“Lone Survivor” sound editor Wylie Stateman picked up his seventh Oscar nomination to date last month, though despite wonderful work in films like “Cliffhanger,” “Inglourious Basterds” and “Django Unchained,” he’s yet to win an Academy Award.

The sound design of “Lone Survivor,” you could tell the instant you heard it, was destined for awards recognition this year. And it was all approached in a very unique way to put the viewer right there in the harrowing experience of the four soldiers dodging bullets and plummeting from great heights throughout.

I spoke to Stateman about his work on the film toward the end of the year, well before he had been nominated. I figured holding it until later made sense because I had no doubt he’d find himself among the nominees. And here he is. It’s possible he’s in the thick of the race, too, as Best Sound Editing has often provided an opportunity for voters to spread the love, even when one of the other nominees may be dominating the race otherwise, from “Speed” to “The Dark Knight” to last year’s shocking tie between “Skyfall” and “Zero Dark Thirty” (presented by “Lone Survivor” star Mark Wahlberg, interestingly enough).

You can read through our back and forth below detailing the experience of crafting the film’s soundtrack.

********

HitFix: First of all, this movie is such an amazing sound experience. I’m just curious from the start, how did Peter Berg talk to you about approaching what you hear in the movie and how you hear it?

Wylie Stateman: Pete was making very a visceral personal film. And his point of view about this was really that of highly trained professionals engaged in their work practice in a very hostile environment, and then sort of the cascading series of mistakes and/or problems sort of leading them into this terrible journey where their options become diminished and the entire story and experience is very close-up and personal. Pete’s thing was he wanted for us to feel like we were “in” this movie, in this environment, in this experience with these guys, shoulder to shoulder with them. And so we really set out to create a soundtrack that is disturbingly close and personal, placing the audience both in and next to these characters, but in a situation where, as an audience member, you can’t process the rhythms of the guns or the nature or the direction of the gunfire the way you would normally do it as an audience member viewing cinema in a normal environment. So what we did is we basically took the film sort of moment-by-moment and created environments that were correct in the acoustical space and not a linear nature of the story. So each shot got its own acoustical environment as if we were sitting there in the middle of experiencing it from the point of view of the center of action. Does that make sense?

It totally does but I’m curious just how unique that approach is in the world of sound.

Most films are approached with, you know, a “good guy gun” and a “bad a guy gun,” or, “This is Mark Wahlberg’s M4 and this is his RPG. This is what a Taliban RPG sounds like.” We didn’t do that at all. We in fact threw away the rule book that dictates that kind of procedural work and we said, “We want to be in these shots. We want to be in these moments.” So that means creating an acoustical fingerprint or an acoustical experience for each one of those shots, not a literal experience. So you can never really identify whose weapon is being fired, you just know that there’s somebody shooting over your shoulder, or that a bullet has just glanced off a rock next to your head. Does that make sense?

Yeah it does and it kind of answers my next question which is, you’ve worked on films like “We Were Soldiers” and “Born on the Fourth of July” with war elements and I was going to ask how did this film differ from those experiences, and I guess that’s it, right?

This is exactly it. In fact we did the same thing with the radios. We fragmented the radio calls based on the words we wanted to hear, not the idea that we’re representing a “bad” radio call. We said, “Okay, we’re going to take the story content and we’re going to fragment that.” Instead of just doing like what they call a ‘futz,’ which is to make it sound like a radio, we actually looked at it and said, “What if it was just packets of information and you only got this word or that word?” And so we built the drama of the bad radio communications one word at a time based on story and not based on creating a sound effect that sounds like a radio.

I guess that’s unique in itself to be able to tell story so specifically with your work. So often I guess sound is building out the world in helping to tell the story sonically, but to just be able to just convey the story in that way, almost in a narrative fashion, to carry that across is interesting.

And that’s what we worked out with Pete. We said, “Let’s make the sound a character in this film.” In the case of radio, let’s make radio story about what word we want to hear or what piece of a word, and by the way, we don’t even have to tether it to exactly the right time. So we’ll repeat words sometimes two frames apart and sometimes 10 feet apart. So there’s no consistent time delay in our theory of radio, there’s just a story. There’s just the fragmented words that you want to play and then placing those words in time where they fit best in the story and in the cut. Also with [film editor] Colby Parker, the same thing. Between Pete and Colby Parker, we established this idea that it’s story. And so with the radios, like I say, there’s fragmented pieces of radio that just fit into his editing patterns, not into the fact that we had a rule to adhere to.

So the idea that Pete had, and Colby, for that matter, is to kind of break the traditional storytelling rules by allowing sound to sonically – or let’s say allow the gunfire and the bullet ricos [short for “ricochets”] and that sort of thing and the falling sounds – you’re “in” that sound. When you’re tumbling down those rocks, the microphones are actually, you know – all of that was shot MOS; there was no production track. But what we did with the foley is we actually put the microphones in the foley artist’s clothes and in his gear. So instead of having the microphone six feet away the way we would normally record something, we actually put it in the backpack and you’re in that moment, you are that tumbling soldier.

I assume you had some elements like the sounds of a body hitting a tree or a boulder, did you go out and get some of these elements separately.

We recorded all of that on the foley stage.

Really?

But really what it is is it’s the concept for how to record it. It’s like instead of saying we’re going to make a recording of a body hitting a tree, we said, “What would it sounds like if the microphone where the body and the microphone hit the tree?” It’s like what we wanted to do was have a first-person experience with the microphone, with the sound, with the concept for the sound for the film. So maybe that’s a better way to explain Pete’s direction in this and Colby’s needs. It’s like, this is a first-person sonic experience. So meaning the microphone is telling the story, the acoustical environment is telling the story. When you hear a gunshot glance off a rock next to your head, it is right there next to your head as a first-person experience. There was no proscenium. Most sound is proscenium presentations. People are in the audience and they’re looking at this experience on the screen. We wanted the sound on ‘Lone Survivor’ to be a first-person experience.

Indeed, so instead of the microphone just passively capturing sound, it’s actively a part of…

…the world. And the situation is different from shot to shot. That’s the other key to this. It would be one thing to have that as sort of the rule, but in order to do that you physically have to make each shot have its own unique, you know, acoustical point of view.

Did you ever hear from Marcus Lutrell about how close to reality it felt or did that even process for him at all.

My relationship to the film is through Pete and Colby Parker. So the three of us – and yeah, they’re in constant touch with Marcus Luttrell. But his impact on the sound is really minimal, whereas Colby Parker and Pete, between us we were very much in sync with what this film was going to feel like sonically.

I talk to a number of you guys in the sound community every year and love hearing these stories. Getting these kinds of perspectives and hearing how people take to each other’s work in that community is always interesting. What kind of feedback have you gotten from your peers?

I get calls from people all the time saying, “Wow, fantastic, wonderful, interesting,” because it’s kind of a unique perspective. I really think between the radios and the gunfire and the bullet impacts and that sort of thing, you know, people that see this film – and it’s particularly my professional friends – they look at it and they understand what kind of achievement it is to break from the traditional, like I say, sitting in the audience and looking at a film through a proscenium versus being in those shots. And that, I think, is what ‘Lone Survivor’ is all about. You are there. And it’s a very honest track. There’s not a lot of music playing these beats, it’s all sound design and acoustical designs.

Well this being the first time I’ve actually talked to you, somehow, after all these years, I wanted to close by asking about your big moment on the Oscars back in 2006 when you were nominated for “Memoirs of a Geisha” and Jon Stewart had that funny bit that mentioned you [see below]. What was your reaction to that?

You know what, it was wonderful for my mother. And I love John Stewart. I watch his show. I’m like so many Americans, that’s where I get my news from, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. So, you know what, it’s all fun. It’s all part of the wonder and charm of working in this business. I try to have very little ego about it other than to say – I guess one of the things that I marvel about in terms of the film industry is the fact that you can get on a bus or an airplane or a train almost anywhere in the world and you’re sitting amongst people who have consumed something that you’ve made. And it’s a very rare opportunity in the world of today, to have a chance to touch so many people. Jon Stewart called me and said he was going to do this and was I cool with this, and I was like, “Absolutely.” Yeah, so that was fun.

The Oscar nominees are gathering for lunch this afternoon as the Winter Olympics forge ahead in Sochi, gobbling up two weeks and extending the phase two timeline of this year’s film awards season. The question is, how will that extension affect the race, if at all?

It’s a funny thing, buzz. Maintaining it, keeping the fire fueled, staying on the crest of the wave long enough to coast to the finish line – it can be tricky business. As of late, every four years, the Winter Olympics stretch the season into March, a callback to the days when the Oscars naturally did extend that far. We end up with a massive window in the post-nominations period (ballots don’t go out for another week still) and that can hurt some players.

