It was Walter Matthau who explained to Ellen Burstyn, upon handing her the Best Actress Oscar she hadn’t been present to accept days earlier, that the chief difference the award would make to her career was this: “When you die, the newspaper obituaries will say, ‘The Academy Award-winning actress Ellen Burstyn died today.'”

It’s a famous quip, one that is proven true virtually every time a former Oscar-winner — or even a nominee — dies, even when their celebrity is such that a puny golden statuette hardly seems their most culturally significant achievement. In the case of a character actor like Ernest Borgnine, who passed away over the weekend at the decidedly ripe age of 95, that single Academy Award win is an essential elevating prefix: “Marty,” the modest 1955 character study for which he won, may not be the most widely seen work of his career, but the Best Actor Oscar it reaped remains a validating distinction for the kind of valuable anti-star on whom obituarists don’t always spend too much column space.

“Marty,” a modest, soft-shuffle romance between a shy, overweight butcher and a dowdy schoolteacher, remains one of the Academy’s most low-key choices for Best Picture. (It also remains the last film to win both the Oscar and the Palme d’Or at Cannes.) Borgnine’s Best Actor win for the film, meanwhile, was equally atypical, particularly coming off a run of variously iconic leading men like Brando, Bogart and Cooper taking the prize: actors who looked and sounded like Borgnine didn’t generally get to headline movies, much less win leading awards for them.

Indeed, he would have only the one opportunity: Borgnine remains one of a handful of men to have won Best Actor at his only nomination in any category, and leading roles didn’t exactly come rushing in its wake. Marty and Borgnine alike had one invitation to dance, and duly took it.

But while “Marty” remains by far the most generous offer, and consequently the richest, most shaded performance, of Borgnine’s career, his CV takes in any number of titles that are treasured memories for disparate generations of moviegoers and couch potatoes: “From Here to Eternity” (which runs second to “Marty” for the title of his best work), “The Wild Bunch,” “The Poseidon Adventure,” “The Dirty Dozen,” “Gattaca” and the small-screen exploits of “McHale’s Navy,” “Airwolf” and even “SpongeBob SquarePants.”

Most impressively of all, Borgnine’s work rate seemed, if anything, to increase with age: his list of screen credits, however undistinguished in recent years, runs busily all the way up to this year. That Screen Actors’ Guild Lifetime Achievement Award he won in 2011, however fiercely protested in some quarters, certainly didn’t come for lack of effort.

But why wasn’t that recent award met with unanimous approval? And why is the title most prominently listed in some of the obituaries dedicated to him not “Marty,” but a film he never actually appeared in — or, to get to the nub of the matter, he never even saw? Yes, much as it would dismay him to see the gay cowboy romance continually welded to his name, Ernest Borgnine’s identity for many movie geeks too young to remember, or feel much for, his prime career work is unhappily likely to remain “That Old Guy Who Refused To See ‘Brokeback Mountain.'”

Borgnine hadn’t bothered the Academy at all since his solitary moment in the sun with “Marty,” but precisely one half-century later, he inadvertently opened a rather ugly can of worms for them with his cheerful declaration that he hadn’t seen the then-comfortable frontrunner for Best Picture, had no intention of seeing it, and knew a number of colleagues in the Academy who felt precisely the same way — among them, such actors as Tony Curtis and Robert Duvall, who voiced their own displeasure. (“If John Wayne were alive today, he’d roll over in his grave,” were his words, though one rather hopes that Wayne wouldn’t be in his grave to begin with.)

The remarks were, of course, unprofessional — in a perfect world, Academy members should see all nominees before voting, though we know that’s all too rarely the case — but it was, of course, the unapologetic homophobia inherent in his resistance to the film that rankled with many a cultural commentator. The defence suggested that Borgnine had no obligation to see, much less approve, a film that didn’t line up with his personal values, however outdated they were. The prosecution might have conceded that point, but countered that by making a public statement of his sight-unseen distaste for the film, Borgnine was effectively campaigning against it — a passive, but nonetheless hostile, act of prejudice.

This entire kerfuffle would likely have been a swiftly forgotten storm in a teacup had “Brokeback Mountain” gone on to win Best Picture, as most expected it to. But when Jack Nicholson, eyebrows raised to the skies, announced that the winner was “Crash,” Borgnine’s comments came in for renewed, magnified scrutiny, as pundits wondered just how representative his views were of the Academy’s elderly, male, (usually) silent majority, and just how much of a hindrance that latent conservative streak could be to the social and cultural relevance of the Oscars.

Of course, whether the Borgnines of the Academy were any happier with “Crash” — a far more overt exercise in liberal tub-thumping than the largely apolitical “Brokeback” — as a victor is another question entirely, but the more contentious social issue had been averted for that year. Meanwhile, “Brokeback Mountain” held on to a kind of noble outsider status that critics would likely have chipped away at had it won — so perhaps, ironically enough, Borgnine’s hurtful comments wound up doing the film a good turn.

The outcome of this is that Ernest Borgnine has been adopted by awards analysts as a kind of poster boy for the Academy’s most conservative instincts: “What Would Ernest Borgnine Do?” asked James Rocchi in an Oscar predictions piece a few years back, and it’s a line that resurfaces in various permutations across the Oscar blogosphere when the Academy makes any seemingly staid or regressive decision.

To the best of my knowledge, the 94 year-old Borgnine never voiced an opinion on “The King’s Speech” — I like to imagine he thought it a bit frilly, if he saw it at all — but his name still surfaced in the conversation when the cosy period piece beat David Fincher’s metallic, youth-oriented, critically adored “The Social Network” to the punch. The Borgnines did it, whether Borgnine did it or not. That’s an unusual Oscar legacy for a one-time nominee-winner to leave behind, but it beats a simple prefix. 

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It’s been a while since I caught Benh Zeitlin’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild” at Sundance. I’ve been aching to give it another look ever since and it’s been in limited release the past week, so soon enough, I’ll do just that. Today, though, it’s expanding a bit farther so more of you will be able to get a look for yourself. The film has won awards at Sundance, Cannes and the LA Film Fest and continues to appear formidable this year. We spoke to Zeitlin about it recently (with another chat with cinematographer Ben Richardson still to come) and also talked up young star Quvenzhané Wallis’s awards prospects. If and when you get around to seeing the film, come on back here and let us know what you thought. You can also rate it in the tool above.

KARLOVY VARY, Czech Republic — I am typing this in the tastefully toxic orange surrounds of an easyJet flight to Gatwick, which sadly means that my week at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is over.

It”s been, as I think my previous diary pieces have made clear, a most enjoyable one: angry Czech sunshine, a healthy patchwork of films, raucous audiences, parties ranging from the luxe to the pilsner-pickled, my first live Q&A sessions, Thai foot massages, a few more films and my mandatory festival injury – this time, a spider bite sustained on a hike yesterday through Karlovy Vary”s dense, chapel-speckled surrounding forest. That”s what I get for leaving the cinema for one afternoon, I guess. (Incidentally, the only superpower I have yet gained from this experience is a left ankle slightly wider than my right, but I wait patiently.)

My festival coverage, however, is not yet finished. I still have one of the week”s highlights, an interview with Kenneth Lonergan about the upcoming extended cut of “Margaret,” to transcribe and relate, while I have, as yet, only written about a handful of the films I”ve actually seen at Karlovy Vary.

That backlog means certain less notable discoveries can be cheerfully resigned to the no-comment bin – though I”ll offer a quick Worst In Show citation for Hong Kong LGBT romcom “Love Me Not,” a chillingly cutesy bad-film-within-a-bad-film that suggests how “When Harry Met Sally” might have played out had both Harry and Sally been obsessively heteronormative homosexuals. Take the title as an instruction.

Such deservedly low-profile drek is par for the course in any size of festival, but there”s happily been very little of it in the mini-programme I carved for myself from Karlovy Vary”s sizeable lineup. And for every lucky-dip viewing that didn”t pan out, there”s been at least one more that rewarded blind flight. Chief among these is German music-video director Jan Ole Gerster”s debut feature “Oh Boy” (B), a regrettable title for a smart, slippy character study that sends the rarely romanticized city of Berlin one of its most gilded visual valentines since “Wings of Desire.”

I came across “Oh Boy” in the festival”s video library, sampling it purely on the basis of an alluring still – though before its very first lustrous black-and-white montage of Berlin street life was over, I rather wished for a bigger screen. With sauntering jazz in the background, Gerster”s nod to Woody Allen is hardly subtle, though once its New Wave-inflected portrait of trust-fund slacker Niko (engaging, open-faced Tom Schilling, who could be a handy stand-in for Vincent Kartheiser should we ever misplace him) gets going, there”s a hint of early Richard Linklater to its wandering day-in-the-life narrative.

