Someone asked me today what looks like a Best Picture winner in these early days, with many things seen, a few still to come. With so many having marks against them it’s difficult to get a gauge on what could be “the one,” and of course, it’s silly to be mulling something like that over when the season has so many more secrets to tell. But my knee-jerk reaction was Tom Hooper’s “Les Misérables.”

Why? Well, it’s in the enviable position of still being a bit of a mystery, for starters. Hooper, of course, is coming off his big win for “The King’s Speech” in 2010, which made him a commodity in Hollywood. The campaign is taking flight, the early notes revolving around the live singing employed by the film (which, frankly, from a sound mixing standpoint, makes it immediately more interesting in the musical realm than most). But more to the point, there’s a lot of tangible thematic resilience in the story that could find the right stride in today’s world. Well, let’s just say there’s a case to be made on that score by a smart campaign, anyway.

In any case, we should be getting a new trailer soon enough, I’d imagine. And today, the first poster for the film has dropped, shrewdly calling back to the iconic Broadway poster featuring a nubile Cosette (played in youth by Isabelle Allen and older by Amanda Seyfried). It’s such a defining image that it might have been a mistake not to call it out, and so Universal has.

The film was recently pushed back a few days to Christmas Day, not long before the Academy made its own announcement about key dates in the Oscar timeline (including an early January 10 date for nominations, which will put some strain on latter-year efforts like this and Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained”). But it felt like the right move as there is a family audience waiting to be tapped that week.

Check out the new poster below and tell us what you think in the comments section.

I’ve been hearing more and more about John Lee Hancock’s forthcoming “Saving Mr. Banks” ever since Tom Hanks was signed on to play Walt Disney in the film and, therefore, the screenplay review community gobbled it up and dissected it and word got out that it had a heck of a lot of potential. Apparently it’s pretty damn good, and it presents a grand opportunity for Hanks, a five-time Oscar nominee who hasn’t been recognized by the Academy since 2000’s “Cast Away.”

Hanks was on hand at the Emmys last night, to collect his trophy for Outstanding Mini-Series or Movie as a producer of HBO’s “Game Change.” (He’s won five of those now, by the way, for “The Pacific,” “John Adams,” “Band of Brothers” and “From the Earth to the Moon,” in addition.) He showed up sporting, it would appear, the mustache he’s rocking out as Disney in the new film, and it got me thinking of a spit-ball sort of column we could throw up every once in a while to place unnecessary pressure on upcoming films and performances that, on paper, look like they could be awards contenders. This certainly seems like one of them.

Yes, “Saving Mr. Banks” is a classic example to kick off such a feature. Production just got underway four days ago and idiots like me are throwing these kinds of considerations around. But nevertheless, the film tells the story of the gauntlet Disney ran in securing the rights to adapting P.L. (Pamela) Travers’s children’s series for the big screen. It’s the first time this looming fixture of the moving image has been portrayed in a film before, and Hanks seems like a perfect fit for the part. Emma Thompson has been cast as Travers.

From the production announcement story:

“As the two wrestle over creative decisions, Travers flashes back to her early life in 1906 Australia, where she was first inspired by those around her to pen the book. Aussie newcomer Annie Buckley plays Travers in the flashback scenes, with Colin Farrell playing her loving father.”

In closing a rave for Kelly Marcel’s script some months back, Carson Reeves at Script Shadow had this to say (it’s SPOILERish):

“And then there”s the monologue. When I say ‘the monologue,’ I mean the best ending monologue I’ve maybe ever read in a screenplay…Walt then gives the most heartfelt convincing thoughtful meaningful plea as to why Pamela should give him the rights to the book. It’s so moving and so TRUE, that it grips your heart and won’t let go…It was just such a great final moment for this character and without question, the reason Tom Hanks signed on.”

Whether that last bit is true or not, who knows, but when a movie star gets the chance to knock out a scene like that, it can be tempting. Meanwhile, here’s what HitFix’s own Drew McWeeny had to say about the script:

“I hope they make the movie that Marcel wrote. She found a great contained story about creative passions, about the act of adaptation, and about a figure we all feel like we know because of his overwhelming media presence.”

I think it’s fair to say this is one to keep on the radar around these parts. Even Drew, who ignores the Oscars every year and certainly doesn’t trade in prognostication, couldn’t help but go there in that piece linked above.

But hey, guys, no pressure.

“Saving Mr. Banks” also stars Paul Giamatti, Jason Schwartzman and Ruth Wilson. It’s set for release some time in 2013.

What else is on the horizon that deserves the albatross of an Oscar Bait column? Give us some recommendations below.

Last night’s Emmy Awards dwarf any movie news today. I didn’t watch them myself — the Oscars may be silly, but at least they can’t repeat their mistakes year after year — but I’m amused at how the TV industry puffs its chest about producing superior entertainment to Hollywood… only to fawn over movie stars (or at least former movie stars) when it comes to dishing out awards. As you’ve probably heard, Julianne Moore, Jessica Lange, Kevin Costner, Claire Danes and Tom Hanks (as a producer) all took home trophies, many of them deservedly — though when Maggie Smith’s sleepwalking schtick manages to beat out A-grade work by Christina Hendricks that would dazzle on any size of screen, you have to wonder if the voters really know their medium. Anyway, HitFix’s resident TV ace has more informed thoughts. [What’s Alan Watching]

Pete Hammond reports that Oscar producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron were watching Emmys closely for tips — not surprising, given Emmy producer Don Mischer’s own involvement with the Oscars. [Deadline] 

This weekend, I got around to David Denby’s vast essay on everything that’s wrong with the current model of American filmmaking. It’s an essential read, even if you can pick and choose the points you agree with. [The New Republic] 

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” has been selected as this year’s Royal Film Performance. Here’s hoping the honor brings more luck to the film than it did Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones” in 2009. [THR]

Peter Knegt examines the box office takings of last week’s specialty releases, and wonders how “The Master”‘s surprisingly early expansion will affect its future performance. [IndieWire]

If you haven’t seen it yet, Tom O’Neil has rounded up the predictions of over 20 awards pundits — including yours truly — in 13 categories. [Gold Derby]

Catherine Shoard makes some early Oscar predictions — you can see the Brits don’t pay obsessive attention to these things, but listing “Holy Motors” as a Best Picture dark horse is a bad call I can get behind. [The Guardian]

From the NYFF, Steven Zeitchik talks to Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach about their fall festival hit “Frances Ha.” [Los Angeles Times]

Dennis Lim revisits Michael Cimino’s much-maligned, recently restored “Heaven’s Gate,” and likes what he sees. [New York Times]

And finally, Chris Laverty talks to “Lawless” costume designer Margot Wilson about the single greatest garment seen in the movies this year: Tom Hardy’s cardigan. Or, as I like to call it, the Hardigan. [Clothes on Film]

With a little over a week to go before the official deadline — though there are always a couple of stragglers and switches afterwards — submissions for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar are now flooding in faster than I can write about them. The last two days, in particular, have brought in a bounty of high-profile new entries, many of them laden with festival awards and acclaim.

