“Thirty years ago, the CEOs that are in Undercover Boss were making 30 times as much as their working people,” Arianna Huffington said last night on Real Time with Bill Maher. “Now, they’re making 300 times as much! We’re about to become Venezuela or Brazil, you know, where the people at the top are basically behind their gates with guards to protect their kids from kidnapping.

The result, she said, is that “the middle class is crumbling and that’s the country we’re going to become…if we don’t fundamentally change where we’re going.” To which Maher replied, “Going to become?”

The Tea Party movement, she later stated, is “about that fact that what is happening is not fair, that the fix is in, that the system is rigged, and that people who are working hard are not really getting rewarded. And the people at the top who brought us to the financial brink were actually bailed out by the taxpayers.”

Brooks Barnes has written a 3.5 N.Y. Times article about the party-circuit stress that has affected Hurt Locker producer-screenwriter Mark Boal over the last several months. It’s especially interesting to me in that it provides a roundabout explanation why Boal subtly flipped me the bird when I took his picture at a Manhattan Hurt Locker party on 2.23.

It wasn’t a hostile flip-off. It wasn’t even a stand-up gesture but one semi-camouflaged by a book cover. If a smart guy you know, like and respect gives you the finger, he’s (a) fooling around and (b) offering a kind of trust that you won’t interpret it the wrong way. But I do think Boal was saying, perhaps in a subconscious way, “I’m starting to really tire of all this Oscar-contention chit-chat crap, and this is my way of quietly conveying that to you and…what the hell, your readers also.”

This is one of several mock movie posters posted yesterday afternoon by College Humor‘s Tom Philips. The fundamental beef about A Serious Man wasn’t that Michael Stuhlbarg‘s Larry Gropnik character is boring — there’s no such thing as a boring Coen brothers film — but that he seemed to have only wimpy responses to the cruel manifestations that resulted from God’s decision to curse his life.

The Wrap‘s Daniel Frankel is reporting that Tim Burton‘s 3-D Alice in Wonderland took in $39.4 million yesterday, and that it will probably wind up with nearly $110 million by Sunday night, according to studio estimates.

Frankel notes that Disney officials “were reluctant to predict even a $70 million opening going into the weekend,” but that’s standard politics — you always predict a number that’s lower than what you think your film will really gross.

Alice is playing in 3,728 theaters, including 188 IMAX 3D showings. Alice‘s weekend tally will easily top Avatar‘s first-weekend earnings of $77 million. Well and good for Disney, except there’s a problem. The problem is that for many if not most discerning moviegoers, Alice in Wonderland is a problem.

Not that a film having such a reputation has ever given a single moment’s pause to the American middle-class when they want to see something. All they know or care about is that Alice is (a) fancifully visual, (b) kid-friendly, (c) 3-D eye-candy and (d) IMAXed. That’s all they information that they’re capable of processing. Make that two tubs of whale-fat popcorn and three…no, four gallon-sized containers of sugar-bombed Coca Cola with tons of ice.

And by the way, The Oregonian‘s Shawn Levy also thought last night’s Spirit Awards show was mostly bad.

A producer friend went to last night’s pre-Oscar party thrown by Endeavor’s Ari Emmanuel at his $10 million Brentwood home — Matt Damon, Kate Bosworth, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, Dustin Hoffman, Josh Groban, Quentin Tarantino, etc. And he’s passed along an observation about the party’s most celebrated guest — i.e., Academy-shunned Hurt Locker producer Nicolas Chartier.

“Without a doubt, Chartier was the toast of the event,” the producer says. “He was there with his mom — who was maybe the most elegant woman there — and seemed to never not be engaged in a conversation in which somebody wasn’t telling him how badly fucked he had been over the whole Hurt Locker e-mail episode. And his having dissed the “$500 million” Avatar in his notorious e-mail meant nothing to Avatar producer Jon Landau, with whom Chartier seemed to spend most of his time.

“The general consensus was that Chartier was perhaps a bit trigger-happy and maybe a bit over-the-top in his enthusiasm, but also the person who should be given the most credit among the various Hurt Locker producers and rally-round team members.

“In a way, Chartier has helped himself. By being banned from the Oscars, his contributions to getting that film made have come to the front lines.”

I wasn’t especially pleased with last night’s 2010 Spirit Awards show, which I watched with a couple of friends at their Horatio Street studio. One thing after another needled, bothered, put me off, pissed me off, or resulted in “tsk-tsks.” It’s a long list but I’ll stick to the pop-throughs.

Host/emcee Eddie Izzard was a nervy provocateur, as expected, but he wasn’t funny. He was hyper and jabbery in a stream-of-consciousness way, but the reaction in the room was “why is Izzard the host of this thing again? Because he met Dawn Hudson at a party after they’d both sloshed some wine? In what way is Izzard’s schtick supposed to provide enjoyment for the viewing audience? This is all about endurance.” You know who was funny when he hosted the Spirits back in the mid ’90s? Kevin Pollak.