For instance, “Gravity” has been riding pretty high with love from the PGA and DGA, but “12 Years a Slave” could end up with a significant boost out of the BAFTA Awards (as we’ve detailed in this space) and could capitalize if Alfonso Cuarón’s space thriller runs out of gas. But Warner Bros. has always kept the gap bridged with advertising buys and marketing awareness as the calendar shifts to phase two, and you can see it out there this season.

Most significantly, a commercial-free “Gravity” special aired on ABC Saturday night, similar to the one the studio ran this time last year for eventual Best Picture winner “Argo.” Sandra Bullock stopped by for the penultimate episode of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” last week and in trades and online, you can see a real robust campaign continuing to play out without taking a breath.

“Dallas Buyers Club” star Matthew McConaughey also showed up on “The Tonight Show” last week as Focus Features has taken an early phase two marketing plunge. Like “Gravity,” that is a film that could be in a precarious situation with an extended season and needs to seize any and all momentum. If Leonardo DiCaprio grabs the BAFTA prize next weekend, watch out.

Speaking of which, Paramount clearly has nothing to lose and is going for broke with a lively print and outdoor advertising campaign for “The Wolf of Wall Street.” There were new commercials for the film in key primetime slots last weekend, too. Meanwhile, a big retrospective of Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio’s collaborations has been set for the Ziegfeld Theater in New York next week, right on the heels of last week’s Santa Barbara film festival tribute to the duo.

Disney animation is firing things up as well. A live concert event was held for the film “Frozen” in Los Angeles Sunday at Herb Alpert’s Vibrato Jazz Club and the ads are blanketing media outlets. In the wake of this year’s Best Original Song dust-up, there is a little more scrutiny on that category than usual and “Let It Go” isn’t the foregone conclusion some might think. (Universal is certainly keeping the pressure on on behalf of “Despicable Me 2” and newly minted Grammy winner Pharrell Williams.)

That’s not even to mention all of the shenanigans Harvey Weinstein is pulling on “Philomena.” Whether plastering a massive quote from a Hollywood Reporter piece curiously stretching to make the film’s Best Picture case in an LA Times ad, getting the real Philomena Lee an audience with the Pope or convincing Mayor Garcetti and the city of Los Angeles to honor her at City Hall tomorrow, the man is working it with typical chutzpah.

Will the fact that Cate Blanchett was unfortunately dragged into an ugly family dispute get voters wondering how they want their vote represented with more time on their hands? Are a pair of surprising (to some) “Captain Phillips” guild wins indicative of wiggle room in this category or that? Lots of questions as the clock ticks on longer than usual.

So while the nominees enjoy their Quinoa Root Vegetable Salad and White Miso Orange Marinated Pacific Sea Bass at the Beverly Hilton Hotel this afternoon, the engines are revving back up under the hood. Nothing is settled and no one is conceding. Those looking to maintain on-going buzz are about to face off with those ready to mount last ditch efforts, and when the dust settles, however the trophies end up being dispersed, it will have been an Oscar race for the ages.

(Quick note: The top 10 shots of 2013 will begin to roll out tomorrow. Be sure to circle back for that annual feature, as I know you’ve been waiting.)

Quelle horreur! It takes a lot to make the rigidly set-in-its-ways Cannes Film Festival switch things up a bit, but the European elections on Sunday, May 25 have necessitated some shifting in the usual schedule. The Competition awards, usually presented on the last night of the fest, will now be handed out the night before, on Saturday; the final Competition film will also screen a day earlier, on Friday. Those of us to stay on until the bitter end will now have the whole weekend to catch up with any major titles we missed, while a screening of the Palme d’Or winner will close the festival. Is that in place of the usually lousy Closing Film? [Screen Daily]

London Film Festival head Clare Stewart announces her intention to cement the fest’s place in the awards calendar. [Variety]

“Frozen” tunes up its awards campaign and rounds up its cast for a bit of a cabaret night. [Hollywood Reporter]

The Criticwire collective addresses the matter of critics walking out of movies: When is and isn’t it acceptable? [Indiewire]

Felix van Groeningen breaks down a key scene from foreign Oscar hopeful “The Broken Circle Breakdown.” [New York Times]

Remembering “The Book Thief,” the Oscar contender that (John Williams notwithstanding) never was. John Patterson wonder who (and what) it’s for. [The Guardian]

Jack Egan talks to recent ADG winner Andy Nicholson about the complex, VFX-incorporating process behind the production design of “Gravity.” [Below the Line]

Still on production design, Jim Bissell talks about creating a ruined Europe for “The Monuments Men.” [The Credits]

“Alone Yet Not Alone” is finding some friends, as the film’s soundtrack hits the Billboard charts and is showcased at whatever the MovieGuide Awards are. [Variety]

BERLIN – “The student has become the master” is, at least more ofthen not, a complimentary phrase, denoting the completion of an education, the expansion of a tradition or, at the very least, the perfection of one good party trick. Yet snider derivations of that sentiment have been applied my a number of colleagues to A.J. Edwards’s “The Better Angels,” a lushly conceived, exhaustively realized debut feature that’d be pretty formidable stuff coming from a more practised filmmaker — and derided in some quarters as a self-impressed knock-off.  

It’d be impossible not to mention Terrence Malick’s name at least once in even the most cursory discussion of this sense-driven historical drama, which portrays the childhood years of an unnamed Abraham Lincoln in oblique, impressionistic fashion. Malick is one of the film’s producers, for starters, while Edwards is a direct protégé of the contemporary’s cinema’s pre-eminent enigmatic tone poet, having worked as an editor and second unit director on “The Tree of Life,” “To the Wonder” and the forthcoming “Knight of Cups.”

It goes without saying that Malick’s protracted productions are unlikely to be in-and-out experiences for his below-the-line collaborators; work on three of them back to back, meanwhile, and chances are a bit of his singular aesthetic is going to bleed into your system. Or quite a lot, as suggested by the ecstatic rusticism of “The Better Angels.” It’s shot in black and white, which is something Malick hasn’t done before, but the camerawork’s gliding kineticism and porous absorption of light are dreamily familiar, or familiarly dreamy — as are the film’s preference for hushed narration over already spare dialogue, catholic appropriation of classical music and irregular, spiritually preoccupied narrative. A.J. Edwards is a student of Terrence Malick, and he doesn’t care who knows it.

To dismiss “The Better Angels” for its obviously derivative qualities, however, is to throw an awful lot of baby out with the sun-dappled bathwater. To start with, if the entire enterprise were nothing more than a Malick tribute act, it’d still be a pretty good one: Edwards and cinematographer Matthew J. Lloyd have an eye for liquid, land-attuned composition that can’t be copied or faked. Shots convey perspective and psychology, not mere pictorial pleasure; there’s no vacant prettiness here. But Edwards’ feature also boasts some bold breaks from the Malick house style: there’s an emotional and visual severity to the piece, and a preoccupation with rootsy Americana texture, that feels very much its own. (If you were to glibly pitch it to a studio exec — and ensure you never work in the industry again — you might describe it as “‘The Tree of Life’ meets ‘The Turin Horse.'”)

As historical drama, it’s slightly more anchored in actual history than, say, Malick’s wildly visionary “The New World”: opening with a shot of the stately immovable Lincoln Memorial, before jumping back to the crunchy Indiana woods where Honest Abe grew up, seemingly announces the film’s intension to celebrate real life (or at least imagined real life) from iconography and mythicism. Several scenes linger with fascination on details and rituals of this rural community, though a simple family setup eventually emerges: stern, rough-handed father Tom Lincoln (Jason Clarke), his wife Nancy (Brit Marling) and their two children — one of them, of course, the eight-year-old future President.

Plagues and illnesses come and go with the seasons; one of them takes Nancy, who’s replaced in short order by Sarah (not-plain and tall, played by Diane Kruger), who adds her own children to the household. Abe accepts this familial shift while beginning to assert his own manly identity. These events have been dutifully researched (much of the narration is drawn from interview texts), yet the film doesn’t dramatize them so much as observe them in the manner of water or weather — lives in constant motion, but susceptible entirely to time and fate.

Rather a lot happens in “The Better Angels”  — life, growth, death — though many viewers (well, many of the few) will conclude that not much happens at all; Edwards is more interested in how history looked and felt as it was being constructed than the construction itself. If the tactility and lyricism of his filmmaking were gained from time spent working with Malick, so be it; such qualities are a gift, not a loan. 

When George Clooney’s “The Monuments Men” was pushed back from its scheduled 2013 release date, the message was clearly sent that it wasn’t seen as awards material — but that didn’t have to be a bad thing. Perhaps it was simply a fun commercial caper to brighten up the drab February release slate, an “Ocean’s 11” in period dress. Then the reviews came out, suggesting there truly was cause for concern: Kris is among the few with at least a kind word for it, but others (including HitFix’s Drew McWeeny) have piled on it for being dull, pompous and featherweight all at once. It certainly went down like a lead balloon at the Berlinale, where it was booed by German audiences and accused of jingoism.

