The Academy has released a statement concerning the decision to rescind the Best Original Song Oscar nomination for “Alone Yet Not Alone.” Here it is in full…

“The Board of Governors” decision to rescind the Original Song nomination for ‘Alone Yet Not Alone,’ music by Bruce Broughton, was made thoughtfully and after careful consideration. The Academy takes very seriously anything that undermines the integrity of the Oscars voting process. The Board regretfully concluded that Mr. Broughton”s actions did precisely that.

“The nominating process for Original Song is intended to be anonymous, with each eligible song listed only by title and the name of the film in which it is used – the idea being to prevent favoritism and promote unbiased voting. It”s been a long-standing policy and practice of the Academy – as well as a requirement of Rule 5.3 of the 86th Academy Awards Rules -­­ to omit composer and lyricist credits from the DVD of eligible songs that are sent to members of the Music Branch. The Academy wants members to vote for nominees based solely on the achievement of a particular song in a movie, without regard to who may have written it.

“Mr. Broughton sent an email to at least 70 of his fellow Music Branch members – nearly one-third of the branch”s 240 members. When he identified the song as track #57 as one he had composed, and asked voting branch members to listen to it, he took advantage of information that few other potential nominees are privy to. As a former Academy Governor and current member of the Music Branch”s executive committee, Mr. Broughton should have been more cautious about acting in a way that made it appear as if he were taking advantage of his position to exert undue influence. At a minimum, his actions called into question whether the process was ‘fair and equitable,’ as the Academy’s rules require. The Academy is dedicated to doing everything it can to ensure a level playing field for all potential Oscar contenders – including those who don”t enjoy the access, knowledge, and influence of a long-standing Academy insider.”

Following the news, which hit last week, Broughton responded in full via his Facebook page. “I feel as though I’m the butt of a campaign to discredit a song, the nomination of which caught people by surprise,” he wrote at the time.

The other nominees in the category come from Universal’s “Despicable Me 2,” Disney’s “Frozen,” Warner Bros.’ “Her” and The Weinstein Company’s “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.”

Two weeks ago cinematographer Roger Deakins picked up his eleventh Oscar nomination to date, and as many who trade in these circles are well aware, he’s still on the lookout for his first win. “Prisoners” won’t likely be the film to get him there as “Gravity” is gobbling up most of the attention in that field this season, but the consistent recognition (including a twelfth American Society of Cinematographers nomination) is unique and continues to mark Deakins as one of the greats.

Indeed, Deakins is “kind of the God of contemporary cinematographers,” as one of his longtime collaborators, Joel Coen, told us not long ago. So much so that Bruno Delbonnel, a huge talent in his own right, admitted he was soiling his shorts at the thought of filling his shoes on “Inside Llewyn Davis.” But Deakins is also at the forefront of the form, having transitioned fully to digital work and seemingly not missed a beat. And his work in the animated realm as a visual consultant on projects at DreamWorks Animation further diversifies his reach in the industry.

As readers of this site know, Deakins is a consistent presence in this space as we frequently talk to him for our annual “top 10 shots of the year” piece. Something from Deakins may or may not be on this year’s collective. You can find out for yourself on Feb. 11 as we roll out that feature, but for now, read through the back and forth below to learn more about Deakins’ work on not just “Prisoners,” but a film we could well be talking about at this time next year: Angelina Jolie’s “Unbroken,” which he’s just wrapping up now in Australia.

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HitFix: Hey Roger. So you’re still in Australia, huh?

Roger Deakins: Yeah, we’ve got another week and a half to go.

How’s it going out there? Are things moving along well?

It’s going really well, actually, yeah. It’s going to be pretty good.

I’m looking forward to that one. Well, I’m glad I could finally talk to you specifically about “Prisoners.” Congratulations on the Oscar nomination. I think that’s nomination number 58 or something like that?

[Laughs]

No, you’re up to number 11 from the Academy. Easy question to answer, I guess, but how does it feel to just have this consistent sort of recognition from your peers?

It’s quite amazing, isn’t it? It’s quite amazing. I could never have imagined it, really.

Were you able to get out and see some of the other movies this year or have you been too busy?

We watched the screeners we had. Not much has been shown here. They’re all a bit later up here. But we’ve seen the screeners. We saw “Gravity” on the big screen. That was amazing.

Thank God for that. On screener that’s not nearly the same experience.

Yeah.

It’s an interesting year for cinematography in general. There were the seven nominations from ASC. It just shows, I guess, how competitive it was this year. What do you think of some of this other work out there?

It’s really diverse, isn’t it? I think that’s always the problem, but particularly this year: how do you judge? How do you choose? There’s such a diversity of work out there. [Laughs]

And just a diversity of methods, too.

Yeah, that’s why I was laughing, really. I work on animation at times and I was laughing because I think, well, you know, a lot of this is computer-generated. Why don’t the people that light animation qualify as cinematographers? I mean, I’m serious. The whole way of creating images, the route you go to create images is changing and diversifying, so I have no idea how you choose. But it’s nice to be amongst the group!

It’s interesting because sometimes people bring up the idea of having separate categories within cinematography for recognizing digital work or something like virtual cinematography. Should there be something like that? I don’t even know how you’d assess what’s what.

[Laughs] It’s kind of funny because how do you make the selection? On “Prisoners,” for instance, some of the snow and some of the rain is computer-generated. So how do you judge a film that is naturalistic and purist, in-camera, if you want to call it that, and one that, you know, where is the line? It’s not possible. And other people have talked over the years of doing it as a budget thing, a small film category as opposed to a big film category. But then you have to say, well, some budgets, most of the money is spent on the actors and what you actually get to shoot with is not much anyway, you know what I mean? In the end it doesn’t matter. I think the choices should encompass all of it, really, and leave it up to the individual members for which way they want to go.

That’s really it. All of this stuff gets lumped in together anyway, but the unfortunate thing is when you have those uneducated saying things like, “Oh, what did Chivo really do on ‘Gravity’ anyway? It’s all visual effects.” It couldn’t be more ignorant as to what he did on the movie.

Yeah.

So hopefully that curve catches up. It’s obviously such a transitioning medium, like so many other things today.

But, you know, it’s always been like that. I sometimes quote a conversation I heard once between some of my peers where they were talking about something I had shot and they said, “Yeah, it was nicely shot, but I wanted to judge something that had a lot of lighting.” And they were talking about a movie that was entirely lit. It was totally faked but – in a way that was a compliment. But again, how do you judge?

Well I have to say I’ve revisited “Prisoners” a couple of times and something that always sticks out to me is there are a lot of shots through windows, or rain-streaked windows. One image of Jake Gyllenhaal through a grimed-up window sticks out in my mind. There’s the shot of the deer in the back of the truck or the kids walking away from the RV shot through the back window. Just in general, that motif kept bubbling up. Is that something you wanted to do or is it something that just came naturally?

A bit of both, really. We talked about it and Denis had a number of images when we were in prep that he brought and we discussed. A lot of it was just trying to keep things from being clear, literally and metaphorically. So the idea was shooting a lot of it through glass or somehow making it less clear.

Something else is the trees in the movie. They’re always there and they’re always foreboding. There’s one shot where you push in specifically, ominously, on a tree early on in the film, ratcheting the tension as we suppose the kids are being kidnapped.

Also something that was very important for Denis. When we scouted for the suburban neighborhood location, it was very important to him that we found the right trees. We found a number of locations that had pine trees, so they didn’t have these bare kind of branches. The whole thing built from there, really.

Where did you shoot this?

It was all shot in Atlanta. We were really lucky because Atlanta is usually quite bright and sunny. We were there in the winter and we were very lucky. I think they had one of the wettest winters they’ve had. That’s what we wanted. The line producer and the first AD, everybody really took it in hand to be as flexible as possible with the weather so we could look at the forecast and say, “Well, we can’t do that.” In the neighborhood we had matching houses, an interior and an exterior. So we could be shooting the exterior and if the sun came out we’d move to the interior, which would already be rigged and ready to go and we didn’t waste time. It gave us that flexibility with the light. It was really important to Denis that we shoot everything in gray sky, so it had this very sort of claustrophobic presence to it. It’s a deceptively simple film in a way because to get that is actually very difficult.

