While I was sleeping last night, Twitter apparently melted down over the announcement that Disney has bought up Lucasfilm, an acquisition about which movie geeks and business brains alike have very strong feelings. I don’t, but when I absorbed the news that a new “Star Wars” film will be coming down the pike in 2015 — sans George Lucas, but still — I was forced to conclude that this hasn’t been much of a week for good news. Anyway, Drew McWeeny is both more informed and more invested than I, and offers his view of the situation, while Drew, Kris and Greg serve up a list of 10 things to look out for in the wake of the deal, from the theme park-ification of Skywalker Ranch to “Star Wars” for preschoolers. What joy. [Motion Captured]

Following the news, Tim Robey and Robbie Collin debate whether or not extending the “Star Wars” film franchise is a good thing. [The Telegraph] 

Jon Weisman looks at the business implications of this season’s earlier Oscar nomination announcement, noting that films now have an extra two weekends to benefit from the post-nom box office bump. [Variety]

With “Cloud Atlas” currently taking flak for low returns on high ambition, Sasha Stone cheers on the risk-takers in this year’s awards race. [Awards Daily]

Why the legion of Hollywood blockbusters to have destroyed New York on screen don’t quite match the less whizzy, more disconcerting threat of Hurricane Sandy. [Vulture]

Steven Zeitchik wonders if the aftermath of the storm will affect the publicity campaign for “Life of Pi.” [LA Times] 

While everyone else hails “The Central Park Five” as one of the year’s standout documentaries, Jeff Wells has some issues with the film. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

Meanwhile, the film took the Audience Award in the documentary section at the Chicago Film Festival, while “Any Day Now” and “Quartet” shared the prize in the narrative division. [MCN]

Park Chan-wook’s “Stoker” unveils a gorgeous new hand-drawn poster, as well as a fresh clip reel. [Empire]

Finally, this may be a few months old, but it’s made for Halloween: Time Out’s extensive poll of the 100 greatest horror films of all time. My own Top 10 is listed somewhere in the mix. [Time Out]

With writer John Gatins and star John Goodman in the air leaving Savannah after film festival tributes there, Paramount had the highlights of its “Flight” crew — Robert Zemeckis and Denzel Washington — back in New York Monday to promote the film, which releases Friday. Zemeckis was set to appear on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” while Washington was all set for “The Late Show with David Letterman.” Then Hurricane Sandy came a’knockin’.

Fallon and Letterman sent their audiences home as a result of the increasingly turbulent weather, opting to drop their monologue on empty theaters and tape the scheduled interviews without a crowd anyway. Given the events of the film and the rash of flight cancellations this week, it was an ironic bit of PR for the film, to say the least.

Washington hit The Ed Sullivan Theater to the sounds of Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” from the CBS Orchestra, and doubly ironic that. With Sandy’s winds whipping outside, Paul Shaffer and his crew were playing a tune inspired by the titular boxer of Denzel Washington’s 1999 Rubin Carter biopic “The Hurricane.”

After dramatically entering the theater in a yellow raincoat and gingerly sitting into his chair, playing up the moment for laughs, Washington seemed typically loose when it came to discussing the film. “Robert Zemeckis is a brilliant director and he’s just at the top of his game,” he said. “I was fortunate to be able to work with him.”

He also went on to praise actor John Goodman’s work. “He steals the picture,” he said. “He lightens the load.” And when asked about preparation, he quipped, “You can go online and just YouTube ‘drunks.’ I tried talking to people who were buzzing, but that didn’t work out so good. They didn’t want to talk about that.”

Over at Rockefeller Plaza, Jimmy Fallon naturally led with “Back to the Future” with Zemeckis. The director was greeted by a modest round of applause from the crew on the set there. “This is very relaxing,” he said of the empty studio. “I like this, because I don’t have to worry about getting any laughs.”

About “Fight” he said, “I’ve never made a movie that’s as harrowing as that one. It’s really about a lot of stuff…When I was reading the screenplay, it had all these big themes in there but they’re very subtle. And as the audience you have to keep adjusting your own moral compass.”

Check out a few clips below.

“Flight” opens nationwide on Friday.

Thought you’d seen “The Artist” win its last award? Think again. The Casting Society of America pretty much partied like it was 2011 at last night’s Artios Awards — the premier honor for casting directors in the industry, given the absence of an Oscar category for the discipline. (That absence is often lamented, but let’s be honest — the average Academy member knows even less about casting than he does about sound editing.)

Anyway, while a scattering of early 2012 releases — “The Hunger Games,” “21 Jump Street,” “Friends With Kids” — had cracked the nominee list, the CSA was all about the awards contenders of 2011 when it came to choosing the winners. “The Help” took the prize in the Big-Budget Feature: Drama category, which is hardly surprising, given the number of ensemble awards (culminating in SAG’s top honor) the film took down last season.

The corresponding Comedy award, meanwhile, went to “Crazy, Stupid, Love.” Is casting a comedy such a different skill from casting a drama that they require separate awards? I wouldn’t have thought so, but I suppose there’s no harm in spreading the wealth. One budgetary rung down, in the Studio or Independent Feature division, “The Artist” took the Comedy award, while “My Week With Marilyn” triumphed in the Drama section. (Unlike the Golden Globes, the CSA clearly wasn’t duped into thinking that lightweight memory piece was actually a comedy.)

“Happy Feet Two” won the animation division, while “Martha Marcy May Marlene” — a film that really seemed to take care with casting even the most incidental faces — took the award for low-budget features. It’s nice to see one of 2011’s best films rewarded for something after being unaccountably passed over for most of last season.

The Career Achievement Award at last night’s ceremony went to Ben Affleck, giving him a chance to warm up his acceptance speech skills for the coming months. Meanwhile, his “Argo” casting director, Lora Kennedy, received the Hoyt Bowers Award for Excellence in Casting. I expect she’ll be making a return trip in the competitive categories next year.

The list of winners in the film categories:

Outstanding Casting in a Big-Budget Feature (Drama): Kerry Barden and Paul Schnee, “The Help” 

Outstanding Casting in a Big-Budget Feature (Comedy): Mindy Marin and Kara Lipson, “Crazy, Stupid, Love”

Outstanding Casting in a Studio or Independent Feature (Drama): Deborah Aquila, Tricia Wood and Nina Gold, “My Week With Marilyn”

Outstanding Casting in a Studio or Independent Feature (Comedy): Heidi Levitt and Michael Sanford, “The Artist” 

Outstanding Casting in a Low-Budget Feature (Drama or Comedy): Susan Shopmaker, “Martha Marcy May Marlene” 

Outstanding Casting in an Animated Feature: Kristy Carlson, “Happy Feet Two” 

NEW YORK – The day after John Gatins graduated Vassar in 1990 he got into a car and drove to California to be an actor. He was already having borderline “Whip-like issues,” he says, referencing Whip Whitaker, the alcoholic airline pilot Denzel Washington plays in “Flight.” Part of the decision was an attempt to leave those problems behind a little bit. So, naturally, he became a bartender.

It’s a typical story. Bartender by night, wannabe actor by day. And while he’d always heard the stories of Hollywood hopefuls never getting their shot, it just wasn’t his story, he says. “I had so many shots,” he tells me over (non-alcoholic) drinks at the Four Seasons hotel. “It was like, very quickly after getting there I had found myself in a lot of great situations. I had great agents trying to help me along and putting me in rooms. I had auditions for good movies. It was pretty immediate, honestly.”

