“How much money does James Cameron need?,” a friend asks. “I’m guessing he can pump premium into his car even if it takes regular. So why would he put his name and then his face on commercials for Sanctum? Which, to be generous, is more or less mediocre. Is it because Cameron believes in 3D? I get that. He should champion good 3D movies. But this? Why?”

Partial answer: Because Cameron is simply queer for almost anything to do with underwater exploration and/or adventure, and because he godfathered this film and is therefore bonded and protective of it, come hell or high water.

Since all I did today column-wise was take photos, I was extremely frustrated by my failure to snap a tiny cherry-red convertible that was no bigger than an amusement park bumper-car. My first thought upon seeing it was “wait…that’s real? Look like some kind of electric toy car.” A man and a woman were sitting in it, about to pull into traffic on Sunset in the Brentwood area. I pulled off into a side street about a half-mile ahead and then turned around and waited at the curb, hoping they’d catch up. Alas, they never showed.

Tooling along Fountain on my way over to the Hollywood Museum for a Tom O’Neil video chit-chat, some kind of mid ’40s convertible suddenly roared past in the opposite direction. I barely had time to turn the camera on and shoot.

Today was a stuff-to-do-in-Los Angeles day — meet with accountant, banking matters, rent, auto mechanic consultation, etc. (Necessitated in part by a recent decision to temporarily move back here later this month.) It began at a friendly Starbucks in a Malibu shopping center. I was halfway into my “Chill The Eff Out” summary when all these kids came in and started singing Sound of Music tunes. A perfect moment.

Movieline‘s Stu Van Airsdale has written a brief but amusing summary of the severe turns, lungings and lurchings in the Oscar race over the last week or so, and advised everyone — perhaps sagely and perhaps not — that “it’s a long race, and it’s closer than you think. Stuff you never thought could happen can happen and will happen.” (Like what, for example?) “Because anyone who insists he or she has the answer is, in reality, the most clueless one in the bunch,” he proclaims.

Quoting recent postings by myself, Tom O’Neil, Sasha Stone and Scott Feinberg, Van Airsdale describes the “torrent of shock that washed away so much of peaceful, quiet Oscar Village after The King’s Speech‘s DGA and SAG two-fer last weekend” as a case of “mass panic.” I wouldn’t call it exactly that. I would call it mass shock, mass resignation and mass bitterness all thrown into the blender….ruuuhhrrrggghhh!

Either way it’s premature, Van Airsdale insists, because “excuse me…Oscar voters haven’t voted! The aforementioned guild overlap aside, there are literally hundreds of thousands fewer actors and directors in the Academy than in those guilds combined, and they don’t even have ballots in their mailboxes yet!”

“So float all the theories you want about Speech‘s ascendancy, sling all the mud you can at the new front-runner, and indulge all the hindsight you can muster. You may be right! But if this week has shown us anything, it’s that you never know. Either way, everyone — deep breaths! We’ve got three more weeks of this crap.”

How sad and curiously timed that Last Tango in Paris costar Maria Schneider, 58, has died only a few days before the 2.15 release of Bernardo Bertolucci‘s landmark film on Bluray, apparently from cancer. I’m sorry. Condolences to friends, family, fans.

Anyone looking for a first-hand sense of what’s happening in Egypt right now needs to read this 2.2 Pajamas Media column by Roger Simon, and especially listen to an mp3 interview with the Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey — “an extremely cynical, snarky, pro-US, secular, libertarian, disgruntled” — that Simon has embedded within.

“The witty and courageous Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey is currently in hiding in his native city of Cairo, moving from one friend’s apartment to another, as supporters of Hosni Mubarak pursue him and other democracy demonstrators,” Simon writes.

“I had been trying to reach Sandmonkey — who has written for Pajamas Media — ever since the demonstrations broke out, because I suspected he would be in the thick of things. But as most know, the internet was cut in Egypt until Wednesday.

“When I finally got through to him late Wednesday night Pacific time, I discovered that, boy, were my suppositions ever correct. Sandmonkey was indeed in the thick of things and his on-the-ground observations that I recorded in this Skype audio-only interview were in many ways surprising and contradicted what we are hearing in our media.”

Final graph from Sandmonke’s latest posting: “The End is near. I have no illusions about this regime or its leader, and how he will pluck us and hunt us down one by one [until] we are over and done with and 8 months from now will pay people to stage fake protests urging him not to leave power, and he will stay ‘because he has to acquiesce to the voice of the people.’ This is a losing battle and they have all the weapons, but we will continue fighting until we can’t. I am heading to Tahrir right now with supplies for the hundreds injured, knowing that today the attacks will intensify, because they can’t allow us to stay there come Friday, which is supposed to be the game changer. We are bringing everybody out, and we will refuse to be anything else than peaceful.

