If it feels like just the other day that Steven Soderbergh released a new movie — well, it pretty much was. Ahead of the supposed sabbatical from filmmaking he’s threatening to make at the end of this year, the Oscar-winning director has been on a tear, perhaps hoping to churn out enough films in a short space of time that audiences won’t miss him for a while. In the last 10 months, he’s given us a double-shot of nifty genre action in “Contagion” and “Haywire,” while this Friday sees the release of male-stripper comedy “Magic Mike” — an unapologetically fizzy entertainment that is nonetheless scoring the director his strongest reviews in some time.

With 24 features now in the can for Soderbergh, it seemed appropriate to devote this week’s edition of The Lists to his decidedly catholic, even eccentric, filmography, which runs the gamut from bright studio popcorners like “Ocean’s Eleven” to classy prestige drama like “Traffic” to square-peg experiments like “The Girlfriend Experience” to such outright esoterica as “Schizopolis” — but since I already offered a Top 10 Soderbergh films list a few years ago, I decided to shift focus to his equally wide-ranging work with actors.

Soderbergh’s films often aren’t expressly designed as performance showcases, but very few of them don’t feature interesting thespian work — largely because his approach to casting is as restless and open-minded as his choice in scripts. There aren’t many filmmakers who are as happy working with A-list Hollywood royalty — George Clooney, say, or Julia Roberts — as the wholly non-pro cast of “Bubble,” or performers from alternative backgrounds like pornographic actress Sasha Grey or MMA fighter Gina Carano.

Soderbergh doesn’t appear to make much of a distinction between these categories — once on camera, an actor is an actor is an actor. As a result, his work with major stars can be as surprising and revelatory as his more off-the-beaten-track discoveries: witness Clooney in “Solaris,” for example, deprived of his default charisma, forced to be alone, grayer, graver and more human as a result.

Indeed, Soderbergh seems often to fare best with actors whose ranges are ostensibly limited. As I drew up the shortlist for this Top 10, I was struck how many of the names I was considering — Jennifer Lopez, for example, or Andie MacDowell — are not necessarily powerhouse (or even especially good) actors, yet were on uncharacteristically vital or nervy form under Soderbergh’s hand. Alex Pettyfer, widely dismissed by critics as a mannequin prior to “Magic Mike,” appears to be the latest beneficiary. Of course, Soderbergh does right by gifted actors, too — you won’t be surprised to find two entries for Benicio Del Toro in the list below.

With such a range of actors and approaches across 24 films, I wound up with a longer shortlist than I expected to have, but these, finally, are the 10 I kept coming back to. Check out the list in the gallery below, and be sure to share your own thoughts and favorites in the comments section.

“Magic Mike” opens in theaters nationwide on June 29.

The Los Angeles Film Festival, like many of its kind that are heavier on gathering highlights from previous fests than securing enviable premieres, is more valuable to locals than it is to international observers — which is largely why I didn’t realize it had been going on until it wrapped yesterday, with an unveiling of Steven Soderbergh’s “Magic Mike.” I’d been distracted by the overlapping event in Edinburgh, after all. I doubt there’s a day on the calendar when a film festival isn’t unfurling somewhere.

Anyway, the LAFF largely came to my attention when I read a report on the festival’s award winners, announced yesterday.  Some of the choices were to be expected: having already taken multiple prizes at Cannes and Sundance, Benh Zeitlin’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild” scored yet again, picking up the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature, a further indication of the film’s broad reach. Wherever it goes, it’s not just critics singing the post-Katrina film’s praises: regular moviegoers are knocked sideways by it too. That’s a powerful combination, and one that has to be considered when weighing up the film’s Oscar chances: early bird or otherwise, we have a genuine contender here.

For the most part, however, LAFF programmers stay away from high-profile festival hits that hardly require the extra exposure. Glancing through the programme, it’s pleasing to see how many titles are new to me — though it’s also gratifying to see that one of my Berlinale highlights from February, and one of my favorite films of the year so far, Ursula Meier’s “Sister,” got another airing there. Word of mouth should start spreading about this very special Swiss youth tale — it has justifiably invited comparisons to the Dardennes’ work, though it’s actually stronger than their last couple of features — which is being released Stateside by Adopt Films.

“Sister,” however, is a practically a blockbuster compared to the winner of the festival’s top prize for Best Narrative Feature — a Portuguese immigrant drama that doesn’t have US distribution yet. As luck would have it, however, I’m already familiar with Pocas Pascoal’s “All is Well,” having caught it in April on its home turf at the IndieLisboa Film Festival. I made a note at the time that the film, a low-key, slightly over-tidy but honestly affecting story of two Angolan sisters (Cheila Lima and Ciomara Morais, both ingenuous performers whose technical imprecision works as both a virtue and a debit) surviving on a shoestring in Lisbon after fleeing their wartorn homeland, could travel well. This win suggests it might.

The legacy of Angola’s civil war has been little explored on film, and much the same goes for Portuguese Angolans as a people — Portuguese cinema, which is seemingly on the rise but still very much a cottage industry, hasn’t much occupied itself with the immigrant experience, while Angola has no film industry to speak of. The politics of “All is Well,” subtle as they are in what principally amounts to a universal family-crisis drama, consequently feel fresh and not overly medicinal. The Angolan-born Pascoal drew largely on her personal history in writing the script, which makes some pointed observations about the relative lack of community in this exiled society.

Throughout the narrative, it’s not administrative authority figures that pose as great a threat to the girls’ security as their fellow refugees, whether it’s a thieving apartment squatter or the superficially kindly but coolly exploitative seamstress who offers them work in her studio. Glancing over sun-baked but decrepit outer-city ghettos, Pascoal’s ochre-dusted camera captures both the protective allure and alien barrenness of this unlovely corner of Lisbon. The production, down to the protagonists’ neatly laundered streetwear, lacks a wear and tear — audiences unfamiliar with the history may be surprised to learn that it’s a 1980 period piece — but the simple drama nonetheless grazes the skin in its wrenching yet matter-of-fact finale, in which paths are split with quiet, knowing finality. 

