After revealing which teams would play each other in the 2012 football season a few months back, the NFL has just announced the official schedule with dates via a prime time special on the NFL Network. (I plan to be in DC for the Falcons in October, thank you.)

It got me thinking. Why debut this kind of thing at 7pm ET and miss the day’s news cycle entirely? The answer, of course, is ratings, monetizing the information and its dissemination. And suddenly it occurred to me: Should the Academy take a similar tack in revealing its annual list of Oscar nominees?

This isn’t a new idea. The concept of transforming the nominations announcement into a prime time special has been whispered about for years. Recently, the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein offered up his thoughts on the idea back before this year’s Oscarcast and David Poland voiced his approval. Goldstein even mentioned sports in his piece to further his point.

“In today’s pop culture, anything that has any air of anticipation is a potential TV event,” he wrote. “Look at sports, where everything from the NBA and NFL draft to the announcement of the MLB all-star game selections is packaged and presented as a TV show. Even the Heisman Trophy, given to the best college football player, is presented in prime time on ESPN, where last December’s award pulled in 4.6 million viewers.”

Most of the time, Goldstein’s ideas for bettering the Oscar trajectory are incredibly disheartening stabs at dumbing things down and removing the prestige out of things. This, however, was an idea that took the best of those worlds and, well, two months later, I approve, too.

The Academy has been bending over backwards to generate ratings for its annual awards telecast by going against the organization’s own grain and unfortunately stripping itself of identity with various manipulations of the Best Picture category. But while the yearly exercise of announcing the nominees at the crack of dawn has been aimed at capturing the news cycle early on the east coast and dominating it all day long, one has to wonder what that’s really doing for the bottom line.

The news of the nominees will be as big an item the day following a prime time special as it is now, with the added benefit of advertising dollars (that are usually lost to various networks that televise the announcement) pouring in. And keep it a reveal kind of thing, only available on the show. The NFL schedule, for example, is available right now online as the NFL Network analysts dig into it on the air. Whenever the Oscar nods are announced each year, a lot of people don’t even watch and just go right to the official site to get the scoop. But if the only place to go is the prime time special…

Think about it. You have a problem with ratings. Rather than chip away at the integrity of one show, add another and market the hell out of it. I’m sure ABC would be happy to air it and get a big boost of advertising for the Oscarcast out of it. You get TWO chunks of night time program to pimp movie stars and get viewers as a result. If there’s a downside, I’m not seeing it.

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“I hope you die.” “Were you bullied as a child?” “Go fuck yourself.” “Learn how to write.” “You’re a haemorrhoid.” “How do you still have a job?”

Any film critic even passingly acquainted with the internet must by now have got used to the idea of being reviewed themselves. Twitter, blog culture and the decidedly mixed blessing of commenting facilities have made it easier than ever for disgruntled readers to let critics know precisely how much they disagree with them, and in some more simple-minded cases, how inept this difference in opinion makes them. Some may say professional criticism is an increasingly irrelevant art, yet the critic-reader dialogue has never been so active.

Even in this climate, however, the comments above — culled from reader responses to a single review last week, some of them corrected for spelling and grammar — are exceptional in their biliousness. These are not the standard dull-witted complaints from movie fans struggling with the concept of objectivity; in many cases, they’re from readers who haven’t yet watched the film in question. These are the complaints of viewers, or potential ones, who somehow feel that their filmgoing experience has been violated. The film is Drew Goddard’s acclaimed po-mo horror flick “The Cabin in the Woods,” the critic Mark Olsen of The Village Voice. The crime: a spoiler.

By literal standards, the spoiler dealt out in the very first sentence of Olsen’s thoughtfully argued, largely negative review of the film is as egregious as they come, revealing as it does an unexpected action in the very last shot of Goddard’s tricksy genre experiment. Someone reading the sentence before seeing the film could be forgiven for thinking a key narrative bomb had been defused, a thrill deflated, even if the crux of the critic’s argument turns on exactly why he doesn’t believe this revelation to be a spoiler.

It’s a bit of a no-win argument, since it takes a viewing of the film to understand why Olsen is right: the final scene is a surprise, yes, but a logically disconnected, borderline-absurdist one at the end of a film built on a carefully braided series of perception shifts, far more crucial to the viewer’s pleasure than the final-insult gimmick, and duly protected in the body of Olsen’s review. The knowingly silly closing shot of “The Cabin in the Woods” — arguably a pumped-up reference to the finale of “Carrie” — is hardly what most viewers are talking about as they exit the theater; the film’s most striking subversions are laid pretty much bare from the first scene onwards.

Olsen isn’t the only critic to find himself in trouble for revealing more about “The Cabin in the Woods” than many readers feel they care to know, nor is the film the first to prompt this kind of defensiveness from potential viewers. But it’s not often that such a film’s trump card has been so widely misidentified — a misconception fed both by the film’s marketing and the reviews of other, coyer critics.

Lionsgate’s marketing campaign has played up the film’s secrets, stoking anticipation with vague imagery and a tagline (“You think you know the story… think again”) that promises mindbending fun and games; many enthusiastic critics have played along, dancing around a “twist” that, by most standard definitions of the term, isn’t really there. Comparing it to such final-reel revelations as those in “The Sixth Sense” and “The Usual Suspects,” the Telegraph’s Robbie Collin suggested that the “seismically satisfying” twist “inspires a kind of cinematic Omertà, forbidding anyone who has seen it from discussing it with anyone who hasn”t.”

Except that “The Cabin in the Woods” has no third-act head-jerk moment — save an amusing star cameo that certainly caught me off-guard when I saw the film a few weeks ago. But the film’s balancing of real and hyper-real worlds — the transition between which would ordinarily make for a late-game narrative turn in a more conventional horror film — is explained quite baldly in the opening act, as Goddard and co-writer Joss Whedon unapologetically reveal what strings are being pulled, and by whom.

The very first scene undercuts all the teen-slasher expectation of the title by introducing Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford as corporate media manipulators, office-drone editions of “The Truman Show”‘s Christof — it’s the equivalent of opening “The Wizard of Oz” with Toto pulling away the curtain.

If there’s a twist to “The Cabin in the Woods” at all (besides the get-out clause of the whole film being a genre twist in itself), it’s this upfront denial of mystery: in the post-“Scream” era, we’ve become so used to the horror genre’s smug referencing of its own tropes and audience expectations that Goddard and Whedon clearly felt pre-emptive deconstruction was the only way to surprise the viewer. It works, and there’s plenty of fun to be had in discovering the finer rules of the story world after its fundamentals have been so casually exposed, though the film remains awfully pleased with itself for doing so. But, as Collin’s colleague Tim Robey succinctly put it on Twitter, gradual reveals aren’t twists, and leading viewers to expect otherwise has amped up online spoiler-phobia to an unreasonable degree.

