Last year, the New York Film Critics’ Circle rather set the pace for the season by handing their two top awards to “The Artist.” (They also set eventual Best Actress Oscar winner Meryl Streep on her way.) This year, however, they’re more likely to mix the conversation up in a few crucial areas. Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor got a fresh injection in lieu of frontrunner rallying, while the group’s selection of Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” in the Best Picture and Best Director categories puts it at the top of the Oscar heap.

Check out the full list of winners below and remember to keep track of all the goings on throughout the season at The Circuit.

Best Picture: “Zero Dark Thirty”

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, “Zero Dark Thirty”

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, “Lincoln”

Best Actress: Rachel Weisz, “The Deep Blue Sea”

Best Supporting Actor: Matthew McConaughey, “Magic Mike” and “Bernie”

Best Supporting Actress: Sally Field, “Lincoln”

Best Screenplay: Tony Kushner, “Lincoln”

Best Foreign Language Film: “Amour”

Best Animated Feature: “Frankenweenie”

Best Documentary: Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon, “The Central Park Five”

Best Cinematography: Greig Fraser, “Zero Dark Thirty”

Best First Feature: David France, “How to Survive a Plague”

The nominations for the 40th annual Annie Awards were announced today, and Disney had to be all smiles with 27 nominations across four feature films in play. And it was “Brave” and “Wreck-It Ralph” from that stable that led the pack, along with DreamWorks Animation’s “Rise of the Guardians,” with 10 nominations apiece.

Not far behind was “Hotel Transylvania” and “ParaNorman” with eight nods each. The former was a delightful surprise for me personally while the latter shows great strength with animators here. The other DreamWorks entry in play, “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted,” brought in four nods.

Shockingly, there wasn’t a single notice for “The Painting” from GKIDS, which makes me wonder if it was seen. Because of the indie distributor’s four films in the animated feature race this year, it is by far the most creative and dynamic. All three of the other films managed at least one nomination, with “The Rabbi’s Cat” showing up in both the Best Animated Feature and Best Director categories. It’s formidable. Remember, it’s already won a Cesar Award. “Zarafa” also showed up in the director category.

On the live action side of things, “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “The Avengers” and “Life of Pi” each racked up a pair of nods. “Battleship” and “John Carter” had a presence as well.

Good timing on all of this, as Anne and I plan on discussing the animated feature category in this week’s podcast. I believe this year’s race is between the two films that led the way here, “Brave” and “Wreck-It Ralph.” We’ll see how it pans out, but it’s a great year for Disney indeed.

Check out the full list of theatrical (and short) nominees below. I weeded out the television stuff for our purposes. The 40th annual Annie Awards will take place on Saturday, February 2, 2013.

Best Animated Feature
“Brave”
“Frankenweenie”
“Hotel Transylvania”
“ParaNorman”
“Rise of the Guardians”
“The Pirates! Band of Misfits”
“The Rabbi’s Cat”
“Wreck-It Ralph”

Best Animated Short Subject
“Brad and Gary”
“Bydlo”
“Eyes on the Stars”
“Goodnight Mr. Foot”
“Kali the Little Vampire”
“Maggie Simpson in ‘The Longest Daycare'”
“Paperman”
“The Simpsons – ‘Bill Plympton Couch Gag'”

Animated Effects in an Animated Production
“Brave”
“Ice Age: Continental Drift”
“Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted”
“ParaNorman”
“Rise of the Guardians”
“Star Wars: The Clone Wars”
“Wreck-It Ralph”

Animated Effects in a Live Action Production
“The Amazing Spider-Man”
“The Avengers”
“Battleship”
“John Carter”

Character Animation in a Feature Production
“Brave”
“Brave”
“Brave”
“ParaNorman”
“The Pirates! Band of Misfits”
“Rise of the Guardians”
“Rise of the Guardians”
“Rise of the Guardians”

Character Animation in a Live Action Production
“The Amazing Spider-Man”
“The Avengers”
“Life of Pi”
“Life of Pi”

Character Design in an Animated Feature Production
“Hotel Transylvania”
“Hotel Transylvania”
“The Lorax”
“Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted”
“ParaNorman”
“Wreck-It Ralph”

Directing in an Animated Feature Production
Genndy Tartakovsky, “Hotel Transylvania”
Sam Fell, Chris Butler, “ParaNorman”
Johan Sfar, Antoine Delesvaux, “The Rabbi’s Cat”
Rick Moore, “Wreck-It Ralph”
Remi Bezancon, Jean-Christophe Lie, “Zarafa”

Music in an Animated Feature Production
“Adventures in Zambezia” (Bruce Retief)
“Brave” (Patrick Doyle, Mark Andrews, Alex Mandel)
“Hotel Transylvania” (Mark Mothersbaugh)
“Ice Age: Continental Drift” (John Powell, Adam Schlesinger, Ester Dean)
“The Lorax” (John Powell, Cinco Paul)
“Rise of the Guardians” (Alexandre Desplat)
“Secret of the Wings” (Joel McNeely, Brendan Milburn, Valerie Vigoda)
“Wreck-It Ralph” (Henry Jackman)

Production Design in an Animated Feature Production
“Brave”
“Frankenweenie”
“Hotel Transylvania”
“Ice Age: Continental Drift”
“Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted”
“ParaNorman”
“The Pirates! Band of Misfits”
“Rise of the Guardians”

Storyboarding in an Animated Feature Production
“Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted”
“ParaNorman”
“Rise of the Guardians”
“Wreck-It Ralph”
“Wreck-It Ralph”

Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production
Jim Cummings, “Adventures in Zambezia”
Kelly MacDonald, “Brave”
Catherine O’Hara, “Frankenweenie”
Adam Sandler, “Hotel Transylvania”
Atticus Shaffer, “Frankenweenie”
Imelda Staunton, “The Pirates! Band of Misfits”
Jude Law, “Rise of the Guardians”
Alan Tudyk, “Wreck-It Ralph”

Writing in an Animated Feature Production
“Brave”
“Frankenweenie”
“From Up on Poppy Hill”
“ParaNorman”
“The Pirates! Band of Misfits”
“Wreck-It Ralph”

Editorial in an Animated Feature Production
“Brave”
“Hotel Transylvania”
“Rise of the Guardians”
“Secret of the Wings”
“Wreck-It Ralph”

Check out all the ups and downs of the season at The Circuit.

Earlier today we launched this season’s edition of The Circuit, which will track the ups and downs of the precursor circuit from the critics awards to the guild announcements all the way through the Oscars and more. But things will get serious later this afternoon as the New York Film Critics Circle sits down to hold its annual vote.

The job of the critics this time of year is to be honest about their view of quality, yes, but also to stand up for titles and individuals lost in the shuffle. Sometimes those calls line up with Oscar, sometimes not, but the road begins to get paved with these announcements. And the narrowing process — particularly in a shortened phase one window — is crucial.

In recent years the NYFCC has gone with films such as “The Artist,” “The Social Network,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Milk,” “No Country for Old Men,” “Brokeback Mountain,” “Sideways,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” and “Far From Heaven.” The Los Angeles Film Critics Association, meanwhile (which announces on Friday), has sprung for “The Descendants,” “The Social Network,” “The Hurt Locker,” “WALL-E,” “There Will Be Blood,” “Letters from Iwo Jima,” “Brokeback Mountain,” “Sideways,” “American Splendor” and “About Schmidt.”

Clearly, the two organizations have their own identities, even if they have agreed four times over the last decade. All but one of the last 10 NYFCC winners has gone on to a Best Picture Oscar nomination, you’ll note, while the Los Angeles crowd has stood up for films that didn’t make the cut on three occasions. The two groups have agreed on a winner four times over that spread of time, but only once has that agreed-upon film gone on to take the Best Picture trophy: 2009’s “The Hurt Locker.” (Of course, if you go back farther, you find more examples. But I’m keeping it fairly recent.)

That makes for a nice segue to “Zero Dark Thirty.” I think it’s entirely possible that both the NYFCC and the LAFCA go for Kathryn Bigelow’s dense, disciplined depiction of the hunt for Osama bin Laden this year, which would be a massive feather in its cap as Sony figures out — very late in the game — its Oscar strategy. And as I Tweeted earlier this week, the film might be the worst thing to happen to Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master,” which, after failing at the box office, has one more shot at being remembered by the Academy: the critics awards.

Of course, Anderson’s film will get its share of kudos throughout the precursor circuit. It may even win with the New York or Los Angeles crowd (LA went for Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” in 2007 over the Coen brothers’ Best Picture winner “No Country for Old Men”). It’s certainly a film that needs the boost more than the still-to-release “Zero Dark Thirty,” but nevertheless, those are two major films to watch for as these groups begin to announce superlatives over the next several weeks.

Also in need of a boost going into the rest of phase one are indie darlings “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “Moonrise Kingdom.” The latter in particular could register with the NYFCC. And let’s not forget about Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” which, in a less competitive year, could easily land Best Film honors from both New York and Los Angeles. It still might.

Then there’s Michael Haneke’s “Amour,” clearly a critical favorite this year ever since it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. And it’s a film in need of a significant push from the critics as Sony Pictures Classics continues to angle it for a Best Picture nomination. Perhaps the LAFCA continues its string of outside-the-box Best Actress winners by spotlighting Emmanuelle Riva. (Though I expect Jessica Chastain will take her share of those prizes along the way.)

In the middle of the two announcements, on Wednesday: the National Board of Review. Even though it’s an organization as old as the hills, the NBR isn’t all that respected, but I’ve always argued that the membership’s tastes often dovetail with the Academy’s, even if the announcement doesn’t, in and of itself, move the needle. It’s a barometer more than an impetus, if you will. The last decade’s winners: “Hugo,” “The Social Network,” “Up in the Air,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” “No Country for Old Men,” “Letters from Iwo Jima,” “Good Night, and Good Luck.,” “Finding Neverland,” “Mystic River” and “The Hours.” That’s a perfect 10 on Best Picture nominations and two winners.