One hopes its LAFF triumph, which comes with a $15,000 cash prize, will help secure a US backer for a modest film that will likely continue to find fans on the festival trail. I’m interested to see what Portugal, not a country that often has a wealth of choices for its annual Academy submission, winds up putting forward for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar: Fernando Gomes’s Berlin hit “Tabu” has the critical profile, and is an infinitely richer and more imaginative achievement, but the less dazzling “All is Well” could well please more Academy voters.

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

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How did you feel about the Best Picture scenario last year? As in, the rule change — implemented last June — that set us up for a final slate of anywhere from five to 10 nominees, depending on what number of contenders managed 5% of the Academy’s #1 votes? Because now might be the time to voice those concerns, in case anyone who matters might be reading.

I realized the window on rules and eligibility changes was swiftly closing (as typically we get an announcement in mid-June), so I shot off an email to Academy brass pulse-taker Steve Pond at The Wrap. He tells me the committees from each branch meet and recommended rule changes to the Board of Governors following the Oscars each year and that the board will be meeting tomorrow to discuss the recent recommendations and perhaps enact some actual changes. The delay, he reckons, could have something to do with figuring out how to implement online voting, which could impact some of the procedures.

“I suspect they won’t change the variable number of Best Picture nominees because to do so would be to admit defeat after only one year,” Pond wrote back. “But it’s possible the decision is still up in the air.”

Admission of defeat or not, I think few would argue that last year’s move wasn’t much more than arbitrary. The good thing was it gave us some suspense in the category, as no one knew how many nominees there would be. In the end, there were nine, which was itself a shocker since the Academy’s own internal recounting of the past decade’s votes using the current rules only presented one instance of as many nominees. Most prognosticators were banking on seven or eight tops.

The big surprise nominee was “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” which only showed up in one other category (Best Supporting Actor). Indeed, for the most part, the three year experiment of having a widened field has provided, as Guy so eloquently put it a few weeks back, “a safety net for falling Oscar-bait” more than anything else.

To say nothing of how the move has been viewed by those in the industry. One filmmaker whose film was nominated for Best Picture in the last three years put it to me thusly: “It’s great to be nominated, but it’s still an asterisk. We didn’t even get a say in any of this.”

Last year’s shift provided for passion votes to shine more than ever, but still, it felt like half-measures when most just hope the Academy eventually goes back to five nominees and leaves all of this behind. And if the new AMPAS president, who will be elected in August, has any strong opinions on the matter, it’s unlikely he or she could push anything significant through that late in the game. But you never know.

So tomorrow’s meeting is it, with a press release on the outcome later in the week. I don’t know what the various committees may have suggested to the board, but I’d nevertheless be interested to hear what changes the readers think should be considered across the various categories.

So have your say in the comments section below on that, and particularly on the Best Picture situation. You never know who may be reading.

If you bother with it, that is. Which you really shouldn’t. It’s terrible. But hey, that’s just one guy’s take. Anyway, “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” graces us with its presence this weekend, Seth Grahame-Smith’s second writing credit of the summer. (Both of them leaving something to be desired, to put it delicately.) If you do decide to brave this thing, do tell us what you thought. And offer up a grade above if you so choose.

There’s a lot of griping out there about “Brave” not being up to snuff and the downfall of Pixar, etc., etc. While I understand bemoaning the sense of sequelitis that is settling in with the company, I have to say, “Brave” doesn’t deserve the barbs. It’s a lovely story and a beautifully animated effort. I’m a fan, even if it is inarguable that it’s not top-tier Pixar. They don’t all have to be. We ran down the studio’s top 10 films earlier in the week in anticipation of this weekend’s release, but now the film makes its way to the public and you get your say. So offer it up in the comments section below if/when you get around to seeing it, and feel free to rank it above after you do so.

EDINBURGH – Once touted as the UK”s answer to Sundance, particularly when positioned against the more glamorous autumnal offerings of the newly shortened London Film Festival, the Edinburgh Film Festival has quietly gone into reboot mode in its 65th year. Actually, that irritatingly fashionable verb may be better replaced with “rebuild”: after the commercial and PR debacle of last year”s edition, whereby last-minute switches in management and a particularly granola programme had some prophesying the death of the world”s oldest continually-running film festival, newly appointed director Chris Fujiwara was handed awfully little with which to work.

Wisely, he”s decided not to bite off more than he can chew. This year”s Edinburgh lineup is unapologetically small in scale-even compared to recent years, when the festival could still filch the odd Cannes title, the selections here feel modest-but there are pleasing flashes of daring and eccentricity in the programming that at least suggest some renewed curatorial conviction: a Gregory LaCava retrospective, for example, wouldn”t have happened last year.

Having skipped last year”s flop, I”ve returned to the festival for a flying visit. After just one day of full programming (William Friedkin”s “Killer Joe,” which I reviewed at Venice last year, opened the festival last night), it”s too soon to pass judgment, but at least two strong films cherry-picked from previous 2012 festivals have got the ball rolling nicely.

An imminent summer release date graciously allowed Edinburgh to swipe one doozy of a Sundance hit from London: Bart Layton”s “The Imposter” (A-) has had documentary fiends chattering since debuting in snowy Utah, but the less you”ve managed to tune into that conversation, the better. Culled from the kind of preposterous tabloid headline that could tempt even a good writer into “truth is stranger than fiction” banalities-and already inspired a fictionalized B-movie in 2010-Layton”s sly, stealthy and genuinely frightening film subversively complicates an already bewildering true-crime narrative with diagonal avenues of investigation that suspend all notions of victimhood. The effect is akin to Patricia Highsmith rewriting a National Enquirer story: with the participating characters scrutinized as keenly as their actions, the merely sensational becomes additionally sinuous.

