“Love” was all around at Sundance this week, as Radius-TWC gave some love to the Sundance entry “The One I Love,” while Sony Pictures Classics fell for “Love is Strange.”

Firstly, Radius-TWC has picked up the worldwide rights for “One I Love” for a reported $2 million just 24 hours or so after it made its debut at the fest, according to Deadline.

“The One I Love” stars Sundance regular Mark Duplass, “Mad Men’s” Elisabeth Moss and Ted Danson, and centers on a couple who take a weekend vacation together in the hopes of salvaging their imploding marriage.

The film serves as Charlie McDowell’ directorial debut. 

Meanwhile, the North American and German rights to Ira Sachs’ “Love Is Strange” were nabbed by SPC in a deal reported to be worth over $1 million, according to The Wrap.

The film stars John Lithgow and Alfred Molina as a New York couple who face discrimination after getting married, and are forced to live apart from one another.

It also stars Marisa Tomei, Darren Burrows, and Charlie Tahan.

Earlier this week Sony Classics also picked up rights to Damien Chazelle’s “Whiplash,” starring Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons, and the Icelandic road trip comedy “Land Ho!,” co-directed by Aaron Katz and Martha Stephens.
 

We’re about a week late in wising up to the Denver Film Critics Society’s list of winners this year but, well, better late than never. “Gravity” was the big winner, taking prizes for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Score and Best Sci-Fi/Horror Film. The acting categories all went to the frontrunners save Best Supporting Actress, which went to “American Hustle’s” Jennifer Lawrence rather than “12 Years a Slave’s” Lupita Nyong’o. Steve McQueen’s slavery drama, which was nominated for seven awards, received no trophies. Check out the nominations here, the winners below and keep track of the season at The Circuit.

Best Picture: “Gravity”

Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón, “Gravity”

Best Actor: Matthew McConaughey, “Dallas Buyers Club”

Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine”

Best Supporting Actor: Jared Leto, “Dallas Buyers Club”

Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, “American Hustle”

Best Adapted Screenplay: “The Wolf of Wall Street”

Best Original Screenplay: “American Hustle”

Best Score: “Gravity”

Best Song: “Let it Go” from “Frozen”

Best Animated Film: “Frozen”

Best Documentary: “The Act of Killing”

Best Foreign Language Film: “The Grandmaster”

Best Sci-Fi/Horror Film: “Gravity”

Best Comedy: “This is the End”

“12 Years a Slave” has picked up yet another Best Picture prize from a critics organization, as the Gay & Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association (GALECA) tapped it the year’s best for 2013. Oscar frontrunners Matthew McConaughey and Cate Blanchett won top acting honors, while “Blue is the Warmest Color” received a pair of prizes including LGBT Film of the Year. HBO’s “Behind the Candelabra” and Netflix’s “Orange is the New Black” picked up awards in the TV categories, including a tie for TV Drama of the Year. Check out the full list of nominees and winners below and remember to keep track of the season via The Circuit.

Film of the Year
“American Hustle”
“Blue is the Warmest Color”
“Dallas Buyers Club”
“Gravity”
“Her”
“Laurence Anyways”
“12 Years a Slave” – WINNER

Film Performance of the Year – Actor
Leonardo DiCaprio, “The Wolf of Wall Street”
Chiwetel Ejiofor, “12 Years a Slave”
James Franco, “Spring Breakers”
Jared Leto, “Dallas Buyers Club”
Matthew McConaughey, “Dallas Buyers Club” – WINNER

Film Performance of the Year – Actress
Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine” – WINNER
Sandra Bullock, “Gravity”
Judi Dench, “Philomena”
Adèle Exarchopoulos, “Blue is the Warmest Color”
Lupita Nyong”o, “12 Years a Slave”

LGBT Film of the Year
“Blue is the Warmest Color” – WINNER
“Dallas Buyers Club”
“Kill Your Darlings”
“Laurence Anyways”
“Philomena”

Foreign Language Film of the Year
“Blue is the Warmest Color” – WINNER
“The Great Beauty”
“The Hunt”
“I”m So Excited!”
“Laurence Anyways”
“Out in the Dark”

Documentary of the Year
(theatrical release, TV airing or DVD release)
“The Act of Killing”
“Blackfish”
“Bridegroom” – WINNER
“I Am Divine”
“20 Feet from Stardom”

Campy Flick of the Year
“August: Osage County”
“The Canyons”
“Carrie”
“The Great Gatsby”
“I”m So Excited!” – WINNER

Unsung Film of the Year
“Frances Ha”
“In A World …”
“Kill Your Darlings” – WINNER (tie)
“Short Term 12” – WINNER (tie)
“The Spectacular Now”

Visually Striking Film of the Year
(honoring a production of stunning beauty, “from art direction to cinematography)
“Frozen”
“Gravity” – WINNER
“Inside Llewyn Davis”
“Laurence Anyways”
“The Great Gatsby”

TV Drama of the Year
“American Horror Story: Coven”
“Behind the Candelabra” – WINNER (tie)
“Breaking Bad”
“Mad Men”
“Orange is the New Black” – WINNER (tie)

TV Comedy of the Year
“The Big Bang Theory”
“Getting On”
“Girls” – WINNER
“Ja”mie: Private School Girl”
“Modern Family”
“Veep”

TV Performance of the Year – Actor
“Bryan Cranston, “Breaking Bad”
“Michael Douglas, “Behind the Candelabra” – WINNER
“Jon Hamm, “Mad Men”
“Jim Parsons, “The Big Bang Theory”
Kevin Spacey, “House of Cards”

