I was so rushed and scattered as I left yesterday for Palm Springs that I forgot to take my Canon Powershot. I take it with me when I go to the market so this makes no sense. The iPhone 4S has an excellent camera, at least, so that’ll have to do.

From the balcony outside room #275 at the Palm Springs Travelodge on East Palm Canyon Drive — Friday, 1.6, 6:25 am.

I sighed this morning as I scanned the BAFTA longlist. I don’t want to do this any more, I muttered. I understand and respect the award-season process, but I’m feeling dismayed and uninspired. I don’t want it to end — I can roll with it, and am fine with seeing it to the end — but I’d much rather jump into 2012 and experience the new. I thought 2011 was a stirring year for the most part, but I’m mainly feeling like a sore loser because the “wrong” films are at the top of too many lists.

Yes, I say roughly the same thing every year just before Sundance, but it’s different this year. Last year I had a dog in the fight (i.e., The Social Network). An awful feeling in the pit of my stomach told me that The King’s Speech was gaining the upper hand as of mid December 2010, but at least there was anger about that. This year only one of “my” films — i.e., The Descendants — has even an outside chance of winning Best Picture. Mostly there’s a feeling of resignation about the likely Best Picture triumph of this or that mediocrity. I don’t have to name them. I’m tired of doing even that.

Nothing depresses me as much as Variety‘s Jeff Sneider and others telling me that The Artist‘s Jean Dujardin is a more likely Best Actor winner than Brad Pitt or George Clooney . I just want to step in front of a moving bus when I hear that.

“I saw both Haywire and The Grey yesterday,” a New York-based critic wrote this morning. “Haywire (1.20) knocked me out — lean, stripped-down, intelligent and exciting. And The Grey (1.27) surprised me for being as harrowing as a Jack London story. There’s a formula at work, for sure, but there’s also surprising depth to the characters. If you think this is another paycheck movie for Liam Neeson, think again — if only because the conditions look so brutal.”

Republican bigot Rick Santorum spoke last night to youthful pro-gay questioners in New Hampshire about “decent rational thought” in regard to differing notions of personal domestic happiness, but he was essentially talking about his own fundamental repulsion regarding gay relationships.

The universal consensus is that William Brent Bell‘s The Devil Inside (Paramount, opening today) not only stinks, but delivers one of the most contemptibly awful endings of all time — cheap, stupid, audience-insulting.

“I can’t remember any time in my career as a movie critic when the crowd around me, winners of free tickets to see the movie before it was released, all started to boo,” writes Willie Waffle. “The ending for The Devil Inside was so bad and people were jeering so loudly you would have thought Mel Gibson just walked into the synagogue on Saturday.”

“The Devil Inside is an insidious kind of terrible movie, a movie that is simply low-grade bad for most of its thankfully brief running time before offering up an ending so openly contemptuous of the audience as to feel like a prank,” writes Hitfix‘s Drew McWeeny.

“You can blame Satan for a lot of bad things, but not The Devil Inside,” writes Toronto Star critic Peter Howell.

It’s the spitting-on-the-audience aspect that seems to have hit the biggest nerve. This raises a question: what movies have ended “badly” (i.e., in ways that audiences have generally condemned) but which at least had integrity? They may have pissed people off but made some kind of thematic or artistic sense.

One of the most unpopular endings along these lines was the ending of Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds. I remember hearing about audiences groaning and howling when they realized that the final shot — a static view of Rod Taylor‘s green sports car driving into the hazy distance while thousands of birds sat around, waiting for the next impulse to attack — was the final shot. I get what 1963 audiences were pissed about, but from my 2012 perspective this might have been the coolest and most haunting ending of a Hitchcock movie ever.

What other films qualify in this regard? Deeply unpopular with Joe Popcorn, but on one level or another deserving of respect.

I’m sitting at a table in a Palm Springs Carrows, which is the same deal as an IHOP. And of course, a giggling woman is sitting one table over with her boyfriend. Giggling constantly and almost hysterically. And she refuses to tire or ease up. And is utterly indifferent to the possibility that others in the restaurant might not want to share in her merriment.

You can’t order people not to be gauche, and there’s really no point in asking them. They’ve either been taught the meaning of the word by their parents at a young age and have been mindful of it it all their life, or their parents were…whatever, common or coarse or didn’t think it was important, and figured that laughter in and of itself is a joy and a blessing and told their kids to always let it out, regardless of the social circumstances.

My theory is that the louder and more relentlessly a person laughs in an otherwise sedate and low-key environment (like a Carrows), the more pent-up and miserable they are with their day-to-day circumstances. I guarantee you that Pablo Picasso or James Joyce or Albert Einstein or George Gershwin never laughed like this in a quiet cafe.

I know one thing: there are more people like the happy giggling lady in today’s world than there are people like me.

Tonight’s screening of Lasse Hallstrom‘s Salmon Fishing in the Yemen at the Palm Springs Int’l Film Festival didn’t work out. I left at the one-hour mark, but it wasn’t the film’s fault. It was mine, or rather the fault of the circumstances.