Jobless, loveless, failing even at being a hipster when more solid responsibilities elude him, Niko spends his day busily doing nothing much at all: scrounging for spare change and attention from Starbucks baristas and his wealthy, golf-playing father alike, and hanging out with actors and artists in whose work he takes no visible interest. In one wickedly satirical scene, he visits the set of an epically banal Holocaust drama seemingly destined for Oscar attention. “I hope this is based on a true story,” Niko quizzes an actor. “Yeah, well, it was the Second World War,” comes the unbothered reply.

It”s a throwaway laugh, but it”s one of several moments in this increasingly morose comedy that queries modern Germany”s cultural and historical engagement with itself – even Berlin”s famously cool arts scene is portrayed as being at the fag-end of its international “moment,” as Niko is invited by a potential date to a dismal modern dance performance that baldly plunders the corpse of Pina Bausch. Gerster may not entirely support this argument with his seductive, contrast-rich monochrome shooting of the city itself, but as night turns to day and a chance encounter with an elderly bar patron leads Niko to sobering self-effacement, this bittersweet trifle points to ample beauty in other quarters.  

Just across the border from “Oh Boy””s strutting Germany, there”s a brisker, chillier gust of twentysomething ennui to be found in “Hemel” (B) — the title, the protagonist”s name, translates as “Heaven” — a glassily accomplished debut from Dutchwoman Sacha Polak, and the most polished of the films I saw in Variety”s previously discussed 10 European Directors to Watch sidebar. A sparse, forthright study of a young woman”s liberal sex life, gradually and discomfitingly braided with that of her urbane, unmarried father, it”s quickly acquired the label of “the female ‘Shame”” since bowing at Rotterdam and Berlin earlier this year – though while that distribution-friendly tag says something of the film”s metallic, echo-y tonalities, “Hemel” takes a more distanced, questioning view of what constitutes transgressive sexual behaviour.

Played with abrasive assurance by rangily beautiful newcomer Hannah Hoekstra – whom I expect international casting directors will land upon soon enough – Hemel is certainly an unhappy woman, though whether her revolving-door sex life is the root of, or a variously constructive outlet for, her depression is open to discussion. Ranging from the playful shaving of pubic hair to more unnerving adventures in erotic asphyxiation, Hemel”s encounters with men are routinely loveless, though Polak”s lean, image-led script steers clear of blandly advocating romance as redemption.

Certainly, it doesn”t seem to solve much for her dad, Gijs – a silver-fox auctioneer whose own long string of casual affairs has recently, if not necessarily permanently, ended in engagement to a colleague scarcely older than Hemel herself. Hemel is predictably rattled by the intrusion, though her scarcely masked jealousy seems not quite that of a daughter: Polak teases out scenes of lingering hand-holding between Gijs and Hemel at the opera, or their candid comfort with each other”s nudity in a hotel bathroom, to chalk out lines that have clearly been toed if not crossed.      

This is a flinty, unstinting gaze at relationships we”d rather not look at, whether or not we can identify small shards of them in our own intimate and family matters, and only occasionally undone by Polak”s preference for overly mannered gloom – Hemel”s sense of inner desolation is plain enough without languorous extended shots of her glaring into space or, in a particularly heavy-handed tease, examining the edge of a Seville rooftop. The craft steers the film right even when its directorial motive doesn”t: Rutger Reinders”s surgical electronic score, all stark, air-bracketed beeps and rustles, lends the film its slowed, troubling heartbeat. Daniel Bouquet”s lensing, meanwhile, is entirely remarkable, its hard-soft lighting games and staring close-ups making equivalent sensual spaces of an uncovered shoulder blade or a writhing string of Christmas-tree bulbs – painting the world as Hemel, however uncuriously, sees it.

Still to come from Karlovy Vary: some short takes of the rest of the fest, and that aforementioned Kenneth Lonergan interview.

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

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In the wake of recent news that TomKat is officially on the outs, Dana Kennedy has penned an overly long but nevertheless interesting story for The Hollywood Reporter about “cloak and dagger” housewife operations and defections and all the drama that comes with a big Scientology story. And all I could really think of the whole time was, “Boy, this could put some wind in the sails of ‘The Master.'”

Paul Thomas Anderson’s much-anticipated film will take on Scientology, though not explicitly, with Philip Seymour Hoffman playing a bit of an L. Ron Hubbard surrogate. The Weinstein Company will roll it out in mid-October, prime real estate in an awards season. Recent trailers have been unique in the usual PR fray (typical of Anderson), building on mystery and intrigue. But something like this could shine a brighter light on the film four months out.

Kennedy’s piece quotes a number of Scientology defectors who use phrases like “biggest nightmare” and “open the floodgates” regarding Holmes’s handling of the divorce and its implications on the criticized organization. It all sounds like a big deal, but who knows, maybe it’s just something to chew on over a holiday. Regardless, this kind of thing can be catnip in an Oscar season.

Then again, Scientology hits very close to home. I haven’t read Anderson’s script for “The Master,” so I don’t what gestures it plays in — Accusatory? Polemical? Non-judgmental? — but it could be a soft subject in a community well-represented in the organization. Just the same, it could be the excuse industry defectors — like, say, 2005 Best Picture winner Paul Haggis (“Crash”) — need to marshal some outward show of support within the community.

Whatever the case, if indeed the TomKat thing plays out in such dramatic hues with Scientology front and center, it could be an interesting turn of events, establishing “The Master” as the zeitgeist play of the season. “The Social Network” certainly bludgeoned that point to death two years ago, however overstated — “A film that defines a generation!” — only to have “The King’s Speech” (positioned by Weinstein) play it cool on the way to a victory. So I wouldn’t expect that kind of intensity. Then again, people certainly got tired of “The Iron Lady” emails last season, so it’s not like Weinstein doesn’t know how to lean heavily on something.

We’ll see how this all plays out. I’m personally very curious about what industry reaction to a film like this will be. And it’s doubly interesting to me that Cruise’s best performance came in none other than Anderson’s own “Magnolia.” What will he think of it?

Anderson reportedly screened the film for Cruise around the time of Cannes and the actor apparently “had issues” with some of it. It was also reported that Anderson plans to screen it for John Travolta, Scientology’s other marquee name (currently starring in Oliver Stone’s “Savages” on the heels of his own PR nightmare regarding supposed massage parlor encounters). A bit of courtesy as politics? Maybe. One certainly couldn’t fault someone for attempting to keep the organization’s ire off a film like this, but as it turns out, they may have bigger fish to fry.

“The Master” opens Friday, October 12.

KARLOVY VARY, Czech Republic – As I mentioned in a previous dispatch, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, though reasonably august itself in its 47th year, has a reputation as one of the “youngest” festivals on the scene in terms of its audience and programming focus. That”s easy enough to see on the ground here: where the lofty likes of Cannes are largely inaccessible to movie fans, hordes of students and backpackers descend on the dainty Czech spa town during the weeks of the festival to do some serious film-watching.

Allowing ticketless chancers to queue outside the cinemas for last-minute access, meanwhile, ensures I haven”t been to one screening here that wasn”t packed to capacity, with many particularly keen cinephiles content to sit in the aisles when seats run out. (Overseeing staff, not nearly as paranoid about fire regulations as their US and UK counterparts, blithely take a more-the-merrier policy.) That level of enthusiasm is heartening enough for hot Cannes repeats like “Holy Motors” and “Amour.” That the kids are also cramming in for Dan Sallitt”s sober, star-free incest drama “The Unspeakable Act,” to name one crowded screening I attended this afternoon, should make Karlovy Vary the envy of many more high-profile festivals.  

That youthful energy has made Karlovy Vary the perfect place for US trade paper Variety to curate what has become one of the festival”s most popular annual strands: the 10 European Directors To Watch programme. Now in its 13th year, it showcases some of the continent”s most up-and-coming filmmaking talent, selected by Variety”s critics from a year”s worth of European festivals. It”s not limited to debuts, though those tend to dominate the lineup; the emphasis is on breakthrough artists who nonetheless haven”t quite hit the big time yet. Tomas Alfredson, for example, was selected a few years before he made “Let the Right One In”; give it a few years, and last year”s selection of Ben Wheatley (“Kill List”) will likely look similarly prescient.

As those examples suggest, this annual Variety selection is more genre-friendly than many a festival sidebar. Though the final list of 10 is whittled down from suggestions made by their collected critics (which, this year, included yours truly), we”re encouraged to consider titles that don”t necessarily fit the ‘critics” film” or ‘festival film” mold, but can nonetheless engage an audience. One of this year”s picks, for example, is future midnight-movie staple “Iron Sky,” the much-hyped Nazis-in-space sci-fi comedy that was savaged by many critics upon its Berlinale debut back in February. Another, “Jackpot,” is a crowdpleasing comic thriller based on a story by Norwegian publishing phenomenon Jo Nesbø. This year”s full list of 10 (well, eleven) directors is:

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

Tim Fehlbaum, “Hell” (Germany)

Ignacio Ferreras, “Wrinkles” (Spain)

Njec Gazvoda, “A Trip” (Slovenia)

Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe, “Black Pond” (UK)  

Magnus Martens, “Jackpot” (Norway)

Sacha Polak, “Hemel” (The Netherlands)

Anne-Grethe Bjarup Rils, “This Life: Some Must Die, So Others Can Live” (Denmark)

Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurosson, “Either Way” (Iceland)    

Timo Vuorensola, “Iron Sky” (Finland)

My involvement in this year”s Variety programme has been one of the festival’s great pleasures for me. Getting wined and dined, first at a swish four-course dinner and later a champagne reception at a mountainside bar that really ought to have been a Bond villain’s lair, was the easy part. More exciting and jittery was the business of introducing the films to the typically robust audiences, monitoring Q&A sessions with the directors (and some dauntingly speedy interpreters) afterwards.