TV Performance of the Year – Actress
Vera Farmiga, “Bates Motel”
Jessica Lange, “American Horror Story: Coven” – WINNER
Tatiana Maslany, “Orphan Black”
Taylor Schilling, “Orange is the New Black”
Kerry Washington, “Scandal”
Robin Wright, “House of Cards”

TV Musical Performance of the Year
Shirley Bassey, “Goldfinger” – “82nd Academy Awards” – WINNER
Neil Patrick Harris, “Bigger” – “67th Annual Tony Awards”
Jane Krakowski, “Theme from Rural Juror” – “30 Rock”
Jessica Lange and cast, “The Name Game” – “American Horror Story: Asylum”
Lea Michele, “To Make You Feel My Love” – “Glee”

LGBT TV Show of the Year
“Behind the Candelabra”
“Bridegroom”
“Modern Family”
“Orange is the New Black” – WINNER
“RuPaul”s Drag Race”

Campy TV Show of the Year
“American Horror Story: Coven” – WINNER
“Behind the Candelabra”
“House of Versace”
“Sharknado”
“Smash”

Unsung TV Show of the Year
“Broadchurch”
“The Carrie Diaries”
“Cougar Town”
“Getting On” – WINNER
“Mom”
“Orphan Black”

The “We”re Wilde About You” Rising Star Award
Adèle Exarchopoulos
Dane DeHaan
Laverne Cox – WINNER
Lupita Nyong”o
Tatiana Maslany

Wilde Wit of the Year
(honoring a performer, writer or commentator whose observations both challenge and amuse)
Rachel Maddow – WINNER
Bill Maher
Kate McKinnon
Dan Savage
Amy Schumer

Wilde Artist of the Year
(honoring a truly groundbreaking force in the fields of film, theater and/or television)
Alfonso Cuarón
Xavier Dolan
James Franco – WINNER
Spike Jonze
Steve McQueen

Timeless Award
(to an actor or performer whose exemplary career is marked by character, wisdom and wit)
Lily Tomlin

One of the most foregone conclusions of this year’s Oscar race, probably right up there with Best Visual Effects going to “Gravity,” is the Best Original Song Oscar going to “Let It Go” from “Frozen.” But maybe Disney doesn’t think it’s so in the bag, as a music video for the song featuring 25 languages just hit the web.

Check it out below. Your move, “Alone Yet Not Alone.”

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC83NA5tAGE&w=640&h=360]

Would you be surprised to learn that the Academy’s goal of opening up the Oscars to a wider array of films with its expansion of the Best Picture field has hit a brick wall and that the complete obvious has, in fact, been the result? Mark Harris hit it out of the park yesterday with “The Christopher Nolan Effect,” an analysis of how that simple rule change a few years ago has yielded, increasingly, the smallest assortment of Oscar nominated films in history. Key quote: “…there”s zero evidence that the expanded field has done anything but dilute the prestige of a nomination.” The dilution has been my stance from the beginning but now there’s data to back it up. Is it time for the Academy to do away with this dubious little experiment? [Grantland]

And here’s Nick Davis’ Tweet that sent Harris down that line of reportage. [Twitter]

The Academy, meanwhile, has cleared up producing credits for “The Wolf of Wall Street” in a departure from the PGA ruling. Martin Scorsese, therefore, picks up his 12th Oscar nomination to date, and Leonardo DiCaprio his fifth. [AMPAS]

How George Clooney pranked Matt Damon into thinking he was gaining weight on the set of “The Monuments Men.” [People]

Scott Tobias double-features “Gravity” and “All is Lost.” [The Dissolve]

Up in Park City, Peter Knegt talks to “Love is Strange” stars John Lithgow and Alfred Molina. [Indiewire]

Speaking of Sundance, team RogerEbert.com reports from the festival premiere of Ebert-focused documentary “Life Itself.” [RogerEbert.com]

And Gareth Evans’ “The Raid 2” appears to be the leading contender for the Palme d’Ork up there in the Utah mountains. [/Film]

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4911776313001

I sat down with the “Monuments Men” crew last week (more on that film in due time) and, like most bozos, figured a softball “Interstellar” question lobbed Matt Damon’s way might produce something interesting. Christopher Nolan always keeps his cast and crew on lockdown when it comes to his projects so it’s almost like you have to preface it with “I know you’re sworn to secrecy,” but you can get interesting nuggets early in the process sometimes. Matthew McConaughey, for instance, had some engrossing things to say about his trepidations going into the project.

Speaking of which, the “Dallas Buyers Club” star and awards season fixture figured in considerably with Damon’s reticent response. (You’ll see in the clip above that Damon comes up with a handful of ways to say “I had a good time” and make each of them sound fresh and forthcoming). “Matthew is the star of the movie and he’s just on fire right now,” Damon says. “He’s really locked in and I can’t imagine that movie’s going to be anything but great.”

Okay, keep your secrets! Damon, you’ll recall, was cast in the film last August in an undisclosed “small” role, so the mystery even extends to what the actual part is. No one hypes his films like Nolan with this “mum’s the word” thing and his fans certainly love him for the tease. We’ll all find out what “Interstellar” is, and what Damon’s role in it will be, later this year.

One of the coolest things to have seen take shape over my years covering the awards beat has been watching the program of Oscar-nominated short films find an outlet to the public through Shorts HD and Magnolia Pictures’ annual theatrical and, eventually, VOD showcase of the contenders. And they’re more accessible than ever as, in addition to theatrical distribution on Jan. 31, they’ll be available on things like iTunes, Amazon Instant Video and DirecTV.

Some of the films that were nominated have been available here and there on the internet. I was able to see a good portion before making predictions and I think we ended up with a pretty impressive crop across the three categories.

Check out more information on the nominees below. Soon enough we’ll have some of our usual analysis of these races, but what’s nice is that it won’t have to be a dictation as this program has opened the races up to the public. Like consideration of all the other Oscar races, it can be a discussion, as well.

