It’s been one of those frenetic mornings. A lot of calling about something I’ve decided not to run for the time being. Tapping out some rough reactions to True Grit. Some back and forth about the Sundance ’11 condo. And preparing for the two big events of the day — a Kids Are All Right schmooze thing in Chelsea, and then the big Black Swan premiere and after-party tonight. The long and the short is that I have to do a time-out for two or three hours.

Michael Mann has so far made one serious failure, and that was (and is) The Keep. I saw it once 27 years ago, and that was sufficient. And yet some, I realize, feel it’s a little better than that. Not that anyone’s had much of a chance to give it another viewing. The Keep isn’t available on DVD or Bluray, but it’s now available through Netflix Streaming.

Congrats to Winter’s Bone director Debra Granik and distributor Roadside Attractions for nabbing two Gotham Awards last night. The grimly realistic Ozarkian drama that launched Jennifer Lawrence took the Best Feature and Best Ensemble Performance trophies. And cheers to the three big honorary award recipients — Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky (looking very dapper with his Preston Sturges moustache), Get Low star Robert Duvall and Conviction star Hilary Swank.

Taken from balcony behind the stage as honorary award-winner Robert Duvall was delivering remarks. Notice Black Swan star Natalie Portman (excellent evening dress!) and her director Darren Aronofsky sitting ringside. I can’t tell if the other guy is Portman’s ballet choreographer b.f. Benjamin Millepied or someone else,

It’s good for an ornery little film like Winter’s Bone to get some hugs and positive attention. Does this mean it’s a “better” film than competitors Black Swan, Blue Valentine and The Kids Are All Right? No — it means that the Gotham award-deciders said “let’s politely blow off the highly respected and admired Blue Valentine, a John Cassevettes-like indie with killer performances, and go with an even smaller little rural film…this way we won’t look like Black Swan or Kids Are All Right star-fuckers or obsequious ass-kissers in any way shape or form….it’ll re-enforce our indie cred.”

I showed up around 9:30 pm after seeing True Grit uptown. And no, I’m not saying anything until the embargo goes up tomorrow at 1 pm eastern.

I had half-expected that Lena Dunham would win the Breakthrough Director Award for Tiny Furniture, but nope — they gave it to Kevin Asch for Holy Rollers. Ronald Bronstein won the Breakthrough Performance award for his work in Daddy Longlegs. Don’t give that Gotham love to the small marginal guys whom people know and like somewhat — give to the really small and marginal guys who’ve barely penetrated public consciousness.

The show, as usual, happened at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. Awards presenters included Natalie Portman, Bill Murray, Melissa Leo, Steve Buscemi, Sam Rockwell, Winona Ryder, Anthony Mackie and Paul “I thought I was going to get some awards attention for my performance in How Do You Know” Rudd.

No offense but co-hosts Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci should give it a rest after this. Every time I turn around they’re always saying smart and gracious things at a lecturn in front of a big well-dressed crowd.

Just-announced Oscar co-host Anne Hathaway presented a special tribute to Focus Features CEO James Schamus.

Kids Are All Right star Annette Bening attended, but I didn’t see her anywhere.

I mentioned to Duvall in the press room that I’d just received my Warner Home Video archives DVD of John Flynn‘s The Outfit, and that it’s one of my favorite ’70s noirs. He liked hearing that and walked over for a quick chat. He said that it didn’t play on very many screens because “the mafia didn’t like it for some reason” and made some moves to block it.

Winter’s Bone dierctor Debra Granik.

Get Low star Robert Duvall in press room after winning his honorary Gotham award.

Irvin Kershner “seemed amused when I told him that, when I first saw Loving back when I was in college, I really didn’t care much for it because I couldn’t relate to its melancholy story about a guy who was beginning to worry that he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere in his career – and, worse, in his life – and worried whether it was already too late to turn back,” Moving Picture Blog‘s Joe Leydon wrote yesterday.

“But when I watched the movie again 15 years later — and this is the part that Kershner really enjoyed hearing — it was much, much easier for me to relate to the lead character, and to appreciate the spot-on accuracy of the movie’s insightful observations. I probably should take another look at Loving – if only to salute Kershner – but, frankly, I’m afraid I now might find it even more relevant.”

Loving is a film close to my past life, in a sense. It’s set in the commuting world between Manhattan and Westport, Connecticut, which I knew from having gone to high school in nearby Wilton and lived in Westport in ’76 and ’77.

George Segal and Eva Marie Saint played a married couple. It also featured Sterling Hayden, David Doyle, Keenan Wynn, Roy Scheider and future 20th Century Fox president Sherry Lansing.

