It’s been a few days since I’ve updated the longlist of submissions for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar — and, with the deadline exactly two weeks away, a few days amounts to a tall pile of new entries. I haven’t yet had time to investigate the finer points of such exotic-sounding submissions as Croatia’s “Cannibal Vegetarian” — cursory research tells me it’s less about cannibals than junkie gynaecologists — but a few higher-profile possibilities have entered along with the probable filler.

Before I get to those, however: I figured that with the submissions count up to 28 (expect that to double in the next fortnight), we have enough films to begin playing with some predictions. So you’ll find a highly malleable top five on the right-hand sidebar, drawn the pool of entries so far, with further rankings on the relevant Contenders page. None of it is to be taken too seriously, of course — least of all in this eternally confounding category. 

One film I pushed straight into that top five, though I remain concerned about how the branch’s more comfort-inclined voters will feel about it, is also one of the better films I’ve seen all year. Joachim Lafosse’s devastating, fact-inspired domestic drama “Our Children” was the film I most regretted missing at Cannes, where many critics questioned its placement in the Un Certain Regard strand rather than in Competition; catching up with it a month later at Karlovy Vary, where I reviewed it at some length, it proved to have been worth the wait.

So I’m delighted that Belgium has entered the film as their Oscar hopeful, continuing a recent streak of challenging selections that don’t play right into Academy voters’ hands. That gutsiness paid off last year with “Bullhead,” a brooding, violent farmland thriller that wound up among the final five nominees, I suspect with a little help from the branch’s more discerning executive committee. “Our Children” may or may not require similar assistance. It certainly has the raw emotional impact voters often respond to, but some may find its fictionalized account of the true-life case of a married Belgian mother-of-three driven to the most desperate of measures by a combination of spousal neglect and post-partum depression — I’ve leave it that for the spoilerphobes, though the film does begin where it ends — a little hard to take.

Working in its favor are comparatively familiar faces in the cast, with strong work from former “A Prophet” co-stars Tahar Rahim and Niels Arestrup, and a staggering lead turn from “Rosetta” star Emilie Dequenne that, in a perfect world, would be right in the thick of the Best Actress conversation. (She was rewarded by the Un Certain Regard jury at Cannes, which doesn’t normally hand out acting prizes.) The film skipped the Toronto fest, but will be having its North American premiere at the New York Film Festival, where its hunt for US distribution can continue. (It’s also at the London fest next month.) It may be my personal favorite film in the race at this stage, but I think it could be one to watch regardless.

Another major festival title to enter the race over the weekend is a more recent unveiling: Kim Ki-duk’s “Pietà,” which won the Golden Lion at Venice earlier this month (albeit in somewhat controversial circumstances) and also played Toronto. That may have made it an apparent no-brainer for South Korea’s selection board, though they’re an inconsistent bunch: they may have submitted Bong Joon-ho’s acclaimed “Mother” a few years back, but surprised in 2010 by slighting Lee Chang-dong’s Cannes winner “Poetry” in favor of an internationally obscure football drama.

This time, they’ve opted again for the highest-profile choice, though I don’t think that’ll help the country land their first nomination in the category. (They’ve never even made the shortlist.) If voters didn’t respond to “Mother,” it’s hard to see them really warming to Kim’s cruder, bloodier melodrama, which, going on to Toronto notices, looks to be more divisive than its initial keen reception on the Lido suggested. (As I said in my review last week, I wasn’t really sold.)

Every year brings some eyebrow-raising omissions in this category, thanks to various blind spots in the voting process — and the biggest of the season so far comes at the hands of Portugal. Most critics (myself included) were rooting for the Portuguese to submit Miguel Gomes’s black-and-white post-colonial romance “Tabu,” the clear cinephile sensation of this year’s Berlinale — I raved about it there, and have mentioned several times since that it remains my top film of 2012 so far.

Whether the Academy would have felt similarly enthused about this dreamily experimental wonder is debatable, but in any case, we’ll never know the answer — since Portuguese selectors have instead thought practically by submitting “Blood of My Blood,” a TV-rooted family melodrama that was the country’s buggest box-office hit of 2011. (It missed last year’s eligibility deadline by a mere week.) Reviews were respectable when it bowed at Toronto a year ago — Variety’s Robert Koehler deemed it a “high-class telenovela” — though nothing approaching the hosannas for “Tabu.” Oh well, something always has to slip through the net.

Another high-profile Berlin premiere rejected by its home country is Brillante Mendoza’s “Captive,” a visceral hostage thriller starring Isabelle Huppert that found few admirers at the February fest, though I was among them. The Philippines electors had the film on their shortlist, but instead elected to enter “Bwakaw,” a gentle story of the friendship between an elderly gay man and his dog, which Academy voters may find more palatable.

Also joining the list is Bosnia and Herzegovina’s “Children of Sarajevo,” a story of siblings orphaned during the Sarajevo siege that was warmly reviewed in Un Certain Regard at Cannes and could well impress voters. The Czech Republic was once a relatively regular nominee here, but hasn’t cracked the shortlist in nine years: they’ll be hoping to reverse that with “In the Shadows,” a 1950s-set police thriller about a Communist detective whose investigation of a seemingly commonplace robbery leads him into a clash with a Zionist German investigator. 

Joining the still-modest number of entries I’ve actually seen in Slovenia’s “A Trip,” a boisterous European riff on “Y tu Mama Tambien” that I encountered at Karlovy Vary, where it screened as part of Variety’s 10 European Directors To Watch programme. I rather liked its mordant answer to fratboy humor and its budget-conscious visual resourcefulness; I’m less convinced that older Academy voters will get it. 

Also tackling youth ennui, apparently, is Bulgaria’s entry “Sneakers” — not, I presume, a remake of the underrated Phil Alden Robinson caper. A more large-scale contender arrives from Norway in “Kon-Tiki,” an epic portrayal of the famous titular Pacific voyage undertaken by six scientists in 1947. The most expensive Norwegian feature produced to date, it’s been a box-office smash at home. Reviews at Toronto were more reserved, but Academy voters are often sympathetic to international attempts at Hollywood-style filmmaking.

That, I think, brings us up to date — though in the time I spent writing that piece alone, any number of new entries could have been announced. Check out the Contenders page for the full list as it stands.

Ben Affleck’s “Argo,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” and David O. Russell’s “Silver Linings Playbook.” With Venice, Telluride and Toronto in the rear view, those are the three films with the early stranglehold on the 2012-2013 Oscar season.

In the case of Affleck’s thrilling true story, an impressive ensemble carries the load and the zeitgeist has been unexpectedly tapped in very direct ways. In the case of Anderson’s artful Rorschach, a pair of compelling performances reflects a vibrant thematic treatise that is sure to court the cinephile vote this year. And in the case of Russell’s Toronto Audience Award-winning dip back into the world of quirk and comedy, an apparent (it’s the one I’ve yet to see) return to form for a veteran actor matched with a sure-fire Best Actress contender — and a lead with his fair share of praise — reflects a filmmaker keeping an impressive stride.

I mention the performances of each because the actors branch — the largest of the Academy — is sure to find plenty to appreciate in this trio. And that will be key, as always. This even in the case of “Argo,” which doesn’t have a single stand-out, though Alan Arkin will surely land his share of votes.

Films like “Amour” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild” are holding steady (particularly the former, which extended its festival run with Telluride and Toronto). But the new kids are on the block, and it’s only going to get busier.

In two weeks, the 50th annual New York Film Festival will join the party, and with it, Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi,” David Chase’s “Not Fade Away” and Robert Zemeckis’s “Flight.” But for a few more days, particularly with “The Master” already in release, this trio will be the talk of the circuit.

Greg Ellwood already outlined the awards potential of the early fall festival bows, but concentrating on these three, let’s dig in a bit specifically.

“Argo,” as I noted from Telluride, is a real player for Best Picture and Best Director. It’s a step up for director Affleck, even if actor Affleck doesn’t really demand as much consideration. And that’s fine, by the way. It works for the movie that he doesn’t let movie star moxie overshadow things. Alan Arkin — who shares a number of scenes with John Goodman — gets the film’s best comedic moments and could certainly be a Best Supporting Actor contender.

Elsewhere, the stellar crafts — from William Goldenberg’s tension-mounting film editing to Rodrigo Prieto’s crisp lensing to, particularly, design elements from Jacqueline West (costumes) and Sharon Seymour (production design) — will definitely be in the conversation. Film composer Alexandre Desplat is prolific as always, so I’d expect one of his more pronounced scores to catch traction before his work here, but who knows?

As for “The Master,” I have to be honest. My knee-jerk on the film (which I didn’t have kittens over like the rest of the critical community) was that Best Picture was a big long shot. The Weinstein Company has an interesting pair of films on its hands in these early days and one seems like more of an awards home run than the other, really. Paul Thomas Anderson’s film appeals to a much narrower audience than Russell’s, but nevertheless, one can tell the train is running away, and the sense of feeling compelled to vote for high art is always lurking.

So with Best Picture, assume Anderson’s direction to go hand-in-hand with any discussion. And his work on the page as screenwriter will certainly pop for that branch as well. Joaquin Phoenix is a sure thing for Best Actor and, assuming the studio sticks to a supporting actor push for co-star Philip Seymour Hoffman (who some argue as co-lead), he’s in there. Amy Adams, meanwhile, will be assisted by a very thin Best Supporting Actress race. But the story here is really the crafts of the film, from Jack Fisk’s (with David Crank) typically specific production design to Mark Bridges’s fetching costumes to, but of course, Mihai Malaimare Jr.’s lush, gorgeous and above all, thematically persistent 65mm cinematography.