This is where I think “Lincoln” could register, or perhaps even “Les Misérables” (it’s a New York-based group) or “Argo.” Also lurking is “Silver Linings Playbook,” which might manage support from the group. And “Life of Pi” could really use the perceived boost of a win there, too.

Next week, the Broadcast Film Critics Association will jump into the pool. It’s a much larger organization than most critics groups, which explains why it tends to have a broader overall vision of the season than the rest. When you have 250 people choosing rather than 30, and in a very different, more simplified voting method, you tend to get a wider cross-section. But also, by the very nature of things, you get an earlier snapshot of the season, which is why films like “Invictus” show up sometimes.

I think the group’s list has been mostly commendable the last couple of years, and it certainly has a choice crop to pick from this time around. “Argo,” “Les Misérables,” “Life of Pi,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Zero Dark Thirty” all seem likely to me. “The Master” is probably a good bet, too, but beyond that, I don’t know. “Amour” could be relegated to the foreign list, while the last films to screen — “Django Unchained” and “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” — could certainly have the right balance of skill and entertainment to register, or they might not. “Flight,” too, for that matter, while the aforementioned indie favorites are also very much in play. So that’s 12 strong contenders for 10 spots.

Meanwhile the narrative of the season has quickly settled into one of “the studios are back with a vengeance.” How will the upcoming announcements reflect or reject that notion? We’ll see.

After all that groundwork is laid, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (rendered more meaningless than ever this year by the Academy’s timeline shift) will chime in with the Golden Globe nods. And beginning on 12/12, the guilds. SAG, PGA, DGA and WGA are, as ever, the announcements that truly matter, as these are the people who cross over with the Academy’s membership. Those lists will be more reflective than any of where we stand.

So batten down the hatches. It’s about to get loud.

Check out my updated predictions HERE and, as always, see how Guy Lodge, Greg Ellwood and I collectively think the season will turn out at THE CONTENDERS.

Oscar buzz is a strange, unscientific and totally intangible thing — even contenders being left out of the precursor can generate their own conversation with some assistance from the blogosphere. Nathaniel Rogers calls it The Noise, and right now he’s hearing it for Nicole Kidman, whose Oscar chances for a brilliant out-of-character turn in Lee Daniels’ “The Paperboy” initially seemed to be shot down with the film’s critical savaging. But Kidman’s doing a stealth campaign, calling up sympathetic interviewers (including our own Greg Ellwood) herself, and it’s paying off with some press at just the right time. Could she crack a still-thin Best Supporting Actress category? Though I think she’s really a lead in “The Paperboy,” I hope so, and so does Rogers: “You’d have to bring Daniel Day-Lewis’s Honest Abe into the room to give her a worthy opponent for impossible commitment to the role,” he writes. [The Film Experience]

Canada’s Oscar submission, “War Witch” took top honors at the Camerimage Festival, which honors outstanding achievements in cinematography. “Holy Motors” was runner-up. [Screen] 

The initial Twitter response to “Django Unchained” is encouraging, though an embargo is supposedly still in place. [The Guardian]

Here’s a comparison I didn’t expect: Devin Faraci on the parallels between “Life of Pi” and John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” (Spoilerphobes should stay away.) [Badass Digest]

With Mike Newell’s new version of “Great Expectations” having just been released in the UK to a muted response, Charles Moore considers the challenges of adapting Dickens for the screen. [The Telegraph]

Speaking of which, David Lean’s version of “Great Expectations” cracks Jason Solomons’ list of the screen’s 10 best literary adaptations, alongside “Stand By Me” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” [The Observer]

Michael Cieply on an Oscar race seemingly being reclaimed by the major studios after several straight years of indies ruling the roost. [New York Times] 

Costume designer Ann Maskrey on dressing “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.” It’s more challenging designing for dwarves than for Cate Blanchett, apparently. Who knew? [LA Times]

Paul Harris reports from last night’s Kennedy Center Honors, at which two-time Oscar champ Dustin Hoffman (and director of this year’s awards hopeful “Quartet”) was among the individuals celebrated. [Variety]

The Academy has posted full videos of the acceptance speeches from Saturday’s Governors’ Awards. I still miss having such moments at the Oscar ceremony itself. [AMPAS]

The awards season has already begun to some extent, but the critics are about to add their collective voice to it: tomorrow, the New York Film Critics’ Circle announce their picks for 2012’s best, kicking off a long, long run of critics’ awards that won’t finish until January. So it’s apt that Sight & Sound magazine have neatly foreshadowed this turn of events with their own annual critics’ poll — one of the largest and most internationally inclusive of the lot.

And though you may already have heard this, it’s good news for “The Master” — one of the films, as it happens, that has the most to gain from the upcoming bevy of critics’ honors. Paul Thomas Anderson’s remarkable Scientology-inspired dual character study has acquired a reputation for being a difficult, divisive beast — but it still united enough opinion to score the most votes in S&S’s survey of over 90 critics, academics and programmers. It wouldn’t surprise me to see it emerge similarly triumphant with certain leading US critics’ groups, reasserting its status as a potential Oscar player.

“The Tree of Life,” it’s worth noting, topped the S&S list last year, while “The Social Network” was top dog in 2010 — so this marks a third straight year that a critics’ cause from the US has won out in the British magazine’s poll. Other poll winners include “Brokeback Mountain” (2005), “Hidden” (2006), “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” (2007), “Hunger” (2008) and “A Prophet” (2009). All in all, not bad company to be in. 

The full top 10 (or top 11, rather, due to voting ties at the lower end) reads as follows:

1. “The Master” (Paul Thomas Anderson)

2. “Tabu” (Miguel Gomes)

3. “Amour” (Michael Haneke)

4. “Holy Motors” (Leos Carax)

=5. “Beasts of the Southern Wild” (Benh Zeitlin)

=5. “Berberian Sound Studio” (Peter Strickland)

7. “Moonrise Kingdom” (Wes Anderson)

=8. “Beyond the Hills” (Cristian Mungiu)

=8. “Cosmopolis” (David Cronenberg)

=8. “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

=8. “This Is Not a Film” (Jafar Panahi, Mojtaba Mirtahmaseb)

I didn’t get to vote in this year’s poll, though my contribution would only have furthered the lead held by the two films at the top. While I fully expected to see “The Master” come out on top, I’m more surprised — and absolutely delighted — to see such extensive support for “Tabu,” the Portuguese semi-silent celebration of movie-love and love itself that I’ve been championing as one of the year’s best since the Berlinale in February. You can expect to see both on my personal Top 10 list toward the end of the month.

Next up are the two leading critics’ pets of Cannes 2012, “Amour” and “Holy Motors” — the latter having recently topped the list of S&S’s across-the-Channel equivalent, Cahiers du Cinema. As usual, Cannes fare dominates the list: after the top two (which premiered at Venice and Berlin), all but one of the selections played the Croisette.

The exception is a film I’m particularly thrilled to see here, and the one British pick on the list. “Berberian Sound Studio,” Peter Strickland’s ingenious homage to 1970s Italian Z-horror, has had to fight for its critical standing this year. Many feared a misfire after the film was turned down by Cannes and other festivals, but word of mouth built rapidly after a quiet debut at Edinburgh in the summer. After a shower of British Independent Film Award nominations, this placing seals its status as one of the year’s crowning achievements in British film. (If you’re interested, check out my Variety review.)

The full array of individual lists will be available on the magazine’s website soon, while a selection of them are in print. In case you were curious, Armond White’s list is thoroughly respectable, including the “The Deep Blue Sea,” “Holy Motors” and “Damsels in Distress,” while Kenneth Turan balances mainstream Oscar bait selection (“Lincoln,” “Silver Linings Playbook”) with “The Gatekeepers,” “Amour” and “No.” Here’s hoping their fellow US critics show similarly broad taste in the coming weeks.

VALLETTA, Malta — There”s a certain advantage to holding an awards ceremony in a different city every year: with the practical and cultural conditions of the event different each time, tradition doesn”t quite congeal into formula. This was my first trip to the European Film Awards, but this year”s Malta-set edition of the continent”s translation of the Oscars had details to surprise even seasoned attendees, whether it was the rowdy Maltese house band – a Gogol Bordello-type collective whose lead singer bore a striking resemblance to Captain Haddock – jamming on stage at regular intervals, or the venue itself, a cavernous former hospital at the sea”s edge, its dense stone walls roughened with several centuries” worth of harder use than a mere red-carpet shindig.

If the surroundings rather humbled the awards themselves, then, that seemed appropriate in an intelligent, enjoyable ceremony that nonetheless seemed torn between honoring European film culture and reading its last rites – leaving a solemn aftertaste that coincidentally complemented a top-category sweep for Michael Haneke”s stern mortality study “Amour.”

Interspersing the trophy presentations was a serious of clip reels in which assorted European film luminaries, from Julie Delpy to Fatih Akin to Haneke himself, paid tribute to their rich cinematic history while ominously expressing their concerns over the industry”s survival in the face of economic restrictions and cultural shifts. (Istvan Szabo at least brightly prophesied that European cinema is equipped to weather the storm – “Our stories have always been about losers,” he said, which, oddly, was one of the evening”s more cheerful soundbites.) An address by the Maltese minister of culture, underlining his own country”s excitement at hosting the awards despite their minimal local film industry, was a polite reminder that European cinema isn”t a wholly democratic beast.

The underlying message of the evening, then, was perhaps one of guarded celebration: to see, love and reward the best in European film now, since we may not have it this good again. (Certainly, the lavish post-ceremony dinner and party, filling an impressive medieval cellar so vast you could scarcely see from one end to the other, had no interest in austerity: the European Film Academy feels their art deserves a grande bouffe of sorts, and why not?)