I have yet to see it for myself (there didn’t seem much point in catching up with it late at Berlin), but a number of you must have. So now it’s your turn to tell us: Is it that bad? Or is it still a reasonable romp? And has its star power and delayed release put a target on its back? Vote in the poll below, and share your thoughts in the comments.

The USC Scripter Awards are one of my favorite events of the film awards season. Yes, they are unique in that they recognize the authors of both screenplays and source material, and can often present a unique slate of honorees, but it’s also a lovely personal excursion when I can make it, as the echoes of my days toiling away on various papers and thesis efforts in the halls of the Doheny Library make it an annual homecoming for me.

This year’s 26th annual ceremony made for a wonderful evening as not only was the master himself, “Chinatown” screenwriter Robert Towne, in the house to receive the Literary Achievement Award, but Solomon Northup himself was able to land his own prize this season due to the unique nature of the proceedings. John Ridley shared the award with the late Northup as “12 Years a Slave” beat out fellow adaptations “Captain Phillips,” “Philomena,” “The Spectacular Now” and “What Maisie Knew.”

What follows is Ridley’s touching acceptance speech, on his behalf and on Northup’s, for the first award of the year that has been reserved for the author of this 161-year-old memoir. He came near tears frequently throughout and it may well be a preview of the Best Adapted Screenplay result on Oscar night.

“First and foremost let me just add my praise to Mr. Towne. I don’t know in your career how many writers have come to you and said, ‘I’m here because of you,’ but if I can’t do anything else tonight, let me say I’m here because of you and because of writers like you. Thank you.

“I’ve been very fortunate to work on a lot of projects and this process has been very new and different for me, adapting in this way, and I’ve in my curiosity had an opportunity to talk to many of the other writers who are nominated tonight and read interviews by them and see them in Q&As. In certain circumstances a very special relationship forms between the writer and the originator and I think it is amazingly special, what you all have been doing for more than two decades, in recognizing the work of the writer and the originator. Thank you very much, and I just want to give my praise to the other writers. Thank you for this process, for your advice and for adding so much to what a lot of people has said is one of the most special years in cinema.

“There was a question asked earlier whether we need books in libraries, and I can say I certainly did. Before this I didn’t know who Solomon Northup was, and I didn’t know his story and I’ve done what I think is some good work in the past, but the difference between then and now is Solomon and his words and his work and his life. I’ve been very honored to be joined tonight by some of some of Solomon’s descendants and I’d like to just introduce them very quickly, and if they would stand up, please: Melissa Howell and Rebecca Bicksler, Michelle Linzy and Milan Linzy.

“The way Solomon wrote, the clarity that he wrote [with], the evocative language that he used and more importantly the strength of his character, to go through what he went through without bitterness and without hate, that really taught me something. I’ve had a very nice career and I’ve written a lot but until I read Solomon’s memoir, I didn’t know what being a writer was all about. And I’m very thankful to an absolutely amazing team of people who helped put this together, starting with a phenomenal director in Steve McQueen and the crew that he put together and an absolutely amazing cast, led in particular by Mr. Chiwetel Ejiofor, the brilliant and amazing Lupita Nyong’o and one individual who just gave me so much spirit throughout this process of making the film, Alfre Woodard who’s actually here this evening.

“For those who have seen the film, people ask me what was the most difficult scene or what was the scene I enjoyed the most, and it was the Mr. Shaw scene. For me to write that kind of language and to create that kind of scene was one thing but to watch the actors dance with the language, it was absolutely amazing, and thank you – thank you all for those performances. I want to thank, too – you know, a film like this on paper, as powerful as the memoir was, going from the script to the screen, it doesn’t happen by accident and it happened through the support of some really phenomenal individuals, everyone at Fox Searchlight, at New Regency, at River Road, at Film Four and especially Mr. Pitt and his company Plan B, and in particular Dede Gardner and a very phenomenal producer and someone who I truly would not be standing here if it weren’t for him, Jeremy Kleiner, to all of them and to all you, thank you so very much.

“And one more: Gayle, thank you for those two boys, those two phenomenal young men you brought into our house who inspire me every day, thank you so much.”

Oscar-pool betters looking for tips in the Best Production Design race shouldn’t be too reliant on the Art Directors Guild Awards: in their 17 years of existence, the Academy has agreed with one of their selections on 10 occasions. Last year, they did not — while the ADG plumped for “Anna Karenina,” “Life of Pi” and “Skyfall,”  the Academy surprised most pundits by picking “Lincoln” instead.

All of which is to say that there’s hope yet for Oscar nominees “12 Years a Slave” and “American Hustle,” though they were left out of the winners’ circle at the ADG Awards tonight. Both films lost the Period production design category to Catherine Martin for her extravagantly stylized Jazz Age design of Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby.”

Martin — who is also Luhrmann’s wife — won both the Guild award and the Oscar in this category 12 years ago for “Moulin Rouge!” and could well be on course for another repeat. The Academy typically responds to excess in this category, and hers is easily the flashiest work here — though “Lincoln” was an uncharacteristically restrained choice, perhaps buoyed by its heft as a Best Picture nominee. “Gatsby” is the only film in the field not also up for Best Picture, which could count against it if voters are playing favorites; Martin, of course, has a second shot on goal in the Best Costume Design category.

It’s lovely to see K.K. Barrett take the Contemporary category for his sleek, elegantly futuristic world-building in Spike Jonze’s “Her.” Some might quibble, however, that he should have competed in the Fantasy category — which went to Andy Nicholson for his remarkable space-station recreations of “Gravity,” a contemporary-set film that isn’t strictly fantastical.

Either way, both men are deserving of the recognition: I’m still pleasantly surprised that Barrett scored the Oscar nod for such coolly inventive, low-key work. This was Barrett’s fourth ADG nod, having previously competed for “Lost in Translation,” “Where the Wild Things Are” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” For Nicholson, this marks his third ADG win, having previously won as part of the team on “Sleepy Hollow” and “The Golden Compass,” though this is his first as head designer.

Full list of winners below:

Excellence in Production Design – Period Film
“The Great Gatsby” (Catherine Martin)

Excellence in Production Design – Contemporary Film
“Her” (K.K. Barrett)

Excellence in Production Design – Fantasy Film
“Gravity” (Andy Nicholson)

Excellence in Production Design – TV Movie or Miniseries
“Behind the Candelabra” (Howard Cummings)

Excellence in Production Design – One-Hour Single-Camera Series
“Game of Thrones” (Gemma Jackson)

Excellence in Production Design – Half-Hour Single-Camera Series
“Veep” (Jim Gloster)

Excellence in Production Design – Multi-Camera, Variety or Unscripted Series
“Portlandia” (Tyler Robinson) 

Excellence in Production Design – Awards, Music or Game Shows
“67th Annual Tony Awards” (Steve Bass)

Excellence in Production Design – Short Format Live-Action Series
“Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome” (Bryan Kane)

Excellence in Production Design – Commercials, PSAs, Promos or Music Videos
“Call of Duty: Ghosts” – “Epic Night Out” (Todd Cherniawsky)

Cinematic Imagery Award
Martin Scorsese

Lifetime Achievement Award
Rick Carter

Hall of Fame Inductees
Robert Clatworthy, Harper Goff, J. Michael Riva

BERLIN – Just as no book should be judged by its cover, no film should be judged by its title — though that doesn’t stop us from occasionally doing so anyway. It’s fair to say that any expectations set up by the title “Two Men in Town” are met by French-Algerian director Rachid Bouchareb’s drab, western-infused thriller: it features at least two men, it’s set in something more or less resembling a town, and it’s sufficiently listless to make you believe no one could be bothered to think up something more flavorful. “Two Magnificent Men in Town.” “Two Men in [Insert Town Name Here].” I’m just spitballing.

To be fair, the film’s a remake of a 1973 Jean Gabin-Alain Delon starrer, “Deux hommes dans la ville,” so Bouchareb can’t be blamed for the title’s creation — only its appropriation. There is, in fact, a lot of appropriation going on here, as Bouchareb picks liberally from the genre playbooks of western and noir, as well as laconic indie Americana as demonstrated by John Sayles and the Brothers Coen (think “Fargo,” except don’t).

He doesn’t wear any of these guises particularly well. Bouchareb’s most successful films (“Days of Glory,” “London River”) benefit from a degree of open-hearted human interest and patient social observation — qualities that aren’t easily grafted onto a script with designs on hard-boiled genre austerity. What we get is some virtuous sloganeering tucked between the grim acts of violence: “Without trust, there can be no chance of reform,” intones Emily Smith, Brenda Blethyn’s hard-assed New Mexico parole officer — no, that is not a misprint — sounding more like a speaker at a Labour Party conference than a seen-it-all Mountain Stater, Marge Gunderson pep and wobbly accent notwithstanding. 