What was the importance of the rain in general, this precipitous sort of environment.

Well again, just the feeling of claustrophobia and the sadness of it.

With that in mind, why shoot it in a 1.85:1 ratio rather than scope?

You know, we talked about that quite a bit. I think it was first my choice and Denis agreed it was the best way to go. It was something about it being more observational, I suppose. A little less like you’re watching a movie. I don’t know. A lot of these are just kind of instinctual choices. I can try and talk about it but it just felt right. It felt more like a natural frame. You’re not saying, “This is a movie.” You’re saying, “These are real people in a real situation.” The way we shot it is really quite restrained because I think anything else would have brought attention to itself as being a movie and made it more melodramatic, whereas we wanted to bring it back down to a human scale. So it was all about that, really, getting into the characters and bringing it into a human scale, not saying, “You’re watching this dramatic detective story.” This is a little story about this man whose kids disappeared and the torment he’s going through and what drives him to do what he does. It’s not about making a dramatic murder mystery or Gothic horror story.

This is kind of a boring question but what brought you to the project? Because you being someone who so often collaborates with the Coen brothers, I’m always interested when you go work with a John Wells or with an Andrew Niccol or in this case Denis Villeneuve, what drew you to this project and why did you want to shoot this movie?

Denis, really. I met him at the Academy when his film “Incendies” was nominated. I sort of did an introduction for him at one of those Academy events and I thought “Incendies” was just remarkable, brilliant filmmaking. So when I heard he was going to be doing something in the States, I asked my agent to see if he had anybody. So I sort of chased it, I suppose.

And now you’re working with Angelina Jolie. How is this movie, “Unbroken,” for someone like you who has been around the block, how is this one challenging you anew?

It is incredibly challenging because of the story we have to tell, with not a big budget, and not a lot of time. We’re here in Australia because it offers us a number of really good things, but then some other things are hard to find. The story has quite a big scope. It’s a World War II story. It basically encompasses this main character’s childhood in Torrance, California then moves to the Pacific and mainland Japan when he becomes a prisoner of war. So it’s got a huge scale and scope and that’s a real challenge on what’s not a big budget or not, actually, a very long shoot. It’s been very challenging but I think the result is going to be quite remarkable.

I keep forgetting that the Coens were writers on that project. Was that your way into it at all?

Well, it’s funny because when I was sent the script I saw their names on the cover and I didn’t know they had written it! I went, “Oh, really?” And when you read it, yeah, it’s like their scripts. It’s a very visual read. I had read the book. It’s a fabulous book and encompasses so many things but to read that script and see how they had honed in on one particular – or the main core of the book in such an interesting way, it really drew me in.

Well, again, I’m looking forward to that. And congratulations again on the nominations. I’ll see you at the ASC Awards?

No, we’re going to miss it. We’re going to be here for a bit. We’re back the end of that following week, so we’ll miss it, which is a real shame.

Ah, bummer. Well good luck with the rest of the shoot and be safe out there.

Alright. Take care. Cheers.

Like a number of films from 2013, many of them nominated in one or both of the Academy’s sound categories — “All is Lost,” “Inside Llewyn Davis,” “Lone Survivor” — what the audience hears is crucial to the overall experience of the film. And that was never more the case this year than with Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity.” But when your goal is authenticity in orbit, how do you come at the problem laid out by the tagline for Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror film “Alien”: “In space, no one can hear you scream,” or do anything, really.

The film is conceptually unique in that it is a ride, meant to put the viewer in the first-person perspective of its embattled protagonist, astronaut Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock). That extended to the use of sound and stacked the challenges up immediately.

“We had a level of realism we tried to convey to the audience,” Oscar-nominated sound mixer Skip Lievsay says. He was also recognized for his work on “Inside Llewyn Davis” this year. “It is 99 percent CG – nearly entirely made-up image-wise. We tried to bridge that gap a bit to come up with a possible sound that you might hear in that situation. It was carefully designed in the same way that the picture was.”

From the beginning, Cuarón was concerned with how they were going to manage the aural complexity of such a thing, and Oscar-nominated sound mixer Glenn Freemantle was one of those who proposed working from a place of tactile effect. There is no sound in space, no, but sound waves can travel through the various structural components — space suits, tech in orbit, etc. — that litter the frame, further putting the viewer in Stone’s shoes.

“I said, ‘Let’s do it by touch, through vibration,'” Freemantle recalls. “It creates a great dynamic because it gives you a contact with her and there’s an energy with it, all the drilling and everything. We recorded thousands of things through vibrations with contact mics and we did all sorts of stuff to try and create that reality, that you really believe what you’re hearing right from the beginning.”

Amassing all of these elements for the film’s post-production sound mixing team was a unique experience for Freemantle. He had connections to someone who worked at NASA, which was an invaluable starting point for understanding what the various materials being used by the astronauts in these scenes would be made of. He also knew someone who worked for General Motors in Luton, England. “They let us record all these cool things and robots and stuff for 12 hours with contact mics,” Freemantle says. “What we were really trying to do is record on multiple mics with tons of different layers. The idea was lots and lots and lots of levels, and we would layer them in different frequencies.”

Eventually all that material made its way to the mixing stage, where Lievsay (who handled dialogue) and his fellow mixers sculpted it into what it is now.

“We really tried to stay away from objective sound and only hear subjective sound,” Lievsay says. “That’s very demanding and very restrictive and that’s what gives the movie its character and makes it what it is: strict adherence to what it would be like if you were there.”

And there are a couple of different ways to hear Lievsay and Freemantle’s work. The ideal way to see “Gravity,” however, might not be the ideal way to hear “Gravity,” as IMAX theaters come with proprietary sound systems that frankly aren’t as crisp and detailed as the other options. Elsewhere there is a typical Dolby set-up, but then there is the Dolby Atmos system, which supports up to 128 discrete audio tracks and up to 64 unique speaker feeds. You can spot Atmos systems at your local cineplex by noting an array of speakers on the ceiling, and what that does is provide a huge jump in the potential for separation with all of these various tracks — dialogue, score, beeps, drills, breathing, etc. The audience is fully immersed in the aural experience, and you can tell with that particular presentation that this sound team were like kids in a candy store.

“The ideal scenario would be to see it in IMAX and Atmos, but they won’t do it,” Freemantle says. “That’s their system and you can’t do much about it, but it would be phenomenal, wouldn’t it, to have the best sound system and the best picture for a film like that?”

Meanwhile, composer Steven Price (a friend of Freemantle’s) first came on board the project as a music editor. Before long he transitioned over to composer for the film as Cuarón liked what he was coming up with. He, too, delighted in working with the Atmos system for directing his work all over the theater.

“You can really hear everything move and then get a sense of it really shifting,” Price, also nominated for an Oscar, told HitFix in October of last year. “Like when you have POV shots where you’re within the helmet and that sort of stuff. A lot of the things that you kind of get nearly there in 7.1, you can get exactly as you intended in Atmos. And I think wherever you sit in the theater, you’ll get a slightly different experience, as well, which is an interesting development. You’re actually embracing the fact that it’s an experience again.”

Working with Price was crucial to Freemantle’s work given that the score isn’t traditional by any means throughout much of the film and almost registers as sound effects-as-melody.

“It was a real fusion of the two areas, right from the word go,” Freemantle says. “What you want to do is work completely together in an army and make it seamless. You’re in and out of these events. I described it at one point that it’s like creating a ballet with the movement. But even under the music we had sub sweeps and bass sweeps. You don’t hear it but it gave the action some weight behind the music as well; there’s another design level that’s moving everything behind you, that you’re not hearing. You know when you’re in the theater and you get that phantom bass in your stomach and it moves you around? We were doing that with it. You want people to feel it but not necessarily hear it.”

And the end result is just another level of sterling technical achievement for one of the biggest, most daring films to find itself in the thick of the Oscar hunt. But no matter what the scale of a project, no matter how massive the canvas, philosophies tend to boil down to a certain reduction and essence. Look no further than Lievsay, who had two completely different tasks in “Gravity” and “Inside Llewyn Davis” but approached each with similar intent.

