I’ve respectfully decided not to attend the Doha Tribeca Film Festival (10.26 to 10.30). I had announced my intention to cover in mid-August, but I gradually became convinced that it just wasn’t a fit. And that’s fine. I was extremely grateful for the respectful gesture of having been invited in the first place, and I’ve thanked everyone concerned and offered my best wishes.

Why did I take a pass on a free trip to a prestigious Middle Eastern film festival, which would have included lodging in a lavish first-class hotel with all kinds of gratis perks (screenings, parties, food and drink) plus a first-time exposure to an exotic culture? Because the trip promised two day-long interruptions in Hollywood Elsewhere’s daily output within a seven-day period, and because the intriguing films being shown at Doha Tribeca didn’t seem quite worth all the tribulations.

I was told yesterday that the Qatar Airlines flight to Qatar (adjacent to Saudi Arabia, south of Kuwait) wouldn’t offer wifi, which meant I’d not only endure a grueling nonstop 13-hour imprisonment (the return trip is 14-plus hours) but would be unable to work on the column while doing so, and the idea of HE going dark for two days over a seven-day period just seemed nuts.

Seriously — what first-class airline doesn’t offer wifi these days? That’s a disconnect.

There’s also some doubt as to whether electrical outlets are available for business-class passengers (which is what I would have been), so that would have meant not even being able to write stuff in preparation for HE placement after the battery dies.

On top of which a friend who’s been there told me that Doha is no Abu Dhabi — it’s a very strict cultural environment. And so it’s kinda boring over there. He also said that the bar downstairs charges $15 for a glass of wine, and that visitors can’t buy bottled wine anywhere or even bring a bottle or two with them on the plane. (They confiscate at the airport.) And that the town outside the corporate ghetto that the festival takes place in isn’t all that interesting.

On top of which the Qatar authorities have been been obsessive about getting a scan of my passport before finalizing the trip. I intended to get that taken care of, but it’s a mild pain with the tons of other things I have to get to every day. In the interim I sent along a high-quality color photo of my passport (which is essentially the same thing as a scan — a digital capturing of a paper document), but I was told this wouldn’t do.

So sometime last month I began asking myself why I’m doing this trip in the first place. Two plane trips involving 13 to 14 hours of agonizing fuselage confinement (“the plane flight is a ballbuster…there really is no way around that,” says a friend) without wifi or electric power? All so I can spend five days in a Middle Eastern Las Vegas in which a glass of Pinot Grigio cost $15 dollars, and with no top-headline, high-throttle films being shown?

“I don’t want to irritate Geoff Gilmore or Jane Rosenthal,” I confided to a friend, “but I’m starting to think to myself that if I could politely and diplomatically get out of this, it might not be a bad thing.” Now that I’ve done this and said thanks and extended best wishes, I feel better.

Again, I hope the Doha Tribeca Film Festival is a success this year, and for many years to come. If and when the Qatar Airlines wifi situation opens up down the road I’d be delighted to attend. And thanks again to the good Rubenstein p.r. people who facilitated .

The five kids from Davis Guggenheim‘s Waiting for Superman — Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, Emily and Anthony — with President Obama yesterday in the Oval Office.

AP photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais

The widely-admired Superman, which has a 93% Rotten Tomatoes rating, opened last Friday.

It wasn’t easy, but I’ve managed to not see Waiting for Superman for several months running. I missed it at Sundance, Toronto, and at last weekend’s Hamptons Film Festival. All of these misses were obviously my fault. And yet I was never invited to a single Manhattan screening by Paramount or agency reps. Not once.

I’ll correct this situation sometime this week. I’l catch it at a commercial venue or get a screener for Paramount reps.

“Most of Hereafter is not about what the dead mean to the living; it’s about having nice little chats with ghosts, and neither director Clint Eastwood nor screenwriter Peter Morgan has the taste for such flamboyant stuff. The two men have accomplished the questionable feat of domesticating the uncanny, and, in the process, they’ve lost their storytelling skills — the coincidences that bring the main characters together by the end are laughably unconvincing.” — New Yorker critic David Denby on Eastwood’s latest.

New Yorker illustration of Hereafter‘s Matt Damon and Cecile de France (or is it Bryce Dallas Howard?) by “Quickhoney.”