In other words, even if you did absorb the 1997 scandal of Frederic Bourdin, a 23-year-old Frenchman and master identity thief who somehow duped a Texan family into accepting him as their teenaged son who had disappeared four years previously, chances are “The Imposter” may still catch you off-guard. Rather than placing its sympathies squarely with the grieving Barclay household, the film adopts a fully compliant Bourdin as its protagonist and prime interviewee. He”s at once an offputting and twitchily charismatic storyteller, and he cops to the bald absurdity of his deception in a way that”s both disarming and disquieting: 15 years later, he”s as astonished as we are that the Barclays believed this brown-eyed, dark-stubbled, heavily-accented European was their blond, blue-eyed boy, but remains perversely, lip-lickingly proud of the masquerade.

What kind of mother wouldn”t recognize her own son? It”s the most obvious human response to this tall tale, and with our belief already handily suspended by truth, Layton and editor Andrew Hulme (practised in fiction with “Control” and “The American”) snakily construct a number of conflicting narratives-some psychologically sympathetic, others sinister-to answer it, artfully shuffling talking-head accounts from Bourdin, the Barclays and still-baffled administrative figures to tease each one out to the brink of credibility, but no further. Atmospherically detailed re-enactments simultaneously heighten both plausibility and the sense that we”re being implacably played, perhaps even more by the participants than the filmmakers.

Documentary purists will doubtless find the film enervating, but there”s an argument to be made that it”s not a documentary at all: rather, it”s a richly dramatized thriller folding and shaping live, possibly embroidered testimonies as its screenplay. Multiple subjectivities don”t amount to objectivity, after all: the truth isn”t as compelling to Layton as the way in which we arrive at it. Meanwhile, the consistent, genre-hued sleekness of the visual styling-cinematographers Erik Alexander Wilson and Lydna Hall are as exacting in the lighting and framing of interview scenes as in the reconstructions-is perversely effective, positing everything in the film as a fabrication of some variety. If I”m evading some of the finer points of “The Imposter””s dazzlingly staggered narrative, that”s largely out of respect to its rich quarry of surprises, but partly the because the film, in its own way as lithely shapeshifting as Bourdin himself, so coldly resists candor.

Preoccupied in a gentler way with the conflicting motivations and selective honesty of ruptured families, Hans Christian Schmid”s elegant, economical domestic drama “Home for the Weekend” (B+), well-received in this year”s Berlinale competition, makes a virtue of its familiarity. The extent to which we”ve seen these brittle bourgeois family politics traced before only underlines the rare degree of care and democracy with which Schmid (“Requiem”) shades his: clocking in at under 90 minutes (a pleasingly recurring feature of this year”s Edinburgh lineup), the film builds an impressively storied family portrait with little recourse to types.

The emotional aggravator of the story, built around a young, recently separated father”s weekend visit to his own retired parents, may be the unspecified mental illness of the family matriarch (Corinna Harfouch), but for the bulk of the film, she seems scarcely more troubled or vulnerable than those around her: the visiting son (Lars Eidinger, “Everyone Else”) hoarding the secret of his broken marriage, his ostensibly overachieving but financially addled younger brother (Sebastian Zimmler), and their publisher father (Ernest Stotzner), whose lordly patience with the whole clan is itself a charade of sorts. Schmid cleverly plays these snippy mini-dramas against each other for the first half, only for the elephant in the room to reassert itself with a desolate tilt into mystery territory: that most classical of signifiers in upper-class family-feud stories, the shattered wine glass, is a stark turning point here.

Modern German filmmakers do a neat line in this kind of crisply penetrating our-house drama, perhaps because their customary constructional discipline sets emotional chaos in such pleasing relief; it”s an unusual pleasure, too, to see a contemporary family on screen whose intellectualism is not something that needs to be excused or played for irony. Beautifully performed and assiduously edited, “Home for the Weekend” doesn”t condescend to his characters with tidily prescribed solutions-indeed, it”s the mother”s abandonment of her prescription medication that divides the family most emphatically-but it”s not unconcerned with healing.  

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

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http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4913614615001

One of the films we certainly have our eye on in the upcoming film awards season is Joe Wright’s adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” with Keira Knightley in the titular role. If nothing else, we can assume the crafts on display will be lush and exceptional (given the talent involved), and indeed, the first trailer for the film indicates just that.

There is no shortage of lavish period pieces this year, actually. In addition to Wright’s film there’s Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby,” Tom Hooper’s “Les Misérables,” Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” and Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi,” to say nothing of subtler period accents in films like “Argo” and “The Master.”

Guy was a bit down on the film in the fields he was charged with predicting in our recent update, but I beg to differ. I don’t think there’s anything on the outside that indicates — yet — that there’s much to worry about. Still, “sure things” are cast away in Oscar season after Oscar season. We’ll have to wait and see how this one turns out.

Focus’ synopsis of the film reads thusly:

“The third collaboration of Academy Award nominee Keira Knightley with director Joe Wright, following the award-winning box office successes ‘Pride & Prejudice’ and ‘Atonement,’ is the epic love story ‘Anna Karenina,’ adapted from Leo Tolstoy”s classic novel by Academy Award winner Tom Stoppard (‘Shakespeare in Love’). The story unfolds in its original late-19th-century Russia high-society setting and powerfully explores the capacity for love that surges through the human heart, from the passion between adulterers to the bond between a mother and her children. As Anna (Ms. Knightley) questions her happiness, change comes to her family, friends, and community.”

Other stars include Aaron Johnson, Matthew Macfayden, Olivia Williams and Emily Watson.

The above-mentioned crafts personnel, meanwhile, is exceptional: Seamus McGarvey, Sarah Greenwood, Katie Spencer, Jacqueline Durran, etc. All Wright standbys.

Check out the new trailer below embedded at the top of this post.

October 26 is a pretty sweet spot to be opening a film you might want to pitch for awards, and Warner Bros. has just settled on that date for “Cloud Atlas,” Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski and Andy Wachowski’s 165 minute adaptation of David Mitchell’s kaleidoscopic novel, which follows six separate but connected narratives through an array of genres.

