http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4913762953001

In tomorrow’s podcast Anne and I touch on the possibility of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” showing up at Venice, but we both secretly hope it goes to Telluride, too/instead. Because, yes, that’s where we’ll be, and like most cinephiles, we’re excited for Paul Thomas Anderson’s first film in five years.

The film will be coming along at an interesting time for Scientology (the “religion” sent up in some ways by the narrative with an L. Ron Hubbard-like character in Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd). Tales of subterfuge and escape acts have circled Katie Holmes’s divorce from Scientology golden boy Tom Cruise in recent weeks, drumming up more and more stories about the organization, some new, many old, all bizarre. But all of that will be backdrop to the film, which, to judge by the new full-length trailer (which comes after a couple of teases), presents Anderson in top form with some of the industry’s best actors giving it all they’ve got.

Joining Hoffman will be Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams and Laura Dern, among others. Speaking of which, it was recently confirmed to me that Phoenix is indeed the lead of the film while Hoffman’s work is more of a supporting thing. Either way I think both are in a pretty great position to get a lot of awards season love, but let’s not count our chickens just yet.

Check out the new trailer, courtesy of Yahoo! Movies, below. Also included is the first poster for the film, which I must say, I totally dig.

“The Master” opens in limited release on Friday, October 12.

We’ve had “The Impossible” — a true-life survival drama set against the tragedy of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami — in our Contenders section for a while now, though for whatever reason, it’s been languishing in the lower reaches of our category lists. Perhaps it’s the question mark of Spanish genre director Juan Antonio Bayona (“The Orphanage”) handling his first English-language production. Perhaps it’s that Naomi Watts, good actress though she is, has had such a tepid run of recent projects. Perhaps it’s that the thought of a film on that tragedy, however indirectly, conjures traumatic memories of Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter.”

Or perhaps the film is, as some advance word suggests, is really strong, and could benefit from lying low. Certainly, Summit Entertainment — who steered “The Hurt Locker” to Oscar glory nearly three years ago — have high hopes for the Spanish production, and have just positioned it as their prime awards pony with the announcement of a December 21 release date.

Now, as I was just writing, December releases have lately met with mixed fortunes in the Oscar derby, but it’s sometimes the relatively unheralded sleepers — as opposed to the hype-burdened juggernauts — that benefit most from a late unveiling. If the film can avoid the cod-inspirational pitfalls of its premise — and Bayona’s certainly a counterintuitive name to be handling this premise — there may be something here. (Less about the “journey to the core of the human heart,” please.) Keep an eye on it.

From the press release:

THE IMPOSSIBLE will open on December 21, 2012 in New York and Los Angeles, from Summit Entertainment.

Cast: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, Tom Holland
Director: J.A. Bayona
Screenwriter: Sergio G. Sánchez
Producers: Belén Atienza, Enrique López Lavigne, Álvaro
Production Companies: Apaches Entertainment, Telecinco Cinema
Genre: Drama
Language: English
Country of Origin: Spain

Synopsis:
From Summit Entertainment. A powerful story based on one family’s survival of the 2004 tsunami, THE IMPOSSIBLE stars Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor and is directed by J.A. Bayona (THE ORPHANAGE). Maria (Naomi Watts), Henry (Ewan McGregor) and their three sons begin their winter vacation in Thailand, looking forward to a few days in tropical paradise. But on the morning of December 26th, as the family relaxes around the pool after their Christmas festivities the night before, a terrifying roar rises up from the center of the earth. As Maria freezes in fear, a huge wall of black water races across the hotel grounds toward her. Based on a true story, THE IMPOSSIBLE is the unforgettable account of a family caught, with tens of thousands of strangers, in the mayhem of one of the worst natural catastrophes of our time. But the true-life terror is tempered by the unexpected displays of compassion, courage and simple kindness that Maria and her family encounter during the darkest hours of their lives. Both epic and intimate, devastating and uplifting, THE IMPOSSIBLE is a journey to the core of the human heart. 

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Sorry, John Hawkes. Better luck next time, Joaquin Phoenix. Hard cheese, Hugh Jackman. Get your gracious-loser faces perfected, because this year’s Best Actor Oscar has Daniel Day-Lewis’s name written all over it. Again. Because, you know, he’s frickin’ Daniel Day-Lewis. And he’s playing frickin’ Abraham Lincoln. Try fighting that. Just try. What? Have I seen the movie? That’s cute.

Such, at least, is the logic of numerous comment-thread denizens (and a hasty blogger or two) who began declaring the two-time Oscar champ a racing certainty as early as November last year, when the first on-set photos of his augustly bearded visage surfaced online. “Daniel Day-Lewis + Lincoln = Oscar,” opined one Awards Daily reader. “It might as well be Meryl Streep playing Jesus Christ,” agreed another. Just yesterday, a Hollywood Elsewhere regular ventured that “Phoenix is a threat to Day-Lewis like Mondale was a threat to Reagan… the [only] other pseudo-competition is the duo of Crow-Jackman in ‘Les Miserables.'” Bold statements for four performances no one has yet clamped eyes on.

Sceptics, of course, can fight back with stats to counter the likelihood of such an occurrence. No one has ever won three Best Actor Oscars before, much less from a mere five nominations. Steven Spielberg’s films have won a combined total of 29 Oscars — with not one acting prize among them. And although it might seem a tidy short-cut to awards attention, no actor has ever won for playing a U.S. president. (Five have been nominated.)

Of course, bringing up these points to prove why Day-Lewis won’t win is as ill-advised as using on-paper prestige as the basis for calling his victory seven months in advance. It seems strange that one has to point this out on an annual basis, but seeing the films counts for everything in this game. For every baity bit of casting that does indeed result in the intended Oscar — Meryl Streep in “The Iron Lady,” for example, though by no means did she walk to victory — there’s another that swiftly collapses once the performance is unveiled. Remember those people who said Morgan Freeman couldn’t lose for playing Nelson Mandela under the eye of Clint Eastwood? There were plenty of ’em, I tell you. 

Whether or not the powers behind “Lincoln” had such breathless, presumptuous expectations in mind when they set a release date of November 9 for the prestige biopic, it seems a sensible way to manage them. For many, not least those predicting an avalanche of awards attention for the film, the opening is earlier than one might expect for such a project, not least since Spielberg’s last two Best Picture ponies — “War Horse” and “Munich” — both opted for a Christmastime debut.

As it stands, “Lincoln” will now precede a number of prestige studio hopefuls this winter, including “Life of Pi,” “The Great Gatsby,” “Django Unchained,” “The Hobbit” and its chief rival for sight-unseen Best Picture buzz, “Les Miserables.” If “Lincoln” is a hit with critics and/or audiences, it’ll need strong legs to withstand competition from later seasonal distractions; if it’s a miss, or a qualified success, it’s in danger of a quick burial.

That’s not as risky a strategy as it sounds if they know the film’s got the goods, not least since it gives the film more time to establish a reputation than those that sneak in just before the year’s end. The Weinstein Company opened both “The King’s Speech” and “The Artist” in November, confident  enough in the films’ critical and audience appeal to know they needn’t hide them until the last minute to gain a lead in the Oscar race. Settling on a release date for a high-profile contender necessitates striking a fine balance. Too early, and you could fall foul of voters’ notoriously short memories; too late, and they might not get round to your movie at all.

Over the last few years, perhaps mirroring the recently condensed awards calendar, December has often fallen into the “too late” category: not since presumed spring release “Million Dollar Baby” craftily snuck onto the 2004 awards calendar eight years ago has a film released that late won the Best Picture prize. In Spielberg’s case, it’s debatable whether “War Horse” and “Munich” benefited or suffered from their late appearances: both entered their respective seasons as heavy favorites, only to face a significant backlash upon their release. Spotty precursor showings followed, and both landed Best Picture nomination by the skin of their teeth, by which time they were already firmly out of the running.  In the case of “War Horse,” I suspect an earlier showing might have cancelled it out of the race entirely; “Munich,” however, could possibly have used more time for its supporters’ counter-backlash to take hold.

Already in the undesirable position of entering the season as a nominal favorite for Best Picture and Actor, it has thus allowed itself plenty of time for the media and voters alike to get to know the movie behind the inflated hype — hype that can prove dangerous if early consensus is anything less than ecstatic. And, indeed, even if it isn’t: this week, fans and critics alike have begun anticipating — nay, demanding — Oscar success for a very different flavor of prestige product, “The Dark Knight Rises.” In this case, the pressure is being laid more on the Academy (which, many seem to think, has a debt to pay to Christopher Nolan) than the film itself, but it still doesn’t help Batman: whether in the form of fanboys’ pleas or an admonishment from Kenneth Turan, Oscar doesn’t much like voting as instructed.