“All movies have the same basic core,” he says. “They’re all about an idea and a story and conveying that idea to the audience.”

Gerard Kennedy also contributed to this report.

Historian Alex von Tunzelmann considers this year’s fact-based Oscar contenders, and argues there’s more to effective cinema than mere historical accuracy: “There is extraordinary power in the moving image. Many of us will know that ‘Braveheart’ (1995) is tosh when we watch it, but years later bits of it may have taken root in our imaginations – and we don’t always remember that they emanated from that great steaming heap of lies.” She also evaluates seven of this year’s Oscar nominees: “12 Years a Slave” passes with flying colors as both history and cinema, but she argues that the factual fidelity of “The Wolf of Wall Street” “undermines its own claim to be satire.” [The Guardian]

Anime veteran Katsuhiro Otomo will be honored for career achievement at this weekend’s Annie Awards. [LA Times]

“Alone Yet Not Alone” songwriter Bruce Broughton talks about his Oscar disqualification, and the inspiration behind the song. [Sibelius]

Mean while, Tim Gray suggests three courses of action the Academy should take to remedy the situation. (I’m not so sure about the third.) [Variety]

Jeremy Kay speaks to David O. Russell and the producers of “American Hustle” about the film’s storied development andf swift production. [Screen Daily]

Jen Chaney argues for the possibility of an Amy Adams upset in Best Actress. I get it in theory, but I’m not buying. [The Dissolve]

As the National Association of Theater Owners calls for a two-mionute limit, Bilge Ebiri writes in defence of longer movie trailers. [Vulture]

Arielle Bernstein on how “Her” presents “one of the most egalitarian and loving relationships” in recent cinema. [Press Play]

The César Award nominations always provide an interesting perspective of how French cinema is perceived domestically — which doesn't always match the view from the outside. This year's list, for example, feature multiple nominations for such international festival hits as Abdellatif Kechiche's “Blue is the Warmest Color,” Alain Guiraudie's “Stranger by the Lake” and Asghar Farhadi's “The Past” — all nominated for Best Picture and Director — but the leading nominee, with 10 bids, was actor-turned-director Guillaume Gallienne's debut feature “Me, Myself and Mum.” 

Best Short Film
Avant Que De Tout Perdre, Xavier Legrand
Bambi, Sébastien Lifshitz
La Fugue, Jean-Bernard Marlin
Les Lézards, Vincent Mariette
Marseille La Nuit, Marie Monge

It’s unusual that at least two of this year’s Best Picture Oscar nominees — “Philomena” and “Dallas Buyers Club” — deal with gay or transgender identity, even if neither film has a wholly LGBT protagonist. Both, naturally, are among the films singled out for recognition in the GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Defiance Against Defamation) Media Awards, Joining them, unsurprisingly, were “Blue is the Warmest Color” and “Kill Your Darlings,” though “The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones” isn’t exactly an obvious call. (“Frozen” would fit the bill too, though they haven’t gone there.)

Below are nominees in the principal film and TV categories; you can check out the full list, with nominations for journalism, blogs, comic books and more, here. Keep up with the season thus far at The Circuit.

Outstanding Film – Wide Release
“Blue is the Warmest Color”
“Dallas Buyers Club”
“Kill Your Darlings”
“The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones”
“Philomena”

Outstanding Film – Limited Release
“Concussion”
“Geography Club”
“Out in the Dark”
“Reaching for the Moon”
“Yossi”

Outstanding Documentary
“Bridegroom”
“Call Me Kuchu”
“God Loves Uganda”
“The New Black”
“Valentine Road”

Outstanding TV Film or Miniseries
“Behind the Candelabra”
“In the Flesh”
Outstanding Drama Series
“The Fosters”
“Gray’s Anatomy”
“Orphan Black”
“Pretty Little Liars”
“Shameless”

Outstanding Comedy Series
“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”
“Glee”
“Modern Family”
“Orange is the New Black”
“Please Like Me”

Outstanding Episode (in series without regular LGBT character)
“Drop Dead Diva” (“Secret Lives”)
“Elementary” (“Snow Angels”)
“Necessary Roughness” (“There’s the Door”)
“Soul Man” (“Bride and Prejudice”)
“Supernatural” (“LARP and the Real Girl”)

On Jan. 16, cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel picked up his fourth Best Cinematography Oscar nomination to date, for the Coen brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis.” He has previously been nominated for “Amelie” in 2001, “A Very Long Engagement” in 2004 (for which he won the American Society of Cinematographers Award) and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” in 2009.

A few days before nominations were announced, I finally got around to talking with Delbonnel about his work on the film, which is really one of the shining examples of the medium this year. We discussed, among other things, his philosophy of carrying a single idea through a film with his work, personal inspirations in the world of modern art and his fear of stepping into the shoes of Coen regular Roger Deakins.

Read through our back and forth below and keep it tuned here this weekend to see if Delbonnel can pull off his second ASC win. (Though this year he’ll be up against six contenders as the wealth of great work this year ended in a tie, yielding seven nominees.)

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HitFix: “Inside Llewyn Davis” really seems like a movie that doesn’t fully hit you, no matter how you feel about it initially, on first glance. Did you feel that way?

Bruno Delbonnel: That’s why the Coen brothers are brilliant and I’m not! A lot of things are happening in this movie, and in every movie from the Coen brothers, but you have to see it twice just to understand that there is a lot of things happening. For example, nobody ever mentions that the first song of the movie is ‘Hang Me, Oh Hang Me.’ Basically what he’s saying is, ‘Hang me, hang me, I’m an asshole, so, yeah, go ahead, hang me.’ This is the first song of the movie, which relates to everything you see afterwards. And the last song is ‘Fare Thee Well, My Honey’ and it’s basically – this guy is saying goodbye to everything he loves, which is folk music and everything. So if you understand the use of music in this movie, it’s very subtle, and all those songs are not just folk songs. They are really related to his story. That’s why if you go back to “Queen Jane,” you understand that, for me, Llewyn Davis picks this song to sing to Bud Grossman and he knows that he will never succeed in singing this song. Every time he sings a song he knows exactly why he’s singing it. That’s why Joel and Ethan are absolutely brilliant directors. Because there is always something underlying in their scripts. That’s my understanding. Maybe it’s too European or whatever, or too intellectual, but I really believe in this in their movies.

I actually saw it at Telluride for the first time and I knew I needed to see it again before leveling an opinion of it. There are just so many layers. I saw it again and it opened up more, and then the third time I saw it, it really revealed itself as a movie that was so elegantly about giving up. And as an artist one understands the idea that maybe you don’t have it in you and you’ve come to the end of that road. It’s a fascinating thing for them, of all people, to make a movie about.

I totally agree with you. I’m kind of disappointed that nobody gave them an award for this script. I don’t mean that the other scripts that won any awards are bad, but this script is so subtle, so intelligent that it really deserved something. And as directors, they are geniuses, really.

So few people see movies more than once this time of year. It’s the kind of movie where in a few years, people will smack their foreheads and say, “What were we thinking?”

Yeah. It’s okay with me, you know? They’ve won a lot of awards. I saw them last week and they are very happy with everything and that’s who they are. They said, ‘Yeah, that’s fine. The movie’s a success.’ So that’s great. But it’s definitely something you have to see two or three times just to understand how delicate it is.

To tell you the truth, when I graded the movie, that’s when I saw it for the first time, really. And I was shocked. I said, “Fuck, that’s a movie I shot.” And it’s a different movie than the one I read, somehow. Even if nothing changes, you know, it’s exactly the script I read but I read it like a DP, you know, “What can I do with this and how can I solve this kind of problem and blah, blah, blah, what kind of light can I do?” I did it really in a very critical way, let’s put it this way. And when I discovered it, I remember I told them, “Wow, it’s a very sad movie. It’s really – there are so many layers.”

I have to ask about the fact that obviously the Coens shoot most of their movies with Roger Deakins and they have an on-going shorthand with him. I know you had worked with them before on “Paris je t’aime,” but were you nervous at all? Was there any trepidation?