So why didn’t it happen for him? Well, he admits, that’s the best question, because the intimidation was significant. “I think it took me looking back years later to go, ‘Come on. Be honest. You were terrified at the whole thing,'” he says. “It’s like as much as you were drawn to it because you like telling stories, and you like the atmosphere, and you love movies and movie culture, I was scared, man. I really had no idea. Part of me was scared and a little bit self-sabotaging. After a year of proving to myself that I could kind of live without alcohol, then, I picked up again. I spent a few really tough years in my early 20s. A lot of people tried to reach out to me to say, ‘Look. You’ve got to get this together.’ I didn’t hear anybody.”

And so you begin to see how the pieces of a screenplay like “Flight” would come together. Whip Whitaker is all that — self-sabotaging, deaf to assistance, caught in a downward spiral — and more. Why more? Because he’s responsible for the lives of hundreds of people at 30,000 feet. But it’s deeper for Gatins, who quips that he’s “100% Irish.” All four of his grandparents were born and lived in Ireland. His parents met in an Irish ghetto in Washington Heights when they were teenagers. “We were this tight kind of Irish culture,” he says. “It was all around me. I saw what it had done. I was like, ‘I’m never going to mess with that kind of thing.’ Then when I drank for the first time, it was different for me. I just had a different kind of zeal for it.”

And Gatins had an interest in writing, too. It went back to his days at school, loving English class, loving to read (which he learned how to do at a very young age). His father was a police officer who did the New York Times crossword puzzle every day, who studied Shakespeare in college. “He has this very conflicted kind of creation myth of his own, in a way,” Gatins says. “And he had a great Irish tenor singing voice. He honestly was a performer. It was always like, ‘Sing for us, Georgie.'”

When Gatins first started writing “Flight,” he was actually five years sober and he had a much firmer grasp on who he was. He had the clarity of mind, he says, to look back and see that, had he gotten some job on “Beverly Hills 90210” or one of the many pilots he had read for, he would have been ill-equipped.

“I think in sobriety you do nothing but reflect,” he says. “You’re a little bit like, ‘Whoa, I just survived the metaphorical plane crash of my life.’ You feel that way. You feel like, ‘Holy cow, I just got out of that thing.'”

His screenwriting career started to take off a little bit, and in particular, a meeting with MTV Films really ignited it for him when they offered him an unassuming high school football drama called “Varsity Blues.” Says Gatins, “I just pitched them a bunch of crazy stuff. I was like, ‘What if the brother is obsessed with religions, and every day he’s trying on a different religion? He is a Buddhist one day. He is this the next day. He’s Hindu. He thinks he’s Jesus Christ. He puts a cross, and walks around, all that stuff.’ They were like, ‘Wow, that’s crazy, but you know what…?'”

The confidence carried with him into pitch meetings for this and that. Eventually he was afforded the opportunity to write and direct “Dreamer” for DreamWorks, inspired by the true story of a broken-down racehorse trainer who takes ownership of a broken-down racehorse. But while he had a draft of “Flight” in his pocket this whole time, he knew he didn’t have the profile to give it lift. He kept saying “no” to offers, like “Blades of Glory,” because he really wanted to direct something he wrote. So finally, he decided to show the first 40 pages of the script to DreamWorks.

He explored a number of themes in the script, particularly spirituality. Coming from an Irish background, Catholicism was of course very pronounced in his early life. But deeper than that, he got into ideas of Whitaker having a bit of a messiah complex, for instance.

“Most models of recovery suggest finding or at least seeking some sort of belief or understanding or god of your own understanding or a higher power,” he says. “The thing I’ve said a couple times is the idea that there are no atheists foxholes, and there are no atheists at 30,000 feet when a plane is pitching all over the place.”

And intriguingly, the plight of addiction has been compared to a low search for God. He references Carl Jung, and asks, “Why do you think they call it spirits? Where did that come from? You drink it and find God? Well, sometimes. Have you ever eaten the worm? Sometimes. Do you know what I mean? It’s kind of one of those interesting things because, look, ever since man crushed grapes, it’s like people have been altering their state of consciousness by whatever they find. And we have these rituals that all kind of surround it.”

In every character, Gatins tried to find some sort of inroad to those considerations. One in particular — a cancer patient named simply “Gaunt Young Man” in the script — blows into the story with “his own Greek chorus,” as Gatins puts it. And indeed, James Badge Dale’s performance in those brief moments makes for some of the film’s most profound considerations. The scene is really the heart of the film, and it’s one of the things Robert Zemeckis was high on when he came on board to direct. Indeed, it was a role he was very concerned about casting because, as he told Gatins, that scene “is the whole movie.”

“Any development person in the world would have looked at that script and said, ‘Okay, let’s be honest,'” Gatins says, “‘You can’t have a bald guy dying of cancer walk into the middle of your fucking movie in the beginning of the second act and give a seven-page monologue and leave. That’s not going to work for a lot of reasons. Why don’t you just go ahead and cut that now?'”

But it does work and it serves as the whole engine that gets the second act going, largely because of Zemeckis’ suggestion that Gatins go back to the lab and constrict that area of the script (which was originally much longer, with Whitaker spending a lot of time in the hospital recovering). And it was moving for star Denzel Washington, too, who walked up to Gatins with his hand extended after filming the scene and said, “I just want to congratulate you. That scene, standing in there, listening to that, that’s like Shakespeare.”

Getting back to Gatins’s desire to make the film himself, obviously, it just never materialized. And for a while, maybe with a hint of that self-sabotage still lingering, he seemed to avoid making the real moves to get it there. Friends and peers would accuse him of hiding behind the fact that he didn’t think he could get the movie made. “You have this beautiful piece of material that you’ve been dying for, that people love. Go do that,” his wife would say to him when he’d consider other offers. “You’re missing the point,” he would tell her. “Nobody will do this with me. My life is passing me by. It’s like, this movie has disrupted my entire creative life. As much as I love it, I fucking hate it. It’s killing me.”

But it’s a happy ending, of course, because Zemeckis took a shine to the script. He and Washington deferred salary to get it made in the mid-budget range, which was crucial. And while Gatins would certainly have had a different take on the material, he admits after a few moments consideration that it was better off as the movie star vehicle it is, one with a higher sheen of gloss.

“I would have to say so grudgingly, because I have an ego like everybody else,” he says. “The truth is, there were things that Bob did that I couldn’t do. Watching him until five in the morning shoot like these tiny, excruciating pieces of that cockpit, that I just don’t know. [Zemeckis is a pilot himself.] I wouldn’t have had the handle to do it. The other thing, too, is we would have to reframe it in the context of how was I making that movie, because they would say to me, ‘Look, you’re making it with Josh Brolin for $10 million.’ What does that look like? That’s a different movie.

“Creatively, Bob could not have been a more gracious and amazing kind of collaborator. The fact that he invited me in at all is like testament to him and his comfort with who he is. He doesn’t have anything to prove to me, surely, or to anybody else for that matter. He really was drawn to do the material because he thought this is interesting. ‘I haven’t seen this movie before. I want to make it. I want to see what happens.'”

