Kimberly Peirce‘s Carrie was supposed to open in March but now it’s not opening for another 10 months, or 7 months later than mid-March. Something’s wrong, right? One thing they have to get right for sure, and that’s improving on Brian DePalma‘s bloody-hand-rising-out-of-the-grave finale in his 1976 version. They have to come up with something better.

The most significant aspect of this Sharon Waxman-Steve Pond post-Golden Globes Oscar handicapping video is the tin-can sound of Pond’s voice. He sounds like Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer. His voice has the high fidelity of Paul McCartney singing “now she’s hit the big time!” in the Beatles’ Honey Pie. He sounds like Vitaphone.

The second most significant aspect is Pond’s disinclination to acknowledge the signs and admit that Best Picture-wise, Lincoln is all but finished. Instead he’s calls it a “shaky” frontrunner. No shit? Pond knows that everybody likes or respects Steven Spielberg‘s film, but nobody really loves it and that’s why it’s not winning anything. He knows it, I know it, Sharon knows it, own up to it. Yes, the 1.26 Producer’s Guild Awards will tell the tale.

Ten seconds into the trailer and it’s obvious that Ghost Team One, a Paranormal Activity spoof playing at 2013 Slamdance, will probably be much, much better than Michael Tiddes‘ A Haunted House, which has a thundering 9% Rotten Tomatoes approval rating. However the film plays, the trailer persuades that it’ll be fairly sharp and clever. These guys are funny.

The last film I’ll see before flying to Park City tomorrow is Andres Muschietti‘s Mama (Universal, 1.18), in which Jessica Chastain stars as a gothy adoptive mom. The way to “get” this film is to repeat the title as if you’re producer Guillermo del Toro. Americans say “mahma” with a first-syllable emphasis, but GDT pronounces it “mah-mah” with a faint second syllable emphasis. He almost says “ma-MAH.” Just say it that way over and over, and it feels cooler and cooler each time.

Is it me, or is this “Dining With Barry & Barb” scene from This Is 40 one of the best scenes from the material that Judd Apatow shot, even though it didn’t make the final cut? Apologies for being seven days late but as perverse, lifeless and emotionally shut-down as it sounds, the “expecting and offering nothing leads to serenity in a marriage” rap is at least a novel concept, and one that I’ve never heard voiced in a film before.

To everyone’s surprise it has become increasingly evident that Lincoln will most likely fail to take the Best Picture Oscar. It is respected and liked, but not really loved. And it looks more and more like Argo might take that award. [Note: Apologies for idiotic, now-deleted info posted a few minutes ago.]

It’s not that the BFCA/Critics Choice or the HFPA Golden Globe awards are Academy influencers, per se. It’s the fact they both chose Argo for Best Film and Affleck for Best Director, and that means that Argo pollen is in the air, and they both sneezed in unison. It’s the pollen, it’s the pollen….the pollen is the thing. If the Producers Guild becomes the third organization to go “ah-choo” over Argo, the game is over.

I’m more of an Argo admirer than a lover or worshipper as Zero Dark Thirty is clearly a much tougher and more riveting film, and generally a higher, greater achievement, but if it has to be Argo then so be it. I’d rather see Silver Linings Playbook take the prize for emotional reasons, but I’m nonetheless willing to fall on the Argo sword if that helps, even a little tiny bit, to fulfill my most ardent wishes in this race, which I don’t need to elaborate upon.

I suspect that Bill Clinton‘s Lincoln endorsement during last night’s Golden Globes telecast pretty much decided that Lincoln‘s and Spielberg’s fate, but you tell me.

All kinds of things to attend to as I leave tomorrow afternoon for Park City and the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. It’s hard. A growing sense of bats swirling around my life, wings flapping….flap-flap-flap-flap-FLAP-FLAP-FLAP! Struggling as we speak. Thinking, examining, researching as fast I can. Several phone conversations this morning, and none of them leading anywhere.

I should have posted a link to last Friday night’s Charlie Rose Show discussion of the Oscar nominations by now. N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott; New Yorker critic David Denby (a Silver Linings hater save for Jennifer Lawrence); Slate‘s Dana Stevens and Annette Insdorf of Columbia University. The thing to listen for, as always, are the implied views rather than the stated ones…but you knew that.

Before driving down to the police-state fortress that was the Beverly Hilton and the Golden Globes awards, I spent two and a half hours on my back underneath a friend’s house, crawling around inside a sprawling dark space that was maybe 20″ high and wearing a surgical mask and a hat and tinted shades as me and two other guys put pink insulation strips between the floor beams. There were piles of dirt on top of the cross breams and every time we pushed through the strips soil poured onto my head, face and neck. I felt like Charles Bronson as Danny the tunnel king in The Great Escape.

I don’t know for a fact that Steven Spielberg arranged for Bill Clinton to come to the Golden Globes and speak admiringly of Lincoln the president and Lincoln the film. But it seems like a pretty good guess that he did. Bill was eloquent as usual, but what was the effect of his testimonial? People realized that Spielberg wants Oscar glory really badly this time, and will cash in any I.O.U.’s, political or otherwise, that might help in this regard.

Argo winning Best Motion Picture, Drama and Ben Affleck winning for Best Director tonight came right on the heels of the BFCA Critics Choice awards deciding to give the same awards, and I think that tore it. I think everyone except for the Lincoln die-hards realized tonight that Lincoln doesn’t have the horses to win the Best Picture Oscar, and Spielberg is probably out of the running also. And the reason for the latter, I think, is that he looked scared tonight. Playing the Clinton card was basically Spielberg saying to himself, “How do we shake this race loose and tip it in our favor? Obviously we have support but possibly not enough. That fucking Critics Choice Argo win didn’t help any. I know…I’ll call up Bill Clinton and have him make a pitch for it!”

It’s now Argo in the lead for Best Picture vs. Silver Linings Playbook with Lincoln in third place.

I dislike movies that exploit fear of evil predators and general undercurrents of dread. You can’t be Pollyanna and you have to be careful, but you also have to understand and accept the fact that the vast majority of people are reasonable and considerate. You can’t live in a fear cage. You can’t live life like a deer drinks from a stream in the forest, always looking up every two or three seconds to make sure a predator isn’t approaching.

Every now and then I get this Tony Soprano anxiety thing in which you can’t stop scratching your arm or your leg. No matter how hard you scratch it still itches. You have to use kitchen knives to make it go away. It happened again last night. I used Tony Soprano’s name because when I saw him constantly scratching his arm during the first or second season of The Sopranos I recognized myself.

What I realized last night is that the scratchies can be (or perhaps always are) specifically linked to something you’re nervous about but have been suppressing. I used to think they just happened when they happened because they felt like it.