It”s fitting, though, that the night”s big winner, “Amour” is a model of old-school arthouse classicism, a European film that could have been made, admired and garlanded in any era. It”d be a daring choice for the American Academy, but for these awards, it”s effectively down-the-line bait; its sweep was as predictable as it was deserved. Still, for the industry pros that make up the EFA”s 2700-strong membership, there”s arguably comfort in lauding a work of timeless formal simplicity from an old pro (indeed, three old pros, counting octogenarian acting victors Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant) at a time when European film stands on unstable ground.  

Traditional storytelling, in fact, ruled the entire list of EFA honorees, from “The Hunt” – a surprisingly old-fashioned allegorical melodrama from onetime Dogme firebrand Thomas Vinterberg, and the one film to wrestle a major prize from “Amour” – to Dutch Oscar submission “Kauwboy,” an affecting slice of family-friendly realism that nods to Ken Loach in more ways that just its “Kes”-lite narrative. That “Kauwboy” helmer Boudewijn Koole won the Discovery Award for debut directors suggests the EFA voters value classicism even when looking to the future.

Many of the night”s speeches, moreover, underlined the night”s reflective theme, as venerable inspirations were variously honored: Lifetime Achievement Award winner Bernardo Bertolucci may have been the evening”s resident old master, but that didn”t stop him dedication a chunk of his eloquent acceptance speech to Ingmar Bergman, like an aged student still in thrall to his teacher. Another honorary award recipient, Helen Mirren, got the night”s biggest laugh when she thanked the EFA for “recognizing that I am a fucking whore,” but that was a segue into a tribute to the European screen goddesses of the 1960s that made her want to act, led by “the original fucking whore,” Jeanne Moreau.

Eyebrows were raised when Leos Carax”s wild, unsettling surrealist funhouse “Holy Motors” failed to show up on even the EFA”s longlist: perhaps it will do so next year, but I wouldn”t be surprised if this kind of flying-blind esoterica isn”t what the voters feel like elevating right now. The players in the European Film Awards may be very different to those in the Oscar race, but the rules of the game aren”t always dissimilar.

Imperfect they may be, but we should be grateful for these awards, not least because they recognize that European arthouse cinema – generally shoved into a single ghetto in awards ceremonies across the pond – has its own mainstream and alternative divisions. And if it”s the former division that obviously dominates, there”s a lot to be said for a film as uncompromising and sparsely beautiful as “Amour” emerging as the equivalent of a Hollywood prestige blockbuster.

There”s also a lot to be said for all this happening in a place as lovely and unexpected as Malta, which I”ve spent a happy weekend exploring, and which wears its own European heritage treasures with becoming modesty – including some jaw-dropping Caravaggios, which Haneke himself took some time to marvel at yesterday morning. Now there”s a meeting of artists that won”t happen on Oscar weekend. 

HOLLYWOOD — The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored its own tonight in the fourth annual Governors Awards. A satellite ceremony dedicated to Honorary Oscar presentations (voted on by the AMPAS Board of Governors), the program was moved off the annual Academy Awards telecast in 2009 and given its own space in the middle of awards season.

This year’s Honorary Oscar recipients were documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker, AFI and Kennedy Center Honors founder George Stevens Jr. and stunt coordinator Hal Needham, while Jeffrey Katzenberg received the Jean Hersholt Award for his fundraising and philanthropy.

The evening began with Pennebaker’s presentation, as Senator Al Franken took to the stage to assist in the introduction. “We have big issues to confront,” Franken said, noting many of the pressing matters of today — fiscal crisis, healthcare, etc. “And we can’t do it unless we’re willing to tell the truth…[Pennebaker’s] films succeed because of his commitment to telling the truth.”

Following a clip package of Pennebeker’s contributions to the medium — pioneering music documentary filmmaking, using cinema vérité techniques to tell real-life stories — the Academy’s documentary branch Governor Michael Moore then approached the podium to sing praises. He compared Pennebaker’s status as a pioneer in the industry to the Lumière brothers, Thomas Edison, Charlie Chaplin and Fritz Lang, offering that the director “invented nothing less than the modern documentary” and particularly praising the innovation of handheld photography in his work.

“Everybody here probably already has one of these,” Pennebaker said upon receiving his Oscar. “I’m kind of trying to deal with it. But it’s hard.” He then went on to give a long, meandering speech and at one point, perhaps sensing an air of impatience, asked, “Am I going on too long?” The production’s cameras caught his wife and colleague Chris Hegedus nodding and then Will Smith casually shaking his head, “No,” which drew plenty of laughs.

“I’ll be brief,” Annette Bening said as she took the stage to introduce a clip package for George Stevens Jr., continuing the joke. She said Stevens, son of a legendary filmmaker and indeed, a man with show business in his blood, has “elevated the art of honoring others” with his founding of the American Film Institute and the Kennedy Center Honors.

Sidney Poitier also participated in Stevens’s presentation. “When you work with George Stevens, art and activism are never far apart,” he said.

Stevens gave a touching speech about a life lived surrounded by the entertainment industry. The night made him think back to the first time he ever saw an Oscar, on the night of March 15, 1944. It was the Academy Awards and his father was nominated for directing “The More the Merrier.” But he was serving overseas in the war and so George Jr. was on hand to accept on his behalf, should he win. He was all set to do just that, but unfortunately, he had never heard of a film called “Casablanca.” He recalled that when Michael Curtiz’s name was called, he shouted, “We was robbed!” Tonight, though, “I can’t say I was robbed,” he said.

The liveliest segment of the night had to be Hal Needham’s presentation. Quentin Tarantino was one of the presenters, noting immediately the importance of stunt coordinators in the industry and that only one other member of that fraternity — Yakima Canutt — had been recognized by the Academy over the years. Indeed, stunt men and women have been angling for their own category at the Academy Awards to no avail for years, and Needham’s recognition has largely been seen as a bone thrown in their direction.

Still, the honor is deserved. Needham has broken 56 bones, his back twice, punctured a lung and innovated all sorts of stunt technology for the betterment of filmmakers the world over. And he was responsible for “one of the most enjoyable first-directed films ever made,” Tarantino said of “Smokey and the Bandit,” Needham’s directorial debut — “a real southern movie that understood the south.”

Producer Albert Ruddy came out to tell a few stories and brought the house down with one about an accidental missile launch on the Samuel Goldwyn Studio that burned an entire stage down that was playing host to Herbert Ross’s “Pennies From Heaven.”

“You’re looking at the luckiest man alive,” Needham said, “and lucky to be alive.” He fought back tears speaking of his mother, who he said was surely looking down on the evening with pride.

Finally, Will Smith and Tom Hanks took part in presenting Jeffrey Katzenberg with the Jean Hersholt honor. “Jeffery has no problem asking you for too much money,” Smith quipped about the studio magnate’s fundraising prowess. But, he said, “Jeffrey has proven it’s not how much you give but how you give. I want to be like you when I grow up.”

Hanks made mention of Katzenberg’s efforts to launch a telethon in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. “He said we need to try something new and different, we have to break the rules,” Hanks said. “And he set a standard for the way Americans help out America in times of need…Jeffrey Katzenberg doesn’t have to do all these things, but Jeffrey Katzenberg cannot help but do all these things.”

Katzenberg noted that it was Kirk Douglas who taught him “you haven’t learned to live if you haven’t learned to give.” But he also noted that he should really deflect much of the credit to the Hollywood community that has assisted his humanitarian efforts over the years. “It’s you who did it,” he said, “you who gave your time and money. That’s what Hollywood does.”

The evening brought out the industry’s A-list, including filmmakers Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann and Robert Zemeckis as well as stars like Warren Beatty, Kristen Stewart, Leslie Mann and more.

VALLETTA, Malta — As predicted, it was a very big night for “Amour” at the European Film Awards, as Michael Haneke’s universally revered Palme d’Or winner swept the four top awards at the ceremony: European Film of the Year and Director of the Year, plus the two acting prizes for its octogenarian leads Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva.

Neither of the actors, sadly, were in attendance (Riva, stricken with flu, is unable to travel), but Haneke was — “jubilant” could never be the appropriate word to describe the solemn Austrian formalist’s reaction to anything, but he looked close to overcome as he accept the night’s final award, limiting his acceptance speech to a simple “thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Haneke didn’t have it all his own way, losing the screenwriting prize to “The Hunt,” while “Amour” cinematographer Darius Khondji made way for “Shame” DP Sean Bobbitt. Still, this was a formidable sweep, underlining the Austrian Oscar submission’s status as 2012’s premier arthouse attraction. The EFAs may not exert much influence across the pond, but this coup can only build on the film’s enviable prestige as it heads into the US precursor jungle — with Sony Classics aiming for greater things than a mere Best Foreign Language Film nod.  

Despite a high-quality slate of nominees that included such outstanding films as “Barbara” and “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia,” as well as the populist juggernaut that is “The Intouchables,” not much else got a look-in. While “The Hunt” wrestled one major award from “Amour,” the Brits ruled the roost in the technical categories, with “Shame” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” each taking a pair: Cinematography and Editing for the former, and Production Design and Composer for the latter. (If you’re wondering why these 2011 releases were competing this year, consider the eligibility date complications involved in a ceremony that covers an entire continent.)

The ceremony itself was an enjoyably mixed bag, with a rowdy Maltese house band complementing some spirited Euro-Borscht belt schtick from our amiable emcee, German comedienne Anke Engelke. Helen Mirren was on cheeky form accepting her honorary award, thanking the European Film Academy for “the great honour of recognizing that I’m a fucking whore,” while the grace note of the night was a wry, touching acceptance speech by Lifetime Achievement Award winner Bernardo Bertolucci, whose tribute was accompanied by a truly gorgeous montage of his life’s work. Take note, Oscar directors.