“Flight” opens nationwide on Friday.

For a medium we’re told nobody cares about, people sure are devoting a lot of column inches to the end of cinema. Michael Cieply joins the long line of writers sounding the artform’s death knell, claiming that Hollywood has lost its grip on the public imagination to TV. He points out that even the film of the moment, “Argo,” has still attracted fewer viewers over its three-week run than a single episode of “Glee,” while the number of specialist films released in US market has dropped by 55% in the last decade. Furthermore, Cieply quotes sources suggesting the Oscars are complicit in this disconnect, citing the recent coronation of the backward-looking “The King’s Speech” (to which audiences flocked, mind you) as an example. I think people might be getting a bit dramatic. [New York Times]

I missed this last week, but Tony-winning production designer Derek McLane will be taking set design duties on the upcoming Academy Awards telecast. [Oscars]

An early glimpse at the costume designs for “Les Miserables,” which look much as you’d expect them to. [Awards Daily]

Reigning Best Supporting Actor winner Christopher Plummer’s bid for a follow-up nomination, the long-idling one man show “Barrymore,” will finally hit screens in November. [The Race]

Zachary Laws wonders if, after two straight years of relatively little-known directors ruling the roost, Best Director will go to an overdue auteur this time round. (No, he doesn’t mean Ben Affleck.) [Gold Derby]

With dress-up on his mind, Christopher Campbell wonders why some of the most Halloween-friendly costume and makeup designs in recent cinema haven’t been recognized by the Academy. [Film School Rejects]

One for the music geeks: Comparing the ‘Cloud Atlas Sextet’ as composed in the film to the music described on the page. [Slate]

Why it’s entirely okay if Joaquin Phoenix doesn’t want to play the Hollywood game — just as long as he doesn’t stop acting. [The Envelope] 

Why “Skyfall” marks the end of misogyny in the Bond franchise. I’m not sure I’d go that far. [The Guardian]

Do adults want a sequel to “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel?” Well, this one doesn’t, but I suspect that won’t stop them. [Thompson on Hollywood]

While official Academy screenings are already under way for the long roll-call of foreign-language Oscar submissions, I’ve slowly been wading my own way through the pile. Having now seen in the region of 25 contenders, around two-thirds of the list remains – I’ll never get to them all, but I’m still feeling more well-briefed than usual. Meanwhile, the more I see, the more impressed I am by the standard of this year’s competition; the threat of “The Intouchables” notwithstanding, Academy voters will really have to go out of their way to make a dud choice. 

Today’s double-shot of contenders for discussion haven’t been been paired for any reason beyond the fact that I saw them back-to-back at the London Film Festival last weekend. Certainly, at first glance, Mexico’s serenely threatening high-school drama “After Lucia” and The Netherlands’ gentle slip of a family film “Kauwboy” don’t have much more than that in common. On closer inspection, however, some clear dramatic and thematic links belie the gaping tonal and formal differences between them.

Both films study the emotional turmoil endured by children bereft of maternal influence, and the familial damage wrought by communication barriers. In terms of the negotiation and resolution (or otherwise) of such crisis, however, you couldn’t ask for two more opposed case studies. 

The one likelier to trouble Academy voters – in all senses of the verb – is “After Lucia,” a film I’ve held off writing about for a week because, as excitingly conceived, psychologically riling and astonishingly well-made as it is, I honestly can’t say I know quite how I feel about it. 

Michel Franco’s almost cruelly assured sophomore feature won the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes (beating fellow Oscar contenders “Our Children” and “Children of Sarajevo,” not to mention “Beasts of the Southern Wild”) and it’s not hard to see why: Franco tackles the topical subject of teen bullying with a violent focal discipline and austere-brute candor that calls to mind several more seasoned provocateurs. “It’s Michael Haneke does ‘Mean Girls!’” is how a luckless producer could try pitching a US remake that will never, ever happen. 

“After Lucia” has accrued a measure of positive the-less-you-know notoriety on the festival circuit – though for at least its first half, viewers aware of its reputation may wonder if there’s a code they’re failing to crack. Even as events start spiraling into adolescent unpleasantness, there’s an unfussed normalcy to Franco’s setup that recalls a particularly high-end Afterschool Special: smart, pretty teenager Alejandra (strong newcomer Tessa Ia, whose impassivity becomes more striking as the narrative unfolds) is both new at school and new in town, having recently moved to Mexico City with her chef dad Roberto (Hernan Mendoza) following the accidental death of her mom (the “Lucia” of the title). 

She’s quick to make friends, though something seems untraceably malign about her new pals’ overtures from the get-go. When a boozy house party results in a hook-up with one of the more affable boys in her circle, casually documented on a sex tape that swiftly goes classroom-viral, the fallout suggests Alejandra alone is prey to a curiously calculated experiment in imposed social demotion. 

As the victimization escalates to levels so vicious as to take us firmly out of teen-movie territory, the film reveals itself not as a contemporary issue-based tract, but an extreme allegory for basest human behavior – a beer-soused “Lord of the Flies” in tight denim, if you will. By the time Franco executes his galvanizing, all-or-nothing denouement – an inevitably polarizing but impressively followed-through narrative gambit that makes and breaks the film in one fell swoop – it’s not only the teenagers’ behavior that pushes bounds of acceptability, or even rationality. 

At both its most earnest and most outrageous, this could easily be the stuff of flushed, didactic melodrama, so it’s to Franco’s considerable credit that his chosen mode of detached, unflinching observation doesn’t waver for a second. Indeed, the film is coolly matter-of-fact enough about the bald inhumanity playing out on screen that we’re almost lulled into ignoring the credibility canyons slicing through this touchy material – beginning, but certainly not ending, with the previously self-possessed, articulate Alejandra’s refusal to tell a soul when the abuse meted out to her reaches criminal proportions. 

Nobody’s motivations – not her own, not her tormentors’, not her father’s – add up here, which is quite possibly the way Franco wants it in his untied morality tale. Down to the final frame, the final splash of its eerily diegetic soundtrack, the film is too exactingly composed to suggest Franco’s hasn’t thought through the question of common plausibility: there’s something to be said for explaining senselessness with senselessness, but this genuinely rattling film flirts with speciousness in the process. 

After staggering out of “After Lucia,” I rather wished the unvarnished, unsentimental but decidedly more comforting “Kauwboy” (yes, it’s pronounced “cowboy”) had been the second part of the double feature rather than the first. Then again, its modest (which is not to say careless) technical and structural qualities wouldn’t have been best flattered by that sequencing, so perhaps it’s for the best. On its own terms, however, this 80-minute miniature is a bracing first feature for documentary maker Boudewijn Koole that stands as more of an anomaly than it should be: a low-concept character study as children’s film. 

The film’s very premise seems an overt nod to Ken Loach’s landmark childhood portrait “Kes”: a lonely boy finds and nurtures a young bird, their mutual dependence and devotion filling in for absent sources of affection while prying open larger social skills. The comparisons should end there: though also rooted in realism, Koole’s film is a softer piece, less profoundly affecting but possessed of its own valid truths and unobtrusive compassion. 