New in town, her first ward is William Garnett (Forest Whitaker), a bespectacled, unassuming type at the end of an 18-year prison sentence for murder. He’s introduced in the film’s opening shot, fatally hurling a rock at the head of his battered victim as a mimosa sunset blazes in the background. It’s all too obvious we’re due a bookending image, though by the time Emily meets him, he seems pretty straight and narrow. A convert to Islam during his incarceration, he’s compliant and polite, though there are plainly anger issues roiling beneath the placid surface. Much as I’d like to attribute this sense to subtle nuances in Whitaker’s performance, the real tip-off is the scene where William’s prison imam instructs him to overcome his anger issues. Emily’s big on trust; the script a little less so.

Far less convinced than the parole officer of William’s reform is the town sheriff, Bill Agati (Harvey Keitel, doing a little with a little), who keeps him under close watch — perhaps understandably so given that, in a bold reversal of Bob Marley logic, William killed his deputy. Also on his tail is former criminal colleague Terence (Luis Guzman, whose sole directorial instruction was clearly to look Latin and leering), whose invitations from the dark side threaten the new life William has already rather improbably set up with kind-hearted bank manager Teresa (Dolores Heredia). What attractive, professional woman wouldn’t shack up with a convicted murderer a week after his release, especially one as dishy as Forest Whitaker?

As this dingy setup plays out exactly as you suspect it must, the film’s rampant absurdities would be acceptable if it were making a broader moral or allegorical point in the process — in the vein of classic westerns — but it’s hard to detect one beyond Emily’s increasingly questionable homespun wisdom. (“If she really cares about you, she’ll follow you anywhere — that’s how women are,” she tells William sagely in the film’s single most hilarious moment. Not even women understand women in Bouchareb’s universe, with Blethyn far less generously served than she was in “London River.”)

Bouchareb made the film as the second entry in a planned trilogy about America’s interaction with the Arab world: the first was last year’s barely seen, critically brutalized Sienna Miller-Golshifteh Farahani belly-dancing comedy “Just Like a Woman,” so Part Three has a lot to live down to. Still, William’s faith is neither an active enough plot point nor a pervasive enough theme in the proceedings for the film to fit this description: no one, in fact, seems to respond to his religion at all. That may be a conclusion in itself, but it doesn’t do much to color this dry, inert potboiler. No Bouchareb film is without its textural pleasures — any film shot by Yves Cape (“White Material”) is going to — but that title seems to represent his full personal investment in the proceedings, and in his chosen new milieu.

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4911761008001

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – Friday night ended up providing one of the most emotional moments I’ve seen in all my years of attending the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. It came at the end of a very long evening saluting the career of actor Robert Redford, one that wasn’t even long enough, actually, as the timeline had to top out at “Ordinary People” lest the celebration spill over far too much. And it was a grace note representative of the heart of this festival.

To get the disclosure out of the way, I count SBIFF Executive Director Roger Durling as a friend. He attended my wedding. We’ve made time to enjoy each other’s company when we’ve both found ourselves in New York, in Telluride, what have you. He is easily one of the classiest, most giving and passionate individuals I’ve ever met and he curates this festival with all of that grace.

I love the Santa Barbara tribute apparatus because it reads so much less as an attempt to capitalize on the awards season than it does a seized opportunity to sit down with accomplished artists for two, sometimes three hours and just marinate in their careers. You don’t get that anywhere else, certainly not at this volume and consistency.

Roger broke down a bit last night. He took to the stage, his voice breaking as he recounted the waterfall jump scene from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” one he frequently discusses with his students in a film class he’s been teaching locally for years. You know it well: Butch sees leaping into the water below as his and Sundance’s only escape. But, the Kid finally screams, Sundance can’t swim. “The fall will probably kill you,” Cassidy howls.

Roger drew a parallel, noting that as a gay Latino man in Panama with no opportunity there, he took his own plunge and came to America. And in 1991, he was introduced to the Sundance Film Festival.

“I jumped into this amazing culture where a person could spend all day watching and talking about films,” he said. “There’s such a sense of purity in film festivals.”

He had found his calling and when he took up his duty as director of the Santa Barbara fest, he embarked on what he said was the most fulfilling experience of his life…until Friday night, when he could honor Redford personally. And it was the spotlight-eschewing Redford who requested Durling, not some star from his past, to present the American Riviera Award to him, festival director to festival director. You could tell that touched Roger deeply.

“To the man who has taught me how to jump,” Roger said, the words catching in his throat. “I can proudly say to you I’ve learned how to swim.”

It was really quite wonderful and in acceptance, Redford spoke to something Roger had noted about community. Film festivals are very much about community, he said, and being here for this honor was a bit of a homecoming as Redford knows these shores well. He’s a child of Southern California where he spent plenty of his days surfing and soaking up the sun. This community, he said, was special.

It was just a brilliant close to the evening, which dived as deep as it could given the late start and time allotment. This sort of thing is not Redford’s bag, you see. “I’ve always been shy around celebrations of myself,” he told moderator Leonard Maltin. “I don’t know why that is, but I’m glad I’m getting it…I don’t look back. I never have. One day you look at your rear view mirror and suddenly there’s history. It’s weird.”

From a “Perry Mason” episode called “The Case of the Treacherous Toupee” to a stunning near-silent portrayal in “All is Lost,” Redford’s history is clearly significant. But his journey was troubled, he admitted. As a minority Anglo in a largely Latino Los Angeles neighborhood growing up after World War II, his life turned violent and his family had to move. Art was presented to him as a “trivial pursuit.” He always had an outlaw sensibility, one of the reasons he liked making “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” – he was comfortable being outside the box.

He told stories of his time on the stage, how performing in a comedy two days after the assassination of President Kennedy, he could tell the laughter had changed in the room, and maybe in America, “because our belief system had been shattered,” he said. He consistently deferred credit for some of his most revered work to his filmmaker collaborators, whether Sydney Pollack on “The Way We Were,” George Roy Hill (who Redford said didn’t get enough credit as a storyteller) on “Butch Cassidy” and “The Sting” or, indeed, J.C. Chandor on “All is Lost.”

He spoke of Paul Newman’s generosity, not just in life but as a fellow actor, never hoarding, always providing a platform for his co-stars to sing. He told the long but compelling story of “All the President’s Men’s” four-year journey to the screen, beginning on the set of 1972’s “The Candidate.” And he spoke of his “insatiable curiosity about everything,” the driving force of his creative life.

When talk turned to “All is Lost,” he told again the story of how a 30-page script from a Sundance alumnus intrigued him from the outset. “With all that film has become, it’s taken it further away from pure cinematic experience,” he said. “This was pure.”

When a clip of 1974’s “The Great Gatsby” was shown, his Jay Gatsby sparring with Bruce Dern’s Tom Buchanan over Mia Farrow’s Daisy Buchanan, Maltin noted that it was a bit of a trailer for Saturday night’s Modern Master tribute to Dern. “Ask him when you see him if he remembers me,” Redford said.

That seemed to sum up Redford’s disposition well. Consistent deferment, shyness of the spotlight, curious of others. He is more concerned with discussing, at length, the ideas behind all of his work than the glitzy movie star elements therein or puffing up his accomplishments. He’s an easy talker, a thoughtful talker, and you could set up a whole other two hours to run from “Ordinary People” through his work in the 1980s and 1990s that wasn’t even touched due to time.

But it all boiled down, for me, to that lovely little ode by Roger. I’m probably most happy for him, that he could finally look a personal hero, a man whose life course changed his own, in the eye and say, “Thank you.”

“All is Lost’ arrives on DVD and Blu-ray Tuesday, Feb. 11. For more on Redford’s experience working on the film, check out the exclusive clip embedded at the top of this post.

Paul Greengrass’ “Captain Phillips” hasn’t missed a beat since that pair of surprise Oscar misses in the Best Director and Best Actor categories a few weeks back. The film pulled out a Best Adapted Screenplay WGA win last weekend and Friday night it routed fellow Best Picture nominees “Gravity,” “Her” and “12 Years a Slave” to win the ACE Eddie Award for dramatic feature film editing. “American Hustle,” meanwhile, bested “Nebraska” and “The Wolf of Wall Street” to claim the comedy/musical prize.

Both of these I frankly saw coming. The organization has a ton of respect for editor Christopher Rouse (who won this award in 2008 en route to an Oscar for “The Bourne Ultimatum”) and I don’t think it’s a signal of weakness on “Gravity’s” part, especially as it pertains to the Oscars, where it could still easily win this award. When I think of “Captain Phillips,” I think of an expert assemblage of footage. “Gravity,” on the other hand – though still a post-production marvel – is a collection of long, extended takes. It’s not difficult to imagine a group of editors would be more inclined to honor something accomplished on a more traditional spectrum.