I had the pleasure of doing the honors for two of the selections, “Black Pond” and “Wrinkles” – both films I was already fond of to begin with (indeed, I believe the former was one of the titles I suggested for consideration months ago), and both of which revealed new facets and virtues via a second glance and subsequent conversation with their creators.

“Wrinkles” may ring a bell for you as one of the titles submitted to the Academy last year for Best Animated Feature consideration – it missed out, I can only presume by a narrow margin, on a nomination, though the Annie Awards nominated it for their top prize. It would have been a distinguished choice: Ferreras” starkly designed 2D feature breaks with the conventional perception of animation as a medium for fantasy and whimsy, using it instead to evoke the all-too-real world of senior nursing homes. An odd-couple story of sorts, it takes a tender but unsentimental look at the friendship that forms in a beigely comfortable care home between a newly arrived widower, in the early stages of Alzheimer”s, and his spry, cynical, never-married roommate. As the healthier man tries everything he can to slow his new friend”s decline, however, the film inexorably morphs into a hard mortality study — one that wouldn’t be an inappropriate companion piece to Michael Haneke’s more severe “Amour.” 

One might wonder what this story, itself adapted from a comic book, stands to gain from non-live-action treatment, but that becomes subtly and inventively clear as Ferreras (who previously worked alongside Sylvain Chomet on “The Illusionist”) delicately probes the mental recesses of dementia. As multiple patients within the home are revealed to be living in suspended worlds of their own, and as Emilio increasingly retreats into himself, the animation allows the narrative to forge seamless connections between characters” separate realities, poignantly echoing their own disorientation.

“Black Pond,” meanwhile, is a stranger and sharper-fanged beast: given a blink-and-you-missed-it theatrical release in the UK last year, Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe”s highly resourceful, tonally slippery debut feature rode a warm wave of British reviews and local year-end accolades (culminating in a BAFTA nomination) to a SXSW berth in the spring. US distributors Entertainment One smartly picked it up, so discerning American audiences won”t have long to wait before falling under its shuffling, sinister spell.

“Black comedy” has been many critics” go-to phrase for the leadingly titled film, and it”s certainly funny and discomfiting in equal measure. Still, I”m not sure it quite nails the intent of a story whose characters are variously consumed by vast human loneliness, a state Kingsley and Sharpe (who also stars) wisely don”t feel compelled to laugh at.

The directors wouldn”t necessarily concur, but I saw reflections of Pinter and Orton in their teasingly structured script, which examines a well-to-do family”s dissolution, in the wake of tabloid murder accusations, from both ends of its narrative. A brittle, screws-loosened variation on a familiar dramatic premise – a passing stranger first reinvigorates the domestic setup of an already fragile family, then threatens it, and finally, in this case, winds up dead – “Black Pond” maintains its uncertainties an impressive distance into the film, its mockumentary testimonies from the principals obscuring rather than illuminating each other.

Much of the talk about the film in the UK centered on the wickedly opportunistic casting of Chris Langham as the family”s socially inept patriarch. A brilliant comic actor whose prominent career nosedived five years ago after he was convicted (unjustly, he maintains) of downloading child pornography, his history of personal scandal lends a certain frisson to his character”s own public downfall. His precisely zoned-out line readings of Kingsley and Sharpe”s densely literate multi-liners, however, justify the casting decision on their own. “The downside of having a tedious life is that you have a tedious life,” he muses. “The upside is that you have a swimming pool in the summer.”

A seemingly tangential strand in which a family friend (Sharpe) relates his blurred version of events to a riotously unsympathetic shrink (a priceless turn from British comedian Simon Amstell) turns out to unlock more than it initially promised, but this aptly rough-edged, curiously troubling debut feature retains certain poetic ambiguities even after we learn exactly what happened.

Beyond the two I handled, I”m still catching up with the remainder of the list. “Hemel,” in particular, merits further discussion in another piece, but this one”s already running long, the hour is late, and my last full day in Karlovy Vary lies ahead.  

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The reactions to “The Amazing Spider-Man” have been kind of schizophrenic. I haven’t seen it, mind you. A) Wasn’t invited. B) Probably wouldn’t have been able to drum up the interest if I had been. Surely these decisions, what gets made, what doesn’t, they have to mean more than money. Right? Right? I guess the wheel keeps on turning, but the holiday just doesn’t feel all that exciting to me at the multiplex. Anyway, I’ll save all of that until after I finally DO see it (whenever that might be). For now, though, I imagine many of you have seen it or will, so offer up your thoughts in the comments section below if/when you do.

“Little kids grow up discovering the world that’s shown to them, and then when you become a teenager, it kind of shrinks a little bit. I think when you get past that point, one of the important things is that you see there is more to the world than yourself. Elaine May had seen an early cut of the film and she said to me, ‘Only a teenager could think that she could have that much affect on the world,’ which I thought was very interesting and apt and kind of touching and sad.”

That was Kenneth Lonergan last year discussing not only his embattled film “Margaret” in a nutshell, but the impact Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem “Spring and Fall” had on him when conceiving the film during our lengthy interview at the height of #teammargaret. And with the DVD/Blu-ray release of the film right around the corner, things are coming full circle in the home video marketing as Fox and the folks at ThinkJam have cooked up an interactive study guide to explain all of the intricacies and connections of the film’s plot to the poem.

The DVD, as we’ve mentioned, includes both the theatrical and extended cuts of the film. An indieWIRE-hosted screening of the extended cut will be held in New York on July 9, while Los Angeles will play host to a similar screening on July 17. Lonergan will be on hand for each, joined by Anna Paquin at the latter.

All of that is well and good but I’m really eager for this film to make its way off the exclusive screening circuit and finally hit shelves, which it will do on July 10. At that time everyone will finally be able to get a look and decide for themselves whether I’m out to lunch for calling “Margaret” the #1 film of 2011 and whether Guy is for putting it at #2.

Speaking of which, Lonergan is attending the on-going Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic (which Guy is covering) today as a special guest along with director Todd Solondz.

Check out the interactive study guide of “Spring and Fall” below. You can view a larger version here. And remember to mark your calendars: July 10.

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Attention movie memorabilia collectors with massive wallets. There are a pair of items on the auction block that you might be interested in.

First up, the Best Director Oscar Michael Curtiz won for “Casablanca” in 1942. Actually, the auction for this one at Nate D. Sanders apparently closed already but I never heard anything else about it after the initial  news (which I’ve been meaning to mention for a few days now). It was expected to fetch upwards of $3 million. Wowsers. And apparently David Copperfied previously owned it, having paid $230,000 for it in 2003. Um, my guess is he made a profit when he sold it to whoever owned it prior to last week’s auction.

That’s a pretty key piece of Academy history, indeed, of film history. I’d say it’s on the top tier, with things like Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane” prize and the like. But again, no word yet on who the winning bidder may have been.

Steven Spielberg typically buys auctioned Oscars and donates them to the Academy. He does this publicly, however. Most recently he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for Bette Davis’s Oscars. But those numbers are a far cry from $3 million (not that Spielberg isn’t good for it). Back in 1996 Hollywood was treated to a twist when Spielberg was revealed as the winning anonymous bidder of Clark Gable’s Oscar for “It Happened One Night.” Maybe a similar twist awaits Curtiz’s award.

It’s rare that Oscars sell because since 1950, the Academy has stipulated that recipients have to give the organization the option to buy it back for $1.

Meanwhile, the world’s priciest movie poster will hit the market soon, too. One of four surviving original posters for Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” will be sold as part of a liquidation auction after it was seized as part of a bankruptcy filing involving well-known collector Kenneth Schacter.

Schacter paid a still-record $690,000 for the poster (which you can see below) in 2005. Who knows what it might go for at auction, but if anyone is looking for an early Christmas present for me, feel free. You know it’s one of my favorite movies.

Movie star Tom Cruise has been, somewhat quietly, passing through one of the high-water marks of his career as of late. In December, “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” became his biggest box office success to date, which is saying something in a career that has included such blockbuster fare as “Top Gun,” “Minority Report” and “War of the Worlds,” not to mention three previous entries in the franchise; he managed to be just one of very few elements of “Rock of Ages,” currently in theaters, to come away unscathed; and, oh yeah, he's turning 50 today.