Perhaps it’s simply because I’ve seen more of the submissions — 15 at present, with the upcoming London Film Festival set to bulk up that number a bit — than is usual for me at this early point in the game, but even with another 20 or so entries still to be announced, this is looking like an unusually high-class crop of contenders. Not only are a great many strong films in the running, but many of those are, to some degree at least, Academy-accessible. The shortlisting process is going to be ugly; the race for nominations competitive. And while most pundits agree that “Amour” (with some heat from “The Intouchables”) is leading the race for the win, that’s not to say there aren’t equally (or even more) deserving films in the mix.

In other words, however it pans out — and allowing for an inevitably questionable call or two on the voters’ part — some great work is going to get left out in the cold. A few of titles announced yesterday, however, seem to me to be better positioned than most. Let’s go through them one by one.

“A Royal Affair” (Denmark): Our friend Anne Thompson may have mentioned in yesterday’s Oscar Talk podcast that Cannes is the leading hunting ground for foreign Oscar contenders — but on the evidence of the submissions so far, the less fashionable, less attended Berlinale is proving equally fruitful. Nikolaj Arcel’s lavish historical drama is the latest example of this. Screening late in the festival to critics who were mostly expecting stuffy corset-porn, this brisk, literate, sexy account of the love triangle between 18th-century Danish monarch King Christian VII, his wife and the royal physician was met with surprisingly keen reviews and a brace of awards for Best Screenplay and Best Actor.

The latter award went to Mikkel Folsgaard as the monarch, though as time passes, many will mistakenly attribute it to Mads Mikkelsen instead: the international crossover star is no less prominent or impressive in the film. (Given that he won the same award in Cannes three months later for “The Hunt,” everything worked out rather neatly.) Also registering strongly in the film is Alicia Vikander, who is currently earning glowing notices for her wonderful supporting work in “Anna Karenina.” The rising profiles of Mikkelsen and Vikander give an extra boost to a film whose crisp storytelling and plush visual spectacle (it’s a dark horse in the Best Costume Design race) should already play well to voters.

An arthouse hit in the UK over the summer, the film should perform equivalently well Stateside when Magnolia release it in November. That “A Royal Affair” was submitted as Denmark’s entry in the first place is already a minor victory, given that it had two viable new films from previously Academy-honored directors — Susanne Bier’s Venice-premiered “Love Is All You Need” and Bille August’s period biopic “Marie Kroyer” — to overcome. For those wondering why the aforementioned “The Hunt” — a popular but dubiously trumped-up melodrama from Tomas Vinterberg — wasn’t considered, that’d be because, in a curious distribution pattern, it’s only released in Denmark in January, long after it opens in other territories. Should Denmark submit it next year, they’ll have a heavy contender on their hands; as it stands, the one they have is pretty formidable. 

“Sister” (Switzerland): Sticking with Berlinale hits, I made my love for Ursula Meier’s gently jagged study of unchecked adolescence at a Swiss ski resort quite plain at the festival, it won a special award from Mike Leigh’s jury. There, I wrote: “Many might cry heresy, but this briskly funny, softly moving study of near-feral youth is, for me, the film so many critics see in the Dardennes’ ‘The Kid With a Bike.'” It remains one of my favorites of 2012, and I look forward to seeing it again at the upcoming LFF.

It’s harder to tell how this one will fly with Academy voters: while they often like child’s-eye narratives, this is a cooler and more contemporary work than the rosy nostalgia pieces they’ve rewarded in the past. On the other hand, the film has been popular on the festival circuit, and it’s hard to imagine that the warmth, humor and family-oriented message of Meier’s film — alongside the visual joys of the great Agnes Godard’s cinematography — won’t find a fair few fans in the branch, some of them hopefully within the executive committee. Also helping its cause is the presence of some familiar faces in the cast: young newcomer Kacey Mott Klein may be the irresistible star of the film, but he’s bolstered by strong work from Lea Seydoux (now recognizable to multiplex audiences from her turn in “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol”) and a French-speaking Gillian Anderson. 

“Fill the Void” (Israel): In recent years, Israel has been a more consistent presence in this category than any other country: they have yet to nail down the win, but Israel’s submission has wound up nominated in four of the last five years. With recent Venice award-winner “Fill the Void” — submitted, as usual, after it won the top prize in the country’s own Ophir Awards — they have a strong chance of going five-from-six, though it represents a slight change of tack. Where those four recent nominees — war stories “Beaufort” and “Waltz With Bashir,” urban drama “Ajami” and academia-set comedy “Footnote” — were all expressly male-driven narratives, “Fill the Void” is a far more feminine enterprise.

The debut feature from New York-born writer-director Rama Burshtein, this woman-dominated ensemble piece tackles the subject of arranged marriage within the Orthodox Jewish community — though it comes out more in favor of the institution than you might expect. That surprisingly conservative sensibility (Burshtein herself is a happy beneficiary of arranged marriage) made the film a point of mild controversy at Venice, where a smattering of boos interrupted the deserved applause for its witty, perceptive scripting, striking shallow-focus aesthetic and excellent performances — most notably that of 18 year-old Hadas Yaron, a worthy winner of the festival’s Best Actress prize. (More on its merits in my review.)

It’s certainly a conversation piece, though as a comedy of manners with a clear debt to Jane Austen, it’s an engaging, non-abrasive one that plays to multiple age groups. That balance between issues and entertainment can be a golden one with this voting branch — I firmly expect to see it in the January shortlist.