Segal plays a successful art-director ad guy who feels he may have made a mistake in opting for marriage, kids and suburban domesticity. He feels creatively trapped, hemmed in. Cold as this sounds, a part of him wants to leave it all and start over again. Partly, you can sense, because Segal is aroused by the socially tumultuous times and, on the cusp of his 40s, he wants to savor the fruits before it’s too late. Loving is famous for its tragically farcical ending with Segal and a friend’s wife getting busted for infidelity by a security video camera during a Westport party. A crowd of revelers (including Saint) are watching the show from the main house.

Leydon calls Loving “quietly devastating” — that’s pretty close to how I feel.

Am I allowed to say…? Naah, forget it. I was going to say while I found Leslie Neilsen‘s original Airplane performance amusing, I never laughed. At most I chuckled. Chortled? Neilsen obviously hasd that deadpan-manner thing down pat. Tens of millions (including Keith Olbermann) loved him for that. It made him into a comic legend in the realm of…well, his own. But let’s not go overboard.

For me “funny” Neilsen was a one-trick pony. He delivered the same clever but thin vibe, over and over. Serious, pre-Airplane Neilsen, however, was another matter. Watch him closely and you can almost (almost, I say) sense his loathing for some of the dialogue he was obliged to say. As David Zucker said in an 11.29 Hollywood Reporter tribute piece, he and Airplane partners Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams thought “serious” Neilsen “was hysterical…when we watched those movies, we laughed.”

And yet twelve years ago David Zucker was asked by an AV Club interviewer if it’s “frustrating” to see Nielsen regarded worldwide as a comic genius. “Well, yeah,” Zucker replied, because “everything guys like Leslie Nielsen say and do onscreen is put in from backstage. Everything’s being controlled from Houston. He doesn’t even flick a switch. He’s just up there in the capsule, and all he can do is act.

“All you have to do is watch him in anything else — Mr. Magoo or Repossessed. You know, all these people think, you know, Leslie Nielsen, that guy’s funny! Let’s get him for our movie! And then they have him trying to be funny, but he needs good jokes.”

A Peggy Siegal luncheon was held today at the Four Seasons for The Fighter, and particularly for director David O. Russell, star-producer Mark Wahlberg and costar Melissa Leo. After the food and schmooze Russell and I spoke for a half-hour — here‘s the mp3. Russell is my kind of whip-smart guy — highly perceptive, well-read, an adult, a father, and whimsical but in no way combustible or hair-trigger. His shorter hair, I think, signifies a new resolve never to be on YouTube ever again.

Yes, that’s N.Y. Press critic Armond White sitting near me (i.e., frame right) during the stand-up greeting that Wahlberg, Russell and Leo offered to the guests.

I asked Wahlberg during the lunch whether he’d read Christian Bale‘s Esquire interview, and he said yeah. We agreed it’s a good read and a good wrestling match. “So why isn’t he here today?,” I asked. “I mean, I know he doesn’t like to do these press things…” Wahlberg went into a schpiel about how he accepts the responsibility of having to promote any film, particularly one with award-season ambitions, with the usual meet-and-greets. “So why isn’t Bale here?,” I asked again. Wahlberg half cleared his throat and half-chuckled and mumured, “Ask him.” I told him the Best Supporting Actor thing is down to Bale vs. The King’s Speech Geoffrey Rush, he said, no surprise, that he’d been told that. And that was that. Bale is Bale.

I told him that as much as I worshipped The Departed, The Fighter feels more authentic in terms of the working-class Massachusetts accents and faces. He said that the authenticity largely came from his (and Russell’s) insistence on using Lowell locals — i.e., people who look and talk like the genuine article without having to “act” it.

(l.) Love Ranch producer Lou DiBella, (r.) legendary boxing writer Bert Sugar, who’s often described as Damon Runyon-esque and/or Studs Terkel-like.

(l.) columnist-critic Marshall Fine; (r.) The Fighter costar and Best Supporting Actress contender Melissa Leo.

If it turns out to be true, James Franco‘s Oscar co-hosting gig will probably kill his shot at being a Best Actor nominee for his performance in 127 Hours. Just as Tom Hanks once said “there’s no crying in baseball!,” you can also say “the Oscar telecast host can’t win the Best Actor Oscar! You can’t straddle lanes like that…no! If he’s the co-host, fine. And he’s a Best Actor nominee, fine. But you can’t do both.”

Nikki Finke is reporting that she “just learned that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has asked James Franco and Anne Hathaway to host the Academy Awards, and it ‘looks like’ both young stars have accepted the offer.

“There is always the chance that one or both of them might back out because of prior commitments and other concerns,” Finke adds, “But my sources say the host announcement could be made as soon as this week.”