10 year-old Jojo (the appealing but not oppressively cute Rick Lens) lives in a grassy, anonymous wedge of suburban Holland with his brusque car-mechanic dad (Loek Peters); he maintains his adoring mother, a country singer-songwriter, is on tour in the US and regularly speaks to her on the phone, though you needn’t be much older than Jojo to realize her “tour” has sent her skywards. With his father’s refusal to talk about her exacerbating the boy’s sense of isolation, Jojo secretly adopts an abandoned baby jackdaw (“kauw” in Dutch) to practise some mothering of his own. 

There are no grand revelations here, and Koole doesn’t feign to offer us any; Jojo’s growing sense of security, and his abandonment of denial as an emotional crutch, is mapped out in incremental steps that mirror the bird’s own growth and, of course, eventual discovery of its wings. You can sneer at the metaphor or you can admire the simple, practical manner in which the director embraces it; his documentarist’s eye is in evidence throughout, not least in his guidance of Lens’s pleasingly artless performance. Whether it’s too small for the Academy or not remains to be seen – a bigger win would be for this lovely morsel to bust out of the festival circuit and reach the younger viewers who’d learn the most from it.

Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, Notre Dame actually GOOD again — oh the horror! The weekend produced its fair share of nightmares (well, the end of baseball season was a godsend) and Halloween isn’t even here yet. But Oscar season feels like it’s at a bit of a standstill, settled into a holding pattern. I hesitate to call it the eye of the storm, but after that first wave of fall festival entries, and with plenty still ahead, it kind of feels like that. So let’s just do a bit of tidying to get an idea of where we are.

“Argo” continues to be a box office hit and the Best Picture frontrunner while “Cloud Atlas” has faltered. AFI Fest is going to bring “Hitchcock” into the fold at the end of the week with “Lincoln” closing it out a week later. “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Les Misérables,” “Django Unchained,” “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” and “Promised Land” (though it’s been seen) are all on deck for press reveals next month.

Sam Mendes’ “Skyfall” has continued to screen, drawing support along the way. And indeed, it’s a lot of fun and a film that could easily appeal to the Academy on the level of “The Bourne Ultimatum,” if not more. “Flight” is opening at the end of the week, at which point we’ll see what the overall critical assessment will be. The focus is more on opening the film than awards buzz at the moment, and indeed, it needs to make an impact if it’s going to register in the season.

Similarly, films like “Life of Pi” and “Silver Linings Playbook” have been seen and chewed on, but now they have to open. Late-November will bring those releases and we’ll see how the conversation shifts or doesn’t when they make it to the masses.

After already having bowed in the UK, “Anna Karenina” is priming the pump for domestic release. The general feeling has been that a lack of awards faith in that and “Moonrise Kingdom” helped grease the rails for “Promised Land” to find a place in the season, but I wouldn’t lose my faith in Joe Wright’s period piece and Wes Anderson’s best film since “Rushmore.” They’re exceptional, unique and offer plenty to work with.

“The Master” story is becoming, more and more, its box office miss more than its achievement as a work of art, which is always unfortunate. The critics groups at the end of the year will surely do their part to drag it back into the conversation, though they could just as easily be on to new favorites by then as well. The film is in a precarious position, particularly with the Weinsteins’ crowd-pleaser (and easier awards play) “Silver Linings Playbook” coming in right behind it.

In the DVD realm, films like “Moonrise Kingdom” and “Magic Mike” have hit shelves in recent weeks, while “The Dark Knight Rises,” “Brave,” “Ted” (from Oscar emcee Seth MacFarlane), “Hope Springs” and “ParaNorman” will land over the next month. Getting a home video release in the midst of Oscar season can be a big boost for films that have been losing a foothold, and more than a few of those qualify.

The news items of late haven’t really moved the needle. Joaquin Phoenix’s rebuffing of the circuit was fun for some pundits to kick around for 48 hours, but it didn’t amount to anything most don’t already agree with (even if secretly) anyway. The Hollywood Film Awards came and were mocked by the feted. The Gotham nominations raised questions for all of a day. It all feels like prelude.

So with November right around the corner, here’s to the next wave. It’s not that I’m bored with the early circuit or anything. There have been a number of films I’ve cherished, conversations I’ve found enlightening, etc. But I’m eager to see how the rest will shape things. I’m looking forward to seeing how “Amour” lands after riding the festival circuit for so long. I’m curious to find out if Middle Earth still resonates. I’m excited for the season to lay its full hand on the table. And we’re just not there yet.

To all my fellow east coasters, stay dry.

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.

How many Oscar nominees can you fit into one cast? Okay, Daniel Craig, you’ll get there, but in addition to the “Skyfall” actor, director George Clooney has filled out the cast of his World War II drama “The Monuments Men” with Cate Blanchett (“The Aviator”), Bill Murray (“Lost in Translation”) and Jean Dujardin (“The Artist”), in addition to John Goodman, Hugh Bonneville and Bob Balaban.

That’s a lot of fire power. But Clooney can wrangle that kind of talent easily. He’s one of Hollywood’s golden boys, primed to receive an Oscar nomination in his sixth category for producing “Argo” this year. Deadline reports that the film, based on a true story and written by Clooney and partner Grant Heslov, tells of a crew of art historians and museum curators who scrambled to recover renown works of art stolen by the Nazi regime, destined to be destroyed.

“The Monuments Men were a group of men and women from thirteen nations, most of whom volunteered, who had expertise as museum directors, curators, art scholars and educators, artists, architects, and archivists,” the Monuments Men Foundation website reads. “The Monuments Men job description was simple: to save as much of the culture of Europe as they could during combat.”

The Deadline story doesn’t indicate whether it’s an original screenplay or based on Robert M. Edsel’s book of the same name. It does, however, note that the “Argo” crew is tapped for the film, though it only mentions Alexandre Desplat (who scored Clooney’s “The Ides of March”) by name. So I’m only assuming that means that DP Rodrigo Prieto and film editor William Goldenberg, among others, are on board.

Filming is set to begin on March 1 in Europe. Will we be talking about it in another year or two as an awards player? Well, one thing’s for sure. “Oscar nominee…” will be all over the trailer’s credits.

Commercial projections for “Skyfall” suggested it would be the highest-grossing Bond movie ever, and global box office figures this weekend suggest that will be the case. In the UK, the film took in over $32m this weekend — the biggest opening haul of 2012, and a record for a non-3D feature. Indeed, it sits behind only the final “Harry Potter” instalment in the all-time rankings. Internationally, meanwhile, it opened at #1 in 24 other territories, raking in $77.7m overall. Given much robust figures, it’ll be interesting to see if it outperforms estimates when it opens Stateside, where it’s expected to gross a little over one-third of US champ “The Avengers”‘ total.  [Deadline]

Back in the US, where “Skyfall” is still lying in wait, “Argo” finally topped the box office in its third weekend, pushing its total past $60m. [Box Office Mojo]

“Argo” casting director Lora Kennedy, due to be honored alongside director Ben Affleck at tonight’s Casting Society of America Awards, talks about finding the right actors for the Best Picture frontrunner. [THR]

Hey, more accolades for “Argo” — the film’s location manager was a winner at the California On-Location Awards, alongside those for “Hitchcock,” “The Dark Knight Rises” and Terrence Malick’s upcoming “Knight of Cups.” [Variety]