What do you think? I was so scared. You wouldn’t believe it. I finished “Dark Shadows” two months before I started prepping with them, so I was kind of in a good mood in terms of – I was very active and “Dark Shadows” was a very long shoot, so technically I was feeling it, let’s put it this way. But I was shitting my pants! Really, I was so scared just to have them compare me to Roger at some point or not to give them what they expected. So I was really, really scared. But they are gentlemen. They never, ever mentioned his name. And even if the crew was the same they worked with for the last 10 years – I was the new guy in the family – nobody ever on this set mentioned Roger Deakins’ name. They were so helpful. And after a week it was okay because after a week of dailies when they said they liked it I was a bit more confident. But, you know, yeah, Roger is a legend and everything he’s done with them is fantastic. So how can I put it other than I was scared?

What were the conversations about the look of the film? Was it you who brought up the cover of Bob Dylan’s “Freewheelin'” or was it them who said they wanted to emulate that? Tell me just about your first discussions about the visual identity of the movie.

“Freewheelin”” was the first thing. I think I did bring it to them. But, in fact, what happened was they called me and I was shooting on “Dark Shadows” with Tim Burton and they said that, “We know that you’re shooting so we’ll call you back in two weeks and if you have a couple of ideas that would be fine.” So I made some research and I had the “Freewheelin”” album at home so I remember this cover. And when they called me back I said, “I have this idea about ‘Freewheelin’,'” and they said, “Yeah, we had the same idea.” So in fact, we never mentioned it but they had it in mind. And I’m sure they would have mentioned it later if I wouldn’t have mentioned it before. Because the reference was New York, winter, slushy and blah, blah, blah. So “Freewheelin”” was the obvious idea. And there is Bob Dylan’s shadow all along the movie anyway. So it was kind of an obvious thing. That was a starting point and that’s when we started discussing. I said, “But that’s not enough. I’m not really creating a look of the period,” you know? I kind of don’t like when people say it’s a period look. I hate it because that’s not what I was looking for. I was really looking for sadness and melancholy, you know? And obviously winter helps you to carry this kind of mood. But that’s what I was looking for, just really melancholy, as if the image was really related to Oscar, to Llewyn Davis.

Maybe that reaction is a response to the production design and set decoration, because Jess Gonchor’s work does such a great job of meticulously recreating the period, but the photography is different. I don’t think there’s anything particularly “period” about the photography, per se.

I don’t think so, either because – I mean, again I totally agree with you. Jess did a fantastic job and that”s the period look. That’s really the period thing, and he did extensive research and what he found and what he recreated is absolutely amazing. It was really helpful for me. And I worked really closely with him on that. But in terms of look, you know, I always say, “What is a period ‘look?'” The only reference we have from the 60s are movies shot on ektachrome or, you know, whatever. So it means that the look we know is based on a technology. And by the time they were using ektachrome or kodachrome or those kinds of stock, it doesn’t mean that was the reality of things. I mean the kinds of color that Jess brings to the movie are more accurate, and probably what I did is more accurate to the period than anything you can see on film from the 60s. I don’t know. If people would have had the stock I have now in the 60s, they would have done the same, probably, except for the melancholy!

I also wanted to talk a little bit about camera movement. There are a few instances where dollying here and there stuck out to me. What was the overall plan for how the camera would move when it did?

First of all there are very, very few movements. It’s kind of a static movie, so there are very few movements. That’s why I think you notice those, because there are very few of them. Otherwise you wouldn’t notice them. For example, when he’s singing to Bud Grossman, that’s when you can notice it. And the philosophy around it is keeping it as simple as we can. So it’s basically locked-off shots. The push-in on the car when Oscar is leaving the cat is a post effect. We didn’t move the camera, and later Joel and Ethan decided to do a slow push-in. I don’t know why they did it but we didn”t do it [on set]. So there is even less movement in this movie than what you expected.

I’m also thinking of the very first shot when Oscar Isaac kind of floats into frame.

That’s the only handheld movement in the whole movie. It’s funny you mention that. That”s the opening shot of the movie and it’s handheld because we had the discussion at some point at the very beginning that we would do the whole movie handheld. And they said, “Come on, no, no. It’s not this kind of movie. It would be more interesting if it’s static, very static.” The only movement is in Llewyn Davis’ head and what’s happening to him. The story is the movement, it”s not the camera. So we discussed this for a couple of hours and they kind of agreed and said, “So what if we only keep one handheld shot for the very beginning, as if it was a fake documentary.” And I said, “Okay, let’s do that.” So that’s the only handheld shot of the whole movie.

So they wanted the camera locked off to make it more observational as a movie? To keep from providing too much commentary on the story with how it was shot?

No, I”m not sure – they are not, how can I say…

I know they don’t think in those terms at all. If I asked them that question, they’d laugh at me.

Yeah, yeah, I think they would! You know, in “No Country for Old Men,” there is no movement at all. They like static shots. It’s all about composition and they let the actor give the performance. They don’t emphasize a performance with camera movement, never, ever. Sometimes a movement has meaning and sometimes they don’t even know themselves. They think at this point of the story they should move the camera and I think that”s the way they work and the way they think. It’s not like Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who I work with a lot and he’s always moving the camera. That’s his style. He needs to have this kind of fluidity and Baroque kind of thing. That”s his style. But the Coens are very static. All their movies are static. They use movement when they need to follow something, they need to follow an action or emphasize or something. And on this movie the story was so strong that they didn’t need to emphasize that much. It would have been an error, I think. It would have been a mistake just to move the camera that much. I think they made the right decision, as usual.

The last thing I want to ask you is I’m curious about your personal inspirations with your photography. I feel like there’s an aesthetic to your work, that I can identify when you’ve shot a film. There are certain elements that pop out, like there’s something about the softness of lighting in your work that is gorgeous to me, and seeing that married with the Coens on a film like this was fascinating. So I’m just interested in knowing what your personal inspirations are.

Thank you. I think now my inspirations are not coming from photography or movies anymore, you know? It’s more about abstract painting and playing with time. I really appreciate you mentioning that but it’s a very hard question, somehow. I think for me now there are painters I really worship, Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg. For me, they are very important in terms of references, because their paintings are so strong and they are not figurative. That’s why I’m interested in what they do because when you look at their paintings, there’s something coming back to you, which is their interpretation of the world. It goes back to you and it becomes your interpretation of the world through their painting, if you see what I mean. So I’m looking for the same thing in movie-making.

That”s why “Llewyn Davis” is one concept. It’s melancholy and it’s sadness. So the question was, “How can I bring this to film? How can I be consistent all through the movie with this idea?” I did the same on “Amélie” or “Harry Potter [and the Half-Blood Prince].” Every time I try to find an idea which I can follow through the whole move, which is a feeling. It’s not a look. I’m not interesting in look. It’s really a feeling. What is the feeling of this movie, which is my own personal feeling, my own interpretation of this movie? That’s why I think it’s a bit peculiar in this world. What I’m doing is a bit special, somehow. I’m not arrogant about it, it’s just my way of filming. And every time I read a script I try to understand what I can do in terms of feeling, not aesthetics. The aesthetic comes later, but what is the feeling of this movie and how do I respond to it or what is my answer to this script?

Well with that in mind, what were the ideas you wanted to convey throughout “Amélie” and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” since you mention those.

Oh, “Harry Potter” was about having Hogwarts, the castle, as the main character. Not the story. The story was boring. It was not a very interesting story. I wanted to feel something very disturbing, as if the castle itself was a person and in every corner you could have something happening. It’s not about Voldemort or all those big visual effects scenes, which are, you know, they are what they are and they were absolutely well done. The visual effects supervisor was brilliant and they did a fantastic job. But to me it was about this thing, which always comes back, so it was a variation, you know, they always come back to the school. Always, always. And the one I shot, 80 percent of the movie happened in the school, so my question was the main character could be the castle. And it’s a very desolate place, so I wanted something not very appealing, you know? There is no seduction about it. There was a romance going on, Harry Potter’s going to fall in love in this school, but who cares? Because it’s not the main thing. I didn’t want to do a romantic comedy. I wanted something very disturbing, so it’s as if this love story inside the school was something very, very uncomfortable. I was looking for this kind of thing. It’s a variation on gray, and I used a lot of Mark Rothko references for that.