Animated Program – Estimated Total Running Time: 110 min.

“Get a Horse!” (Lauren MacMullan and Dorothy McKim, English, 6 min.) – Mickey Mouse and his friends are enjoying a wagon ride until Peg-Leg Pete shows up with plans to ruin their day.
“Mr. Hublot” (Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares, Non-dialogue, 12 min.) – The eccentric, isolated Mr. Hublot finds his carefully ordered world disrupted by the arrival of Robot Pet.
“Feral” (Daniel Sousa and Dan Golden, Non-dialogue, 12 min.) – A wild boy who has grown up in the woods is found by a hunter and returned to civilization.
“Possessions” (Shuhei Morita, 14 min.) – A man seeking shelter from a storm in a dilapidated shrine encounters a series of household objects inhabited by goblin spirits.
“Room on the Broom” (Max Land and Jan Lachauer, in English, 26 min.) – A genial witch and her cat are joined on their broom by several friends as they set off on an adventure.

Live Action Program – Estimated Total Running Time: 108 min.

“Helium” (Anders Walter and Kim Magnusson, Denmark/Danish, 23 min.) – A dying boy finds comfort in the tales of a magical land called HELIUM, told to him by the hospital janitor.
“The Voorman Problem” (Mark Gill and Baldwin Li, UK/English, 13 min.) – A psychiatrist is called to a prison to examine an inmate named Voorman, who is convinced he is a god. Starring Martin Freeman.
“Avant Que De Tout Perdre / Just Before Losing Everything” (Xavier Legrand and Alexandre Gavras, France/French, 30 min.) – Miriam has left her abusive husband and taken refuge with her children in the local supermarket where she works.
“Aquel No Era Yo / That wasn’t Me” (Esteban Crespo, Spain/Spanish, 24 min.) – Paula, a Spanish aid worker, has an encounter with an African child soldier named Kaney.
“Do I Have to Take Care of Everything” (Selma Vilhunen and Kirsikka Saari, Finland/Finnish, 7 min.) – Sini tries frantically to get her family ready to leave for a wedding, but her husband and two children are interfering with her efforts.

Documentary Program A – Estimated Total Running Time: 97 min.

“The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life” (Malcolm Clarke and Nicholas Reed, Canada/USA/UK – English, 39 min.) – At 109, Alice Herz Sommer is the world’s oldest pianist…and its oldest Holocaust survivor. At the heart of her remarkable story of courage and endurance is her passion for music.
“Karama Has No Walls” (Sara Ishaq, UAE/UK/Yemen – Arabic, 26 min.) – When protesters in Yemen added their voices to those of other nations during the Arab Spring, the government responded with an attack that left 53 people dead and inspired widespread sympathy throughout the country.
“Facing Fear” (Jason Cohen, USA/English, 26 min.) – As a gay 13-year-old, Matthew Boger endured a savage beating at the hands of a group of neo-Nazis. Twenty-five years later, he meets one of them again by chance.

Documentary Program B – Estimated Total Running Time: 87 min.

“CaveDigger” (Jeffrey Karoff, USA/English, 39 min.) – New Mexico environmental sculptor Ra Paulette carves elaborately designed and painstakingly executed sandstone caves, driven by an artistic vision that often brings him into conflict with his patrons.
“Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall” (Edgar Barens, USA/English, 40 min.) – In a maximum security prison, the terminally ill Jack Hall faces his final days with the assistance of hospice care provided by workers drawn from the prison population.

Screenwriter Terence Winter, who last week was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street,” was just as confused by some of the reactions to his film as Leonardo DiCaprio was toward the end of the year. The hedonistic depiction of Wall Street excess had led some to question its moral standing, surmising that it seemed to take far too much delight in its depictions.

But that thin line is also partly the point. It’s a film that shows you a good time and dares you to have fun with it, because it’s a display of antics that appeal to base, primal desires in many ways. That having been said, the idea that anyone would take away from it the idea that it was meant to be a glorification was “sort of a head-scratcher” for Winter, he says. “You’d think it would go without saying, but anyone who would watch that behavior and want to emulate what’s going on on screen has got a screw loose as far as I’m concerned.”

But as Scorsese himself has noted in his rounds with the press, the devil often comes with a smile. And it was therefore very much by design that the viewer was to be fished in by these antics. “We talked about the idea that we never, ever see the people on the other end of the telephone,” Winter says. “You never see the people who are being duped by this stuff, so you as the audience are sort of taking the place of those people. You’re going along for the ride and you’re sort of seduced by the fun and the bad behavior, and then when it turns dark toward the end, you go, ‘Oh my God. I’ve been actually cheering this guy on this whole time.’ You’re kind of taking the place of the people on the other end of the phone, in a way. We wanted to let Jordan [Belfort] sell you his story.”

Belfort’s novel was a vast tome. At 528 pages, if Winter was going to give you the whole thing, “it would have been an 18-hour movie” (though it certainly isn’t a swift affair as is). Whenever Winter – who is the showrunner of HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire” – sits down to adapt something, he tends to circle the things he’s interested in. By the time he had finished “The Wolf of Wall Street,” however, he had virtually circled the entire book. “It was like, ‘Okay, great, now what,'” he says. “But like any crime story, it’s sort of the rise and fall, so you had to find that throughline. The rise and fall of Jordan Belfort.”

Winter met with Scorsese and DiCaprio every day for six weeks in the lead-up to production before he went off to work on the third season of “Boardwalk Empire.” So he wasn’t on set much at all. There was, however, a lot of improvisation going on, which is a huge reason for the film’s extended post-production schedule, as Scorsese and his editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, shaved the material down.