Meanwhile, Fox Searchlight had already set Ben Lewin’s Sundance hit “Six Sessions” (formerly “The Surrogate”) for that date, but they’ve also gone and re-titled it a third time. The film is now called simply “The Sessions” and is based on the life of poet, journalist and polio victim Mark O’Brien. John Hawkes has been receiving Oscar buzz for his performance as O’Brien (whose story has already been told in one Oscar-winning film, the 1996 short documentary “”Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien”), as has co-star Helen Hunt. HitFix’s Drew McWeeny wrote of the film from Sundance that it gives Hawkes his “career-best role.”

Who knows how “Cloud Atlas” will land in the season, though? Warner Bros. Domestic Distribution President Dan Fellman says in the press release, “Audiences who have seen an early screening of ‘Cloud Atlas” have been elated by its powerful and inspiring story, as well as its breathtaking visuals. An October release in North America is the perfect window to showcase this epic film.” Whatever that means.

I’ve never read the novel. I don’t know who might have meaty roles throughout the ensemble, which includes Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, James D’Arcy, Keith David, Hugh Grant, Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Jim Sturgess, Hugo Weaving and Ben Whishaw, among others. But it certainly sounds intriguing. Drew digs in regarding the hard work laying ahead for WB here.

It’s also another massive 165 minute for Warners to pitch (along with “The Dark Knight Rises”). I also imagine “The Great Gatsby” will clock in at a significant running time. And I figure “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” won’t be too slim, either. I’m still high on Ben Affleck’s “Argo,” also set for an October release (October 12, to be precise). I heard recently that it dips further into inspirational movie territory than politico-procedural. There’s also “Trouble with the Curve” and “Magic Mike,” as laid out in our per-studio pre-Oscar season breakdown last week.

Searchlight, meanwhile, also has “Beasts of the Southern Wild” (opening limited next week) and “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” primed for the season.

Other potential Oscar plays currently slatted for October release include Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” and David Chase’s “Not Fade Away.”

The ads that have been popping up around the site lately remind me that, indeed, last year’s Best Picture winner “The Artist” hasn’t yet transitioned over to home video yet. The DVD/Blu-ray release is set for Tuesday, June 26, a full seven months after it opened in limited release in November of last year and of course over a year since it world-premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

It’s clear that The Weinstein Company, which owned distribution rights in a few other territories but was mainly focused on domestic totals, was looking to squeeze as much out of the film as possible, keeping it in theaters for quite a while. Things settled around $44 million, making “The Artist,” along with the likes of “The Hurt Locker,” “The Last Emperor,” “The Deer Hunter,” “Annie Hall” and “Midnight Cowboy,” one of very few films from the last four decades to win Best Picture without hitting at least $50 million domestic. Still, having five Oscars to show probably helps that go down a bit better.

For special features fanatics, the press release offers the following:

“The Artist Blu-ray and The Artist DVD are packed with extras for both movie aficionados and casual film fans: Blooper Reel; Q&A with the filmmakers and cast; ‘Hollywood As A Character: The Locations of The Artist’ Featurette, which takes viewers on a tour of film locations; ‘The Artist: The Making of A Hollywood Love Story’ Featurette, allowing fans to go behind the scenes on set; and four mini Featurettes, ‘The Artisans Behind The Artist,’ providing a look at the film’s costume designs, cinematography, production design and the composer. The Artist also includes UltraViolet™, an entirely new way to collect, access and enjoy your digital entertainment.”

I was somewhat surprised by the presence of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd being tapped for the cover quote — “Ingenious. Moving. Joyous.” — rather than one of the myriad film critics that wrote appreciatively of the film throughout the year. I guess they really wanted a Grey Lady attribution, and maybe A.O. Scott’s (positive) review at the paper was just too heady for Sony Home Entertainment. After all, “Evokes the glamour and strangeness of silent movies without entirely capturing the full range of their power” doesn’t exactly make ’em fly off the shelves, does it?

Anyway, mark you calendars. A week from today last year’s awards thoroughbred will be available to enjoy (or not) on your couch. Will you be buying a copy?

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

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This weekend, Pixar Animation Studios will be releasing its 13th feature film, “Brave.” It’s a milestone for the company in that not only is it the first Pixar film to feature a female protagonist, but a female co-director is also at the helm.

Pixar has built a business on milestones, actually. Going all the way back to its revolutionary short “The Adventures of Andre and Wally B.” in 1984, and then again with the company’s work in feature film development starting with 1995’s “Toy Story,” each step has been a willful one and a progressive one.

Indeed, in considering the studio’s 10th feature, “Up,” back in 2009, I wrote, “Watching Pixar Animation grow and develop as a studio has become almost more fascinating than experiencing one of the company”s many creative films unfold on screen. Beginning with an industry leap in 1995″s ‘Toy Story” and eventually moving into its daring own with 2008″s ‘WALL·E,” the studio has, at the very least, shown a desire for creative progression.”

That said, “Brave,” as much as I like the film (which I caught at the premiere and grand opening of the Dolby Theatre last night), doesn’t register much in the way of progression. It feels like the studio treading a bit of water, leaving the envelope to be pushed another day.

Nevertheless, with all that in mind, it seemed a pretty good time to reassess the studio’s best work to date. Three years ago I put together a similar list, which featured the only 10 features Pixar had released at the time. We’ve seen three more since then, including “Brave,” so how does the collective shake down now?

The order here will of course be different for everyone. “WALL·E,” for example, was a major high point for many in 2008, but not as much for me. “Monsters, Inc.,” on the other hand, isn”t considered top tier Pixar to some, but as you”ll note below, I beg to differ.

Be sure to rank the films as you go and maybe we can suss out what the readership’s collective list would be. And as always, feel free to offer up your thoughts and/or your own list in the comments section below.

“Brave” opens in theaters nationwide Friday, June 22.

(NOTE: This list first appeared in part at InContention.com in 2009.)