Will composer Jonny Greenwood make headway with a notoriously in-club music branch? I can’t really say. But his work is a huge step up from “There Will Be Blood” and absolutely deserving. I also wonder if the film’s sound design will find some room with that branch as well. “Blood” landed a somewhat surprising Best Sound Editing nomination, remember.

And finally, “Silver Linings Playbook.” As mentioned, it won the Audience Award at the Toronto Film Festival yesterday, which in recent years has gone to such films as “The King’s Speech,” “Precious” and “Slumdog Millionaire.” I can’t comment personally, but it seems Jennifer Lawrence (Best Actress) and Robert De Niro (Best Supporting Actor) are well within the realm of possibility. Bradley Cooper could face a tighter race for Best Actor consideration, but he’s obviously in the conversation. Meanwhile, along with Best Picture and Best Director potential, David O. Russell’s work as a writer is sure to show up in the Best Adapted Screenplay race.

Crafts seem somewhat less likely, and for a contemporary dramedy like this, that’s not necessarily a surprise. Veteran editor Jay Cassidy could certainly make it in, though. I haven’t heard a lot about Danny Elfman’s original score, and he’s faced weird aversion from the branch in the past, but who knows?

And so, a trio of very, very different films launches us into the season, highly praised all. And soon enough, they’ll be joined by more. What will rise up to the bar they’ve set? And what won’t? We’ll see.

Guy and I have updated the Contenders section ourselves once more. I had mentioned some weeks back that Greg Ellwood would be joining us on that score. It didn’t happen when expected but I think we should be good to go for that on the next update. I’ll be sure to offer up some sort of post so you’ll know who’s handling which category (though, as always, clicking on the appropriate photo in the predictions sidebar will take you to that category’s contender page and the respective prognosticator’s thoughts on it).

For now, though, here’s what we’re thinking.

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.

It’s been too long since we last got together. Technical difficulties conspired to keep us away during the Toronto Film Festival, while a bout of a flu-like-thing kept us away while in Telluride. Alas, it’s all for the better, as we come to you this weekend with a full, measured slate of material. Let’s see what’s on the docket…

Beginning with Telluride, we discuss films like “Argo,” “Hyde Park on Hudson” and “The Gatekeepers” (well, we get to the latter two eventually) that were looking for an early boost there before venturing out into the rest of the season.

Though I was not at the Toronto fest, Anne was. Nevertheless, screenings of “Anna Karenina,” “Looper” and “The Master” in New York give us plenty to talk about together, while Anne has plenty of thoughts on others like “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Cloud Atlas” that I haven’t seen yet.

Since we last met, the Academy has taken care of a little business, namely tapping Jeffrey Katzenberg, D.A. Pennebaker, George Stevens Jr. and Hal Needham as this year’s Honorary Oscar recipients. We discuss.

And finally, after a big drought, reader questions! We address queries concerning where blockbusters like “The Avengers” and “The Dark Knight Rises” can expect to find themselves in the season this year, fringe performances that might be ones to watch and our festival regimens.

Have a listen to the new podcast below. IT’S A LONG ONE, but hopefully that will make up for the delay in finally kicking off the season. 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.

Well, the day has finally come — for those of you lucky enough to live in New York or Los Angeles, that is. After an enigmatic marketing campaign, and an unorthodox series of pop-up screenings preceding festival appointments at Venice — where it won Best Director, Best Actor and very nearly the Golden Lion too — and Toronto, Paul Thomas Anderson’s sixth feature film is here to dazzle and perplex the general public. I flipped for it in Venice (the next few months will have to be impossibly astonishing for it not to crack my year-end Top 5), and many top critics are similarly enthused — for the number-crunchers, its Metacritic score is currently a robust 87. Not everyone’s a believer in this gleaming but prickly movie, however: our colleague Drew McWeeny has doubts, and I anticipate some interestingly varied reactions from your good selves. (Awards expectations are similarly scattered, though I think it can go the distance.) Chime in below when you get a chance to see it and feel free to rate it above, as well. 

NEW YORK — With much fanfare leading up to the reveal, Disney finally launched the trailer for Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” this evening. The event was part of a Google Play cross-promotion with Spielberg and star Joseph Gordon-Levitt on hand in a Google+ Hangout to take questions from selected fans for 30 minutes after the trailer debuted.

The event was simultaneously broadcast on the ABC SuperSign in Times Square, where a modest group of people stopped to watch and snap photos as rush hour dwindled. Google users’ comments scrolled across the sign with exclamations like “Those are all gonna be great performances!” and “Anyone else smell the coming Oscar for Daniel Day-Lewis?”

Calling the production “one of the most compelling experiences” he has had making a film, Spielberg noted that it was important to get a penetrating and thorough look at Lincoln as a man, not as a myth. And one way into that was to focus on the final four months of his presidency, rather than the entire width and breadth of it, and his cues were taken from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book “Team of Rivals,” on which Tony Kushner’s screenplay is based.

“The last four months he was very, very focused on two issues,” he said. “One of course was ending the war and the second issue was passing the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery. To see him working on a specific action really gives you an idea of what it must have been like to be Abraham Lincoln, and not just to be him, but to be a member of his family, to be Robert Lincoln, to be Tad Lincoln, to be Mary Todd Lincoln.”

Gordon-Levitt seconded the thought, adding that for him, it was a relief to see the film dig in and present an icon as a human being, above all else. “We deify this man,” he said. “He’s on our five dollar bill. He’s in huge statues. He’s become this icon of American culture, and I just loved seeing a movie where he is a human being, that’s flawed, that makes mistakes, that has to compromise, because let’s face it, there’s a lot of that in our culture right now. We sort of take people and turn them into icons and symbols and stop treating them or thinking of them as human beings.”

Part of that sense of human frailty is evident, Gordon-Levitt said, in the Lincolns’ desire to keep their son, Robert — who the actor plays in the film — from enlisting in the Union Army. “They’ve already lost two sons and are sort of giving him special treatment to keep him out of the Army, which makes him feel like an outsider and very alienated and ashamed of himself,” Gordon-Levitt said. “And it just goes to show that the movie doesn’t paint Lincoln as this perfect monument but as a man that has really complicated issues to contend with.”

Regarding the collaboration with actor Daniel Day-Lewis, Spielberg said it was a privilege to be able to direct someone he views as arguably one of the greatest actors in the world. “Daniel does incredible preparation when he tackles any role,” he said, “and he really honored Lincoln by reading so much about him, even more than I ever did. He came up with his interpretation based on everything he read and everything he experienced just within his own process, and he just delivers Lincoln as I imagine, as we all imagine, Lincoln perhaps was to very, very many people in his life and in his administration.”

Spielberg made it a point of mentioning that the film will not have huge action scenes depicting Civil War battle or be presented on an epic canvas with sequences detailing the plight of 19th Century slaves. “This is the story of the fight to get this amendment passed,” he said. “You have to bring a little bit of knowledge of history and a little bit of context to what we’re going to present to you.”

The parallels to the modern socio-political environment weren’t overly seized upon in the discussion, but Gordon-Levitt’s comment about iconography certainly hinted at it. And Spielberg did, too, when he noted of his discoveries in developing the project, “I was surprised…at how [Lincoln] was able to ingratiate and put into great use men — smart, learned individuals — who were in opposition to him, who ran against him. His Secretary of State, who was his greatest supporter in this fight to get the 13th Amendment passed, ran against him for the nomination and lost, and Lincoln turned right around and put him in his cabinet.” One couldn’t help but think of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

“He was very bipartisan in the sense that he went for the best person for the job,” Spielberg continued. “He was very willing to listen to people who opposed him, who criticized him for being too slow [to act].”

And there seemed to be a glimmer of the modern parallel in Spielberg’s thoughts about what he’d like an audience to take away from the film, as well.

“I certainly would love you to take away the burden that leadership requires,” he said, “and the kind of weight that this kind of leader [carried] — especially this president, during a time when the country was torn into. The entire Constitution was in jeopardy. The founding fathers were in jeopardy of losing this democratic creation. And the kind of weight that Lincoln has to bear, the responsibility and his duty to the Constitution…

“All presidents swear an oath to the Constitution, to keep this country united, and when the country fell apart, Lincoln had to put it back together again, with a lot of help. But he bore total responsibility. And he was also trying to reassemble a family that was in jeopardy of dissolution. So I hope people can see the kind of burden that leadership requires, the kind of sense of real passion for something you really believe in. Lincoln believed in the American people.”

“Lincoln” opens November 9.

Some months back I pondered the idea of the dissolving of TomKat — and therefore, a flood of fresh Scientology headlines — adding a little extra leverage to the cause (if you will) for “The Master” this awards season.

The zeitgeist, you see, is a funny thing. It’s malleable in some ways. The world is always torn in a million different directions, strife, discovery, politics and the economy all having their day in some fashion. And if any movie were to take the abstract approach, “The Master” is certainly it. Now that many have seen the film, of course, the Scientology angle has been softened. But the idea of putting one’s faith and fate in the hands of another — government, religion, whatever — is still, and always, relevant.

But sometimes things line up specifically. Sometimes one doesn’t have to connect a lot of dots to present that, say, “Moneyball” tells a story of the difficult, painful process of change for the good around the idea that the sum of all parts is greater than one single entity, and that that reflects where we are as a country (even if that’s 100% true). Sometimes, like with Ben Affleck’s Iran hostage crisis film “Argo,” the reflections are much more defined.