I’ll have more tomorrow, but the after-party calls. Full list of winners below:

European Film of the Year: “Amour” 

European Director of the Year:  Michael Haneke, “Amour”

European Actress of the Year: Emmanuelle Riva, “Amour”

European Actor of the Year: Jean-Louis Trintignant, “Amour” 

European Screenwriter of the Year: Thomas Vinterberg, Tobias Lindholm, “The Hunt”

European Composer of the Year: Alberto Iglesias, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”

European Production Designer of the Year: Maria Djurkovic, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”

European Documentary of the Year: “Winter Nomads”

Lifetime Achievement Award: Bernardo Bertolucci

Prix Eurimages: Helena Danielsson (producer)

As “Lincoln” enters its fourth weekend at the box office, numerous commentators have noted how realistic the film is in its portrayal of politics and history. It resonates even today.

That realism didn’t end with the story and performances, as the look of the film meticulously recreated a sense of time and place. Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and production designer Rick Carter were responsible in large part for that realism. The duo, who have three Oscars and eight nominations between them, are longtime collaborators with Steven Spielberg and I recently spoke with them about their work on the film, with Spielberg and with each other.

Kaminski notes that the most important element of his work is always “creating visual language.” With “Lincoln” widely being noted as an actors’ piece, it’s unsurprising that he found his primary task having “to create the realistic world in which the actors would feel comfortable.”

Carter also found that the focus on a narrow story, and the role of particular characters in it, improved his work. He had been involved in the project for over a decade, dating back to 2001. “I was involved in some of the earlier versions when it was a film on a full presidency,” he says. “So many things happened [in those versions] that it became a greatest hits version of Lincoln’s presidency.” He found, though, that he was able to concentrate on details and proper historical research as it was consolidated into a film on the passage of the 13th Amendment. “I was lucky I had a long time to digest the historical materials,” he says, acknowledging he would have been overwhelmed otherwise.

Kaminski also notes that the human and political story affected his work, especially when compared to some of his showier recent efforts. “The movie was more restrained in terms of visual panache – the camera is not very busy in how it moves,” he explains. “We composed the movie with a great concern to the reality of the period. We didn”t want to be flamboyant with the camera. That”s a major difference from the other movies where the camera is consistently moving.” In this respect, he compares it to another film he did with Spielberg about slavery and mid-19th Century America: “Amistad.”

The lack of showiness created an intimacy Carter tried hard to develop, and he found that Lincoln’s having been in the White House for four years helped that task. “Every choice we made was based on historical accuracy,” he says. “It was a place where Daniel [Day-Lewis] could go and feel he was in a real place…that meant that the details had to be purposeful.” The result of this was meticulous research to bring in actual details from the Lincoln White House.

Kaminski points out the obvious, that every movie set attempting to recreate a real time and place is not actually that real time and place. The upshot of this is his need to “take this artificial environment and create a world that the audience can embrace the story as if they were there. That”s always the most challenging aspect of my job.” As such, even though he did not think “Lincoln” was a technologically challenging movie, he nevertheless needed to painstakingly mimic the practical lighting of the period: whenever possible, lighting was created by windows and oil lamps, as would have been the case at the time. But while these were good rules to work by, he admits he needed to use artificial lighting at times while not detracting from the look of the film.

In an attempt to recreate an organic atmosphere, the pair of course had to work hand-in-hand. They’ve worked together numerous times and Carter notes that learning how Kaminski intended to light the picture helped him know what to concentrate on. “It”s understanding the colors, so within the darkness, you can see so much,” he says, marveling that Kaminski “was able to direct where your eye goes while seeing whole frame.”

Kaminski is also grateful for the relationship which has developed over seven films now. He says the period authenticity Carter had to create was more obvious than his. “We can definitely help each other in creating a movie that feels real,” he says. “We understand each other in terms of what needs to be done to do the work.” He particularly praised his colleague’s knowledge of the reality of the set and the roles of other department heads on the production. “I photograph what is in front of the camera,” he says. “If I have really good stuff, my work will be better.”

One of the reasons they have worked together so frequently is because they are both chosen crafts artists of Steven Spielberg. “Because of our relationship, I have a lot of freedom,” Carter says of the living legend. “He always directs me in the sense that I show him things and he comes up with ideas.” Spielberg knows what he wants but has tremendous faith in the people he employs on the set, he says.

Kaminski also notes that his and Spielberg’s incredibly successful relationship has deepened over time. “Cinematographers are not asking permission from directors to do things,” he says unapologetically. He nonetheless admits that differences between DPs and directors can cause serious problems, but insists that hasn’t been the case with them. “Our relationship has been so successful because we both see the movies the same way.”

Spielberg was clearly going for a realistic, human story with “Lincoln,” which is what Kaminski and Carter (who had previously worked with him on grand epics such as “War Horse” and science-fiction movies such as “A.I.”) tried to convey as well. And whether they were researching history, working with each other or working with their crews, they sought to establish that sense of place every step of the way.

“Lincoln” is now playing at a theater near you.

Anne and I discussed the documentary feature category at length on yesterday’s podcast, commenting on a wide array of movies. Naturally, then, most of them were featured in the PGA’s list of nominees in the category.

The two that were — “The Gatekeepers” and “Searching for Sugar Man” — are easily two of the best in the field this year. The former, though, hasn’t gotten a lot of discussion, but with a qualifying release this week, talk should start circulating. I saw it at Telluride in September, noting that it “provides an invaluable perspective on evolving methods of anti-terrorism while treading the philosophical waters of playing God and having the power to extinguish another life with the push of a button.”

“Searching for Sugar Man,” meanwhile, is potentially the most popular film of the lot this year, and that actually counts this time around, as the documentary feature category’s process now allows for that kind of wide-spread appeal to register.

The full list of nominees:

“The Gatekeepers”

“The Island President”

“The Other Dream Team”

“A People Uncounted”

“Searching for Sugar Man”

Previously announced, special honors will be awarded by the guild to Bob and Harvey Weinstein, J.J. Abrams, Tin Bevan and Eric Fellner and Russell Simmons. The full list of feature nominees will be announced on January 3, 2013.

Speaking of documentaries, by the way, it’s worth noting that the great D.A. Pennebaker will receive an Honorary Oscar at tonight’s Governors Awards (which I’ll be attending). He’ll be presented the honor by Michael Moore, who has been instrumental in the overall shift of rules and regulations in the Best Documentary Feature category at the Oscars this year.

The 24th annual Producers Guild Awards will be held on January 26, 2013.

I’m writing this from my hotel suite in Valletta, Malta, where the view from my balcony is foregrounded by scattered yachts sleeping on a still sea as the sleepy Maltese capital — all hybrid Euro grandeur in honey-colored stone — turns silently in for the night. Earlier, I spotted Michael Haneke and Mads Mikkelsen, among others, enjoying a gentle nightcap in a neighboring hotel bar, unbothered by press or publicists.

All told, it’s hardly the circus you’d encounter the night before a major awards ceremony across the pond, but the European Film Awards have a very, well, continental way of doing things. Voted for by the European Film Academy, they may commonly be described as the transatlantic equivalent of the Oscars, but the EFAs have far less of an industry built around them. For one thing, they’re something of a travelling celebration, the venue alternating every other year from their Berlin base camp to a range of more far-flung locales: it’s a nifty way of honoring the continent’s cultural diversity even when the nominees themselves center mostly on major European nations.

Anyway, Malta’s doing the honors this year, and the modest, pretty Mediterranean island — one of the world’s smallest states — feels like suitably neutral territory for a competition dominated by France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Denmark and, by rewinding a bit to 2011, the UK. And I’m predicting a good night for the first three of those, largely because they’re allied on a formidable frontrunner. The EFAs rarely spring major surprises, tending to laurel revered auteurs and substantially acclaimed festival successes: in recent years, winners of their top prize have included “Melancholia,” “The Ghost Writer,” “The White Ribbon,” “Gomorrah” and “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.”

Michael Haneke’s “Amour” fits that winners’ template perfectly, and would be a deserving victor — it already leads the field with six nominations. But let’s break it down on a category-by-category basis. (Here’s the full list of nominees.)

BEST EUROPEAN FILM

Four of the six nominees here are also in the foreign-language Oscar race: Italy’s “Caesar Must Die” and Germany’s “Barbara,” which respectively won the Golden Bear and Best Director awards at Berlin; France’s global smash “The Intouchables” and, of course, “Amour.” Though “Intouchables” would be the clear populist choice, Thomas Vinterberg’s “The Hunt” — which could well compete for Denmark at next year’s Oscars — feels like the strongest potential spoiler here: I’m personally unmoved by the film, but its moral allegory hits many viewers squarely in the gut. Still, it’s hard to see “Amour” losing: it’s both the least divisive and most accomplished film here. Haneke has won this prize twice before, for “Hidden” in 2005 and “The White Ribbon” in 2009, but the EFA voters have never been overly concerned with spreading the wealth. (The sixth nominee, “Shame,” may be terrific, but feels a little like yesterday’s news in this lineup.)

Will and should win: “Amour”

BEST EUROPEAN DIRECTOR

Four of the Best Film nominees — Haneke, Vinterberg, Steve McQueen and Italy’s venerable Taviani brothers — show up here again, with Nuri Bilge Ceylan (“Once Upon a Time in Anatolia”) taking the lone-director position. The EFAs haven’t split the awards often recently: last year marked the first such instance in five years, when Susanne Bier beat her compatriot Lars von Trier, much to his consternation. Meanwhile, both times Haneke won the top prize, he took this award too: he’s arguably ascended to the status of Europe’s leading auteur, so there’s little reason to bet against him this time.