Other notable new entries that I haven’t seen include Mexico’s “After Lucia,” a well-reviewed drama on the topical theme of school bullying that was the surprise winner of the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes this year — I’ll have more thoughts on that when I see it at the London fest next month. Brazil’s submission, father-son drama “The Clown,” has yet to appear on the international festival circuit, though it’s a popular choice at home — I’ve been receiving tips and tweets about it from Brazilian readers for several weeks now. Also scarcely on the radar outside its home country is Russia’s entry “White Tiger”; it’s WWII adventure, but I can’t tell you much more than that.

Another two new entries are ones that I’ve seen, but don’t expect to make much headway in the competition. I briefly reviewed Slovakia’s entry, “Made in Ash,” at Karlovy Vary: it’s a well-meaning but monotonously glum social treatise documenting the limited economic opportunities available to the country’s youth. Branch members will likely snooze through the parts they can’t stomach. Still, it’s a better choice than Hong Kong’s dismal “Life Without Principle” — a dreary financial-crisis parable from the usually-more-fun Johnnie To — which I saw at Venice last year and had completely forgotten about until now. In my review, I described it as evoking “Paul Haggis, with a little less of the Canadian”s famed subtlety and wry sense of humor.” Even if any voters spot the resemblance, I don’t think it’ll help.

As usual, you can keep up with the growing list of submissions at the category’s Contenders page.

I was very impressed with the level of confidence exuded in Stephen Chbosky’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” We’ve spoken to the writer/director about the film, praised Logan Lerman’s leading performance to the heavens and spoken about it in the podcast. But now the film makes it to theaters after a Toronto bow and you’ll all get a look for yourselves. So assuming you make it out to see it, head on back here with your thoughts. And as always, feel free to rate the film via the tool above.

A handful of releases this week so we’ll start with Robert Lorenz’s “Trouble with the Curve.” I’m quite the fan, and as you heard in Friday’s Oscar Talk podcast, Anne is, too. I still wonder how the Academy will respond but I’m also interested in what you guys have to say. So if/when you get around to it, head on back here with your thoughts. Also, feel free to rate it via the tool above.

Not to be outdone the day after Fox Searchlight dropped “Hitchcock” on the season, Focus Features would like to remind everyone of its own last-minute addition: Gus Van Sant’s “Promised Land.” The film, starring and written by Matt Damon and John Krasinski, has launched its first trailer and it’s clear it’s dealing in shades of shifting American values. That could be very powerful this season.

Anne and I had a discussion about “zeitgeist” films in this morning’s podcast, and though films like “Argo” and “Zero Dark Thirty” will speak to that, something like “Promised Land” — which seems to be telling a story of the capitalization of the country on the backs of its citizens — couldn’t be more relevant. Not to put too much pressure on it, but that could be catnip.

Van Sant’s last brush with Oscar came for Focus’s own “Milk” in 2008. Nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Film Editing and Best Original Score came knocking, as well as wins for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay. What will his latest yield? We’ll find out soon enough.

Check out the new trailer below, courtesy of Apple.

“Promised Land” opens in New York and Los Angeles on December 28.

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.

This week there have been a number of shake-ups, from significant scheduling shifts to new movies for the season to festival premiere announcements. And there are even a few movies to discuss, too. Let’s see what’s on the docket…

We start out this week with discussion of the weekend’s releases. We both really liked “Trouble with the Curve” while I’m big on “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” (which Anne hasn’t seen) and Anne is big on “End of Watch” (which I haven’t seen).

The week’s biggest announcement was the Academy’s decision to announce Oscar nominees earlier than ever, on January 10. This significantly shortens the phase one window and gives us plenty of room to agree, disagree and ponder the implications.

Fox Searchlight dropped a new contender on the slate this week with the announcement that Sacha Gervasi’s “Hitchcock” is ready to go — and with a November release, at that.

With the October 1 deadline looming, the Best Foreign Language Film race is heating up with official submissions landing fast and frequent. We take an ever-so-brief survey of what’s going to be in play.

And finally, reader questions. We field queries regarding the “zeitgeist” thing people like us bring up every year around this time, perceptions of The Weinstein Company’s recent streak of dominance impacting this year in some way and whether “Moonrise Kingdom” is still a potential player.

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. And as always, remember to subscribe to Oscar Talk via iTunes here.

“Here I Come” courtesy of Stuart Park.

Unless I’m very much mistaken, this might qualify as the first official longlist of the awards season. (Don’t get too excited — you might not have any energy left by January.) The nominations for the European Film Awards — effectively the Oscars of European cinema — won’t be announced until November 3, but we now know exactly what pool of eligible films they’ll be drawn from.

Since voting from the vast selection of European films to play in theaters and at festivals over the past year would be impractical — especially given that no two country’s release schedules are alike — the European Film Academy instead narrows the field using a system in some ways similar to that of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. The 20 countries with the most EFA members each elect one film to represent their country in the awards. Then, over 20 further films — some from other countries, some overlooked by the national committees — are added to the list by a panel of EFA board members and invited industry experts.

The final longlist totals 47 films from 31 different countries. Using this list, the EFA’s 2700 members will now vote for the nominees in nine categories. Two other categories, for Best Documentary and Best Animated Film, are determined by smaller panels. Indeed, this year’s EFA nominees for Best Animated Film have already been announced: Spain’s “Wrinkles,” the Czech Republic’s “Alois Nebel” and the UK’s “The Pirates! In an Adventure With Scientists!.” 

Most of the titles below will fall away in the process. It doesn’t take great clairvoyant powers, meanwhile, to guess some of those that will stick around. If you’re thinking of putting your money on anything but “Amour” for the Best Film prize, I’d gently suggest otherwise; these awards can be as predictable in their own way as the Oscars.

The longlist offers few surprises, with most of the big prizewinners and critical favorites from the festival circuit present and correct. From Cannes, we have “Amour,” “Rust and Bone,” “The Hunt” and “Beyond the Hills,” among others; from Berlin, Golden Bear winner “Caesar Must Die,” as well as “Tabu,” “Barbara” and “Sister”; from last year’s Venice fest, Golden Lion winner “Faust,” “Alps,” “Carnage” and the British duo of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” and “Shame.” (Sad to say, Ken Loach’s “The Angels’ Share” is the only UK film from 2012 to make the list. The points to a comedown from last year’s banner year for British cinema — though Peter Strickland’s remarkable anti-horror film “Berberian Sound Studio” really ought to be here.)  