Inadvertently voting as expected, however, is another matter. When it comes to “Lincoln,” the sight-unseen predictors may be over-eager, but not entirely off-base: given the wider safety net of the expanded Best Picture category, “Lincoln” could open at Christmas and easily secure a top nod on fumes alone, just as “War Horse” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” did last time round. This year, Team Spielberg seems to be playing a longer game, which may suggest they have more than token nominations in their sights. 

For more views on movies, awards season and other pursuits, follow @GuyLodge on Twitter.

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Female directors and producers may have received relatively short shrift at the Academy Awards over 84 years — for those of you keeping score, only seven women have won Best Picture, while that number famously drops to one for Best Director. Within the Academy itself, however, they get a little more respect: following yesterday’s announcement of their rejigged Board of Governors, women occupy two-thirds of the spaces in the director and producer sections.

One of them is also one of six new governors: Lisa Cholodenko, the Oscar-nominated writer-director of “The Kids Are All Right,” joins recent Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow and Michael Mann at the directors’ table. Mann returns to the board after a hiatus, while Bigelow retains her place (and also holds a spot in the documentary field, making her the only governor doing double duty).

As someone whose indie-centered work hadn’t invited Oscar attention prior to “The Kids Are All Right,” Cholodenko’s a pleasingly fresh choice for the board, and her presence alongside Bigelow — plus industry stalwarts Kathleen Kennedy and Gale Anne Hurd at the producers’ table — sends a more positive message to women in the industry than the awards themselves tend to.

Also newly elected to the board is Bill Condon, who, of course, produced the Oscar telecast to warm reviews three years ago. He’s been elected as a writer — the capacity in which he earned an Oscar for “Gods and Monsters” and a nomination for “Chicago” — though he could as easily represent the directors. Other first-time governors include former Disney chairman Dick Cook, twice-nominated cinematographer Dante Spinotti, sound mixer (and four-time Oscar champ) Scott Millan and Oscar-winning VFX artist John Knoll. 

The actors’ representatives, meanwhile, remain unchanged, with Tom Hanks, Ed Begley, Jr. and Annette Bening (who is surely delighted for her “Kids Are All Right” director) all retainings their places on the board.

The new Board of Governors’ first major task is just around the corner: in a fortnight’s time, they will convene to elect a new Academy president, as current chief Tom Sherak’s three-year reign draws to a close. As Sherak’s now served three straight terms on the board, Academy laws dictate that he step down. Personally, however, I think his time was up anyway: with the number of rule changes, particularly relating to the elastic Best Picture category, Sherak hasn’t projected a terribly confident face for the Academy, while the three Oscar telecasts produced under his watch have been clunky at best, with last year’s Hathaway-Franco fiasco a now-infamous nadir.

Variety reports a wide-open contest for Sherak’s replacement, naming Kennedy, Hurd and Cook among the favorites for the position, alongside writer-director Phil Alden Robinson, producer Hawk Koch (whose father, Howard, headed the Academy in the late 1970s) and marketing exec Cheryl Boone Isaacs, who is already producing this year’s Governors’ Awards ceremony.

For my money, I can’t think of someone more fit for the job than Kennedy, a super-producer who has used her powers to bring both immortal blockbusters (many of them, of course, with Steven Spielberg) and trickier arthouse propositions (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) to our screens, landing seven Oscar nominations along the way. It’s been a while since a true industry titan was the face of the Academy — meanwhile, a woman hasn’t held the position since Fay Kanin stepped down in 1983. (The only previous female president, one Bette Davis, resigned after only two months back in 1941.) Just my two cents.

The current Board of Governors is listed below. 

Actors
Ed Begley, Jr.
Annette Bening (Oscar nominee: “The Grifters,” “American Beauty,” “Being Julia,” “The Kids Are All Right”) 
Tom Hanks (Oscar winner: “Philadelphia,” “Forrest Gump”)

Directors
Kathryn Bigelow (Oscar winner: “The Hurt Locker”)
Lisa Cholodenko (Oscar nominee: “The Kids Are All Right” — as writer) 
Michael Mann (Oscar nominee: “The Insider,” “The Aviator” — as producer)

Writers
Bill Condon (Oscar winner: “Gods and Monsters”)
Frank Pierson (Oscar winner: “Dog Day Afternoon”)
Phil Alden Robinson (Oscar nominee: “Field of Dreams”)

Producers
Gale Anne Hurd
Kathleen Kennedy (Oscar nominee: “E.T.,” “The Color Purple,” “The Sixth Sense,” “Seabiscuit,” “Munich,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “War Horse”)
Hawk Koch

Executives
Dick Cook
Jim Gianopulos
Robert Rehme 

Documentary
Kathryn Bigelow
Rob Epstein (Oscar winner: “The Times of Harvey Milk,” “Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt”)
Michael Moore (Oscar winner: “Bowling for Columbine”)

Cinematographers
John Bailey
Richard Crudo
Dante Spinotti (Oscar nominee: “L.A. Confidential,” “The Insider”) 

Editors
Anne V. Coates (Oscar winner: “Lawrence of Arabia”)
Mark Goldblatt (Oscar nominee: “Terminator 2: Judgment Day”)
Michael Tronick

Designers
Jim Bissell (Oscar nominee: “Good Night, and Good Luck.”)
Rosemary Brandenburg
Jeffrey Kurland (Oscar nominee: “Bullets Over Broadway”)

Makeup/Hairstyling
Leonard Engelman

Music
Charles Fox (Oscar nominee: “The Other Side of the Mountain,” “Foul Play”)
Arthur Hamilton (Oscar nominee: “Madron”)
David L. Newman (Oscar nominee: “Anastasia”)

Sound
Curt Behlmer
Don Hall
Scott Millan (Oscar winner: “Apollo 13,” “Gladiator,” “Ray,” “The Bourne Ultimatum”)

Visual Effects
Craig Barron (Oscar winner: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”)
Richard Edlund (Oscar winner: “Star Wars,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Return of the Jedi”) 
John Knoll (Oscar winner: “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest”) 

Short Films/Feature Animation
Jon Bloom (Oscar nominee: “Overnight Sensation”)
Bill Kroyer (Oscar nominee: “Technological Threat”)
John Lasseter (Oscar winner: “Tin Toy,” “Toy Story” — special award)

Public Relations
Rob Friedman
Cheryl Boone Isaacs
Martin Levy 

For more views on movies, awards season and other pursuits, follow @GuyLodge on Twitter.

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A colleague was recently bemoaning Pixar’s descent into the world of, as he put it, “Roman numerals, Roman numerals, Roman numerals.”

Indeed, after turning “Toy Story” into an amazing franchise that got better with each installment, the company has added onto the “Cars” series with a sequel, has “Monsters University” (a follow-up to 2001’s “Monsters, Inc.”) on the way next year and, as broken today by Deadline, is priming “Finding Nemo” for another trip to the well.

This makes me really sad. Some are saying there’s a whiff of director Andrew Stanton retreating to safe territory after the disaster of “John Carter,” but he has always said he wouldn’t be averse to a sequel if he found the right concept. Well, it appears he has, and what I consider to be Pixar’s best film and one of the decade’s best, too, will no longer go unsullied by franchising.

To me, though, “Finding Nemo” doesn’t make a lot of since for a sequel. “The Incredibles?” Sure. “Finding Nemo?” It’s such a complete story. Yeah, you could have said the same thing about “Toy Story,” but this one’s a little gem to me and I guess I feel like I wanted it to stay contained. Maybe there’s a big world to open up. My fingers will be crossed, I guess.

Albert Brooks, the star of the first film, said he expected the studio would never make a sequel when I spoke to him about his work in “Drive” last year. But he said he had a great idea for a sequel if anyone was interested:

“I had a wonderful idea for them. I swear to God I think there could be a great sequel to ‘Nemo’ where the fish never will leave home. He just won’t leave. ‘Getting Rid of Nemo.’ Right, ‘You’re 30 years old! Get out of here!'”

The studio’s latest, “Brave,” wasn’t as rousing a success — critically speaking — as other original titles, but I was a big defender. And it certainly beats sticking with branding (“Finding Nemo” is one of the company’s biggest-selling brands with children). I hope that well isn’t running out of original ideas. I really do.

Meanwhile, the original film is set for a 3D release later this year, with a Blu-ray release to follow. To date, it’s the only Pixar title that hasn’t been made available in HD.

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This Friday the giant zit that is “The Dark Knight Rises” hype will finally be popped and the anticipation for Christopher Nolan’s superhero denouement will give way to discovery. But the great thing about Batman is that the character endures, even if Nolan’s interpretation takes its leave.