Lindy Hemming — who surely has the best name ever for a costume designer — may have won an Oscar over 12 years ago for the fussy Victorian finery of Mike Leigh’s “Topsy-Turvy,” but the Welsh-born veteran’s reputation these days rests on decidedly more modern-day gear. It may not be as Academy-friendly a niche, but Hemming has become something of an expert in the art of dressing the action hero — or even, in one very famous case, the superhero.

Hemming is the woman who saw James Bond through two contemporary redesigns: boarding the franchise with Pierce Brosnan on 1995’s “GoldenEye,” she also clothed the character’s rougher reincarnation as Daniel Craig in 2006’s “Casino Royale.” She’s also responsible for Lara Croft’s painted-on silver bodysuits in the “Tomb Raider” films, and did wardrobe duty on one of “Harry Potter” films.

Perhaps most notably of all, however, she’s the person Christopher Nolan chose to refashion Batman for the 21st century — though it’s more likely her iconic interpretation of the Joker’s famous green-and-purple ensemble in “The Dark Knight” that landed her a Costume Designers’ Guild award (in the fantasy category, though the beauty of the film’s costumes was precisely their non-fantastical nature) as well as a BAFTA nod. (The Academy, ever shy of contemporary work in the category, couldn’t go there.)  

Two of these franchise associations will keep Hemming much in the spotlight this summer. Naturally, we’ll see the latest extension of her Gotham City wardrobe next month in “The Dark Knight Rises” (more on that in a bit), but James Bond will also be keeping her busy: she may not be working on “Skyfall,” but she’s curating a blockbuster exhibition at London’s Barbican center on various aspects of 007 design, in honor of the franchise’s 50th anniversary. (With five credits, she’s the longest-serving costume designer in the films’ history, so she’s more informed on this subject than most.)

Designing 007: 50 Years of Bond Style runs from 6 July to 5 September, handily coinciding with the Olympic Games: there couldn’t be a better time to run an exhibition on this most British of cultural exports. Costume will obviously be extensively featured — yes, Ursula Andress’s white bikini from “Dr. No” included — but the exhibition will also cover production design, storyboards, gadgets and visual effects across all 22 Bond films, making it a must for all series fanatics lucky enough to be in the British capital this summer. I’m planning a visit.

Speaking exclusively to Clothes on Film, Hemming offered this taste of what the exhibition has to offer:

“Very few costumes from the early films were kept, and not much of anything else, however Sir Ken Adam, the great production designer, had saved much of his design output, so we had that, plus we decided to re-create some of the iconic items, like Honor Blackman”s gold waistcoat from Goldfinger (1964), some very beautiful early evening dresses, and as everyone by now knows, some exquisite tailoring re-creation by Anthony Sinclair for our Sean Connery mannequin.

When I was designing for Bond I took great joy in referencing the clothes from past films, or the colours. Most notably, I attempted my own take on the iconic white bikini worn by Ursula Andress in Dr. No (1962) while designing Halle Berry”s orange bikini and belt from Die Another Day (2002), and with Daniel Craig”s trunks from Casino Royale (2006) being a nod to Sean Connery”s pale blue poplin pair worn in Thunderball (1965), which are being re created for me by Sunspel. The white bikini has been loaned to us for the exhibition and it is the first time it has been exhibited.”

Check out the rest here.

Meanwhile, while browsing for Hemming-related scraps, I also came across this brief interview she gave to British GQ magazine back in March, in which she discusses her upcoming work on “The Dark Knight Rises” — with particular emphasis on Tom Hardy’s Bane character. Most of us have now seen the striking, distinctly unseasonal (though, according to the magazine’s fashion know-it-alls, “surprisingly on-trend”) military sheepskin overcoat that looks to be the character’s signature garment, and Hemming explains the inspiration for it as follows: 

“Bane was meant to look like a cross between a dictator and a revolutionary… I designed the coat myself – it took a year. We took inspiration from a Swedish army jacket and a French Revolution frock coat and amalgamated the two. It was a pain to have made, because in LA shearling is not their sort of thing: there weren’t the tailors who could work with the fabric.”

Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne will remain in his regular Armani tailoring, while Hemming promises that “few changes” have been made to the bat suit. Business as usual, then: the villains don’t only get the best lines, but the best clothes too.

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“Alps,” the follow-up feature from “Dogtooth” helmer Yorgos Lanthimos, didn’t get quite the push it deserved out of last autumn’s festival season. Well-received by critics upon its debut at Venice, where the Best Screenplay prize it eventually took was the very least it deserved, Lanthimos’s glassily menacing comedy of extreme appropriated identity went on to provoke and perplex festival audiences at Toronto and London. Somehow, however, it acquired a reputation as more of a niche proposition than the already gruelling, yet astonishingly Oscar-nominated, “Dogtooth” — a shame, really, since it’s no less accomplished, and arguably more ambitious, an achievement. 

New York cinephiles have only until mid-July to wait for the film, which you may or may not remember cracked the top five of my Best of 2011 list. (It’s not the last title on that list awaiting US release, either.) Thanks to its tough-sell status, the rest of us may have to be very patient indeed — here in the UK, a release date has yet to be confirmed.

However, a neat publicity boost for “Alps” arrived this weekend when it took the top prize at the Sydney Film Festival, scooping a $60,000 cash prize in addition to the poster-friendly laurels. The Sydney fest has been growing in stature in recent years, while their juried competition award has gone to some canny choices since its introduction five years ago: “A Separation” won last year, while previous winners include “Hunger,” “Bronson” and Xavier Dolan’s “Heartbeats.” For a film that’s still making some distributors nervous, a comparatively mainstream award like this represents a major vote of confidence.

The win is all the more impressive considering the strength of the competition; the jury, headed by Australian actress-filmmaker Rachel Ward (remember her stint as a Hollywood leading lady in the 1980s?), had a number of safer, more audience-friendly options.