And “Amélie,” I don’t remember. That’s 12 years ago. I’ve moved on!

Does that happen with you? Does it leave you after a certain amount of time, the experience of making a movie?

No, I just don’t care anymore. I mean I just move on. First of all, as any other DP, I don’t watch the movie I’ve done. I’ve done it. I’ve done them and I’m happy I’ve done them. There is nothing I regret and I”m happy I’ve done “Potter” and “Amélie” or whatever. But I move on and I try to explain something different every time. That’s it. “Amélie” was 12 years ago and I don’t even remember what I did, you know, and why. And maybe it was not those kind of concepts anyway, when I did “Amélie.” You evolve, you know? And so I changed. If I would do “Amélie” now I would do it totally differently. But I don’t think it would be better. I don’t have a clue. I don’t really ask myself these questions anyway.

Fair enough. Well thank you again for taking the time to talk. It’s a fantastic piece of work, immaculately crafted on all levels.

Oh, thank you. I really appreciate it. And, you know, I must tell you your questions are very interesting.

Well thank you!

It’s really quite rare. There are a lot of people who talk about how you achieve something, which is a bit boring. But, you know, I really appreciate it. Thank you very much.

“Inside Llewyn Davis” is now playing in theaters.

Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto have earned an enormous amount of acclaim for their performances in “Dallas Buyers Club,” which has put them at the front of their Oscar races. But their work was of course assisted by the Oscar-nominated makeup and hairstyling of Robin Mathews and Adruitha Lee, allowing them to slip further into their characters and fully inhabit the roles of Ron Woodroof and Rayon.

Both natives of the South who can remember the mid-80s well, both Mathews and Lee say the project was a personal one. “I grew up in Alabama,” Lee says. “I had lost some friends to AIDS. I had a dear friend and I remember going over to his house when he found out [that he had HIV] and there was this blood-curdling scream. I owned a salon in Alabama at the time. I knew lots of ‘Rayons.’ Nobody really knew much about the disease. It was terrible. When you’re working on the film, it takes you back to a lot of different people that you knew.” Lee always wanted to work in this field ever since she was a kid. She even owned salons in Alabama and Nashville once upon a time.

Mathews – who started in the industry as an actor and studied makeup part-time early in her career – was born and raised in New Orleans. She was in Dallas frequently in the mid-80s as family lived there. “There was never too much hair, never too much makeup,” she says. The makeup on the film required meticulous research on her part, not only from the perspective of recreating the period but also accurate depictions of individuals battling AIDS. “I really throw myself into the research,” she says. “It had to be pure realism – that’s how Jean-Marc shoots. I spoke with the head of infectious diseases. He explained that AIDS patients, near the end of their life, always get three things: 1) very skeletal in the face; 2) seborrhoeic dermatitis, a patchy rash on certain parts of their face; and 3) lesions.”

The makeup was especially essential as it had to work in the absence of a lighting department (due to Vallée’s shooting style and attempt to create a realistic atmosphere), and also due to a reason many viewers may not notice – it had to guide the actors through various stages of sickness and health, depending on the stage of the story. But the film was not shot at all sequentially. “Everyone surely thought these actors lost a bunch of weight, then they gained some back and then they get really skeletal and they’re about to die,” Mathews describes. “That’s entirely makeup making them look, say, 25 pounds heavier. The film was shot in 23 days. There wasn’t enough time for them to gain or lose weight. It was really makeup that was part of the transformation. They came to us pretty much skeletal.”

This tight schedule, lack of sequential shooting and importance of the makeup led to some pressure, especially when the makeup was all that was standing in the way of shooting the next scene. The lack of a lighting change meant there was little for the rest of the crew to do between scenes. “Sometimes I had a two-hour makeup change as I take them from their healthiest to their sickest,” Mathews says. “The rest of the crew is sitting around. I was always under the gun.”

Lee also recalls the mechanics of shooting the film being tight. “The first actor I met was Matthew [McConaughey],” she says. “I met him for the first time in the director’s office. We needed to do everything to give him the look in the office – we didn’t have a hair-and-makeup trailer. Then I meet ‘Rayon.’ I went down to meet her and talked about wigs. I never met ‘Jared.’ Jean-Marc had a vision in mind. Some looks were ‘too good.’ Finally, I took a wig from [my car] across the parking lot, put it on Rayon and Jean-Marc said, ‘I love it.'”

Mathews made a similar comment, saying that she has “no idea what [Jared] is like as a person. I didn’t ever get to meet Jared – I still haven’t met Jared. He kept character the whole time. We would discuss regular business things, such as releasing an album for his band, 30 Seconds to Mars, but still as Rayon.”

Mathews recalls a particularly amusing anecdote that probably best describes this transformation. “My very first time meeting her, she sat down in my makeup chair and the first thing I asked her was how she felt about waxing off all of her eyebrows? She agreed and right before I was about to pull the strip of eyebrows off, she touched my hand and told me in her soft voice with a hint of a Southern accent to, ‘Make it quick sweetheart.’ Needless to say, I complied.”

At a broader level, Mathews describes coming up with Rayon’s look as a collaboration between her, Vallée and Leto, recalling how Rayon would say “in her little soft voice, ‘Oh, I quite like that.'” This required Mathews to put herself into the mind of Rayon, to figure out how she would have chosen her look. Mathews thought that Rayon’s first female influence would have been her mother, a woman of the 1960s. This resulted in influences such as “Bewitched’s” Serena, Bridget Bardot and Twiggy. At the same time, however, she is very much a child of the 1980s, with icons such as Pat Benatar and Dolly Parton also forming her look.

“[Robin and I] had to double-team a lot,” Lee recalls of the time crunch, “in the trailer at the same time when Matthew was going through his different looks, when Rayon was going through her different looks.” An example of the synergy occurred with Rayon as the character got thinner, when both Mathews and Lee decided to use headscarves to demonstrate that her wigs would no longer “work.”

As for the experience of being nominated for an Oscar? Having made the bake-off list in the category a number of weeks ago, Mathews admits she got up at 5am to have some champagne with a friend before the announcement, because even if she wasn’t nominated, “we still were drinking champagne.” Finding her name on the Oscar website was an experience she cannot describe.

Lee, on the other hand, was working in Puerto Rico. It was far from her mind during filming but when the news finally registered, “it was surreal,” she says. “The morning that I found out, I couldn’t believe it. It feels really good.”

Mathews and Lee now find themselves in the thick of the Oscar race for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. And they may have a lot more to celebrate on March 2.

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4911776258001

If your a fan of cinema and, more importantly, a fan of the art of cinema than you need to get excited about Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin.” 

Lucky enough to attend the first screening of “Skin” at the 2013 Telluride Film Festival, I described “Under the Skin” as “an original piece of cinema that is gorgeous, mesmerizing, heartbreaking, frustrating and pretentious all at the same time. It has some of the most haunting images of the year and features the bravest performance of Scarlett Johansson’s career.” The film stuck with me so much that it ended up making my year-end top 10 list at no. 2 ahead of films such as “Her” and “12 Years A Slave.” Yes, “Skin” is that special.

A24 Films was brave enough to pick up “Skin” for distribution in the United States and were kind enough to provide HitFix with what is essentially the first “teaser trailer” for the picture.  Glazer cut this preview himself and it features a plethora of just some of the film’s incredible imagery in quick succession. You can check this preview itself embedded at the top of this post.

“Under the Skin” will open in Los Angeles and New York on April 4. It will expand to limited release on April 11.  

When “The Great Gatsby” led the nominations for the Australian Academy Awards (aka the AACTA Awards), that seemed obvious enough, but I didn’t expect to see it win outside the technical categories. “Moulin Rouge!” was also heavily nominated in its year (“Australia” less so), but voters preferred more locally flavored work in the top categories, and I assumed that’d be the case this year. Not so: “Gatsby” just about swept the night, winning all but one of the 14 awards for which it was nominated, including Best Film, Director and acting prizes for Leonardo DiCaprio, Joel Edgerton and striking newcomer Elizabeth Debicki. (Carey Mulligan was the lone loser, passed over in Best Actress for Rose Byrne.)