The film premiered at this year’s Toronto Film Festival on the very day Canada closed its embassy in Tehran and announced the imminent expelling of Iranian diplomats from Canada. Meanwhile, the news this week is dominated by the breaching of the US embassy wall in Cairo as well as the storming of the consulate in Libya and the murder of US ambassador Christopher Stevens there. And today, protestors attempted to scale the wall of the US embassy in Yemen. These events eerily feel like scenes ripped right out of the movie, even if they are in response to an anti-Islam film rather than discord over providing asylum for a hated former leader.

But more than that, to take a few steps back, “Argo” is very much about global responsibility. An evergreen notion is what role a country ought to have in the interests of other nations’ prosperity. And “Argo” asks that question to an extent, amid a tale of one man’s responsibility for the six individuals he brazenly attempts to rescue.

“The West – we, the Canadians, the British – are having to examine what our roles have been historically,” Affleck told CBC News at the festival, “what the result has been for our involvement and…what the benefits are of getting into the ‘getting into business with people’ business, in terms of these leaders. I think [‘Argo”s] definitely relevant on a sort of global, political level.”

This kind of thing is putty for an awards season, not to diminish the very real-world nature of things. And earlier this week, Roger Ebert stepped out on a big limb in September of all months: “The winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture will be Ben Affleck’s tense new thriller ‘Argo,'” he declared. His reasoning was the crowd-pleasing nature of the narrative at the fest and his drawing a direct line to many recent Best Picture winners getting their leg-up in Toronto.

But I would suggest there is more to “Argo”‘s play than that. It’s film about the world tearing itself apart while simultaneously trying to mend itself. It’s a film about what we owe rather than what we’re due (even if some think the film owes Canada more than it offers, which I don’t fully understand). It’s a film about the responsibility we have for one another.

And given that it’s also about, well, Hollywood saving the day? That could be a formidable equation indeed.

With Telluride and Venice behind us, and Toronto winding down, the first, and biggest, wave of the fall festival season is just about over — but Fantastic Fest, the New York Film Festival and the London equivalent are all still lying in wait. With no major world premiere this year in the vein of previous coups like “Frost/Nixon” and “Fantastic Mr Fox,” London won’t be competing with the Big Apple (which boasts “Life of Pi” and “Flight”) for media attention, but it remains one of the most useful greatest-hits festivals on the circuit.

I was too tangled up in Venice business last week to report on the unveiling of the London lineup, but it’s a healthy blend of established festival hits, less celebrated discoveries and archive gems. 200-odd features are in the mix, around 40 of which I’ve already seen — affording me plenty of room to explore the farther corners of the programme when my coverage begins next month.

Big prizewinners from Sundance, Berlin and Cannes — including “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Caesar Must Die,” “Sister,” “Reality” and, of course, “Amour” — are all present and correct, though it’s surprising to see neither of the Venice jury’s favorites, “The Master” and “Pieta,” joining them. Toronto selections set to receive their first airing across the pond include “Argo,” “End of Watch,” “Quartet,” “Seven Psychopaths” and closing film “Great Expectations”; Brits impatient to clamp their eyes on “Cloud Atlas,” “The Impossible” and the like, however, will have to wait a little longer. (Bar, of course, an appearance in the annual Surprise Film slot.)

Under the watch of newly appointed fest director Clare Stewart — formerly in charge of the Sydney Film Festival — a few changes have been made to the structure of the programme. Chief among these is the division of the films into thematic strands, as opposed to the more precise geographic sections of yore, with each strand led by a Gala film. Tidily enough, “Amour” heads up the Love strand; “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” the Dare strand (though I didn’t find the film terribly daring when it opened Venice); Romanian Oscar hopeful “Beyond the Hills” the Journey strand; British black comedy “Sightseers” the Laugh strand;  “The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology” the Debate strand; Bollywood actioner “Chakravyuh” the Thrill strand; “A Liar’s Autobiography” the Cult strand; and French animation “Ernest & Celestine,” which I flipped for in Cannes, the Family strand.

The festival’s awards, meanwhile, have been beefed up, with shortlists for the established prizes expanded to a dozen titles each. Top of the heap is the festival’s Best Film award, which was introduced three years ago — “A Prophet,” Russian character thriller “How I Ended This Summer” and “We Need to Talk About Kevin” make up the already-formidable winners list.

I’m not sure what the process was for compiling this year’s Best Film nominees, though Stewart’s team seems to have largely steered clear of films already prominently honored at other festivals. Palme d’Or victors “Amour” doesn’t make the cut, for example, though unawarded Cannes hit “Rust and Bone” (review) does. As do two non-Competition champs from the Croisette: Un Certain Regard winner “After Lucia” and Directors’ Fortnight winner “No” (review).

Venice winners in the running include Italy’s “It Was the Son” and Israel’s “Fill the Void,” which I liked a great deal. Also up for the award is Australian Oscar submission “Lore” — perhaps my most anticipated title of the fest. Much of the shortlist, meanwhile, has been plucked from the Toronto lineup, not all of them glowingly reviewed, and three of them British: Michael Winterbottom’s “EVERYDAY,” Sally Potter’s “Ginger & Rosa” (deemed a disappointment by our colleague Greg Ellwood) and Martin McDonagh’s “Seven Psychopaths” — deemed a slight disappointment by yours truly last night. More on that at another point.     

Festival veteran “Beasts of the Southern Wild” may seem to many an obvious frontrunner for the Sutherland Award for Best Debut Feature — yes, it hasn’t opened in the UK yet. I’ve a feeling, however, the jury may choose to look a little further afield: fellow Sundance success “My Brother the Devil,” a sharp study of Muslim gangsters in East London, and unsettling Brazilian society patchwork “Neighbouring Sounds” would make superior alternatives in my book, and those are just the two I’ve seen.

Full list of nominees (including the Best Documentary and Best British Newcomer categories) below. The London Film Festivals runs from 10 to 21 October; keep an eye out, as usual, for our coverage.   

Best Film

“After Lucia,” Michel Franco
“End of Watch,” David Ayer
“EVERYDAY,” Michael Winterbottom
“Fill the Void,” Rama Burshtein
“Ginger & Rosa,” Sally Potter
“In the House,” Francois Ozon
“It Was the Son,” Daniele Cipri
“Lore,” Cate Shortland
“Midnight’s Children,” Deepa Mehta
“No,” Pablo Larrain
“Rust and Bone,” Jacques Audiard
“Seven Psychopaths,” Martin McDonagh

Best Debut Feature (Sutherland Award)

“Beasts of the Southern Wild,” Benh Zeitlin
“Clip,” Maha Milos
“The Comedian,” Tom Shkolnik
“Eat Sleep Die,” Gabriela Pichler
“My Brother the Devil,” Sally El Hosaini
“Neighbouring Sounds,” Kleber Mendonca Filho
“The Samurai That Night,” Masaaki Akahori
“Shell,” Scott Graham
“Ship of Theseus,” Anand Gandhi
“Sleeper’s Wake,” Barry Berk
“Tomorrow,” Andrei Gryazev
“Wadjda,” Haifaa Al Mansour

Best Documentary (Grierson Award)

“Beware of Mr Baker,” Jay Bulger
“Canned Dreams,” Katja Gauriloff
“The Central Park Five,” Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon
“The Ethnographer,” Ulises Rosell
“For No Good Reason,” Charlie Paul
“Free Angola and All Political Prisoners,” Shola Lynch
“Les Invisibles,” Sebastien Lifshitz
“Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God,” Alex Gibney
“The Summit,” Nick Ryan
“Turned Towards the Sun,” Greg Olliver
“Village at the End of the World,” Sarah Gavron
“West of Memphis,” Amy Berg

Best British Newcomer

Rowan Athale, “Wasteland” (writer-director)
Sally El Hosaini, “My Brother the Devil” (writer-director)
Fady Elsayed, “My Brother the Devil” (actor)
Scott Graham, “Shell” (writer-director)
Eloise Laurence, “Broken” (actor)
Rufus Norris, “Broken” (director) 
Chloe Pirrie, “Shell” (actor)
Tom Shkolnik, “The Comedian” (writer-director)

For casual Oscar-watchers, the Cannes Film Festival may seem prime hunting ground for Best Foreign Language Film candidates, but it hasn’t turned up much so far — only two submissions have emerged from this year’s programme. The first of these was obvious: Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winner “Amour,” eventually selected as Austria’s entry. 

The second is similarly predictable: eyebrows would have been raised if Romania hadn’t submitted “Beyond the Hills.” Cristian Mungiu’s long-awaited follow-up to his 2007 Cannes champion, “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” earned a raft of glowing reviews — if not quite the unanimous veneration that greeted his previous film — upon its premiere back in May, and was the only film in Competition to take more than one jury award: Best Screenplay for Mungiu and Best Actress for young novices Cosmina Stratan and Cristina Flutur. (As with the recent kerfuffle in Venice, the latter prize was something of a compromise: “Amour” lead Emmanuelle Riva was reportedly the jury’s first choice.) 

The selection of Mungiu’s film throws down an interesting gauntlet of sorts to this voting branch, for the director’s last film remains something of a thorn in the their side. Just as “The Dark Knight” is widely — if not quite accurately — regarded as the film that triggered a change in the structure of the Best Picture category when it failed to make the cut in 2008, “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” is similarly perceived in relation to the foreign-language race.