Nevertheless, I’ve been saying for a few weeks now that the key to this year’s Best Picture Oscar race may yet lie in the envelope for Best Film Editing on the night of March 2. If the winner is indeed “Gravity,” I think we have our Best Picture answer. Ditto “12 Years a Slave.” If it’s anything else (and I think “Captain Phillips” is far more likely than “American Hustle”), then it will probably be a nail-biter until the final envelope is opened. But I’m happy for Rouse, whose work is amazing on this film, a film that took an unfortunate bump on Jan. 16 but keeps on keeping on.

Elsewhere, “Frozen” and “20 Feet from Stardom” won the animated and documentary prizes. Both are pretty well set up for big wins at the Oscars. “The Office,” “Breaking Bad” (which had to win, given it accounted for four of five nominations in its category) and “Homeland” won top TV honors, while Steven Soderbergh – under his “Mary Ann Bernard” pseudonym – won in the TV miniseries or motion picture field for “Behind the Candelabra.”

Oh, and a great night for “Captain Phillips” didn’t stop with the top prize. Greengrass received the organization’s Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year prize, too, presented by fellow Oscar outcast Tom Hanks.

Check out the nominees here, the full list of winners below and remember to keep track of all the ups and downs of the season via The Circuit.

Best Edited Feature Film (Dramatic)
“Captain Phillips”
Christopher Rouse, A.C.E.

Best Edited Feature Film (Comedy or Musical)
“American Hustle”
Jay Cassidy, A.C.E., Crispin Struthers & Alan Baumgarten, A.C.E.

Best Animated Feature Film
“Frozen”
Jeff Draheim

Best Edited Documenatary (Feature)
“20 Feet from Stardom”
Douglas Blush, Kevin Klauber & Jason Zeldes

Best Edited Documentary (Feature)
“The Assassination of President Kennedy”
Chris A. Peterson

Best Edited Half-Hour Series for Television
“The Office” – “Finale”
David Rogers & Claire Scanlon

Best Edited One-Hour Series for Commercial Television
“Breaking Bad” – “Felina”
Skip MacDonald A.C.E.

Best Edited One-Hour Series for Non-Commercial Television
“Homeland” – “Big Man in Tehran”
Terry Kelley, A.C.E.

Best Edited Miniseries or Motion Picture for Television
“Behind the Candelabra”?
Mary Ann Bernard

Best Edited Non-Scripted Series
“Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” – “Tokyo”
Nick Brigden

Best Student Editing
Ambar Salinas, Video Symphony

ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year Award
Paul Greengrass

Lifetime Career Achievement Award
Richard Halsey, A.C.E.
Robert C. Jones

Heritage Award
Randy Roberts, A.C.E.

Filmmaker/editor relationships may not have the iconic status of relationships between directors and certain actors or producers or even cinematographers, but there are exceptions to this. For instance, no one has been as integral to Martin Scorsese’s career as Thelma Schoonmaker. Much of Steven Spielberg’s work has been shaped by the great Michael Kahn.

Usually these sorts of collaborations are marked by something special at the core of the relationship, and over the past decade, a similar one has begun to blossom in this light: Paul Greengrass and Christopher Rouse. Rouse has worked on nearly all of Greengrass’ films, dating back to 2004’s “The Bourne Supremacy,” and even though their collaborations number just five, to think of one artist without the other is now a bit difficult.

Rouse recently earned his third Oscar nomination for Greengrass’ “Captain Phillips” and Friday night, he picked up his second ACE Eddie Award to date. HitFix recently spoke to him about the on-going collaboration with Greengrass, the Academy Awards and the journey of his latest.

********

HitFix: How did you get into film editing?

Christopher Rouse: I’m the third generation of my family in the film business, and I grew up with a deep passion for movies. I made my own Super 8 films when I was a kid, and always loved the editing process. When I left high school, my dad was directing a film and I went to work for him as a PA. There were two wonderful editors, Bud Isaacs and Bernie Balmuth, working on the project, and every chance I had I would go to the editing room to watch and learn from them. I was really fortunate, because Bud took me with him on his next film and got me my first union job.

How did you first get to know Paul Greengrass?

I had worked on the “The Bourne Identity” and was close with the film’s producer, Frank Marshall. When Paul was hired for “The Bourne Supremacy,” he told Frank he was interested in working with a few key crew members from Hollywood because he wanted a different experience from what he’d had on his independent British projects. Frank recommended me, and one afternoon Paul gave me a call. We spoke on the phone for quite some time, and I guess I made a reasonably good impression because he hired me sight unseen.

How would you describe your relationship with him after five films?

It’s the richest and best creative relationship I’ve ever had. And it’s not just a working relationship – Paul and I are also close friends. I have the great privilege of working with someone who is an exceptional filmmaker with a powerful world-view, chooses tremendously interesting projects, and is a great guy besides. Like any strong friendship ours is based upon trust, so we’re very open when we speak with each other, and that has great creative benefits.

To what extent is he a hands-on director in the editing suite?

I suppose that depends upon what your definition of “hands-on” is. Paul’s vision and strong point of view drive every aspect of his process, so in truth his hands are on everything. But Paul’s process is incredibly inclusive, and just as he encourages his actors to explore the deeper, truthful aspects of the drama through improvisation, he gives me great creative freedom to engage with his material. And that’s why I love working with Paul. He always wants to see the version I think works best, whether or not it’s something that’s close to what was scripted or shot. He encourages me to make bold choices and think out of the box, and that always leads me into interesting creative territory. It’s a very fluid process that’s rooted in months of work and conversations we’ve had.

So it’s structured, but it’s loose. Paul likes to describe what we do as “playing jazz together.” As Paul shoots, I send him cuts regularly and we speak every day, talking about how the piece is developing. After production ends, Paul comes in to watch my cut. We’ll talk about it at length, and then he’ll go away while I make changes. When I’m done he’ll return, we do it all again, and so forth. We work very closely through every aspect of post-production until we’re finished.

Is there any sort of unique challenge in editing his films given their docudrama nature?

Paul’s process is rooted in his documentary background and his love of cinéma vérité. And so he relentlessly searches for dramatic truth, no matter where that takes him. He likes to shoot long takes with his actors, often resetting several times in order to allow the actors to discover the situation more freely and deeply. And he encourages improvisation. So what makes Paul’s material so rich and exciting also makes it pretty labor-intensive for me. Sometimes a scene will arrive in the cutting room as it was written. Sometimes it’ll be very different than what was on the page. And depending upon what Paul and the actors discovered while they were shooting, the material from later in the day can be quite different from the earlier takes. So trying to meld that material can be challenging.

So specifically with “Captain Phillips,” how would you describe your approach to this material when you got your hands on the footage?

I think I approached “Captain Phillips” as I would any project. I always try to understand the story, characters, and themes as deeply as possible, and then work as hard as I can to make those things come to life. Because the plot of “Phillips” falls into thriller territory – it’s a heist-gone bad – it was important to serve the needs of that genre. The film had to be exciting, suspenseful, and deliver a strong narrative conclusion. But Paul also saw “Phillips” deeply as a deeply character piece, a tale of two captains carrying out the orders imposed on them by the first and third worlds. And so it was important to set up and develop stakes for the characters that not only advanced the plot but also advanced the thematic ideas in the film.

It was also important to build a growing sense of tension over the entire film, but still allow room for the characters to express their emotions in complex, nuanced ways. There were also many smaller “builds” in the film, and depending upon what was going on with the story and the characters, each build needed to be approached differently. For example, in the scene when Phillips is kidnapped in the lifeboat, the characters were highly reactive to each other, and it was important to feel like anything could happen. And so the growing tension there is the result of unpredictable rhythms building to a confrontation that then explodes in a surprising, aggressive series of events. But in the sequence that ends with the SEALs rescuing Phillips, it was important to feel the power and inevitability of the U.S. Navy gradually bearing down on the situation in the lifeboat. And so the tension there is the result of a long, slow build that ratchets up as time is running out, and climaxes when the situation reaches critical mass.

All along the way, we had to keep our emotional connections with the characters. The film not only had to build to an exciting ending, but one that felt emotionally complicated and cathartic as well.

What was your biggest challenge on this one?

I suppose it was in trying to deliver the film Paul wanted, trying to create a piece that was simultaneously exciting, richly characterful and thematically resonant.

Was there anything on “Captain Phillips” you hadn’t done before in your career?

I’m always in early on a project with Paul, but on “Phillips” I spent much more time with him during script development and pre-production. Paul brought me in six months before shooting began. We went over the script in great detail as it evolved, discussing every aspect of it. A lot of problems that might have come up during shooting were solved before the cameras rolled. And needless to say, I was completely in tune with what he was looking for long before I started cutting the movie.

What does it feel like to be nominated for an Oscar?

It’s absolutely incredible. When your peers acknowledge your work to this degree, it’s far beyond flattering – it’s overwhelming. And being nominated affects me deeply because it reminds me of my dad [producer/director/screenwriter Russell Rouse], who won an Academy Award in 1959 [Best Original Screenplay for “Pillow Talk”].

