For those who don’t own the Criterion DVD of Stanley Kubrick‘s Spartacus (or who’ve never watched the extras), this Peter Ustinov recollection contains a funny, must-see Charles Laughton impression plus two or three stories about Laughton during pre-production and principal.

We all know that Hurt Locker helmer Kathryn Bigelow has been uninterested in playing the gender card when asked about her potential to become the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar. And The Winner Is columnist Scott Feinberg is nonetheless running quotes from three female directors — Gina Prince-Blythewood (The Secret Life of Bees), Kimberly Pierce (Boys Don’t Cry, Stop-Loss) and Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp, 12th and Delaware) — about Bigelow being on the precipice.

Listen to Alex North‘s “love theme from Spartacus” before playing this brief video clip.

I’ve just come from the “Directors on Directing” panel discussion at the Lobero theatre. A good one. Quentin Tarantino delivered the most entertaining riffs; Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron, sitting beside each other, were a kind of tag team and ranked a close second. The other panelists were Lee Daniels (Precious), Pete Docter (Up) and Todd Phillips (The Hangover). It was moderated by Variety‘s Peter Bart.

As if by magic or cosmic intuition, yesterday’s suggestion that Santa Barbara Film Festival tribute ceremonies could use a little less discipline and perhaps unfold less smoothly and uniformly came true hours later during last night’s James Cameron tribute at the Arlington theatre. And everyone played their parts beautifully.

Except for the show starting almost 35 minutes late (i.e., around 8:35 pm), almost nothing happened as planned. Cameron began delivering his acceptance speech at the get-go as host Leonard Maltin stood on the opposite side of the stage, delivering one of the most elegant and controlled “what the fuck is going on?” emcee performances I’ve ever seen. (Somebody had mistakenly told Cameron to offer his profound thanks at the get-go.)

After four or five minutes Maltin called out to Cameron, “Sorry, but you’re stepping on my act! I’m supposed to be asking questions!” (Or words to that effect.)

The film clips (Aliens, The Terminator, T2, Titanic) were shown somewhat out of sequence, and again — it was like jazz. The feeling in the room was giddy, liberating. Half of the red punch had splashed out of the bowl and splattered on the floor, and the feet of Maltin and Cameron and some of the senior staff were damp with it. It wasn’t quite on the level of the Marx Bros. A Night at the Opera, but it was sneaking up on that. Sometimes life is not a West Point reville formation.

And then Cameron’s q & a with Maltin had to be interrupted to allow Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to present Cameron’s Modern Master award hastily, before the Santa Barbara airport closed. Silhouetted figures scampered out from backstage to confer with Maltin while the clips were playing. If I had a special mike I would have probably heard festival p.r. chief Carol Marshall say, “Pssst! Leonard! Governor Schwarzenegger has to leave now…cut short your discussion of Sigourney Weaver‘s riveting performance as Ripley or whatever…I know we didn’t plan it this way…of course!…but he has to deliver his speech now!”).

Perhaps I’m slightly exaggerating the feeling of disorder, but it was certainly noticable and amusing — a feeling of “this isn’t in the script.”

We all think we need order and prudence in our lives, but what we really need is an occasional shot of uncertainty or even chaos to clean the blood out. Nights like last night make existence on this planet seem like the ribald and foolish farce it actually is deep down. They force everyone to think quickly on their feet, and transform fleeting anxiety into humor and sparkle and goobah-goobah-goobah. Please, give us more tribute sessions like this!

I was sent to the wrong after-party (i.e., a second-tier gathering on the Santa Barbara pier) but I eventually figured things out and made my way over to the correct one. I had a great chat with Cameron (which included a somewhat clumsily-spoken woman coming up to him and blurting out a complaint about Avatar) but I can’t share until later.

I have to drive a friend down to Point Dume and then turn around and be back by 10 or 10:15 am in order to get to the Directors panel at the Lobero theatre, which starts at 11 am. It’s now 7:03 am.

Clearly the little kid in the hat was (a) feeling under-appreciated and wanted some attention, or (b) was indicating to the audience and the producers that he thought little of Back to the Future III and that people who felt otherwise knew what they could do. Either way this is one of the most blatant “why did they leave this in?” shots since the young kid in the cafeteria who plugged his ears before Eva Marie Saint shot Cary Grant in North by Northwest.

“I don’t know what I’m allowed to say about Inception,” Leonardo DiCaprio recently told a junket journalist for the Philippine Inquirer.

“It’s Chris [Nolan] delving into dream psychoanalysis and, at the same time, making a high-octane, surreal film that came from his mind. He wrote the entire thing, and it all made sense to him. [But] it didn’t make sense to many of us when we were doing it. We had to do a lot of detective work to figure out what the movie was about.”

To me DiCaprio’s statement as almost an iron-clad guarantee that Inception is going to be far-reaching, multi-layered and generally a kick-ass ride. Actors involved in ambitious films by major directors always say they found the plot perplexing. A big-name actress said the exact same thing to me last summer on the set of a big-budget espionage thriller. A TCM page on North by Northwest says that “according to biographies on Cary Grant, during production the star repeatedly expressed confusion over the film’s plot, which he found implausible and unclear.”

I was irritated earlier this afternoon at the absolute refusal of the L.A. Times/Envelope Oscar-preference software to allow me to buy a few shares of Christoph Waltz stock, but that’s forgotten now. It vanished from my head the minute I saw the great-looking design of the L.A. Times All Stars rundown of choices and…uh, stock picks. It’s the coolest-looking thing I’ve been a part of, visually, in any medium. I feel genuinely honored and gratified to have been included.

Some of the most gifted screenwriters in the business sorta kinda dropped the personality ball this morning. The goal of any participant in a panel discussion is to inject some energy and perhaps a little unruly pizazz into the proceedings. But this morning’s “It Starts With The Script” discussion, moderated by Indiewire columnist Anne Thompson, never got off the ground, much less got my pulse racing.

How’s this for a great angle and a great photograph? I would have shown up at the rear of Santa Barbara’s Lobero theatre for the the pre-discussion photo op, but nobody told me it was happening.

It was comprised of intelligent chatter from some very bright and accomplished people, of course, but there were no energy surges, no pop-goes-the-weasel moments, no jokes, no disputes…almost toothless.

The participants included The Hurt Locker‘s Mark Boal , Up In The Air‘s Jason Reitman, Precious adapter Geoffrey Fletcher, (500) Days of Summer co-writer Scott Neustadter, It’s Complicated‘s Nancy Meyers and Star Trek co-writer Alex Kurtzman.

You go to these things looking for a little Chris Matthews-type energy, some old-fashioned Crossfire action…whatever. Questions and teasers and provocations that might lead to sparks of some kind, a little contentiousness, a touch of the old no-you’r’e-wrong-and-here’s-why, etc.

In all candor, I believe this to the most intriguing photo of Nancy Meyers that I’ve ever taken.

Who cared/knew/gave a shit about Dear John, the Amanda Seyfried-Channing Tatum drama that kicked Avatar to the curb yesterday, and is expected to earn $35 million by Sunday night?

I had the tracking that pre-told the tale, but I couldn’t be bothered with all the SBIFF razmatazz and running around.

London’s National Film & Television School has created a tart comedy short — Mr. Pixel Mrs. Grain: A Never-Ending Love Story — that offers “a humorous illustration of the benefit from both worlds of film and digital.” Fine and good, but the grain monks folded their tents and went into hiding after Martin Scorsese more or less sided with the HE view. Game over.