I realized during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival that not wearing facial stubble is no longer an option for lead actors. Obedience was demanded and every single actor in every single film I saw in Park City complied. And we the ticket-buyers are probably stuck with glistening follicles for the next 10 to 15 years. Or longer. Fashion dictates, monkeys salute and no one resists. Probably because of surveys like this one.

Today’s Oscar Poker podcast touched on the somewhat surprising success of The Grey, the underwhelming response to Haywire (which I find deeply depressing) and the blah-blah-blah-blah Oscar season as things now stand. It was a threesome today — myself, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone and Boxoffice.com‘s Phil Contrino. Here’s a stand-alone mp3 link.

Longtime Oscar-watcher and chronicler Damien Bona, co-author (with Mason Wiley) of Inside Oscar and sole author of Inside Oscar 2, has died of a heart attack at age 57. His passing was announced by Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone a little while ago. Condolences to his family, friends and colleagues.

Damien Bona (3.18.54 – 1.29.12)

If I was the Hollywood Reporter editor in charge of dreaming up headlines for the magazine, I’d have a problem with “Being Brad Pitt.” It’s kinda lame and generic sounding, like something Interview might use. HE alternate #1: “NOT GONNA WIN…and That’s Cool.” HE alternate #2: “RICH SCRAGGLY BEARDO & The Performance of His Career.” HE alternate #3: “LONG TIME COMING: Brad Pitt’s Career High.”

Last night’s DGA Award win by The Artist‘s Michel Hazanavicius took the wind out of my sails. The last hope of the anti-Artist crowd was a surprise win by Hugo‘s Martin Scorsese, and now that’s dashed. I don’t know if I even want to watch tonight’s SAG awards. It’s certainly possible that The Artist will win Best Ensemble, and that’ll be one more stone in the bucket.

It’s time for a perfectly rendered Criterion Bluray of Carol Reed‘s Odd Man Out (’47), one of the most sadly emotional and tragic noirs of all time. I saw it a couple of times on laser disc in the mid ’90s, and I have indelible memories of a sweating, barely conscious James Mason (as IRA combatant Johnny McQueen) and of constantly falling snow in a darkened Belfast. I would have them again in high-definition.

The exquisite photography is by Robert Krasker, who also shot Reed’s The Third Man.

The only NTSC DVD was put out by Image nearly 14 years ago, and opportunistic re-sellers are asking $80 and $90 and higher for used and new copies. Shut those suckers down.

The harbor finale with Mason and Kathleen Ryan leaning against the iron fence with the cops slowly approaching in the snow…wow. And Robert Newton ‘s performance as the gesticulating alcoholic painter…forget about it.

Odd Man Out was Mason’s breakout film, of course, but he’d been acting since 1933 or thereabouts, when he turned 24, and was 37 — no spring chicken — when Reed’s film was shot in mid ’46.

The Wiki page notes that Roman Polanski has “repeatedly cited Odd Man Out as his favourite film,” and that he feels that Odd Man Out is superior to The Third Man, generally thought to be Reed’s masterpiece. “I still consider it as one of the best movies I’ve ever seen and a film which made me want to pursue this career more than anything else,” Polanski has said. “I always dreamt of doing things of this sort or that style. To a certain extent I must say that I somehow perpetuate the ideas of that movie in what I do.”

The other day I agreed with Self-Styled Siren‘s comment that Alfred Hitchcock‘s Lifeboat (’44) is “very unappreciated” — I assumed she meant “wrongly” — by saying that Tallulah Bankhead, John Hodiak, Hume Cronyn, Henry Hull and Walter Slezak are excellent and that Hitch’s studio-water-tank simulation of the North Atlantic easily out-verisimiltudes Waterworld.

The discussion began with my mentioning the forthcoming Masters of Cinema Bluray version, due in mid April.

Siren said that Lifeboat is “a good example of our mutual pal Glenn Kenny‘s argument that a confined space can still be very cinematic.” Or my view that any limitation (including not having enough money) always encourages creativity. Lifeboat is the first of Hitchcock’s four confined-space films, the others being Rope (’48), Dial M for Murder (’54), and Rear Window (’54).