How would you compare the feeling of this nomination to the ones you received for “United 93” and “The Bourne Ultimatum?”

Each time it’s been really special. Because “United 93” was my first, the ride that went with it was new and wild. “Bourne” was special because I had such a deep connection with the franchise, having worked on the first three. And because I’d spent so much time on “Phillips” – from script development through pre-production, production, and post-production – the “Phillips” nomination means a great, great deal to me.

With that in mind, what does it feel like to be going to the ceremony without Tom Hanks and Paul Greengrass as fellow nominees?

It’s extremely bittersweet. Obviously I’m over the moon about my good fortune, but am crushed for Paul and Tom. It’s been a very strong year for directors and performances, and I have great respect for everyone who was nominated, but I can’t reconcile them being left out of their categories. Paul directed a tremendously powerful film with thematic complexity and resonance, which also played as great entertainment. He shot in very difficult circumstances – it’s exceptionally tough to shoot on the water – and got great performances from his actors, including a group of young guys who had never acted before but were key to the success of the film. Tom’s performance was nothing short of stunning. The commitment, the choices, the nuance… His emotional arc was monumental, and left us breathless at the end of the film. Of course I’m biased, but I think they should have been acknowledged.

To say this awards season has not gone as expected is something of an understatement. No one could have anticipated that perhaps the closest best picture race this century would be overshadowed by twenty one year-old allegations surrounding Woody Allen and his adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow.  After almost two decades of silence, a series of tweets during the Golden Globes from Mia Farrow, Dylan’s adoptive mother, and her brother, Ronan Farrow, has snowballed into a dramatic series of statements that has once again dragged these unproven allegations into something of a public spectacle.

Mia Farrow and Ronan Farrow publicly brought attention back to the molestation claime during the Golden Globes in January when Diane Keaton accepted a lifetime achievement award for the absent Allen. A series of editorials and reports followed, but it appeared the story had ended. Instead, the now 28-year-old Dylan Farrow released a scathing statement once again accusing her adoptive father of molesting her as a child. And in the New York Times no less. Allen’s lawyer and friends have stood up for him, but Allen himself finally felt the need to speak out publicly with an almost unbelievable OP-ED published online in the New York Times tonight (it goes without saying the Paper of Record hasn’t been this relevant since the Bush administration left office).   

In his lengthy and well-written editorial Allen bluntly describes his initial reaction to the molestation accusations remarking he thought it was obvious and “transparent” they were the “malevolent” actions of a former lover, Mia Farrow, battling for custody of their two children.

Allen goes on, “I naïvely thought the accusation would be dismissed out of hand because of course, I hadn”t molested Dylan and any rational person would see the ploy for what it was. Common sense would prevail. After all, I was a 56-year-old man who had never before (or after) been accused of child molestation. I had been going out with Mia for 12 years and never in that time did she ever suggest to me anything resembling misconduct. Now, suddenly, when I had driven up to her house in Connecticut one afternoon to visit the kids for a few hours, when I would be on my raging adversary”s home turf, with half a dozen people present, when I was in the blissful early stages of a happy new relationship with the woman I”d go on to marry – that I would pick this moment in time to embark on a career as a child molester should seem to the most skeptical mind highly unlikely. The sheer illogic of such a crazy scenario seemed to me dispositive.”

Allen details what went on with the case and once again vents his disappointment over the “irresponsible” judgement of Justice Elliott Wilk who said in his ruling in the case — where charges were not pressed against Allen — “we will probably never know what occurred.” The Oscar winning filmmaker then brings us to the present, “Now it”s 21 years later and Dylan has come forward with the accusations that the Yale experts investigated and found false. Plus a few little added creative flourishes that seem to have magically appeared during our 21-year estrangement.”  

Eventually, Allen even asks whether he thinks even Mia believes this anymore. “Would a mother who thought her 7-year-old daughter was sexually abused by a molester (a pretty horrific crime), give consent for a film clip of her to be used to honor the molester at the Golden Globes?”

It’s an excellent question that sadly brings this all back to awards season.  Actually, the spectacle is sad. The fact it’s come up because of attention for Allen’s “Blue Jasmine” is more disappointing than anything else. It’s cast a shadow over one of the best performances of Cate Blanchett’s career and Allen’s own impressive screenplay.  It’s all just a mess.

As some of Allen’s friends have pointed out, this all seems quizzically timed to Ronan Farrow’s meteoric rise as an MSNBC talk show host. Where was all of this public anger from the Farrow clan just two years ago when Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” earned a best picture nomination and Allen his fourth Oscar?  Instead, while Dylan says she’s never wavered in her claims, Mia’s teasing that Ronan might actually be Frank Sinatra’s son during an October Vanity Fair piece and not Allen (which, by the way, means she was cheating on him at the time) certainly brought a tremendous amount of new attention to her brother and those tweets during the Globes didn’t hurt either.  Did this all rise from a mother’s attempt to help her son’s career? It sounds silly, right? And yet…

In any event, Farrow and her grown children might be disturbed if she watches the Academy Awards on March 2.  Allen isn’t favored to win best original screenplay, but if they expect rumblings from the audience when Allen’s name is announced they will be sadly mistaken. His name might not illicit a roar, but it’s clear many of Allen’s friends in Hollywood and the Academy are still behind him.

Speaking of Allen, he finished up his long post with the following:

“Of course, I did not molest Dylan. I loved her and hope one day she will grasp how she has been cheated out of having a loving father and exploited by a mother more interested in her own festering anger than her daughter”s well-being. Being taught to hate your father and made to believe he molested you has already taken a psychological toll on this lovely young woman, and Soon-Yi and I are both hoping that one day she will understand who has really made her a victim and reconnect with us, as Moses has, in a loving, productive way. No one wants to discourage abuse victims from speaking out, but one must bear in mind that sometimes there are people who are falsely accused and that is also a terribly destructive thing. (This piece will be my final word on this entire matter and no one will be responding on my behalf to any further comments on it by any party. Enough people have been hurt.)”

No matter who you believe, Judge Wilk’s statement “we will probably never know what occurred” rings true. And, as Dylan’s immediate response to Allen tonight attests, this doesn’t appear to be ending anytime soon. 

Not everyone was expecting “Captain Phillips” writer Billy Ray to take the WGA Award last weekend — though Kris, I believe, called it. Anyway, it seems to have been a popular win, and while he seems unlikely to repeat that triumph on Oscar night, it’s nice to see one of the season’s most formidable also-ran films get a moment in the sun. Ray himself has now written a good piece about his experience of writing the film — in which he refuses to claim much credit: “I like the feeling I get when I’m working on a true story – a sense of authenticity, that I’m really reporting and not just writing … [Phillips], like the movie itself, is real and unvarnished, imperfect but thoroughly human. I always felt there was a real nobility in that; my job was simply to capture it. In that sense, it’s really Captain Phillips who wrote this movie – I just wrote it down.” [LA Times]

Channing Tatum and the Academy have named the six members of the public who will form this year’s “Team Oscar.” [Variety]

William Chang Suk Ping, a surprise Best Costume Design nominee this year, talks about hand-crafting 100 gowns and the multiple shades of black in “The Grandmaster.” [New York Times]

Nick Schager on why “Frozen” is the first Disney princess film that isn’t so much for girls as much as ity’s actively about them. [Village Voice]

The stars of “Nymphomaniac” discuss working with Lars von Trier, and explain why he’s not a misogynist. [The Guardian]

Noel Murray on why too many screenwriters are overly concerned with backstory. [The Dissolve]

Is Best Actor a done deal for Matthew McConaughey? Kyle Buhanan thinks there’s still some wiggle room. [Vulture]

Finally, not a huge surprise, but something we wanted to hear: Jonny Greenwood will be scoring “Inherent Vice.” [Film Music Reporter]

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio hit the stage at the Arlington Theatre Thursday night as co-recipients of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Cinema Vanguard Award. A two-hour discussion, moderated by The Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy, covered all bases of their 12-year pas de deux, including, of course, their introduction to each other’s work.

For DiCaprio, that moment was seeing “Taxi Driver” for the first time, as he has mentioned in the past. Having a protagonist “fool” him in that manner caught him totally off guard. Throughout Scorsese’s work, “you feel a tremendous amount of passion for a character, yet feel embarrassed for them,” he said, citing examples such as Travis Bickle and Rupert Pupkin. And that could certainly be extended to Jordan Belfort, but we’ll get to that.

For Scorsese, he first heard DiCaprio’s name when another frequent collaborator, Robert De Niro, suggested he work with him, as the iconic actor was very impressed with what the youngster offered on the set of 1993’s “This Boy’s Life.” Not long after, Scorsese saw “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” and that name popped up again: Leonardo DiCaprio.

Of course, there were many years between then and “Gangs of New York,” the 2002 epic that would mark their first collaboration. Though “Gangs” had been gestating for over 25 years at that point (ads for the film popped up in the trades in 1976). DiCaprio was eager to work with Scorsese and, as he garnered a bit of cache in the wake of his mid-90s hits, he researched the director’s passion project and threw his hat into the ring.