The vagaries of international distribution mean that several of the films here may feel like last year’s news, and the EFA don’t seem to have any hard and fast restrictions when it comes to dates. Eyebrows were raised last year when Cannes Grand Prix winner “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” didn’t make the cut; lest we think it had been snubbed, it shows up in this year’s longlist instead.

A similar outcome could await some of the most surprising omissions from this year’s list. France, for example, is represented by “Rust and Bone,” “Carnage” and recent Oscar submission “The Intouchables” — but Leos Carax’s Cannes critics’ darling “Holy Motors” is nowhere to be seen, despite it having been released at home back in July. Is it being made to wait, or has it simply been left out? If the latter, the selection committee should take some flak — particularly when the longlist features such oddities as Finnish Nazis-in-space adventure “Iron Sky.”

Those of you who have been paying attention to foreign-language Oscar submissions process will notice 11 of this year’s entries (so far) in the mix: Austria’s “Amour,” Belgium’s “Our Children,” Bosnia and Herzegovina’s “Children of Sarajevo,” Bulgaria’s “Sneakers,” France’s “The Intouchables,” Germany’s “Barbara,” Greece’s “Unfair World,” Hungary’s “Just the Wind,” The Netherlands’ “Kauwboy,” Romania’s “Beyond the Hills” and Switzerland’s “Sister.” Expect to some of these titles repeated a few times over the next few months.

As for what might show up alongside “Amour” in the nominees list, the EFA Awards tend to favor higher-profile crossover titles, so I’d expect “The Hunt,” “Rust and Bone,” “The Intouchables,” “Shame” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” to be among those showing up in several categories. Last year’s awards, you may remember, were ruled by the Danes and the Brits, with Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia” and Susanne Bier’s “In a Better World” taking Best Film and Best Director, respectively, with Colin Firth and Tilda Swinton landing the acting prizes.

This year’s European Film Award ceremony takes place in Malta on December 1. The full longlist, courtesy of the EFA:

“Alps,” Yorgos Lanthimos (Greece)

“Amour,” Michael Haneke (Austria/France/Germany)

“The Angels’ Share,” Ken Loach (UK/France/Belgium/Italy)

“Avalon,” Axel Petersen (Sweden)

“Barbara,” Christian Petzold (Germany)

“Beyond the Hills,” Cristian Mungiu (Romania/France/Belgium)

“Caesar Must Die,” Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (Italy)

“Carnage,” Roman Polanski (France/Germany/Poland/Spain)

“Children of Sarajevo,” Aida Begic (Bosnia & Herzegovina/Germany/France/Turkey)

“Combat Girls,” David Wnendt (Germany)

“Come As You Are,” Geoffrey Enthoven (Belgium)

“Death of a Man in Balkans,” Miroslav Momcilovic (Serbia)

“Diaz: Don’t Clean Up This Blood,” Daniele Vicari (Italy/Romania/France)

“The Door,” Istvan Szabo (Hungary/Germany)

“The Dream and the Silence,” Jaime Rosales (Spain/France)

“The Exchange,” Eran Kolirin (Israel/Germany)

“Faust,” Aleksandr Sokurov (Russia)

“Flower Buds,” Zdenek Jirasky (Czech Republic)

“Gypsy,” Martin Sulik (Czech Republic/Slovakia)

“The Hunt,” Thomas Vinterberg (Denmark)

“In Darkness,” Agnieszka Holland (Poland/Germany/Canada) 

“In the Fog,” Sergei Loznitsa (Russia/Germany/Latvia/The Netherlands/Belarus)

“The Intouchables,” Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano (France)

“Iron Sky,” Timo Vuorensola (Finland/Germany/Australia)

“Just the Wind,” Benedek Fliegauf (Hungary/Germany/France)

“Kauwboy,” Boudewijn Koole (The Netherlands)

“Li and the Poet,” Andrea Segre (Italy/France)

“Naked Harbour,” Aku Louhimies (Finland)

“Once Upon a Time in Anatolia,” Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey)

“Once Upon a Time There Lived a Simple Woman,” Andrey Smirvov (Russia)

“Our Children,” Joachim Lafosse (Belgium/France/Switzerland/Luxembourg)

“The Parade,” Srjan Dragojevi (Serbia)

“Paradise: Love,” Ulrich Seidl (Austria/Germany/France)

“Policeman,” Nadav Lapid (Israel)

“Rose,” Wojciech Smarzowski (Poland)

“A Royal Affair,” Nikolaj Arcel (Denmark)

“Rust and Bone,” Jacques Audiard (France)

“Shame,” Steve McQueen (UK) 

“Sister,” Ursula Meier (Switzerland/France)

“The Sleeping Voice,” Benito Zambrano (Spain)

“Sneakers,” Ivan Vladimirov and Valery Yordanov (Bulgaria)

“Sons of Norway,” Jens Lien (Norway/France/Denmark/Sweden)

“Tabu,” Miguel Gomes (Portugal/Germany/Brazil/France)

“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” Tomas Alfredson (UK/France/Germany)

“Unfair World,” Filippos Tsitos (Greece/Germany) 

“Unit 7,” Alberto Rodriguez (Spain)

“The Woman Who Brushed Off Her Tears,” Teona Strugar Mitevska (Macedonia/Belgium/Slovenia/Germany)

Well, I pretty much nailed this likelihood in a tweet on Tuesday. With very little left to choose from in the way of North American premieres, what with NYFF really diving in big this year on that front and Telluride and Toronto taking their fair share as usual, it seemed like Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” would be a good fit for AFI Fest. And so it shall be. The November festival always has one or two premieres every year, and last year, one of them was a Spielberg film — “The Adventures of Tintin” (which closed the fest while Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar” opened it). He’ll be back for more in 2012.

”Steven Spielberg is an American master, enriching the cultural legacy of our nation with each new film in his extraordinary career,” AFI President and CEO Bob Gazzale said via press release. ”We are honored he has chosen AFI FEST for the World Premiere of ‘Lincoln,’ an historic cinematic event in itself as it brings the most dramatic American history to life for new generations.”