Cruise has been in the news a lot this week as a result of his (naturally very public) divorce from Katie Holmes. But I'll save the melodrama regarding what the “real” story is behind all of that for those overly interested. It's unfortunate that this planned piece of commentary ended up coinciding with one of Cruise's personal low points, but so be it. As noted in The New York Times yesterday (beat me to the punch), he always bounces back.

Cruise had a rocky mid-aughts to push through: episodes with Matt Lauer, Oprah Winfrey and, er, Sumner Redstone to grapple with in the media, a promising start only to be followed by an abrupt collapse of the resurrected United Artists label and an overall sense of having left his best days behind him lingering in the industry. And yet, here he is, strong as ever, with even a handful of potential franchises on the horizon (Paramount's “Jack Reacher” and Universal's “Van Helsing” reboot).

I've been pretty pro-Cruise throughout it all. He's still one of the hardest-working guys in the business and yet he has somehow remained, over all this time, an underrated performer. (Interestingly, actors who have performed opposite Cruise have been nominated for six Oscars, seven if you want to count Robert Downey Jr. in “Tropic Thunder,” though he didn't actually share any scenes with Cruise in the film. Three have won.)

So with that in mind, and as a salute to the star on his 50th birthday, I wanted to dedicate an installment of The Lists to Cruise's best work on the big screen. Because while he's brought in his share of dollars and cents over the years, he's also offered up his share of quality portrayals. He has, after all, three Oscar nominations to show for himself. And he's probably left a few on the table in his time.

So Happy Birthday, sir. Many happy returns.

Check out my picks in the gallery below. And please give us your comments and/or offer up your own list in the comments section.

“Rock of Ages” is currently in theaters. “Jack Reacher” opens everywhere December 21.

KARLOVY VARY, Czech Republic – I don”t why it didn”t occur to me that a film festival located high in the Czech mountains in the middle of summer would be on the warm side, but it didn”t – it”s been a humid few days of filmgoing here at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, even when some films haven”t packed much heat. Handily enough, the air conditioning throughout the festival center apparently chose this weekend to go on the blink, introducing a sauna-like atmosphere to certain screening rooms that, in the words of a glass-half-full Czech critic I overheard yesterday, “intensifies the experience.”

The experience was only moderately de-intensified this evening with an electrical storm that did little to dampen the enthusiasm of the numerous al fresco beer drinkers at this cheerfully youth-populated festival. “The weather here is Karlovy Varied,” remarked a British writer-director, who”d probably rather not be credited with that line, as we joined them. The festival itself may want to reappropriate it for advertising purposes. My viewing list from the last two days has been nothing if not Karlovy varied: it spans, among others, a blissful big-screen return visit to Jean-Pierre Melville”s “Le Samouraï,” a Finnish-Portuguese western inspired by the work of Henry David Thoreau and an erotic Dutch character study understandably – if not quite accurately – described by several critics as a female-focused “Shame.”   

I”ll expand on some of these (particularly “Hemel,” the impressive Dutch effort) in another festival diary entry. Right now, however, the film pressing most heavily on my mind is one that needed no collaborative intensification from the weather gods. I”d like to say smugly that my film of the festival so far – bar “Le Samouraï,” of course, which sits happily above consideration – is an obscure diamond not yet shared with the rest of the festival circuit, but the truth is that it comes instead from Karlovy Vary”s substantial selection of highlights from May”s Cannes Film Festival. Following approving noises from many colleagues, Belgian auteur Joachim Lafosse”s “Our Children” (A-) was the film I most regretted missing there; as it turns out, my regret was not misplaced.

“Our Children” is an overly worthy-sounding English title (the French original is the more evocative but less readily translatable “A perdre la raison”) for a film that stoops neither to earnest hand-wringing nor disingenuous shock-raking in its methodical, carefully considered anatomy of an appalling domestic tragedy. The film is closely drawn from, but doesn”t directly document, the global headline-making case of Genevieve Lhermitte, the married, middle-class Belgian woman who killed her five young children with a carving knife before attempting suicide. If that sounds like something you”d rather not see, the act – alluded to in the otherwise strictly linear film”s prologue – is kept cleanly but devastatingly off-screen; the near two-hour psychological build-up to it is punishing enough.

Aware that a story of such grave human weight and consequence demands to be told exactingly if it is to be told at all, Lafosse”s film succeeds most profoundly by refusing to phrase the inevitable question – how could she? – as a rhetorical one. No one (not even, one suspects, the woman herself) could presume to explain what motivated Lhermitte to violate the laws of human nature so unspeakably.

How she did, however, is a different line of investigation, one “Our Children” convincingly and compassionately pursues as it maps out the (im)practical domestic details that left a clinically depressed mother so bereft of oxygen that irrational extremes seemed the only option available to her. Renamed Murielle here, and quite stunningly played by Émilie Dequenne, the character is subjected to one of the most painstaking slow-burn mental breakdowns we”ve seen on screen in recent years. Lafosse and co-writers Matthieu Reynaert and Thomas Bidegain (“A Prophet”) offer no cheap inciting incidents in Murielle”s distressingly seamless descent from bright, loved-up mother-to-be to virtually catatonic mother-of-four (the number is another fact changed), while there”s no catch-all pop psychology pilfered to color in her state of mind.

More compelling, and gradually revealing, is its fixation on the details of her unconventionally oppressive home life. Loved but not guarded by her under-achieving Moroccan husband Mounir (Tahar Rahim), it”s her ostensible father-in-law Andre (Niels Arestrup, his casting cannily echoing the fraught paternal relationship he forged with Rahim in “A Prophet”) who”s the problem. Not a blood relative, but a life mentor who effectively adopted Mounir as a child – with unimpeachable subtlety, Lafosse insinuates that sexual relations may have occurred – Andre, a wealthy GP, permits Mounir to continue living with him after he marries Murielle. As the family expands, Andre becomes an ever-present third parent in the household, his kindness invaluable to Mounir and unbearable to Murielle, who finds her every maternal decision second-guessed by not one but two men of the house.

As Lafosse calmly pushes this claustrophobic domestic triangle to its breaking point, it becomes clear that “Our Children” is not merely a ripped-from-the-headlines horror story, but a more thoughtful and universal study of the unorthodox family unit and the fragility of its gender balance, with even unspoken religious concerns coming into play. We may be frustrated with Murielle for not divorcing her ineffectual husband, or at least not issuing any firmer ultimatums, but she also seems more taken with the tenets of his Muslim background than he does. Many European formalists would take a glassier, more oblique approach to this story, and while Lafosse treats it with appropriate solemnity, he”s not so hat-in-hand as to streamline the messy, fertile emotional impulses of all three complicit principals.

Rahim, effectively muted in a more tethered role than we”re used to seeing him play, and Arestrup repeat the quietly fractious dynamic of their previous teaming, but it”s Dequenne who commands the drama. Obviously more womanly than she was 13 years ago, when she broke through in the Dardenne brothers” “Rosetta,” she”s nonetheless retained that girlish, wild-eyed volatility, which renders her increasing sense of captivity in this borrowed home all the more palpable. Her gradual, powerless hollowing-out of Murielle”s mental state, achieved without ever resorting to over-fevered tics of mental instability, is astonishing: an extended take that finds her driving, singing along to an overwrought French chanson on the radio, and finally buckling under the weight of its ersatz emotion is altogether heart-stopping.

Any American A-lister performing the same scene would effectively be mailed the Academy Award now. Dequenne shared an irregular Best Actress award at Cannes in Un Certain Regard; she”d likely have walked off with the prize in Competition, where this stately-brutal kick to the stomach also belonged.

Next from Karlovy Vary: a sampling of this year’s selection of Variety’s 10 European Directors To Watch.

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

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KARLOVY VARY, Czech Republic – “All of this… for some movies?” The line — spoken by a fellow critic, mind — was tinged not with contempt, but genuine astonishment. We were standing on the humming, uplit terrace of the Grand Hotel Pupp, the largest and swankiest of many large and swanky hotels in the sequestered Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary, gazing out at the bewilderingly lavish party not much laid as frosted on for the opening night of the town’s 47th annual film festival.

Inside, several hundred champagne-marinated guests filled the hotel’s five vast banquet rooms, straying only a gentle distance from a vast buffet — of which a five-foot tuna laid on ice and getting surgically sashimi’ed was a mere sideshow. Somewhere downstairs, Helen Mirren — honored for her contribution to European cinema at the festival’s opening ceremony earlier in the evening — and assorted Czech politicos lived it up in a presumably gilded VIP lounge: perhaps their tuna was even larger, their pancake station a queue-free affair. (Yes, all film festivals from here on out should have a pancake station.) I have yet to see a festival bash even half as shiny; it made the charmingly beery ceilidhs of the Edinburgh Film Festival last week look wattle-and-daub-esque by comparison.

Yes, all of this had been put on for some movies — but after two days at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, it’s clear they think the movies are worth it. A generously selected programme runs the gamut from rough-and-ready Eastern European world premieres to a comprehensive highlights package of the Cannes just gone to a tasty retrospective of Jean-Pierre Melville.