I sympathize with cinemagoers who wish to experience a film’s every narrative development cold, who like to be as susceptible as possible to the power of surprise. My own viewing of “The Cabin in the Woods” was doubtless enhanced by the fact that I’d absorbed virtually no information beyond the title going in, admittedly more through idle indifference than concentrated effort; I didn’t even know that Chris Hemsworth was in it, for starters.

But I also sympathize with critics who wish to write intelligently and provocatively about a film, yet find their arguments increasingly hamstrung by what they can or can’t reveal of its plot. A film like “The Cabin in the Woods” is chiefly notable for the rules it bends and breaks in its storytelling; to not comment on this very subject would amount to critical negligence. Some films can only be meaningfully analyzed through a kind of narrative post-mortem: what plot points did or didn’t work, what connections were or weren’t made, what conclusions or implications can or can’t be drawn from these choices.

There is a place for this level of criticism, generally safely bracketed with spoiler warnings. It is, admittedly, not usually in daily papers where a review’s chief function is less to examine a film’s engine than to direct readers as to whether or not it’s worth seeing — but even the latter function of criticism collapses into formless, generic observations the less specific a writer is allowed to be about the text at hand. (Frankly, those who simply want to know whether the film’s any cop have Rotten Tomatoes stats readily available.)

Some have gone so far as to suggest that even mentioning the Jenkins and Whitford characters — essentially, the half of the film not described by the title — amounts to a spoiler, even though the story begins with them. The film’s trailer took similar flak from fans for revealing as much. If not even the first scene of the film is fair game for critics to discuss, why write (or read) a review at all? Shouldn’t some of the published reviews also be of use to those who have seen the film, and now want pointers to renew or continue the discussion about it? Spoilerphobic film culture treats reviews as disposable introductions, but it’s surely as post-viewing texts, preserved in online infinity, that they have more lasting and significant value.

It’d be flip to say that paranoid viewers can take complete responsibility for maintaining his preferred level of ignorance about an upcoming release, especially one selling itself on a level of mystique — though it is easy enough not to read a review. Trailers, then, are more of a bugbear to the spoilerphobic, particularly given their frequent over generosity with plot details. I avoid watching them these days — less out of concern for narrative surprises than for fending off critical preconceptions — but most multiplex patrons don’t have that option.

Matters aren’t helped by a film publicity culture where pre-release materials are reaching absurd levels of convolution: witness the marketing campaign for Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus,” a dangerously self-elevating tangle of teasers, trailers, trailers for trailers, further trailers and lengthy footage reels, calculatedly fed to the blogosphere for endless scrutiny and speculation. I haven’t seen a shred of footage from the film, though I understand from the many who have that the film’s enigmas have, remarkably enough, been left intact through it all. But as long as this trend for protracted peek-a-boos continues, not every studio is going to play the game quite so artfully; fairly soon, critics won’t have anything left to spoil. 

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

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About a month ago, I posted  an early, subtitle-free trailer for Miguel Gomes’s “Tabu,” a woozy, wistful black-and-white Portuguese romance that I flipped for in Berlin, and which still stands as my favorite new film of 2012 so far.

Chances are some of you admired the glorious imagery and music of the two-minute taster without a clue as to what it was actually about; happily, a subtitled trailer has now been assembled, and Australian distributor Palace Films has kindly let us have the first crack at it. (They’ll be backing the film’s next international appearance, at the Sydney Film Festival in June.) Adopt Films, meanwhile, has the U.S. right, and has announced a limited release in late December; expect Toronto and perhaps New York fest dates in the fall.

Anyway, take a look after the jump and see if it makes any more sense to you now — though I’d venture that at least half the film’s storytelling lies in its more sensory aspects.

There’s a reasonable chance you’re looking at one of this year’s foreign-language Oscar submissions: the Portuguese selectors entered Gomes’s far more opaquely difficult “Our Beloved Month of August” a few years back, so it seems likely they’d favor this more widely acclaimed (and audience-friendly) effort.

Incidentally, Portugal’s being rather good to me in 2012: in addition to serving up my top film of the year, they’re also hosting me at the IndieLisboa Film Festival at the end of this month. Keep an eye out for some festival reports from sunny Lisbon as an appetizer to May’s Cannes coverage. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoelUhjVXas?rel=0&w=640&h=360]

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About the time a full crowd of TCM Classic Film Festival-goers began filling one of the smaller theaters at Mann’s Chinese multiplex this evening, the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic (9:20pm ET, April 14, 1912) came and went. The occasion: a screening of a newly restored version of Roy Ward Baker’s “A Night to Remember,” the 1958 British production dramatizing (though nevertheless capturing in minute detail) the harrowing, historic event.

It’s been a bit of a slow slog for me with the fest this year and I’ve already missed a few of the things I wanted to catch because of various reasons, but I really wanted to be there for this. I had never actually seen the film and it seemed a good way to, I don’t know, take stock of the anniversary. And I have to say, it’s a fantastic film. I was kind of blown away by it and its impressive miniature effects, its swift but touching handling of the human drama, and I was also very intrigued that James Cameron’s “Titanic” follows it so closely.

Both films take very detailed steps toward painting an accurate portrait based on historic record, so naturally there would be overlap, but I was still surprised at how the imagery and the interpretations of this and that beat were so similar. Mostly, though, I was greatly moved by both the spectacle and the humanity of Baker’s film (much as I was and still am Cameron’s).

I also found myself waiting for the ship to break as the stern rose into the night sky, but then it occurred to me that of course that wasn’t going to happen. This was a time when even eyewitness accounts of the ship’s breaking in two were disavowed as misremembered, exaggerated or sensationalized. It wasn’t until Robert Ballard discovered the wreck in 1985, two pieces of the ship lying a third of a mile apart, that people — like tonight’s special guest, Titanic historian Don Lynch — had to eat their words and give up the romanticized idea of the “unsinkable” ship still maintaining its assemblage as it plummeted to the bottom of the Atlantic.

That having been said, the image of the Titanic diving into the water, unbroken, almost stubbornly in tact, is nearly as arresting as Cameron’s more accurate depiction of it breaking apart. (Though if you watched that National Geographic special — “The Final Word” — featuring Cameron’s updated analysis, you know that even the severity of angle depicted in “Titanic” was, it turns out, too dramatic and that it was more of a 19 or 20 degree angle before snapping and then kind of gliding underneath.)