The category had long been plagued with controversial omissions and decisions, but so great was the critical outcry when Mungiu’s lavishly acclaimed drama about illegal abortion in Communist Romania failed even to make the January shortlist — its tough subject matter and deliberate construction going over the heads of more conservative voters — that the Academy was spurred into action. (The slighting of French animated feature “Persepolis” also factored into the hullabaloo.) The next year, the system was rejigged with the introduction of an executive committee to rescue worthy films not initially voted to the shortlist by the general branch — the system, of course, that prevails today.

Whether by the committee’s hand or otherwise, allowing Mungiu’s latest onto the shortlist this time would be a tidily symbolic gesture, indicating the change that has occurred in this troublesome category over the last five years. It would finally break the category’s defiant resistance to New Romanian Cinema: it may be one of the most significant movements in world cinema this century, but even with the committee in place, no Romanian film has yet cracked even the January shortlist, despite such major, prize-laden selections as “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu,” “Police, Adjective” and, of course, “4 Months.”

So, “Beyond the Hills” has a lot going for it on paper, but what of the film itself? That may be where we hit a slight snag. As I said above, the film garnered a lot of lofty praise at Cannes, but I couldn’t help sensing a faint kneejerk quality to some of the hosannas — I’ve read and spoken to few who think it’s quite on the level of “4 Months.” I certainly didn’t think so: Mungiu’s protracted study of a young woman wrestling an Orthodox convent for her childhood friend’s soul is expertly composed and pleasingly complex in its moral fretwork, but it also feels self-regardingly languorous, calculated in its dramatic reversals, in a way that the crisp, candid “4 Months” never did.

If I’m surprised at just how little I’ve thought of “Beyond the Hills” since May, it doesn’t seem likely that the branch voters will warm to it in greater numbers than they did to “4 Months.” Arguably the more “difficult” but less rewarding film, it could well be one the executive committee scoops up to make a point.

Meanwhile, Hungary has also opted for a challenging top festival winner in the form of Benedek Fliegauf’s “Just the Wind,” a harrowing true-life study of extreme racial violence in the country over a 24-hour period, based on the case of five Romany families gunned down by white supremacists in the all-too-recent past. It won the runner-up Grand Prix at the Berlinale, a fitting reward for its startling formal relay of perspective and menacing accumulation of inoperable dread — I’d be lying if I said it was one of my favorite films there, but it was certainly among the most coldly accomplished. I sense its medicine will be too tough for the voters, but it’s a laudable choice of submission.

Not to be crass, but it struck me yesterday that a screening of “Anna Karenina” followed by moderating a Q&A with Kristen Stewart (along with Walter Salles and Garrett Hedlund for “On the Road”) was an interesting juxtaposition. Young lady errs and gets maligned by society. Hmm. But stripping the tabloid away from a persona is always a good thing, and spending a few hours with Stewart, first on stage then later in the evening at an after-party, really endeared me to her, I must say.

People put their best face on in this game so you’re always going to be charmed, seduced, wooed by the “please like me” thing of it all. But Stewart (who was nevertheless exposed to the film industry from a very early age) is a very normal girl in the throes of very abnormal circumstances. And her “best face” is difficult to manage. She squirms on stage in between the smoothly collected Hedlund and the cerebral Salles. She feels like she doesn’t belong, but she desperately wants to. Indeed, she thinks she deserves to.

A film like “On the Road” (as well as “The Runaways” and “Welcome to the Rileys” before it) feels like a step toward putting a little distance between her and the franchise that made her, a yearning for the legitimacy someone like Emma Watson is searching for now. It’s hard, though, when you’ve been that pigeonholed, and the perception of what you have to offer has been that ingrained in the pop culture consciousness. And that’s if you’ve even succeeded at getting people to look at the work rather than the image portrayed in “Us Weekly.”

At one point during the on-stage discussion, Stewart recalled working on the film and being transfixed by the opportunity and the talent involved. “Look, I’m just a stupid kid but I totally deserve to be here,” she would humbly but assertively say when offering this or that suggestion during the collaborative process. And it was a big, bright, illuminated sign that could easily serve as the thesis of Jack Kerouac’s generation-defining work: I’m just a stupid kid, but I totally deserve to be here.

That is, in part, what drew Salles to the project, which has languished as “the unfilmable” for decades. After making the great South American road trip movie in 2004’s “The Motorcycle Diaries,” he moved on to the great North American road trip. The films separately “tell stories of socio-political and cultural change,” he told the audience. “And they’re about learning to grow up, which is interesting. Because growing up is hard.”

Immediately the notion brought me back to Stewart, learning to grow up, but with the whole world watching. And it’s not just growing up in general but growing up as an actress. Later the 22-year-old told me about how nervous she always gets during a Q&A because of the balance of comfort with her colleagues and the sense that she is representing them, to an extent. “On one hand it’s like, it’s just a bunch of actors,” she said. “But then I’m like, shit, it’s a bunch of actors! They care about what I have to say!”

You can tell the experience, particularly working with this cast and being guided by someone like Salles through the journey, has been life-changing. And it’s a bit surprising for her. When she first read the novel, she said she couldn’t relate to the Marylou character at all. And more than that, “you don’t get a sense of her heart or her mind in the novel because of how it’s written,” she told the audience.

But after all, the character was based on someone with a heart and a mind of her own: Luanne Henderson. So Stewart was eager to get inside her head. She met with Henderson’s daughter to help fill in this and that, but ultimately, she was completely taken by a person she kept calling “magic.” And given that Henderson passed away just two years before shooting began, “I felt like she was with me,” Stewart told the audience.

However, the actors in the film aren’t depicting real-life characters, and that’s something Salles would keep telling them during production. “You’re not playing Jack Kerouac, you’re playing Sal Paradise,” he would tell Sam Riley. “You’re not playing Neal Cassady, you’re playing Dean Moriarty,” he would tell Hedlund. And, “You’re not playing Luanne, you’re playing Marylou,” he would tell Stewart. The distinction is important, because while Sal, Dean and Marylou are characters fleshed out in their own right in the novel, they are also archetypes for a generation, and embossing those highlights is key to the greatness of what “On the Road” is.

The reverse is in the cards for Stewart. “Kristen Stewart” is an archetype right now. The two words conjure tabloid imagery and big box office romance spectacle. For many, they don’t feel real. They’re ethereal. But — and not that this should be a news flash — there is flesh and blood, desires and dreams, commitment and passion beneath that archetype. There is a Luanne to Stewart’s Marylou, and she’s finding her — or perhaps, more to the point, we are — one humble step at a time.

(As promised, we still have a couple of straggler reviews left to wind down our Venice coverage, kicking off with the film that wound up taking the gold — and which I caught up with on the festival’s final evening.)

VENICE — As a general rule of thumb, no film that opens on an image of a rusty meat hook is going to rival “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” in the innocuous-crowdpleaser stakes. Sweatily, almost loving lit in such a way that suggests the “Saw” franchise hasn’t entirely missed batty Korean auteur Kim Kim-duk’s cultural radar, that hook – which almost certainly has never been used for curing Christmas hams – promises a baseline of nastiness from which this elevated exploitation thriller never deviates, whether tilting into geometrically ironic black comedy or the florid maternal melodrama implied by the title. There’s a lot going on in “Pietà,” but with most of it falling under the column of extreme suffering and humiliation in variously high keys, it won’t feel that way to those with only one eye on the bubbling plot. 

Though not the most violent or gleefully grotesque entry in the modern K-thriller canon, “Pietà” must nonetheless rank among the most self-consciously despairing. When the protagonist of the piece is a below-zero debt collector whose MO is irreparably crippling non-payers and reaping the disability insurance, it’s clear that Kim’s morality tale is working intricately to quash the construct of morality itself in contemporary society. 

Set in Cheonggyecheon, a poverty-soiled stretch of inner-city Seoul where even the lightest of industry has fallen to severe loan-shark rule, “Pietà” is yet another cinematic response to the global economic downturn of the last few years, taking rather an atypically humorless hard line against capitalism – though whether that social corruption informs or merely exacerbates the base human evil on ample display here may be more of a subject for debate than this reliably ungiving filmmaker intends. Either way, there’s a lot of impressively thorough maiming, quasi-incestuous rape and eel-based cruelty to factor in before opening that discussion. 

The aforementioned debt collector (played with a threatening aura of sustained sulk by Lee Jung-jin) is named Kang-do; I endeavored to resist a regrettable pun about his having a kang-do approach to his profession, but he is introduced to us as an appropriately efficient and instruction-bound enforcer, systematically (and quite literally) breaking down his employees’ debtors with well-aimed blows to the ribs, limbs, spine – whichever injury hasn’t been shown to us most recently. You’d call him automaton-like if not for the tight insinuation of enjoyment in his demeanor; when one victim refers to him as “the devil” – true to the title, there’s a lot of Christian imagery at play in this seemingly secular film – he takes it as one would a client’s compliment. 

Less accepting of this slur, and capable of wielding some paralyzing damage herself, is Min-sun (Cho Min-soo, a wry presence in a film not big on subtleties), the mournfully beautiful older woman who begins stalking him, leaving food on his doorstep and offering unsolicited assistance in his hit jobs. When she finally claims to be his long-lost mother, having left him as an infant to fester psychologically, it’s hard to imagine that he came from any womb at all. Kang-do is pretty skeptical himself, forcing his mother to prove her maternal devotion such a series of absurdly denigrating challenges. When she passes them in his eyes, they adopt each other not just as friends but as collaborators – but the unfamiliar burden of personal connection erodes Kang-do’s professional resolve, as he begins showing uncharacteristic cracks of mercy that, in a neatly-reversal strewn final act, wind up showing very little to him. 