They could, for example, have added to the growing trophy collection of “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” or followed up on the Oscar nomination for Canada’s “Monsieur Lazhar.” “Caesar Must Die,” winner of the Golden Bear at Berlin, was among the dozen films in the running; so was that festival’s highlight, and my own favorite of 2012 so far, “Tabu.” Brazilian suburban tapestry “Neighbouring Sounds” wowed me at Lisbon last month — I must write a more detailed appraisal at some point — and would have made a credible winner, or they could have gone starry-eyed with “On the Road.” “Alps” can’t have nabbed this prize easily, which makes its victory all the more gratifying.

Another Competition contender, and certainly the film about which I heard the most chatter from Sydney, was “Lore” — the long-long-awaited sophomore feature from Australian director Cate Shortland, whose slinkily brilliant 2004 debut, “Somersault,” put both Abbie Cornish and Sam Worthington on the international map. Reviews for her very different-sounding follow-up — a World War II survival story about five children, separated from their Nazi parents in the last days of the Third Reich, forced to undergo a 500-mile trek to safety — have been uniformly impressed.

The film was widely expected to show up in Cannes last month; the glowing reception for its Sydney debut sheds little light on why it didn’t, particularly given the much-derided shortage of female directors on the Croisette this year. Regardless, it seems we’ll be hearing plenty more about “Lore,” which I can only assume is Toronto-bound.

Australian blogger (and loyal In Contention reader) Glenn Dunks sent us his own tip about the film last week, suggesting it could be one to watch in the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar race. It’d be unusual for Australia to submit a German-set, German-language production to represent their national cinema, but (following the Academy’s 2006 rule revision) completely legitimate.

Due to the scarcity of non-English-language films from the country, Australia has only entered the Oscar race five times before; “Samson and Delilah” made the January shortlist two years ago, but a nomination has thus far eluded them. Given the Academy’s widely noted fondness for both child-oriented narratives and WWII dramas in this category, submitting “Lore” could be a smart way to break that duck. Keep an eye on it.

Every Oscar season needs a pulse of emotion that feels less put-on, that doesn’t have that whiff of campaign or construct. Something that organically pops from the fabric of the form can be galvanizing, and though nothing can exist so pure for too long, the recognition of a tempest in the calm before it strikes means something.

Quvenzhané Wallis is that tempest for 2012. And though we’ve been intimating as much since the film bowed at Sundance, it bears repeating: get ready to hear a lot more about this 8-year-old natural.

Wallis was five when director Benh Zeitlin went searching through over 4,000 young ladies for the lead role of Hushpuppy in his festival sensation “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” She was six when she delivered the performance in the film, one that is likely to be a formidable contender on the awards circuit this season, a road that could well end with her nabbing the record for the youngest Best Actress nominee in history.

“Beasts” went from Sundance to Cannes and kept a headwind going strong into tonight’s Los Angeles premiere as a featured player of the Los Angeles Film Festival. And with more reactions pouring in, it’s safe to say the film is striking an overwhelming note of blanket approval.

Speaking to Zeitlin earlier this week (full interview to come), the director noted Wallis’s inherent sense of right and wrong as well as a quietness that spoke to him and forced him to draw the previously quite talkative character inward on the page. There is a majesty with which Wallis holds the viewer’s attention, even in passive moments, a nebulous aura at once arresting and alluring.

As a folk hero, Hushpuppy takes on an archetypal quality, but one nevertheless singular. She is a ball of innocence, hope, wonder and breathless life, but something wiser struggles beneath the surface. Wallis — with careful and noteworthy guidance from Zeitlin — gives an energy to the character that makes it feel like a spark plug for the overall production.

Indeed, cinematographer Ben Richardson (full review also coming) talked about Wallis as a muse, the camera tethered to her performance in ways that made him think of the photography less in terms of handheld than as an extension of what she was conveying. The obligation, he said, was to documenting the palpable power she was generating on the set and ensuring that it came across.

The folks at Fox Searchlight have something special on their hands and they know it. No one wants to jinx it over there, but the fact is this: few if any actresses will give a more compelling performance than Quvenzhané Wallis in “Beasts of the Southern Wild” this year.

I’m still working from memory here as I haven’t caught the film since January, but it has stuck with me. Seeing fleeting images on trailers or catching a bar or two of its triumphant score stirs something in me still. It’s an experience, and that puts it ahead of the curve right out of the gate. As it marches head first into an awards season that will surely produce more of the usual, “Beasts” and Wallis’s work therein is anything but.

“Beasts of the Southern Wild” opens in select theaters on Wednesday, June 27.

Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” is still shooting, believe it or not, despite that Christmas Day release looming six months away. Two lengthy back-to-back shoots for Leonardo DiCaprio. That guy’s gonna need a vacation.

Today comes news of further casting on the western romp, as Jonah Hill has joined the ensemble, according to a report at Deadline. Apparently Hill was in the mix for a larger role in the film at one point in time, but couldn’t commit due to scheduling. It seems they’ve found room for him after all.

Hill has stepped up his profile plenty in the last few years. He’s successfully jerked himself from the pigeonhole of broad comedy (though he’ll continue to be in plenty of those, including this year’s “The Watch”). An Oscar nomination for his performance in Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball” certainly pushes that point.

After “Django,” Hill also has a role opposite DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street,” a long gestating project for the “Hugo” director. Hill is also attached to star in the drama “True Story” opposite James Franco for director Rupert Goold.

“Django Unchained” also stars Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz and Kerry Washington and is set for a December 25 release.

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

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It didn’t take great clairvoyant powers to predict that the critical majority would have their knives out for “Rock of Ages,” an unapologetically synthetic karaoke musical that, with its “Glee”-generation take on 1980s excess, is surely the year’s most uncool blockbuster. (Hitfix’s Drew McWeeny didn’t see the funny side; nor did David Poland, regular champion of the genre, who claimed he was “not exaggerating” in naming it the worst movie musical in 30 years.) Oh, well. I’m happy to be in the minority on this one, having already sung the praises of both the movie and Tom Cruise’s magnetic, self-reflexive performance in it. (Golden Globe nod, here we come.) Any of you planning to make up your own mind this weekend? Report back if you do, and rank it using the button above.

