Honestly? I wasn’t expecting Silver Linings Playbook to win four big Spirit Awards today. And yet it took Best Feature, and David O. Russell won for Best Director and Best Screenplay and the Best Actress trophy went to Jennifer Lawrence. I figured they might split the biggies between SLP and Beasts of the Southern Wild and/or Benh Zeitlin, but no.

What does this mean Oscar-wise? Maybe nothing, but could Russell at least take Best Director? Along with Jennifer Lawrence taking Best Actress, I mean.

The Sessions scored twice with John Hawkes winning for Best Actor and Helen Hunt taking the Best Supporting Actress award. Matthew McConaughey won Best Supporting Actor for his aging stripper role in Steven Soderbergh‘s Magic Mike.

Amour director Michael Haneke before start of Spirit Awards ceremony.

SLP‘s David O. Russell, winner of the Best Director and Best Screenpay awards.

Jonathan Dana, Deadline‘s Pete Hammond.

Toy’s House director Jordan Vogt-Roberts.

I somehow missed (a) Thursday night’s Live Read of the screenplay/film version of David Mamet‘s Glengarry Glen Ross, which was performed by an all-female cast (terrific idea!) and then (b) Sean Fennesssey‘s account of same on Grantland, which appeared yesterday afternoon.

Fennessey begins by quoting LACA Film Series curator Elvis Mitchell: “‘The melancholy of the blues and the immediacy of jazz…his characters are hard-hearted and hardheaded, so I thought women can do that,.’ That was how Mitchell [introduced] the conceit of last night’s Live Read. Mamet’s terse, rhythmic story tracks four real estate salesmen (and scam artists) desperately working through the night on the eve of a robbery. The Live Read, a semi-regular event at LACMA, is a quiet, clever, only-in-L.A. happening where the city’s access to celebrity and artists is actually used for good.”

Robin Wright as Ricky Roma, originated by Al Pacino, but more primally by Joe Mantegna in the original stage production. Catherine O’Hara as Shelley Levene, originated by Jack Lemmon or Robert Prosky in the stage version. Melanie Lynskey as George Aaronow, originated by Alan Arkin. Maria Bello as Dave Moss, originated by Ed Harris. Mae Whitman as John Williamson, originated by Kevin Spacey. And Carla Gugino as Blake (“set of steak knives”), originated by Alec Baldwin.

Taken in October 1987 from the East Berlin side of the Brandenburg Gate. Berlin was part of an Eastern Bloc honeymoon my ex-wife Maggie and I were on. We had tied the knot in Paris at St. Julien le Pauvre and were looking to avoid a typical westernized European atmosphere (i.e., McDonalds) by visiting only Communist countries — i.e., Czechoslovakia, East Germany. Cool idea, mixed results.

In about 90 minutes I’ll be driving over to that same beach-adjacent parking lot in Santa Monica for the good old Film Independent Spirit Awards. Same red carpet, same crowds, same parking passes, same security goons, same massive circus tent. The best part is the schmooze time (11 am to 1 pm) before everything starts. In my drinking days I used to enjoy my champagne during this period and get happily buzzed. Not “half in the bag” but…you know, “happy.” At noon! Thank God those days are over.

For years and years the weather in Santa Monica was perfect on Spirit Awards day — warm and balmy, no breeze or not too breezy, radiant blue sky. But last year it was chilly and blustery and faintly miserable. It was like the Southern California Weather Demon was saying “I left you alone for so many years in the past but not today….today I’m going to put you through it, Spirit Awards!” Being inside the main tent was okay but if you were in the rear press tent it was like “where’s my overcoat?” I felt like Jack London looking to build a fire. The almost-gale-strength winds assaulted the heavy plastic material covering the tent entrances. The gusts blew napkins into the air and destroyed women’s carefully coiffed hair styles.

Please, God…please spare me an experience like that today. Either way the Spirits will air tonight on IFC at 10 pm Pacific/Eastern and 9 pm Central.

Former SNL headliner Andy Samberg, who’s looking to be the next Paul Rudd or Adam Sandler or Bill Murray or whomever, is the emcee.

The Spirit Awards are basically the Indie Oscars, of course, but the definition of what specifically constitutes a Spirit-worthy indie film has become more liberal and/or less precise in recent years. I forget what the budgetary limit for Best Feature contenders is now but I remember the days when it was $15 million. Now it’s…what is it? $25 million? Higher?