“Definitive” will be a word thrown around a lot when considering these films, but — and not to take anything away from Nolan — when stacked against what? Nothing that came before understood the character well enough to be considered the mold. So I hope future filmmakers will not feel trepidation when saddling up to give their take. In this world of reboots, we all know it’s coming. But I wouldn’t let Nolan’s trilogy cast too daunting a shadow. Again, the character endures. He was here long before Nolan.

And indeed, one of the reasons I’d argue this series has been so successful has been its reverence for that source material. Story arcs from Batman’s 70-plus years were fruitful inspiration for the filmmakers, and with the closing installment right around the corner, it seemed like a good time to call back to those yarns from the pages of DC Comics.

Some of you may be planning to take in trilogy events or re-watch the first two films at home before checking out the third installment. So while this isn’t a list dedicated exclusively to “The Dark Knight Rises,” it’s a good primer for wallowing in everything the films have taken into account so far.

Nolan and company did an interesting job of bringing this material into play. “Organic” was always a key word, folding and weaving events and themes from the character’s lineage that spoke to what he wanted to show on screen. There are plenty of direct references and even some repurposed moments, but there was extensive and smart use of compositing throughout as well.

So with that, let’s take a look at the stories that most informed Nolan’s vision of the character. Batman, like all great superheroes, is a character defined by his story’s themes. And those themes were mined considerably for this trilogy.

Naturally, I had to leave a few out. The cross-title “Legacy” arc gets into Bane’s connections with the League of Shadows (though that story’s more pertinent prequel is included on the list). Ed Brubaker’s “The Man Who Laughs” had some modest connections to “Batman Begins,” including the unveiling of the Bat signal. And the “Leviathan” story currently playing out in the pages of “Batman Incorporated” is coming at a serendipitous time, I must say. But the 10 below are the purest inspirations for the series, I think.

(Speaking of Brubaker, he must be feeling good after Marvel revealed the subtitle of the “Captain America” sequel: “The Winter Soldier.”)

SPOILER note: If you want to stay super pure and unspoiled on “The Dark Knight Rises,” maybe it would be a good idea to steer clear of this list for the next few days (not that speculation hasn’t pretty much uncovered a number of the reveals already). While I’m not ruining plot points and specifics in my copy, I am obviously detailing story arcs that could make you draw connections you’d rather not draw yet.

Feel free to offer up your favorite Batman arcs in the comments section below. You can also, as always, rate my selections as you go. (No numbered ranking from me. We’ll be going in chronological order.)

“The Dark Knight Rises” opens everywhere Friday.

This is a total cop-out of an admission, but the best film I saw in my recent trip to the Karlovy Vary Film Festival was one I’d seen before. (Okay, including what I caught in the Jean-Pierre Melville retrospective, I should amend that to the best few films. But let us not split hairs.) The week hadn’t wanted for worthwhile discoveries, but things swam into perspective when, in the last few hours before I had to leave for the airport, I impulsively ducked into a screening of Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Alps.” Coming out of it a second time, everything else I’d seen that week looked a shade smaller, a little more finite, by comparison.

Regular readers might remember I fell hard for Lanthimos’s playful, existentially preoccupied follow-up to “Dogtooth” at Venice nearly a year ago: it was my favorite film of the festival, and wound up in my Top 5 of 2011. But it plays even better on a second go-round.Some of the thrill of disorientation is lost, as the then-shrouded premise proves more rational and more navigable than it initially appeared — but for a viewer no longer chasing comprehension, the subtleties, and unexpected sympathies, of Lanthimos’s characterization comes to the fore. Imperiously chilly it may be, but this is no bloodlessly arch exercise in psychological geometry, as less favorable reviews have suggested; as with “Dogtooth,” to which I’m surer than ever “Alps” is at least equal, its humanity is latent, but rich.

US readers ostensibly got the chance to see for themselves on Friday, but the release is so limited you’ll have to be very keen-eyed indeed to catch it. It’s presently on a single screen each in New York and Lake Worth, Florida until Thursday, after which it will next surface in Seattle on July 27 for another week-long run. Thereafter, it’s set to pop up briefly in such cities in San Francisco, Memphis and Iowa City — but a Los Angeles run, unfortunately, has yet to appear on the calendar. After the Oscar success of “Dogtooth,” one might have hoped for a higher profile for Lanthimos’s latest, but it’s an unapologetically tough sell. Keep your eyes peeled.

Meanwhile, since my initial review of the film is gathering dust back on the old site, I thought I’d repost it:

What do Jude Law, Morgan Freeman, Winona Ryder and Prince all have in common? (No, they aren”t in the ensemble of “Contagion,” but since everyone else is, you can forgive yourself that error.) The answer, as it happens, is that they”re all namechecked in “Alps,” Yorgos Lanthimos” dazzlingly dislocated follow-up to the improbably Oscar-nominated “Dogtooth” – a return that should keep him on the fast-track to Euro-auteur royalty, even as it lashes out at the merest suggestion of acceptable behavior.

The invocation of these familiar names from film and pop culture – sporadically dropped into the conversation as one of the script”s many riotous, explanation-averse running gags – seems almost an ironic slapdown to any suggestion that the surprise slow-creep success of Lanthimos’s last film would move him any closer to the mainstream. Doubling down on its predecessor”s polarizing absurdist humor and chilly formal grace, “Alps” applies those virtues to a more diffuse, ensemble-driven structure that is in no hurry to reveal its rich thematic adhesives of doubling and substitution. It”d be rash to call it a better film than “Dogtooth,” but it is, in the relative scheme of these things, a bigger one, and exciting evidence of restless formal development on the part of its director. (Lanthimos” regular DP Thimios Bakatakis” camerawork is as calculated and sparing with space and depth as before, but more active and richer in palette.)

The film nails its storm-cloud colors to the mast in its opening scene, wherein a gifted teenaged gymnast (the touchingly breakable Ariane Labed, winner of 2010″s Venice Best Actress prize for the Lanthimos-produced “Attenberg”) is threatened with grievous bodily harm by her coach when she dares to suggest more contemporary music for her ribbon-twirling routine. “You”re not ready for pop,” he seethes. Neither, it seems, is Lanthimos, who amplifies this unnerving sense of everyday psychosis across a progressively surreal shuffle of story strands, the most dominant of which involves a lonely young nurse (“Dogtooth” standout Aggeliki Papoulia, once more on brave form) offering herself as a replacement to the bereaved parents of a young car-crash victim. (“But I have wonderful news!” she tells them, mere seconds after delivering the time of death.)

After this description, you”d probably struggle to believe me if I told you “Alps” is a slightly warmer film than its predecessor, but in its cockeyed, proudly foot-in-mouth way, it is: the comedy is sometimes broader and more patiently, zanily observational (as in a cryptic running motif where a couple feed each other lines of stiff English-language dialogue on everything from light fittings to orgasms), which is, admittedly, cold comfort alongside its most heart-stoppingly brutal interruptions.

As in Lanthimos” previous film, there”s a larger, more rule-bound narrative behind its depiction of isolated social transgression, but it”d be stealing his thunder to describe the knitwork. Suffice to say that where “Dogtooth” examined the devastating consequences of preventative social retardation, “Alps” elegantly provides a mirror hypothesis of people attempting to stall time and mortality after the fact of tragedy, like so much toothpaste scraped messily back into the tube; as studies in aggressive human denial, they make for a punishingly brilliant twin-set, with no pearls in sight.

Any New Yorkers, Floridians or others among you managed to see the film yet? Share your thoughts in the comments — I’m genuinely intrigued to hear feedback on this one.

Manhattan played host to the world premiere of Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises” today on a hot day in the city (which also served as one of the key locations of the shoot). The Associated Press offered a live stream of the red (make that black) carpet arrivals, which, in addition to principals from the cast and crew of the film, included other such celebrities as Ron Howard and Dennis Haysbert.

“I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished with the three movies,” star Christian Bale said. “I’m very honored to have played this character and to have recreated it in our own fashion. And I’m very fascinated to see what consequent Batman incarnations will look like.”

In many ways, Bale said he was amazed to be there for the premiere of a third and final film. Everyone involved with the production always said they should just assume one movie at a time and “not be arrogant enough” to assume they would have the opportunity to make sequels.

Much of the talk swirled around the bittersweet nature of dropping the curtain on the trilogy, as it is that rare thing: a definitive end to a franchise and all involved. Gary Oldman was one of the actors to appear in each installment and he recalled his final day of shooting.

“The last scene [I filmed] was on a rooftop here in New York,” he said. “It was Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s first scene in the movie and my last scene of the trilogy. You can’t quite believe it, really, that it’s over. But it’s got to come to an end. And talk about going out with a bang.”