“Hours and hours of the improvisation didn’t get into the movie,” Winter says. “But all of the improvs came from scenes that were written. So it was all kind of riffing on what was already there. For me, that’s where the magic is sometimes. You can’t be that precious about your words that you can’t be willing to explore an alternative or an addition, especially when you get actors like that, Leo and Jonah, who are so good at improv. Those guys are really great at this. And Jonah is also a really talented writer in his own right. You’re going to get some great stuff.”

Indeed, and the result was five nominations for the film. Pity that Schoonmaker’s task in the editing suite didn’t gain recognition, but Winter is truly delighted to have received his first-ever Oscar notice from his fellow writers.

“It’s really the highest praise one can ask for in any business, to think that people who do the same thing that you do think you did a great job,” he says. “And the films that were out this year, it was such an incredible year for film, so it’s even more meaningful.”

“The Wolf of Wall Street” is now playing at a theater near you.

“The Great Gatsby” turned out to be a bone of contention between director Baz Luhrmann and his wife, costume designer and production designer Catherine Martin. He had loved F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book for many years, while it didn’t exactly bowl her over when she first read it as a teenager in Australia. As a 15-year-old, it alienated her, and she couldn’t quite understand the central love story.

“It’s hard for a 15-year-old girl to understand that,” Martin says. “And so when Baz pitched the book to me, I was extremely resistant.”

Over the years he finally wore her down one day, told her he was sick of her “pontificating” and handed her the book once more, pleading with her to read it again. So she did and three hours later finished what she now considers one of the best books ever written. The themes were so striking for her and it was so beautifully written. She adored it.

“And he just found that extremely irritating because I had been a naysayer and now I was the book’s biggest fan,” she says. “So we still laugh about that!”

Whenever Martin starts in on a project – and this marked her third collaboration with Luhrmann as a costume designer and her fifth as a production designer – she says she never thinks in pictures. She always thinks psychologically about the relationships and the themes, particularly with something like a work of literature, which allows you to get inside the heads of the characters.

“It’s much more ephemeral and dreamlike, the experience of reading a book for me,” she says. “I don’t concretize it. And I think many people concretize the images, which is why people are routinely so upset when very well-loved books are made into movies, because you’re not quite sure how the book should have looked but it wasn’t like that.”

The most fundamental design directive Luhrmann gave Martin was that he wanted the world the characters inhabited to reflect the modern, “unnostalgic” version of New York that Fitzgerald knew and loved. “You had to feel this visceral, alive, pumping, modern metropolis,” she says. “And it needed not to feel like a sepia, tasteful kind of removed or slightly distant place. It needed to feel absolutely present and alive and possible. The combined vision that he had with the actors about the characterizations of each of the people had to be helped and expressed through, or counterpointed by, the environments they found themselves in, as well as the costumes they wore.”

Through a series of workshops and script reads, the actors themselves began to inform Martin’s designs. Carey Mulligan’s “finesse” and “febrility” allowed Martin as a modern woman to enter into Daisy Buchanan’s head and understand who she was. Luhrmann is an expressionistic filmmaker who views costume and production design as the outward expression of the inner life of a person. Subtlty, elegance and clarity were key.

“It’s the privilege of working with great actors,” Martin says, “because ultimately costumes are just clothes. It’s the actors that transform them into the images that we perceive. ‘Annie Hall,’ for instance, when Diane Keaton wears baggy men’s pants and a waistcoat and a funny hat and the tie, she becomes the iconic image of Annie Hall. She transforms that collection of clothes. I wear those clothes and I look like I’m dressing for Halloween. It’s the actor’s ability to transform those clothes that is the amalgam. It’s the alchemy that makes the character.

“If you look at the best models in the world, or the actors that promote product, they’re bringing something extra to the product,” she continues. “It’s not just, ‘I’m slim, I’m beautiful.’ It’s actually pushing the envelope. It’s selling the dream. It’s allowing you to believe that there are possibilities that you cannot envisage that go with the sweater or the woman’s purse or whatever it is.”

Meanwhile, Luhrmann is color-obsessed, Martin says, and the very first thing they did was analyze all the descriptions in the book by doing word searches for colors mentioned throughout. White, silver and gold were predominant, leaving them with a very brilliant and high-key palette to work with. Being a summer story, that made some sense, but then there was discussion about how color influences the mood of various scenes.

“For instance, if you go to the 1923 renovation of The Plaza, it’s different, but it’s not unlike the current renovation,” Martin says. “They were very white, bright rooms. Very sparsely furnished. Even the suites, there was no artwork, just mirrors. And when we did all this research, and because we had such a great association with The Plaza and it’s such a character in the book, Baz felt that this environment was not the right kind of heavy oppressive place for the penultimate conflict in the book to take place. So we then had to look for other inspirations and another palette that somehow had its roots in The Plaza but could be extrapolated to create a much darker, heavier, more oppressive, hotter environment. We looked to the Oak Room and we used the oak paneling from the Oak Room and got the idea of making this room a much more heavy and intensive place where you could imagine this terrible fight over Daisy ensuing between Tom and Gatsby.”

In the production design sphere, digital work is increasingly creeping in as a hugely supportive element. In recent years, in fact, heavily computer-generated work in films like “Avatar” and “Alice in Wonderland” has walked away with the Oscar for Best Production Design. For Martin, she’s in the fortunate place of being involved with a Baz Luhrmann film from the moment he decides to make it and convince others to be a part of it through to the delivery of the final color-timed frame, so she’s a significant part of that process every step of the way.