Better still, screenings are routinely packed to the gills, as high-spirited hordes of vacationing civilian film buffs are encouraged to queue for standby seats. Outside the festival center — the concrete high-rise slab of the Thermal Hotel, a surreally brutalist imposition on the centuries-old wedding-cake architecture that dominates this pretty, river-split town — live bands play, beer stands prosper and temperatures soar past 90 degrees. It’s perhaps the most festive film festival I’ve yet visited — one that, however customarily stacked with sober, serious-minded independent fare, is committed to selling cinema as a good time. I like.

Admittedly, the first two films I saw didn’t seem quite equal to the accompanying spirit of celebration. The festival’s official, rather incongruous curtain-raiser was almost comically modest in relation to the festivities that followed its premiere: Irish-made and BBC-funded, Lisa Barros D’Sa’s and Glenn Leyburn’s period rock biopic “Good Vibrations” (C+) would have been a likelier fit for Edinburgh, but its rowdy if somewhat over-sweetened rebel yell was greeted with good humor by an audience that likely, for the most part, had no idea who John Peel was. 

Peel, the late, beloved British radio DJ who for many years was unmatched as a tastemaker and talent-spotter on the UK rock scene, is a side character in “Good Vibrations,” which fixates on the more specialized subject of the Belfast punk scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Beyond birthing one of the greatest pop songs of all time — pause now to download The Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks” if it’s somehow skipped your radar — it’s not remembered as a particularly forceful wave. Inasmuch as it was a scene at all, however, it existed thanks to Terri Hooley, an affable, bloke-y and impractically passionate record store owner turned independent label founder, signing bands based on a music lover’s whims rather than any business acumen, and enjoying all the commercial success that implies… which is to say his label went bust before the 1980s did.

It’s hard not to like a biopic that employs a traditionally triumphant arc in service of a character most Hollywood script editors would deem a failure, and the dirtily shot, structurally rambunctious “Good Vibrations” is a heartfelt valentine to triers everywhere. But as boisterous as it is, this cautiously audience-tooled film lacks true punk spirit, not to mention a specific sense of the political frictions that bled into, or out of, the music during Ireland’s Troubles. Richard Dormer’s gregarious performance conveys Hooley’s force of personality more than his personality itself; it may well be that the disconnect is appropriate, but it’s easier to care about Jodie Whittaker as his finitely supportive wife. Punk and Irish blarney wind up not entirely serving each other here, but maybe that was Hooley’s problem all along.

However insubstantial, “Good Vibrations” was still a necessary tonic after my first press screening of the festival, a selection from its homegrown strand. “Made in Ash” (C), an almost gleefully grim Czech-Slovak drama of social iniquities, is so unlikely to travel far beyond its own angrily regarded borders that I shan’t dwell on it too extensively. One of a global breed of earnest, festival-targeted dramas content to proficiently hammer one doomy note from first shot to last, it tells the not-unaffecting story of Dorota, a means-free Slovak high-school graduate who heads to a deadbeat Czech-German border town in search of employment.

Unlike the postgrad studies we’re used to, this one features less Alexis Bledel and more sweatshop labor and venereal disease from other people’s grandfathers; hard stuff, yes, and unhappily authentic, but it’s still easier to pity the blankly weepy Dorota than it is to care about her. Debuting writer-director Iveta Grofova’s has an eye and an ear for decaying social fabric, but also a weakness for metaphors so pointedly ironic they scarcely qualify as irony: when the camera lands on a nightclub sign labelled “Happy End” in the film’s closing stages, you don’t have to be Barthes to sense the film swinging the other way.

More rewarding low-fi melancholy was to be found this morning in the only American film I’ve seen at the fest so far: Adele Romanski’s small, sunbleached debut feature, “Leave Me Like You Found Me” (B+) premiered at SXSW in March, where some critics might have been too quick to dismiss it as mumblecore noodling with landscapes. What I saw was a tender, confidently bare relationship drama, largely in control of its narrative’s negative space and the yawing, yawning feelings that fill them. Romanski is best known in the indie sector for producing David Robert Mitchell’s lovely “The Myth of the American Sleepover,” and her own directorial miniature shares that film’s soft-lit sense of Polaroid heartbreak.

Coincidentally enough, “Leave Me Like You Found Me” follows another recent US film, Julia Loktev’s excellent “The Loneliest Planet,” in using a camping trip as the catalyst for a couple’s dissolution; if we’re to take just one thing away from this potential double-bill, it’s that lovers might well be better off splashing out on the honeymoon suite. The difference here is that the split is already in the past tense: casual Californian semi-hipsters Cal (David Nordstrom) and Erin (Megan Goode) have been officially apart for over a year, and are marking their recent reconciliation with a testing-the-waters vacation to the Sequoia National Park.

Early, cuddly rekindlings, however, swiftly give way to fraught squabbles that eventually tip over into that which cannot be unsaid: as they (and we) wonder what brought them together again, the couple’s reunion serves both as a post-mortem of their initial break-up, and an all-too-conceivable blueprint of the one to come. Given that neither party is notably more sympathetic than the other, you could question the stakes of Romanski’s emphatically small narrative, but her writing contains gently incisive suggestions of what needs and insecurities bind us even to the most imperfect of relationships. “I want to be the one who stops loving you,” Erin whispers to Cal, fearful of him beating her to the punch. Intuitively played by its two leads, and exquisitely shot by James Laxton and Jay Keitel — their airy, wheaten vistas increasingly a cruel retort to the renewed romance that isn’t — this is unassumingly wise independent filmmaking.

More to come from Karlovy Vary, including thoughts on a superb Cannes catch-up title, “Our Children,” and Variety’s sidebar of 10 European Directors To Watch, two of whose screenings I’ll be introducing at the festival on Monday.  All this, yes, for some movies.

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

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The Academy has announced its annual list of new invites, always a fun thing to browse through and say, “Damn, it’s about time,” or, “Jesus, really?” So let’s see.

Actors of note that were brought in include all of last year’s non-member nominees and/or winners: Bérénice Bejo, Demián Bichir, Jessica Chastain, Jean Dujardin, Jonah Hill, Melissa McCarthy, Janet McTeer and Octavia Spencer, welcome aboard. Other notables include Tom Berenger (26 years after “Platoon” — I guess “Inception” brought up his stock), Bryan Cranston, Matthew McConaughey (nice), Sam Rockwell, Andy Serkis and Michelle Yeoh. 

The Dardenne brothers finally got an invite from the directors branch, which is quite lovely, as did last year’s Best Foreign Language Film winner Asghar Farhadi (who was also invited to the writers branch — ditto Michel Hazanavicius).

Speaking of writers, Stephen King was actually invited this year, as was Oren Moverman, Kristen Wiig (though she wasn’t invited by the actors) and Nicholas Stoller (“The Muppets”).

In the designers arena (which was renamed the Designers Branch following a recommendation from the previously-titled Art Directors Branch), I was most happy to see Maria Djurkovic (“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”) make the cut, while Larry Fong (“300”) and Alwin Kuchler (“Sunshine”) were nice additions amongst the cinematographers. Ditto Anna J. Foerster, who did amazing work on “Anonymous” last year, I thought.

Congrats to Kirk Baxter for getting in on the editing side of things. I guess he only had to win two Oscars to finally get the invite. Alberto Iglesias and last year’s Best Original Score winner Ludovic Bource, meanwhile, were invited by the music branch.

Producer invites went out to Letty Aronson (“Midnight in Paris”), Dede Gardner (“The Tree of Life”) and Grant Heslov (“The Ides of March”), among others, while the doc branch extended invitations to Amy Berg (“Deliver Us From Evil,” “West of Memphis”) and Lucy Walker (“The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom,” “Waste Land”).

Also, a big congratulations to Adam Keen, Katie Martin Kelley and the other public relations folks who were invited this year.

The biggest surprise invite was for director Terrence Malick, who I wouldn’t necessarily expect to have already been a member, I guess. But I wonder if he’s been invited in the past. I can’t recall. And will he even accept?

Check out the full list of invites below. Who still isn’t a member (that you know of) who should be invited?