Also very much on the lips of the cast and crew was the “family” Christopher Nolan has built, and not only through the Batman films. Tom Hardy, who stars as the villain Bane in the new film, noted that there was an “‘Inception’ family” (including newcomers to the franchise such as Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard) and a “Batman family” on the set.

“Chris creates a very intimate environment,” he said, Oldman sneaking behind him to tickle the actor as he spoke. “You never feel overwhelmed by the size of the movie because you feel so incredibly safe.”

Said Gordon-Levitt, “It was an honor to be in ‘Inception’ and even more so when he asked me back. They [Nolan and wife/producer Emma Thomas] have become my friends.” He also took a choice moment to promote Hardy’s work in Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Bronson.”

Anne Hathaway is one of the cast members working with Nolan for the first time on the film, and in her view, it was a dream come true. Indeed, in interview after interview, she has beamed over being able to work on a series of films she already loved from a distance.

“Chris is a dream director and this is a dream part in a franchise that blew my mind as an audience member,” she said. “So to actually be invited into it, I wasn’t expecting that. I’m very humbled.”

She also fielded, naturally, a question about her incarnation of Catwoman (who isn’t referred to as such in the film) versus previous portrayals of the character.

“I believe that each Selina [Kyle] is representative of the Gotham City that she lives in,” she said thoughtfully.

Co-writer Jonathan Nolan recalled when his was younger and his brother gave him a copy of Frank Miller’s “Year One” story arc. As a result, he said, “I was really only into one comic book superhero when I was a kid. So it’s been a privilege to spend nine years playing around in Gotham City with my brother.”

And indeed, Christopher Nolan also noted that “privilege,” and responding to a question regarding saying goodbye to the characters, said, “There isn’t really one last scene that you do with everybody involved, and so you’re gradually wrapping it up. So I’m saying goodbye to Michael Caine and the Batcave for the last time, and then I’m saying goodbye to Christian and the Bat suit for the last time. So it’s spread out over a few weeks toward the end of a seven-month shoot. But there was a lump in the throat every now and again.”

“The Dark Knight Rises” opens everywhere Friday.

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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One of the highlights of my extremely (mercifully) short trip to Comic-Con this year was a big showcase of all the Batmobiles, from the 1966 TV series edition through the Tumbler of Christopher Nolan’s latest Batman franchise. I’ve always wanted to see one of the Anton Furst-designed rigs from the Tim Burton films up close and suddenly, I got my chance. It didn’t disappoint.

The Batmobile has always generated awe. It’s a signature element of the Dark Knight’s arsenal, unique in the world of superheroes. And each iteration on screen has been pretty friggin’ cool in its own way.

So with that in mind, the CW will be airing a short documentary tonight creatively called “The Batmobile” that covers the history of Batman’s ride. Interviews with Nolan, Burton, Joel Schumacher, Adam West, Dennis O’Neil and Michael Uslan are included.

Meanwhile, reviews of the new film, which opens Friday, have been given the green light. HitFix’s Drew McWeeny is among the devoted. To wit:

“We may never see superhero films quite like these again, and that’s fine. Nolan had something special to say with his time in the trenches, and he’s ended on his own terms. I suspect that the reaction to the film will be hotly divided, but I’m firmly on the side that this is a triumph, a victory for all involved, and one of the year’s most impressive efforts so far in any genre, on any subject.”

Meanwhile, detractors are already receiving death threats. Oh, Batman. How you rile a summer movie season.

“The Batmobile” airs tonight at 8pm ET/PT. The full length doc will be included on the Blu-ray of “The Dark Knight Rises” later this year. Check out a trailer below and be sure to circle back tomorrow for a list of Batman stories to prepare you for “The Dark Knight Rises.”

I confess that when the press release unveiling this year’s Venice Film Festival jury landed in my inbox today, it brought me up a little short — I hadn’t quite realized that the festival, which I’ll be covering here at IC for the fourth consecutive year, is only a little over six weeks away. Yep, that’s how close the fall festival season, and all the feverish awards talk it brings with it, is: enjoy the peace of summer while it lasts, folks.

That slightly sobering realization aside, the press release brought good news: in keeping with Venice’s recently acquired reputation as perhaps the most adventurously programmed of the big three European festivals, this year’s jury — expanded this year from the usual seven members to nine — is a suitably contemporary and eclectic gathering of artists. It was previously announced that Michael Mann (whose daughter, Ami, competed at the fest last year with “Texas Killing Fields”) will preside over this year’s Competition jury, marking the third year in a year in a row that an American director has had the honor: Quentin Tarantino and Darren Aronofsky precede him. But he’s to be the only Yank at the table, with his fellow jurors coming from Britain, Israel, Argentina, Hong Kong, Serbia, France, Switzerland and, of course, Italy.

For many, the most familiar name on the list will be Samantha Morton, a twice Oscar-nominated actress who successfully branched out into directing with 2009’s “The Unloved,” winning a BAFTA for her efforts. That makes her one of two female filmmakers on the panel, with French-Swiss writer-director Ursula Meier a pleasingly fresh choice for the jury: still very much on the rise, she won a deserved prize at Berlin in February for her wonderful sophomore feature “Sister” (reviewed here).

Other filmmakers in the mix include Ari Folman (“Waltz With Bashir”), Pablo Trapero (“Carancho”) and, representing the host country, Matteo Garrone (“Gomorrah”), fresh from winning his second Grand Prix at Cannes for “Reality.” The most left-field selection, meanwhile, is revered performance artist Marina Abramovic, recently the subject of acclaimed documentary “Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present.” I’d love to sit on the jury’s deliberations this year: who knows what she’ll make of “Anna Karenina?”

Nothing’s official yet, but Joe Wright’s Tolstoy adaptation is widely predicted to premiere on the Lido. Ben Affleck’s “Argo” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” are also in the conversation, though with that jury in particular, I’d count on looking further afield for the Golden Lion winner. The fun kicks off on August 29.

The full press release:

The selection has been made for the members of the International Jury for the Competition at the 69th Venice International Film Festival (29 August – 8 September 2012), with American director Michael Mann as president. The decision was made by the Board of Directors of the Venice Biennale chaired by Paolo Baratta, upon the recommendation of the Director of the Venice Film Festival Alberto Barbera. The personalities selected to compose the Jury are:

• Serbian artist and performer Marina Abramovic, who was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 1997 Venice Biennale
• French actress and model Laetitia Casta, who worked for acclaimed directors such as Raoul Ruiz (Les âmes fortes, 2001), Patrice Leconte (Rue des plaisirs, 2002) and Tsai Ming-Liang (Visage, 2009). Casta received her first nomination at the César Awards for the interpretation of Brigitte Bardot in the movie Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque)
• Hong Kong producer and director Peter Ho-Sun Chan, a leading figure in the Asian film industry, who has been able to merge art and entertainment and has originally reinterpreted the traditional wuxia genre
• Israeli director and screenwriter Ari Folman, author of Waltz with Bashir (2008) that won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
• Italian director Matteo Garrone, two-times winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival for Gomorra (2008) and Reality (2012)
• French/Swiss film-maker Ursula Meier, who received a Silver Bear Special Award at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival for her movie Sister
• British actress Samantha Morton, who received two Academy Award nominations, one for Best Supporting Actress in Woody Allen”s Sweet and Lowdown (2000), and one for Best Actress in Jim Sheridan”s In America (2004)
• Argentinian director and producer Pablo Trapero, who already participated at the Venice Film Festival, the first time in 1999 with his debut film Crane World (Mundo Grua), and then in 2004 with Rolling Family (Familia Rodante, 2004)

On the closing night of the Venice International Film Festival (September 8, 2012), the Venezia 69 International Jury will award the official prizes to the feature-length films in competition: the Golden Lion for Best Film, the Silver Lion for Best Director, the Special Jury Prize, the Coppa Volpi for Best Actor, the Coppa Volpi for Best Actress, the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Young Actor or Actress, the Award for Best Technical Contribution and the Award for Best Screenplay. 

For more views on movies, awards season and other pursuits, follow @GuyLodge on Twitter.

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Every now and then, the curious in-between state of being a film critic in two different countries means an occasional slip in awareness. As much as I try to stay abreast of both the UK and US release schedules, I’m sometimes surprised to find that this film or that has or hasn’t surfaced in one of those regions — particularly when the parallel universe of the festival circuit means so many things are seen out of time.

Which is why this post arrives a fortnight late: somewhere between my festival exploits in Edinburgh and Karlovy Vary, I completely failed to register that Sarah Polley’s “Take This Waltz” — itself a long-tarrying premiere at Toronto last autumn — opened Stateside at the end of June. (Perhaps I was distracted by its August release date in the UK.) No harm, no foul — except when we’re talking about one of the year’s best films.