I was pulled over late last night by the East Hampton bulls because my tail lights were out. That was because I hadn’t fully turned the lights on. I’d been to the closing-night party of the Hamptons Film Festival and had a mild buzz-on, I admit, but nothing to concern the authorities. To make sure Officer Diamond had me submit to four tests to determine sobriety levels — holding up one foot for a count of six or seven, walking the white line, eyeballing a moving object and breathalyzer. I passed.

But I hadn’t paid a traffic ticket for “straddling lanes” (straddling lanes!) that I’d been given in midtown Manhattan a few months ago, which had kicked things up to a fine. And so Officer Diamond was obliged to arrest me, cuff me, put me in the back of his vehicle and drive me back to the police headquarters in Wainscott. From 2 am to 3:20 am I sat and waited as he filled out five or six forms (arrest, background, court date, etc.). This was the part I really didn’t care for. Sitting meekly under fleurescent light and minute by debilitating minute, my spirit slowly withered and died.

Then Officer Diamond took all my cash ($80) for bail and then gave me an 11.3 court appearance date, and then took the cuffs off and cut me loose. The police station is located about a mile into the woods, so I had to walk for about 25 minutes through the pitch-black forest (no streetlights of any kind) and then another 1/3 of a mile back to the Enclave Inn. I finally settled down and got some sleep around 4 am, and then got up at 8 am.

Now I have to take a cab (Lindy’s Taxi) out to the spot near the north shore where my car was left, and then drive back to the city.

Yesterday’s Maureen Dowd N.Y. Times column, titled “Lord of the Internet Rings,” begins as follows: “They had me at the mesmerizing first scene, when the repulsive nerd is mocked by a comely, slender young lady he’s trying to woo. Bitter about women, he returns to his dark lair in a crimson fury of revenge.

“It unfolds with mythic sweep, telling the most compelling story of all, the one I cover every day in politics: What happens when the powerless become powerful and the powerful become powerless?

“This is a drama about quarrels over riches, social hierarchy, envy, theft and the consequence of deceit — a world upended where the vassals suddenly become lords and the lords suddenly lose their magic.

“The beauty who rejects the gnome at the start is furious when he turns around and betrays her, humiliating her before the world. And the giant brothers looming over the action justifiably feel they’ve provided the keys to the castle and want their reward. One is more trusting than the other, but both go berserk, feeling they’ve been swindled after entering into a legitimate business compact.

“The antisocial nerd, surrounded by his army of slaving minions, has been holed up making something so revolutionary and magical that it turns him into a force that could conquer the world.

“The towering brothers battle to get what they claim is their fair share of the glittering wealth that flows from the obsessive gnome’s genius designs.

“The gnome, remarkably, invents a way to hurl yourself through space and meet up with somebody at the other end.

“All of these mythic twists and turns in ‘Das Rheingold’ at the Metropolitan Opera in New York were a revelation to me. I’d never seen the Ring cycle. I didn’t even know what it was about. I loved everything about Peter Gelb‘s $16 million production: the shape-shifting, high-tech stage, the mermaid sopranos dangling from wires, the magnetic Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel, who plays Wotan, the weak ruler of the gods who tries to renege after bartering his gorgeous sister-in-law for construction of a gorgeous castle.”

And so on.

If it hadn’t been for the East Hampton fuzz I would have posted congratulations & best wishes last night to the Hampton Film Festival jury and audience-choice winners. They included Tom Hooper‘s The King’s Speech (best narrative), Jill Andresevic‘s Love Etc. (best doc), Lisa Gossels‘ My So-Called Enemy (HIFF’s ‘Conflict and Resolution’ prize), Alice Nellis‘s Mamas & Papas (narrative & best screenplay Jury winner), and Aaron Schock‘s Circo (doc jury winner).

The third “Oscar Poker” is up. Recorded this afternoon — myself in East Hampton, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone in Los Angeles, and Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino from somewhere in the Bumblefuck hinterlands.

So it’s not just me posting Let Me In items/stories to try and save it from the oblivion file. (It dropped 53% this weekend — not good.) Bilge Ebiri is also a champion. Here‘s a recently-transcribed Matt Reeves interview.

The Social Network wound up really pulling ahead. Secretariat pretty much fell flat. Everyone reporting this story needs to avoid cornball horse-racing phrases.

Yesterday afternoon 127 Hours star James Franco submitted yesterday afternoon to a q & a with Museum of Modern Art film chief Rajendra Roy inside a small theatre in Sag Harbor. The highlight came when Cool It director Ondi Timmoner tried to persuade Franco to consider playing Robert Mapplethorpe in a biopic she’s planning, and Franco smiled and playfully said yes.