Lynch stuck around for a Q&A afterward, tossing around his decades of knowledge on the subject with spirit and passion. He is the co-author of both “Titanic: An Illustrated History” and “Ghosts of the Abyss” and was part of Cameron’s ace team of technical advisors on the 1997 film (in which he also had a small role). Additionally, he provided commentary for the Criterion release of “A Night to Remember.”

As it turns out, the night wasn’t just an anniversary of solemn note. Saturday was also Turner Classic Movies’ 18th birthday, celebrating nearly two decades of classic film devotion on TV. I should say that I gravitated toward the channel right around the time I was discovering a passion for film and filmmaking, so it’s meant quite a lot to me over that span of time. Congrats to all involved.

The TCM fest concludes tomorrow with a few more delights, Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby,” John Ford’s “The Grapes of Wrath” and a Cinerama presentation of “How the West was Won” at the Arclight among them.

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

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On April 20 director Kevin Macdonald”s “Marley,” a documentary about the legendary musician Bob Marley, will be the first U.S. release ever to be made available for streaming on Facebook on the same day as its theatrical release. Facebook”s users will be able to instantly watch the film streaming from the Bob Marley Facebook page.

In addition to the innovative distribution launch, a portion of the proceeds from the film”s Facebook sales will benefit the charity organization Save the Children. “We are proud to have the ‘Marley” documentary support Save the Children,” said executive producer Ziggy Marley via press release. “Helping underprivileged children is something that our father would do every day, so it is very appropriate for ‘Marley” the film to be partnering with a charity whose main focus is helping children. Bob would be very happy.”

In his review of “Marley” from Berlinale, Guy described the film as a thoroughly absorbing return to roots for the filmmaker. Macdonald won an Academy Award in 1999 for “One Day In September,” which looked at the kidnapping of several Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich by the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September. The event was later dramatized in Steven Spielberg’s “Munich.” Macdonald has since gone on to pursue narrative endeavors such as “The Last King of Scotland” and “State of Play.”

The filmmaker now shifts between documentary and narrative work. He was drawn to Bob Marley as a subject because no other musician has enjoyed the global impact that Marley did. And, likely as a result of his passion and pre-existing status as a critically acclaimed director, the documentarian enjoyed unprecedented access to the Marley family for the creation of the film.

In Todd Gilchrist”s interview with Macdonald at the South by Southwest Film Festival last month, the director said it was his goal to get behind the icon to see what was really there. “I suppose I went in slightly cynical,” he told Gilchrist. “Probably feeling like he”s been so commoditized. But the thing is, I came out the other end feeling like he”s more of a hero and admiring him more than I did at the beginning for so many reasons, but I think largely because I think he”s not a hypocrite. I think he really lived the life that he preached and was truly driven to communicate his message to as many people as possible.”

It’s a message that continues to reach and influence millions and will reach even more when the film is made so widely available next week.

You can like the Bob Marley Facebook page to gain access to the live stream and go to the Save The Children website to learn more about the charitable organization.

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Welcome back to Cinejabber, your weekly open space to kick around whatever film-related thoughts you have on your mind. Who knows, some of them may even concern films that have nothing to do with Joss Whedon.

What, if anything, are you planning on seeing this weekend? Beyond “The Cabin in the Woods” — on which I seem to be in the minority, finding it reasonably clever but not particularly revelatory — the options aren’t all that tempting. I haven’t seen the Farrellys’ take on “The Three Stooges,” but in spite of better-than-expected reviews, can’t muster up much enthusiasm for the idea. Over on my side of the Atlantic, meanwhile, the crowds are packing into “Battleship,” which, as my Variety review explained, is pretty much exactly what you think it is — for better and worse.

As is so often the case, then, the most rewarding options are to be found in the arthouses. Those of you still looking to complete your 2011 Oscar checklist now have the opportunity to check out Canadian director Philippe Falardeau’s “Monsieur Lazhar,” a gentle but perceptive classroom drama that I’d wager was the runner-up to “A Separation” in this year’s foreign-language race, and may have come closer to toppling it than we might think.

Quietly detailing the crowing bond between an Algerian immigrant schoolteacher and the pre-teen class collectively traumatized by the suicide of their previous teacher, it’s not as literate or as penetrating as “The Class,” to which it’s been rather routinely compared, but it’s unsentimentally affecting, and graced with at least one truly astonishing performance — that of the cherubic young Sophie Nélisse, as the most mature and most profoundly ruptured of the students. (She won a deserved Genie Award — the Canadian Oscar — for Best Supporting Actress.)

However, the best release of the week is, unfortunately, for the eyes of New Yorkers only: Pablo Larrain’s “Post Mortem,” a tonally equivalent but formally superior follow-up to 2008’s way offbeat “Tony Manero,” opened on Wednesday for a two-week engagement at the Film Forum, and I implore those of you in a position to see it to do so. Longtime readers may recall that the Chilean film, a midnight-black comedy set around the country’s 1973 military coup overthrowing President Allende, made my 2010 Top 10 list after wowing me at that year’s Venice Film Festival. (My short festival review offers more details.) It’s taken its time reaching American shores, but it’s worth the wait; the timing’s handy, too, since there’s a possibility Larrain’s next film, “No,” may pop up in next week’s Cannes lineup.  

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

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I am not particularly excited about Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” but I haven’t been particularly excited about one of his films in a while. Sorry if that’s sacrilege for you but I’ve been happy enough being pleasantly surprised by this or that and just don’t have it in me to get all goose-bumpy over the prospect of a new QT joint.

That said, my fingers are crossed for this one because, as you all know, I have an affinity for the genre in which Tarantino is working here and I very much want this to succeed so we can have more explorations of it. I’m really intrigued that Leonardo DiCaprio took on the project, and of course I’ll be very interested to see what Christoph Waltz has for us after a few dubious post-“Inglorious Basterds” tries. Jamie Foxx, well, I’m not as taken by that and wish Will Smith had seen the light and taken the role, since it’s what his career sorely needs at this juncture.

Christmas promises to be a very Leo holiday with this and Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” landing in theaters. Will both be awards bait? We’ll know in due time, but for now, The Weinstein Company has released the official synopsis for Tarantino’s film. So if you didn’t get your hands on the highly circulated screenplay that made the rounds last year, here’s your chance to know what to expect, if you so desire:

Set in the South two years before the Civil War, DJANGO UNCHAINED stars Academy Award®-winner Jamie Foxx as Django, a slave whose brutal history with his former owners lands him face-to-face with German-born bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Academy Award®-winner Christoph Waltz).