From last year’s report: “The 2012 Spirit Awards did the wrong thing today by giving four awards to the Big Oscar Inevitable known as The Artist — Best Feature, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Cinematography. The worst kowtow was giving Jean Dujardin its Best Actor prize instead of, say, A Better Life‘s Damien Bichir or Take Shelter‘s Michael Shannon. It wasn’t an indie thing to do — it was a ‘we want to be the Oscars too!‘ thing. Extremely bad form, dark day, etc.”

But the dominant Spirit Award qualifier, as always, is having the right attitude, a certain unpretentious or hands-on “fuck it, we’ll do it this way instead” approach to filmmaking. Being willing and able to scrimp and cut corners whenever necessary, to occasionally pick out your own wardrobe and do your own makeup in a gas station bathroom, and…I don’t know, having the improvisational fuck-all nerve and spontaneity and irreverence of spirit to quietly pantomine “what the fuck just happened?” when an 85 year-old actress wins a BAFTA award? Serious Spirit-minded people don’t walk around frowning and seething and spitting bile and getting their knickers in a twist.

Best Feature nominees: Beasts of the Southern Wild, Bernie, Keep the Lights On (which I haven’t even seen), Moonrise Kingdom and Silver Linings Playbook. I’ll be happy if Beasts of the Southern Wild or Bernie or SLP wins. Prediction: Beasts of the Southern Wild.

I know that if I see Richard Linklater there I’m going to tell him how knocked out I was by Before Midnight, which will definitely be a Spiit Award nominee this time next year in several categories.

Best Director: Wes Anderson, Benh Zeitlin, Ira Sachs (Keep The LIghts On), David O. Russell, Julia Loktev (The Loneliest Planet). Prediction: Zeitlin or Russell.

Touchstone Home Entertainment’s Bluray of Michael Mann‘s The Insider looks perfectly fine. It looks like film, which is the right way to go, of course. Noticable but tolerable grain levels. Dante Spinotti‘s cinematography looks as good as it did when I first saw The Insider at the big Academy premiere in late October 1999.

It’s a significant upgrade from the DVD, of course, but how could it not be? If I had my druthers the look of this Bluray would be tweaked just a bit more because I like my Blurays to “pop” just a bit more, but that’s me. I don’t mean to indicate that the Bluray hasn;t been “done right.” It has been. It’s fine. No beefs.

But I do have a problem with the lack of a decent “making of” documentary. There’s so much to get into with this film, so much to look back and reflect upon in terms of issues that reach well beyond the concerns of the entertainment industry, that it’s a shame that Disney decided to merely remaster the elements for a bare-bones release.

For openers there’s the story of Marie Brenner‘s researching and writing of “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” the May 1996 Vanity Fair story that inspired the film. The writing of the screenplay by Eric Roth, and Mann’s massaging and tweaking and whatever else. The casting. The shooting and the logistical challenges. The reactions by CBS News and 60 Minutes staffers, particularly the late Mike Wallace.

You wouldn’t expect that a Disney Bluray would include an honest look at the spectacularly awful marketing of the film by Disney feature publicity, which in my mind is one of the great cock-ups of all time. The Insider is basically about how CBS corporate interests allowed a major 60 Minutes news story to be diluted over fears of a Big Tobacco lawsuit. And yet Disney marketers somehow allowed the public, some in the press and even some in the filmmaking community to run with the idea that The Insider was an anti-smoking film.

I recall attending an Insider press conference with Mann and Al Pacino and Russell Crowe and others, and that’s exactly what was on the minds of at least some of the journalists.

Consider a piece I wrote three years ago:

“Most of the moviegoers who’ve heard of The Insider probably still think it’s an anti-smoking drama, but you’d think that a smart guy like Jason Reitman would know better. The Insider is about the killing of a major 60 Minutes news story, and about the wreckage (personal, professional, cultural) that this action causes. At most the film was peripherally or tangentially about smoking.

“The fact that Big Tobacco had enough money and legal power to make CBS corporate feel legally threatened (and thus leading to the story being de-balled on 60 Minutes) is what’s crucial to the story. It was a movie about big-time TV journalists being pushed around and then folding their tent. But the adversarial element could have just as easily been weapons manufacturers or any politically powerful concern.

“Since The Insider was released in ’99, it’s become common knowledge that due to their corporate-ownership and corporate priorities, major news media orgs can’t really be counted upon to report the tough stories (’03 Iraq invasion, WMDs). Robert Kane Pappas‘ Orwell Rolls In His Grave (’04) spelled this out pretty clearly. For my money the serious hardball information today comes sporadically from the N.Y. Times and from Bill Moyers’ Journal but mostly from online reporting and columnists and from the British newspapers. TV network news is pretty much out of the game.”