Will and should win: Michael Haneke, “Amour”

BEST EUROPEAN ACTRESS

Kate Winslet’s an odd filler nominee for her so-so work in “Carnage,” especially considering the nominating committee passed over Marion Cotillard for “Rust and Bone,” but that aside, this is a pretty remarkable category. Nina Hoss in “Barbara,” Margarethe Tiesel in “Paradise: Love” and Emilie Dequenne in “Our Children” anchor tough-minded, female-centered projects with unflinching fortitude; Dequenne, in particular, could be a frontrunner in another year for her crushing turn as a mother driven by post-partum depression to the unthinkable. All three, however, are unlucky to come up against 85-year-old Emmanuelle Riva’s career-crowning performance as a stroke victim maintaining an inner fight against her own body: look for her to take her first individual award for “Amour” here.

Will win: Emmanuelle Riva, “Amour”
Should win (by a hair): Emilie Dequenne, “Our Children”

BEST EUROPEAN ACTOR

Another sterling lineup. His performance may be a less showy display of technique, but it’s entirely likely that Riva’s invaluable duet partner Jean-Louis Trintignant could continue an “Amour” sweep here. Still, the EFA voters are clearly fond of other films in the race, and this is where I expect them to show that — though the likely beneficiary is less clear-cut. Omar Sy and Francois Cluzet have been nominated in tandem for “The Intouchables,” and while the performances are hardly inseparable (and Sy’s is appreciably better), the tidiness of awarding both players from the much-beloved buddy movie could prove tempting for voters. But then, so could voting for Cannes winner Mikkelsen, especially with the invisible factor of an equally fine 2012 performance in “A Royal Affair” boosting his chances. A pair of nominees from 2011 Britpics, Michael Fassbender in “Shame” and Oscar nominee Gary Oldman in “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” are equally worthy of consideration, but may, I suspect, cut into each other’s vote.

Will win: Mads Mikkelsen, “The Hunt”
Should win: Jean-Louis Trintignant, “Amour” 

BEST EUROPEAN SCREENWRITER

Best Film nominees “Amour,” “The Hunt” and “The Intouchables” all repeat here, and it seems likely the race will be between them: “The White Ribbon” took this award in 2009 as part of its sweep, so I’ll go with “Amour,” though I can see voters responding to the rigid narrative architecture of “The Hunt” in this category. Of the other nominees, Cristian Mungiu may have taken the screenplay prize at Cannes for “Beyond the Hills,” but the EFA voters haven’t mentioned his film, widely agreed to be a lesser work than 2007 champ “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” in any other categories. Meanwhile, I’m not convinced “Carnage,” adapted fairly slavishly by Roman Polanski and Yasmina Reza from the latter’s play, is a major feat of screenwriting, but it’s here anyway.

Will and should win: Michael Haneke, “Amour”

And to run more briefly through the other categories:

BEST EUROPEAN CINEMATOGRAPHER

Will and should win: Gokhan Tiryaki, “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia”

BEST EUROPEAN EDITOR

Will win: Anne Østerud and Janus Billeskov Janse, “The Hunt”
Should win: Joe Walker, “Shame”

BEST EUROPEAN PRODUCTION DESIGNER

Will and should win: Maria Djurkovic, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” 

BEST EUROPEAN COMPOSER

Will and should win: Alberto Iglesias, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”

BEST EUROPEAN DOCUMENTARY

Will win: Julien Temple, “London: The Modern Babylon”

BEST EUROPEAN ANIMATED FILM

Will and should win: Ignacio Ferreras, “Wrinkles”

BEST EUROPEAN DISCOVERY

Will win: “Twilight Portrait”

PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD

Will win: “The Intouchables” 

The ceremony, which will also include honorary award presentations to Helen Mirren and Bernardo Bertolucci, takes place tomorrow evening: keep an eye out for my updates here and on Twitter. 

NEW YORK — I’m running a little late as I make it over to the Laura Pels Theater on 46th Street. When I get there, a tiny crowd surrounds Jake Gyllenhaal, bearded and maned for his performance in the off-Broadway play “If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet.” He’s almost unrecognizable, which goes a long way toward explaining why the crowd is tiny. He’s gracious, all smiles, answering questions.

Later, backstage at the theater, he recalls what it was about the piece that made him finally break his long hiatus from the stage. Written by Nick Payne, the George Devine Award-winning play features Gyllenhaal (in his New York theater debut) as Terry, a loafer uncle to an affection-starved, overweight teenage girl. It’s a quartet piece but Gyllenhaal shines, largely because of his character’s idiosyncratic nature. That nature was founded in the play’s dialogue, which Gyllenhaal says was like trying to unlock a Rubik’s Cube.

“The character stops in the middle of thoughts and he continues into the middle of the next one,” the 31-year-old actor says. “Sometimes he’ll pick back up parenthetically like four or five lines back down. So you don’t just have to find the attention, you have to fill in the blank…The story is so obtuse; it’s the same thing. You begin at the middle of the scene and you finish before the situation actually ends. So to me, I was just fascinated by that and it started to guide me.”

Gyllenhaal says he always felt comfortable in front of a live audience and, ever since he was a kid, enjoyed mimicry. A cockney Brit was one of his “stock characters that are always used as caricatures that aren’t really necessary,” he says. “They’re kind of like the simple shape and form and mold of a sculpture.”

The language itself, though, the rhythms of it, made the part irresistible. He could even see the architecture of the dialogue for each character on the page. All of Terry’s dialogue is on the left side of the page, never making it past half-way across. The starting and stopping gives tangible shape to the thing, and as to informing character, it almost serves as a defense mechanism. As the play’s director Michael Longhurst put it in a telephone interview, “When characters speak like that, it’s often to avoid what he’s trying to say. He spends his time asking people how they are. It’s a way of avoiding how he’s doing. It’s a very British thing to do, deflect, deflect, deflect.”

And so Gyllenhaal starts in with his accent to illustrate the point: “When I first come in I’m like, ‘Probably should have rung or something,’ period. ‘But phone was fucked,’ period. ‘And I thought,’ period. ‘By the time I was trying to get change for the fucking,’ period. ‘You know, the phone and that,’ period. ‘Then I might as well just,’ period…It’s crazy! But that’s the way he writes, and unlocking it is what’s fun.”

All of that makes for lengthy introduction to how language and behavior was the key to success when Gyllenhaal signed on to play a Los Angeles police officer in David Ayer’s “End of Watch.” A new spin on found footage (though that’s not really what this is — Gyllenhaal’s character films much of his exploits and so that point of view becomes diegetic for the film’s purposes), “End of Watch” tells the story of a pair of patrolmen who spend their days on the southeast side of LA going after gang-bangers and drug-pushers until one unfortunate day, they open too many doors and find themselves the target of a Mexican drug cartel.

Gyllenhaal was looking for something new in his life and, according to Ayer, chased the project down. “I think he was just frustrated,” Ayer said by telephone. “He wanted to act. He wanted to just sink his teeth into a role and act and not be distracted by the sort of big business side of things. He wanted to lose himself and he wanted to be reinvented…He’s just like, ‘Look, I’m sick of everything. I’m sick of my life and I want to change it. I want change.’ And that’s all I heard, is that he’s ready to transform. His heart was really open at that time and he was really receptive to doing something totally different and giving me the total commitment that I needed for this movie to work…I told him, ‘Look, if this works out, you’re going to come out of this a different person.’ And I think that happened.”

Here was an immersion of a whole other sort. For months Gyllenhaal underwent tactical training and participated in police car ride-alongs with co-star Michael Peña. And again, the way his character spoke was key to who he was.

“There were things Dave would write, where, for instance, there was a speech where I ‘m talking about going on dates,” Gyllenhaal says, before reading off some of the scene: “‘I get laid without a badge, thank you very much. There’s a pattern here, an MO. First date, respectful kiss. Second date’s dinner.’ And Dave was like, ‘Enunciate.’ And when we were rehearsing he’d be like, ‘Enunciate. Enunciate. Enunciate.’ And then I started to realize that the thing about this guy was everything he said, when he talked to people, was very clear. This is going to happen. That’s going to happen. And that all definitely went into it.”

As he describes the philosophy his voice mimics what he’s talking about, crisp, precise, a 180 from the bubbly Brit he was just moments before.

The ride-along aspect of the prep was particularly crucial. He and Peña did two or three each week for five months. The first call he went on, someone was murdered and died right in front of him. There was a domestic violence call that didn’t turn out the way he had expected at all when they “rolled up on two dudes,” he says. “And it was brutal. The crazy thing to me was watching two police officers switch from their relationship to getting the call and the focus in that. Watching human behavior, for me, it just blew my mind. That was the hardest thing for Mike and I to get, that switch. And Dave talked about it all the time, but watching that was crazy, every time, because it was like sort of fun or just interacting, normal, joking, normal, joking [and suddenly] life and death.”

He admits he had trouble shaking it all off when he’d return from the experience on multiple occasions, noting the under-considered effect of post-traumatic stress disorder in law enforcement officers. “It would take me two or three hours to get to bed, to finally just chill the fuck out,” he says. “By the end, we’re seeing murders and shootings and it just became something normal. I was very surprised at how desensitized I became, and Michael and I talked about that a lot.”

For an actor like Gyllenhaal who — he admits — can be a bundle of energy on set, it must have been a major gear shift. At a recent New York cocktail gathering for his new film “Life of Pi,” Ang Lee — who directed Gyllenhaal to a Best Supporting Actor nomination for 2005’s “Brokeback Mountain” — recalled that energy. “He provided a lot,” Lee said. “He has a good heart. But,” he offered with a smile, “I think when the camera’s rolling, an actor should conserve their energy.” (More on how that philosophy impacted Gyllenhaal in our sidebar on his work with top-tier directors over the years.)

Sam Mendes, meanwhile, who worked with Gyllenhaal on “Jarhead” the very same year, told HitFix that “as a person [Gyllenhaal is] a bit more of an unexploited bum. He”s got much more rage and kind of anger in him and complexity. And so it was a mixture of that sort of youthful, big-eyed innocence and then something else…I think that he”s got a streak of madness in him.”