As they looked back at the experience, one of the main things that stuck out was Dante Ferretti’s massive-scale production design at the Cinecittà studio in Rome.

“You got lost in it,” DiCaprio said. “It was an incredible undertaking.”

Moving to 2004’s “The Aviator,” here was a passion project of DiCaprio’s, one he nurtured and developed with director Michael Mann. But when Mann went off to direct “Ali,” he was left with this fantastic script he was eager to see through, and Scorsese seemed the perfect fit.

“I had always shied away from the Howard Hughes story,” Scorsese said. “Spielberg wanted to make it, Warren Beatty. But this was the story of Howard Hughes I hadn’t seen.” It was a portrait of a dreamer who had “wings of wax,” the filmmaker said, citing the Icarus myth. It was also an opportunity for Scorsese to indulge in his classic Hollywood and filmmaking interests. “That was the hook,” he said. “I was seduced by the possibility of creating that time. I was born in the 40s and grew up with swing music. I have nostalgia for it.”

He delighted in playing with two-strip Technicolor and tinkering with a bunch of filmic tricks to bring the film to life in exciting ways. DiCaprio mentioned at one point that it was a “next level of collaboration” for the two, because of how his research into Hughes’ neuroses informed how Scorsese shot them, from an x-ray blast of Hughes’ skull cut into a film premiere sequence (signifying the mogul’s sense of feeling invaded) to quick insert shots built around how he eats at a dinner table, it was a synthesis of creativity and clearly the moment where the two artists began to fire on all cylinders.

After the weight of those two epics, though, Scorsese was spent. He and DiCaprio knew they wanted to do something else together, but they weren’t sure what. “I wanted to do a down and dirty B film,” Scorsese said. “I had had it with ‘The Aviator,’ in a good way, because I made a spectacle. I just wanted to do a street war.”

Eventually “The Departed” crossed both their desks and seemed to be the one. “It was a film that didn’t give a damn about anything,” Scorsese said, which is significant given the overall sense that when he finally seemed to stop “caring” about winning awards, the awards came. (“The Departed” won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing.)

An aside here on “Shutter Island,” which was only touched upon briefly. That film was firmly in my top 10 in 2010 and I feel perfectly fine about that four years later. It’s an amazing, masterful piece of genre filmmaking, a forest lost through the trees by many who seemed hung up on its plot devices. When you look at the craft, it’s STAGGERING work. It should have been a Best Picture nominee (which would have made it five in a row for Scorsese as of late), but anyway…

Then, of course, there’s this year’s cause célèbre: “The Wolf of Wall Street.” We covered DiCaprio’s vision of it as part and parcel of an examination of wealth with “The Great Gatsby” and “Django Unchained” in a December interview, but to reiterate, “it’s about the American dream and the corruption of that dream,” DiCaprio said Thursday. “Putting this culture up on screen is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.” He drew a distinction between Jay Gatsby and Jordan Belfort, however, noting that the former did it all for love, while the latter was responding to the “reptilian part of his brain.”

Jonah Hill was on hand to present the award to the duo. Citing Joe Pesci’s “what do you mean I’m funny” scene, he recalled, “I had never seen something so funny and dangerous and scary and real all within moments of each other, in the same scene,” he said. “From the moment I saw that scene, I decided to dedicate my life to film.”

A few years later he saw “Gilbert Grape” and, being a young boy who wasn’t aware of DiCaprio’s work otherwise, he thought the character was played by a real mentally challenged actor. “I had never thought of the idea that an actor can become that different from who they were as a person,” he said. “From that moment on I wanted to dedicate my life, not only to film, but to being an actor. It was a moving experience for me.”

For “The Wolf of Wall Street,” DiCaprio landed his fourth nomination for acting to date, while Scorsese, too, was nominated for his direction. Both, meanwhile, shared in its Best Picture nomination as producers, so the culmination of something certainly seems to be in the air. No better time, then, for them to receive this sort of recognition from the golden coast.

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4911753308001

The unexpected love thrown to “Dallas Buyers Club” by the Academy was on of the best surprises when the Oscar nominations were announced last month.  The film’s 6 nods are a testament to the moving direction of Jean-Marc Valle (he earned an editing nod), the smart script by  Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack and, obviously, the career best performances from stars Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, Jennifer Garner and other unheralded members of the film’s ensemble. McConaughey and Leto are the frontrunners in the best actor and best supporting actor categories respectively and have deservedly swept the equivalent Golden Globe and SAG Awards honors.  

Focus Features has provided HitFix with some exclusive commentary from McConaughey breaking down one of the final scenes in the movie.  This moment finds Ron Woodroof (McConaughey) near the end of his rope trying to keep his medical buying club alive and, basically, just trying to stay alive. He’s consoled by Eve (Garner) as they drink a beer in an empty house donated to Woodroof to keep the DBC going. McConaughey talks about how he and Garner focused on striking the balance between being sincere, but not too sentimental and, what often goes unnoticed, not saying too much.

You can watch the exclusive clip in the video at the top of this post.

“Dallas Buyers Club” is still playing in theaters, but also available on Blu-ray and DVD.
 

It's taken five weeks, but 2014 finally has a great movie on its hands. No, it's not “Boyhood,” any other selection from the Sundance Film Festival last month or Lars Von Trier's slightly overrated “Nymphomaniac.” It's Wes Anderson's “Grand Budapest Hotel.” That's no disrespect to Richard Linklater's buzzed drama, it's no doubt great. “Grand Budapest” is very different from “Boyhoood” or any other film that screened in Park City. Simply, Anderson's latest is an example of an auteur at the peak of his cinematic powers.

Anderson's aesthetic has evolved over the years and he's had some missteps along the way (yes, “The Darjeeling Limited,” we're looking at you). In fact, this author wasn't really a fan of the Texas native until his stop-motion animated wonder, “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” And yet, with that film and then “Moonrise Kingdom,” Anderson has settled into a creative groove. He's always had a distinct voice, but now he's figured out how to make it work consistently. The context of his stories, characters and distinct style make much more sense than they did eight to 10 years ago. Moreover, they allow the subtleties of his storytelling, which have been lost on audiences at times, to finally shine through.

“Budapest's” artistic accomplishment will likely be covered by G. Lodge's official review and a review closer to release from D. McWeeny. But let's talk Oscar shall we? It all begins with the date.

Fox Searchlight and the filmmakers no doubt have their reasons for releasing “Budapest” in the Spring. The obvious comparison is “Moonrise Kingdom.” That Focus Features release was a monster art house hit grossing $45 million domestic the summer of 2012. Anderson's “Royal Tenenbaums” earned slightly more in December 2001, but Disney spent a tremendous amount to market it during the holidays and the grumblings from the Mouse House were heard all around town. Among Anderson's other releases, “Mr. Fox,” “Darjeeling” and “Life Aquatic” failed commercially with fall release dates. Moreover, unlike “Moonrise,” which grossed just $21 million overseas, “Grand Budapest” has the international star power and Euro-centric storyline to be a much bigger hit across the pond (one reason it's opening the Berlin Film Festival). So, for the financial success of the picture, a March release makes sense. For awards season? Well, we'll see.

To be completely honest, if this had been released in late November or December of 2013, this pundit is convinced it would have made the Best Picture field. It's accomplished, entertaining, funny, has a subtle serious undertone to it and features an incredible acting ensemble including a “give this man a Best Actor nomination” turn by Ralph Fiennes (more on him later). But, that didn't happen, so let's not dwell on it. Or, let's leave that to others for now.

The big question is whether “Budapest” will still be a relevant contender with a March release date. Focus believed in “Moonrise,” but even with stellar reviews it was hard to pull out anything other than an original screenplay nomination (Anderson has two of those and a Best Animated Feature Film nod). Searchlight actually thought they might get some traction for “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” which was released in the Spring of 2012, but grabbing much more than some SAG and Golden Globe nominations was too difficult with so many films entering the fray in the final months of the year (and yes, we're well aware we're talking apples and oranges in terms of quality but members actually mentioned “Marigold” throughout the year).

Since the Best Picture field expanded to as many as 10 nominees, May releases “The Tree of Life” and “Midnight in Paris” are the earliest bows of the nominees. “The Hurt Locker,” “Up,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “Winter's Bone” each hit theaters in June. Let's be clear, however. There is a huge difference between March and May. So, if the hype starts building with critical kudos, just take it all with a grain of salt, awards watchers. The last time a film released before May and landed a Best Picture nomination? “Erin Brockovich” in 2000.