The pre-award-bestowing podium patter for the nominees, written by someone in the FIND/Spirit Awards organization (or by a freelancer), was drivel — awful. I have the same complaint every year.

And the endless thank yous by the winners, acknowledging not only their on-set colleagues and agents and managers, etc., but also their wives and parents and sisters and brothers, were pure agony. What semi-sincere person would actually contend that his or her brother or sister (whom he/she most likely hasn’t had any meaningful interaction with since their mid teens) had something to do with winning a Spirit Award?

Jeff Bridges sang a live country-and-western tune with T-Bone Burnett and a couple of jowly 50ish guys providing electrified backup, and guess what? Not only does Bridges have a weak country-nasally voice — it has no manly heft or diaphragm oomph — but he doesn’t seem to know how to sell a song within his vocal limits. Even a person with a shitty voice can sound half-okay if they can deploy the right kind of phrasings and lung power and whatnot.

Every so often a corporate sponsor’s logo would be seen on top of the coverage. We all understand the necessity of this from time to time, but it looked technically amateurish every time because the blending of the Spirit Award footage plus the logo overlay created a generally darkened image. It reminded me of video overlay effects that I used to see back in the ’80s. Embarassing.

This is the first year since the mid ’90s in which the Spirits weren’t held inside a big white tent in Santa Monica. They happened instead inside a big white tent on the top of a downtown plex called LA Live, which is adjacent to the Staples Center. And yet the director of the Spirit Awards inexplicably chose not to provide the audience with a basic panoramic establishing shot of the LA Live neighborhood at the very beginning (and maybe a return to this once or twice during the show) that would have explained what’s visually dramatic or exciting about being in downtown LA — i.e., how it all looks and feels.

Ryan Reynolds and Maggie Gyllenhaal presented an award while holding drinks in their hands. Part of the point of the Spirit Awards, which is supposed to be a much more informal affair than the Oscars, is to have a blast — I get that. But never hold a drink in your hands in front of a camera of any kind. It always make you look like a lush.

Lee Daniels‘ Precious, an emotionally affecting domestic horror film about suffering and sisterhood that almost no one has seen twice because no emotionally balanced person could stand a second viewing, swept the Spirits awards last night. It won Best Feature, Daniels took Best Director, Gabby Sidibe won for Best Actress, Mo’Nique won the Best Supporting Actress award, and Geoffrey Fletcher — a nice guy — was handed the Spirit Award for Best Screenplay.

The upside is that after Sunday night’s Oscar telecast no one will have to clap for or nod approvingly or even think about Precious ever again.

As noted elsewhere The Hurt Locker wasn’t a contender because it was nominated in two acting categories at last year’s Spirit Awards (which came a little more than five months after Hurt played Venice/Toronto and roughly four months before it would open commercially), which naturally disqualified it from being among this year’s nominees. A few months ago I was told by a person in Dawn Hudson‘s FIND office that the ’09 nominations happened as a result of the film having been submitted by someone at Summit Entertainment, the distributor of The Hurt Locker.

It would have been nice to see someone other than Crazy Heart‘s Jeff Bridges win the Spirits’ Best Actor award (which FIND calls the Best Lead Male award). A Single Man‘s Colin Firth should have won it — after all the campaigning he did he could have had one night in the sun. But no — the Bridges blitzkreig (which will reach its big crescendo tomorrow night) had to prevail. Bridges, Bridges, Bridges, Bridges…Bridges already!

Christian McKay, who kicked serious Wellesian ass in Me and Orson Welles, should have won the Best Supporting Actor award — it’s really that simple. He delivered a much grander and tastier rock ‘n’ roll performance than did the winner, The Messenger‘s Woody Harrelson.

Hooray for (500) Days of Summer‘s Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber winning for Best Screenplay. It was nice to see Lone Scherfig‘s An Education win for Best Foreign Film — except that no one in the educated film world thinks of An Education as “foreign.”

Everyone loved the triumph of Anvil! The Story of Anvil winning the Best Documentary award — yeah! Except no one has explained to me how The Cove , which many suspect/hope/believe will win the Best Feature Documentary Oscar tomorrow night, wasn’t even nominated by the Spirits in this category.

Cheers to Roger Deakins for winning the Best Cinematography award for his work on A Serious Man, and also to Joel and Ethan Coen for having hired Deakins and winning lastnight’s Robert Altman Award. And a hearty pat on the back to the Humpday crew for snagging the John Cassavettes Award.

Every year Envelope/Gold Derby columnist Tom O’Neil guest curates an exhibit called “And the Winner Is …” at the Hollywood Museum (1600 No. Highland, just down the street from the Kodak). It’s a celebration of the remnants of several films old and new. There are costumes and items from impressionable-Eloi films like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Twilight: New Moon (“yes, a Taylor Lautner costume in addition ones worn by Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart,” O’Neil says) as well as The Hurt Locker, The Blind Side, Inglourious Basterds, Julie & Julia, The Young Victoria, Bright Star, (500) Days of Summer and Star Trek mixed in artifacts from Gone With the Wind, Ben-Hur, Gladiator, etc.