Meanwhile, Australia’s feelgood foreign Oscar submission “The Rocket,” which I’d have bet on for the top prizes, took the only award for which Baz Luhrmann’s blockbuster wasn’t eligible, Best Original Screenplay. “Gatsby,” of course, is up for only two Oscars — Best Production Design and Costume Design — though I’m betting it’ll win both.

Full list of winners below. Everything else at The Circuit.

Best Film: “The Great Gatsby”

Best Direction: Baz Luhrmann, “The Great Gatsby”

Best Original Screenplay: Kim Mordaunt, “The Rocket”

Best Adapted Screenplay: Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce, “The Great Gatsby”

Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio, “The Great Gatsby”

Best Actress: Rose Byrne, “The Turning”

Best Supporting Actor: Joel Edgerton, “The Great Gatsby”

Best Supporting Actress: Elizabeth Debicki, “The Great Gatsby”

Best Cinematography: Simon Duggan, “The Great Gatsby”

Best Editing: Matt Villa, Jason Ballantine and Jonathan Redmond, “The Great Gatsby”

Best Sound: Wayne Pashley, Jenny Ward, Fabian Sanjurjo, Steve Maslow, Phil Heywood and Guntis Sics, “The Great Gatsby”

Best Original Score: Craig Armstrong, “The Great Gatsby”

Best Production Design: Catherine Martin, Karen Murphy, Ian Gracie and Beverley Dunn, “The Great Gatsby”

Best Costume Design: Catherine Martin, Silvana Azzi Heras and Kerry Thompson, “The Great Gatsby”

Best Visual Effects: Chris Godfrey, Prue Fletcher, Tony Cole and Andy Brown, “The Great Gatsby”

Raymond Longford Award: Jacki Weaver

INTERNATIONAL AWARDS

Best Film: “Gravity”

Best Direction: Alfonso Cuarón, “Gravity”

Best Screenplay: Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell, “American Hustle”

Best Actor: Chiwetel Ejiofor, “12 Years A Slave”

Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine”

Best Supporting Actor: Michael Fassbender, “12 Years a Slave”

Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, “American Hustle”

Just as Bruce Broughton has been punished by the Academy for his questionable campaign tactics, Vulture has chimed in with a detailed timeline of strategies employed by the master of Academy manipulation, Harvey Weinstein — not all of them strictly by the Oscar playbook. Take this anecdote about Weinstein’s 1996 campaign for Billy Bob Thornton in “Sling Blade”: “John Ericson, a retired actor who lives in Santa Fe, N.M., said he was called several times recently by a representative from the studio. In the first call, this person asked Mr. Ericson if he had received Sling Blade and urged him to watch it. A few days later, the representative called back to gauge Mr. Ericson’s reaction … ‘He said: “Didn’t you think he was wonderful? I hope it will be something worthy of a nomination,”‘ Mr. Ericson recalled.” [Vulture]

Karina Longworth reflects on how Meryl Streep was a bête noire for Pauline Kael — a great read, this. [Vidiocy]

Alfonso Cuaron talks with Tim Gray about his early influences, from “Lost in Space” to “The Bicycle Thief.” [Variety]

Oscar-nominated cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd discusses the process of shooting “The Grandmaster.” [New York Times]

The Guardian shortlists 2013’s best lines of dialogue. None of them is from “The Heat,” but I shan’t weep. [The Guardian]

From Golshifteh Farahani in “The Patience Stone” to Scarlett Johansson in “Don Jon,” Gary Goldstein lists some dream Oscar nods he wishes had panned out. [LA Times]

Sam Adams talks to Philip Glass about his life in film music and his latest Godfrey Reggio collaboration. [The Dissolve]

Tinie Tempah and Laura Mvula will be performing at the BAFTA Awards. No, I’m not sure why either, but we wish them well. [Hollywood Reporter]

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4911803953001

Updated (11:06 PM): Bruce Broughton and his wife responded to the controversy on their Facebook pages tonight.

“What’s on my mind? The mess of this afternoon’s news and the positive responses of so many friends. If you want to really vent your feelings in a positive way, one that transcends your lovely notes to me, you can let the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences know.

“How do I feel? I feel as though I’m the butt of a campaign to discredit a song, the nomination of which caught people by surprise. As many of you have noted, the campaigning on the other songs is epic compared to my simple email note. The marketing abilities of the other companies before and after the nomination far outstrip anything that this song was able to benefit from.

“We learned this morning that the song will appear on Billboard’s charts shortly. Somebody’s listening to it. Somebody likes it.

“But most of all, I feel sullied, and I feel disappointed not only for me, but for Dennis Spiegel, who wrote a lovely (and although hardly anyone has noticed), truly ecumenical lyric which helped drive the story in the film, and for the unassailable Joni Eareckson, whose vocal on the song breathed real life into it.

“So, if you’re really upset by this miserable turn of events, I appreciate your notes enormously (I also read Belinda’s page), but let the Academy know.”
– Bruce Broughton, evening of Jan. 29.

“I cannot believe that the Academy just did that to Bruce. Bruce has given hours and hours of his time to the Academy over a period of 30 years, has tirelessly fought for composers, is the only top composer I know who will generously lend out his scores to composers, spends hours having lunches giving advice to up and coming film composers. These poor huge production companies who had their noses put out of joint by a little song. All I can say is, they must have been terrified by the song and it’s one damn good song too. Well, they are happy now, they can play together in the same sand box again. Shame on you Motion Picture Academy for taking the low road, saving your own butts and doing this to one of your former Governors and Head of the Music Branch. Maybe a phone call to Bruce, from one of the Academy Governors of the Music Branch would have been nice too? (Angry wife!)”
– Belinda Broughton, evening of Jan. 29

 ******

EARLIER (4:13 PST): Well, we said something about this was fishy from the start. The nomination of Christian hymn “Alone Yet Not Alone,” from the faith-based film of the same title, in the Best Original Song category raised more eyebrows than any other decision by the Academy this year — not least because the independent film had scarcely been released, much less reviewed, in the mainstream media.

That wasn’t the reason the nomination smelled bad, however — we’re used to the music branch’s obscure decisions in that category by now, and the song evidently has its admirers. Instead, it was the reports of songwriter Bruce Broughton personally soliciting votes for his work that placed the nomination under scrutiny. Broughton, a former Academy governor and former head of the music branch — nominated for Best Original Score back in 1985 for his memorable work on “Silverado” — directly emailed his fellow branch members to raise awareness of the film and his work in it. While public For Your Consideration ads are par for the course in Oscar season, personal campaigning of this nature is an Academy no-no.

And so it is that the Academy has taken the step of rescinding the nomination, thus disqualifying “Alone Yet Not Alone” from the race. No other song will take its place on the ballot, so we’re reduced to a four-nominee race. No big deal, given that that “Alone Yet Not Alone” didn’t have a snowball’s chance of winning in the first place — but it’s a shame for the unknown sixth-place nominee that would have had a place in the category if the Academy had nipped this error in the bud.

Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs has stated, “No matter how well-intentioned the communication, using one”s position as a former governor and current executive committee member to personally promote one”s own Oscar submission creates the appearance of an unfair advantage.”

Broughton, meanwhile, told Variety he is “devastated” by the disqualification, adding, “I indulged in the simplest, lamest, grass-roots campaign and it went against me when the song started getting attention. I got taken down by competition that had months of promotion and advertising behind them.”

This isn’t the first time a high-profile disqualification has occurred in one of the music categories. In the 1972 race, eventual Best Picture winner “The Godfather” was famously disqualified from the Best Original Score category, after it emerged that a portion of Nino Rota’s iconic theme had actually been lifted from his work on an earlier Italian film. Back then, the disqualified nominee was actually replaced (by John Addison, for “Sleuth”). Perhaps the Academy reasoned that it’d be too embarrassing to invite an extra nominee this late in the game — not that this situation isn’t already mortifying enough.

Will there be a fallout from this, aside from the protests of tens upon tens “Alone Yet Not Alone” fans? Possibly not, though I expect the Academy may establish some more stringent campaign guidelines, and independent contenders, in particular, may be more cautious about how they proceed from now. (Diane Ladd is said to have sent handwritten letters to members of the acting branch in aid of her Best Supporting Actress campaign for “Wild at Heart” in 1990. Would that have passed muster? Or is it only senior Academy figures who need to steer clear of such tactics?)