Since being acquired by Magnolia at Toronto — where reactions ranged from the ecstatic to the exasperated, proving once more why films shouldn’t be evaluated by aggregate website scores — fans and sceptics alike have wondered why the distributor held Polley’s beguilingly modest character drama back until mid-summer, a release patch where even the strongest counterprogramming strategy is vulnerable, and, without a full armada of critics backing it, its award-caliber performances and construction seem least likely to gain the industry foothold they deserve.

But watch the film itself, and the scheduling makes pleasingly content-sensitive sense. The phrase “summer movie” has come to imply any form of effects-laden tentpole blockbusters, but taken at its most literal, it’s hard to think of a film that embodies the season with more tactile specificity than “Take This Waltz,” an ostensibly interior film in which adult relationships nonetheless brew, bend and buckle in the salty grip of the sun.

None of the principals in its itchy, untenable love triangle may realize or acknowledge it, but this is not a story that would unfold, or even end, in the same way over a winter, or even a cool-headed spring. Summer loving, as two overage teens once sang, happens so fast, and the humidly hovering air and sticky Toronto pavements so lovingly evoked by Polley in her jambalaya-colored film amount to more than 93-degree atmospherics — they’re behavioral catalysts in and of themselves.

It’s that ripe environmental awareness that makes emotional sense of a film both narratively spare and sensually cluttered, even when Polley’s writing tilts toward the affected: in a story that hinges on irrationally ruled desire, every mood-influencing detail, be it the saturated color of a sweat-stained T-shirt or the near-palpable aroma of chicken cacciatore, goes beyond the decorative and into the realm of consequence. If filmmaking is chiefly a sensory exercise, this represents a quantum leap from Polley’s already encouraging debut “Away From Her” — less cautiously tasteful in its design, more unruly in its emotions, the work of a young filmmaker who has discovered that grown-ups aren’t as grown-up as we think they are. That it’s as unapologetically sexy a film as North America has produced in many a year, doused in the hot stink and brute poetry of intercourse, is hardly incidental to its merits, either.

That doesn’t immediately appear to be the case. It’s rare that a film this wonderful overrides a red flag as glaring as an opening-act speech by Michelle Williams’s diffident protagonist Margot, in which she muses to an airplane seatmate about her fear of “connections” — she’s talking about connecting flights, but it doesn’t take even a glancing interest in psychology to tell that she isn’t, not really, and for a good few minutes, we have every reason to fear two further hours in the company of a transparent mouthpiece for all manner of twentysomething neuroses.

But then something interesting happens: just as said seatmate, who just happens to be her unwitting next-door neighbor and future lover Daniel (the highly promising Luke Kirby), calls Margot on her and the script’s cod self-analysis, so does the film. The faintly teeth-gritting talk of connections emerges as clever lampshading of a boldly selfish character better at observing her problems from a distance than taking possession of them, whose passive preference for emotional limbo is what leads her so casually into adultery.

Peacefully married to the avuncular Lou (Seth Rogen), an aspiring cookbook writer whose patience with her moods is more detrimental to the relationship than one might think, she takes no more responsibility for this happiness than she does for her undirected yearnings: she appears to have walked into marriage as unquestioningly as she has into infidelity. Played with customary intuition and soft-fruit sensitivity by Williams, that may make her a maddening character, but not an unbelievable and unsympathetic one. 

As her characters play-act at adulthood in their brightly painted slatted dollhouses, Polley appears to be nagging at why their domestic structures don’t wield the weight of permanence or formality they did — or merely seemed to — for older generations. Grumpier viewers have complained about the feyness of the supposed hipster community in which Polley has set her otherwise classical femme infidèle study — she’s a drifting freelance copywriter, while Daniel, in a touch particularly aggravating to the film’s detractors, is rickshaw-runner — but in this not-wholly-naturalistic drama, the preciousness of these lives seems a valid subject for scrutiny, not just a scriptwriter’s twee fancy. How do middle-class adult live lives this unreal? Some critics are asking this question, but so, to some degree, is “Take This Waltz.” 

Abetted by its meticulously color-coded cinematography and costume design, part and parcel of the film’s fevered summer sense, “Take This Waltz” is the unusual kitchen-sink drama that plays with woozy distortion of reality rather than effortful amplification of same. Its finest moments are one that actively wallow in fantasy. An exquisitely written and delivered mid-film monologue for Daniel, detailing in unflinching carnal detail precisely what he’d do to Margot were she his, is an elevated writer’s flourish as triumphant as the aforementioned “connections” solo is uncertain; arousing some audible whimpers at the press screening I attended, it’s as erotic a scene as has ever been achieved in film without the removal of one stitch of clothing.

A similarly frank sequence, and Polley’s grandest directorial coup, comes late in the film, as a swirling, circling time-lapse shot, scored to the ashily plaintive Leonard Cohen ballad of the title, details Margot and Daniel’s full sexual courtship, from tentative acquaintance to extravagant perversion to banal domestic interaction — it’s a remarkable bridging of the most  heightened and the most mundane polarities of human desire. Popular music is ingeniously used throughout: the bubblegum absurdity of one indelible 1980s one-hit wonder, in particular, cruelly augments and finally counters Margot’s most damagingly escapist instincts.

Williams has such form in negotiating intelligently tricky, ungiving young women on screen that it seems she’s no longer capable of surprising, but she does so here anyway. It’s the sexual restlessness that feels new and invigorating in this performance, beautifully balanced by the never-better and, crucially, never-stiller Rogen, shorn of schtick here and exposing warm reserves of feeling. (It’s the superb Sarah Silverman, by contrast, who gets to act out as Lou’s abrasive, involuntarily perceptive alcoholic sister.)

It takes actors of rare grace and empathy to make filmmaking this intricately formed breathe and bleed: on the page and behind the camera, Polley dares to risk over-designing here and there, confident in the human core of her story to see her more lavish ideas through. That and the steaming sun, at any rate. Good on Magnolia for waiting to give us the year’s truest summer movie.

‘Take This Waltz’ is currently in theaters. Already seen it? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

For more views on movies, awards season and other pursuits, follow @GuyLodge on Twitter.

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You could hear the hype machine behind Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises” humming to life the instant it was assured some form of existence. It’s building to a fever pitch this week as the film is on everyone’s lips down in Comic-Con and word out of uniquely selective screenings makes the rounds. And now, David Germain has gone and thrown out the Oscar talk, so strap in.

Discussing the film in semi-review language, Germain swears it “has the weight and scope – and then some – of 2008’s ‘The Dark Knight’…whose snub in the best-picture field helped prod the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to expand the category to more than five nominees.” He basically plants a flag for the film’s chances on the circuit and gets Nolan, Christian Bale and Anne Hathaway on the record to discuss the franchise’s awards legacy.

Nolan is charmingly humble (measured, even) in his response to questions about that legacy:

“Look, the idea, the fact that people have talked about `The Dark Knight’ as being a key reason why the academy changed their rules and expanded the field is just a huge honor for the film, in a weird way…The academy’s been incredibly good to me and my films, and it would be churlish of me to complain…they owe Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock a lot more than me…It’s kind of like, get in line.”

Hathaway, meanwhile, promises she’s speaking not as a cast member but rather an Academy member when she says:

“So far, it’s the best film I’ve seen all year…He’s transcended the genre now. I think he’s shown that a comic-book movie can actually be epic, extraordinary cinema.”

I have no opinion yet. But there are those who do and who would certainly see the Oscar landscape differently than Germain. Regardless, I think it’s a terrible Albatross to throw around the neck of a film facing the footsteps of an award-winning blockbuster that broke records and had a hand in changing the Oscar status quo.

Further to Hathaway’s point, though, by most accounts, the film earns its 165-minute running time and moves along at a clip. Just tonight, for instance, David Letterman — who had Hathaway on as a guest — had this to say:

“I”ll tell you, in all honesty, I went to the movie, and it”s two hours and forty-five minutes. So two hours and forty-five minutes, that says bring survival gear, and I went in there, and the thing flies by. I was amazed at how quickly it goes by, and that”s the sign of a great movie.”

That will be crucial, considering the vast majority of the Academy sees comic book adaptations as things lesser than, certainly not worthy of epic considerations.

Yet that’s precisely what these stories (whether they work as movies or not) are: epics. “Noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero, in which a series of great achievements or events is narrated in elevated style.” Sounds like a comic book to me.