Robert Zemeckis talks to Dave Kehr about returning to live-action filmmaking with “Flight,” though he doesn’t see it as much of a departure from his recent work. [New York Times]

Charlie Lyne on Helen Mirren’s potential Oscar clip for “Hitchcock” and the dramatic stakes of mortgaging houses. [Ultraculture]

The great Melissa Leo talks “Francine,” saying no to plastic surgery, and how Bill Murray inadvertently set her on the right path in 1984. [Los Angeles Times]

Jeff Wells thinks a prickly Guardian interview is indicative of my John Goodman’s Oscar campaign may struggle this season — though I’m not sure why Jeff thought a nomination was such a certainty anyway. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

Following the success of “Skyfall,” John Logan will write the next two Bond movies. Nice to see the man’s getting some work. [Empire]

The Wachowskis are back this weekend with “Cloud Atlas.” The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival to mixed reviews, though HitFix’s Drew McWeeny is certainly one of the devoted. My take is that, as I’ve noted a few times, the underlying thematic tissue didn’t hold so well for me but the individual stories were involving and, above all else, the craft on display is immaculate. So in many ways, I think it’s a fascinating miss, but a movie I’d no doubt see again — if I can carve out the time (it’s LONG). In any case, you’ll get a look for yourself this weekend, so when you do, head on back here with your thoughts. And feel free to rate the film via the tool above.

Tom Hanks has been out and about plenty this week promoting today’s release of “Cloud Atlas.” I caught him on Letterman earlier this week, wonderful as ever, the perfect salesman. And yesterday, he showed up at “The Colbert Report” to engage in a little Halloween sketch built around that salesmanship.

Hanks takes on six roles in the film and really is great in all of them. If the ambition of the project were to stretch anywhere in the major categories, I would say he would be someone to watch. It’s not going to be the easiest movie for Academy members, but when Hanks is on screen, he’s bound to provide a little added comfort.

“Argo” also gets a shout-out in the sketch, though I won’t ruin the joke for you here. Which reminds, as Anne and I discussed in the podcast this morning, that Ben Affleck’s film is — and, in my opinion, has been — firmly in the frontrunner position. It’s only gaining traction as it holds spectacularly at the box office and it doesn’t really feel like it’s peaking too early because it’s not like it’s alone in the conversation. “Lincoln” and “Silver Linings Playbook” are right there, the latter grabbing most of its buzz in Toronto where “Argo” also “officially” premiered.

Anyway, check out the Colbert Report segment below (with a hat tip to Awards Daily). It’s a good one.

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.

“Cloud Atlas” is opening this weekend so we take the opportunity to revisit the film.

The International Documentary Association (IDA) announced its list of nominees to kick off the documentary race. We discuss the nods and the category so far.

Speaking of categories, it’s time to dissect another, this time the original and adapted screenplay fields.

And finally, reader questions. We address queries regarding the potential for overkill in Oscar marketing and perceptions of screenwriting vis a vis movie musicals.

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.

As always, if you have a question you’d like us to address on a future podcast, send it to OscarTalk@HitFix.com.

I accidentally neglected to mention the Hollywood Film Awards in yesterday’s roundup. There may be much skepticism in the blogosphere as to their credibility, but like it or not, they are an awards show at the start of the season — and we can expect to see a lot more of certain honorees in the months to come. Of course, the winners had all been announced beforehand: “Silver Linings Playbook” was a favorite of theirs, taking directing honors for David O. Russell, while Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro were named actor and supporting actor of the year, respectively. Others winners included Marion Cotillard, Amy Adams and Quvenzhané Wallis — but by the time “Django Unchained” wins for its screenplay, when no one’s yet had a chance to see how the script works on film, you get why they’re not taken too seriously. As usual, Scott Feinberg is the go-to man on this subject. [The Race]   

With Jessica Chastain now in the lead race for “Zero Dark Thirty,” those in the know say she could be a real threat. [Gold Derby]

Nathaniel Rogers looks at the Oscar talk, such as it is, for Anne Hathaway in “The Dark Knight Rises,” and why she still doesn’t compare to Michelle Pfeiffer. [The Film Experience]

Steve Pond speaks to one of the real-life Iran hostages from the events depicted in “Argo,” who tells him: Yes, there are inaccuracies in the film, and no, it doesn’t matter. [The Odds]

Jon Weisman on an Oscar season in which there seem to be more unseen players than usual at this point. [The Vote]

The William Faulkner estate files a lawsuit against Sony Pictures Classics for using a line from “Requiem for a Nun” without permission. The past certainly is not dead. [New York Times]

R. Kurt Osenlund wonders if this will be the year the Academy warms to Wes Anderson in the top races, and concludes that they probably won’t. [The House Next Door]

The Media Action Network for Asian-Americans takes issue with “Cloud Atlas” making up white actors as Asian, though they acknowledge the film’s artistic ambition in doing so. How civil. [The Guardian]

Speaking of “Cloud Atlas,” with the film likely to be a bit of a leap for Tom Hanks fans, is he still the box office force he once was? [Vulture]

With the November 1 eligibility due date looming around the corner, it’s time to really dig in on the Best Animated Feature Film category. Currently there are 16 titles assumed eligible for the award, which has been dished out at the annual Oscars for 11 years now. And that 12-year history has shown an interesting progression for the category.

The rise of GKIDS in the indie sector has shaken this race up a bit as of late, seemingly giving animators the artistic alternatives that they don’t always get out of the commercial lot. The dirty little secret about the animated feature category is that it was, long before the Best Picture category’s facelift, the first real step the Academy made toward allowing space for commercial films and therefore providing general audiences a better sense of accessibility to the annual Oscarcast.

But over time the category has naturally evolved, all the way up until just last year, when the studios were up against it as Pixar was shut out after winning the award four years in a row, two indie titles faced off against two traditional animation house films (from the same studio, in fact) and the win went to an in-house gem that came from a non-animator filmmaker who made his name in live action.

Also, the rules were altered last year. Previously, a year that brought at least 16 eligible contenders would yield a full slate of five nominees. In a year with 13 to 15 contenders, there would be four, and in a year with 8 to 12, there would be two or three. Any year with less than eight contenders will result in the category being skipped, but that’s not likely to ever happen.

So yes, the category is ever in flux. And this year, it has a diverse and quality crop to show for itself. If you actually sit down and look at each of the films in the hunt — which is just what I’ve done over the last couple of weeks — it becomes fairly obvious that this is in no way a thin year and that there is some stiff, bottlenecking competition waiting to fill out the category.

But getting back to the diversity, traditional animation is well-represented amid the usual CG flurry in 2012, as is stop-motion. A pair of this year’s contenders even make brief use of live action footage, while another uses traditional two-dimensional animated characters placed into computer-generated 3D environments. Claymation even makes an appearance in one instance.

Animation houses in the fold include Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Sony, Aardman, Blue Sky, Laika, Studio Ghibli and Illumination. And, of course, of the 16 entries, 14 of them were (or will be) available theatrically in 3D, proving animation is still very much a driver of Hollywood’s addiction to those inflated ticket prices.

What will the nominees be? Let’s investigate. Click through the gallery below to get the lowdown on each of the year’s animated feature film contenders. Should anything pop up on the official list of qualifiers that we didn’t see coming, we’ll be sure to take note of that. For now, though, it seems like these 17 are the field. And as always, keep track of the race all season long via the Best Animate Feature Film Contenders Page.