In “The Great Gatsby,” the environments and sets were all geographically detailed. Something like Gatsby’s mansion and Nick’s bungalow and their relationship to the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock are all mapped out way before shooting in a real geographical space. They all had their own internal architectural reality and were described, drawn and modeled so that Luhrmann could understand their spacial relationships.

“All these complex and detailed geographical and design points were not left till post,” Martin says. “I’m very lucky that I’ve been able to work hand-in-hand with Chris Godfrey, who is our visual effects supervisor, helping to realize Baz’s ultimate vision. Because Baz sees no division between any of these many art forms that go into making a movie. Whether it’s the dissolving of Daisy’s letter in the bath when she realizes that she’s going to marry Tom Buchanan and she still, I suppose, loved Gatsby somehow, to how the Buchanan mansion might look, we still had some members of the art department working on furnishing the visual effects department with architectural details, window details, right up until weeks before the final visual effect was delivered.

“So I think it’s an absolutely intrinsic part of production design. And the art department, I think, needs to work hand in hand with visual effects. Certainly that’s been my experience in working with Baz. And in fact I think we would probably have a visual effects art director on the next film, because you need someone who understands the process, to make sure that all the right information is going up to all the multiple houses.”

The result of all of this is another pair of Oscar nominations for Best Costume Design and Best Production Design for Martin. She has been nominated singularly for Best Production Design on 1996’s “Romeo + Juliet” and Best Costume Design for 2008’s “Australia,” but the only other time she was recognized in both categories was for 2001’s “Moulin Rouge!” She won both Oscars that year, and in a season as contested as this, where voters might be looking to spread the love a bit, the opulence of “The Great Gatsby” could well bring her one or two more Academy Awards.

We, along with Martin, will find out if that’s so on March 2.

Probably the story that caught the most traction over the holiday yesterday was Harvey Weinstein’s recent comments on violence in films on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Live.” Said the Weinstein Company co-chairman, “You have to look in the mirror,” he said on the program. “I have to just choose that aren’t as violent as they used to be. For me, personally, I can’t continue to do that. So change starts here.” Of course, Weinstein hasn’t really traded in violence beyond his relationship with Quentin Tarantino. [CNN]

We’re a few days late in noting it but Mark Harris’ sober assessment of the nominations is a good one. “It”s always a pleasure to discover we don”t know quite as much about the Academy”s tastes, which shift slightly every year as new members replace old, as we imagined we did.” [Grantland]

If you’re eager to know how the Oscars might play out, here’s a tediously assembled simulated ballot to chew on. [Awards Daily]

Scott Feinberg gets Sandra Bullock to talk about her pretty-darn-good career choices as of late: four Best Picture nominations, two Best Actress nominations. [The Race]

Why Emma Thompson was the real winner of the 2014 SAG Awards. [E! Online]

At barely 23 years old, Jennifer Lawrence landed her third nomination in four years last week. David Crow has some ideas on why she might be good for America. [Den of Geek]

The Oscar nominations brought a wide array of surprises, not least of all below the line. What were the most surprising craft category nods and snubs? [Gold Derby]

“No More Fake Shit”: The Taming of David O. Russell. [The Bygone Bureau]

It may have been left out of the Oscar race entirely, but Cannes champion “Blue is the Warmest Color” reigned supreme at France's Lumiere Awards — which hold a similar place in the French awards calendar to the Golden Globes. (The French Oscar equivalent, the Cesar Awards, announced their nods on January 31.) “Blue” won all four categories in which it was nominated: Best Film, Director, Actress for Lea Seydoux (shared with her work in “Grand Central”) and Breakthrough Actress for Adele Exarchopoulos. Roman Polanski took Best Screenplay honors for “Venus in Fur”; Bertrand Tavernier's “The French Minister,” which led the field with five nods, won nothing. Full list of winners below; everything else at The Circuit. 

I remember a few years ago, one of the more surprising Oscar nominees for both Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing was Edward Zwick’s “Blood Diamond.” It made sense in hindsight. Not only was it great work from respected artists, but Zwick has always had an ear for quality sound work; four of his films have been recognized with Oscar nominations by the branch. So he’s a nice choice for this year’s Filmmaker Award at the 50th annual Cinema Audio Society (CAS) Awards.

“It seems fitting that in celebration of 50 years of the CAS we are honoring Edward Zwick, a producer/director/writer of both award winning film and television,” CAS President David E. Fluhr said via press release. “His projects on both the big and small screen have consistently demonstrated a commitment to quality in story and craft, particularly sound. In continuing the CAS tradition of synergy between our two honorees, Zwick our Filmmaker Honoree and Andy Nelson, our Career Achievement Honoree, have collaborated on five film projects including the CAS and Oscar-nominated “Blood Diamond” and ‘The Last Samurai.”

Speaking of the sound categories, they once again had tricks up their sleeves. The Society had some interesting picks (that tipped us off to the potential for an “All is Lost” miss in Best Sound Mixing) and Peter Jackson’s latest installment of “The Hobbit” managed to slide into both categories.

The 50th annual CAS Awards will be held on Saturday, Feb. 22.

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4911801507001

Alexander Payne’s vision for “Nebraska” was always in black and white. Going way back to prep on 2004’s “Sideways,” he told his director of photography, Phedon Papamichael, that he had this little road trip movie he was keen to do free of color, which of course was appealing to Papamichael. Nearly a decade later they finally set out to make the movie, but they had a bit of a roadblock.

“Originally we intended to shoot black and white stock but Paramount requested a color version of the film as well, and that excluded us from using black and white stock,” Papamichael says. “All we were told is ‘we can’t sell a black and white movie; certain markets won’t take it,’ and we were never really able to find out who the color version is for. HBO came up. It was like, ‘HBO won’t show black and white,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh, really? HBO won’t show ‘Raging Bull?'”