The film opens in limited release the next day on November 9 and expands further on November 16. So it’s a good place to unleash the film, but I wonder, what’s left for an opener? “Les Miserables,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Django Unchained,” all of those are likely off the table. “Promised Land,” too, given the late December release date. Fox Searchlight just introduced “Hitchcock” to the season, with a November release as well, so that’s possible.

“The Adventures of Tintin” was a big play last year. And it didn’t much feel like a festival film, either. So maybe Warner Bros. gives “The Hobbit” a whirl? Cheap LA premiere, after all. There’s really nothing else, though.

More from the press release:

“Spielberg has an impressive history with AFI. He was the recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1995, the highest honor for a career in film; five of his movies rate among the greatest films of all time on AFI”s 100 Years…100 Movies list: ‘Schindler’s List’ (#8), ‘E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial’ (#24), ‘Jaws’ (#56), ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ (#66) and ‘Saving Private Ryan’ (#71); and last year he completed a one-hour special at the AFI Conservatory with friend and collaborator John Williams entitled TCM PRESENTS AFI’S MASTER CLASS: THE ART OF COLLABORATION that explored the four-decade friendship and working relationship between the two artists, among the most prolific and influential collaborations in film history. In addition, both Spielberg and producer Kathleen Kennedy serve on the American Film Institute”s Board of Trustees, which is chaired by Sir Howard Stringer, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Sony Corporation, and is comprised of leaders of the motion picture and television communities and leaders from global goods and services companies. Spielberg has been an AFI Trustee since 1986, Kennedy since 1994.”

Meanwhile, Spielberg’s stuff keeps making its way to Blu-ray. After “Jaws” a few weeks back, the Indiana Jones trilogy hit shelves this week (and is getting a big IMAX theatrical re-release), with “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” coming soon enough. I guess it’s all Spielberg all the time.

“Lincoln” opens in limited release on November 9.

There is no press release planned for this news but I wanted to pass it along to our readership in any case. After seven years of owning and operating In Contention, first as a blogspot thingamajig, then guiding the .com forward as (I think) one of the preeminent awards season outlets in the space, I’m happy to announce that our little company has been formally acquired by HitFix.

The final signatures were committed to paper just after Telluride, which is serendipitous as at last year’s fest, just before the premiere of “Albert Nobbs,” Greg Ellwood first bent my ear and told me his ideas. Then, three swift weeks later — a year ago today, in fact — we officially hitched our wagon to HitFix.

These last 12 months have been kind of a trial run, if you will. And it’s been a wonderful experience, a great partnership and a solid foundation on which to build a more permanent and organic relationship. Handing over something you’ve built from the ground up is a scary thing, but I can’t think of a better, more fiercely competitive and consistently growing outlet to have bought In Contention.

And no, nothing’s changing. I’m not going anywhere. Guy’s not going anywhere. Gerard’s not going anywhere. If anything, the coverage will get more angles. Greg Ellwood’s material will be folded in here (as you’ve seen) and some of the other members of the HitFix team may have things to offer, hands to lend as the season really heats up.

So with that, I’m looking forward to moving ahead as HitFix’s Editor-at-Large, overseeing the awards coverage of the site and continuing to be dominant in the face of a game that wasn’t much more than a few amateur outlets when I first started doing it 11 years ago.

Wow. 11 years. Time flies.

Last year, Oscar analyst par excellence Mark Harris, whose insights we’ll be missing this awards season, wrote a description of the average Best Foreign Language Film voter that was so specifically accurate that all I can do is quote it: “They like spending a weekend Learning About Other Cultures. They want to see movies that are ‘thought-provoking,’ but not too disturbing or unsettling. They”re more open-minded about content than they are about style. And more than anything, they like movies that depict the drawbacks, rituals, sociological peculiarities, class inequities, or historical scars of whatever country they”re from.”

If that’s true, however, such voters are going to be a bit flummoxed by a few of the most prominent contenders in this year’s race. Many will admire “Amour,” Michael Haneke’s study of withered French intelligentsia, set within the spacious confines of a Parisian apartment — but there will be some who wonder, “Wait, are we in Austria?” Similarly, a lot of voters will likely be into the German-set, German-language Holocaust survival tale “Lore,” while others might be twiddling their thumbs, waiting impatiently for the kangaroos to bound onto screen. It’s Australia’s submission, after all.

Joining the group of culturally muddy submissions is “War Witch,” a moving, immersive portrait of the horrors endured by Central African child soldiers that was a critics’ favorite back at the Berlin Film Festival, where it won Best Actress for its 13 year-old non-pro lead Rachel Mwanza. (A few months later, it won both the Best Narrative Feature and Best Actress awards at the Tribeca Film Festival — and duly secured US distribution with Tribeca Films.)

Hard-hitting enough to jolt conscientious voters to attention, yet not too violent or despairing to turn them off entirely — there’s a vein of tradition-rooted magical realism running throughout that lends proceedings more exotic appeal than a faux-gritty docudrama approach — it’s an audience-friendly wild card that’s well worth remembering in this race.

So, what lucky African nation submitted it? None, actually: Canada did. Though there’s nothing in the film to suggest the connection — bar a hefty proportion of French dialogue — “War Witch” is a wholly Canadian production, from Montreal-born filmmaker Kim Nguyen. On the hand, the film is an obvious choice for the country: give or take Xavier Dolan’s less acclaimed (and less Academy-friendly) “Laurence Anyways,” it’s their highest-profile festival success from the 2012 circuit. On the other, well, it’s not an obviously Canadian choice at all.   

The submission of these films is healthy proof that the Best Foreign Language Film award is slowly growing out of the Academy’s archaic conception of it as a kind of elementary-school cultural fair, where nations were emphasized more than the films themselves. (To this day, the statuette is officially awarded to the winning country rather than the winning filmmaker, who at least gets to keep it as a kind of representative figure.)

That the Academy is allowing such hybrid-identity films to compete acknowledges that the notion of films and filmmakers belonging to single countries is an outdated one in this era of global film production — an era where even a brand-name Hollywood director like Brian De Palma had to call on France and Germany to finance his latest film. At the same time, their admission shows up the quaintness of the Academy’s existing system for the category, whereby the longlisting process is outsourced to competing countries, each required to select a single film to represent their entire national industry.