We all know what a pot sounds like when it comes crashing to the kitchen floor. But what about a Hulk smashing things? Or a Lizard man hissing? Or a bear screeching? Or a…Bane…making a tumbler fall several stories?

Such sounds can rarely be properly captured while filming, leaving our supervising sound editors with the responsibility of creating them. They are awarded at the Oscars for their accomplishments in the category of Best Sound Editing.

Like Best Sound Mixing, this category”s nominees are picked by the sound branch, though winners are chosen by the Academy as a whole. The category tends to favor action films and war films. This is unsurprising given the need to create distinctive aural accoutrement in such movies. Animated films, particularly those of Pixar, also do exceptionally well given that there is usually is no “filming” in the traditional sense where sounds would be captured.

This was the sole category, apart from Best Supporting Actor, that “The Dark Knight” managed to win four years ago. Richard King”s second Oscar was the sole blemish for “Slumdog Millionaire” on a night where it won every other category in which it was nominated. While “The Dark Knight Rises” may not inspire the passion of “The Dark Knight” or “Inception” (for which King also won), I still expect him to return to the conversation this year.

Marvel’s “The Avengers” was another summer superhero blockbuster that showcased sound effects to the nth degree. Audiences ate it up and then some (to the tune of over $600 million domestically). If Frank Eulner, previously nominated for “Iron Man,” doesn”t return, I”d be surprised.

Those strike me as the two most likely of the major summer titles to get nominated here. It would still be premature, however, to rule out the work “The Amazing Spider-Man” (done by Shannon Mills and Oscar nominee Addison Teague) given that the franchise has seen luck here in the past. Ditto the alien- and tech-based sounds of “Prometheus” (especially as Mark Stoeckinger and Victor Ray Ennis have four nominations between them, three of which were sole nominations for their films.

“Brave” comes in a long line of Pixar films that have had great success in this category. While “Cars 2,” the studio”s first major miss, received a shut-out from the Academy last year, could this adventure title filled with bows, arrows and bears return the studio to the fold? It”s certainly possible. Even so, I can”t help but wonder if, unlike most Pixar titles, this film is liked more than loved. That could spell trouble in categories outside of Best Animated Feature Film. Gwendolyn Yates Whittle does have two nominations, however.

“The Hunger Games” was a critical and financial success and I cannot shake the feeling it will be rewarded with an Oscar nomination somewhere. The sound effects were not that memorable but I still thought I”d mention it here. Lon Bender is a past winner for “Braveheart” and has scored somewhat surprising nominations for “Blood Diamond” and “Drive.”

On the note of “Drive,” “Looper” is the sort of high concept, September-released action film to which the Academy is unlikely to show much love. See what happened to “Drive” last year. But “Drive” did score a nod here, as noted, so perhaps Jeremy Piersen shouldn”t lose hope for his work on Rian Johnson”s latest effort.

What of films still to be released?

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” is Peter Jackson”s return to Middle Earth. Strangely, two of the three original “Lord of the Rings” films were not nominated in this category (though the one that was, “The Two Towers,” won the Oscar). While this gives me pause, it is still obviously a major contender.

Quentin Tarantino”s last crazy war effort, “Inglourious Basterds,” managed to get nominated in both sound categories. “Django Unchained,” being a western of sorts, will doubtless feature memorable sound effects as well. A good gun fight always energizes this branch. Will it be enough to score a nomination? Very possibly – we’ll have to see how the reception to the film is, and how much opportunity five-time nominee Wylie Stateman has to showcase his talents.

Ang Lee”s “Life of Pi,” which premiered at the New York Film Festival to great acclaim, will also require exceptional sound effects to tell its fantastical story. After a long career, Philip Stockton won this category on his first nomination last year for “Hugo.” If this film is a hit with AMPAS, and I suspect it will be, I”d say he could get a repeat nomination.

Another tearjerker with dangerous water at the center will be “The Impossible.” Oriol Tarragó”s career to date has been almost entirely in Spanish movies. While I suspect he”ll be lost among bigger features and more established Hollywood staples, I thought I”d mention him anyways. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Boy should you ever. The sound work in “The Impossible” is some of the most stunning of the year, in my opinion.)

“Cloud Atlas” involves a plethora of sounds, being in multiple time periods and settings, and with significant action involved. The Wachowskis” “The Matrix” did, after all, win this award. So perhaps Frank Kruse will earn his first nomination this year.

A film whose AMPAS potential I have trouble analyzing is “Zero Dark Thirty.” This operational drama is squarely within Kathryn Bigelow”s comfort zone. It may provide opportunity for sound work similar to that which won Oscars for “The Hurt Locker” in both sound categories. Paul N.J. Ottosson has returned to work with Bigelow again, but her filmography wasn”t really the stuff Oscar was made of pre-“Hurt Locker.” So what sort of consistency will her recent success produce? Plus, I also simply have reservations about this project on the whole.

Another contender could have been a war film but it’s not a war film at all: Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln.” Spielberg”s films have eight nominations in this category, five of which have won. “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was also given a special award when the category was not annually awarded. So if this is a nominations sweeper, watch out. Three-time winner Richard Hymns is once again collaborating with the director.

Robert Zemeckis”s “Back to the Future” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” have both won this category. “Forrest Gump” and “The Polar Express” also received nominations. “Flight” looks likely to be a vehicle to return Denzel Washington to the Oscar fold. A film featuring a plane crash as its centerpiece will, by necessity, require great sound work. So Dennis Leonard could well repeat his nomination for “The Polar Express.”

I”ll end with a film I may be giving too much Oscar consideration to: Sam Mendes”s “Skyfall.” James Bond films seldom do well with Oscar. But given the cast and crew for this one, and the reception so far, I feel, it could – just could – prove to be an exception. Sound effects are central to any Bond movie, and there is no reason to believe that this will prove an exception. After all, Karen Baker and Per Hallberg won here for “The Bourne Ultimatum,” another sequel whose predecessors received no Oscar love. And like that title, this film seems poised for exceptional reviews.

That strikes me as a fairly long and comprehensive list of the potential nominees. But given how poorly I did in predicting this category last year, I felt it necessary. Who do you see rising to the top?