“If you are in Egypt, I am calling on all of you to head down to Tahrir today and Friday. It is imperative to show them that the battle for the soul of Egypt isn’t over and done with. I am calling you to bring your friends, to bring medical supplies, to go and see what Mubarak’s gaurantees look like in real life. Egypt needs you. Be Heroes.”

As I wrote on 1.22, Tom McCarthy‘s Win Win (Fox Searchlight, 3.18) “is a wise, perceptive and affecting little family-relations flick that works just fine. If only more films labelled ‘family-friendly’ were as good as this. McCarthy is always grade-A, and this is more from the same well. Win Win is warm but not sappy, smartly written, very well acted and agreeable all the way.”

Earlier today Anderson Cooper, Katey Couric and Christine Amanpour were all threatened, shouted down, pushed and/or (in Cooper’s case) punched by supporters of Hosni Mubarak in Cairo on Wednesday. Cooper was reportedly slugged in the head several times.

Rightwing goons are always pulling this crap. They beat up anti-government protestors during last year’s street demonstrations in Tehran. They were shown doing the same thing in Costa Gavras‘ Z. What are the odds that what they’re doing isn’t being directed and/or coordinated by you-know-who?

Beginners (Focus Features, 6.3) doesn’t look half bad. The trailer contains tenderness, whimsy, empathy and dog conversations. Oliver (Ewan Mcgregor) falls in love with Anna (Melanie Laurent ) only months after his father Hal (Christopher Plummer) has died, and out comes all the memories of Hal having come out of the closet at age 75 and all that happened as a result.

It doesn’t look like a steak eater’s movie, and that’s fine. And yet…

Who suppresses their basic nature for 75 years? What’s the point of suddenly being openly and actively gay at that age? If this realization hits me at 75, I’ll pat myself on the back and then resolve to figure out who I am a little earlier in my next life. And then I’d go out and buy a new 60″ plasma and bring home a new stack of Blurays and re-commit myself to fine dining and my regular workout schedule and buy a bunch more books and just totally forget about sex. Because it’s pretty much over when you’re 75. We all enjoy about 50 or 55 years of active rabbit sex, and then it’s olly olly in come free.

Okay, septugenarians and octogenarians “do it,” fine, but none of us want to hear or think about that. And yet I’m interested in seeing Beginners. For the most part. I just don’t want to hear anything about Plummer buying lubricant or anything along those lines.

In addition to previously announced 2011 South by Southwest headliners like Source Code, The Beaver, Paul, The Innkeepers and Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, the remaining narratives and docs were announced this morning.

The dramatic features include Aimee Lagos‘ 96 Minutes, Chris Eyre‘s A Year in Mooring (great title!), Terry McMahon‘s Charlie Casanova, Janet Grillo‘s Fly Away, Robbie Pickering‘s Natural Selection and Anne J. Howell and Lisa Robinson‘s Small, Beautifully Moving Parts. I don’t have any angles or inside-track info so you tell me.

The South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival runs 3.11 through 3.19 in Austin, Texas. Yaw-haw. If I could figure a way to attend without having to part with an arm and a leg I’d probably do it. I’ve never been. Every time I look into it and ask around it’s always described as nothing but bubble and trouble, clutter and crap. And really long lines even if you’re press.

Movieline‘s Stu Van Airsdale is working as we speak on the new Oscar Index graph that he posts every Wednesday. I’m looking at last Wednesday’s chart and thinking how abruptly things can change…wow. It’s so out of date it’s almost endearing.

I have to chuckle at a comment made by Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers in the latest pundits prediction piece by Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil, to wit: “I will not change my Best Picture pick to The King’s Speech. I believe that Oscar voters will come to their senses and see that The Social Network is the best picture of the year even if it’s not the picture that most warmed what passes for their hearts. It’s more than a battle between New Hollywood and Old. It’s a battle to ignore business as usual and put the groundbreaking movie in the Academy time capsule. That’s The Social Network.”

Travers, myself, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Cinematical‘s Erik Davis and NextMovie‘s Kevin Polowy are the only Gold Derby pundits standing by The Social Network. Just call us Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Colonel Travis, Buddy Ebsen and Frankie Avalon. The other 17 are predicting Best Picture Oscar victory for The King’s Speech.