But Payne just told Papamichael not to concern himself with it. The movie only ever existed in their minds in black and white anyway and they didn’t even bother leaving much time to deal with the color version in the end. “I actually just said to Skip [Kimball, the digital intermediate colorist], ‘Okay, just do whatever you always wanted to do and nobody would let you do. Feel free to experiment!'”

After having tested a number of stocks and settling on the look Papamichael wanted for the film, it was off to the Arri Alexa digital camera to attempt to duplicate the visuals, trying to find a grain look similar to the stock.

“We were able to do that fairly quickly,” he says. “It’s almost impossible to distinguish it. Haskel Wexler called me and Janusz Kaminski, asking whether I shot on film, so we were able to make the Alexa look like an actual black and white film.”

It might sound like a lot of trouble to simply sap the image of color, but it meant something artistically to shoot in such stark visuals. “It just seemed appropriate for this story,” Papamichael says. “And of course with Bruce’s face and the textures and his hair glowing when he steps into the sun, I mean it’s just something that lets you focus in on these motifs we have in the story about isolation and loneliness and death and this graphic landscape with the clouds and the skies.”

Payne took Papamichael on the very Montana-to-Nebraska road trip the characters in the film embark upon to give him an idea of that landscape. It was fascinating for the DP, to drive through Main Streets of small-town America and get just a sense of emptiness.

“He just wanted me to get an impression of the vastness of this land and how long you drive without seeing anything,” Papamichael says. “We’d get into these towns where it says ‘population 22,000,’ and we’d go down Main Street, usually, and I’d never really see everybody, and I’d go, ‘You’re from here. Where is everybody? Where are all the people?’ In Italy you’d see, even if it was a small town, kids running around a piazza, some old man sitting in a cafe. There was never anybody. He goes, ‘I don’t know. I guess they’re inside watching TV.’ And then later, of course, making the movie with all these scenes of nobody communicating or making eye contact…”

There wasn’t a lot in the way of references for the movie beyond the obvious Peter Bogdanovich works. Papamichael requested a print of “Paper Moon” be brought in to make sure they weren’t over-doing the film grain look in post-production. “It’s amazing,” he says. “We just sort of forget because we’re so used to all these sleek images now, how alive that old black and white print is.” And of course there are echoes of “The Last Picture Show” throughout. Papamichael grew up on movies like “Alice in the Cities” and “Kings of the Road,” too, all of which were somewhere in his head while making the film.

“It’s very easy to find compositions [in that landscape],” he says. “I did all the framing and was able to set up most of the compositions and I said, ‘If you don’t like them, of course, we can talk about them.’ But we really found a groove, this being our third movie. There was no disagreements or anything. Once you have that scope frame and those landscapes and those lonely little figures sitting pretty, it kind of tells you what to do. It’s not that difficult to find a frame.”

The result is a first-ever Oscar nomination for the DP, in what is clearly a tight field, given that the nominations from the American Society of Cinematographers stretched to seven. And ever since the Academy discontinued the divide between black-and-white and color films in the Best Cinematography category, only 11 black and white movies have been nominated; “Nebraska” joined the company of “In Cold Blood,” “The Last Picture Show,” “Lenny,” “Raging Bull,” “Zelig,” “Schindler’s List,” “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” “Good Night, and Good Luck.,” “The White Ribbon” and “The Artist” on that score last week. Impressive company indeed.

For more on the photography of “Nebraska,” check out the video embedded at the top of this post.

Phedon Papamichael’s work will next be seen in George Clooney’s “The Monuments Men.”

It’s wonderful when an exemplary year of filmmaking yields an awards season as unpredictable and wide open as this one is. “12 Years a Slave” and “American Hustle” won Globes. They each led guild nominations. “Gravity” and “Hustle” led Oscar nominations, but “12 Years” wasn’t far behind. “Gravity” and “12 Years” tied for the PGA Award, but “Hustle” won the SAG ensemble award. And each film was given a Best Picture prize of some sort at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards. (Some of them dubious but that was clearly the point of the BFCA adding those categories: the opportunity to spread wealth.)

Do you know how difficult it is to tie on a preferential ballot? Do you know how even the distribution of votes has to be? It’s mind-boggling that that happened. I thought 2000 was a tight year. Three different films won the top guild honors. A Best Picture/Best Director split happened at the Oscars. But three films this evenly dispersed? Call it. This is the most competitive Oscar season I’ve ever covered.

Last night’s Producers Guild of America Awards ceremony was supposed to clear things up. After all, it’s the only organization that also uses the preferential ballot on the circuit. Whatever won there, as it has for six straight years, was bound to win Best Picture. No. A tie. A TIE.

So let’s look at the nominations themselves. I look at the announcement from Thursday and I see four fairly obvious wins for “Gravity”: Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effects. But Best Film Editing, Best Original Score and especially Best Director are certainly within reach if not easily chalked up from here. That’s seven. Is “Gravity” really “Cabaret?” Is it a film that can rack up that tally and still miss Best Picture? I suppose in a field this tight, it absolutely could be.

What does “12 Years a Slave” seem primed for? Best Adapted Screenplay, probably, though “Philomena” has a shot at that one (it does). Lupita Nyong’o has proven she’s the frontrunner in the supporting actress category. And throw in Best Director as a possibility. Those three and Best Picture? Does that compute?

“American Hustle” seems like a good bet for Best Original Screenplay and maybe costumes and/or production design (two races that could also go to “12 Years a Slave” or, frankly, to “The Great Gatsby’s” opulence). Strangely enough, though, for all the talk of the actors helping to carry it through and with that SAG ensemble win in the bank, none of the four nominated stars are frontrunners in their races. I suppose if it ends up strong enough to win the big prize then Russell is in play for Best Director. So again, four including Best Picture? Does that compute?