Schultz is on the trail of the murderous Brittle brothers, and only Django can lead him to his bounty.  The unorthodox Schultz acquires Django with a promise to free him upon the capture of the Brittles – dead or alive.Success leads Schultz to free Django, though the two men choose not to go their separate ways.  Instead, Schultz seeks out the South’s most wanted criminals with Django by his side.  Honing vital hunting skills, Django remains focused on one goal: finding and rescuing Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), the wife he lost to the slave trade long ago.

Django andSchultz’s search ultimately leads them to Calvin Candie (Academy Award®-nominee Leonardo DiCaprio), the proprietor of “Candyland,” an infamous plantation where slaves are groomed by trainer Ace Woody (Kurt Russell) to battle each other for sport.  Exploring the compound under false pretenses, Django and Schultz arouse the suspicion of Stephen (Academy Award®-nominee Samuel L. Jackson), Candie’s trusted house slave.  Their moves are marked, and a treacherous organization closes in on them.  If Django and Schultz are to escape with Broomhilda, they must choose between independence and solidarity, between sacrifice and survival…

Written and directed by Academy Award®-winner Quentin Tarantino, DJANGO UNCHAINED is produced by Stacey Sher, Reginald Hudlin and Pilar Savone.  The executive producers are Harvey and Bob Weinstein, Michael Shamberg, Shannon McIntosh, and James Skotchdopole.  DJANGO UNCHAINED will be released in the U.S. on December 25, 2012, and internationally by Sony Pictures.

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I have not seen Drew Goddard’s “The Cabin in the Woods,” but as I understand it from the ZOMG! online contingent, there are spoilers to be wary of, so I guess I won’t be digging into this thread much until I finally see it, hopefully this weekend (making for a healthy dose of Joss Whedon this week, whose “The Avengers” I saw last night — it was awesome). But as the film is hitting theaters nationwide today, it’s time to get your thoughts and provide a space for whatever these ZOMG! spoilers might be. So when/if you get around to the flick, head on back here with your take.

This may not come as the biggest shock to you, but I’m not what you might call a comic book geek. I don’t say that with any sense of smugness or superiority — Lord knows I belong to any number of other uncool subclasses of geekery — but it’s a universe I never subscribed to as a boy, and with which I can therefore never completely connect.

Even if I’ve grown to appreciate the occasional artistry in the books (and, of course, the many films they have borne), I must confess I’ve still never read one cover to cover. This, as you might expect, leaves me largely clueless when it comes to separating the worlds of Marvel and DC characters. Where news of certain comic properties intersecting leaves many fans (it’s both reductive and discriminatory to say “fanboys”) foaming at the mouth, I merely shrug my shoulders. The sense of adaptation is lost on me entirely.

Which goes some way toward explaining why, when news of Joss Whedon filming “The Avengers” hit the internet a couple of years back to a positive Mexican wave of movie-blog excitement, I was one of the few left scratching my head and thinking, “Steed and Peel? They’re trying that again?”

Say “The Avengers” to me, and I think not of Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Captain America or Thor. I do think of superheroes after a fashion, but not ones that wear capes, wield hammers or turn green after losing their temper. Rather, the Avengers I’m thinking of wear Savile Row suits and Mary Quant miniskirts, though the leather catsuit worn by one of them would cross over to Marvelworld quite easily.

I’m talking, of course, about John Steed and Emma Peel, the chic English spies who popularized the Avengers title on British TV, in the very same decade that Stan Lee and company took it for their introductory 1963 comic. (The TV show claimed it first, debuting in 1961.) Like a gentler, camper James Bond — its one-episode espionage narratives taking a secondary role to its leads’ clothes and sexual chemistry — it was hugely successful candyfloss TV. Catch the odd rerun in odd hours on UK channels and it’s not hard to imagine its influence on everything from “Doctor Who” to “Alias”; cast members like Diana Rigg to Joanna Lumley (who filled the former’s shoes in the 1970s revival “The New Avengers”) still enjoy national treasure status in the UK.

Clearly, I’m not the only Brit whose mind goes to the bowler-hatted spy first when the name “The Avengers” comes up — the overlap is a big enough concern that Whedon’s film has been rather clumsily redubbed “Avengers Assemble” for its UK release, a title that I suspect will still leave some older onlookers confused. In the US, however, they’re clearly confident that precious few know or remember not only the British spy series, but the wretched Hollywood blockbuster they made of it back in the summer of 1998.

Some of you, depressing enough, may be too young to remember this, but “The Avengers” was one of the biggest mainstream catastrophes of that year in cinema: a truly astonishing mishandling of a project that had been begging to be made for decades, scuppered so comprehensively by errors in casting, writing and editing that word of its failure got out long before its release. (The bad buzz on “John Carter” was positively anticipatory compared to this puppy.)

I remember doggedly looking forward to “The Avengers,” despite any number of warning signs: after his hilarious botched remake of “Les Diaboliques,” Jeremiah Chechik wasn’t exactly the name one wanted to see attached to a project that required a light, self-aware touch. Ralph Fiennes may have had the right degree of stiff-backed poise and patrician charm to play John Steed, but the emphatically un-English Uma Thurman was nobody’s idea of an Emma Peel. And when the film was shifted from June to late August on the release calendar, one got the distinct impression that Warner Bros. wasn’t saving the best for last.

Sure enough, August came and “The Avengers,” ominously unscreened for critics, lived down to its promise. Following studio panic, the film had been cut from 115 minutes to 87 — a gesture of mercy to audiences, perhaps, but one that left a previously limp script incomprehensible, its saving-the-world climax seemingly pulled from thin air. Fiennes and Thurman’s oil-and-water chemistry was merely the insult to which the script’s misguided insistence on a romance between the two (something the TV series had always flirtatiously danced around) added thudding injury. Ugly, unfunny, culturally inauthentic — the film pleased precisely no one on either side of the Atlantic, and was rewarded with a bushel of Razzie nominations at the year’s end.

In the brief few minutes that I believed Joss Whedon was taking on the unenviable challenge of redeeming the British spies’ big-screen reputation, I was torn between bafflement that anyone would deem him the man for the job and odd gratitude that someone, at least, was giving it another go. I doubt anyone will ever dare try again — though a TV reboot in the UK is conceivable — though it’ll remain an opportunity lost to the wrong people. I’ve not seen Joss Whedon’s Marvel-flavored “The Avengers” yet, but here’s hoping he’s given the title some dignity.

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The TCM Classic Film Festival kicks off tonight with a screening of a restored version of the film that won director Bob Fosse an Academy Award: “Cabaret.” The musical was adapted from the Broadway stage production, which was itself based on John Van Druten’s play “I Am a Camera” (a drama inspired by Christopher Isherwood”s book “The Berlin Stories”).