Actors
Simon Baker – “Margin Call,” “L.A. Confidential”
Sean Bean – “Flightplan,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”
Bérénice Bejo – “The Artist,” “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies”
Tom Berenger – “Inception,” “Platoon”
Demián Bichir – “A Better Life,” “Che”
Jessica Chastain – “The Help,” “The Tree of Life”
Clifton Collins, Jr. – “Star Trek,” “Traffic”
Bryan Cranston – “Contagion,” “Little Miss Sunshine”
Jean Dujardin – “Les infidèls, “The Artist”
Richard E. Grant – “The Iron Lady,” “Withnail & I”
Jonah Hill – “Moneyball,” “Superbad”
Ken Howard – “J. Edgar,” “In Her Shoes”
Diego Luna – “Milk,” “Y Tu Mamá También”
Margo Martindale – “Secretariat,” “Million Dollar Baby”
Melissa McCarthy – “Bridesmaids,” “The Back-Up Plan”
Matthew McConaughey – “The Lincoln Lawyer,” “A Time to Kill”
Janet McTeer – “Albert Nobbs,” “Tumbleweeds”
S. Epatha Merkerson – “Mother and Child,” “Terminator 2: Judgment Day”
Sam Rockwell – “Cowboys & Aliens,” “Moon”
Andy Serkis – “The Prestige,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”
Octavia Spencer – “The Help,” “The Soloist”
Lili Taylor – “Being Flynn,” “High Fidelity”
Nia Vardalos – “For a Good Time, Call…,” “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”
Kerry Washington – “Django Unchained,” “Ray”
Michelle Yeoh – “The Lady,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”

Designers
Laurence Bennett – “The Artist,” “Crash”
David Brisbin – “The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” “Dead Presidents”
Scott Chambliss – “Cowboys & Aliens,” “Mission: Impossible III”
Wendy Chuck – “The Descendants,” “Sideways”
Maria Djurkovic – “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” “The Hours”
Sanja Milkovic Hays – “Battle: Los Angeles,” “Mission to Mars”
Mayes Rubeo – “Avatar,” “Apocalypto”
Anne Seibel – “Midnight in Paris,” “The Devil Wears Prada”
Sharon Seymour – “The Ides of March,” “Friday Night Lights”
Sammy Sheldon – “X-Men: First Class,” “V for Vendetta”

Cinematographers
Florian Ballhaus – “Mr. Popper”s Penguins,” “The Devil Wears Prada”
Oliver Bokelberg – “Win Win,” “The Station Agent”
Anna J. Foerster – “Anonymous”
Larry Fong – “Super 8,” “300”
Alwin Kuchler – “Hanna,” “Proof”
Toyomichi Kurita – “Tyler Perry”s Madea”s Big Happy Family,” “Waiting to Exhale”
George Mooradian – “Crazy as Hell,” “Nemesis”
Guillaume Schiffman – “The Artist,” “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies”
Terry Stacey – “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,” “Friends with Money”

Directors
Joseph Cedar – “Footnote (Hearat Shulayim),” “Beaufort”
Jean-Pierre Dardenne – “The Kid with a Bike (Le gamin au vélo),” “The Child (L”enfant)”
Luc Dardenne – “Lorna”s Silence (Le silence de Lorna),” “The Son (Le fils)”
Philippe Falardeau – “Monsieur Lazhar,” “It”s Not Me, I Swear! (C”est pas moi, je le jure!)”
Asghar Farhadi* – “A Separation (Jodaieye Nadar az Simin),” “About Elly (Darbareye Elly)
(also invited to the Writers Branch)
Rodrigo Garcia – “Albert Nobbs,” “Mother and Child”
Michel Hazanavicius* – “Les infidèles (The Players),” “The Artist” (also invited to the Writers
Branch)
Kasi Lemmons – “Talk to Me,” “Eve”s Bayou”
Terrence Malick – “The Tree of Life,” “The Thin Red Line”
Michaël R. Roskam – “Bullhead (Rundskop)”
Wong Kar Wai – “My Blueberry Nights,” “In the Mood for Love”

Documentary
John Battsek – “The Tillman Story,” “One Day in September”
Amy Berg – “Bhutto,” “Deliver Us from Evil”
Simon Chinn – “Project Nim,” “Man on Wire”
Marshall Curry – “If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front,” “Street Fight”
Johanna Demetrakas – “Crazy Wisdom: The Life and Times of Chogyam Trungpa
Rinpoche,” “Bus Riders Union”
Daniel Junge – “Saving Face,” “The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner”
Mary Lampson – “Kimjongilia,” “Harlan County, USA”
Sam Pollard – “Gerrymandering,” “4 Little Girls”
Glenn Silber – “El Salvador: Another Vietnam,” “The War at Home”
Lucy Walker – “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom,” “Waste Land”

Executives
James Amos
Michael Bostick
Richard Brener
Howard Mark Cohen
David C. Glasser
Jeffrey B. Goldstein
Frederick Huntsberry
Jon Jashni
Michael Marshall
Tony Safford
Gregory Silverman
Nigel Sinclair

Film Editors
Kirk Baxter – “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “The Social Network”
Nicolas De Toth – “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” “The Sum of All Fears”
Scott Hill – “Zookeeper,” “Bruce Almighty”
Dan Lebental – “Iron Man 2,” “Elf”
Glen Scantlebury – “Transformers,” “Bram Stoker”s Dracula”

Makeup Artists and Hairstylists
Mark Coulier – “The Iron Lady,” “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2”
Linda Flowers – “The Hunger Games,” “The Social Network”
Toni G – “Salt,” “Monster”
Amanda Knight – “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2,” “Mission: Impossible”
Tami Lane – “Superman Returns” “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe”

Members-at-Large
Wendy Aylsworth
Kyle Cooper
Patrick Crowley
Bud Davis
Chris deFaria
Sarah Katzman
John Kilkenny
Heidi Levitt
Kerry Lyn McKissick
Elizabeth Sayre
Michael Tadross
Mary Vernieu

Music
Ludovic Bource – “The Artist,” “OSS 117: Lost In Rio”
Alberto Iglesias – “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” “The Constant Gardener”
Conrad Pope – “My Week with Marilyn,” “The Rising Place”
Ryuichi Sakamoto – “Love Is the Devil,” “The Last Emperor”
Theodore Shapiro – “The Big Year,” “I Love You, Man”

Producers
Letty Aronson – “Midnight in Paris,” “Match Point”
Michael Barnathan – “The Help,” “Rent”
Jean Bréhat – “London River,” “Days of Glory (Indigènes)”
Susan Cartsonis – “Beastly,” “What Women Want”
Tracey Edmonds – “Jumping the Broom,” “Soul Food”
Dede Gardner – “The Tree of Life,” “Running with Scissors”
Grant Heslov* – “The Ides of March,” “Good Night, and Good Luck.” (also invited to the
Writers Branch)
Thomas Langmann – “The Artist,” “Mesrine: Public Enemy #1”
William Packer – “Think Like a Man,” “This Christmas”
Aaron Ryder – “The Raven,” “The Prestige”
Peter Saraf – “Our Idiot Brother,” “Little Miss Sunshine”
Mary Jane Skalski – “Win Win,” “The Station Agent”

Public Relations
Larry Baldauf
Cindi Berger
Matthew P. Brubaker
Brian Daly
Rebecca Kearey
Adam Keen
Katie Martin Kelley
Eric Kops
Derek McLay
Michelle Sewell
Mark Woollen

Short Films and Feature Animation
Paul Cichocki – “Brave,” “WALL-E”
Eric Daniels – “Tangled,” “Meet the Robinsons”
Amanda Forbis – “Wild Life,” “When the Day Breaks”
Emily Hubley – “The Toe Tactic,” “Pigeon Within”
William Joyce – “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore,” “Meet the Robinsons”
Marv Newland – “CMYK,” “Tête à Tête à Tête”
Floyd Norman – “Waking Sleeping Beauty,” “Mulan”
Jonas Rivera – “Up,” “Cars”
Michelle Steffes – “The Interview,” “Day Labor”
David Verrall – “Dimanche/Sunday,” “Madame Tutli-Putli”
Jennifer Yuh Nelson – “Kung Fu Panda 2,” “Madagascar”

Sound
Erik Aadahl – “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” “Monsters vs Aliens”
Deb Adair – “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance,” “Moneyball”
Stephen M. Bartkowicz – “Tyler Perry”s Good Deeds,” “Red State”
John T. Cucci – “Snow White & the Huntsman,” “Prometheus”
Chuck Garsha – “Misery,” “Die Hard”
Mildred Iatrou – “The Green Hornet,” “The Tree of Life”
Tim LeBlanc – “For Greater Glory,” “Something Borrowed”
Bo Persson – “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “Fanny & Alexander”
Gary L.G. Simpson – “Captain America: The First Avenger,” “The Bourne Ultimatum”
Philip Stockton – “Hugo,” “Brokeback Mountain”

Visual Effects
Scott Benza – “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” “Iron Man”
Greg Butler – “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2,” “The Lord of the Rings: The
Return of the King”
Sheena Duggal – “The Hunger Games,” “Spider-Man 3”
Christopher Evans – “Hugo,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Ben Grossmann – “Hugo,” “The Italian Job”
Dan Lemmon – “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” “King Kong”
John Rosengrant – “Real Steel,” “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines”
Eric Saindon – “Avatar,” “X-Men The Last Stand”
R. Christopher White – “The Lovely Bones,” “Jurassic Park III”
Guy Williams – “Marvel”s The Avengers,” “Avatar”
Joss Williams – “Hugo,” “Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”