And by the way, does it really matter if Cuarón wins the DGA prize next weekend, as most expect? I’m not sure there is anything that could definitively tip the scales at this point. And the WGA Awards won’t do anything to clear up matters; “Gravity” isn’t nominated and “12 Years a Slave” isn’t eligible. Other than the DGA next weekend, the PGA was the only guild that had all three facing off against each other and it ended in…a TIE. So it’s all probably going to come down to certain envelopes on Oscar night, and as ever, I’d have a keen eye on Best Film Editing for the potential answer.

This is all you can hope for this time of year, a little bit of intrigue. The notion that it’s not a telegraphed march to Oscar glory through countless precursor ceremonies that all bring the same news. Though ironically enough, it’s those various precursors’ inability to agree that is making this such an interesting season.

And the best part? Ballots don’t even go out for another month. You can almost hear the various gears turning in the offices of campaign strategists across town. Everyone knows they have an angle.

This is fun.

PARK CITY – The unexamined life, to tinker brashly with the words of Socrates, is not worth filming. That, at least, appears to be the key tenet behind much of Richard Linklater's work, in which ordinary lives are put under the most exacting of microscopes, and granted the level of scrutiny and detail usually reserved for the extraordinary. After the 18-year relationship study of the “Before” trilogy – currently a trilogy, at any rate – it seemed Linklater could hardly push his interest in magnified realism and time-lapse chronology any further. Turns out he can, and “Boyhood” is the astonishing result. 

Heading into today’s Producers Guild of America (PGA) Awards announcement, it was “12 Years a Slave” and “American Hustle” that appeared to have the momentum. The former had landed some major media prizes in the form of Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice wins, while the latter added a Screen Actors Guild ensemble award to its own Golden Globe prize last night. But, well, Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” had a little something to say about all of that. And the season itself had something to say about calling this thing just yet, as the final award of the night ended up split down the middle in a tie between Cuarón’s opus and Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave.”

The PGA Awards are key in this brave new awards season world as they use the same preferential balloting scenario that the Academy uses. As such, ever since the Academy went to its expanded Best Picture slate four years ago and the producers followed suit, the PGA winner and the Oscar winner have matched up. That’s why tonight’s winner was going to matter probably more than any other precursor honor this season. But no answers are coming from a tie.

“Gravity” has been my bet for the Oscar for a long while. Yeah, you can call me biased. I think the film is amazing, far and away the year’s best, but it always struck me as the undeniable landmark, and crucially, one free of the kind of baggage that would make such a film fall short. It’s the sort of movie that is sure to show up toward the top of ballots, getting plenty of number one votes, but a lot of twos and threes as well. That’s the kind of thing that carries the day with a preferential ballot.

But then, “12 Years a Slave” showed some more muscle this evening. And it needed to. If it was going to show itself to be formidable in the Oscar race, after months and months of “it’s the one to beat” talk (that began far too early thanks to jump-the-gun journalists), it needed to take down a major guild prize. And now it has. Albeit half of one. But this is a huge, huge boost from within the industry.

In the guild’s 24 years of dishing out awards, the PGA winner has gone on to win the Best Picture Oscar 17 times. And again, most importantly, it has a perfect track record over the last four years, the years where the preferential ballot has been used for both. Not that that stat means much of anything at the moment as this is officially the most heated Oscar race I’ve ever covered.

Next week the DGA will speak up and, in all likelihood, opt for Cuarón. How can they not? Then again, maybe Steve McQueen ekes it out. Maybe David O. Russell harnesses the power of 15,000 votes. But it feels like Cuarón’s year for that prize. I don’t know. Flip some coins. Let’s see what happens. This is awesome.

Elsewhere, “Frozen” predictably won the animated award while the documentary prize (which featured none of the Best Documentary Feature Oscar nominees) went to “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks.” “Breaking Bad,” “Modern Family” and “Behind the Candelabra” won TV prizes. Previously announced, Disney chairman Bob Iger received the Milestone Award, TV producer Chuck Lorre accepted the Norman Lear Achievement Award and the film “Fruitvale Station” was given the Stanley Kramer Award, among other peripheral honors.

Check out the full list of PGA Award winners below, and as ever, keep track of all the ups and downs of the 2013-2014 film awards season at The Circuit.

The Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures
-TIE-
“Gravity” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Producers: Alfonso Cuarón, David Heyman
and
“12 Years a Slave” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Producers: Anthony Katagas, Jeremy Kleiner, Steve McQueen, Brad Pitt & Dede Gardner

The Award for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures
“Frozen” (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
Producer: Peter Del Vecho

The Award for Outstanding Producer of Documentary Theatrical Motion Pictures
“We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks” (Focus Features)
 Producers: Alexis Bloom, Alex Gibney, Marc Shmuger

The David L. Wolper Award for Outstanding Producer of Long-Form Television
“Behind the Candelabra” (HBO)
Producers: Susan Ekins, Gregory Jacobs, Michael Polaire, Jerry Weintraub

The Norman Felton Award for Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television, Drama
“Breaking Bad” (AMC)
Producers: Melissa Bernstein, Sam Catlin, Bryan Cranston, Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, Mark Johnson, Stewart Lyons, Michelle MacLaren, George Mastras, Diane Mercer, Thomas Schnauz, Moira Walley-Beckett

The Danny Thomas Award for Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television, Comedy
“Modern Family” (Paul Corrigan, Abraham Higginbotham, Ben Karlin, Elaine Ko, Steven Levitan, Christopher Lloyd, Jeffrey Morton, Dan O”Shannon, Jeffrey Richman, Chris Smirnoff, Brad Walsh, Bill Wrubel, Danny Zuker)