The softening effect on a hardman of a female presence (usually a girlfriend, here a mother, though Kang-do and Min-sun don’t have a lot of respect for boundaries) is a fairly standard story arc in Hollywood and beyond. However, in this uninhibited but not exactly progressive film – which you could retitle “Stop! Or My Mom Will Stab” for a multiplex audience that would appreciate the lushness of its violence, if little else – the woman’s influence doesn’t seem to ameliorate violence so much as divert its current. 

Recent Korean cinema, both within and outside of the thriller form, has bred a curious sub-genre: studies of older women attempting to renegotiate their sons’ violent legacies. Bong Joon-ho’s far richer and even more frenziedly operatic “Mother” will be an obvious point of comparison for many; Lee Chang-dong’s opalescent character study “Poetry” less so, but “Pietà” archly shares with both films an interest in the mutation and occasional consistency of personal sin across the generations. Meanwhile, the title’s alignment of the mutually blood-stained Min-sun and Kang-do with the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ is the queasiest joke in a film of many, even if Cho Min-soo’s perfect porcelain face seems made up to equal specifications of Madonna and MILF. 

It may seem a provocation to many Western eyes, but “Pietà” actually marks something of a safe step back for Kim – or at least a return to the more audience-cooperative form of “3-Iron,” after a more experimental, documentary-inspired run that either culminated or bottomed out with last year’s unwatchable (though somehow Cannes-awarded) faux-video diary “Arirang.” His latest is certainly more satisfyingly, even rigidly, narrative-based – you can practically hear the resolutions clicking into place in the film’s taxingly shrieky but cleverly precise final act – though mileage will vary on the emotional payoff to be gained from watching profoundly unpleasant people lay their demons, and sometimes themselves, to rest. 

Formally, however, the director isn’t out of the woods yet. What’s hardest in “Pietà” to reconcile with the widespread gasps of admiration (and, of course, the Golden Lion) that greeted it on the Lido is the rampantly grubby ugliness of the whole thing. Shot in particularly mangy digital, with compressed compositions that lend every set the appearance of a moderately outsize matchbox bit with a bare bulb, it emphatically opts out of the technical bravado wielded by extravagantly grim peers like “I Saw the Devil”; you’d say Kim was extending his flirtation with vérité if the plotting weren’t so large and so shrill. Nasty is as nasty does, and this lurid if aspirational potboiler does its thing, but the camera could have been let in on the joke.

Oh me, oh my. Trailers for trailers. I guess they’re here to stay.

Last week we gave you the heads up that the trailer for Steven Spielberg’s hotly anticipated biopic “Lincoln” will drop on Thursday as part of a bizarre Google+ hangout thing. And it’ll be screened in Times Square to boot. But to make sure everyone gets the picture, a preview of the preview has landed today, representing the first footage of the film to yet be revealed. The 44 seconds features what I imagine is a touch of John Williams’s original score and is carried through by dialogue from Union soldier to Daniel Day-Lewis’s 16th Commander-in-Chief.

The film will surely enter the season amid a lot of speculation and awards chatter. Much of that is thanks partly to numbskulls like me, who write things like, “[The project] is a marriage of artist and material that couldn’t be packed with more potential, a portrait of another very divided time and the one man who could collect the strands and strengthen the ties that bind a nation,” as I did in this season’s introductory Oscar column two weeks ago.

The thing is, I talk to a lot of people with films in play this season, and even those banking on their own projects can’t wait to see if this will indeed be “the one” this season. Of course, that’s partly deflection. No one wants the harsh scrutiny of the early spotlight and they’re more than willing to concede it to another film in September. But I sense genuine anticipation there.

We’ll all know in a couple months when the film finally hits theaters. And we’ll have at least an even better idea in three days when the trailer finally drops. In the meantime, here’s a taste.

Interesting side note to all of this: In case you didn’t know, Grantland writer Mark Harris is going the ethical route this year and has decided to bow out of Oscar coverage. The reason, of course, is the fact that his husband, Tony Kushner, wrote the screenplay for “Lincoln” and therefore it’s quite obviously a conflict of interest. I’ll miss Mark’s “Oscarmetrics” coverage this season, as his always a fresh take, but the gesture is surely a refreshing one.

Ever since I first heard word of Robert Zemeckis’s “Flight” back in the early summer, and certainly since the trailer dropped some time later, it’s been at the top of my list of anticipations for the year. It’s exciting to me that a mid-budget, adult, character-driven drama from a major director with a movie star at its center has been made. They seem all too rare.

It was doubly exciting to see the New York Film Festival tap the film as its closing night gala, part of a defining 50th anniversary slate that really announces the fest as a significant stop for awards season contenders. I’m counting the days until that premiere and my fingers are crossed that all the positive word I’ve heard on the film bears out.

Meanwhile, though, there’s a foundation being laid. We’ve had Denzel Washington tapped for potential Best Actor consideration every since we first launched the Contenders section for the 2012-2013 Oscar season, but you can finally see the gears turning on the upcoming campaign.

The New York Times’ Terrence Rafferty got a look at the film in advance of the fest for the purposes of writing a profile of sorts on Washington in today’s Sunday edition. Somewhat clumsily pitched as a “what makes him tick” kind of piece, Rafferty nevertheless gets some nice thoughts from a few of the actor’s past and present collaborators.

Here’s John Goodman, who co-stars in “Flight” and also starred with Washington in 1998’s “Fallen”:

“He”s one of those cats who does a lot of preparation, which makes him very easy to work with.”

And Jonathan Demme, who directed Washington in 1993’s “Philadelphia” and 2004’s “The Manchurian Candidate”:

“I think of him as an architect. When he arrives on the set he”s ready to start building the scene…It was Denzel who made me realize, ‘Oh yeah, it”s the actors who are the final storytellers, really.” We prepare the production and set up the shots, but then the camera is rolling, and the actors are telling the story of the movie. All the great actors are great storytellers, they have to be.”

And how about Norman Jewison, who directed the actor in Best Picture nominee “A Soldier’s Story” in 1984 and to a Best Actor nomination in 1999’s “The Hurricane”:

“I noticed right away that he had tremendous concentration. He”s very analytical. On ‘Soldier”s Story” I could see how curious he was about the relationship between the actor and the camera. He”d played the part onstage, and as the filming went along, I saw him start to take the performance down, to make it subtler.”

All of this is mixed in with Washington’s own thoughts on his processed, pressed for particulars from Rafferty about what makes him tick. It does the job, certainly, and in advance of the film’s NYFF premiere, sets the stage for a major movie star performance.

I can’t wait.

Seeing the reactions to Derek Cianfrance’s “The Place Beyond the Pines” land on Twitter yesterday, I still couldn’t quite get a handle on what to expect when I finally see the film. I was a huge fan of the director’s 2010 indie “Blue Valentine,” and particularly Ryan Gosling’s performance therein. Gosling was robbed of an Oscar nomination for one of the year’s best performances, but at least co-star Michelle Williams was noticed.

But reactions to Cianfrance and Gosling’s latest collaboration, which also stars Bradley Cooper and Eva Mendes, seemed a bit split. Some found it impeccable and another step up. Others, like HitFix’s Greg Ellwood, found it to be lacking.

Calling the film “uneven” from the start, Greg wrote that “the script feels like a worked over mash-up of too many familiar ideas and movie cliches.” I hope I beg to differ. But in the meantime, “Pines” has found a nice home for not-so-easily-defined indie dramas. Focus Features has announced its acquisition of the title, with plans for a 2013 release.

“Derek Cianfrance has made a bold, epic, and emotionally generous saga, once again showing a master”s hand in eliciting searingly beautiful performances from the actors with whom he collaborates,” Focus CEO James Schamus and president Andrew Karpen said jointly via press release.

Added Cianfrance, “The Focus team”s ability to work in partnership with writers and directors is known and respected by the film community. Their passion for this very personal project is why I know they are the right home for our new movie.”

The Weinstein Company picked up “Blue Valentine” out of Sundance in 2010 and seeded it throughout the year. Getting a nice publicity boost from an MPAA dispute later in the year, the company managed to keep the film in the minds of critics and Academy voters come year’s end. We’ll see if Focus can manage similar success with Cianfrance’s follow-up.

The Toronto Film Festival is on-going through September 16.

VENICE — Sorry for the delay there. The wi-fi in the press room went haywire, so I had to bolt the second the Golden Lion was announced and cycle furiously back to my apartment to get online again, like a lanyard-wearing Nancy Drew.

Clearly, however, technical difficulties weren’t just limited to the press room, as all manner of crossed signals and mixed messages made for the most confusing festival awards ceremony I’ve ever seen — and that was before word leaked of an abrupt switch, forced by festival brass, in the jury’s choice for the top prize.

After jury president Michael Mann announced at the start of the ceremony that no film could be given more than one award, two films were given a pair of statues. Minutes later, two winners were handed the wrong trophies, and were called back onto stage to exchange awards. And finally, it has emerged that film the jury deemed overwhelmingly the best in show hasn’t won the award for, well, best in show. Confused? So are we — and you didn’t have to watch this all play out in Italian.  

Here’s how it apparently played out, according to The Hollywood Reporter: the jury was so dazzled by Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” that they voted to hand not only the Golden Lion for Best Film, but the Silver Lion for Best Director too, with a joint Best Actor prize for Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix to boot. That’s how much they liked it. 