Excuse me and due respect, but this is close to ridiculous. These guys would be great for hosting the MTV Awards, maybe, but they’re not skilled or funny or pizazzy enough to handle the Oscars. What are the producers thinking? Ratings, I know, but every good Oscar host needs a little Lenny Bruce running through his/her veins, and Franco and Hathaway, trust me, do not have that quality — it’s not in them.

Franco and Hathaway are cool and gifted and sensitive, certainly, but they don’t have that command-of-the-spotlight, look-at-me and then fucking-listen-to-me quality. This is the worst Oscar hosting idea since…when?

TheWrap‘s Steve Pond has passed along positive tweet impressions of Joel and Ethan Coen‘s True Grit, which screened to a select few last week in Los Angeles and also Saturday night here in New York.

I was told two things yesterday about True Grit. One, that it’s a surprisingly emotional film (i.e., surprisingly for the Coen brothers, that is). And two, that while Jeff Bridges‘s Rooster Cogburn performance is crackling and robust, Matt Damon “almost steals the show”in the Glenn Campbell role, and that he’s suddenly looking like a possible Best Supporting Actor nominee.

The great Irvin Kershner, director of The Empire Strikes Back but more importantly of Loving, the 1970 George Segal-Eva Marie Saint Westport ennui dramedy, had died at age 87.

Kersh was a feisty guy, fun to talk to, full of piss and vinegar, no day at the beach. I loved his brief little performance in The Last Temptation of Christ (“…but we want it!”). And yes, let’s acknowledge that he deserves eternal credit for defying George “it doesn’t have to be that good” Lucas on production values and other matters and making the best Star Wars film of all time.

The Fighter had another triumphant Manhattan showing last night, and at a good theatre for a change — i.e., Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade as opposed to the always-crappy-sounding Lincoln Square. After the lights came up star-producer Mark Wahlberg, director David O. Russell and Best Supporting Actress contender Melissa Leo sat for a q & a. Strong applause greeted the closing credits. New Yorker critic David Denby was there. Smart crowd, pretty middle-aged women, etc. It was the place to be.

The sound is indistinct on these iPhone clips (I forgot my camera due to being fagged and shagged from a red-eye flight I took on Saturday night), but if you turn the sound way up or wear headphones you can make it out.

So why weren’t Christian Bale or Amy Adams there? And why aren’t they taking part in today’s Four Seasons luncheon (which I’ll be attending at 12:30 pm)? Both give serious heavy-hitter supporting performances, and both are very likely Oscar nominees in their respective categories. And that’s not just the usual blah-blah.

Adams gave birth to a daughter about four months ago but if she bails on these events she’s going to weaken her standing, and in my opinion she’s easily Leo’s equal. (Her character is just as feisty, and is clearly the more sympathetic of the two.) We all know Bale doesn’t like to do these dog-and-pony shows but it’s December, for Chrissake, and he needs to get over it. You have to lube up and bend over. Is Bale this year’s Monique in this respect? Monique mixed with George C. Scott, I mean?

The Fighter delivers like a total champ the second time — no weakening, no diminishment. And the sound, as mentioned, was much cleaner and more crisp-sounding at the Walter Reade than it was at the Lincoln Square. Beware of Lincoln Square at all times!

On 11.12 I said that The Fighter is “a rugged little blue-collar thing that (I know this sounds like a cliche) pulses with grit and real feeling and emotional immediacy. It’s loose and crafty with a hurried, shot-on-the-fly quality. Which makes it feel appropriately “small” and local-feeling. To watch it is to be in it

I also said that “ten minutes into it I was saying to myself, ‘Wait…this is good…this is good…this feels right.’

“Hollywood has made good films about Massachusetts blue-collar people, but for me they felt ‘acted’ (like The Town and, no offense, The Departed). But Russell and Wahlberg, shooting almost entirely in Lowell on a fast 33-day schedule, have made some kind of real-deal thing here.

“And the cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema (Let The Right One In) is brilliant — it feels close and true as it bobs and weaves and circles like a boxer And the soundtrack is full of great music, ’60s and ’70s pop tracks and lots of newer-sounding, heavy-percussion stuff, and it all just seems perfect for the task at hand. In this sense The Fighter is almost like Hal Ashby‘s Coming Home with one right-sounding cut after another playing like a juke box in a diner.”

Yesterday’s Oscar Poker was just Sasha, Phil Contrino and myself. We got into early True Grit talk, the award-worthiness of Shutter Island, general box-office tallies, Black Swan, spoilers, the diminishing theatre presence in the heartland, and the current leading candidates for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress. Here’s an independent, non-iTunes link.