As previously discussed in a piece on the strange dance that “The Godfather” engaged in with Oscar, “Cabaret” holds the record for most Academy Awards won by a film which did not win the Best Picture award. Francis Ford Coppola’s spin on mafia and the American dream ultimately took the Best Picture prize for the 1972 season, but “Cabaret” won eight of the 10 awards for which it was nominated, including Best Director, Best Actress (Liza Minnelli) and Best Supporting Actor (Joel Grey).

“People hear ‘Cabaret” and they think, ‘Oh Christ, it”s a musical about happiness,”” Minnelli said to the LA Times in a recent interview. “It”s not about that at all. It”s about opinions and politics and survival.”

Indeed, “Cabaret” takes place in 1931 during the fading of the German Weimar Republic (the liberal parliamentary representative democracy established in 1919) and the rise of the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party. Minnelli took on the iconic depiction of Sally Bowles, a cabaret singer at the Kit Kat Klub in Berlin. The vivid if flighty Bowles strikes up a brief but deeply felt affair with her sexually ambivalent neighbor Brian Roberts (Michael York), a British academic who is temporarily in Germany.

Joel Grey”s Emcee functions both as the club”s master of ceremonies and the film”s thematic narrator. He illustrates the seedy underbelly of the self-indulgent nightlife that Bowles so reveres, as well as the escalating menaces of the Nazi movement.

One of the interesting aspects of the adaptation was the decision to confine the musical numbers to the diagetic environment of the club rather than having the characters spontaneously express themselves in song as the musical does. Fosse has a distinct and remarkable editorial sense and often uses the inherently surreal nature of the stage (including the backstage environment) as a metaphor for both human nature and what is happening in the larger text. His choices in the film were bold and dynamic and account for a large measure of the reason the work still feels relevant. And indeed, Minnelli tells a story in the LA Times interview of Fosse’s habit of ripping up studio notes aimed at, what else, honing the film’s aesthetic down for general audiences.

“Cabaret” does not address the rise of the Nazi party directly (though Roberts is subject to brutal beating one drunken night), but rather via the public”s response to its members. They are often harassed, mocked or kicked out of the club during the film”s first act, as if they are a joke, a silly group that poses no real threat. Later, a chilling scene depicts a spontaneous call to nationalism when a young Nazi youth sings “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” amidst a primarily enthused crowd in a beer garden.

It is a moment where Roberts and his wealthy friend Max (who in the world of the film supported the NSDAP as they opposed communism, which would threaten his bloated lifestyle of excess) realize that this is not a group that will be easily controlled. In “Cabaret””s  final scene, the moment in which Minnelli”s Bowles wails the exultant “Life is a Cabaret,” the audience in the club is filled with Nazis who have clearly become the dominant force in Berlin.

Indeed, though the constitution was never officially repealed, “the legal measures taken by the Nazi government in February and March 1933, commonly known as Gleichschaltung (“coordination”), meant that the government could legislate contrary to the constitution,” which marked the true rise of the Third Reich. Thank you Wikipedia.

Take a look at the “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” scene for a taste of Fosse”s ability to express more with the right song and shot selection than 10 pages of dialogue would yield. And what is fascinating is how salient the themes present in “Cabaret” feel in today”s world.

It is perhaps not as clearly defined as this, but, Brian Roberts is the camera, the observer taking in what is happening in Berlin, a snapshot of a moment just before the world is irrevocably altered (though he is affected by his environment as well, at least temporarily). He sees all, but ultimately, returns to his own life and does nothing. Sally Bowels and the Emcee are in some ways the mirrors, both the positive and negative images that Roberts is capturing.

The Emcee is eerily sardonic towards the Nazis and yet gleeful, as if the destruction of all he is and represents is something he secretly craves. Sally is optimism, enthusiasm and an attitude of undaunted, if unfocused, momentum. But she is also the Ostrich with her head in the sand of personal ambition and indulgence, ever seeking more and more in terms of material wealth and fame. Bohemian in her dwellings, opulent in her desires, she is willfully oblivious to the danger the Nazis represent and the poverty, ignorance and geopolitical factors (continued humiliation and reparations for the German participation in WWI among them) that are compelling the citizenry to blindly back them. People are disposable toys to Sally as much as she is one to them.

The roar of the 1920s is a fading echo and yet the characters in this film seem woefully out of step with the crushing forward momentum of oppression that is upon them. In their thrill-seeking and sensual distraction, they miss what is unfolding right before them. They belong to yesterday because they will not accept the truth of their present time and that is how tomorrow was claimed by Hitler.

“Does it really matter as long as you”re having fun?” Sally asks. The film answers: “Yes, it matters very much.”

Stars Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey will be in attendance tonight for a post-screening Q&A at the TCM fest’s opening night event, which will be held at the historic Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Cineastes will be pleased to hear that 78 films will screen over the course of the four-day festival, with appearances from Kim Novak (who caused a bit of a tumult with her comments on “The Artist””s score last season) and Debbie Reynolds.

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Most regard the Un Certain Regard strand at the Cannes Film Festival as a kind of B-league to the Competition, populated with smaller films and names that aren’t quite ready for primetime. In truth, however, the section’s selections of late have established that there’s very little to distinguish Un Certain Regard from the Competition on the grounds of quality: with major Competition alumni like Gus van Sant, Jean-Luc Godard and Bruno Dumont having accepted UCR berths in recent years, the increasing sense of the strand is one of mere spillover.

Consider this list of films to have played in Un Certain Regard over the last few years: “Dogtooth,” “Blue Valentine,” “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” “Miss Bala,” “Mother,” “Wendy and Lucy,” “Precious,” “A Scanner Darkly,” “Elena,” “Police, Adjective,” “Father of My Children,” “Tuesday After Christmas,” “Heartbeats,” “Oslo, 31 August” and so on. I wouldn’t consider any of them second-class works, even if most of them don’t come from the kind of brand-name auteurs (Haneke, Almodovar, von Trier) that are granted automatic entry into the Competition whatever the quality of their latest film. But they amount to a formidable bunch to have missed if you monitor Cannes with your eye on the Competition alone.

The principal difference between Un Certain Regard and the Competition, perhaps, is that nobody cares all that much about what film wins the former — even if some well-chosen winners, like “Dogtooth” in 2009, have successfully parlayed the award into arthouse glory. Chances are it would have done so anyway, while less well-received winners, like last year’s widely reviled “Arirang,” haven’t found the prize much of a help on the international distribution front. If the Competition generally lives up to its name, Un Certain Regard feels more like a curated showcase.