Such a sweep of the top categories may be commonplace at the Oscars, but it’s very rare indeed in the festival world — it happened at Cannes with “Barton Fink” in 1991 (though rules have since been changed to prevent another such occurrence), but it’s unprecedented at Venice. The Silver Lion may technically be termed a directing prize, but in festival circles, it’s regarded as a runner-up to the Golden Lion — a silver medal, as befits its name.

Festival organizers thought the trio of awards was overkill — redundant, even — and instructed the jury to reallocate one of the prizes. That’s understandable enough. Less clear is why the jury then decided to take the top prize away from Anderson’s film, and hand it to their second favorite, Kim Ki-duk’s “Pieta,” instead. (I’ll have some more thoughts on that when I finally see “Pieta” tonight; schedule clashes conspired to make me miss its initial screenings.) It makes some sense of Mann’s initially cryptic speech at the beginning of the ceremony, in which he stated that the jury paid particular attention to the wording of the award titles, and implied that certain awards should be regarded as equal.

(The trophy switcheroo, incidentally, didn’t concern “Pieta.” Rather, the confusion was between the absent Anderson’s Silver Lion, accepted on his behalf by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and “Paradise: Faith” director Ulrich Seidl’s Special Jury Prize, which effectively amounts to the bronze medal, in this scenario.)

So, it would appear a combination of festival politics and eccentric logic has cost “The Master” a major coup, though it hardly seems fair to Kim Ki-duk either: nobody likes winning on a technicality. It’s fortunate, at least, that this whole fiasco revolves around a director as indifferent to the whole process as Anderson: if the man gave one shit about what awards he gets given, he’d have been at the ceremony. And even ignoring all the smoke and mirrors, it’s still nice to see “The Master” — for my money, the best film at Venice by some distance — recognized in any capacity. (In the long list of preliminary honors from alternative juries announced before the ceremony, it also won the most prestigious one: the FIPRESCI Critics’ Award.)

I’m particularly thrilled that both its leads shared the Best Actor award: going into the ceremony, all the buzz had been about Phoenix, but the superb Hoffman deserves just as much credit as his co-star — if not a teeny bit more. (Phoenix, like Anderson, was not in attendance — both men being unable to travel back to Venice in time after the film’s Toronto premiere on Friday. This again left the charmingly rumpled Hoffman to accept for both of them, after his own rather hurried flight back. “I put this suit on in the bathroom, so don’t judge,” he quipped.) Both men, meanwhile, are firmly on course for Oscar nominations, though it remains to be seen how Hoffman will be categorized — this joint award underlines my perception that the mean are co-leads, but campaign strategists probably won’t see it that way,

Against all this confusion, the other winners are, sadly, being treated rather as afterthoughts. It’s delightful to see 18 year-old Israeli actress Hadas Yaron, so luminous in Rama Burshtein’s well-regarded “Fill the Void,” recognized with the Best Actress prize, and not merely the Marcello Mastroianni award for newcomers. (The downside is that the latter award went to Italian actor Fabrizio Falco, who’s quite startlingly terrible as a crazed truth-teller in Marco Bellocchio’s euthanasia-themed melodrama “Dormant Beauty,” but them’s the breaks.)

It’s also interesting to see some recognition for Seidl’s prickly parable of extreme religious faith, the second part in his “Paradise” trilogy — though I rather preferred “Paradise: Love,” which went unawarded in Cannes. I presume the concluding chapter, “Paradise: Hope,” is Berlin-bound; it’ll be interesting to see if the director can earn some hardware there.

Olivier Assayas looked like he was hoping for more than the Best Screenplay prize for “Something in the Air,” his moderately autobiographical reflection on 1970s radicalism — though its seems a reasonable enough hat-tip to an intelligently constructed film that I nevertheless don’t think is one of his finest. The technical prize, meanwhile, was handed to Italian cinematographer-turned-director Daniele Cipri, who shot his own family drama “It Was the Son.” I haven’t seen it, but by all accounts it was no visual feast — perhaps the jury merely looked upon the award as a convenient way to shoehorn in some recognition for another film they liked. Seems a mite dubious, but it’s unlikely to be their most questioned decision.

JURY AWARDS 

Golden Lion: “Pieta,” Kim Ki-duk

Silver Lion (Best Director): “The Master,” Paul Thomas Anderson

Special Jury Prize: “Paradise: Faith,” Ulrich Seidl

Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix, “The Master”

Best Actress: Hadas Yaron, “Fill the Void”

Best Screenplay: “Something in the Air,” Olivier Assayas

Technical Achievement Award: “It Was the Son,” Daniele Cipri

Best Young Actor: Fabrizio Falco, “It Was the Son” and “Dormant Beauty”

Luigi De Laurentiis Lion of the Future: “Mold,” Ali Aydin

Orizzonti Award: “Three Sisters,” Wang Bing

Orizzonti Special Jury Prize: “Tango Libre,” Frederic Fonteyne 

PRELIMINARY AWARDS

FIPRESCI Award (Competition): “The Master,” Paul Thomas Anderson

FIPRESCI Award (Orizzonti/Critics’ Week): “The Interval,” Leonardo Di Constanzo

SIGNIS Award: “To the Wonder,” Terrence Malick

SIGNIS Award (Special Mention): “Fill the Void,” Rama Burshtein

Audience Award (Critics’ Week): “Eat Sleep Die,” Gabriela Pilcher

Label Europa Cinemas Award: “Crawl,” Herve Lasgouttes

Leoncino d’Oro Agiscuola Award: “Pieta,” Kim Ki-duk

Leoncino d’Oro Agiscuola Award (Cinema for UNICEF mention): “It Was the Son,” Daniele Cipri

Pasinetti Award: “The Interval,” Leonardo Di Constanzo

Pasinetti Award (Documentary): “The Human Cargo,” Daniele Vicari

Pasinetti Award (Best Actor): Valerio Mastandrea, “Gli Equilibristi”

Pasinetti Award (Special): “Clarisse,” Liliana Cavani

Brian Award: “Dormant Beauty,” Marco Bellocchio

Queer Lion Award: “The Weight,” Jeon Kyu-Hwan

Arca CinemaGiovani Award (Best Film of Venezia 69): “The Fifth Season,” Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth

Arca CinemaGiovani Award (Best Italian Film): “The Ideal City,” Luigi Lo Casco

Biografilm Lancia Award: “The Human Cargo,” Daniele Vicari; “Bad 25,” Spike Lee

CICT-UNESCO Enrico Fulchignoni Award: “The Interval,” Leonardo Di Costanzo

CICAE Award: “Wadjda,” Haifaa Al Mansour

CinemaAvvenire Award (Best Film of Venezia 69): “Paradise: Faith,” Ulrich Seidl

CinemAvvenire Award (Diversity): “Wadjda,” Haifaa Al Mansour

FEDIC Award: “The Interval,” Leonardo Di Costanzo

FEDIC Award (Special Mention): “Bellas Mariposas,” Salvatore Mereu

Mimmo Rotella Foundation Award: “Something in the Air,” Olivier Assayas

Future Film Festival Digital Award: “Bad 25,” Spike Lee

Future Film Festival Digital Award (Special Mention): “Spring Breakers,” Harmony Korine

P. Nazareno Taddei Award: “Pieta,” Kim Ki-duk

P. Nazareno Taddei Award (Special Mention): “Thy Womb,” Brillante Mendoza

Magic Lantern Award: “The Interval,” Leonardo Di Costanzo

Open Award: “The Company You Keep,” Robert Redford

La Navicella-Venezia Cinema Award: “Thy Womb,” Brillante Mendoza

Lina Mangiacapre Award: “Queen of Montreuil,” Solveig Anspach

AIF-FORFILMFEST Award: “The Interval,” Leonardo Di Costanzo

Mouse d’Oro Award: “Pieta,” Kim Ki-duk

Mouse d’Argento Award: “Anton’s Right Here,” Lyubov Arkus

UK-Italy Creative Industries Award: “The Interval,” Leonardo Di Costanzo

Gillo Pontecorvo-Arcobaleno Latino Award: Laura Delli Colli

Christopher D. Smithers Foundation Award: “Low Tide,” Roberto Minervini

Interfilm Award: “Wadjda,” Haifaa Al Mansour

Giovani Giurati del Vittorio Veneto Film Festival Award: “The Company You Keep,” Robert Redford

Giovani Giurati del Vittorio Veneto Film Festival Award (Special Mention): Toni Servillo

Primio Cinematografico Award: “Terramatta,” Costanza Quatriglio

Green Drop Award: “The Fifth Season,” Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth

VENICE — It’s the final day of the Venice Film Festival, and everything has wound down to a suitably Italian pace. The journalists have largely headed home or on to Toronto — including my flatmates, leaving me rattling around a three-bedroom apartment, idly contemplating potential house-party guests.

The jury’s deliberations have been done. The closing film (the Depardieu-starring Victor Hugo adaptation “The Man Who Laughed”) has been screened, and is reported to be, as is the usual wont of festival closers, rather dreadful. Warned off by colleagues at dinner last night, I opted for a lie-in this morning instead. As such, my festival viewing is complete, but my reviewing isn’t: look out for a couple more short-form review pieces in the next few days. 

In other words, it’s a low-key end to a festival that has been decidedly low-key from the start. That’s not to say it’s been a bad one: there’s much to admire in this year’s slimmed-down programme, particularly outside of a Competition lineup that most agree has been a shade less inspired than those of the last two years. Still, the Competition is where everyone’s eyes ultimately land, as the inevitable question arose at the dinner table last night: “What’s looking good for the Golden Lion?”

(Actually, the question arose three times, as happy social circumstances forced me to attend three separate dinners. The things I do for this job.)  

