45 minutes from now I have to leave for my first screening of the day, Stephen Frears‘ Lay The Favorite, which starts at 8:30 am. I could stay here and file and catch “the Frears” (similar in a Denby-esque sense to “the Daldry”) at a 7:30 pm press screening but in so doing I’ll have to miss Spike Lee‘s Red Hook Summer, which has a public screening at 6:30 pm. I’ve heard that Lay The Favorite is light and nimble but…let’s not go there. Eff it. I’ve just decided to see “the Frears” at 7:30 tonight and catch Spike’s film tomorrow morning at 8:30.

The Artist‘s latest triumph, having last night won the Producers’ Guild Daryl F. Zanuck award from the Producer’s Guild, totally cinches the Best Picture Oscar. Michel Hazanavicius‘ lightweight bauble has had it in the bag since early December (thanks to a steamroller effect begun by several critics groups), and now it’s really a done deal.

I was at a Sundance after-party for Nicholas Jarecki‘s Arbitrage and having a pretty good time when I heard the news, and I wasn’t even moved to tweet. Game over, let it go, drink up, watch the snow.

For me, there’s one upside in this otherwise disappointing story. It’s a good thing that a film that has so far made only $10 million and change has more or less swept the season. The spineless sheep who are cheering on The Artist are settling, obviously, for a very slight gimmick movie, but at least they’re not dismissing it because it’s not a big earner. This on top of The Hurt Locker ‘s Best Picture triumph two years ago is a positive indicator. It makes it a little easier for the next first-rate “little” film.

Matt Ross‘s 28 Hotel Rooms, which I saw yesterday afternoon, is a two-character drama about a longterm affair that happens entirely in hotel rooms and never really “goes anywhere,” story-wise. The lovers, richly portrayed by Chris Messin and Marin Ireland, are both attached in the outside world. And yes, naturally, they gradually fall in love with each other.

But they never leave the realm of hotel rooms, and after a while (sometime around the 15th or 18th vignette) this starts to feel confining and unsatisfying. It’s a fairly absorbing film as far as it goes — there’s a spherical world of feeling and experience in Ireland’s eyes alone — but it should been called 18 Hotel Rooms or 21 Hotel Rooms or something along those lines.

I knew I was feeling antsy when Marin’s character announces at the beginning of vignette #20 or #21 that her husband is in the hotel — he’s spontaneously travelled with her to have some romantic-getaway time — so their meeting is off. The instant I heard this I knew I wanted the husband to barge into the hotel room and bust them or plead for understanding or try to beat up Messina. That told me something. I really, really wanted something more than just these two in another hotel room. Which isn’t a putdown of the actors or their performances — far from it. I just needed to escape from the concept.

Ireland is truly a superb actress. I last saw her on-stage two years ago in Neil Labute‘s reasons to be pretty.

28 Rooms director Matt Ross, Messina, Ireland.

Today’s West of Memphis press conference started 20 minutes late…grrrr. The participants were director Amy Berg, producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, the formerly incarcerated Damien Echols and Jason Baldiwn, Echols’ partner Lorri Davis, and lawyers Stephen Braga, Dennis Riordan and Don Horgan. MCN’s David Poland moderated.

The above clip is of Jackson and Echols offering final thoughts about the case, and what value the movie has to everyone right now. The final statement is a request for anyone with additional hard evidence to please call the West Memphis 3 tip line.

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This is the first peek I’ve had of Nicholas Jarecki‘s Arbitrage, which will screen four and half hours from now at the Eccles. The synopsis (hedge fund trader trying to unload his company before fraud is revealed) makes it sound like similar to Margin Call. Costarring Richard Gere, Nate Parker, Susan Sarandon, Brit Marling, Laetetia Casta and Tim Roth. (Vimeo clip posted by Deadline‘s Brian Brooks.)

Everyone and everything from the beginning of time has existed in color…but we tend to forget that. Here are an assortment of colorizations. Nice stuff, although some seem overly “painted.”

The best looking representation of Abraham Lincoln in color that anyone’s ever seen…right? Seems that way.

For me, Atticus Coffee/Teahouse/Books on lower Main Street has the only really really fast wifi in town. Park Regency wifi is sluggish, Park City Marriot wifi is passable, Eccles wifi is shit and Yarrow Hotel wifi is covered in molasses. But Atticus wifi is smooth and clean and just about perfect…thank God. I’m there right now, the blizzard coming down outside, sipping a hot chocolate.

I felt a little iffy about attending this morning’s screening of Rory Kennedy‘s Ethel, an HBO-funded doc about her famous and revered mom, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy who became known as a force of nature in he own right beginning in the 1950s, and certainly since the ’60s. I was wondering what could be historically new in this, and whether it might feel a little too tidy and boilerplatey.

