I’ve stayed twice in Park City’s Yarrow Hotel. The semi-spacious rooms are the size of any other room in any other moderately upscale hotel. But the place is clean and cozy and well-tended, and of course well located for anyone running around the Sundance Film Festival. But nearly $2500 and change for five days? The Creative Coalition guys are calling this a discounted rate. Tony Montana‘s response: “Thass 500 bocks a night, mang.” My place, the Park Regency, is about 3/4 of a mile south of the Yarrow, and just as nice in terms of the usual comforts. And bigger. A large one-bedroom apartment with bunk beds in an alcove for week #1 (1.17 through 1.24) and a smaller one-bedroom apartment for week #2 (1.24 through 1.30) for $1800 for two weeks, or $900 per week. The TCC post is wrong, by the way. A check-in on Thursday, 1.22 with a check-out on Sunday, 1.25 = three nights.

For at least the last six months of 2014 many Oscar know-it-alls had Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken right at the top of their likely Best Picture lists. The vast majority of shepherd-following Gurus and Gold Derby-ites sang the tune in four-part harmony…”Unbroken, Unbroken, Unbroken, Unbroken…we can’t wait to fall to our knees and celebrate the wonder of Angie!” Well, this morning’s PGA nomination snub was a very sobering harbinger, I’m afraid. Unbroken is now seriously diminished if not down for the count in the Best Picture contest, and even Fandango‘s Dave Karger — one of Angie’s most loyal and steadfast soldiers — has thrown in the towel. It now seems fair to take a little bow for expressing reservations about this film ten and a half months ago, or on 2.27.14. I was just going on a hunch, a whiff of an aroma to come…but damned if what I wrote then isn’t a pretty good summary of what many people with taste (i.e., not those who offer opinions to CinemaScore) have been saying since Unbroken opened a week and a half ago. I can sense the drift of things months in advance. I’ve always had this ability. It’s why I’m good with a column like this.

Last night I watched an Amazon instant-download high-def version of Lewis Milestone‘s Pork Chop Hill (’59). The monchrome tonalities couldn’t have been richer and the focus was razor sharp, but it was cropped at 1.78:1. I didn’t like that because I know there was plenty of visual material above and below the cleaver lines, and that Pork Chop Hill has been shown previously at 1.66:1. So last night I ordered the 2012 Region 2 French Bluray which delivers a 1.66:1 image. I’m what you might call a 1.66 loyalist, and this is how I handle things when push comes to shove. There’s an Olive Film Bluray coming out on 1.27 that uses a 1.85:1 crop, according to online info.

(l.) Olive Films Bluray of Pork Chop Hill, streeting on 1.27.15 in 1.85:1 aspect ratio; (r.) Filmedia Bluray, released in France in March 2012 in 1.66:1 a.r.

At the end of the day, or more precisely on the morning of Thursday, January 15, Selma might squeak by with a Best Picture nomination. Perhaps a last-minute sympathy surge will manifest from Academy members who were shocked it didn’t make the PGA’s Zanuck nominee list. But after this morning’s stunning PGA exclusion, I think the game is pretty much over. Selma screeners were slow in arriving when they arrived at all, the “disparagement of LBJ’s role” meme stuck to the wall, and some people apparently decided that they didn’t want to do the African-American suffering thing two years in a row after 12 Years A Slave. The current situation, in the wake of the PGA snub, is that Selma has no chance to win the Best Picture Oscar, and is apparently in some kind of struggle to even be nominated. But it might slip in. Who knows?

How long does it take a DVD duplication facility to crank out thousands of discs and pop them into jackets, and how time-consuming is the mailing process after that? It shouldn’t take that long, should it? I’m hearing it was pretty much DuVernay’s fault for taking a long while to finish post-production despite a nearly complete version (sans closing credits) showing at AFI Fest on November 11th. (On 12.5 Paramount’s Lea Yardum told BFCA members that Selma “has just recently been finalized…therefore we are unable to send you screeners.”) And I don’t know whose responsibility it would be except Paramount’s for taking as long as it did to send out Selma screeners, and for sending them only to Academy members when they were finally ready.

Balloting for Academy nominations closes on Thursday at 5 pm so DuVernay snagging (or not snagging) a DGA nomination on Tuesday, 1.13, won’t mean a thing in terms of Oscar noms. What matters, as In Contention‘s Kris Tapley pointed out this morning, is that four industry groups have announced nominations so far this year: SAG, ACE, ADG (i.e., Art Directors Guild) and the PGA. And only five films have been recognized by all four — Birdman, Gone Girl, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game and Nightcrawler. Selma has been hyped to heaven by its Oscar-blogging friends, but when push has come to shove it has not been cutting the mustard.