So, what is looking good for the Lion, and the other jury awards? This year feels harder to call than most — and most years are pretty hard, with recent Venice juries having flummoxed pundits with such unexpected winners as “Somewhere,” “Lebanon” and “Lust, Caution.” (The latter may not seem a surprising pick now, but after its rough initial reception on the Lido, hardly anyone imagined Ang Lee winning his second Lion in three years.)

Few films in Competition this year have crashed and burned — though it’s fair to assume Brian De Palma’s silly “Passion” won’t be taking any prizes tonight — but few have been overwhelming critical successes, either. Most titles have an admiring fanbase, surrounded by pockets of skepticism or simple indifference. Many were moved by Rama Burshtein’s arranged-marriage drama “Fill the Void,” others were offended by its perceived conservatism. The poetry of Terrence Malick’s “To the Wonder” drew the requisite gasps of admiration (mine included), but fewer than usual: even some of his acolytes thought it felt minor by his standards.

The one film rising above this polite exchange of critical nods and shrugs is Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master.” It has, of course, been widely adored by critics here, but even certain detractors are willing to acknowledge that its feels the most substantial film on the Lido this year, the only one we’re all likely to be talking about next month, next year and beyond. (It’s also, in case you hadn’t already worked this out, the only Venice film likely to figure into this upcoming Oscar race.) For my part, as much as I’d like to single out some unheralded gem in need of a boost, “The Master” remains the best thing I’ve seen at Venice this year by a country mile, growing only richer and more teasing in the rear-view mirror — I’m positively itching to see it again.

Unsurprisingly, it’s the bookies’ favorite to take the gold tonight, but I wonder. Venice juries are often willing to reward the most robust critical hit in the lineup, and reward English-language films with relatively frequency — in recent years, “Vera Drake,” “Brokeback Mountain” and “The Wrestler” all seemed like no-brainers. With Michael Mann, himself a swaggering US auteur, at the head of the jury, I question whether he’ll be overly eager to hand the prize to a compatriot and relative contemporary — he may be wowed, but he may also prefer to steer the jury toward a more exotic title with less cultural kinship (and capacity for comparison) to his own work.

Nobody, for example, is likely to see a lot of Mann’s bravado reflected in “Fill the Void” — the film I’m increasingly thinking could be the spoiler here. It would be a distinctly modest choice for the Lion, but not an irrelevant one. As I wrote in my review, Israeli director Rama Burshtein’s debut feature takes a bravely contentious stand on matters of religion and gender, and earned a smattering of boos amid the warm applause at its press screening, so it’d be a reasonably provocative choice.

In addition to Israeli juror Ari Folman (“Waltz With Bashir”), it’s not hard to imagine film finding support from several strong-minded women on the jury — Samantha Morton and Marina Abramovic among them. Handing the Golden Lion to a female director, meanwhile, would make for a subtly pointed rejoinder to Venice’s chief rival, Cannes — which controversially failed to include any women in its own competition this year. This is enough to make me relatively confident that “Fill the Void” is taking home something major tonight, whether or not Mann’s team think Burshtein’s ready for the big one.    

If not, the Best Actress prize for its strong female ensemble is a distinct possibility — though it’s hard to see who could compete with its luminous lead, Hadas Yaron, for the Best Young Actor prize. In a pleasing change from the usual awards routine, Best Actress is highly competitive this year, though it’s not a starry contest: Franziska Petri in “Betrayal,” Nora Aunor in “Thy Womb,” Maria Hofstatter in “Paradise: Faith” and Cho Min-soo in “Pieta” all have their champions.

I’m plumping for the latter, largely because Kim Ki-duk’s thriller has been one of the festival’s more enthusiastically received entries — it could even be in the hunt for the top prize. Annoyingly, it’s one of a couple of Competition films I missed, as schedule clashes conspired to make me miss each of its three screenings; should it take one of the top two awards, I’ll have a chance to rectify that tonight. (For the first time, I’m staying in town for the closing-night festivities.)

By contrast, Best Actor feels a leaner field. It’s not impossible that we could see it go to Dennis Quaid (for the too-swiftly dismissed “At Any Price”) or Toni Servillo (for Marco Bellocchio’s shrill, shallow but curiously popular “Dormant Beauty”) or even, if the jury’s in a silly mood, James Franco for his amusing white-gangsta routine in “Spring Breakers.” But this has felt like Joaquin Phoenix’s award to lose from the get-go, with his ‘difficult’ press-conference routine only raising his profile.

Venice has recently made a habit of giving at least one acting prize to a major international name, and it’s easy to see Phoenix following recent A-list winners like Colin Firth (“A Single Man”) and Michael Fassbender (“Shame”) to a busy awards-season run. (Yes, regardless of his antics, he’s very much in contention for an Oscar.) Phoenix’s odds slightly lessen those of “The Master” for the Lion: though Venice juries had no problem handing “Vera Drake” the top prize and Best Actress in 2004, they recently seem to have followed Cannes’s lead of keeping them separate. (“The Wrestler” may have taken hardware in 2008, but Mickey Rourke, somewhat absurdly, did not.)

With that, here are my best guesses for what will win tonight:

WILL WIN

Golden Lion: “Fill the Void,” Rama Burshtein

Silver Lion (Best Director): “Pieta,” Kim Ki-duk

Special Jury Prize: “The Fifth Season,” Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth

Volpi Cup (Best Actor): Joaquin Phoenix, “The Master”

Volpi Cup (Best Actress): Cho Min-soo, “Pieta”

Osella Award (Best Screenplay): “Dormant Beauty,” Marco Bellocchio, Veronica Raimo, Stefano Rulli

Osella Award (Technical Achievement): “Betrayal” Oleg Lukhichev (cinematographer)

Marcello Mastroianni Award (Best Young Actor): Hadas Yaron, “Fill the Void”

And, just for fun, this is how I would distribute the awards were I running the jury — with the obvious caveat that I haven’t seen everything.

SHOULD WIN

Golden Lion: “The Master,” Paul Thomas Anderson

Silver Lion (Best Director): “Betrayal,” Kirill Serebrennikov

Special Jury Prize: “Thy Womb,” Brillante Mendoza

Volpi Cup (Best Actor): Philip Seymour Hoffman, “The Master”

Volpi Cup (Best Actress): Franziska Petri, “Betrayal”

Osella Award (Best Screenplay): “At Any Price,” Ramin Bahrani, Hallie Elizabeth Newton

Osella Award (Technical Achievement): “Betrayal” Oleg Lukhichev (cinematographer)

Marcello Mastroianni Award (Best Young Actor): Hadas Yaron, “Fill the Void”

I’ll be back tonight to report on the winners. Until then, sunshine and antipasti — and possibly, if I can muster it, a screening of Michael Cimino’s restored “Heaven’s Gate” — await.

(UPDATE: No sooner had I posted this story than I received notification that Hungary has submitted Berlin Silver Bear winner “Just the Wind,” which I’ve seen. More detail on that in the next category update.) 

In the few days since I last checked in on this category, there have been several new titles added to the growing pile of Best Foreign Language Film Oscar submissions — and the rate will only increase as the deadline for entries looms at the end of the month. We’re up to 13 now, but it’ll be 60 or so before you know it.

The most notable title from the new entries is Australia’s submission “Lore” — which I suggested back in June would be one to watch in the race. Like Austria’s pick of Michael Haneke’s “Amour,” it’s a selection that couldn’t have been made a few years ago, when countries had to submit films in a native language. Indeed, there’s nothing obviously Australian about “Lore” — a German-set, German-language World War II survival story about five children’s 500-mile trek to safety in the dying days of the Third Reich — bar the fact that it’s a largely Australian production from a noted Down Under director, Cate Shortland. (Britain and Germany also had in hand in the financing — so between “Lore,” “Amour” and their own selection “Barbara,” the former country indirectly has a number of dogs in this fight.)

As a huge fan of Shortland’s uneasily atmospheric 2004 debut “Somersault” — the film that brought both Abbie Cornish and Sam Worthington to international attention — I’ve been waiting with some impatience for her follow-up, and critical reactions so far suggest she hasn’t disappointed. There’s widespread bafflement that the film was turned down by the Cannes Film Festival — which, as you may recall, could have used a strong female-directed feature or two — but the film has rallied since debuting in low-key fashion at the Sydney Film Festival, and is currently garnering further admiration in Toronto. (US rights have already been snapped up by Music Box.) It’s currently my most-anticipated film at next month’s London Film Festival.

The combination of a WWII setting and a child’s-eye perspective makes “Lore” obvious Academy catnip in the category, boosted by the (inessential) asset that’s it’s evidently very good to boot. The question is whether voters, who are often overly impressed by cultural specificity, will hold the film’s indirect relationship to its home country against it. Australia has entered the race five times before, always with locally-set features. They’ve never been nominated — though their last attempt, 2009’s Aboriginal love story “Samson and Delilah,” cracked the January shortlist. I’m thinking they’ll do at least as well this year.

Another language-crossing director in the race is Sweden’s Lasse Hallstrom, twice nominated for Best Director by the Academy — in 1987 for his Swedish breakout hit “My Life as a Dog” and in 1999 for one of his sappy US efforts, “The Cider House Rules.” Since then, his Hollywood stock has since fallen sufficiently (“Dear John” and early 2012 release “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” did fine commercially, but no one was calling for Oscars) that he has returned home to make his first Swedish feature in 25 years.