Nonetheless, the festival has lured in some pretty big world-cinema names to head the Un Certain Regard jury in recent years, including directors Claire Denis (who, in my book, deserves some bigger-ticket festival assignments), Paolo Sorrentino, Emir Kusturica and Fatih Akin. This year, however, they’ve changed things up a little — and further amped up the name appeal — by getting actor (and one-time director) Tim Roth to preside over proceedings. He has some form in this area, having served under Wong Kar-wai on the 2006 Competition jury that handed the Palme d’Or to “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”; hopefully the jury will arrive at a stronger decision under his rule.

Perhaps what’s most surprising about the choice of Roth is that it rather outstrips that of this year’s Competition jury president for international red-carpet status. Nanni Moretti may be an established and respected European auteur, and a Palme d’Or winner to boot, but his appointment in the top seat hasn’t generated the same level of media attention and speculation as Robert De Niro and Tim Burton in years past — inevitable when Hollywood names are involved, of course, but it’s not as if they’ve picked from the holiest reserve of international filmmakers either.

Incidentally, Moretti headed the 2001 Venice jury, which displeasing many by giving the gold to Mira Nair’s “Monsoon Wedding” over Alfonso Cuaron’s “Y tu Mama Tambien”; pundits could be forgiven for expecting a similarly soft-edged choice this year.

Anyway, more fuel for the Cannes fire until the lineup of films is announced precisely a week from now. Hang in there.

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Before Turner Classic Movies embarked on a Hollywood-set film festival aimed at presenting classic films on the big screen in 2010, film historian and TCM Prime Time host Robert Osborne tried his hand at a similar program on the east coast. He happily lent his name to the Robert Osborne Classic Film Festival in Athens, Georgia, a partnership with the University of Georgia, for six years before the economy forced the program to be shuttered.

“It told me kind of how audiences would respond to certain things, and how to present them,” he says, calling from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, ground zero for this year’s third annual TCM fest. “And we started out with enthusiastic audiences and to full houses. So it really showed me that there was an audience out there that would have a great time when word-of-mouth got around. More than anything it kind of convinced me that it was not something that just because people could see these movies for free at home that they wouldn’t be really excited about coming from all over the world to see classic films on a big screen in Hollywood.”

Nevertheless, it took marquee title films early on to achieve the attendance levels Osborne and TCM were hoping for. “Casablanca” and “Singin’ in the Rain” (both films reprising this year for their 70th and 60th respective anniversaries) were the big attractions, he says. But there were also nuggets for cineastes, like a newly restored version of Fritz Lang’s silent masterwork “Metropolis” and an anniversary screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless.”

This year, Osborne says, before the announcement of the program’s film schedule and celebrity appearances, premium passes were sold out within two hours of tickets going on sale. “It means that people were trusting us and the films we would pick would be good ones,” he says. “They didn’t have to wait to be told what the films were going to be to decide to buy a ticket. And I think that’s the biggest thing; the trust factor got there. And that turned out to be great because then it means they don’t have to book for marquee names; you can book really terrific films that maybe people don’t know by name but they’re going to realize that they’re going to see something they would probably like and see something that might be a great discovery and they go for it.”

This year’s festival features a slew of special presentations and restoration screenings to tickle the film-lover’s fancy. Of course Osborne finds it tough to pick just one “must-see” from the cornucopia of titles, but he also notes that it’s very much an individual thing.

“For me, one of the must-sees would be ‘Cover Girl,’ with Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly on a big screen, with Stanley Donen doing some of the choreography and stuff. Another must-see for me would be ‘Funny Face,’ again, Stanley Donen, because that’s such a visual movie and it’s Fred Astaire and it’s Paris and it’s Audrey Hepburn and the great Gershwin music score and to see the magic of it on the big screen. But also I would say a must-see is ‘How the West was Won,’ to be able to see it in Cinerama, which it hasn’t been shown in Cinerama on a regular basis for years.”

And he can’t stop there. “The Thief of Baghdad” with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., springs to mind, as, of course, does today’s big opening night presentation, “Cabaret,” with Oscar-winning stars Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey in attendance. “You’re playing ‘Cabaret’ on a big screen at the Chinese Theatre, I mean, that’s like irresistible to me,” Osborne says. “Somebody I talked to recently said the one more than anything else they want to see is ‘Seconds,’ the John Frankenheimer film. Somebody else said, ‘Well, I want to see ‘The Longest Day’ because it’s going to be in Cinemascope on a big screen, never seen it that way and it’s such an awesome film.’ So it’s kind of to each his own. But the great thing is we’ve got films from all the eras and we’ve got films from all the genres. If you like war films, fine. If you like musicals, great. If you like adventure films, we’ve got ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ and we’ve got, you know, Randolph Scott westerns, the whole mix. I think that’s very important.”

One showcase in particular is a bit of an unofficial centerpiece for the fest when you look out over the schedule: Saturday night’s screening of Roy Ward Baker’s “A Night to Remember.” The date, April 14, is both the 18th birthday of Turner Classic Movies and the eve of the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. The latter event has been quite the talk of the film world given the recent 3D conversion of James Cameron’s 1997 film, but here’s a chance for film-goers to discover a dramatization that came 40 years before that Leonardo DiCaprio/Kate Winslet romance came along and destroyed all box office records.

“So many people don’t know that movie,” Osborne says. “They only know the ‘Titanic’ of James Cameron or the ‘Titanic’ of Fox with Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck and Bob Wagner. The British ‘A Night to Remember’ is so beautifully done and so well-constructed. So it’s a logical fit for our festival because it’s not just a piece of Hollywood showmanship or Hollywood glamor but it’s a really well-crafted British film.”

A quick conversation with Robert Osborne can’t pass without some idle commentary on the recent Oscar season. After all, the author of “80 Years of the Oscar: The Official History of the Academy Awards” might have a thing or two to say about a season thematically dominated by reverence for the cinema, and particularly classic cinema, at that.

“I loved the way it turned out, but I didn’t think it was a very good season,” he says. “I didn’t think, to me, that there was really — except for ‘A Separation,’ which I thought was great — I didn’t think there was a really great film out there this year. I did love ‘The Artist.’ I’ve seen it four times and every time I see it, it gets better and better. I think it’s really a great film and I think he’s [Best Actor winner Jean Dujardin] terrific in it. And it’s wonderfully directed and very clever, and it’s so well-researched, too.

“I thought ‘The Iron Lady,’ that she [Meryl Streep] was fabulous, but I didn’t think the film was as good as I wanted it to be. But I thought she deserved to win. I liked ‘The Help’ and I love Viola Davis. But I didn’t think that film was a great film; I thought that was a very uneven film. I thought the Southern women were so caricatured that it was kind of like ‘Harper Valley PTA’ or something like that. Overall I was kind of disappointed this year in films.”