It’s a system that has long discriminated against outstanding foreign-language films whose only crime was to have had more than one country involved in its production — and one that has long been plagued by inconsistencies and double standards in the Academy’s own rulings on eligible national identity. Take 1994, for example, when two films in Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s landmark pan-European “Three Colors” trilogy were entered into the race. Switzerland claimed “Three Colors: Red,” a co-production with France and Poland, as its entry, and won the lion’s share of critics’ awards going into the nominations — only for the Geneva-set film to be disqualified by the Academy for not being sufficiently Swiss in its makeup.

In the same year, however, Poland was allowed to compete with the preceding chapter, “Three Colors: White,” despite it being no less international a co-production. (The irony, meanwhile, is that France wasn’t involved at all — despite the whole trilogy being themed around the country’s own national flag and identity.)

The Academy’s reasoning was that since the director was a Polish citizen, that made “White” a more valid submission than “Red” — which one might accept as a logical, if dispiritingly literal, stand if not for the fact that Japanese maestro Akira Kurosawa’s “Dersu Uzala” had won an Oscar nearly 20 years before… for the former Soviet Union. And the following year, Frenchman Jean-Jacques Annaud’s “Black and White in Color” pulled off an upset… for the Ivory Coast. Had the Academy specifically altered their policy, or were they merely making up the rules as they went along?

Odd kerfuffles like this continued to plague the category until matters came to head in 2005, when the Academy again took it upon themselves to disqualify one of the most acclaimed submissions in the race. France, Austria, Germany and Italy had all contributed to the production of Michael Haneke’s wholly Paris-set, French-language “Hidden,” but it was Austria who — as both a co-producing country and as the director’s home state — elected to enter the film. When the Academy ruled that the film had too many French elements to qualify as Austrian, the ensuing uproar was only amplified by the fact that no similar objection had been raised four years previously, when Austria had submitted Haneke’s “The Piano Teacher” — a Vienna-set film, sure, but one also made in French, in collaboration with France and with three French leads. Was it now merely a film’s milieu that made the difference?

Realizing that such arcane semantics regarding national identity were only digging an already irrelevant category’s grave deeper, the Academy wisely loosened the rules: from 2006 onwards, it was confirmed, films were no longer required to be in an official language of the submitting country, nor was the narrative required to take place there. The change bore fruit in its very first year, as Canada’s entry “Water” — an Indian-set, Hindi-language period drama from Canadian-Indian filmmaker Deepa Mehta — snagged a nomination. (On a less momentous but not insignificant note, nobody complained that Mexican nominee “Pan’s Labyrinth” told an entirely Spanish story with a heavily Spanish cast and crew.)  

So, progress. Not that the fundamentally dated architecture of the category isn’t still causing trouble. Last year saw Finland free to submit the French-language co-production “Le Havre” — but U.S.-born director Joshua Marston found himself disqualified from the race for the second time after his Albanian-made, Albanian-set film “The Forgiveness of Blood” was entered by Albania — the Academy only acting after rival filmmakers from the country voiced their displeasure. Marston had endured this disappointment seven years previously, when his arthouse hit “Maria Full of Grace” was entered by Colombia, and DQ’d on the same grounds. The keepers of this category may have got the idea of films having heavily-stamped passports, but globe-trotting filmmakers remain a problem for them.

Still, with “Amour,” “Lore” and “War Witch” — and others possibly yet to come — all raising the profile of melting-pot filmmaking in this year’s foreign-language race, it’s a happy sign that this beleaguered category is slowly inching its way around its own most restrictive obstacles. (We can only hope that obstinate voters of the variety described by Mark Harris don’t hold certain films’ mixed blood against them. They didn’t with “Water.”)

At some point, I’d venture, the Academy will have to scrap the national submissions process entirely, and take responsibility for choosing the best in the field — the way it does in every other category. For now, however, we’re in what will likely be a long, curiosity-riddled interim stage. I was discussing this on Twitter yesterday with another entertainment journalist who felt it was “silly” for “Amour” to be the Austrian submission. Well, yes and no. What silly is for there to be an “Austrian submission” in the first place.   

You know the drill. Offer up your need-to-knows in the comments and we’ll try to address a few questions at the end of this week’s podcast. We will already be addressing Oscar’s date changes, “Trouble with the Curve,” “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and foreign language submissions.

The Academy has announced key dates in the timeline for this year’s Oscars. We already knew the 85th Academy Awards were set for Sunday, February 24. Previously nominations for the Oscars were set for Tuesday, January 15, but the latest release has moved that date five days earlier to January 10. This is still nice for Sundance-goers who won’t have to worry about covering the announcement while at the fest, which runs January 17 – 27. But it’s also the first time they’ll be announced before the Golden Globes are held (on January 13).

Polls for nominations will close on January 3, while voting begins for the second phase of the circuit on February 8, meaning there is nearly an entire month between the nominations announcement and the opening of the polls. That’s a pretty long time. Usually it’s no more than two weeks or so. How will that time be used for marketing purposes? That’s a lot of days to fill, and a lot of time for the discussion to shift in interesting ways — unless, of course, we’re met with an undeniable this season, which is always possible.

The press release offers the following in the way of reasoning: “In an effort to provide members and the public a longer period of time to see the nominated films, the Academy will reveal the 85th Academy Awards nominations on January 10, five days earlier than previously announced.”

It also goes on to note that this will be the first time the Academy will provide its membership the opportunity to vote electronically. “Together with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Everyone Counts, the Academy has been developing an electronic voting process for more than a year,” it reads. “The Academy conducted extensive research and held numerous focus groups with its members to ensure a smooth transition and widespread adoption.”

However, during the pre-nominations phase, members will still continue to vote via paper ballot in the Best Animated Feature Film, Best Animated Short Film, Best Live Action Short Film, Best Documentary Feature, Best Documentary Short Subject, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Makeup and Hairstyling and Best Visual Effects categories “due to specialized screening schedules and processes.”