There has to be some frowning and head-scratching going on this morning by strategists working for Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken and particularly Ava DuVernay ‘s Selma as both are missing in the just-announced list of nominees for the Producers Guild of America’s Darryl F. Zanuck Award for best feature film. A Zanuck nom is regarded as a reliable Oscar bellwether — a reflection of general industry sentiments. The final lap of last year’s Best Picture battle was an either-or between 12 Years A Slave and Gravity, and this resulted in a PGA tie with both films winning half a Zanuck.

The nominees are American Sniper (what?), Birdman, Boyhood (of course), Foxcatcher (bounce-back from Schultz tirade), Gone Girl, Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, Nightcrawler, The Theory of Everything and Whiplash. A hearty back-pat for Nightcrawler and director-writer Dan Gilroy! And Gone Girl is back in the arena. And all hail Damian Chazelle‘s Whiplash.

The Selma exclusion is the biggest shocker. The civil-rights period drama is currently regarded as a likely Best Picture nominee by nearly all of the Oscar season know-it-alls (including me, despite my belief that it’s not a great film but a good one). So right now these people — particularly Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, who’s been one of the film’s biggest supporters — have some ‘splainin’ to do.

My guess is that recent negative reports about Selma having mischaracterized President Lyndon Johnson‘s attitude and record about the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are a factor in its absence. Too many reliable sources said that DuVernay got it wrong on this matter. The question is whether or not the PGA nominations will influence other voting bodies.

Josh Gad is apparently on-board to play Roger Ebert in Russ & Roger Go Beyond, a fact-based comedy about the making of Beyond The Valley of the Dolls, for which the 27 year-old Ebert wrote the absurdist screenplay under the tutelage of softcore producer Russ Meyer (Will Ferrell). 20th Century Fox financed and distributed the mind-bending, mildly awful sex farce about an all-girl rock band, opening it on 6.17.70.

Soft-porn producer Russ Meyer, Chicago Sun Times film critic Roger Ebert sometime in ’69 or ’70.

I was told about Gad’s casting by producer David Permut at today’s Variety brunch at the Parker Palm Springs. There was an earlier idea to cast Jonah Hill as Ebert, Permut told me a few months back, but that didn’t pan out. Hill has a thoughtful, whip-smart air about him — he would’ve been perfect. Ebert’s widow Chaz Ebert was at the same brunch, but had left by the time I heard about the Gad casting. I wonder what she thinks about her late film-critic husband being played by a guy who always seems to play hyper obsessives who can’t hold it in.

I was so taken aback by the notion of the geeky-mannered Gad playing the brilliant, urbane, smoothly-phrased Ebert that I forgot to ask Permut who will direct.

Russ & Roger Go Beyond has been described in Variety and Deadline stories as an upcoming indie since mid-2014. The screenplay has been written by Emmy winner Christopher Cluess.

From 11 am to 1 pm Hollywood Elsewhere attended Variety’s Creative Impact Awards and 10 Directors to Watch Brunch at the Parker Palm Springs. Totally relaxing…as pleasant and cheerful as this kind of thing gets. It was great shooting the breeze with The Judge costar Robert Duvall, Nightcrawler director-writer Dan Gilroy, Selma director Ava DuVernay, Leviathan director Andrey Zvyginstsev, Top Five director-star Chris Rock, Wild Tales director Damian Szifron, Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker, and Variety brunch host Steven Gaydos. And to discreetly gawk at Still Alice star (and almost-certain Best Actress Oscar winner) Julianne Moore, Foxcatcher costar Steve Carell and Boyhood director Richard Linklater.

(l. to r.) Wild Tales director-writer Damian Szifron, The Judge costar and likely Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Robert Duvall, Leviathan director Andrey Zvyagintsev at Variety‘s Palm Spring Film Festival brunch at the Parker Palm Springs.

(l.) Boyhood director Richard Linklater, (r.) Top Five director-star Chris Rock near end of ceremony.

Several attendees posing for a group shot. Don’t ask me to identity them all but obviously Chris Rock and Steve Carell are standing toward the left.

“At this point, everyone wants to know which film is going to win Best Picture,” MCN’s David Poland has written. “Anyone who tells you they know the answer is pulling their own chain. [But] it is looking more and more like Boyhood vs Imitation/Theory with the latter two splitting, allowing Boyhood to win. Birdman is divisive, especially amongst older voters.” Particularly older women, Poland neglects to mention. “There are a number of reasons why Selma is unlikely to win and two years in a row of ‘historical dramas focused on race’ is amongst them, whether we like it or not. Grand Budapest is a bit too light and magical and Whiplash is too thin, however entertaining. [And] Nightcrawler is just too brutal to win.”

