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The standout factor, for me, isn’t the violent conflict between young Egyptian militants and police in Cairo, or the economic factors driving the fury. It’s that none of this would be happening if it hadn’t been for the recent government overthrow in Tunisia. Political rage can ignite very suddenly. Why did many Eastern European socialist governments all topple within months of each other in 1989? All it takes is a flash of a match.

It’s too bad in a sense because Hosni Mubarak, autocratic dictator that he is, has been essentially pro-Israel and a force for political moderation and stablization for the last three decades. If he goes Egypt could become a Muslim brotherhood state, and that, of course, would threaten Israel. I wonder how many other dictatorial governments in the Middle East and northern Africa are going to come under siege?

There’s an almost romantic exhilaration that comes from joining mass street protests and yelling “throw the bums out.” Primal, primitive, decisive. “Violence and revolution are the only pure acts.” — Malcolm McDowell‘s Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson‘s If…. But once this or that government has toppled and the thrill has subsided, that’s when the heartache begins.

This is very good, but the best repeated-slap of all (starting at 1:21) is self-administered. Anyone can slap anyone else, but when you whack yourself in a fit of self-loathing…watch out. Name the actress and the film. Hint: The self-slapper is being honored tonight at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

My personal favorite isn’t included. That would be James Cagney‘s one-two-three slap of a bartender in William Wellman ‘s Public Enemy (’31) — choreographed as carefullly as one of Cagney’s dance steps in Yankee Doodle Dandy. First a backhand, then open-handed and downward, and then an upwards backhand on the chin. It starts at 1:15:

Every year (late January/early February) I come home to the same creamy yellow room on the 2nd floor of the Hotel Santa Barbara, and my soul goes “aaahhh.” Great wifi, nice rugs, ice buckets, nicely-situated, small little shitty flatscreen TV, wonderful white bathroom, really nice aroma, etc. And a really great complimentary breakfast in the lobby (fruit, cereal, coffee, croissants, bagels & cream cheese) every day from 7 to 10 am.

Hotel Santa Barbara, room #206 — Thursday, 1.27, 8:44 pm.

I was consumed all today with flying and driving and shoring up advertising revenue. White rental car, driving around, breakfast diner, Camarillo, Ventura…check-in, groceries, all that stuff. And once I arrived in Santa Barbara and unpacked I just felt this urge to succumb to a vegetable mindset. Once you give in to that kind of thing, it’s mesmerizing. And it’s good for the soul. Restful, soothing. I am the walrus & the brussel sprouts.

Three days ago the great political trends-and-numbers analyzer Nate Silver , the author-creator of FiveThirtyEight (now a N.Y. Times column) who was way, way in front of most of the political statistician crowd during the 2008 presidential election, began analyzing the Best Picture Oscar race for Melena Ryzik‘s Carpetbagger column.

This was a day before the Oscar nominations, of course, but Silver’s view is basically that The Social Network will most likely win. The core of his reasoning is (a) that the Academy has been closely following the preferences of the BFCA/Critics Choice awards in recent years and…uuhhh, hold on…uhmm…oh, yeah…and that (b) the Academy’s instant-runoff voting system, “which is no more convoluted than, say, the voting process for Dancing With The Stars,” he says, favors David Fincher‘s film.

“Instant-runoff voting can make a difference when there is a choice between an ‘agreeable’ candidate and one that some people love,” Silver writes, “but other people can’t stand, perhaps tipping the balance toward the former choice. This may have been the situation last year, when we had a somewhat weaker field overall.

“The Social Network is much more than ‘agreeable’, though: yes, nearly everyone likes the movie, but also, some people think it’s absolutely epic . In our experiment, it got to both have its cake and eat it too, picking up a lot of first-place votes at the outset, but also serving as a failsafe for many voters once other films fell by the wayside. If its critical reviews are any guide, it needs to be considered the favorite to win Best Picture, and perhaps a prohibitive one.”

Several thoughts, riffs and reviews about the 2011 Sundance Film Festival are in my head, but Park City Transportation will be here in 11 minutes. I only had six full days of movie-watching here (i.e., last Friday to last night), and I caught only about 22 or 23 films. I’ll be in Los Angeles by 11 am or so. 90 minutes to disembark and rent the car, and then a two-hour drive up the coast to Santa Barbara with occasional stops (photography, seaside contemplation, whatever).

Scott Feinberg (Scottfeinberg.com), Pete Hammond (Deadline Hollywood), Steve Pond (The Wrap), Sasha Stone (Awards Daily), Anne Thompson (IndieWIRE), and yours truly will participate in a first-ever Blogger’s Panel at the Santa Barbara Film Festival next Sunday, 1.30m from 4 to 5:30 pm, at the Santa Barbara Museum.

