative Movies (i.e., “Rise of the Planet of the Apes — the birth of the Tea Party.”). Thanks to Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone.

This 1.20.12 Romney riff is good also.

Gifted people always know they’re gifted. Some allude to this knowledge but they usually indicate otherwise, feigning modesty and humble uncertainty, because it plays better. Last night it seemed to me that Viola Davis, Best Actress Oscar nominee for The Help, conveyed a little bit of that “I’m good and I know it.” Good on her. The last time I heard this in a public forum was from Errol Morris, and before that from Frank Lloyd Wright in a Mike Wallace televised interview.

I arrived late for the Santa Barbara Film Festival’s Viola Davis tribute at the cavernous Arlington theatre last night. She was introduced by Octavia Spencer, interviewed by Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson, career-clipped and given the Outstanding Performer of the Year Award. There was an after-party in Montecito at the home of festival president Douglas R. Stone for a small gathering of festival elites. That group included Davis, Spencer, Samuel L, Jackson, myself, Thompson, In Contention‘s Kris Tapley, Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg and Deadline‘s Pete Hammond.

During the 2012 Sundance Film Festival I noticed at least two films (Red Lights, Black Rock) in which a protagonist who’s recently been in an ultra-violent altercation walks around in public view with dried blood on his/her face. (I think at least one other Sundance film went in for this.) This is similar to Ryan Gosling walking around during the final 25% of Drive with brownish blood stains on his white scorpion jacket.

This is a bullshit affectation favored by wanna-be-cool directors, and I’m saying right now to Nicholas Winding Refn and all the others that it ends here and now. Nobody in the actual world ever walks around with globs of dried blood on their person. It would be like walking the streets with a big sandwich-board ad that says “HAVE JUST BEEN IN VIOLENT ALTERCATION” and “LOOKING AROUND FOR NEXT PERSON TO HIT OR SHOOT.” It would obviously attract attention, especially from the law, and anyone who’s just beaten up or killed somebody usually wants anything but that. Plus blood is unattractive and sticky, and I think there’s some kind of instinct that we’re all born with to wash it off as soon as possible.