I’m still waiting for a definitive sign that Boyhood is something more than a critics’ film, or more precisely a Steve Pond film. I’m not saying it isn’t that. Richard Linklater‘s Best Director campaign may indeed result in a win, but somebody needs to point out the solid indicators that say Boyhood‘s popularity is as deep and wide as the Jordan river. As much as I like and truly respect that film, I’m honestly questioning — unsure of — its strength amongst the fartists.

Mexican directors Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo del Toro are “stealing Hollywood’s thunder now. They’re doing exactly what the French” — nouvelle vague-ists Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette — “did in the 1960s. Birdman bears much the same relation to Batman as Godard’s Breathless did to The Maltese Falcon: it converts a Hollywood formula into its own kind of free-form jazz. [And yet] the Three Amigos are the children of globalism, as conversant in franchise formulas as they are in Mexico’s indigenous cinema. Working away at the fault-line that separates north from south, blockbuster export from indie import, they are bilingual, speaking Hollywoodese but making up their own grammar and syntax.” — from “Hollywood’s Mexican Wave,” a piece by Tom Shone in Intelligent Life magazine, January/February 2015.

For me the standout event at last night’s Palm Springs Film Festival awards gala was the appearance of Still Alice‘s Julianne Moore, who was conspicuously absent from the Oscar campaign trail all through the 2014 Oscar season. Her campaign strategist no doubt instructed that the “she’s due” buzz, which began during last September’s Toronto Film Festival, was all they needed and so let well enough alone. With absolutely no one anticipating flotation from Alice, a Lifetime disease-coping movie, the best approach would be to do nothing at all until January when things kick off in earnest with the Palm Springs Film Festival, the Golden Globes, the BFCA awards, etc. Team Moore knows that the competition isn’t that strong (with the exception of Cake‘s Jennifer Aniston, who’s running the most successful go-for-it campaign) and that they’ll almost certainly coast to a win. But the rest of us are bored. It would be far more engaging if at least one other contender posed some kind of threat to Moore…alas, no. Then again Moore’s speech last night was spirited, relaxed…a bull’s-eye.

Birdman director Alejandro G. Inarritu, star Michael Keaton, last night on Palm Springs Convention Center red carpet.

I sat through the whole thing, man…four and a half hours of chit-chatting and smiling and eating the salad and and dessert and the mashy meat entree, grinding it all out in that huge, cavernous convention hall, dressed in my tuxedo-like black suit and tweeting now and then at table 1302. (In Contention‘s Kris Tapley sat to my right.) The venue, as always, was basically a tryout venue for speeches that everyone will be giving over the next seven weeks or so, and there was something to be said, naturally, for hearing them for the first time.

The horses…I’m sorry, the honorees were Gone Girl‘s Rosamund Pike (Breakthrough Actress winner), Selma‘s David Oyelowo (Breakthrough Actor), Whiplash‘s J.K. Simmons (Spotlight winner), The Judge‘s Robert Duvall (who got the evening’s only standing ovation), Boyhood maestro Richard Linklater (Sonny Bono Visionary Award), Moore, The Theory of Everything‘s Eddie Redmayne (uncharacteristically dressed in black), Birdman director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, The Imitation Game‘s Benedict Cumberbatch and Wild‘s Reese Witherspoon.

Brad Pitt schooled 2400 people at the Palm Springs Film Festival gala at the P.S. Convention Center on the proper pronunciation of David Oyelowo‘s last name. I’ve been telling people for months now that you don’t have to worry about the last “oh” syllable. Just say “oh-yellow” and you’re more or less okay. If you can rise to the challenge and include that last “oh” and really say “Oyelowo,” then you’ll really be cooking with high-test. But if you can’t, no one will blame you. By the way: Se7en will be 20 years old this year…two decades as of 9.22.15. I remember the all-media screening at the Village Westwood like it was last month.

I’m staying, as noted, at the Casa Cody, which is right near downtown Palm Springs. Late this morning some drunk drove into a pole and knocked out the Time Warner wifi signal. Right after this I was asking the front-desk guy about alternate wifi sources, and during our discussion he called the place “Cassa Cody,” pronouncing the Spanish term for house — generally pronounced “casah” as in Casablanca — as rhyming with “pass” or “mass” or “crass” or “Cass Elliot” with an “a” attached. I didn’t say anything, of course…what would be the point?