Rory, Ethel Kennedy and grandkids somewhere in Park City with the last 24 hours.

Ethel director Rory Kennedy during this morning’s post-screening q & a at the Park City Library — Saturday, 1.21, 10:40 am.

The answers are “very little” and “it sorta kinda is.” But it’s a beautiful sonnet regardless — a funny, warm and deeply affectionate family tale that slips inside and, I swear, churns it all up again. Damned if it didn’t make me melt down a couple of times.

It’s focused, of course, on Ethel — her life with Bobby, the 11 kids (she was pregnant for 99 months all told), the White House and U.S. Senate years of the early to late ’60s, etc. But it’s primariy about Rory’s legendary rockstar dad. His political career and his marriage to Ethel are the spine of the doc, as they were so closely intertwined. The doc more or less ends with his death in June 1968, and barely touches Ethel’s life for the last 40-plus years. Her mom is very honestly and bluntly presented as very private and guarded, and amusing snippy at times. She “hates” introspection, she says at one point. Anyone who’s ever had a feisty grandmother will chuckle at this.

But it must be said that Rory Kennedy’s decision to only briefly summarize her mother’s life after 1968 and not explore any particulars (such as Ethel’s bout with alcoholism) makes this a lesser film than it could have been. It’s more than a bit of a gloss. But it’s such a charming and emotionally affecting one that almost all is forgiven. I couldn’t believe I was weeping at this, a significant portion of the the most familiar and widely told romantic tragedy of our times — the Kennedys who lived and soared and triumphed and made elective office sexy, and then were cut down. But I guess we all have our vulnerable spots.

I was struck by how closely Rory resembles her father — eyes, nose, jawline, teeth. She looks like him a little more than any of her siblings, and on some level I felt a vague RFK contact high from being relatively close to her this morning and taking her picture.

I’ve been up since 6 am. It’s 7:22 am right now. I have an 8:30 am screening of Ethel, an HBO doc about Ethel Kennedy, at the Library, and then a noon press conference for West of Memphis (moderated by David Poland!) followed by 28 Hotel Rooms (I think) at the Yarrow at 3pm and then Nicholas Jarecki‘s Abitrage at 6:30 pm, and then an Aribtrage after-party with the usual filings in-between and whenever.

Rodrigo Cortes‘ Red Lights, which screened at 10 pm last night, plays differently than you might expect — I’ll give it that. But in my view it suffers from a silly and confusing second half or, in the view of others, a terrible ending. Either way this faux-spooker didn’t go down all that well with the crowd. They were being polite, but they were somewhat confused and hadn’t really bought it.

Cillian Murphy, Elisabeth Olsen, Sigourney Weaver during last night’s post-screening q & a.

Rodrigo Cortes

It’s about a pair of investigators, Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and Tom Buckley (Cillian Murphy), who specialize in debunking bogus paranormal claims. Weaver is persuaded there’s no such animal as a ghost or messages from the after-life or anything along those lines — it’s all about theatre and seducing the gullible. The story gradually builds into an epic confrontation between the Weaver forces and Simon Silver (Robert DeNiro), perhaps the greatest paranormal performer or hoodwinker of all time…or is he?

The first 40 minutes are devoted to exploring Weaver’s literal and rational-minded reasons for being a skeptic, and a little about her own personal background involving a comatose son. And then something happens that I shouldn’t divulge, but when that thing happens the tone set by Weaver’s rationality is thrown out the window and the film devolves into a kind of emotional madhouse with “boo! surprise” jolts thrown in from time to time, plus a lot of raging emotion and red herrings that don’t lead anywhere and plot threads that aren’t developed and/or are abandoned.

It just goes nuts, this film. A kind of ComicCon idiot gene takes over. I was saying to myself, “What happened here? This thing was smart, absorbing and moving along pretty good fora while and then wham…a cheesy cheap-shock virus invaded and it went south.”

I got so sick of Murphy shouting and getting angry and parting his mouth and going “whuh?” when a shock moment occurs and driving like an idiot and stumbling around with blood on his face I was ready to throw something at the screen.

A guy asked during the post-screening q & a if Cortes could please explain the last five minutes, and most of the audience chuckled and some applauded. When that happens you’re dead. It means you haven’t provided the right information and tied things up with sufficient clarity.

Cortes is an obviously intelligent young director who’s unfortunately into second- and third-act wham-bams (yelling, violence, boo!, exploding lights) rather than developing things internally. As an audacious Latino who’s made a “things go bump in the night” flick, I regret to say that Cortes doesn’t begin to approach the poise or expertise of, say, Juan Antonio Bayona (The Orphanage) or Alejandro Amen√°bar (The Others). So this one gets tossed on the heap, I’m afraid.

Sigourney Weaver’s snowboots.