But there’s no better antidote to a disappointing awards season than a four-day rush through the best classic cinema has to offer, and that’s what Osborne and TCM will be busying themselves with beginning tonight with the opening night screening of “Cabaret.” The fest runs through Sunday, April 15. Check out the official TCM Classic Film Festival website for schedules and details.

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Among the major European auteur titles being bandied about in the speculation as to the Cannes lineup, Jacques Audiard’s “Rust and Bone” is surely among the most impatiently awaited, not least because it pairs him with his biggest star lead yet: Marion Cotillard, who seems to be balancing the twin pulls of Hollywood and her home industry with impressive ease.

A black mark against the film’s Cannes possibilities, however, is its French release date of May 17: the second official day of the festival, but the first of regular programming after Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom” officially cuts the ribbon on proceedings the day before. Can a film premiere at Cannes the same day it opens in France? It seems unlikely — surely it’d have to premiere locally in advance. If the film isn’t festival-bound, however, expect a lot of international critics cramming into the public cinemas on the Croisette to take a look at the latest from the director of “A Prophet” and “The Beat That My Heart Skipped.”

A subtitle-free French trailer for the film landed on the web today, and while I’ve resisted taking a look myself, it seems to have caught some observers off guard. Audiard has of late been working in an expansively hard-boiled mode, and the news that he was adapting Canadian author’s Craig Davidson’s short story collection “Rust and Bone” (it’s unclear yet whether he and regular co-writer Thomas Bidegain have adapted one story, or spliced several) seemed to fit that groove: Davidson’s tough, terse prose centers on down-and-out gamblers and fighters on society’s fringes.

Audiard’s film, however, looks to be a slightly more lyrical beast, starring Cotillard in a role gender-switched from the source material, as a sea-park orca trainer who loses both legs in a work-related accident. Matthias Schoenaerts, the hulking Belgian actor who so impressed with his presence in this year’s foreign Oscar nominee “Bullhead,” plays a love interest of sorts; frankly, I don’t care to know much more, though I gather the trailer is enigmatic even to French speakers, and that it suggests the brooding romantic in Audiard, mostly on leave for “A Prophet” is back here.

Whatever it is, I can’t wait. Sony Pictures Classics, of course, already have the US rights to this one — I imagine it’ll be a late-year deal. Take a gander at the trailer below, and tell us what you think.

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Nuri Bile Ceylan’s “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia,” which opened Stateside in January and hit UK screens more recently, has been bringing critics to their knees since Cannes last year, but has has more of a slow-creep effect on me.

I saw it last May in unideal circumstances: the Cannes programmers, in their wisdom, had decided to press-screen this languorous 160-minute policier in a late-evening slot at the very tail-end of the festival. I stayed awake but not exactly absorbent: I was left with admiring impressions of the film’s daring narrative style and staggering night-time cinematography, but almost immediately afterwards, was unable to recall a single thing that happened in it.

Returning to it recently, however, proved both rewarding and reassuring: there is something oddly evanescent about the way it reveals its mysteries, but one suspects that may be Ceylan’s intent in a kind of long-night’s-journey-into-day story that stretches and loops time in such a way that all incidents become less connectable the more we learn about them.

And my tired eyes weren’t deceiving me about that astonishing lensing: if only foreign-language cinema didn’t have second-class citizen status in the awards race, Gokhan Miryaki would be as mandatory a Best Cinematography nominee as Emmanuel Lubezki was last year. (The Turkish submitted it last year for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, but it wasn’t among the few saved for consideration by the Academy’s executive committee.) “Anatolia” isn’t as rich or as moving as 2002’s less conceptual “Uzak,” still Ceylan’s personal best, but it clearly rewards revisits.

All of which is to say that Ceylan was already on my mind, and happily so, when the news came through today that he’s due to be honored once more at the Cannes Film Festival — outside the Competition fray this time, and for his career as a whole. The director’s mantel is already generously decorated with Cannes gold: “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” shared the runner-up Grand Prix last year, the same award taken by “Uzak,” while “Three Monkeys” earned him the Best Director prize in 2008.

This time, he’ll receive the Golden Coach (or, more elegantly, the Carrosse d’Or) in the Directors’ Fortnight strand of the festival, an award given to a director whose work exhibits “courage and independent-mindedness.” Previous winners include Clint Eastwood, David Cronenberg and last year’s embattled recipient, Jafar Panahi. This marks the second year in a row a Middle Eastern director has taken the award; coincidentally or otherwise, it’s indicative of how that territory’s cinematic creativity is flourishing, often against sizeable circumstantial odds.  

Ceylan will receive the award after delivering a director’s master class on the opening day of the Fortnight (and second day of the festival overall), May 17. I find myself stunned by how rapidly Cannes is creeping up on us — I don’t feel at all ready.

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Earlier this year we reported on the Eastman Kodak company”s plans to have its name removed from the theater at the Hollywood & Highland complex where the Academy Awards have been held since 2002 as a part of their filing for federal bankruptcy.

CIM group (the company that owns the Hollywood & Highland mall where the theater is located) has been seeking a new sponsor for the theater while simultaneously renegotiating their deal with the AMPAS. The Academy, meanwhile, has indicated that it may move the Oscarcast to another location once its lease is up in 2013. The Nokia Theater LA LIVE in downtown Los Angeles (a venue which would provide double the capacity of the current theater) had indicated plans to bid for the show, but most have assumed the Academy wasn’t likely to pick up stakes.

Meanwhile, the LA Times reports that Dolby Laboratories has entered into talks with CIM for the naming rights to the venue. The Academy, if it chooses to remain in the Hollywood & Highland location, has the right to reject a sponsor (though we don”t image that they would take issue with the audio/visual pioneers at Dolby).

The deal between Dolby and CIM is likely contingent on the landlord renewing its contract to host the Academy Awards. If both deals are carried through it will be somehow both poetic and sad to see one of the last bastions and earliest creators of celluloid be replaced with the company that created a digital 3D projection system. It is both indicative of the times we are in and somehow perfectly bittersweet.

In the past the Oscars have been held at the Hollywood Roosevelt, Ambassador and Biltmore Hotels, the Grauman’s Chinese and Pantages Theatres in Hollywood, the Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion downtown, the Shrine Auditorium on the USC campuse and, of course, the Kodak.

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The third annual TCM Classic Film Festival kicks off Thursday and as I’m slowly slipping back into the saddle this month, I’ll be hoping to attend this and that over the swift four-day event.

