I’m of two minds about this afternoon’s Irish Wake at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, otherwise known as the Santa Barbara Film Festival Blogger’s Panel (4 to 5:30 pm, 1130 State Street). On one hand I’d like as many people as possible to come because it’ll feel like a less miserable thing with friends offering hugs. On the other hand the only way to get through it might be to bring a quart of Jack Daniels and pass it around. Either way you don’t want the panelists to outnumber the audience.

Because the only thing anyone will want to talk about is last night’s impact grenade — i.e., The King’s Speech‘s Tom Hooper winning the DGA award for feature directing, and thereby all but settling the Best Picture race. It’ll basically be an occasion for whimpering, howling and lamenting on the part of myself, Scott Feinberg and Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, plus the usual dry, perceptive, mild-mannered analysis from Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson, the beat-reporting, up-with-movies-and-the-people -who-make-them positivism of Deadline‘s Pete Hammond, and the avuncular wit and wisdom of moderator Peter Rainer, critic for the Christian Science Monitor.