The Award for Outstanding Producer of Non-Fiction Television
“Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” (CNN)
Producers: Anthony Bourdain, Christopher Collins, Lydia Tenaglia, Sandra Zweig

The Award for Outstanding Producer of Competition Television
“The Voice” (NBC)
Producers: Stijn Bakkers, Mark Burnett, John de Mol, Chad Hines, Lee Metzger, Audrey Morrissey, Jim Roush, Kyra Thompson, Nicolle Yaron, Mike Yurchuk, Amanda Zucker

The Award for Outstanding Producer of Live Entertainment & Talk Television
“The Colbert Report” (Comedy Central)
Producers: Meredith Bennett, Stephen T. Colbert, Richard Dahm, Paul Dinello, Barry Julien, Matt Lappin, Emily Lazar, Tanya Michnevich Bracco, Tom Purcell, Jon Stewart

The Award for Outstanding Sports Program
“SportsCenter” (ESPN)

The Award for Outstanding Children”s Program
“Sesame Street” (Sprout)

The Award for Outstanding Digital Series
“Wired: What”s Inside” (http://video.wired.com/series/what-s-inside)

The Davie O. Selznick Achievement Award
Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli

The Norman Lear Achievement Award
Chuck Lorre

The Stanley Kramer Award
“Fruitvale Station”

Milestone Award
Bob Iger

Vanguard Award
Peter Jackson, Joe Letteri and Weta Digital

Visionary Award
Chris Meledandri

PARK CITY – If you only see one Dust Bowl sci-fi eco-western starring Nicholas Hoult this year… well, maybe wait for the next one. Arriving in Sundance on a tide of buzz that seems justified only by its on-paper singularity, Jake Paltrow's infallibly earnest genre experiment “Young Ones” marries the stark heartland integrity of John Steinbeck to the post-apocalyptic nihilism of “Mad Max,” with the waxen self-importance of neither. Relocating a classical land-ownership saga to a barren New-Old West situated, we can only hope, in the very distant future, Paltrow's film never quite finds the happy medium between B-movie splatter and literary elevation; if nothing else, it confirms my suspicion that films adorned with their own chapter headings are rarely good news.

Conceptually, at least, “Young Ones” represents an ambitious advance on Paltrow's 2007 debut “The Good Night,” a middle-of-the-road male-angst comedy enlivened — if not necessarily enhanced — by dreamy subconscious interventions. No surprise, then, that the director's inner fantasist has taken over in his follow-up feature: “Young Ones” intrigues most in its earliest, haziest stages, when we're still trying to determine what world we're actually in. It begins with Michael Shannon in a desert, brutishly blowing the heads off two jibbering bandits as they relieve themselves — but that's par for the course with Shannon's films these days, and it takes some time for the rules of this harsh new frontier to emerge.

As it turns out, Shannon's Ernest Holm is one of the notionally good guys, a crop-farming patriarch whose demeanor is as dry as his fields — seemingly terminal drought has long desiccated the area, and few others share Ernest's conviction that the rains will eventually come. With his wife (Aimee Mullins) crippled — her husband's to blame, apparently, though we're never told how — and confined to a complicated life-support apparatus, Ernest fends stoically for himself and his two children, Jerome (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and Mary (Elle Fanning). While Jerome is a vulnerably devoted daddy's boy, Mary has impatient plans for a life of her own — chiefly involving her opportunistic, malevolent boyfriend Flem (a handsomely leering Nicholas Hoult), who can scarcely conceal his designs on Ernest's land.

From this resolutely old-fashioned premise, things spin out much as you'd expect — albeit with fancier ammunition and more lumbering robot-horses than in its twin inspirations of Greek and Shakespearean tragedy. (The parched, elemental milieu lends proceedings a certain Biblical quality, minus any allegorical moral allusions: we appear to be in a post-religious Middle America, though at least country music has survived.) The film's environmental concerns, meanwhile, seem very much of the now: highly priced and perilously rare, water is the new gasoline, and while not exactly hectoring in tone — Paltrow evidently doesn't spend too much time on his sister's website — “Young Ones” appears to issue a passive-aggressive warning about the potential consequences of natural resource abuse.

The film, meanwhile, wastes some pretty precious resources of its own, with Shannon — on typically terse form — prematurely dispatched and Fanning given little to do other than stare soulfully out at dusty vistas while hanging laundry. (This particular future looks pretty bleak for everyone, but women are still drawing the shortest of short straws.) The action, lean as it is, is increasingly narrowed to a face-off between Hoult and McPhee, neither actor quite conjuring the requisite physical or psychological intensity to ground the film's wafty, quasi-Malickian atmospherics.

With the film markedly inert for one that combines so many punchy genre elements, a lot could be forgiven if “Young Ones” succeeded as a genuinely striking mood piece — yet its vision of a techno-rustic future never quite convinces either. Desolate, sprawling South African locations, shot in eerily flat-lit fashion by Giles Nuttgens, make for a more effectively alien American West than the one we currently have. Yet the design within it looks strenuously like design, not all of it — least of all beige suits that evoke nothing so much as Cannes security guards — a natural fit for the film's story world. (Ditto Nathan Johnson's lush orchestral score, slathered indiscriminately over sparse scenes that hardly call for it.) Caked in heat and dust, “Young Ones” aims for a kind of dull finish that shouldn't extend as far as it does to its storytelling.

The 20th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards have come and gone and so it’s time for another round of best and worst. What were the touching, heartfelt, funny and endearing moments of the evening? What were the cringe-worthy, false-note, unfortunate moments? Some of Team HitFix has a few ideas, so click through the gallery story below for our thoughts and feel free to tell us what you thought of the show in the comments section.