The legacy of Nolan’s Batman films will not be their critical and awards appeal, though that’s certainly part of it. Their legacy will be shifting perceptions, even if slightly, of an art form’s place in the conversation. There’s a whole mass of people down in San Diego right now celebrating this very concept.

With the heaviest of studio slates, it might be a minor miracle if Warner Bros. can keep everything afloat, because there is promise throughout the stable. So “The Dark Knight Rises” may or may not be an awards contender at the end of the day. But it doesn’t need to be. Perhaps, indeed, it would be churlish to complain that the mold wasn’t completely demolished. Just broken will do.

More on all of this very soon.

“The Dark Knight Rises” opens everywhere July 20.

Having written pretty much everything we could about Kenneth Lonergan’s “Margaret” here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here, it’s high time we finally shut up about it. It’s been a long strange trip. And the film is in the unique position of having built interest on the way to its home video release more so than its theatrical release, so with that in mind, it seemed like a good idea to solicit opinions today as it hits DVD/Blu-ray. So please, offer up your thoughts on the film when you get around to seeing it. You can rate it above but I’m most interested in whatever dialogue we can generate in the comments section below, so don’t be shy. I look forward to your take.

KARLOVY VARY, Czech Republic — Kenneth Lonergan begins our interview with a stumble — a literal one, as he trips himself trotting up the stairs to our plush riverside hotel lounge in loosely laced sneakers, sheepishly proffering a hand as he breaks his fall. He cheerily mocks his own gracelessness, but still seems a little outside his rhythm as he takes a seat, sugaring his cappuccino with a light tremble of the hand. He crinkles the paper sachet as his gentle gaze finds me through two-tone spectacles. He is not, I suspect, a man given to visible and expansive relaxation.

And yet Lonergan must be feeling more relaxed than he has done in many a year — and not only because all practical realities seem a little further away in the mountain air and fierce sun of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, where his second feature film as a director has just been unveiled to an appreciative Czech crowd. That film, “Margaret,” was, for five years, something of a creative millstone around the literate, soft-spoken New York playwright and screenwriter’s neck — tangled in post-production complications that have become the stuff of industry lore, not to mention an ongoing lawsuit. 

“Margaret” may not be entirely out of the woods yet, but it is, finally, out of the shadows. Released to US audiences last autumn, it has slowly burnt its way into the cultural consciousness, landing on many a critics’ Best of 2011 list (mine and Kris’ included) — and is finally set to reach its widest audience this week with its long-awaited DVD release. 

In the process, it has taken two forms: the already sprawling 150-minute edit released in theaters last year and, now, a 185-minute extended cut that Lonergan devotedly assembled for the DVD. Deemed by Kris to be even richer than the film he named his favorite of last year, it’s the culmination of a tortuous editing process for the filmmaker, whose story of a teenage girl’s flailing quest for retribution in the wake of a daylight tragedy presented him with any number of narrative and emotional circuits. Now tasked with presenting two edits to audiences where completing even one recently seemed an impossibility — the original theatrical cut is the one screening in Karlovy Vary, and still traveling the global cinema circuit — Lonergan appears gravely content, if such a paradox is possible, with the outcome.  

“They’re two different movies,” he explains, though he stresses that he doesn’t feel notably more possessive of one than the other. “The extended cut isn’t definitive. Indeed, it’s hard to say what’s definitive after a certain point. Some things, whether it’s a play or a film, you get on the first go, and you can be pretty sure that’s definitive. But once it’s taken on a longer life, and taken more time to put together, it becomes blurrier. I wrote a play once called ‘Lobby Hero,’ which I thought turned out very well, but there’s no final version of it. I published the one we produced, but there are seven other versions with different variations sitting in my desk at home. Other things I’ve written, every word is the right one. This isn’t one of those.”

In a sense, then, Lonergan views the new DVD edit of the film as another draft — not better or more conclusive, but a different way of working through his ideas. “The nice thing with the DVD now is that I don’t have to decide. I presented it one way, and now all the other ways — the ways I wasn’t necessarily sure about — I can put in the longer version. I could see in the theatrical version where I should have left this scene longer, or left that scene out. And I’m sure there will be moments in the extended version where I’ll think, ‘Why did I need to put that in?'” 

Not that Lonergan has come to these realizations yet. The new edit is only slightly less fresh and malleable for him than it is for audiences encountering it for the first time. “I haven’t seen the films side by side, so I don’t even know which one I prefer,” he says ruminatively. “They’re quite different, I think. I’m very curious to see how it plays. This film has had so many screenings, and there have been so many versions of it over time. Which is not unusual in itself — it’s just this one was unusually protracted.”

What difference, then, has an extra 35 minutes of footage made to a film that, to the sometimes simultaneous bemusement and delight of critics, never quite seemed set in stone to begin with? “The best way to put it,” he says carefully, “is that things merely suggested in the theatrical release, including whole sides of Lisa’s [the protagonist’s] personality, have now been explored, elaborated upon, in the extended cut. Which approach is more effective will be for others to decide; I’ll have my own opinion. I hope there’s no repetition, no needless extension of things we’ve already understood and with which we are satisfied. It may be half an hour of drudgery and dreariness. We’ll see.”

A more concrete difference, meanwhile, lies in the film’s music — for many critics, a sinuous standout of the original cut. “That’s very much a departure. I loved Nico Muhly’s score in the theatrical version, but I had a simultaneous idea for a score that incorporated more existing classical pieces, and more music from the opera.” A performance of Offenbach’s “The Tales of Hoffmann” is viewed by Lisa (Anna Paquin) and her mother (J. Smith-Cameron) in the film’s emotionally crescendoing finale. 

“I liked both those approaches, but I couldn’t decide, so I ended going with Nico’s score for the theatrical release. Now I get to use my other idea in the extended cut — I couldn’t quite afford every piece that I wanted, but I hope it works.” Lonergan emphasizes once more that he views the new score as an alternative rather than an improvement. “It was actually very easy to make the decisions for the extended cut on the DVD, because when in doubt, I simply did what I hadn’t done initially. It’s kind of therapeutic: if there were two approaches I liked, I now get to show both of them. Which is unusual, because one tends to think, with a work of art or entertainment, you only get one chance and one way to present it. And now with modern technology, which I always thought I was largely against” — he pauses to chuckle — “I’m able to have it both ways.”

I suggest that a film like “Margaret” — which deals, after all, with such messily imperfect lives and emotions — hardly lends itself to a tidily definitive edit, that there could hardly be a story more open to alternative tellings. “Exactly,” he nods. “I know, watching the extended version, there will be many things I’ll be very happy are now there. But there will be many things I’ll wonder about still. It’s  the nature of the work — it’s never perfect. I sometimes feel that if it was perfect, it wouldn’t be any good.”  

This glorious imperfection, he explains, stemmed from an unusually liberated writing process. “One of the many things I’ve seen in print about the film that isn’t true is that the shooting script was 186 pages. According to everyone except me,” he says with a wry half-smile. “The shooting script was actually 162 pages. That’s long, of course. It’s a big movie. I enjoyed writing this script more than any other I’ve ever written, because I knew what was going to happen very clearly. And that allowed me to improvise as I was writing, to not worry about any editing issues whatsoever. So I wrote it with an unusually open channel to my unconscious — it was almost as if I just closed my eyes and wrote what I was hearing in my head.”

“The first draft came out at 378 pages.” He shakes his head, indicating the tome’s size with a thumb and forefinger, like a fisherman miming a minnow. “I had it bound in leather and after the film, I gave it to the actors to read, just for fun. It reads perfectly well, it’s just more.“

That very “moreness” of it led Lonergan at one point to consider making the story as a television miniseries, retaining its vast form but breaking it up into chapters — but his directorial gut insisted on cinematic treatment. “I wanted it to be a movie. I grew up going to the movies, not watching them on television, so I’m still a bit resistant to TV as a medium. There’s something about the impact of a big screen that means something to me, even though I realize almost every film is fated to be seen for a year in theaters, and then forever after on television. Martin Scorsese is keenly aware of this: he shoots for the big screen still, but he’s so canny.” 

The mention of Scorsese, of course, isn’t incidental: the master is a longstanding associate of Lonergan’s, who received his second Oscar nomination for co-writing “Gangs of New York.” Scorsese and his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker even offered editorial input on “Margaret” in the midst of its post-production limbo.  

“Scorsese once said to me, ‘You can’t do wide shots anymore, because if the faces are too small, no one’s going to see them.’ Of course, he shoots all these wide shots, but he’s Martin Scorsese. He can afford to break his own rules. But there’s something to that. It’s a bit like shooting something without sound, which you wouldn’t generally do, because you want people to hear it. It’s not a question of integrity, it’s a question of how people are going to watch your film.”   