Writers
J.C. Chandor – “Margin Call”
Asghar Farhadi* – “A Separation (Jodaieye Nadar az Simin),” “Beautiful City (Shahr-e ziba)”
(also invited to the Directors Branch)
Michel Hazanavicius* – “The Artist,” “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies” (also invited to the
Directors Branch)
Grant Heslov* – “The Ides of March,” “Good Night, and Good Luck.” (also invited to the
Producers Branch)
Stephen King – “Pet Sematary,” “Creepshow”
Oren Moverman – “The Messenger,” “I”m Not There”
Annie Mumolo – “Bridesmaids”
Nicholas Stoller – “The Muppets,” “Get Him to the Greek”
Peter Straughan – “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” “The Men Who Stare at Goats”
Kristen Wiig – “Bridesmaids”

With Steven Soderbergh evidently in brisk entertainer mode, Channing Tatum and Matthew McConaughey both coming into career form and a raunchy, lickety-split trailer doused in Rihanna, I walked into “Magic Mike” last night expecting some summery fun. Even I, however, was surprised to be greeted with top-drawer Soderbergh: a grown-up, disarmingly classical riff on Hollywood backstage-musical tropes, sure to remain one of the year’s smartest studio films. Tatum, in case “21 Jump Street” hadn’t underlined the point, has rare star quality; Alex Pettyfer, who hadn’t threatened such promise until now, is a revelation. And could Oscar attention await McConaughey’s delightfully skeezy supporting turn, or Reid Carolin’s lithe original script? Who knows? If you’re planning on catching it this weekend, be sure to share your thoughts below, and your rating above.

BEVERLY HILLS – Have you had a chance to see “Beasts of the Southern Wild” yet? The film only opened in limited release Wednesday, so chances are it hasn’t crept your way yet, but when it does, you’re sure to be treated to an undeniably singular and assured vision if nothing else.

The purveyor of that vision is writer/director Benh Zeitlin (along, of course, with his co-writer and childhood friend Lucy Alibar), and he seems to be seeking out a zen space amid overwhelming response to the film first at Sundance and later at the Cannes film festival, both of which brought laurels. On the eve of the Los Angeles fest (which would again bring another award), he’s cool and collected at a press day for the film, the specter of release hanging overhead.

The bayou-set modern fable was seeded in Alibar’s original play, “Juicy and Delicious,” though it wasn’t always a Louisiana tale. All of Alibar’s work are set in her native Georgia, but when Zeitlin sat down to work on it as a feature film, he wanted to transport the setting to New Orleans.

“It’s always been this kind of El Dorado for me a little bit,” he says of the city. “It’s been kind of a magical place in my imagination since I was very young.”

Those were just the inklings of youth, however. When he was able to experience the city for himself and live there for six years, he found that it spoke to him in more tangible ways. “There’s something in the air there,” he says. “It’s like it kind of takes care of you in this weird way. Things present themselves to you and it”s just about being adaptable and being willing to follow a really curvy path.”

He references one of the featured actors from the film, Dwight Henry, for instance. Henry — as has been well-documented by now because of what a fascinating story it is — happened to own a bakery across the street from where the production was doing a casting call.

“It’s hard to believe that the guy who was meant to play that part is just sitting right across the street from me the whole time, and one of the other girls in the film is living next door to him. But you just sort of know that it”s in the magic in the world, and that it”s going to present you things and it”s just the person you”re supposed to find, you”re going to find, and stuff like that.”

The attitude appears inherent in Zeitlin but it’s also the sort you have to adopt if you’re going to make it through the production of a film like “Beasts,” which is as far from convention as it can be with an epic scope under a limited budget. And still — probably owed to that very disposition — the film carries a heavy air of primal familiarity.

The truly challenging aspect, however, was finding the right actress to play Hushpuppy, the 6-year-old heroine at the film’s center. Zeitlin looked at some 4,000 girls for the part, but ultimately it was the quietness in young Quvenzhané Wallis’s performance choices that not only told Zeitlin she was the one, but altered and even clarified his vision of who Hushpuppy was.

“There”s something in the way that she interacted with her father where she”d be very quiet, because he was very loud and very in her face,” he says. “Hushpuppy was more talkative originally, and I think that”s something that I didn”t realize. You know, Hushpuppy doesn”t really have any friends that are human beings. Her friends are animals. And so there”s a lot going on internally in her head and there wouldn”t be a lot that she says. So I think that the way Quvenzhané played the part where she would — just the intensity of her stare and the amount that was going on behind it in her head at all times — sort of made me realize how much of it was about what she was thinking, and the way she was interpreting things, and that it wasn”t going to be as much about conversations that she had with anybody.”

That also opened the film — and Zeitlin — to improvisation and throwing out the day’s lines in favor of letting the actors play a scene out naturally.

The title of the film, interestingly enough, comes from a scene in the play that wasn’t actually included in the film. In the scene, a character named Miss Bathsheba — a teacher — warns her students that they ought to “be sweet to each other before we all get devoured by the beasts of the Southern wild,” Zeitlin says. “You know, if you see a dark room, if you see a rattlesnake in the woods, charge into it. Don’t be afraid. There was an ethereal sense to the movie that that title always represented to me.

“I think it is something that speaks to South Louisiana, where no one is going to live who’s afraid,” he continues. “It’s a very ferocious, very resilient culture of people that have fought back against a lot and it values fearlessness and it values a strength in a way that you probably don’t see in a lot of other places.”

The film isn’t, however, a faithful adaptation of the play in any way. In fact, there’s no scene in the play that is a scene in the movie, Zeitlin says. It was more that he was inspired by Alibar’s work and that it became a key to unlock ideas he was already contemplating.

“It was really the connection between a little girl losing her father that I sort of brought to another story that I wanted to tell about a community refusing to leave their home and just the emotional parallels between those two things,” he says. “I don”t even know that there is a final draft of that play. There”s probably four or five different versions she”s done at different times and it was a very malleable thing itself.

“And we really pulled things from all through her canon of material; it wasn’t sort of bound to that specific work. Then even after we had written the script we were completely open to throwing it out and rewriting it based on who was going to play all the parts. To me, nothing exists until the film exists, so there was never any sense of holiness or preciousness about what’s on the page.”

Underneath all of that, though, beyond the allure of New Orleans and the inspiration of Alibar’s work, beyond the profound nature of the mundane that Zeitlin sought out in his cast members, beyond even his bedrock, zeitgeist-laden idea of a community stalwart in the face of losing itself, was who Zeitlin is as a person.

Both of his parents are folklorists involved with landmarking sites of cultural importance. His father handcuffed himself to the Thunderbolt roller coaster on Coney Island before it was demolished. He was, quite simply, raised in a house very much interested in preserving art and culture. And naturally, that couldn’t help but find a foothold in the story he wanted to tell.

“It was this notion that there”s this cultural and artistic importance to things, things that you couldn”t put a monetary value on or say this great, famous artist was the architect of this building,” he says. “But maybe there was a community that built something important to the world and important to culture, and if you destroy it, it”s a certain kind of death for the world.

“As far as Louisiana specifically, I was never planning to move there. And it was a very strange, mysterious magnetism that kept me there. I wrote the film at this moment where I actually got in a car accident on the way to the premiere of my film ‘Glory at Sea’ in Austin. I had to go back to New York and recover for about six months and was sort of aching to be back in Louisiana. And so trying to unearth what this pull is and what it is about this place that has a hold of me was something that I was trying to figure out as I wrote the film.”

“Beasts of the Southern Wild” is now playing in NY and LA and will continue to expand throughout the summer.

The Academy has announced rule changes for the 85th annual Academy Awards, which were voted upon Tuesday. All of the changes are quite minimal.

However, in the makeup category — which will now be known as Best Makeup and Hairstyling — I’m guessing the change has a lot to do with “The Iron Lady” hair stylist Marese Langan not being able to share in the win last year when she could at the BAFTA Awards. But things were actually reversed there, where prosthetics designer Mark Coulier originally wasn’t allowed to share in the honor across the pond.

All of that caused a bit of a dust-up last year, thanks in part to Guy’s spotlighting a post from blogger Bradley Porter (who worked on the film and later removed the post as a favor) on the matter.

The press release also notes changes in the Best Music (Original Song), Best Visual Effects and Best Foreign Language Film categories. Sadly, no news on Best Picture. So unless the new president has strong feelings on that in August, it’s another season of variable nominees.

The press release in full:

Beverly Hills, CA (June 28, 2012) – The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences approved rules for the 85th Academy Awards. The most significant changes affect the Music, Foreign Language Film, Makeup and Visual Effects categories.

In the Music (Original Song) category, the Executive Committee may recommend that a fourth songwriter for an individual song be considered in rare and extraordinary circumstances. This amends the rule that has been in effect since 2005, whereby up to two songwriters could be eligible per song, although a third songwriter could be added if he or she were found to be an essentially equal contributor.

In the Foreign Language Film category, films must be submitted to the Academy in 35mm or DCP, but are no longer required to be exhibited in those formats in their countries of origin.

The award given in the Makeup category will now be known as the Makeup and Hairstyling Award. Additionally, during the nominations process, all branch members who have seen the seven shortlisted titles will receive ballots to list their top three choices.