Amr Waked, Ewan McGregor in Lasse Hallstrom’s Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

One, the drive from L.A. to Palm Springs took three hours rather than the usual two, and two of those hours were stop-and-go hell. So I was stressed and frazzled. Two, the sound in the Palm Springs High School auditorium echoed and bounced all over the fucking place, forcing me to to cup my ears to hear even half of the dialogue. There were whole scenes I was missing. And three, there were a couple of 20something girls sitting to my right who were constantly talking to each other. Not whispering — talking. I was so whipped I didn’t even admonish them.

So the hell with it. They won. The shitty sound and the girls and the fatigue, I mean.

The portion that I saw told me that Yemen is an lightly engaging, smartly written adult comedy with a dry, underplayed sense of humor — a bit like Local Hero. I’ll see it again sometime soon, and probably have a fine time with it.

21 and 1/2 months ago I saw Richard Press‘s Bill Cunningham New York, a likable, open-hearted, intensely New Yorkish doc about the legendary N.Y. Times “On The Street” fashion photographer. (The MOMA showing was the opening-night attraction for 2010’s “New Directors New Films.”) But it’s eligible for 2011’s Best Feature Doc Oscar so I’m revisiting.

The DVD came out last September. I was recently sent a copy by Karen Fried, the film’s publicist, and I watched it again last night. It’s likable, clean, sturdy, straight.

The 82 year-old, Manhattan-residing Cunningham has been shooting fashion and society pics for the last 45-odd years, and in the process has often been at the forefront of fashion trends. His photo collages in the Times are his claim to fame.

As the owner of a red Bridgestone bicycle I’m down with anyone who peddles all over New York. Press’s doc would have you believe that Cunningham never takes a cab or a subway. I don’t really believe that. There’s no way an older guy, even if he’s in terrific shape, would ride a bicycle around in sub-zero Manhattan temperatures with those Arctic winds howling and swooshing down…no way.

The other question mark is why does Cunningham still insist on shooting film? Anyone who’s been around for ages is going to stick with the tried-and-true — I get that — but for a guy who travels light and lives alone and lives in a small apartment there’s no reason in the world for a professional photographer to not shoot with a digital camera these days. Film has been extinct for…what, at least seven or eight years? Longer? Only eccentrics and sentimentalists are still shooting with the stuff.

I don’t blame Cunningham for being who he is, but I do blame Press for not asking about film vs. digital and making it part of the doc. It’s a huge topic to ignore. I tried reaching Press earlier today to make sure it;s not in the film, but he didn’t respond.

Bill Cunningham New York isn’t what you’d call a stunningly original doc, but it’s a very assured one, and not a frame longer than it needs to be.

The doc makes clear that Cunningham has a wonderfully radiant attitude about life. He lives healthily, stays lean and trim, is constantly on the go, constantly scanning the city for the next hint or clue and full of good cheer. This is how to live your life when you get older.

On Saturday, January 7th, Regen Projects is having an opening reception for “Daniel Richter: A Concert of Purpose and Action.” No, not “my” Dan Richter, the former mime and still-kickin’ businessman who played Moonwatcher in Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey (and whom I interviewed 19-plus years ago for the L.A. Times) but a German artist named Daniel Richter. Just sayin’.

With scripts for The Artist, Shame, Beginners, Drive, Martha Marcy May Marlene, My Week With Marilyn, The Iron Lady, Like Crazy, Margin Call, Take Shelter and Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy out of the running due to rules and regulations, the Writers Guild has announced five nominations each for their Best Original and Best Adapted Screenplay award…congrats to all. On the other hand the disqualifications are excessive so it’s not exactly a bellwether of anything else.

Original Screenplay: 50/50, w: Will Reiser; Bridesmaids, w: Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig; Midnight in Paris, w: Woody Allen; Win Win, w: Tom McCarthy; Story by McCarthy & Joe Tiboni; Young Adult, w: Diablo Cody. Suggested HE winners: 50/50 or Win Win.

Adapted Screenplay: The Descendants, w: Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, w: Steven Zaillian; The Help, w: Tate Taylor; Hugo, w: John Logan; Moneyball, w: Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin; story by Stan Chervin. Suggested HE winner: Moneyball or The Descendants.

I’ve often referred to Palm Springs as a place where actors and filmmakers go to hide out when their movie has bombed big-time or has otherwise proven an embarassment. They usually do so while wearing Ray-ban shades and a fishing hat with the brim pulled down. But I’m heading out there today (expected departure around 1 or 1:30 pm) to spend four days at the Palm Springs Film Festival. Salmon Fishing in Yemen, Super Classico, Elite Squad, Turn Me On Dammit, etc. Plus parties and dryness and gekkos and brunches.

I’ll be staying at the Palm Springs Travelodge on East Palm Canyon Drive. If I’d decided to go earlier I might have been comped by the festival. I’ve never attended before because it’s right before Sundance and the expense seemed too much to bear.