One contender that actors, film lovers and awards watchers should keep the fire burning for is Ralph Fiennes. Beyond Anderson's smart and succinct script, the film's amazing production design and (again) fantastic ensemble, “Grand Budapest” lives and dies on Fiennes' performance as M. Gustav. He's simply phenomenal, delivering Anderson's quick dialogue with expert deadpan precision. Moreover, even with its large cast, Fiennes is the engine that drives “Budapest.” He makes you root for M. Gustav and helps transform him into one of Anderson's most memorable characters. He's never made a flat out comedy before (no, 1998's “The Avengers” doesn't count) and you could certainly argue Anderson's films are not traditional comedies. That being said, “Grand Budapest” will be a massive reminder to producers and filmmakers around the world just how wide Fiennes' range is.

Fiennes is really the only possible acting contender in the cast, but it must be pointed out how wonderful it is to see F. Murray Abraham, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Willem Dafoe and Adrien Brody seemingly having the time of their lives. Their enthusiasm over the material completely translates on screen and a number of them haven't been this energetic in a movie in years (or possibly this century).

While almost all of Anderson's films have been exemplary below the line, “Grand Budapest” feels as though its team has taken the director's aesthetic to another level. More than any of his other films, you often feel as though you're watching live action actors in a stop-motion animated world. Production designer Adam Stockhausen, who collaborated with Anderson on “Moonrise,” has done a superb job and it's quite a jump from his incredibly realistic Oscar-nominated work on “12 Years A Slave.” And, as always, Alexandre Desplat's score is fantastic. This could easily earn him a seventh Academy Award nomination.

We haven't even gotten to Anderson, of course. It would be shocking to see him passed over for another original screenplay nomination, but the date will have a lot to say in terms of where “Grand Budapest” will play in the season. Some might think it's comical to consider such possibilities in the beginning of February, but the case has been made as to how difficult it is to be a contender before a May or June debut. For Anderson and his cast and crew, let's hope those odds are wrong.

“The Grand Budapest Hotel” opens in limited release on March 7.

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4911753384001

BERLIN – At no point in its fleet runtime does anyone break into an actual dance routine — and honestly, someone probably should — yet the average Busby Berkeley musical barely contains as much regimented choreography as Wes Anderson’s dizzy, chintzy and improbably touching “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” Cast members don’t walk; they glide, skip and occasionally pop into the frame as if released by a lever. The camera doesn’t pan or track; it whirls and soars. The mise-en-scene is pulled into shape via an intricate operation of cogs and pulleys — some of them visible. All moving parts — cars, trains, bobsleds, even actors — run like artisan-built clockwork toys.

What I’m saying, I suppose, is that this is Anderson’s busiest, even fussiest, film — in a filmography that has never wanted for clutter or garnish. Hell, it might be more animated even than “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” This should be bad news, at least for this viewer: Anderson’s wondrously worked worlds can feel as airless and affected as they are artful, and the potential in this project for twee rigidity is off the scale.

Why, then, am I simultaneously so tickled and moved by “The Grand Budapest Hotel?” It’s a film so choux-pastry-light as to feature a scene where two characters are literally immersed in pastry boxes, so OCD in its detailing that the cast credits list an actor represented only in oil-painting form. But in relocating his fixed sensibility to an obsolete European neverwhere, and making the eponymous institution as storied and tragic a subject as any of its residents, Anderson has hit on the ideal narrative context for his restless romanticism and production design fetish: Beneath its jaunty crime-caper surface lies a story implicitly about beauty and ornamentation, and the ways in which we’ve let it go.

The hotel in question is located not in Budapest, but in the fictional republic of Zubrowka — “once the seat of an Empire,” an introductory subtitle notes ruefully. At least half its name correct: it’s a grand enterprise, introduced in diorama form as a kind of industrially frosted pink wedding cake atop spiky, forbidding grey hills, ensuring you wouldn’t stay there to savor anything but the hotel itself. That’s its 1932 incarnation, at least, where it’s a high-society hub lorded over by Ralph Fiennes’ unflappable, fearsomely groomed manager Monsieur Gustave.

That’s not where we begin, however, in a film that nests its narrators like Russian dolls. Speaking to the camera in 1985, an unnamed writer (Tom Wilkinson) relates his memory of a visit to the hotel in 1968; his younger self (a fine Jude Law) finds it a decaying palace of broken dreams, its former glory concealed beneath orange melamine panelling and rows of vending machines. (Genius production designer Adam Stockhausen delights as much in grotty modernist kitsch as he does in pre-war splendor.) There, he encounters elderly guest and former hotel proprietor Zero (F. Murray Abraham), who takes the storytelling baton from this point.

And a cluttered, chaotically tall tale it is, with Gustave as its deliciously effete hero. Fiennes plays him as a tragicomic fop of literary inclination and delivery, commanding his staff with a manicured iron fist and spouting other people’s poetry in the ready manner of those who need it most. He takes great pride in servicing his elderly female guests, even as he alludes to his own ambiguous sexuality; when he takes the younger Zero (Tony Revolori), then a wide-eyed lobby boy, under his wing, his interest seems equal parts paternal and chastely amorous.

The death of one of Gustave’s grizzled conquests, 84-year-old moneybags Madame D (Tilda Swinton, extravagantly liver-spotted), kicks the story into gear: After she unexpectedly bequeaths the hotelier a priceless painting, her enraged descendants conspire to have him framed for her murder.

Thus ensues a  human pinball game of chases, escapes and shaggy-dog searches — not dissimilar, then, to the hijinks of the director’s last, lesser feature “Moonrise Kingdom,” but with the overhanging gloom of the already-glimpsed future (and the imminent threat of an Andersonland equivalent of World War II) lending a certain pathos to the playfulness. Madame D’s death itself foreshadows the demise of the hotel’s ruling class; Zero’s madcap efforts to rescue his beloved boss serve to restore an elegant order that won’t last even his lifetime. For such a fun, frisky divertissement, there’s an awful lot of mortality on this film’s mind.

Many saw this bittersweet theme of temporary grace in “Moonrise Kingdom,” a near-equally ornate puppy-love romance that I didn’t feel nearly as deeply as “The Grand Budapest Hotel” — perhaps because the hyper-stylized fairytale Continentalism here somehow feels more authentically, eccentrically Andersonian than the other film’s nostagia-washed New England. More crucially, for the first time since “The Royal Tenenbaums,” an Anderson film has a soulful, suggestive lead performance at its center, rather than dinky human extensions of the art direction.

Flaunting his rarely-indulged capacity for snappish comedy and more familiar spaniel-eyed gravitas, Fiennes is quite magnificent here, revelling in a difficult man’s absurdities without stooping to condescension or cartoonishness. A typically hand-picked ensemble swans gamely around him — special shout-outs to Law, Saoirse Ronan’s wistful baker and Willem Dafoe’s grunting, cat-tossing hitman, though the likes of Lea Seydoux and Bill Murray could hardly be given less to do.

Not that you can blame them for simply seeking an opportunity to show up on set, so exhaustive and enticing is the world-building here, with Stockhausen’s obsessive dollhouse designs lovingly cradled by Robert Yeoman’s lithe, pastel-hued cinematography. Alexandre Desplat’s merry score — its tones from thumping organ to waltzing balalaika — would be needlessly fey in just about any other context, including some of Anderson’s own work. “The Grand Budapest Hotel” thrives on such prettiness: it’s a proudly slight elegy for life’s delicacies. In a film where dessert forms an actual plot point, it’s apt that Anderson has found a way to have his cake and eat it too.

Last I heard, Pope Francis is not an Academy voter, though at a time in the season where every headline opportunity counts, an appointment with him can’t hurt. Oscar-nominated “Philomena” star/writer Steve Coogan and the film’s real-life subject, Philomena Lee, met with His Holiness yesterday — obviously not to promote the film (though there are reports of a screening being scheduled at the Vatican), but to campaign for the release of 60,000 adoption files held by the state and Church in Ireland. Lee says, “As the film portrays, I have always put great faith in the church and the good will to put the wrongs of the past right. I hope and believe that his Holiness Pope Francis joins me in the fight to help the thousands of mothers and children who need closure on their own stories.”   [BBC News]

Tim Gray separates the active campaigners from the low-fliers among this year’s acting nominees. [Variety]

A day in the life — wait, make that two days in the life — of David O. Russell. [Hollywood Reporter]

Matt Singer on how social media is shutting down more movie-related conversation than it nurtures. [The Dissolve]

Meet the two British film school graduates who hustled their way to a short film Oscar nod. [Daily Beast]

Nathaniel Rogers offers a detailed breakdown of the beautiful people on this year’s Vanity Fair Hollywood Issue cover. [The Film Experience]

Composer Steven Price discusses some of his scoring decisions for “Gravity.” (I had no idea that was Lisa Hannigan’s voice in there.) [New York Times]

Noah Gittell believes “urban critics” have done Jason Reitman’s “Labor Day” a disservice. [Movie Mezzanine]

George Clooney reveals his plans for revenge on Tina Fey and Amy Poehler for their Golden Globe jibes. [Vanity Fair]