Last night’s Irish shindig (for the US-Ireland Alliance) at Bad Robot was cool. Thanks to JJ Abrams for inviting me. Nice vibe, nice guests, nice food, nice potato chips and dip, pretty girls. Colin Farell was one of the honorees. I spoke for a bit with director-producer Tony Bill, who was sharp as a tack and in a chipper mood.

Bar Robot honcho and host JJ Abrams delivering remarks at last night’s event.

I have to mention that it was partly an outdoor party, and you know how Santa Monica can be at night with the chilly damp air and all. After a while I started to say to myself, “This is a really good gathering but fuck this cold damp air…this feeling of wanting to be someplace warmer but not really feeling that warmth.” So I exited out of a side door, got into the car and fired up the heat. And then I drove back to West Hollywood for some sushi and parked my car in the wrong lot and got towed.

Colin Farrell.

I switched from Softlayer to Liquid Web late yesterday afternoon, but the ISP-to-root server propagation process is slow and grinding. Did I mention frustrating? 19 hours have passed so far and HE’s appearance is spotty — great on the iPhone and IPad, better on Safari, not so hot on Firefox or Google Chrome. Things won’t really be smooth as silk until sometime tomorrow, I’m guessing. Some sources say website propagation can take as long as 72 hours, but I’m not buying that.

In a cab on my way to Melrose Tow, where my car is being held prisoner. They got it late last night while I was having sushi on West Third Street. It was parked in an empty commercial lot, blocking nothing, hurting no one. What will they charge me? You can’t negotiate with racketeers. Update: $147 bills! Not that bad.

This is the only vaguely amusing poster in an otherwise crude and sophmoric series. I don’t know why I’m even posting this. I guess because this was more or less my basic reaction as I watched Life of Pi. CG paintbox, typhoon, lifeboat, Bengal tiger, CG paintbox, high seas, flying fish, faux-spirituality, CG paintbox.

From my Cannes Film Festival review of Wayne Blair‘s The Sapphires (Weinstein Co., 3.22): “A healthy portion is cool, snappy, rousing, well-cut and enormously likable. (And dancable.) That would be the first 40%, when the true-life tale of an Aboriginal Supremes-like group assembled and took shape in Australia in 1968. This 40-minute section, trust me, is definitely worth the price.

“But the main reason the film delivers overall is Chris O’Dowd‘s performance as Dave, a charmingly scuzzy boozer and Motown fanatic who steers the four girl singers (played by Deborah Mailman, Jessica Mauboy, Shari Sebbens and Miranda Tapsell) away from country and towards soul music, and then takes them to Vietnam to entertain U.S. troops. Dowd’s manner and personality are a total kick — an absolute hands-down winner and the best reason to see The Sapphires, even when it turns sketchy in the last half or so.

“I was saying to myself during the first 10 or 15 minutes, ‘Whoa, this is pretty good…not as high-throttle razzmatzzy as Dreamgirls but I like it better.’ And then it kept on going and hitting the marks for the most part. Blair is a talented director who knows how to cut and groove and put on a show. [Even during the parts] when it’s not really working The Sapphires at least keeps the ball in the air with reasonable agility and sass. The analogy, come to think, isn’t really Dreamgirls as much as Hustle and Flow and The Commitments, at least during those first 40 minutes.

“The soul classics are delightful to savor throughout. The music put me in a good mood right away and kept me there.

“The script is by Aboriginal actor-writer Tony Briggs and Keith Thompson, and based on Brigg’s 2004 stage play, which was based on his mom’s true story (as the closing credits infom).

In this “ask Joe and Jane Schmoe about the Oscars” bit, Hollywood Reporter award-season columnist Scott Feinberg wisely avoids questions that would point out public apathy about the Academy Awards, as former “Carpetbagger” David Carr used to do in Times Square. Instead he gets them to act out famous lines from Best Picture nominees.

The only funny part? When they repeat a line from Michael Haneke‘s Amour: “I want to die.”

But is this a line from Amour? Or is it a line that people think they’ve heard spoken by Emmanuelle Riva‘s character? In other words, is Amour‘s alleged “I want to die” line analogous to Casablanca‘s “Play It Again, Sam”…which also was never said?