On Monday, when we launched our Oscar predictions for 2012, Kris was keen to stress how fluid the field is, how few things are set in stone. “Which of these could fall off the 2012 map and take a seat until next year?” he asked. Days later, the first of these dropouts — not that it was ever promised to us this year in the first place — has come to light, and the Contenders charts have already required tweaking.

But it’s good news. The latest feature from unhurried New York auteur James Gray — a starry, evidently lush period piece that’s currently untitled, but was once dubbed “Low Life” — has been acquired by The Weinstein Company for a 2013 release, and Deadline’s Mike Fleming claims that the distributor has “big plans” for the film next year.

That puts a major question mark on speculation about the film cropping up in this year’s autumn festivals; Gray’s work, for whatever reason, has a greater following in France than anywhere else, so Cannes 2013 (where his last three features premiered in Competition) seems the natural place for the Weinsteins to unveil this one, which only recently completed shooting.

The new film also marks two crucial reunions of sorts for Gray: chiefly with the Weinsteins, whose collaboration with the director on his 2000 sophomore feature “The Yards” (back in the Miramax days) was not a happy one. Accusations of over-pressuring and negligent marketing were made from the filmmaker’s camp, but hatchets have obviously been buried. It also reteams Gray with his regular leading man Joaquin Phoenix, whose extended performance stunt and fake “retirement” in 2009 did no favors for Gray’s last film “Two Lovers” — even if the director was in on the joke.

In terms of awards talk, the film’s elimination from this year’s slate simplifies things for actress Marion Cotillard, who now has nothing to interfere with a strong Best Actress bid for her excellent work in Sony Pictures Classics’ “Rust and Bone.” She has a meaty-sounding lead role in the Gray film, playing a Polish immigrant in 1920s New York forced into prostitution to provide for herself and her sister. Phoenix, plays her Big Apple pimp; Jeremy Renner plays his cousin, a kind-hearted magician with whom Cotillard falls in love.

The screenplay, by Gray and Ric Menello, is, refreshingly, an original effort, incorporating elements of mythic storytelling but allegedly inspired by the director’s own family history. Early stills, excavated by The Playlist via French newpaper Liberation, portend a visual feast, with ace cinematographer Darius Khondji, citing Robert Bresson and American realist painting as visual influences. Over four distinctively textured features, Gray’s never quite hit a home run for me, but I couldn’t be much more excited about this one.

Anyway, one to watch — just not this year. The Contenders pages (Best Actress in particular) have been adjusted accordingly.

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This isn’t going to be a review of “Rock of Ages.” That’s partly because I already wrote one in short form for Time Out and the film doesn’t much benefit from extended analysis, and partly because I’d only end up repeating much of Andrew O’Hehir’s bang-on piece for Salon, which rightly celebrates Adam Shankman’s gleefully (with emphasis on the ‘glee’) silly hair-metal musical for the very ersatz quality for which many other critics are punishing it. As if hair metal was ever about authenticity in the first place. Suffice to say the film aims no higher than it can hit, and as two hours of quippy, gaudily decorated Hollywood karaoke, it hits pretty squarely. I more or less loved it.

More interesting than the film, however, and more worthy of considered conversation, is Tom Cruise’s fascinating central performance in it — a turn that earns the “central” tag despite its essentially supporting status, and not just because it reduces kewpie-doll leads Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta to sparkly wallpaper whenever he deigns to show up. (You can practically feel the film cowering as he makes his dimly lit entrance. We’re trembling ourselves.) 

No, “Rock of Ages” is built entirely around the mystique of Cruise’s character, fictional Axl Rose-alike rock god Stacee Jaxx, any semblance of structure and tension in the film dependent on his appearances and absences alike. And if one were to neaten that sentence by suggesting that “Rock of Ages” is built around the mystique of Tom Cruise himself, well, you wouldn’t be wrong. 

It seem astonishing, but Tom Cruise has been a movie star for nearly 30 years. And while his features remain stubbornly ageless — which is not to say youthful, not exactly at least — he’s beginning to let it show in other, more obliquely weary ways. His star hasn’t faded, but it’s perhaps ascended to a point where he needn’t maintain it that keenly: whether in very good films (“Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol”) or very bad ones (“Knight and Day”), his most recent run of headlining roles has found him on mutedly professional form. If not quite phoning it in — even on his A-game, he’s too tightly wound a performer for that — he nonetheless appears to have been conserving his energies, picking impassive or physically-oriented leads that don’t require the full force of his movie-star charisma.

Given his steady-if-not-strenuous, work rate, and the refusal of the media, forever intrigued/aghast at his shrouded private life, to give him any room to recede, he was clearly saving that star wattage for something — and however unlikely a conduit for it Adam Shankman may seem, “Rock of Ages” is the vehicle he’s chosen to remind us of the power he wields.

What’s interesting, however, is that he’s done so without much reference to the Tom Cruise of old. The electric Dentyne smile that lured hordes to “Top Gun” and “Cocktail” a quarter-century ago is scarcely in evidence here; nor is the boyishly flustered Joe American appeal that defined his work in such films as “Rain Man,” “The Firm” and “Jerry Maguire.” Instead, Cruise’s Stacee Jaxx reaffirms his performance presence with a weapon he’s rarely removed from his arsenal: simple, snaky, slightly grubby sex.

For all the romantic leads he’s played and magazine covers he’s graced, the perennially tidy-looking Cruise has always been an oddly sexless star: not in a particularly virtuous or immature way, mind, but in a guarded, reserved one. We’ve seen his immaculately sculpted torso any number of times, but his characters routinely seem politely cut off at the waist, burdened with too many other responsibilities to fuck. It’s a quality Stanley Kubrick ingeniously exploited by casting him in “Eyes Wide Shut,” the most sexual film he’ll likely ever appear in, and one of the most tortuously impotent characters he’ll ever play.