Anyway, thus ends one of the weirdest incidents in recent Academy history. “Alone Yet Not Alone” is nominated, yet not nominated. Somewhere, Oscarcast producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron are heaving a huge sigh of relief.

When the title track for the independent faith-based production “Alone Yet Not Alone” picked up a Best Original Song Oscar nomination on Jan. 16, we at HitFix were the first to raise an eyebrow at the curiosity. One of the song’s writers, Bruce Broughton, had formerly served as an Academy governor, making the whole situation smell a bit fishy.

It soon came out that he had directly campaigned on the song’s behalf by sending notes to some of his fellow Music Branch members asking them to consider it. But my reaction at the time was “big deal.” So the guy reached out to a few people. This happens every day of every Oscar campaign season and anyone who tells you different is either clueless or naive. But when Nikki Finke first Tweeted this afternoon that she had heard the Academy was about to announce a repeal of that nomination due to campaign violations, I started to feel bad for all involved.

It was revealed in the days following the Oscar nomination that a PR firm representing one of the songs that was not nominated hired a private investigator to dig up the truth. I can’t speak to that report’s veracity because it leaned purely on anonymous sourcing, but it certainly didn’t seem far from desperate reality when it comes to Hollywood. So perhaps all of the publicity was enough to force the Academy’s hand. Either way, it’s a hugely hypocritical thing to have done.

If the Academy is going to go after Broughton, “then they should start coming after all of us,” one industry insider not affiliated with any of the nominees and who had no skin in the Best Original Song game this season told me. “They should look at everyone and not just wait for someone to forward them an email from a guy who said ‘listen to my song.’ It seems really punitive and over the top.”

Because that’s all that happened here. A guy with contacts sent a few emails asking people to listen to his submission. He hired a firm originally to get the word out but it was drowned out by other campaigns.

Which brings me to another point. “No matter how well-intentioned the communication,” Cheryl Boone Isaacs’ statement in the Academy’s press release reads, “using one”s position as a former governor and current executive committee member to personally promote one”s own Oscar submission creates the appearance of an unfair advantage.”

How can you begin to frame this as an issue of fairness? What’s fair about access to studio funds versus a tiny independent production like this? The other three songs in the category are performed by Grammy-winning and nominated artists like U2, Karen O and Pharrell Williams. The third is belted by a Tony-winning goddess of the stage. What’s fair about that sort of inherent exposure versus that of a quadriplegic Evangelical minister you’ve never heard of before?

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t find “Alone Yet Not Alone” to be nomination-worthy in the slightest. And I think the music branch probably deserves a hard look for a few reasons not necessarily limited to this. But the idea that it’s not fair for a guy to send a few emails in the face of the kind of rule-bending campaign shenanigans we see each and every year is sort of beyond.

Was it to make an example? That seems to be what some are thinking this afternoon. Because why not just revoke Broughton’s Oscar tickets, as the Academy did for a similar email dust-up with “The Hurt Locker” producer Nicolas Chartier in 2010? Why not throw some of this rhetoric at actress Ann Dowd when she personally spent upwards of $13,000 to send DVD screeners of the film “Compliance” to voters, regardless of whether she was nominated or not (she wasn’t)?

Neither of those circumstances really required anything other than a stern slap on the wrist, to be perfectly honest, and that seems the case here, too. So the lack of consistency is unfortunate. And the result is an Academy first. You can read all the nifty stats about which other nominations have been rescinded in the past, but all of them stemmed from eligibility issues, i.e., those contenders shouldn’t have been in the running to begin with. This is the first time, to my knowledge, a nomination has been revoked due to alleged campaign malpractice. So with that in mind, you can’t really take it as anything other than a warning shot across the bows of studios. It’s just too bad it had to be something this small that was used as the hammer for that nail.

“I’m devastated,” Broughton said in a statement soon after the news dropped today. “I indulged in the simplest grassroots campaign and it went against me when the song started getting attention. I got taken down by competition that had months of promotion and advertising behind them. I simply asked people to find the song and consider it.”

That’s all this time of year is about, anyway. To get people to take a look (or listen). The Academy is basically admitting with this decision that its membership is a flock of sheep. (Whether that’s true or not is another discussion entirely.) But I hope those behind that un-nominated song – which doesn’t get the benefit of being tossed into the category as the Academy won’t be adding a new nominee – are proud of themselves. The whole thing is more of a farce now than it was on Jan. 16.

Festival programming can be a competitive business to begin with, but when you have three major international fests in close proximity, things are bound to get a little bit heated. So it is with Venice, Telluride and Toronto, the latter two of which actually overlap with the first — the whole marathon playing out over a condensed three-week period in late August and early September. And where Cannes gets to luxuriate in having May all to itself, there’s no such comfort for the autumn trio: given that they mark the unofficial start of awards season, getting first dibs on heavyweight titles (and the media coverage that comes with them) is of increasing importance to festival directors.

For a long time, Venice was the queen bee of the fall festival circuit, elevated by its age and European glamour. It’s still arguably the most prestigious of the bunch (not least since it’s the only one with juried awards), but Toronto long ago leapfrogged it in terms of industry attendance and standing — as Oscar jockeying shifted ever earlier in the season, and the Academy grew more open to independent fare in the mid-to-late 90s, launching prestige titles at Toronto became common practice. (“American Beauty” winning Best Picture after taking the Audience Award at Toronto was a significant trendsetter in this regard.)

As Toronto settled into its role as the prestige-crossover kingmaker, Venice retained its loftier art-film profile — the former still secured its share of big-name US premieres, while the latter still filched a number of Venice’s more specialized titles. They had a comfortable arrangement, even if Toronto’s move to overlap with Venice’s closing dayshad a negative impact on Lido attendance levels. Still, it became increasingly clear that both senior festivals had more to worry about in the form of Telluride, the bijou showcase festival in the Colorado mountains that began strictly as an insider event, but has recently stolen the big boys’ thunder as a launchpad for A-list projects.

Since Telluride’s lineup isn’t announced in advance, any previously unseen titles it secures are presented as “sneak previews” rather than “premieres” — a loophole that has allowed it to get a jump on titles promised as world premieres to its rival fests. Telluride has been stepping on Toronto’s toes for a few years, but last year they got aggressive with Venice too, beating them to the punch on such titles as Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin” and Errol Morris’s “The Unknown Known.” “12 Years a Slave” and “Prisoners,” both set to world premiere in Toronto, were unveiled at Telluride first; “Gravity,” which had its world premiere in Venice and was supposed to go straight on to Toronto, stopped off at Telluride in between.

Venice director Alberto Barbera made it known that he wasn’t impressed with Telluride’s actions, and vowed to prevent such occurrences in the future. “For next year, we will all have to be agreed on the ground rules: if a movie is in competition in Venice it has to screen here first,” he said.

At the time, Toronto seemed more sanguine about Telluride’s encroachment, but it turns out they, too, are taking action. Toronto director Cameron Bailey announced yesterday that the first four days of the festival — the busiest and most media-friendly stage — will feature only world premieres and North American premieres, with any film that has already screened at Telluride not permitted to play during that time. “Essentially, when we agree to and announce a premiere status, we want it to be real and to stick and not to have any surprises,” said Bailey.

It’s a compromise measure on Toronto’s part: not a wholly restrictive move, but one that will effectively force distributors to choose between a Telluride berth and a prime publicity slot at Toronto. Whether the effect will be a decrease in major Telluride premieres or a more back-loaded Toronto programme remains to be seen — either way, it’s probably good news for those craving a little more breathing room in that claustrophobic festival season.

Telluride director Julie Huntsinger, however, was unfazed by Bailey’s announcement, and insisted the festival has no intention of changing its “sneak preview” policy. She tells Variety: “The Telluride Film Festival has achieved its esteemed reputation with 40 years of dedication to a carefully curated program and a relaxed, no-hype environment where the filmmakers and the audience are placed first and foremost. We are committed to continue this effort in the same tradition we always have, with passion and integrity.”