There are two great moments in the above clip. The first happens at 2:20, just after Bankhead has lost a priceless diamond bracelet after she and the others have tried fishing with it (“I can recommend the bait…I should know, I bit on it myself”). The second happens at 8:55 after a young German sailor, pulled aboard after his ship has gone down, is disarmed after pointing a gun at the lifeboat crew. And Hodiak says, “What are you going to do with people like that?” Cronyn says, “I don’t know…I was thinking of Mrs. Igley and her baby…and Gus.” And Bankhead says, “Well, maybe they can answer that.”

The writers were John Steinbeck, Jo Swerling, Ben Hecht, Alma Reville, MacKinlay Kantor and Patricia Collinge.

Lifeboat is one of many hundreds of films made since the early 1920s that are sharper and deeper and of more lasting value than The Artist. Don’t get me started.

Last night Christopher Plummer sat for a Santa Barbara Film Festival Modern Master tribute at the Arlington theatre. Plummer said he was unsure if the audience wanted to sit for the whole thing, but it was a pleasure from start to finish with Pete Hammond interviewing, and many — well, about 20% — of Plummer’s films getting the once-over.

The above clip was taken by yours truly as I leaned against the theatre wall about 15 rows back. It’s Plummer talking about playing Mike Wallace (“He was a cruel guy but a great TV newsman’) in Michael Mann‘s The Insider (’99).

Plummer is going to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, of course. I pretty much called this four months ago in Toronto, declaring that he had the Oscar more or less “in the bag” and “is going to be awfully hard to beat.”

The general rule is that alcohol abusers, which Plummer has freely admitted to being for two or three decades, tend to pay the price later in life. But not Plummer. He’s 82 and obviously sharp and lucid and in great shape — he ran across the stage last night to accept his SBIFF award. It all comes down to genes.

As of 8:42 pm this evening, the 2012 Sundance Film Festival had given two awards to Ben Lewin‘s much-praised The Surrrogate — the Dramatic Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize for Dramatic Acting (a tip of the hat for costars John Hawkes and Helen Hunt). The film was acquired for distribution during the festival by Fox Searchlight.

There’s a similarity or two, I gather, between Mischa Webley‘s The Kill Hole, which is having its world premiere at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, and Paul Haggis‘s In The Valley of Elah. Some bad Iraq War business haunting a veteran of that blighted conflict (Chadwick Boseman) and some harsh truths gradually finding their way into the light.

The Kill Hole director Mischa Webley — Saturday, 1.28, 2:40 pm.

I won’t be seeing it until Monday night, but I had a chance to speak with Webley this afternoon at a small gathering in downtown Santa Barbara. Nice guy, straight shooter. The principal costars are Billy Zane, Peter Greene, Ted Rooney and Tory Kittles.

No matter how good or pretty good or not-so-hot The Kill Hole turns out to be, I do feel that the title, due respect, should be given some more thought. It just has too much of a foul sound. Think of all those other terms that end with the word “hole.”

The same steamroller-lemming-mob mentality that has pushed The Artist all through awards season has presumably sunk in among the Directors Guild membership. It is therefore likely that Artist helmer Michel Hazanasidvicious will take the top prize at this evening’s DGA Awards. The “anything but The Artist” contingent (i.e., myself and I don’t know who else) is hoping for an extremely unlikely upset by Hugo‘s Martin Scorsese.

The 2012 Santa Barbara Film Festival’s “It Starts With The Script” happened at 11 this morning at the Lobero Theatre. The paneiists included JC Chandor (Margin Call), Jim Rash (The Descendants), Mike Mills (Beginners), Will Reiser (50/50) and Tate Taylor (The Help). IndieWire columnist Anne Thompson moderated. For the first time since I’ve attended this festival I missed it, but at least I got some photos.

(l to. r) J.C. Chandor, Will Reiser, Anne Thompson, Mike Mills, Jim Rash, Tate Taylor, Roger Durling.

SB Film Festival director Roger Durling, Descendants co-writer Jim Rash.