Key dates are as follows:

Friday, November 30, 2012: Official Screen Credits due

Saturday, December 1, 2012: Governors Awards presentation

Monday, December 17, 2012: Nominations voting begins

Thursday, January 3, 2013: Nominations voting ends 5 p.m. PT

Thursday, January 10, 2013: Nominations announced 5:30 a.m. PT, Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater

Monday, February 4, 2013: Nominees Luncheon

Friday, February 8, 2013: Final voting begins

Saturday, February 9, 2013: Scientific and Technical Awards presentation

Tuesday, February 19, 2013: Final voting ends 5 p.m. PT

Sunday, February 24, 2013: 85th Academy Awards presentation

Those of you who have been assuming Michael Haneke’s “Amour” is in an unassailable position for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar shouldn’t be feeling quite so confident after this morning’s news of the newest entrant in the race.

The French submission is always awaited more keenly than most at this stage: with 37 nods to date, France is the most-nominated country in the category’s history, even if they haven’t actually taken the gold in 20 years. It’s for this reason that, in any given year, the French entry tends to be regarded as a frontrunner by default — whether they’ve chosen particularly wisely or not. 

Their selection committee has made some daring choices in the past: think back to 2007, when they forsook what might have been a relatively easy nomination for “La Vie en Rose” to put forth the Iranian Revolution animation “Persepolis” instead. (They didn’t even crack the January shortlist.) This year, however, they have put commerce ahead of art with a strictly strategic choice: Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano’s feelgood box-office smash “The Intouchables.”

The selection of the hit culture-clash comedy will come as a blow to champions of Jacques Audiard’s higher-brow tearjerker “Rust and Bone,” who could be forgiven for thinking the Marion Cotillard vehicle (which also did pretty tidy business at home) had a decent shot of being picked. For the last five years, after all, France has gone with an acclaimed Cannes title — though only two of them (“The Class” and Audiard’s “A Prophet”) got past the submissions stages. (For similar reasons, some were holding out hope for Leos Carax’s absurdist odyssey “Holy Motors” — but even at its most adventurous, the committee is never that insane.)

“The Intouchables,” however, is an anomaly — and, frankly, has looked the obvious French submission for the better part of a year, since it started shredding all French box-office records upon its release in November 2011. Matters were eased further by the impossibility of the country submitting French-German-Austrian co-production “Amour” due to its ineligible release date in France. Austria got to do so instead — meaning the two highest-profile films in the race so far are, in the eyes of most viewers, effectively from the same country.

“The Intouchables” is by no means a critics’ film: even warmer reviews submit that this fable of a wealthy white quadriplegic given a new lease on life by his free-spirited, working-class black carer is on the condescending side, while its fiercest detractors have tried it on charges of crass cynicism and even outright racism.

The public, of course, cared not a whit, responding in droves to its slick, well-acted packaging of easy tears and easier laughs. Its commercial phenomenon status extends far beyond its home country: it currently stands as the highest-grossing French-language feature in global box-office history. Released Stateside in May by the ever-savvy Weinstein Company — who also hold the English-language remake rights — it has gone on to gross nearly $9 million. That makes it the highest-grossing foreign-language title of 2012 so far, and also lands it among the year’s Top 100 US grossers. 

As such, it arrives in the foreign-language race as one of the few submissions that the branch’s voters are likely to have already heard of, or even seen.  That’s a considerable point in favor of a film that already shouldn’t have much trouble speaking to the kind of older, more middlebrow-inclined voters who traditionally dominate this branch: they like to be broadly entertained while also being comfortably moved, and “The Intouchables” does so in the kind of way that inspires easy word of mouth. Count on the Weinsteins giving it their considerable campaign muscle — they’ve never won in this category before, though Miramax scooped its share of foreign Oscars back in the day.

There’s even been talk of the Weinsteins pushing it in general categories too, notably Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor — a category that star Omar Sy won in an upset at the Cesars earlier this year, beating eventual Oscar champ Jean Dujardin. That, however, seems a more remote possibility, and not only because the reigning Best Picture house has its hands full with such heavyweight hopefuls as “The Master,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and (perhaps) “Django Unchained.” You could argue that too much crossover success could complicate the playing field for their remake, to which Colin Firth was at one point attached; as it stands, a Best Foreign Language Film win would be a neat introduction.

Could it actually take the prize? Certainly, though it gives me no pleasure to imagine such an outcome. (After catching up with it recently, I side with the detractors.) Academy voters broke with recent form this year by actually given the critics’ darling the prize — but then again, “A Separation” wasn’t facing a pre-approved crowdpleaser. “Amour,” a far tougher and chillier sit than “The Intouchables,” could benefit from the Academy’s natural inclination toward the weighty, though the French film is sufficiently didactic and manipulative for voters to mistake it for something meaningful.

We’ve seen Haneke lose to light, tear-stained entertainment before in this category — though if Sony Pictures Classics succeeds in its campaign to net “Amour” top nominations for Best Picture, Director, Actor and/or Actress, that would further compel members to vote for it in the ghetto category. (Only three films have previously been nominated for Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film in the same year; none of them lost in the latter category.) Meanwhile, with “Rust and Bone” out of the running, Sony can now concentrate that film’s campaign around a Best Actress nod for Cotillard.

All of which is to say, with many more entries yet to roll in, this category is far more up in the air than some casual observers would have you believe. The winner could well be something far more below-the-radar than either of the presumed French-language frontrunners. 

Keep track of the submissions list at our Contenders page for the category.

When Warner Bros. shuffled “The Great Gatsby” on to 2013, there was an opportunity for another holiday bow on December 25 opposite “Django Unchained.” I had been wondering if any of the big latter-year films were going to jump on it but it started to seem like everyone was comfortable, until today, when Universal announced that it would be pushing Tom Hooper’s “Les Misérables” two weeks to that date.

Meanwhile, one wonders whether the film could end up with the date all to itself (at least as far as films of this sort go). I keep wondering whether “Django Unchained,” which was still shooting up until last month, will be ready in time. It surely has to be, given the revenue potential (and necessity) for The Weinstein Company. But with Quentin Tarantino working with a new editor — Fred Raskin — after the untimely passing of long-time collaborator Sally Menke, it might not be as fluid as usual. Of course, Raskin worked alongside Menke on the “Kill Bill” films, so he’s not totally fresh, but you never can tell how these things will go.

That’s neither here nor there, though. There’s no real reason to think “Django” won’t make it (and after all, Tarantino has been editing during production), but the news here is Universal’s announcement. The move separates “Les Misérables” from Warner’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” which is sure to gobble up plenty of the pre-holiday box office. “Zero Dark Thirty,” meanwhile, is set for December 19, so this puts Hooper’s film, along with Tarantino’s, as the last out of the gate.