Attendance by any festival-attending and/or Santa Barbara-residing HE readers would be greatly appreciated. There’s nothing worse than when the panelists outnumber those in the audience. And if you come, please ask slightly challenging and/or rude questions.

Moderated by Peter Rainer, film critic for the Christian Science Monitor and KPCC/NPR host, the panel “will engage in a unique discussion about the dynamics of this year’s awards race and speak on the differing reactions to blogging had by film critics, publicists, movie stars and readers,” the release says. “The ever-expanding reach of new media and its influence on the film industry makes this discussion both interesting to audiences and essential for aspiring and established filmmakers.”

For those who can’t make it I’m told the festival will be videotaping the whole thing and providing all the panelists with a postable embed code later that day. Cool.

A short while ago Film Experience‘s Nathaniel R. asked what would be the Best Picture lineup if there were only five slots. The knee-jerk answer is that The Social Network, The King’s Speech, True Grit, Black Swan and The Fighter would be the nominees. Right?

I need to clarify something for those who don’t read the comment threads, or didn’t read them yesterday. I was criticized last night for failing to accurately read the significance of The King’s Speech getting 12 nominations vs. The Social Network getting 8. I’m aware that The Social Network couldn’t hope to compete in certain below-the-line realms (including Best Supporting Actress, production design, etc.) that The King’s Speech, being a British period piece about the royals with a strong supporting female, would probably be recognized for.

So yeah, I got that. Take away those smaller categories and the nomination tallies for the two films are roughly even.

What I also know is that the mice scurried and the world tumbled yesterday morning when people considered the difference between 12 nominations for TKS and 8 nominations for TSN. Nobody thought it through — they just fled like fools over to TKS. The TSN-favoring Gurus of Gold roster, made up of pros who are supposed to have a veneer of sophistication about this game, took one look and folded for TKS, to a man. Not one of them held their ground. And that’s what I was responding to yesterday, why I felt so effin’ gloomy. One minute I was savoring a clear blue sky and a morning cappucino with my hot Czech girlfriend in an outdoor cafe in Wenceslas Square, and the next minute….Soviet tanks!

The winds will shift again when TSN director David Fincher wins (as expected) his DGA award on 1.29, and when TSN screenwriter Aaron Sorkin picks up his adapted screenplay WGA award on 2.5. And if the Sorkin or Fincher wins don’t happen, then the game will be pretty much over.

I was invited last week to sip Bloody Marys with Hobo With A Shotgun star Rutger Hauer. The twist is that the meeting & drinking will begin this morning starting at 9:30 or 10 am, and then, mildly lit, myself and others will head up to the Egyptian to see the film at 11:30 am. I never touch beer or wine until 9 pm or later and I never go near hard stuff, so this will be an experience.

I missed an 11:30 pm Hobo screening last weekend due to a venue change, and I decided not to attend last night’s press screening in order to catch Rashaad Ernesto Green‘s Gun Hill Road — a mistake.

A few hours ago Sasha Stone, Scott Feinberg and I recorded a special Oscar Poker (#18) about this morning’s Oscar nominations. I’d been in a funk all day about the 12 nominations handed to Tom Hooper‘s The King’s Speech, and the meaning of that number. Our discussion was basically about raising the spirits of those who, like myself, felt grief-struck about the “wrong” film suddenly seeming to become (emphasis on the “s” word) the leading Best Picture contender.

To me (and to most of the world) the 12 TKS nominations indicated a return to the old Oscar mentality of the ’90s, to notions of Anglo-Saxon safety and familiarity and upscale formula, to Merchant-Ivory/Masterpiece Theatre brand of royal British cinema. I felt deeply bummed by this because, to me, The Social Network almost represented a kind of Prague Spring movie — youthful, buzzy, fresh, GenY, 21st Century, etc. So to me this morning’s King’s Speech power-surge felt like repression, like Soviet tanks rumbling into Prague in August ’68. I stood on the street and wept.

But you know what? Our conversation raised my spirits somewhat. Here’s a stand-alone link,

Park City’s Yarrow Hotel bar, 14 or 15 minutes into Barack Obama‘s State of the Union speech.

Every last MCN Guru of Gold voter who changed his/her Best Picture prediction in favor of The Social Network over the last three or four weeks reversed course this morning after the Oscar nominations were announced, and now they’re all King’s Speech supporters again. (Except for Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, who abstained.) It was almost the same deal at Gold Derby’s prediction chart except for five journalists who have, it would seem, at least a semblance of faith in previous perceptions and/or a backbone — Cinematical‘s Erik Davis, Village Voice‘s Michael Musto, Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil, NextMovie‘s Kevin Polowy and myself.