It’s not hard to see why studios are drawn to Telluride over Toronto as a place to unveil sensitive prestige fare: it’s a festival with a smaller lineup and a smaller crowd, which makes it easier to generate some positive word of mouth ahead of its “official” premiere at the bigger, less forgiving fest. (Of course, that approach can also backfire for the wrong film: “Under the Skin” suffered some toxic early reviews at Telluride before rallying a bit in Venice, where its chilly formalist qualities were likelier to find a dedicated band of admirers.) But it’s also not hard to see why the bigger festivals are loath to let Telluride have this advantage: even a few days is a long time in festival terms, and the rapid spread of reviews online means a film can already seem old news — made or broken — by the time its formal world premiere rolls around.

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the long run. Both Telluride and Toronto stand to score points off each each other if distributors are compelled to choose between them, while Venice might be the quiet beneficiary — with the North American festivals not bothered about a film premiering there first (and “Gravity” having proven that a Lido kick-off can still stands a major US awards hopeful in good stead), it may begin to seem a more attractive option again. Meanwhile, with New York pinching more and more high-profile premieres for itself (and even London getting the first look at “Saving Mr. Banks” last year), the fall festival season isn’t about to get any less noisy.

Did you know that over the past seven years, six films that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival have been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars? Or, that last year “Beasts of the Southern Wild’s” Benh Zeitlin became only the third Sundance helmer after Peter Cattaneo (“The Fully Monty”) and Lee Daniels (“Precious”) to earn a Best Director nod? Were you aware of the impressive number of nominated actors whose performances first played Park City, including Melissa Leo (“Frozen River”), Jennifer Lawrence (“Winter’s Bone”), Mo’Nique (“Precious”), Terrence Howard (“Hustle & Flow”), Michelle Williams (“Blue Valentine”), Carey Mulligan (“An Education”) and Laura Linney (“The Savages”)?

Sure, there have been some off years, but in general, Sundance has been a major player in the awards season ever since “Little Miss Sunshine” shook the annual indie conclave in 2006. And its influence appeared to be on the upswing. Emphasis on “appeared.”

The 2013 edition of the festival was seemingly strong, but the anointed grand jury prize-winning film “Fruitvale Station” didn’t even crack the original screenplay category. And when all the nominees were announced — on the first day of the 2014 festival, no less — the only Sundance alum honored was “Before Midnight” for adapted screenplay and, as usual, a number of nominees in the documentary and short film categories. Luckily, as arguably the premiere documentary festival in the world, Sundance continues to contribute a majority of the Best Documentary Feature field. This year, four out of the five selections all debuted at the previous festival: “20 Feet from Stardom,” “Dirty Wars,” “The Square” and “Cutie and the Boxer.” In fact, six of the last nine best documentary winners premiered at Sundance. And unless “The Act of Killing” pulls out a win, it should be seven out of 10 as of Sunday, March 2.

But, let’s be honest. For a festival that has prided itself on being a bridge between independent film and mainstream success, it was not a good Oscar year. Will 2015 be any different? Well…

There were two major players at this year’s fest that have serious awards potential: Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” and John Michael McDonagh’s “Calvary.” The latter was quickly picked up by Fox Searchlight and Brendan Gleeson (Best Actor), Kelly Reilly (Best Supporting Actress) and McDonagh (Best Original Screenplay) could all be nominees a year from now.

“Boyhood,” premiering out of competition, was by far the critics’ pick of the festival. Patricia Arquette should be a player for Best Supporting Actress and Linklater could earn yet another screenplay nomination (original) for this one. The question is whether there will be enough critical heat throughout the year to drive “Boyhood” to potential director and picture nods. If a half-dozen other studios or mini-majors were behind it, you’d give it a serious chance. “Boyhood,” however, is currently set for release from IFC Films. While a supporter of independent film since 2000, they have never been a serious awards season player outside of the documentary or foreign language categories. Will AMC Networks give IFC the budget to play with the big boys now that they have something as special as “Boyhood” on their hands? Or, will IFC partner with someone else to give the film a better chance at broad success? Certainly a subplot to pay attention to as the summer nears.

Another potential awards season player is the grand jury- and audience prize-winning “Whiplash.” It’s hard to see the film entering the Best Picture race, but Sony Classics, who picked up the film after it wowed on opening night, could easily campaign actors Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons (Best Supporting Actor). Craig Johnson’s “The Skeleton Twins” might be able to round up some Independent Spirit Award love for stars Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, but Roadside Attractions will smartly be focusing on making it a hit first (and they’ve got a shot with it).

The one big remaining question mark revolves around U.S. dramatic competition entry “Infinitely Polar Bear.” There were numerous fans of this tearjerker at the festival and it was somewhat surprising the jury didn’t award Mark Ruffalo an acting prize for his performance (shockingly they completely skipped an acting prize this year). It’s absolutely the best work of Ruffalo’s career and why the film still “appears” to be in acquisition limbo is somewhat bizarre (and co-star Zoe Saldana is pretty fantastic too). Pay attention to this one, however. If a mini-major does come on board or if someone like Paramount picks it up, Ruffalo will be a player.

That being said, there was no “Precious,” “Little Miss Sunshine” or “Beasts of the Southern Wild” that rocked Park City in 2014. Hiccup or disappointing trend? Ask us next January.

Guy Lodge contributed to this report.

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4911766893001

“Gravity” may still be my favourite of the Best Picture nominees by a long chalk, but there’s no film I’m happier to see in the mix than “Her” — Spike Jonze’s wistful 21st-century love story was perceived by many as being a little too cool for the Academy, but its healthy haul of five nominations suggests its bittersweet charms may not be quite as socially or generationally specific as you might think. Meanwhile, I’m glad voters also noticed what an immaculately crafted piece it is: those nominations for Best Production Design and Original Score are among my favorites of this year’s field.

For those of you still enraptured by the film, then, this nifty behind-the-scenes featurette is a bit of a treat, offering some genuine insight into Jonze’s unusual creative process across various stages of production, and capturing the film’s intimate, hand-made quality. Lovely stuff — check out the embed above.

[UPDATE: Unfortunately, this video has been removed at the distributor’s request.]

You can’t stop what’s, er, coming. As I made clear in my review last week, the first part of Lars von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac” was one of my highlights of the Sundance Film Festival, delivering all the brazen daring, operatic beauty and discomfiting hilarity any von Trier fan could want. Having not seen the entire beast like some of my colleagues, Volume Two is now top of my Most Anticipated list, and this new international trailer promises more of the same — in the best possible way.

No nudity or split-second vagina shots to be found here — despite word that the second half is more sexually explicit than the first. But there’s still plenty to ponder, including hints of Jamie Bell’s inner S&M master, cars going up in flames, Shia LaBeouf’s still-indecipherable accent and the unimpeachable soundtrack choice of Talking Heads’ pop classic “Burning Down the House.” If any knowledgable folk can tell me if the song features in the film as well, I’d be most appreciative.

“Nymphomaniac: Volume One” opens in the US on March 21, with Volume Two following on April 4. (Other countries, the UK included, get them simultaneously.) The uncut version of Volume One will have its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival on Sunday, February 9.

A reader asked me the other day if the UK has county-divided critics’ awards to match the multitude of local US groups. The answer is no — the nation isn’t quite big enough for such madness — but while the London Critics’ Circle (which hands out its awards on Sunday) remains the highest-profile British critics’ award, other UK critics and bloggers have banded together to form the UK Regional Critics’ Awards, also known as the Richard Attenborough Awards. Despite the “regional” remit, their awards were presented in London last night, and also included a number of public-voted categories. No big surprises, and more good news for “12 Years a Slave”; check out the list after the jump, and keep up with the season at The Circuit.

Best Film: “12 Years a Slave”

Best Director: Alfonso Cuaron, “Gravity”

Best Actor: Chiwetel Ejiofor, “12 Years a Slave”

Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine”

Best Screenplay: Spike Jonze, “Her”

Best British Breakthrough: George Mackay, “How I Live Now” and “Sunshine on Leith”

Public vote:

Best British Film: “Philomena”

Best Onscreen Duo: Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks, “Saving Mr. Banks”

Best Visual Effects: “Gravity”

Best Film Blog: “Den of Geek”