In the Visual Effects category, nominees will be selected from a pool of ten films chosen by the Branch Executive Committee by secret ballot. Previously, the committee could put forward as many as ten productions or as few as seven.

Other adjustments to the rules include standard date changes and other “housekeeping” adjustments.

Rules are reviewed annually by individual branch and category committees. The Awards Rules Committee then reviews all proposed changes before presenting its recommendations to the Academy’s Board of Governors for approval.

Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2012 will be presented on Sunday, February 24, 2013, at the Dolby Theatre® at Hollywood & Highland Center®, and televised live on the ABC Television Network. The Oscar® presentation also will be televised live in more than 225 countries worldwide.

Recently you may recall Drew McWeeny and I separately participated in Cole Abaius’s answer to the Sight & Sound all-time list of the greatest movies for Film School Rejects. In summing up his pick for the #1 movie ever, Drew said of David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia” that the film’s subject, T.E. Lawrence, “is a fascinating historical figure, full of contradictions, and it is fitting that David Lean’s epic masterpiece manages to be funny, thrilling, sad, political, and dynamic.”

Indeed, while it’s been far too long since I last saw the film, it’s one that sticks with you. It’s the kind of thing the word “movie” was made for. The kind of thing you should experience on the big screen once in your life if you can. Or, as Drew prefers, in 70mm (indeed). Well, there’s an opportunity coming up.

The Academy has announced that it will be presenting the US premiere of a new digital restoration of the film on Thursday, July 19 at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The restoration originally bowed at the Cannes film festival in May.

The 50th anniversary screening will feature the director’s cut of the film with an introduction by Sony Pictures restoration exec Grover Crisp and a special video message from star Omar Sharif, who received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his performance in the film.

The film itself earned a total of 10 nominations and walked away with seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Diredctor and a raft of craft categories.

“Lawrence of Arabia” is also getting some unique exposure for its 50th anniversary at the multiplex. Those of you who have seen Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” are aware of Michael Fassbender’s character, David’s, fascination with the film and with Peter O’Toole’s look therein.

Tickets for the event are $5 for the general public and $3 for Academy members and students with a valid ID. They can be purchased starting July 2 at www.oscars.org.

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4913716164001

The Weinstein Company, as noted a few times already, has quite the slate of films to throw at the wall this awards season. But what will stick? Will Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” sweep through the branches as a favorite or will it just be seen as a fun romp? Will Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” find a welcome rhythm? Will “Lawless” and “Killing Them Softly” find a much warmer reception than they did at Cannes? And what of something like Dustin Hoffman’s “Quartet,” stealthy and unassuming?

“The Silver Linings Playbook” is part of all of this too. It was featured with “Django” and “The Master” at Cannes as part of a footage screening package and comes from “The Fighter” director David O. Russell. I’ve heard this and that about the film, about how Robert De Niro is finally not phoning it in, about how stand-out “it” girl Jennifer Lawrence is, etc. But I’ve also heard Bradley Cooper is a bit surprising with his performance, and judging by the recently released trailer, I can see immediately he’s firing on different cylinders than usual.

The Film, adapted from the novel by Matthew Quick, tells the story of a former teacher who spends some choice years in a mental hospital before moving back in with his folks with the goal of reconciling with his ex-wife. Who knows how much the script may have morphed since Russell came on board, but it’s a quality role for Cooper. Jacki Weaver and Chris Tucker also star.

Awards? Well, who knows? It’s certainly the one on TWC’s lips when you ask them lately. But we’ll have to see in a few months’ time. I doubt this is one for the festival circuit, but I suppose it could be. “The Master” seems more likely to hit the Telluride/Toronto/Venice corridor to me.

Cooper will also be seen in “The Words” from CBS Films, which played Sundance and could be added fuel for whatever Best Actor campaign he lights this year.

Check out the new trailer above. “The Silver Linings Playbook” opens November 21.

Ah, BAFTA — even when they’re not making a conscious decision to do so, they seem to wind up shadowing the Academy. As Kris reported yesterday, AMPAS brass are meeting today to discuss potential changes to the voting rules for next year’s Academy Awards. Earlier today, however, BAFTA beat them to the punch by announcing an overhaul of their own voting system. They’d cry “First!” — but it’s not the English thing to do.

The changes are considerable, and to my eye, come with both pros and cons — but the chief takeaway, for better or worse, is that it makes the BAFTA voting system markedly more similar to that of the Oscars. That’ll disappoint those who treasure the quirks of the Brits’ previous voting system, which sometimes resulted in some rather distinctive winners. But since dramatically shifting their calendar to precede the Oscars in 2000 — they used to take place several weeks after — the BAFTAs having been falling ever more in line with the American awards, so this feels like a natural progression. 

The first of the changes is the most welcome, and it involves streamlining the polling from a three-stage to a two-stage process. You may recall that the BAFTAs used to have an initial vote to draw up 15-nominee longlists in each category (bar exceptional fields like Best Foreign Language Film and Best British Film). After the announcement of those longlists, a second vote would determine the five final nominees in each category — before, of course, the final vote for the winners.

Under the new system, however, as in the Oscars, the initial vote will determine the five nominees in each category — thereby scrapping the longlist. This, in my opinion, can only be a good thing: not only were the longlists pointless and cumbersome, but they also drained most of the suspense from the eventual nomination announcement — with the five top choices of the relevant voting chapter (more on the chapters in a moment) marked on the longlist with an asterisk, the final nominees would only occasionally deviate from those.

Meanwhile, announcing the longlists to the public rarely served BAFTA well, revealing only the alarmingly, and sometimes comically, shallow pool of films and names being considered by the voters, while many deserving contenders didn’t even make that cut. This year’s longlists were particularly embarrassing: “Midnight in Paris” made the cute for Best Visual Effects, for example, while Simon Curtis and Phyllida Lloyd (but no Terrence Malick) were in for Best Director. The new system won’t necessarily stop that kind of demented voting in the lower reaches of the ballot, but it’s surely better that we don’t know about it.

Or perhaps it will, given that the second major change announced today involves the power given to the voting chapters — in BAFTA parlance, that’s the equivalent of the Academy branches. The Academy has always employed branch voting at the nomination stage — actors determining the acting nominees, cinematographers determining the cinematography nominees, and so on — with the entire membership voting on the winners in all but a few ghetto categories.

BAFTA, however, unusually had the reverse system. The entire membership would vote on the nominees in all categories, but with the exception of Best Film and the acting races, the final winner in each category was determined by the relevant chapter/branch. Now, BAFTA has decided to flip that system, once again bringing their procedures mostly in line with the Academy’s.

The nominees for direction, writing and all technical categories will be determined by branch voting, while the entire membership will vote for the winners in all categories. The only difference from the Oscar voting lies in the acting categories — where, as with Best Film, the entire membership will determine the nominees as well as the winners.

Are you still with me? Is your head hurting yet?

This change strikes me as more of a mixed blessing. Chapter-specific voting at the nomination stage is obviously a good thing. Though, as I mentioned earlier, BAFTA nominees were usually in line with the chapter’s asterisked picks anyway, when the collected membership strayed from those it was rarely for the better. (Witness this year’s head-desk moment in the Best Original Screenplay category, where the general voters overruled the writers’ choice of “Young Adult” in order to nominate Abi Morgan’s disastrous script for “The Iron Lady.” Sometimes you really should leave it to the professionals.)

I’m more nervous, however, about having the entire membership vote for the winners. One of the things I’ve always liked about BAFTA, as opposed to the Academy, is that chapter voting in the technical categories often led to some highly singular and deserving winners: “Mulholland Drive” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” both won for Best Film Editing, for example, which is an outcome that seems likely with all chapters voting.

The principal concern is that voters with little knowledge of the field they’re voting in will simply default to the biggest nominee in the race, or the one they simply like most — a trend that sometimes results in iffy calls in below-the-line categories at the Oscars. (Emmanuel Lubezki, feel free to pout at this point.)

BAFTA have acknowledged that worry, and I like their pledge, quoted in Variety, to “take a more proactive role in instructing members to abstain from voting in categories where they don’t consider themselves qualified to judge, and [to] also send out a clear message that it expects members to abstain in the final round in any category where they have not seen all five nominees.” That is at it should be, but I’m not sure how many voters will play fair in that regard. 

Finally, special rules still apply to the awards for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Animated Film, Best British Film and Best Documentary Feature, in which both the nominees and the winners will be determined by “opt-in” chapters of volunteers from all areas of BAFTA. That will ensure that all the nominees are viewed and given a fair shake by the voters — though I still wouldn’t count on the Best British Film winners being as idiosyncratic as when the award was determined by a select jury.

Anyway, we’ll see how it all pans out next year. For now, I’m pleased to see BAFTA evidently taking on board the industry and critical response to problems in their voting system — some of these solutions are clearly for the better. Others — well, swings and roundabouts, but it can’t hurt to try things. Your turn, Academy. 

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

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