For Ayer’s part, he made sure he got the most out of that spirit and vigor. “Let’s put it this way,” he said. “The days are so long and grueling that whatever energy he had I made sure got diverted into the movie. So there wasn’t a lot of time to sit and think and bullshit. The work velocity was so intense that you had to bite down and run…and he was locked on.”

One important element, though, was establishing a camaraderie between Gyllenhaal and Peña. And it wasn’t an easy task. “It was like kind of an arranged marriage of sorts,” Gyllenhaal says. “At first, Dave was like, ‘Get together; you’re supposed to be best friends.’ And we’re like, ‘Uh, okay.'” But things needed to get heated if they were going to hug it out.

Gyllenhaal repeats an oft-told story about a tactical training exercise he was doing with his co-star that involved live ammunition. Due to ear protection, they couldn’t hear each other well. “I was shooting and he kept shooting and I started to get pissed,” Gyllenhaal recalls. “And we came out and we like had it out. We just went at it. Then we stormed off and he called me the next day and was like, ‘Hey.’ I was like, ‘What?’ And he was just like, ‘You know, it was kind of cool.’ And I was like, ‘You’re an asshole.’ And he was like, ‘I think we’re friends now.’ It was a quintessential moment where as soon as we went that far with each other, from that moment on it was like, ‘All right, if I can hate you, I can love you, and that’s it…I got your back.'”

The multi-camera technique was another challenge, but it was mostly fun and opened doors for the actors. There would be cameras rolling pretty much all the time and Gyllenhaal says they had something like 135 hours of footage when all was said and done.

“Dave would call ‘cut’ and everyone would go off and Mike would be doing shit that was brilliant,” Gyllenhaal says. “He’s so funny and he’s like in it, we’re still in it. So I just put the camera on him and I’d be like, ‘Let’s roll sound,’ and we’d roll sound, and I would just press record on the camera and I’d film Mike doing this stuff. It was gold! Our editor, Dody Dorn, was brilliant that she could even put it together.”

At the end of the day, Ayer got exactly what he wanted out of the actor, and the actor got exactly what he wanted out of the experience. “He has a good heart,” Ayer told me, “and that’s why I thought he was so right. Because sometimes you cast this stuff and it’s this action hero vibe. I didn’t want an obvious cop. You don’t cast a guy you feel like is a cop. You cast a guy who feels like a dude, a normal guy, a normal person with depth, and then turn them into that cop. So this character, you can feel the curious mind and the soul and the emotional life behind the demeanor of a law enforcement officer, a ghetto gunfighter.”

And finally, says Gyllenhaal of Ayer, “That motherfucker changed my life. I don’t know how to put it any other way. He took this kid, who had, like, grown up in LA, relatively easy lifestyle, and he threw him into a world that I definitely had preconceived notions about and had my own stigma about, not only with law enforcement but also southeast LA, all that, and he just blew it open. He just showed me a place that he called home, that changed his life, that made him who he is…There was no safety net. And I think that in a majority of life lived with safety nets, someone who pulls that out and says, ‘That’s for real. Are you ready for this?’ That changes your life.”

“End of Watch” will be returning to theaters nationwide on December 7 in a re-expansion. It arrives on DVD/Blu-ray on January 22. Meanwhile, “If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet” resumes performances at the Laura Pels Theater in New York and plays through December 23.

(Check out our sidebar discussion with Gyllenhaal concerning what he’s learned from the many talented directors he’s collaborated with, from Ang Lee to Sam Mendes, David O. Russell to David Fincher.)

One of the striking things you note immediately about Jake Gyllenhaal's portfolio of work is the caliber of filmmakers he's worked with. As a supplement to our feature interview with the star of the off-Broadway production “If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet” and the screen's “End of Watch,” we asked Gyllenhaal if he could recall what he's taken from the experience of working with a handful of these esteemed craftsmen — three of whom feature in the Oscar race this year.

In 2005, Gyllenhaal landed his first and only (to date) Oscar nomination for Ang Lee's “Brokeback Mountain.” The film was based on E. Annie Proulx's “New Yorker” short story about two cowhands who enter into a forbidden homosexual relationship in 1960s Wyoming. Gyllenhaal starred opposite the late Heath Ledger in the film, which tells a story of love as an unstoppable force of nature.

“He's called a master for a reason, because he truly is,” Gyllenhaal says of Lee. “What I learned from his is that silence, particularly between an actor and a director, is the most powerful, the most motivating, sometimes the most manipulative but ultimately the most inspiring choice for a director and actor. Most of the time, if you have an actor who's intuitive, if you give them their space and the opportunity to create something and find something — just like a shift here, a little shift there — massive things can happen. What I learned from Ang was invaluable.”

2007 brought a collaboration with notoriously meticulous filmmaker David Fincher on the dense and lengthy exploration of the trail of terror blazed by the Zodiac killer in the Bay Area of Northern California. “Zodiac” didn't manage much awards traction but is largely considered one of Fincher's finer moments, featuring one of Gyllenhaal's finer performances.

“I learned so much from David,” Gyllenhaal says. “I think I learned more from David than any director I've worked with. What I walked away with from my experience with David is an utter respect for the director and their position and their power. And that as an actor, your job is to service that vision. That is your job. You must do that in every possible way. I also learned that there are two things that work when making a movie with David, or in general: to take the work that you do as serious as life and death when you're doing it, but then at the other end to realize that it's just a movie. And if you can keep that perspective, you'll be all good.”

The very same year as “Brokeback Mountain,” Gyllenhaal was featured in a leading capacity in Sam Mendes's Gulf War dissection, “Jarhead.” Based on the memoir by former Marine Anthony Swofford and drawn from works of existentialism such as Albert Camus's “The Stranger” (which is even featured in the story), the film depicts a soldier at his wits' end, yearning to matter in a war that seems to make no sense, and it clearly gave Gyllenhaal a unique psychological opportunity as an actor.

“If I ever check in with myself, if I ever have any doubt about my work or my skills or my mind as an actor, I always go back to working with Sam, because he was so trusting, so confident in my skill,” Gyllenhaal says. “He empowered me so much as an actor. What is a theme amongst these directors that you mention is the ability to have so much confidence in what they do and the story they're telling that they give the actors space. Sometimes there's nit-picking, and obviously with Fincher's repetition and there's a meticulousness with the way he frames things — and that's all of his movies, and that's why he's brilliant — but there's a space. There's a respect. There's a sense of the major league. You know what I mean with that? I think I learned from Sam — he was the best acting director and coach that I've ever worked with. The things I learned about acting from him I've taken with me everywhere I've gone.”

One film Gyllenhaal starred in which no one has seen, or ever will, it appears (due to legal disputes with the film's financiers, among other things) is David O. Russell's “Nailed,” featuring the actor opposite stars like Jessica Biel, James Marsden and Catherine Keener. It joins films like Tony Kaye's “Black Water Transit” and Jerry Lewis's “The Day the Clown Cried” as efforts lost to the ages, but that doesn't change the fact that Gyllenhaal did the work and took plenty from the experience.

“I learned from David that no matter how brilliant you are as a director, no matter how brilliant the script you're directing is, no matter how cool the cast is, sometimes — it's unbelievable — but no one will ever see it,” Gyllenhaal says. “That's a huge dose of reality in some way. But I also learned that David's brilliance is in abstraction. And there's an aspect of joy that exists in David, and he's always looking for the darkness in the humor, and then always looking for the humor in the darkness. David has a real sense of darkness and a real sense of humor. You can't get to the same place that David can take you. Only David can take you there.”

In 2009, Gyllenhaal was afforded the privilege of working on “Brothers” with Jim Sheridan, who made his mark on the medium via films like “My Left Foot,” “In the Name of the Father” and “In America.” A remake of Susanne Bier's Danish film “Brødre,” “Brothers” tells the story of how the war in Afghanistan tragically affects a young man thought missing for a time who returns home only to see that his wife and brother (played by Natalie Portman and Gyllenhaal respectively) have grown closer together — too close. It was an interesting flip side of the “Jarhead” coin for the actor.

(Gyllenhaal takes a moment to fully consider the role call: “You're baffling me. Like, what a fucking blessing it is to work with all these people.”)

“I loved Jim,” Gyllenhaal says. “Jim was just game for anything. He was constantly discovering, constantly trying to figure it out, never stopping, full of will. He is the epitome of, 'If there's a will, there's a way.' Maybe it's his cultural background. Maybe it's just the type of movies he decided to make, the themes. I remember Jim coming up to me and saying, 'Hey, I have an idea about this scene.' The scene had nothing to do with this action but he's like, 'I think in the middle of this scene you should jump down in the middle of the snow and start making a snow angel.' And I was like, 'That's brilliant.' He's like, 'Try it. Let's do it.' And it was always an adventure. It was like you were adventuring out into this world of the unknown every day with him. I loved that the most.'”

Gyllenhaal worked alongside an on-fire Anne Hathaway in Edward Zwick's 2010 effort “Love and Other Drugs.” Based on a novel by former Viagra salesman Jamie Reidy, the film walks a high wire of tonal shifts and is highly sexualized, unique in Gyllenhaal's career. Both Gyllenhaal and Hathaway received Golden Globe nominations for their performances.

“Ed was — it's funny,” Gyllenhaal begins. “All these guys and different times in your life, you know? Ed was at a critical point in my life as a person and as an actor. To this day, he functions as a sort of big brother, paternal to me. His precision and his — he was so tough with me and at the same time so loving, you know? He just wouldn't let up. Sometimes Ed would whisper things to me like 'go do this' or 'try that' that would break so many rules that I found myself getting nervous. Like he'd give an intention in the scene that was so way off what he had written but it would open us up into a whole other world and it was like an adventure, too. But a little more violent, a little bit more, like, dangerous, you know? I loved that about working with Ed, but I learned so much from him. I mean, that journey with us was a life journey, too.”