In “Rock of Ages,” however, Cruise is tasked with playing a character whose very definition has disappeared beneath his libido: a man with tattooed six-shooters pointing straight at his crotch and a veritably factory-line of dirtied Barbie-doll groupies at his disposal, Stacee Jaxx is a man for whom sex has long since passed pleasure and become sustenance. He’s as much an addict as Michael Fassbender’s randy corporate shark in “Shame,” with the difference that his Neverland lifestyle doesn’t merely accommodate such excess, but positively depends on it. He is, in other words, an awkward fit for an actor who, it seems to the public, had to calculatedly jump on Oprah’s sofa to drive the point home that he is indeed a lover.

It’s that very improbability that makes the resulting performance — a lithe, funny, wickedly self-reflexive one — Cruise’s first in years to acknowledge and reflect his stardom. Casting icons as other icons, fictitious or otherwise, tends to be a double-or-nothing strategy: the two outsize personae either crowd each other out of the screen or nest in each other, locating a kind of tinderbox truth in both, and the latter outcome is happily the one Cruise arrives at here.

Not only does he gamely cop to the irony of playing someone whose celebrity has exiled them from functional society — Jaxx may not (yet) be a Scientologist, but he amusingly expresses his own mystic minority values — but he wears the character’s sexuality as a kind of leering invitation to the tabloid society that has questioned and inconclusively scrutinized his own artfully concealed sex life for the better part of three decades.

In a stunt far more daring and sly than his amusing against-type cameo as a vulgar studio chief in “Tropic Thunder,” Cruise flirts with playing himself expressly by not playing himself. The ostensible miscasting shows through in spots — with his waxen chest, sleek man-bob mane and proficient but evidently autotuned singing voice, he inevitably doesn’t quite look or sound like a metal frontman, however much the makeup team and Rita Ryack’s terrific costumes aid the illusion. But even that distance feels like a virtue: Cruise is playing a role here, but so is Stacee Jaxx, and if both men’s real selves remain under wraps in Shankman’s proudly surface-obsessed fireworks show, the performance knowingly suggests just how much off-screen acting goes into being a star.

Cruise has pulled off this trick once before, and in a far more valuable film to boot. Halfway through “Rock of Ages,” it hit me that the actor was baldly playing Stacee Jaxx neither as himself nor as a David Lee Roth type, but as Frank T.J. Mackey, the “woman-taming” self-help guru he played in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia.” The characters share an aggressive, offputting sexual stridency and even an approximate hairdo — Jaxx could very well have a strutting hit song called “Respect the Cock” in his back catalogue –but what links them principally is a kind of brittle self-protectiveness that cracks too easily under investigation. (Both characters reveal themselves largely in tense interview scenes.)

In 1999, before the focus on his private life had shifted more to curiosities of religion than sexuality, Cruise’s performance as the effortfully self-constructed Mackey — still, by many a yard, the best work of his career — seemed designed to tease audiences with the security of his secrets. 13 years later, his performance as Stacee Jaxx is an equally ballsy, if oddly unflattering, assertion of his own legend, and an equally brazen refusal to admit what makes him tick. In an age where stars are compelled to make themselves as available to their audiences as possible via Twitter feeds, reality shows and planted TMZ scoops, Tom Cruise, like Garbo before him, knows that lasting stardom is built on inscrutability. In playing the wafer-thin Stacee Jaxx, Cruise offers an entertaining approximation of a sex-fuelled rock god, but what he’s really playing is one of the last real movie stars.

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Can you feel that? It’s the swelling of anticipation for “The Dark Knight Rises” reaching a fever pitch. Pretty soon, the thing is gonna pop and all 165 minutes of the film will be unleashed and some may just faint with that “it’s finally here!” ecstasy.

Tickets for IMAX screenings went on sale Monday, and most of the midnight screenings were pretty much zapped instantly. This after select theaters put theirs on sale back in January and, yep, sold out. Insanity. Here’s hoping there’s something really special underneath all that hype. (I’m sure there is.)

Christopher Nolan’s Batman series has largely been defined, I think, by the work James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer have done with the music. Unfortunately, neither “Batman Begins” nor “The Dark Knight” were nominated by the Academy (the latter stirring quite the controversy in 2008, with Zimmer even going before the Academy to state his case when eligibility came into question). But that’s to be expected with that branch.

Alas, this time around, it’s just Zimmer on the score. Howard was committed to other projects so it’s a shame he wasn’t on board, but judging by some early samples, that hasn’t made for any drastic shifts. The percussive intensity of the music is still there (which has always had more of a Howard vibe to me), but the eerie, swelling elements (which has always felt more Zimmer-ish) have been amped up a bit. It’s the end of an epic after all, so that makes sense.

Interesting to me is how so much of the score kind of calls back to “Batman Begins,” particularly one track called “Despair.” And there’s even another track called “Why Do We Fall,” which recalls Alfred’s relationship to Bruce in the first film. And the final track, “Rise,” brings back that child solo that was so prevalent in the “Begins” score, too.

On that note, as excited as I am in general for a new Batman film, I’m mostly interested in how it will tie in to the first one and make for a cohesive, definitive, (hopefully) thematically virtuous piece of a greater whole. Much of Nolan’s language has been about ending the story, about completing the story, and that says to me he’s interested in the body of work as much as the individual installment.

The whole thing was originally laid out as a trilogy way back before “Batman Begins” went into production, so that all makes sense. But I imagine we’ll never really know what the death of Heath Ledger did to derail, or at the very least, detour that original vision.

Have a listen to the 30-second samples of each track on “The Dark Knight Rises” soundtrack (courtesy of Batman-News.com) and check out the cover art below. Some of the track titles might be considered spoilerish to some, I don’t really think so.

“The Dark Knight Rises” soundtrack will be available on July 17. The film hits theaters July 20.

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