As I look over the schedule, I’m actually pretty impressed at the number of anniversary restoration screenings. The fest kicks off with one of them, in fact, a 40th anniversary showcase of Bob Fosse’s “Cabaret.” There’s also “Two for the Road” (45th anniversary), “Grand Illusion” (75th), “The Longest Day” (50th)…

…yep, there’s more: “Fall Guy” (65th), “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (75th), “Casablanca” (70th), “Dr. No” (50th), “Singin’ in the Rain” (60th), “Moonstruck” (25th), “Call Her Savage” (80th) and perhaps the centerpiece of the week, a restoration of “A Night to Remember” a day short of the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

One premiere restoration in particular caught my eye, of “Rio Bravo,” with actress Angie Dickinson in attendance. Others planning to attend for conversations on this or that flick include Liza Minnelli, Joel Grey, Rick Baker, Stanley Donen, John Carpenter, Kirk Douglas, John Landis, Mel Brooks, Robert Wagner, Norman Jewison, Debbie Reynolds and Thelma Schoonmaker, among others.

Finally, actress Kim Novak is a bit of a guest of honor this year as her hands and feet ceremony at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre happens on Saturday, April 14. “Vertigo” will also be screened during the fest with the actress on hand. Hopefully she’s recovered from that “rape” perpetrated by “The Artist” and Oscar-winning film composer Ludovic Bource.

Lots to do and see for fans of classic cinema. I definitely want to make that “A Night to Remember” screening, and the “Grand Illusion” restoration is tempting (though it’s lined up against a “Chinatown” event with Robert Towne and Robert Evans on hand, so that’s a tough choice). There’s also a “History of the Oscars Red Carpet” panel that could be interesting for our purposes.

If you’re in the area and want to dig into some of this stuff this weekend, check out the festival’s official website. I’ll try to do and see what I can. It’ll be a nice change of pace, certainly.

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

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The news has landed that legendary “60 Minutes” newsman Mike Wallace has passed away at the age of 93. It was reported by “CBS Sunday Morning” earlier today.

Wallace was of course a titan of his industry, a familiar face on the weekly CBS news show as warm and welcome on the television every Sunday as the nightly showcases of Peter Jennings, Dan Rather and Ted Koppel in their times. The highlights of his career are milestones of the news world: the Ayatollah Khomeini, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Iran-Contra and, of course, Big Tobacco.

Which yields an unavoidable question, one Wallace the character posed in Michael Mann’s 1999 film “The Insider”: “I’m not talking celebrity, vanity, CBS. I’m talking about when you’re nearer the end of your life than the beginning. Now, what do you think you think about then? The future? In the future I’m going to do this? Become that? What future? No. What you think is, ‘How will I be regarded in the end? After I’m gone.'”

There’s no question that the pause Wallace took at that critical juncture in his career will be a visible stain on his long and distinguished professional life, but never a detrimental one. If nothing else it’s a long-lasting, bold lesson of the industry’s hard ethical edges and a reminder of frailty and humanity therein.

Wallace, of course, was portrayed brilliantly by last year’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner Christopher Plummer in Mann’s film. Plummer was criminally neglected by the Academy that year for his performance, which managed to win the LAFCA and NSFC prizes and nearly took the NYFCC honor as well.

“He was so vivid in my mind and my memory,” Plummer said of Wallace at a Santa Barbara Film Festival tribute in January. “He could make people cry. He was a cruel guy, but he was a marvelous TV journalist. I was terrified that he would loathe my performance.” Those fears were assuaged when Wallace later gave Plummer the thumbs up for his portrayal, noting, “I always open my lecture tours by saying, ‘I am not Christopher Plummer.'”

Plummer was on fire in the film, a performance of embodiment and grit, passion and drive that is frankly the rare thing. In a film that featured a career-making turn from Russell Crowe and a highly underrated, dynamo performance from Al Pacino, it was Plummer who really stuck with you once the credits rolled. Like so many performances, I consider Plummer’s recent Oscar to be recognition for that as much as for his wonderful work in Mike Mills’s “Beginners.”

I reached out to the film’s screenwriter, Eric Roth, this morning after I heard the news. Roth really had to dig under Wallace’s skin to flesh out such a vibrant character and so I wanted to hear his thoughts on the matter. They line up with my considerations above.

“He seemed to me to be a giant force of nature, a man who changed journalism forever by asking real questions that required real answers,” Roth wrote back. “Our portrait of him in ‘The Insider’ was to say we are all human, we all put our pants on one leg at a time, we all have our fears and weaknesses and heartbreaks, we are, no matter our fame and fortune, human. He was a man for the ages. Rest in sweet peace.”

But now that Wallace is gone, the question Plummer’s version of him posed becomes the query of the moment. How will he be remembered? I think there is no question. He’ll be remembered as one of the shining beacons of an industry that, as ever, struggles with itself, constantly striving, sometimes failing, to be the just and noble fourth estate it was always meant to be. There was Murrow. There was Cronkite. There was Kuralt, Bradley and Brinkley. And there was Mike Wallace.

From this morning’s “Face the Nation,” here is Morley Safer on his friend and colleague’s long, illustrious career. And after that, a taste of Plummer’s work as Wallace in “The Insider.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPlUxN3y4dw&w=640&h=360]

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Apologies for going quiet on you like that — my March flu has returned with reinforcements, and I’ve been too groggy to get much of anything done. The Easter weekend couldn’t be more sympathetically timed.

Anyway, welcome back to Cinejabber, your weekend space to bandy about any random movie-related thoughts you may have on your mind.

Any of you planning to go to the movies over the holiday, or are you nesting at home with chocolate eggs and DVDs? With “Titanic 3D” casting its shadow over the multiplexes, the week’s new wide releases don’t look too tempting — though if you live in New York or LA, I urge you to hurry off to “Damsels in Distress,” which beguiled me in Venice, wound up on my 2011 Top 10, and stands comfortably as my favorite comedy of the last couple of years. 

Meanwhile, I’m interested to hear if any of you — religiously inclined or otherwise — have any perennial Easter movies that complete the weekend for you. It’s not as commodified a sub-genre as the Christmas movie, but for some of us, hoary, overblown Biblical epics are as inextricably connected to the holiday as hot cross buns. And if you’re in a more highbrow mood and haven’t yet made the acquaintance of Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” or, better yet, Pasolini’s “The Gospel According to St. Matthew,” this is the perfect time to do so.

I’ll be probably be rewatching the latter tomorrow, with a side dish of the immortal Peanuts special “It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown,” plus an awful lot of hot honey and lemon. What are you guys getting up to? 

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

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