Finally, Gyllenhaal's collaboration with David Ayer on “End of Watch,” a pivotal moment not only in his life but in his career.

“That motherfucker changed my life,” Gyllenhaal says bluntly. “I don't know how to put it any other way. He took this kid, who had, like, grown up in LA, relatively easy lifestyle, and he threw him into a world that I definitely had preconceived notions about and had my own stigma about, not only with law enforcement but also southeast LA, all that, and he just blew it open. He just showed me a place that he called home, that changed his life, that made him who he is and it's been the most influential part of the world I've been. I made some of my closest friends I have to this day because of the experience with him. He was like, 'You're going to do this. You've got to walk through fire.' And literally. We were in a controlled burn with the Orange County Fire Department, sitting there in full get-up in a house that was burning. Me, Dave, Michael [Peña], with like smoke down, we're on the ground and it's like a thousand degrees if we put our hand up, you know what I mean? He really threw me into the fire and all the risks were real, and there are people who don't fuck around and there was no movie stuff. There was no safety net. And I think that in a majority of life lived with safety nets, someone who pulls that out and says, 'That's for real. Are you ready for this?' That changes your life.”

And that's just a sampling of a group that also includes talents as varied as Duncan Jones, Mike Newell, John Madden, Roland Emmerich, Richard Kelly and Nicole Holofcener. But it's clear the actor has come a long way from his first work on screen as a child in 1991's “City Slickers,” and he'll be the first to tell you he owes the lessons of that journey to his collaborators.

Be sure to check out our full interview with Gyllenhaal for more on his work in “End of Watch” and “If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet.”

Welcome to Oscar Talk.

In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

Two of the final four hold-outs of the season screened since we last met, “Les Misérables” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” and both were received well. We discuss our thoughts on both and their potential impact on the race.

The Gotham Awards happened earlier in the week and the Independent Spirit Award nominations were announced the very next day. Is the state of indie film really reflected here? We talk about those who were and are in play.

We focus on the Best Documentary Feature category for the first time this year, running through a number of contenders.

And finally, reader questions. We address queries concerning the renaissance of documentary filmmaking and the density of quality films in the Oscar race this year.

Have a listen to the new podcast below. If the file cuts off for you at any time, try the back-up download link at the bottom of this post. You to subscribe to Oscar Talk via iTunes here. And as always, if you have a question you’d like us to address on a future podcast, send it to OscarTalk@HitFix.com.

“Here I Come” courtesy of Stuart Park.

We may still be in the early stages, but one of the clear narratives of this awards season has been in place for some time now: after several straight years of independent productions ruling the roost, studio fare looks set to dominate this year’s Oscars, with “Argo,” “Lincoln,” “Life of Pi” and (we presume) “Les Mis” all riding a wave of mainstream prestige combined with multiplex appeal. Pamela McClintock examines the situation and wonders if, after recent triumphs for limited performers like “The Artist” and “The Hurt Locker,” this could be the year box office once more becomes a Best Picture prerequisite, and “event pics for adults” once more become a recognized Hollywood commodity. [Hollywood Reporter]

On the same theme, Tom Shone terms “Lincoln” the year’s unlikeliest blockbuster, and suspects that will help it in the Oscar race. [The Guardian]

Ross Douthouat, meanwhile, considers the arguments of the film’s more articulate dissenters. [New York Times] 

Bob Verini considers how the screenwriters of “Lincoln, “Anna Karenina,” “Quartet” and “Les Miserables,” all of them accomplished playwrights, marry stage and screen dynamics in their adaptations. [Variety]  

Oscar-nominated costume designer Julie Weiss breaks down the six guiding principles of her craft, and how she applied them in “Hitchcock.” [Wall Street Journal] 

“Les Mis” star Hugh Jackman will receive a tribute at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image on December 11. [Screen]

Sasha Stone rewinds to the summer and states the Best Picture case for “The Dark Knight Rises.” She knows It’s not happening — and personally, I don’t think it should — but Sasha’s not going down without a fight. [Awards Daily]

Charlie Lyne considers the curious video for Jessie J’s Best Original Song hopeful for “Silver Linings Playbook,” then brings it round to the Best Actress race in a way I’m still trying to scrub from my brain. [Ultra Culture]

Next year’s Sundance lineup features a record number of female-directed films, including half the titles in the US Competition strand. [Time]

Finally, happy news for longtime followers of the In Contention family: our former contributor Chad Hartigan’s new film “This is Martin Bonner” will premiere out of competition at Sundance in January. Watch this space. [Martin Bonner]

The Academy has announced that 11 films will advance in the race for Best Live Action Short Film at the 85th annual Academy Awards. A tie in the balloting resulted in 11 films as opposed to the usual 10. The press release notes that 125 films had originally qualified in the category.

Check out the full list of films below.

“A Fábrica (The Factory)”
Aly Muriiba, director (Grafo Audiovisual)

“Asad”
Bryan Buckley, director, and Mino Jarjoura, producer (Hungry Man)

“Buzkashi Boys”
Sam French, director, and Ariel Nasr, producer (Afghan Film Project)

“Curfew”
Shawn Christensen, director (Fuzzy Logic Pictures)

“Death of a Shadow (Dood van een Schaduw)”
Tom Van Avermaet, director, and Ellen De Waele, producer (Serendipity Films)

“Henry”
Yan England, director (Yan England)

“Kiruna-Kigali”
Goran Kapetanovic, director (Hepp Film AB)

“The Night Shift Belongs to the Stars”
Silvia Bizio and Paola Porrini Bisson, producers (Oh! Pen LLC)

“9meter”
Anders Waither, director, and Tigi Magnusson, producer (M & M Productions A/S)

“Salar”
Nicholas Greene, director, and Julie Beck, producer (Nicholas Green)

“when you find me”
Ron Howard, executive producer, and Bryce Dallas Howard, director (Freestyle Picture Company)

The five nominees will be revealed on Thursday, January 10 as part of the annual Oscar nominations announcement.

Last year’s winner in the category was Terry George’s “The Shore.”

What’s that sweet smell of vanilla wafting in from the kitchen? Yep, it’s bakeoff time already. Earlier today, the Academy announced the shortlist of 10 films still in the race for the Best Visual Effects Oscar. On January 3, the visual effects branch members will gather to view 10-minute excerpts from the shortlisted films before voting on the final five nominees.

None of the inclusions is as surprising as one particular omission. For its jaw-dropping re-creation of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, I had thought Juan Antonio Bayona’s “The Impossible” a sure thing for a nomination, let alone a shortlist spot. However, despite nominating “Hereafter” in 2010 for a far less impressive tsunami sequence, the voters felt differently: the Spanish production failed to make a list dominated by expensive Hollywood product.

A trio of superhero blockbusters — “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “The Avengers” and “The Dark Knight Rises” — made the list, though I’d argue that the effects work in all three is solid rather than dazzling. Greg Ellwood, who’s handling the category in our Contenders section, predicted that none of them would ultimately be nominated; that seems less likely now, though four of his predicted nominees (“Cloud Atlas,” “The Hobbit,” “Life of Pi” and “Prometheus”) are still good to go.

The shortlist features seven films Greg had included in his own Top 10 for the category: the outliers, in addition to the aforementioned “Spider-Man,” were “Snow White and the Huntsman” and “Skyfall.” “Huntsman,” I think, is a pretty good call on the branch’s part: the pumped-up fairytale’s wilder visual concepts are a triumph of aesthetic stylization as well as techno-savvy.

I’m less convinced that “Skyfall,” slick as its pyrotechnics are, represents some of the year’s very best work in the field: while the film is looking good for cinematography and sound nominations, I’d be surprised to see it go further in this category. The all-but-forgotten “John Carter,” however, could well pop up in the nominee list: this branch can be forgiving than most of ambitious work in costly flops, which should also steer “Cloud Atlas” to a nod. 

Like most Oscar pundits, however, I sense the path is increasingly clear for “Life of Pi” to secure at least one win on Oscar night, and not just because — bar a surge in momentum for “The Hobbit” — it’s the only Best Picture contender in the bunch. 

Here’s the full shortlist: 

“The Amazing Spider-Man”

“The Avengers”

“Cloud Atlas”

“The Dark Knight Rises”

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”

“John Carter”

“Life of Pi”

“Prometheus”

“Skyfall”

“Snow White and the Huntsman”

Surprised? Disappointed? What do you expect to see nominated, and what do you expect to take the prize? Have your say in the comments.

NEW YORK — “The Dark Knight Rises” director Christopher Nolan stopped by the Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater Wednesday night for one of the Film Society’s “An Evening with…” events. Scott Foundas moderated the discussion, which didn’t focus on Nolan’s full career, but rather, his experience with the character of Batman across a trilogy of films that has changed the landscape of blockbuster filmmaking and, indeed, the awards race itself.

Whether Nolan and his film are in a position in this crowded year to make good at the Oscars in major categories is debatable, but Warner Bros. is doing well by the director with one of the more compelling visual “for your consideration” campaigns of the year and plenty of reminding that Nolan broke the barriers of the ghetto-ized “comic book” film. And that’s just where the discussion began Wednesday, as Nolan recalled what it was that attracted him to the project in the first place.

“I’m not a huge comic book fan,” he admitted. “I’ve never pretended to be. It’s very dangerous to pretend you’re a comic book fan. They spot you pretty early…But what I saw was a very clear, identifiable gap in movie history, if you like.”

That gap, Nolan said, pertained to an opportunity left in the wake of the highly stylized versions of Batman created by filmmaker Tim Burton, which he called “fantastic, but very ‘Tim Burton,’ very idiosyncratic.” Nolan, as he’s said numerous times, yearned for something more engrained in reality. Because despite the fact that his first exposure to the character was through the campy Adam West television series of the 1960s, what he always took from the comics was a sense of the real world.