The naming of Scorsese, and the memory of the project’s darkest hours, leads me to wonder just how much the film’s reception has been shaped by its backstory: in the long run, does Lonergan think the film benefited from having had to fight so hard to see the light of day?  

“The only benefit I can see is that it provoked this unexpected and very welcome championing of the film,” he replies after a moment’s consideration. He’s referring, of course, to the so-called Team “Margaret” movement, a critic-led campaign of sorts for the film that protested what many observers saw as unduly quiet publicity from its studio, Fox Searchlight. 

The movement, such as it was, ignited in late November, shortly after it screened for British critics, who added their voices to the chorus as awards season weighed on the minds of its American fans. The unprecedented result was an expansion of its initial UK release, while across the pond, a handful of screenings were arranged for those who had missed the boat in the fall. (The London Critics’ Circle, meanwhile, made good on their initial championing of the film, handing Paquin their Best Actress award, while most US awards bodies turned a blind eye.) Twitter, to the unapologetically technophobic Lonergan’s amazement and amusement, was a key enabler in this turnaround.

“I despise the internet, and as as a matter of principle, I’m not supposed to like critics,” he laughs. “We’re supposed to be above the praise, and to ignore the disparagement when people don’t like our work. And yet I’m so grateful to the critical community for rescuing the film. I was just swept away by that, I must say. It was not something of my making, and it was very touching to me. To the cast. To everyone — Scott Rudin, Sydney [Pollack], who, alas, wasn’t alive to see this. They worked so hard for so long and for so little money, just because they liked the film. And the thought that no one would see it was painful. So to see it become something of a cause célèbre was humbling. It makes you believe in critics.” He throws me a playful glance. “And the British.”

My suggestion that the Team “Margaret” phenomenon is something that would have pleased the self-righteous, eagerly crusading Lisa is met with another smile: “Like me, I doubt she would have thought of anything so effective,” he quips.

Still, he refuses to romanticize the film’s struggles. “In that one way the backstory perhaps helped a little,” he allows, “but the truth is that it was simply a very long post-production period which wasn’t helpful to anyone. Maybe the film would have had exactly the same reception had it been released straight away. Or it might have not done well, and then wouldn’t have been rescued by critics, because there’d have been nothing to fight against. Who knows?”

As it stands, the film wound up first hitting screens in September 2011, neatly coinciding with the ten-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks — which themselves weigh heavily on the mind of Lisa in the film. “Margaret” has been described by many critics as a valentine of sorts to post-crisis New York City, and one of American cinema’s most searing reflections on the tragedy to date. Did Lonergan intend it as such? The answer, though he admits he started writing “Margaret” before the attacks even occurred, is yes. 

“The film isn’t set exactly in time, but I always imagine it’s set in 2003 — any more recently than that, and Lisa would be too young for it to mean what it does to her, while if it had just happened, that would be a very different environment too. But it absolutely pervades the atmosphere of the film, and was meant to. There’s no didactic parallel between her story and the story of New York after 9/11, except in that there’s a terrible thing that’s happened that widens her view of the world, and she doesn’t know what to do with that, or her sense of responsibility for it.”

Lisa’s feelings of fury and futility in processing a tragedy — a fatal bus accident — in which she’s both complicit and a victim stemmed from Lonergan’s own political frustrations in the wake of 9/11. “I was very angry with my political team — the lukewarm leftwing intelligentsia of New York, who immediately blamed America for getting blown up,” he says. “America’s committed its sins, no doubt, and continues do so, but I feel the people responsible are in fact the people who blew us up, and who are trying to blow us up still. I don’t think it’s wrong to say that, and it made me sick at the time, the number of analysts turning their blame inward.”

“We must blame the Islamist extremists. We can blame America for its sins as well, but it’s not the same thing. People don’t always know what to do when faced with two bad guys. And I think that describes Lisa’s confusion about what to do, her desire to both take responsibility for what she’s done and make sure that the other person acknowledges his responsibility too. So you can draw all kinds of parallels to 9/11 — it’s not an allegory, but the film wouldn’t be the same if it hadn’t happened.”

Lonergan is particularly proud of a shot, newly restored in the extended cut, which nods to the film’s brittle, uncertain post-9/11 environment. “We shot a lot of airplanes — we even went out in the street one day to shoot nothing but airplanes going by. And one of those shots I really love. It’s in a section where Lisa really doesn’t know what to do, where she’s on the phone trying to track down the bus driver, and all it is is a very long shot of a plane going over Broadway while she’s talking. The simple fact is that in 2003, whenever an airplane went by in New York, you got nervous. Now, you don’t — we’ve gotten used to it. But for two or three years, you would have an enhanced reaction. And this shot conveys that for me.”

By Lonergan’s timeline, then, Lisa is now in her mid-twenties. Has he given any thought to who and where she is now? Now living in Obama’s America, is she is angry and effortfully engaged with politics as she was as a teenager? 

“I don’t think so, no,” he says, answering more decisively than I’d perhaps expected. “To me, the sequel in Lisa’s life to what happens is that she grows up and becomes an adult. A regular adult going about her business, concerned with her own concerns, the way adults are. The way, excepting those unusual and heroic people who devote their lives to other people’s concerns, we all are. Which was really her obstacle in the film.”

It’s not, he thinks, necessarily a positive outcome. “You know in the film there’s a shot of the back of Lisa’s head, where she walks into the crowd, into Broadway, and disappears,” he says, suddenly animated with specificity. “It was Anne McCabe, the editor, who suggested we make that the last shot of the film. But I think that would have been a depressing note to end on. Not that the film has to have a happy ending, but we’ve already thoroughly explored the dark side of growing up. She’s tried so hard to fix things, and she fails — she’s forced to acknowledge that her mother’s not perfect and neither is she, which is a point that most adolescents take a while to reach.”

He swallows the last of his coffee and glances out the window into the white morning light, briefly looking more melancholy than a man presenting his magnum opus to the world might be expected to. “It’s not a character flaw to become an adult.”

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Eight-time Oscar nominee Peter O’Toole is hanging it up. In a statement released by his publicist, the actor said, “It is time for me to chuck in the sponge. To retire from films and stage. The heart for it has gone out of me: it won’t come back.”

There’s nothing worse than being on a track once filled with inspiration long after that well has dried up. So as sad as it might be, I’m happy O’Toole recognizes that the art, the work, the business, whatever, is no longer doing it for him. At any age we should focus on what moves us, what inspires us, and relinquish what doesn’t. If we can.

O’Toole never won a competitive Oscar. In fact, he holds the record for nominations without a win amongst actors. His first was a high bar, for “Lawrence of Arabia” in 1963, and a tough loss to Gregory Peck for “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Who’s going to argue with Peck in that? His most recent came for “Venus” in 2006, four years after he was awarded an Honorary Oscar by the Academy.

O’Toole originally declined the Honorary Oscar, saying at the time that since he was “still in the game and might win the lovely bugger outright, would the Academy please defer the honour until I am 80?” He later relented and accepted the prize.

Upon accepting the honor (presented to him by actress Meryl Streep) at the 75th annual Academy Awards, O’Toole said, “always a bridesmaid never a bride my foot. I have my very own Oscar now to be with me till death us do part. I wish the Academy to know I am as delighted as I am honored, and I am honored…Having already bagged this baby, as it were, and so spared uncertainties prior the opening of an envelope, I am able to think.” It was one of the best Oscar acceptance speeches I’ve ever seen, eloquent as always.

I don’t want this to sound too much like an obit or anything, though I suppose it is an obit for a career. But the roles are staggering, the performances just as much: “Becket,” “The Lion in Winter,” “Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” “The Ruling Class,” “The Stunt Man,” “My Favorite Year” — and those are just the Oscar-nominated. Otherwise there was “Lord Jim,” “The Last Emperor,” “Man of La Mancha” and a particular stand-out bit in “Ratatouille,” among countless others.

On the stage, he’s done it all, from “Waiting for Godot” to “Macbeth.” He won an Emmy for his work in the 1999 mini-series “Joan of Arc”

And now, it’s a career in the rear view. He may never have won that competitive Oscar, but that frankly catapults him and his legend further. I hope whatever he does next, he finds that he has more than enough “heart for it.”

It hardly feels like it, but we’re already over a week into the back end of 2012’s release calendar: technically, we’ve seen approximately half the films that will be eligible for awards consideration at the year’s end.

Not that the eventual list of this year’s Academy Award nominations will reflect as much, of course. It’s a well-known law of the awards game that early releases tend to suffer most in the Oscar game, as voters with notoriously short memories forget notable accomplishments from the January-to-June window, while studios, mindful of that fact, barrage them with baity prestige fare in the year’s final quarter. Occasionally, a “Crash,” a “Hurt Locker” or a “Silence of the Lambs” bucks the odds and hangs in for the long haul, but it takes sustained critical and/or public conversation and cunning campaign savvy to do so — the work, as ever in this business, is almost never enough.