Anne Thompson shrewdly notes that films in this position are in the precarious spot of having to meet awards-giving bodies’ screening and voting deadlines. And then there’s the issue of making screeners, which is a massive process after the final print is delivered.

The film will be Hooper’s follow-up to 2010’s “The King’s Speech,” which took home Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay. On paper, its an awards bait film if there ever was one. But that first trailer that released some time back gave me a weird feeling. I actually defended Hooper’s often maligned aesthetic for “The King’s Speech.” But here it seems to take an epic and reduce it to claustrophobic visuals. Hopefully I’m wrong.

Speaking of all this, I recently had it confirmed to me that Hugh Jackman would be the film’s only lead for the purposes of campaigning. None of the ladies (Anne Hathaway, Samantha Barks) will be getting a misrepresented lead actress push, and Russell Crowe — a co-leading character by some peoples’ measure — will be pushed for Best Supporting Actor.

“Les Misérables” opens everywhere Christmas Day.

The pre-release strategy for “The Master” was interesting. Unique, I guess is the word. The marketing side of this business is driven by the typical, but sometimes filmmakers chafe at having their work pitched in the usual ways. So you get someone like David Fincher or Paul Thomas Anderson who says, “Nope, we’re gonna do THIS.”

As far as screenings have been concerned, Anderson has clearly been all about getting it to fans first. We broke the news last month about the film’s first public screening following a special showing of “The Shining” in Santa Monica, and that tactic was employed multiple times thereafter with pop-ups in Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Austin, etc. And in most cases, fans were getting a look at the movie before the press.

Well, Anderson’s love affair with his flock stretches even further than that and their connection with “The Master” might be deeper than they even realize. It turns out, Paul Thomas Anderson’s fans may have had a significant hand in giving the film its title.

The Playlist recently caught wind of a Postmedia News article quoting Anderson thusly:

“Really, [the title of the film] was just a process of elimination. In fact, the Internet actually gave it its title first. A version of my script got out online years ago and they referred to it as ‘The Master,’ even though it didn”t have a title on it or anything. So we just ended up calling it ‘The Master.’ We never did find another title for the film.”

The Playlist is taking credit for this. The headline of that piece: “Paul Thomas Anderson says The Playlist named ‘The Master.'” But even in digging through the self-referential links, you’ll see the initial script review from the outlet notes that the screenplay, which had been making the rounds much like “There Will Be Blood” before it (and therefore was racking up quite a few script reviews), was “affectionately being dubbed ‘The Master’ by many.” That’s because Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd character was called “Master” in the script.

Indeed, the first mention of the title really goes all the way back to the Variety announcement of the project in December of 2009.

So with that in mind, and due respect to The Playlist, I think it’s fairer to say that the fans and internet obsessives who propagated the title, the Anderson cult, if you will, (folks like the hard-working guys at Cigarettes & Red Vines, for instance) were the ones really responsible for naming “The Master.”

Either way, chalk another one up for the internet. It’s alive! ALIVE!

Meanwhile, here’s a little bit of Anderson’s chat in the “Academy Conversations” program:

“The Master” is currently out in limited release. It expands further this Friday, September 21.

I guess I’m a little bit confused. After being told up one side and down the other to beware Robert Lorenz’s “Trouble with the Curve,” I found myself liking it just fine. It’s a bit unruly in spots and amateurly conceived in others, but never to detriment. And even Clint Eastwood’s grizzled performance, threatening to make good on the promise of “Gran Torino” (i.e. that he’ll be in the self-parody business from here on out) didn’t strike the sour chord I expected it to.

Then as the movie went along, I realized the framing — my framing — was all wrong. This isn’t Clint Eastwood’s movie. This is Amy Adams’s movie. And she’s great. Coupled with “The Master,” her work here further shows a dynamic range for the actress, who by the way landed three Oscar nominations in just six years, for those keeping score at home. And if you’re still not convinced, have a look at “On the Road,” where she shows up out of nowhere and gives a unique if brief take opposite Viggo Mortensen.

In Lorenz’s film, Adams stars as Mickey (you can probably guess the reference), a young professional doing a pretty good job of keeping distance between herself and the potential suitors in her life. There’s a reason, of course, and that’s the sense of abandonment she took away from her early life with a single father, Gus (Eastwood), who spent most of his time on the road scouting for Major League Baseball. The script (from writer Randy Brown) sets her up on a scouting trip that doubles as a therapy session and, along the way, lessons are learned, breakthroughs are made and a valid enough theme is woven throughout.

One thing the script does so well is tell a few parallel stories with increasing confidence. A colleague after this afternoon’s screening noted the classical nature of this, which is a good point. You don’t see it often (in this case, Gus and Mickey’s story is told against the backdrop of a discovery yarn about a young up-and-coming high school player), but there’s also the added virtue of a love story that actually works quite nicely.

And that’s where Justin Timberlake comes in. I bought him fully as a fellow scout of Gus’s (formerly scouted himself, with echoes of “Moneyball”) with eyes for Mickey, Mr. Right at the wrong time. But that’s another strand of the narrative that gets explored and, I would say, rather fully.

Not to go there with the Gene Shalit terminology, but I while “Trouble with the Curve” isn’t a home run, it’s a solid double, at the very least. Its ambitions are in check and its limits are known, but it finds its rhythm and it tells its story. I don’t mean to damn with faint praise but I don’t want to oversell it either. I was just charmed by what it wanted to get across, I guess.

What I’m curious about, however, is whether it’s Academy material. The sight-unseen notion has been a play for Eastwood in Best Actor, but that’s a mirage. Again, the story of the film is Adams, and I think the narrative will speak to older members who know what it’s like to lose touch and shoulder the burden of knowing more about life than their children. As well, it should spark for younger members all too familiar with how maddening communication breakdowns with parents can be at crucial times.

The whole thing just works. It might be hokey in spots, it might be conventional (it will surely be a commercial success), it might even be a shade treacly. But it’s not shallow, and it’s not lazy. And mist significantly, it sports another great performance from a consistently top-notch actress.

“Trouble with the Curve” opens September 21.