There was also plenty of discussion about the James Bond franchise, which Nolan has always noted as a particular influence on his work. (And ironic, then, that the clearly “Dark Knight”-influenced “Skyfall” moved into the IMAX venues “The Dark Knight Rises” had camped out in over the summer). One of the first films he ever saw was “The Spy Who Loved Me,” and at a certain point, the Bond films fixed in his head as a great example of scope and scale. “That globe-trotting thing, that idea of trying to get you along for a ride, that was very much a jumping-off point cinematically [for the ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy],” he said.

Foundas brought up the idea of action films in a post-9/11 environment and how that was something that played into the tonal shift of these films as well. “Batman Begins” was released in 2005 and started the thematic construct that would be shared across the trilogy’s villains: terrorism.

“Interestingly, the Bond films, back in the 60s, they were very specifically about Cold War fears,” Nolan said. “They introduced the threat of nuclear terrorism very specifically for the first time in movies and they were closer than people realize, in pop culture terms, to what people feared at the time. And I think that one of the things in taking on an action film set in a great American city post-9/11, if we were going to be honest in terms of our fears and what might threaten this great city, then we were going to come up against terrorism and how that might feature in the universe of Batman. And I think we approached it with a great deal of sincerity.”

Ra’s al Ghul, the Joker and Bane, thereby, serve as Nolan’s central trio of adversaries seeking, above all, to destroy Gotham through terror, chaos and, ultimately, the cruel tease of hope.

Nolan noted that actor Liam Neeson, who starred in “Batman Begins” and briefly in “The Dark Knight Rises” as Ra’s al Ghul, was a godsend. “The great thing about Liam is he can sell anything,” the director said, before recalling one of the film’s earlier scenes between al Ghul (then going by the alias Ducard) and his pupil, Bruce Wayne: “They’re sitting by the fire and there’s this line I wrote. Liam says, ‘Rub your chest. Your arms will take care of themselves.’ And I pictured Boy Scouts all over the world freezing to death because I just made up this thing. I don’t go camping, I have no idea. And he says it and you believe it!”

There was also discussion of Nolan’s interest in the process of things in his work. A film like “The Prestige” is very much caught up in the process of magic, for instance, the procedural nature of things and the physical elements at play. His work on the Batman films is no exception.

“It’s something I enjoy, knowing and seeing a process of things come together,” Nolan said. “I think that’s a great pleasure in movies. But it’s also a way of frankly circumventing a lot of the suspicion the audience might have of something. In the case of ‘Inception,’ when you’re dealing with dreams, you risk alienating. ‘It’s not real, it’s a dream.’ The solution was to allow the audience in on the creation of the dream, so the dream is not fooling the audience, they’re complicit in fooling a third party.

“Similar with Batman, if he just arrived fully-formed into an ordinary world, not a Tim Burton world, with the ears and the cape, it would be laughable. So the way around it was to see the symbolism, why he’s doing that, and try to involve the audience in the mental process of figuring out what’s going to make him frightening to criminals. It’s one of the reasons in ‘Batman Begins’ we never show Batman clearly. We show him being a terrifying wraith.”

Two clips from the film were shown: the montage sequence built around Ducard/Wayne’s glacier sparring and a scene toward the end of the film when Bruce is forced to mimic disorderly drunkenness to get a house full of guests out of harm’s way. The latter in particular, Nolan noted, reflected actor Christian Bale’s considerable talent, juggling psychology and physicality with ease.

As discussion moved to 2008’s “The Dark Knight,” naturally the work of Heath Ledger as the Joker was at the forefront. Nolan had met with Ledger early on when he was putting together “Batman Begins” because he was meeting with most young actors in Hollywood at the time. And Ledger politely explained to the director why he would never be involved in a comic book film. Nevertheless, Nolan presented his goals to the actor, then set out to make the film.

The idea of “The Dark Knight” was to follow through on the realism of “Batman Begins.” In so many words, who would the character of the Joker be, seen through the prism of that film? It wasn’t an obvious answer for Nolan, and that kept it interesting.

Eventually Nolan met with Ledger again, this time for the specific role of the Joker. Ledger had seen Nolan do what he set out to do with “Batman Begins” and the interest was finally there, but they didn’t have a script yet. Nolan’s brother Jonathan was working on it, but they knew what they wanted out of the role. And Ledger seemed to be game.

“He didn’t like to work too much,” Nolan said of the late actor, who won an Oscar for his iconic performance. “He liked to do a character and then stop working and let enough time go by until he was hungry for it again. And that’s what happened when he came in; he was really ready to do something like that.”

Ledger spent months and months obsessing on and thinking about how he would play the character. Nolan sent him some materials, like Anthony Burgess’s novel “A Clockwork Orange” and some work by painter Francis Bacon, just “tangential” things that fed into his vision of the Joker. By the time the script was finished, Ledger was so committed, knowing what a high-wire act it would be, that if he didn’t like the script, it would have been extremely uncomfortable. But happily, it was off to the races, and the real work started to go into figuring out how to make the character tick.

“Like a lot of artists, he would sneak up on something,” Nolan said. “So you couldn’t really sit and go, ‘Okay, you’re going to do the Joker. You’re going to show me what it’s going to be.’ You had to sort of say, ‘Let’s read this scene. Don’t act it, just read.’ And he’d sit with Christian and there would be a line or two where his voice was a little different, throw in a little bit of a laugh. And then we would film hair and makeup tests and try different looks, and in that, he’d start to move, and we’d have these rubber knives and he’d choose what weapon and explore the movement of the character. We weren’t recording sound, so he felt quite able to start talking and showing some of what he was going to do. And in that way he sort of sneaked up on the character.”

The voice, though, worried the director at first, he said, because of its odd shift in pitch. “He had figured out this whole thing that was all based on the Alexander Technique, where if you hit a high note, you’re then able to hit sort of two octaves below afterwards,” Nolan said. “It’s a way of lowering your voice. So you had this character who you’d never quite know which way the pitch was going to go of his voice. Just as in his physical movements — you don’t know how he’s going to move; it’s always a surprise — the actual tone of his voice was always a surprise, too. Sometimes it would go incredibly low and threatening and other times it was light, in a way.”

Clips featured were the Joker’s encounter with Gotham’s mob bosses and the interrogation scene between him and the Caped Crusader later in the film, which was actually the first scene shot after the big IMAX prologue. Of that prologue, Nolan recalled that the final shot of the Joker removing his mask was out of focus, so he had to call Ledger back in to re-shoot it. Ledger was insecure, thinking there was something wrong with this incredibly high-wire performance he had concocted, but Nolan had to go to great lengths to explain it was merely a technical issue. Nevertheless, he stuck with the out of focus shot when he got to the editing room, because it was a better performance.

Finally talk shifted over to “The Dark Knight Rises,” which puts a definitive end on Nolan’s involvement with the franchise and hopes to blaze its own path through the awards season after lighting up the box office and landing its share of critical acclaim.

“We finished ‘The Dark Knight’ with a lie,” Nolan said. “Where does that go? What does that thread into?” That was the question he wanted to answer with his superhero denouement.

Talk was fairly limited in this segment, with no discussion of Anne Hathaway, who took on the iconic role of Catwoman, or much at all of Bane, played by Tom Hardy. But Foundas took the opportunity to deal with the relationship Bruce Wayne has had with his butler and only family, Alfred Pennyworth (played by Michael Caine) throughout the series, which in some way — reflected in one of the clips in which Alfred says to Wayne that it’s time for the truth to “have its day” — speaks to that thematic idea. Nolan commented on how Bale and Caine’s chemistry was perfectly realized every step of the way, making his job all the more easy. But soon enough talk moved right on into the IMAX filming format and Nolan’s oft-stated passion for film over digital.

“”It’s a can of worms,” Nolan said. “I’m a real bore on the subject. I’ll give you the short version, which is I grew up watching museum presentations of IMAX films and OMNIMAX films. It was invented in 1969, so it’s actually a year older than I am. It’s simply the most immersive film format ever created.”

Nolan had a life-long dream to shoot a feature on IMAX and as the multiplexes started to build out the infrastructure to show re-purposed 35mm prints in IMAX, he saw his opening. But it was a gradual process.

“On ‘Batman Begins,’ we did the conversion. I got to know the guys that way,” he recalled. “On ‘The Prestige,’ we shot our visual effects plates using an IMAX camera, so I got to see what the thing was, how big it was, how noisy it was.” With “The Dark Knight,” he experimented further, shooting roughly 30% of the film in IMAX (mostly in action sequences, as dialogue scenes — given the noisy machinery that “sounds like lawnmower” — were not ideal). And finally, about half of “The Dark Knight Rises” was filmed in the format.

He spoke briefly about Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master,” as well, noting that it’s the only other film that seems to have embraced high definition filmmaking on celluloid. “That’s what a movie is supposed to look like,” he said.

And indeed, the final clip shown was of the build-up and execution of strategic bombing in Gotham City, which Foundas said he was embarrassed he couldn’t show in IMAX or even on film. Alas, it still looked tremendous.

When “The Dark Knight” failed to land a Best Picture nomination in 2008, after a precursor circuit that clearly saw it in the thick of the hunt, the Academy shifted the landscape of the category, expanding the number of nominees in the hopes that popular fare would have a better shot at the recognition. It appears unlikely the final installment of Nolan’s epic achievement will make good on the promise of that change, but the ripples are nevertheless felt. And at the end of the day, even with all the talk of grounding comic books in a sense of reality and bringing a dose of sincerity to blockbuster filmmaking, Nolan is very clear about his ultimate goal: “I wanted to create, first and foremost, an entertainment, something people could keep a distance from and enjoy.”

With roughly $2.4 billion in box office receipts and nine Oscar nominations (and likely more to come this season) to its credit, it’s fair to say he’s pole-vaulted over that bar.

“The Dark Knight Rises” hits DVD/Blu-ray Tuesday, December 4.