As our recent top 10 list of her best work made clear, we love Nicole Kidman. So it’s no surprise that my pick of yesterday’s internet action is this fascinating piece the Oscar-winning actress wrote for The Hollywood Reporter, reflecting on the making “Eyes Wide Shut” with Stanley Kubrick. In it, she touches on her personal discovery of Kubrick’s work, her affectionate, admiring relationship with a director that she refused to glorify and her closeness to Tom Cruise during filming — despite media suspicions that the film wrecked their marriage. She writes: “Stanley wanted to use our marriage as a supposed reality… He used the movie as provocation, pretending it was our sex life — which we weren’t oblivious to, but obviously it wasn’t us.” Essential reading: more of this kind of thing, please. [THR] 

A second interesting dose of personal reflection comes from “Cloud Atlas” co-director Lana Wachowski, who spoke candidly and movingly about her experience with a transgenderism at an award presentation last weekend. [Slate]  

Speaking of the Wachowski’s, Christopher Borrelli takes a tour of their secluded directors’ workship in the Windy City. [Chicago Tribune]

With the film now having received Oprah’s endorsement, indie distributor Participant Media are planning an Oscar campaign for the acclaimed “Middle of Nowhere,” from African-American writer-director Ava DuVernay. [The Envelope]

Meanwhile, Lionsgate has their eye on Golden Globe attention for their Al Pacino-Christopher Walken comedy “Stand Up Guys,” which will be getting a qualifying release in December. [The Playlist]

Jon Weisman compares “Silver Linings Playbook” to “Smashed,” and concludes that the latter is getting shortchanged in the Oscar race. [The Vote]

Robbie Collin sits down with “The Master” star Philip Seymour Hoffman for a substantial interview. [The Telegraph]

Sasha Stone goes deep on the Best Actress race — and is predicting a nomination for Anne Hathaway in “The Dark Knight Rises.” Let’s just say I don’t quite see it. [Awards Daily]

Robert De Niro is as willing as anyone to admit he hasn’t really been on award-winning for a long time prior to “Silver Linings Playbook.” [AV Club]

Looking ahead to 2013, Alfonso Cuaron’s eagerly awaited, agonisingly delayed sci-fi “Gravity” has been rated PG-13 by the MPAA — which means it’s finally finished. [Cinema Blend]

“It’s really… commercial,” a friend remarked to me as we left yesterday’s screening of “Silver Linings Playbook,” a press-and-BAFTA mixer that was as warmly received as its buoyant Toronto debut had promised it would be. He said it with a hint of distaste, and he’s not the only one resistant to its unapologetically Audience Award-y charms — there are those who believe that a film dealing with tricky variations of mental illness and familial damage should perhaps make itself harder to like. Or just a little harder, period.

For my part, I joined the majority faction of those beguiled by the film. I delighted in the same free-jazz trick David O. Russell pulled so deftly with “The Fighter” two years ago: injecting tried-and-true narrative formula with agitated sociable energy, leaving the whole scrappier and more abrasive than most Hollywood journeymen would given the same script. It’s a crowdpleaser that’s at once comforting and unfamiliar as it hits its romantic comedy marks, giving its two superb leads plenty of space to see each other as emotional chaos slowly finds its way to order.

Russell’s volatile personal reputation may linger in the memories of some, but from where I’m standing, he’s fast growing into one of the most humanly engaged filmmakers in US film today. If this is commercial, I’m buying — and The Weinstein Company has every reason to expect many others will.

The grown-up reform of the multiplex looks to be one of the dominant narratives of this year’s awards season. Perhaps even more glowingly greeted at Toronto, Audience Award voting notwithstanding, was Ben Affleck’s propulsive, emotionally charged thriller “Argo” – a rock-solid piece of conscientious entertainment that isn’t coy about its debt to such smart American craftsmen of decades past as Sidney Lumet and Alan J. Pakula.

As a true-blue Warner Bros. production, many of the raves have noted the relative scarcity of such intelligent, character-driven accessibility in latter-day studio product. As, indeed, have the film’s detractors, many of whom take the line that critics wouldn’t have thought the film nearly so remarkable in US cinema’s 1970s boon. This can be argued, rather unproductively, back and forth, but everyone’s reaching the same “They don’t make ’em like this anymore” conclusion.

If Affleck has been designated as this year’s poster boy for the virtues of adult-oriented studio cinema, he and his film cut a more modest figure than, say, Christopher Nolan. The British neo-Spielberg had this barbed position bestowed on him in the 2008 and 2010 races, when “The Dark Knight” and “Inception” were hailed as sainted proof that studio blockbusters could have something going on upstairs – though the Academy only seemed semi-convinced when the nominations were announced.

The blogosphere attempted to revive that discussion back in the summer for “The Dark Knight Rises” – having pretty much surrendered the idea of the vastly popular but wholly synthetic “The Avengers” being taken seriously by voters. Whether it was because the Batman sequel failed to match the commercial, critical or cultural clout of its predecessor, the conversation didn’t exactly take hold. Champions of high-concept franchise cinema have since taken to touting the Oscar potential of “Skyfall” – a stronger horse for Best Picture recognition, but not one any pundits are willing to bet on just yet.

For the second year running, then, the odds are stacked against a bona fide pop blockbuster cracking the Best Picture lineup. With that, the greater-than-usual abundance of mainstream prestige fare in the late-season release calendar (“Argo,” “Playbook,” “Flight,” “Lincoln,” “Les Miserables,” “Life of Pi,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” even “The Impossible”) offers an array of options to populist-minded voters looking to stem the Academy’s recent taste for “smaller” contenders from the indie/foreign fringes.

Sasha Stone recently asked an online assembly of Oscar pundits if the high standard of studio cinema this year – a debatable notion, to begin with – could wind up freezing favored independent contenders like “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “The Sessions” out of the race. But the narrative could never be that simple, since the concept of “studio cinema” this days is an increasingly malleable one. 

Does the term only apply to releases from the so-called Big Six – Paramount, Warner, Disney, Universal, Columbia, Fox? Do studio releases that weren’t produced in-house carry an asterisk? “Les Mis” may be a Universal release, but it’s a wholly foreign – well, British – production. Speaking of foreign productions, Summit’s pumped-up, Spanish-made disaster pic “The Impossible” has the sensibility, if not the lineage, of a Hollywood blockbuster; with the film inspiring Steven Spielberg comparisons from many a critic, it’s slightly absurd to imply that it’s less mainstream than Spielberg’s own legislation-themed drama “Lincoln.”

Similar questions arise at the top of the so-called indie sector. The Weinstein Company and Fox Searchlight, say, are pretty powerful entities that could well be regarded as majors in their own right. They certainly can’t be spoken of in the same breath as a Magnolia or an IFC: if “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” both a strange, singular achievement and an undeniable audience charmer, had been picked up by one of those noble indie fighters, would it have the degree of awards buzz it enjoys today?

Weinstein’s prestige pair “Silver Linings Playbook” and “The Master” may both be jagged, distinctive, stimulating auteur pieces, yet one can surely be regarded as more a pseudo-studio picture than the other – while I’d propose that “Argo” boasts a more independent spirit than Warners stablemate “The Dark Knight Rises.” Perhaps this isn’t the year the studios bite back at the Oscars, but the one where multiplex and arthouse queues cross at Crowdpleaser Junction.

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

NEW YORK — It’s not like John Goodman hasn’t been working consistently enough for a couple of decades, but the last two years have shown a stunning proliferation by anyone’s measure. Last year he was featured in two eventual Best Picture nominees — the Oscar-winning “The Artist” and Stephen Daldry’s “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” — as well as a recurring role on TV’s “Community.”

This year he’s following that up with roles in a trio of awards season hopefuls (“Argo,” “Flight” and “Trouble with the Curve”) as well as some voice work in Henry Selick’s “ParaNorman,” while 2013 will bring the antagonist of “The Hangover: Part III,” some more voice work in the much-anticipated Pixar sequel “Monsters University” and his fifth collaboration with the Coen brothers (“Inside Llewyn Davis”).

“It’s just the roll of the dice,” he says over drinks about his recent string of consistency and good luck with projects. “You’re not going to count on it every year. To me, it felt like, well, this is the way the cards are this year.”