I caught a screening last night of Paramount’s finely restored version of John Huston‘s The African Queen (1951), which will be issued on DVD and Blu-ray on 3.23. I was happy to see it, happy to see a short doc that explains how the restoration came about, and happy to meet Paramount’s vp of restoration Ron Smith — the guy who saw the project through from start to finish.

How much better looking is this new Queen than the version that gets shown on Turner Classic Movies now and then? A lot better, I’d say. Some of it looks amazing — sharper focus, smoother textures, no blotchy colors. There are portions that look only slightly or somewhat better because they were matte shots or African location footage to begin with, and therefore were never as clean and well lighted as the sound stage work Huston shot in London, but they still look better than they ever have. And the sound has been nicely enhanced (i.e., the usual scratches, hisses and pops removed).

And Katharine Hepburn looks a bit prettier or glammier, even, than she has before in this film. (Her cheekbones were quite amazing.) And Humphrey Bogart‘s beard looks more specifically scruffy, his facial color is more tanned, and the stains on his shirt and pants and grubby little hat are more noticable.

Nobody has to be sold on The African Queen being a must-own classic, except that it obviously hasn’t been ownable until now. It looks as good as it’s ever going to look, or significantly richer and fresher than before…however you want to put it.

The screening happened at Viacom screening room at Broadway and 44th. Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny and New York Post critic Lou Lumenick also attended. Delicious cupcakes and other things that are quite bad for you were served after the screening.

Paramount’s restoration vp Ron Smith prior to last evening’s screening — Thursday, 3.4, 5:55 pm.

I spoke to Smith about the restoration particulars, and about other large-format (i.e., mostly VistaVision) films in the Paramount library that he’s been remastering for high-definition broadcast and eventual Blu-ray. (Like The Ten Commandments, To Catch A Thief, etc.) I was particularly interested in the fate of Marlon Brando‘s One-Eyed Jacks, for which the copyright expired in 1988 and which is now a public domain title. The bottom line is that Paramount has all the primary materials, but unless they can arrange to protect some portion of the copyright (like the literary rights, let’s say) there’s nothing to legally prevent other companies from ripping off their upgrade and putting out their own version.

Smith arranged to get access to The African Queen‘s original three-strip Technicolor negative in England, and then had it scanned and sent via a high-end server to Motion Picture Imaging in Burbank to be restored and recombined. Smith has noted that “this was probably the first restoration [in which] we never touched or even saw the actual film.”

Smith’s restoration produced an unfortunate by-product. An actor was hired to double for Robert Morley during African location footage, and he appears in two shots — one in which Morley’s minister character is leading the natives in the singing of a choir, and another in which he’s gardneing. In both shots you can now tell that this guy — his features looking much sharper — doesn’t look a bit like Morley. Not even like his cousin, I mean. It’s a little embarassing. If I’d been in Smith’s shoes I would have CG-pasted Morley’s face on top of the stand-in’s.

I couldn’t help but snicker at Bogart’s line about his “boys” — a pair of ebony-skinned African natives — “moanin’ and rollin’ their eyes” when they sensed danger from the sounds of the oncoming German army. I’m sorry but this description sounds only a step or two removed from one of the boys saying “feets, don’t fail me now!”

In a NY Times piece set to appear in Sunday’s (3.7) edition, A.O. Scott dismisses the David-versus-Goliath analogy that everyone has applied to the Hurt Locker vs. Avatar Best Picture showdown. “It is really, melodrama and rooting interests aside, a contest between the mega-blockbuster and the long tail,” he writes.

“That last phrase, the title of a 2006 book by Chris Anderson, already has a bit of an anachronistic sound, but Mr. Anderson’s idea, shorn of some of its revolutionary overstatement, is still compelling. As digital culture makes more and more stuff available and spills it faster and faster into an already swollen marketplace, some works will establish themselves slowly, by word or mouth, social networking and serendipitous rediscovery.

“That hypothesis is likely to be tested more strenuously than before in the movie world. The money to produce and publicize the kind of middle-size movie that has dominated the Oscar slates in recent years is drying up. Cheap acquisitions can be turned into hits — last year’s best picture winner, Slumdog Millionaire, being the most recent long-shot example — but there are likely to be fewer luxury goods for the prestige market.

“Only one of the current crop of best picture candidates, Up in the Air, fits that description: it has a polished look, an established star, a literary pedigree and a medium-size budget. And it looks — all of a sudden, after a strong start in Toronto and in spite of perfectly good box office numbers — like an outlier, a throwback.

“Which is to say nothing about its quality. The Oscars are never about that anyway. They are about how the American film industry thinks about itself, its future, its desires and ideals. Right now it is thinking big and small, trying to figure out how to split the difference, and hoping we will keep watching. Wherever and however we do watch.”