There’s an aura of almost rapturous serenity in the hallways of the Hotel Santa Barbara in the early morning hours. It exudes a realm and a mindset so far removed from the world of Hispanic party elephants it’s not even funny. I spoke to a local cab driver last night who didn’t even know that Santa Barbara hosts an annual film festival, much that the festival was beginning last night. So many people live in their little bubbles.

It began to rain in Santa Barbara early this morning, but there’s still that Mediterranean climate, and the pleasant fragrance of flowers and soil and shrubbery just outside and the chiffon yellow color of the walls, and the nice free breakfast downstairs — fruit, bagels, granola, orange juice, coffee.

Cameron, Paxton, Rosenthal, Bigelow, Henriksen, Reiser, Reinhold and Pasdar, to name but a few. Movieline‘s Kyle Buchanan had this earlier today.

The first line of the second paragraph of Anthony Lane‘s review of Edge of Darkness (in the 2.8 issue of The New Yorker) reads as follows: “Mel Gibson, who looks and sounds not a day over sixty-five, plays a policeman named Thomas Craven.”

The remainder continues: “The name is a joke, since the movie insists, time and again, that he has all but dispensed with fear. Warned by a fellow-officer that “someone armed and dangerous” is on the loose, Craven replies, ‘What do you think I am?’ This is delivered not with a wink and a wild grin — we are not, thank Heaven, in Lethal Weapon territory — but with a pared-down, dead-eyed plainness, which goes with Craven’s salty hair, thinning at the back, and the frown lines carved across his forehead like rifts in a relief map. He wears a loose-fitting suit that he might have picked up at a morgue.

“‘I’m the guy with nothing to lose who doesn’t give a shit,’ he says. You’re telling me.”

The YouTube description reads as follows: “Techno Remix of Mel Gibson‘s WGN interview with Dean Richards, during which Gibson called Dean an asshole on air.”

The L.A.County Coroner’s office has announced that Brittany Murphy died of “community acquired pneumonia complicated by iron deficiency anemia and multiple drug intoxication.” They’re calling it “accidental.” It would appear, however, that the drugs didn’t get into her system as a result of a gang of ne’er-do-wells kidnapping Murphy and forcing her to swallow them against her will.

HE Blu-ray correspondent Moises Chiullan reports that director William Friedkin has decided against screwing up the To Live and Die in L.A. Bluray in the manner of last year’s French Connection debacle.

Friedkin’s acid-washed version of his Oscar-winning 1971 film was the first corporate-sanctioned vandalizing of a classic film and the first known instance in which a respected director had defaced his own work. Good to see he’s had second thoughts.

I like this teaser one-sheet just fine, but marketing-wise it’s too conceptual, too Saul Bass, too Hollywood Key Art Awards. The plebes would take one look and go “naaah.”

Leaving for Los Angeles in a few minutes. Won’t be filing anything until mid-afternoon, which is when I’ll be chilling (I.e., stuck) inside LAX for three hours.

According to “Hollywood’s Top 40,” a piece by Peter Newcomb on page 272 in the new Vanity Fair, the following filmmakers pocketed the following amounts in 2009: (1) Michael Bay, $125 million; (2) Steven Spielberg, $85 million; (3) Roland Emmerich, $70 million; (4) James Cameron, $50 million; (5) Todd Phillips, $44 million; (6) Daniel Radcliffe, $41 million; (7) Ben Stiller, $40 million; (8) Tom Hanks, $36 million; (9) JJ Abrams, 36 million; and Jerry Bruckheimer, $35 million.

JFK Airport, American Airlines concourse A — Thursday, 2.4, 9:10 am.

Way down at the bottom of the list is Brad Pitt, who earned a piddly $13.5 million last year.

Bloomberg.com’s Kristen Haunss reported today about slick Wall Street types taking part in a mixed martial arts Fight Club scene at Manhattan’s Renzo Gracie Academy.

“We get a lot of finance guys,” says RGAA’s program director Max McGarr. “It’s a good release from their job. If you lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, it’s good to come here and get it out.” Richard Byrne, CEO of Deutsche Bank Securities who practices jiu-jitsu and sparring at the club, calls it “a great stress reliever…talk about a great way to get aggression out, and it’s an unbelievable workout.”

Mixed martial arts is described as “a contact sport combining aspects of wrestling, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, grappling, ground fighting, muay thai and other techniques.”

How many top-tier actors today could do this scene and really give it their all and bring it home, like this fellow does?

“Beware those quick to praise for they need praise in return.

“Beware those who are quick to censor — they are afraid of what they do not know.

“Beware those who seek constant crowds for they are nothing alone.”

I’ve known hundreds if not thousands of people who’ve seemed to fit the description of those first and third lines. It goes without saying I’ve never forgotten them. Every time I meet someone new I find myself wondering who they really are (or may be) in the solitude of their cars, beds and bathrooms.