The resulting film, “The Hypnotist,” sounds significantly less soft-centered than Hallstrom’s American confections: starring Mikael Persbrandt (“In a Better World”) and Hallstrom’s wife Lena Olin, among others, it’s a thriller following a detective and a psychiatrist on the trail of a killer, who must use hypnosis on the traumatized son of a slain family in order to track him down. The film was screened in the market at Cannes this year and only premieres in Sweden later this month, so no reactions have leaked yet; on paper, it sounds slickly commercial and ripe for Hollywoold treatment. That may not necessarily make it the voters’ cup of tea in this traditionally genre-averse category, but a familiar name at the helm may give it a leg up.  

Also joining the list is Greece, whose selection, “Unfair World,” won the Best Actor and Best Director prizes at the San Sebastian Film Festival  last year. The film, a mystery-tinged moral dramedy , drew favorable but arm’s-length reviews in the English-language press. Some might be surprised that the Greek selectors didn’t go for last year’s superb Venice prizewinner “Alps,” especially after director Yorgos Lanthimos scored a highly improbable Oscar nod last year for “Dogtooth” — but lightning was always unlikely to strike twice in that place.

The Japanese are trying their luck this year with the rather uninspiringly titled “Our Homeland,” about a terminally ill man reunited with his family after a 25-year exile in North Korea. Second-generation Korean immigrant Yang Yong-hi based it on her own family history, giving the film a similar backstory to Cambodia’s entry, “Lost Loves.” The film’s Berlinale response, however, was not overly kind.

Also in the mix: Poland’s “80 Million,” a politically themed, allegedly uplifting heist drama set in the country’s Communist era; Ukraine’s “Firecrosser,” the true story of a Soviet POW under Stalin’s regime who eventually became a Native American tribe leader (!); and The Netherlands’ “Kauwboy,” a Berlin-garlanded debut feature about the friendship between a young boy and an abandoned bird. “Kes” with clogs, anyone?

You can keep track of the submissions over at our Contenders page for the category, which I’ll be sorting more rigorously as the number grows.

Stephen Chbosky’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” is set to play the Toronto Film Festival tomorrow. Press screenings are happening today. It’s a nice, public space to debut the film, which opens on September 21, but it’s also sure to be a big coming-out for star Logan Lerman, who gives a shattering performance of tenderness, emotion and, its its own way, charisma.

Lerman hasn’t been on my radar in any substantial way, really. He’s the “Percy Jackson” guy. He was good enough in “My One and Only” and certainly held his own in “3:10 to Yuma.” But I wasn’t really prepared for what he had to offer here, opposite a scenery-chewing Ezra Miller and an Emma Watson looking to put a little distance between herself and the “Harry Potter” franchise that made her.

But it’s a performance that, I think, deserves real consideration this awards season. The Best Actor race will likely shake out the way it usually does — a few obvious contenders playing roles that were half-way there on the page and maybe this wild card or that, depending on how campaigning goes — but Lerman should be in the conversation.

I never read Chbosky’s 1999 book, but I understand it has a devoted following. One of its biggest fans was Miller, in fact, who relished the opportunity to play the book’s homosexual free spirit Patrick. But it’s Lerman who kept catching my eye, finding nuance and organic humor, empathy and the right soft touches to carve out a defined portrait where a cliched protagonist could easily have emerged.

Chbosky originally thought of Lerman for Miller’s character, actually. But after the young actor begged to audition for the lead, the author/director gave him a shot.

“He was the second person who auditioned for Charlie and after him there was no other auditions,” Chbosky told me in an interview published earlier this week. “There was no need; he was perfect. Within five seconds of his audition what you saw in the movie, that was it. He had come up with this character. It got richer over time and he got more comfortable over time with the words and the place where we were shooting, but he had it. It was right.”

Was it ever. I was consistently moved by the nuance of Lerman’s work in the film, the empathy he so genuinely conveys, the way his character ultimately travels a rather expected arc without telegraphing it. His Charlie is someone I wish I knew in real life. I can’t really think of another way to put it. I also can’t think of a better compliment. He embosses the heart of the role and never in typical ways.

Lerman has another “Percy Jackson” film on the way, but he’s also working on “Noah” at the moment with director Darren Aronofsky, who certainly has an eye for talent. I’d say we’re going to hear plenty more about him in the future, and I expect I’ll always look back at “Perks” as the moment it really clicked for me.

I’ll be eager to see if others feel the same way.

“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” opens September 21.

VENICE — You can forgive a film for a lot if it passes the essential test of being alive – it”s a more crucial box to tick than any degree of creativity or even competence, and it”s hard to define beyond instinctively listing the haves and have-nots. All great films are alive, as are many rather bad ones: films that make their missteps with purpose and conviction and even a little wit, keenly aiming for an artistic target that may or may not be visible. Brian De Palma has made some bad films in his time, but he”s never made a dead one; his trademark art-trash sensibility has a rudely healthy pulse, even when the balance is as out of whack as it is on an exquisite failure like “Mission to Mars.” 

So when it becomes apparent mere minutes into “Passion” – his long-awaited return to the kinky Venetian-blind thriller territory of “Body Double” and “Femme Fatale” – that the film is not just calendar years away from his best work, there”s still much to hope for. A remake of the late Alain Corneau”s nastily compelling erotic thriller “Love Crime,” itself no jewel of the form, the project seemingly plays to De Palma”s strengths as a hall-of-mirrors cinema fetishist, while allowing him ample room for improvement and simple tarting-up; more Hollywood remakes should hand incompletely realized scripts to directors best qualified to handle them in the first place.

So it”s with no small amount of dismay that I say that “Passion,” quite contrary to its title, is an eerily bloodless (if briefly ketchup-stained) contraption, a film noir so ploddingly un-alive to its own absurdities that its peaks of bad taste are rendered troughs by virtue of sheer humorlessness. Were De Palma”s name not on the thing, you”d assume it was the work of a genre journeyman with a hard-on for “Dressed to Kill” – and even then only in the second half, when the lighting scheme abruptly shifts into trademark high-contrast horizontals, an elaborate ballet-focused split-screen sequence signifies nothing in particular, and Pino Donnagio”s begins paying screeching homage to Bernard Herrmann, who had already playfully Xeroxed his style for DePalma in the 1970s. As arguably the most openly postmodern of the cine-literate generation of American auteurs that came to prominence 40 years ago, DePalma”s work has never belonged wholly to itself, but his frame of reference is oddly small and self-serving here. 

Before we even get to that, however, there”s a turgid hour or so of flat corporate melodrama to get through, tedious not so much for its narrative content – this catty back-and-forth of double-crossings and retaliations was unwholesomely entertaining when enacted by Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier in “Love Crime” – as the uncharacteristic airlessness of its staging. Cinematographer (and Almodovar regular) Jose Luis Alcaine shoots in a mode of perfunctory, bare-bulb brightness, with the synthetic echo of the sound design amplifying a certain emptiness to the compositions that may well be budgetary: half the film”s set in a high-flying Berlin marketing firm, so why, in so many scenes, do only four people seem to work there? 

Not, to be fair, that you”d expect a swarm of employees to put up with Rachel McAdams”s Christine, the purringly awful manager of said firm, who thinks nothing of swiping her employees” best ideas and tucking them in her immaculate French roll for exclusively personal gain. She butters up her wide-eyed protégée Isabelle (Noomi Rapace) with a sleek combination of professional flattery and Sapphic advances – this devil wears La Perla, and isn”t afraid to show it – only to claim sole credit for Isabelle”s ingenious ad campaign. We”re told it”s ingenious, at any rate: what we see of it looks more like a concept that even Pete Campbell would scrap at the planning stages. Still, who can argue with “10 million YouTube hits in five hours?” Such is the universe “Passion” lives in. 

Understandably piqued, Isabelle responds by sleeping with Christine”s beardily morose boyfriend Dirk (Paul Anderson), setting in motion a series of bad turns, each deserving another, until blood winds up on someone”s hands. The bad news for us – and the film – is that the blood isn”t Isabelle”s. Since her breakthrough as the screen”s original Lisbeth Salander, Rapace has had mixed fortunes as a crossover movie star: her round-vowelled, slightly earnest otherworldliness served her well in “Prometheus” this summer, but she”s utterly at sea here in a role that requires a hefty shot of guile.

Wan and nervous-looking to begin with, the Swedish actress winds up swamped by De Palma”s abruptly pumped-up styling just at the point where she”s required to shoulder proceedings, as the film veers considerably, and not quite coherently, from the Corneau original’s tidier, sang-froid-fuelled close. No less strangely cast is McAdams, years too young to possess this dragon-in-heels role with the coolly unimpressed swagger of Kristin Scott Thomas. Still, if she seems to be playing dress-up in several scenes, at least she”s playing: she deserves a more responsive scene partner when she sweetly bares her teeth and says, “You have talent. I just made the best use of it.” 

That”s one of the few zesty lines in an otherwise limp script – written by De Palma himself, but sounding in its worst stretches likes it”s been through several rounds of Google Translate. “It”s got more stars than the galaxy!” says Isabelle”s untowardly interested assistant, after confirming her booking at a London restaurant. Later, De Palma has the nerve to wheel out that most frosted of chestnuts, “Revenge is a dish best served cold” – the place of which was already sealed in the postmodern pop-culture realm by Quentin Tarantino, himself something of a De Palma shadower, nearly 10 years ago. The charitable might say he”s mocking the shallowness of his own character by having her resort to such clichés, but little in this disappointingly sedated self-parody — arriving six years after the far friskier genre pleasures of “The Black Dahlia” — suggests he”s in a position to tease.