In “Argo,” Goodman stars as Oscar-winning makeup artist and civilian CIA operative John Chambers, who assisted agent Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) in cooking up a wild story to get six American embassy workers out of harm’s way during the Iranian hostage crisis. This tale of Hollywood saving the day is “so absurd that you wouldn’t make a movie about it unless it were true,” Goodman says. “People mention that segment of the film and satire in the same breath, but Alan [Arkin] was telling me that he knew people like that, the producer, and people in the business talk about the business like that all the time. So we weren’t necessarily making fun of it. It’s just the way things are.”

Speaking of which, Goodman relished the chance to work with the actor he first saw on screen over 40 years ago in “The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming.” The two had oddly never met, but Goodman says he’s always responded to the amount of integrity in Arkin’s work. “I’ve always admired him,” he says. “He’s funnier than hell, and dry, because he just tells the truth. There’s no waste. Usually when you meet somebody you admire, it’s always a letdown. They’re never as good as advertised. He’s still interested in acting, which was great because I’d just pick his brains about it, his theories and stuff. He’s just an interesting man.”

Any journalist can attest to the same being true of Arkin on the interview circuit, to which Goodman bursts into laughter and, going into his best Alan Arkin impression, offers: “‘If I have one more person ask me what Ben Affleck is like.’ That’s why I like being with him at junkets. Things I want to say but I don’t.”

It was also a nice opportunity to make a movie in Los Angeles, Goodman notes. The first time in a while he shot something there was “The Artist,” and it’s striking to him how the business is shrinking away from its Hollywood roots.

“I was over at Paramount the other day and it’s all television production over there,” he says. Goodman moved to New Orleans in 1997. “They can’t afford to make films in Los Angeles. I mean, I like going to other places, but it’s nice to be able to make a Hollywood film in Hollywood.”

Which is a nice segue to “The Artist,” which Goodman wasn’t able to promote all that much last year due to the busy workload that has yielded all of these films in 2012. He balks a bit at the awards season machinery, a process he says he doesn’t really understand. So seeing a tiny labor of love take off in that way was unexpected.

“It’s so strange because we were just making this lovely little thing with a very talented guy, Jean Dujardin,” he says. “And Michel [Hazanavicius], the director, just had this story to tell. And it was great. It was fully realized. The guy loves movies…It was lovely to see the movie with an audience. That was the experience. And I tell you what it was, it was nice to see Michel’s dream realized fully and live to grow more than the expectations for it. So that was nice, that that kind of persistence is rewarded.”

Nevertheless, Goodman feels the Oscar thing is “too big,” he says. “It’s a lot different than when I was a kid and it was on on a Monday night and it was a neat deal in the spring…The red carpet’s wagging the whole thing now, and it just seems like people think if you don’t make a film that’s not nominated, what’s your purpose of living? Why are you even here? That’s not the reason people do movies. I don’t know if that sounds sour or bitter or anything, but to me it’s just blown way out of proportion.”

The counter argument, of course, is that a film like “The Artist” might not have reached such a wide audience had Harvey Weinstein not picked it up at Cannes purely to market it for awards attention. “That could be,” Goodman concedes. “I think it would have had a lovely little word of mouth, but without the massive advertising.”

Is there a financial benefit? Goodman’s not so sure about that, either. “Maybe it gets a little bump,” he says, “but not too much. And as for actors, maybe your price may go up and you’ll get cast a little more once, but it seems to level off. I mean, it’d be nice and everything, but I don’t know that it’s that beneficial.”

Maybe Weinstein could attest to that, as “The Artist” didn’t end up pulling in the revenue anticipated after such a financially successful awards season run with “The King’s Speech” a year prior.

Getting back to 2012, “Flight” was a great opportunity, Goodman says, to work with Denzel Washington again. The two collaborated once before in 1998’s “Fallen” but hadn’t seen each other for years.

“I not only like to work with him, I like to watch him work,” Goodman says. “Just really well-prepared, and like a good magician, you can’t see the tricks. There are no tricks. It’s seamless.”

The character he plays in the film is a charismatic, iPod-listening, Atlanta-area drug dealer. It was well-drawn on the page by screenwriter John Gatins, and so for Goodman, “it was just a matter of hitting my marks and having fun,” he says. “In the two scenes I was in I had to do some very specific things, and it was just a matter of getting that blocked down and just relaxing with it.”

He was only on the set for a couple of days, so it was an easy enough shoot, but not as easy as last year’s “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.” Blink and you’ll miss Goodman’s handful of moments as an apartment building doorman, but the length of the role didn’t matter to the actor, even as it started to shrink more and more. He just wanted to be a part of it.

“I was very moved by that script,” he says. “They ran out of time and had to squeeze me out more, and they asked me, ‘Do you still want to do this movie?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, you know what, just to be in it.’ And it only turned into a day, a couple of little scenes, but I just wanted to do it. I liked the kid a lot and I liked the story a lot. And I’m glad I did it.”

The film was a bit of a surprise Best Picture nominee for some, but per his view of awards season, Goodman says he doesn’t really put too much stock in that kind of thing. Nevertheless, it was, as he says, a nice roll of the dice to be in those two Best Picture nominees.

Swinging back once more to this year, there was also Robert Lorenz’s August release “Trouble with the Curve,” with Goodman starring opposite Clint Eastwood and Amy Adams. And like so many who have said “yes” to a Clint Eastwood project, the opportunity to work with the man is what made Goodman sign on.

“It was almost like I didn’t have to read the script,” he says. “I just wanted to work with Clint Eastwood. He’s not only prolific but good, in a good way. He doesn’t just grind them out. He makes quality movies, good stories that people like to go see and he knows how to do it. I’m attracted to people like that who can do it with a minimal amount of trouble and a maximum amount of pleasure. He’s got a crew around him and surrounds himself, delegates authority well, like Ben [Affleck] does. Ben’s confident enough in himself that he can let them do the job, and Clint’s the same way.”

And so on that note, each of these films represents a certain brand of mid-budget adult drama that is ever-receding from the marketplace.

“Adult drama, yeah, I think you hit something on the head there,” he says. “Yeah, grown-up movies, something with a subject that people are interested in. I’ve never seen anything like ‘Flight’ before and certainly never seen anything like ‘Argo’ before. It’s nice to hit something different that will attract an adult audience, something that’ll get you out of the house and share a movie experience with other people. I was out the other night, standing on the street the night [‘Argo’] came out, and people would just come up to me on the sidewalk and say they want to go back. It was a nice feeling.”

Both “Flight” and “Trouble with the Curve” were filmed in Georgia, which makes for a nice homecoming this weekend when he’ll be honored by the Savannah Film Festival. It seems somehow strange that he’s yet to be recognized by the Academy with an Oscar nomination, not that it’s likely bothering him all that much. But what matters to him is the luck he’s had as of late, because he loves to work, and judging by his schedule, he’ll be content for a while yet.

“Down time used to bother me, but I had down time this summer and I kind of liked it a lot,” he says. “A couple of years ago, right before I did ‘The Artist,’ it was dry. And I really got worried. But, you know, I’m getting older now. If it happens it happens and if it doesn’t it doesn’t.

“Of course, that’s really easy to say right now.”

“Flight” opens on November 2. “Argo” and “Trouble with the Curve” are currently in theaters.