This year looks to be particularly cruel to first-half releases. Thanks to lasting festival buzz at Sundance and Cannes, consolidated by glowing reviews upon its theatrical release last month, “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is bound to be in the conversation at the year’s end, but very little else looks like a sure thing.

Some will take that as an indictment of the general quality of 2012 releases to date, but that shouldn’t be the case. Look a little closer, and you’ll see that it’s actually been a varied and invigorating six months at the movies, running the gamut from surprisingly well-reviewed studio tentpoles (“The Avengers,” “The Hunger Games”) to mid-range sleepers (“21 Jump Street,” “Magic Mike”) to classy arthouse fare (“Damsels in Distress,” “Moonrise Kingdom”)… and that’s without even crossing US borders. Many of these may not qualify as Academy-friendly, but that’s not to say they’re any less deserving than any number of upcoming prestige titles.

All in all, there’s a rich enough selection of quality work that Kris and I felt a Top 10 list was in order, highlighting the early-bird films and individuals we’d most like to see acknowledged when awards season rolls around. (Regular readers might recall my annual First-Half FYC series on the same subject — look at this as a taster for that.) Some of them have a chance of sticking around, others are pie-in-the-sky fantasies, but all of them merit consideration.

We settled on one personal favorite in 10 different categories, a brief that still left many worthy names on the sidelines. Honorable mentions include: Sarah Polley’s “Take This Waltz,” with its heartrending performances by Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen; Tom Cruise’s wickedly clever self-parody in “Rock of Ages”; the directorial and editorial poise of “Miss Bala”; Kristin Scott Thomas’s snappy, film-redeeming support in “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”; Paul Rudd’s ingenious comic pyrotechnics in “Wanderlust”; the stormy, expansive lensing of “The Hunter” and Linda Cardellini’s flinty selflessness in “Return.” Not to mention any number of outstanding foreign-language titles that will never get the respect they deserve, from Russia’s “Elena” to Chile’s “Post Mortem” to Japan’s “I Wish.”

So look on the list below as a mere conversation starter — or rather, a conversation retainer, a reminder not to get too dazzled by the bright lights of the autumn and winter heavyweights. Please share your thoughts — and, of course, your own first-half standouts — in the comments section.

Early as it seems to you and me to be thinking about this stuff, the gears have already started grinding for the 2012 Screen Actors’ Guild Awards. The panel of 2,100 members voting for this year’s nominees has already been randomly selected from the Guild’s vast membership, while yesterday, the submissions process was opened — actors and their representatives hoping to compete for the awards this year have until October 25 to enter their names for consideration in the category of their choosing.

Yes, unlike at the Oscars, actors get to determine whether they compete in the leading or supporting race at the SAGs — which has resulted in several mismatches with the Oscar list over the years. Most recently, Kate Winslet won a supporting SAG and a leading Oscar for “The Reader”; a few years before, Benicio Del Toro won both awards, with the categorizations flipped, for “Traffic.”

One difference in the process this year is SAG’s decision to accept online submissions only, a policy intended to “reflect [their] continuing commitment to environmentally sound practices.” It’s a small change, and paper voting will still be permitted at the nomination stage, as well as in the final vote. Still, following the Academy’s announcement earlier this year to implement an online voting option for the upcoming Oscars, it’s clear that the entire awards season is slowly stepping into the digital age. The key change, of course, will come when online streaming is permitted as a way of distributing films to voters for consideration.

The edited press release from SAG: 

Submissions of performances for consideration for the 19th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards® nominations are now open online at sagawards.org/submissions, it was announced today by SAG Awards® Committee Chair JoBeth Williams. For the first time, submissions will be accepted online only. Submissions will close on Thursday, Oct. 25, at 5 p.m. (PST).

“Implementing an online submissions only policy this year reflects SAG Awards continuing commitment to environmentally sound practices,” Williams explains. The SAG Awards was honored in 2009, 2010 and 2011 with the Environmental Media Association (EMA)”s Green Seal, recognizing a production”s outstanding efforts to implement sustainable initiatives and promote environmental awareness. Online submissions for Actor® nominations have been available since the 9th SAG Awards. Actors and their representatives were advised this time last year that an online submissions only policy would be implemented as of the 19th Annual SAG Awards and were encouraged to try the online procedure if they had not previously done so.

The Screen Actors Guild Award-The Actor®-is presented by SAG-AFTRA for outstanding performances in motion pictures and primetime television. Actors may submit their own performances from 2012 for consideration in categories of the actor”s choosing. With the actor”s permission, producers, studios/networks, agents, managers, or publicists may also submit performances for consideration in the category designated by the actor. Nominations for the 19th Annual SAG Awards will be announced on Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012 at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood.

Of the top industry honors presented to performers, only the SAG Awards are selected entirely by actors” union peers The nominees for performances in 2012, including the distinctive ensemble awards and stunt ensemble honors, will be chosen by two separate film and television nominating panels, each comprised of 2,100 members from across the United States, who were randomly selected this spring. Nomination ballots will be mailed on Wednesday, Nov. 21 and voting closes on Monday, Dec. 10.

After nominations are announced, final SAG Awards voting instructions will be mailed on Monday, Dec. 31, 2012 to all active members of SAG-AFTRA. Online voting is encouraged. Final voting paper ballots are available only upon request between Monday, Oct. 1, 2012 and Monday, Jan. 14, 2013. Online votes must be cast or previously-requested paper ballots returned by Friday, Jan. 25 to the SAG Awards election firm, where results will be sealed until they are opened onstage at the 19h Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013. The ceremony will be simulcast live from the Los Angeles Shrine Exposition Center on TNT and TBS at 8 p.m. ET, 7 p.m. CT, 6 p.m. MT and 5 p.m. PT.

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Two versions of Kenneth Lonergan’s “Margaret” finally reach a large audience tomorrow as the film makes its way to DVD/Blu-ray. Included will be the theatrical cut of the film and an extended (not “director’s”) cut.

Speaking last week with Eric Kohn at indieWIRE (which will be hosting a special New York screening of the extended cut tonight), Lonergan said, “It was nice to have the liberty to explore and go into depth in certain areas I felt were interesting to touch on and suggest in the theatrical release…it’s unusual to have the chance to do both of your ideas for a project instead of picking just one.”

Indeed, the extended version was a way for Lonergan to explore his ideas for the film outside of the constraints of a 150-minute time limit he agreed upon with the studio. It doesn’t turn the film into a new experience per se, but I feel like it injects more patience into the overall design and structure of the narrative. And to me, it’s a better movie.

I loved the theatrical cut for different reasons. The edits made the film feel a touch inelegant, which I thought actually worked in its favor. At the time I called it “a messy but truthful construction…[i]t bears the scars but wears them as a badge of honor and, in some ways, they become inherently tied to the themes being explored.”

With a handful of added scenes, extended moments and contextualizations, however, the three-hour version is a deeper breath. The filmmaking seems to take another step back to observe Lisa Cohen’s plight and marinate in what she’s going through all the more.

One scene in particular was just stunning, an aural assault from peripheral conversations as she tries to come to immediate grips with the accident she’s recently witnessed while talking with her (lovestruck) best guy friend in a restaurant. Other added elements include a follow-up to a scene in which Lisa loses her virginity and a theater class discussion that dissects the overly heightened drama of adolescent emotion (one of the film’s many themes) with precision. Both scenes give actor Kieran Culkin more to work with.

There’s also a re-inserted sequence that expands on a bombshell Lisa drops later in the film’s third act. I’m wary of discussing it at length, but it’s particularly fascinating to me because, without it, one could argue that Lisa’s bombshell raised some intriguing questions in the theatrical cut. How credible was it really? Was it a cry for attention? I liked how vague that made her motivations then, but here, again, it makes for a deeper breath and added context, turning that portion of the film into something slightly different. (And it gives J. Smith-Cameron even more opportunity to shine.)

Anyway, that entire paragraph is annoyingly vague. So I look forward to more people catching the film when it’s released tomorrow and maybe keeping the conversation going. It is a masterpiece, like nothing ever committed to film, I feel. It’s journey has been harrowing and interesting but that’s all backdrop for the rich work Lonergan did on the page as a writer and on the set as a director, working with actors honed in and pitched just right.

Check back tomorrow as Guy will have an interview with Lonergan from the Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

“Margaret” lands on DVD/Blu-ray courtesy tomorrow. Pick one up. It’s worth a blind buy.