The Best Picture Oscar nominees that failed to receive PGA nominations in the last four years – i.e. the relevant era – are “The Blind Side,” “A Serious Man,” “Winter’s Bone,” “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” “The Tree of Life” and “Amour.” So there is hope yet for films like “Inside Llewyn Davis,” “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” and “Philomena” that absolutely have support within the Academy but missed out on recognition this morning. And also note, one of the films that missed with PGA over the last four years was a Coen brothers effort that manifested great passion within the Academy.

The films that made the PGA cut but missed with Oscar over that stretch are “Invictus,” “Star Trek,” “The Town,” “Bridesmaids,” “The Ides of March,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “Moonrise Kingdom” and “Skyfall.” There are more misses because the PGA has stuck with 10 nominees over the last two years, when the Academy changed its rules slightly to allow for anywhere from five to 10 nominees (and have ended up with nine both years). So someone from today’s announcement will absolutely be left off, but who?

I was most surprised to see “The Wolf of Wall Street” hang on amid the torrent. “Blue Jasmine” makes sense and has always been a top 15 lurker in the Best Picture ranks. If Woody Allen lands a DGA nomination next week, watch out. But I still wonder if “Her” has the right mojo. Nevertheless, finding love with the producers is pretty significant; it’s certain to show up on tomorrow’s WGA tally and may well be a DGA nominee given the respect Spike Jonze (star of “The Wolf of Wall Street,” no less) commands from his peers.

The goose would appear to be cooked for films like “All is Lost,” “August: Osage County,” “Before Midnight,” “Fruitvale Station” and “Rush” in the Best Picture category, despite having various angles on the race throughout the season. But never say never. Actors could help carry “August” and “Rush” has its fans. But the point is that concentrated passion is what’s necessary with the preferential ballot (which the PGA shares with the Academy). Which films have it? I think “Dallas Buyers Club,” “Her,” “Inside Llewyn Davis” and “The Wolf of Wall Street” absolutely qualify.

But you can talk this stuff to death. Nothing is left field as of yet. The WGA will add to the mix tomorrow with their own caveat (a number of the year’s contenders aren’t eligible). The DGA will speak up Tuesday and BAFTA will give an idea of the British voting bloc’s perspective on Wednesday. The race is still alive.

That said, in all likelihood, we will know the winner of this year’s Best Picture Oscar on Jan. 19, or a little more than two weeks from today. That is the night of the PGA Awards, when today’s announcement will yield a victor. The guild has nailed the winner 18 out of its 24 years of existence, which isn’t a miraculous stat on its own, particularly given how the face of the group changed shape over the years. But what’s more relevant is this: in the last four years of sharing the same preferential balloting system as the Academy, they are batting a thousand. Who wins? “American Hustle?” “Gravity?” “12 Years a Slave?”

I think it’ll come down to one of those three, and then, at risk of sounding authoritarian, we’ll know.

The 2014 PGA Awards will be held on Sunday, Jan. 19.

The Producers Guild of America announced the 10 nominees for theatrical picture and animated picture categories today for the upcoming 25th PGA Awards and familiar names such as “American Hustle,” “Gravity,” “12 Years A Slave,” “The Croods” and “Frozen” made the cut.  Surprisingly, the Coen Bros’ and Scott Rudin produced “Inside Llewyn Davis” and The Weinstein Company’s “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” was snubbed from the 10 motion picture honorees.

Here is a quick rundown of the newly announced categories.

The Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures:

“American Hustle“ (Columbia Pictures)
Producers: Megan Ellison, Jon Gordon, Charles Roven, Richard Suckle

“Blue Jasmine“ (Sony Pictures Classics)
Producers: Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum

“Captain Phillips“ (Columbia Pictures)
Producers: Dana Brunetti, Michael De Luca, Scott Rudin

“Dallas Buyers Club“ (Focus Features)
Producers: Robbie Brenner, Rachel Winter

“Gravity“ (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Producers: Alfonso Cuarón, David Heyman

“Her“ (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Producers: Megan Ellison, Spike Jonze, Vincent Landay

“Nebraska“ (Paramount Pictures)
Producers: Albert Berger, Ron Yerxa

“Saving Mr. Banks“ (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
Producers: Ian Collie, Alison Owen, Philip Steuer

“12 Years a Slave“ (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Producers:  Anthony Katagas, Jeremy Kleiner, Steve McQueen, Brad Pitt & Dede Gardner

“The Wolf of Wall Street” (Paramount Pictures)
Producers: Riza Aziz, Emma Koskoff, Joey McFarland

The Award for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures:

“The Croods“ (DreamWorks Animation)
Producers: Kristine Belson, Jane Hartwell

“Despicable Me 2“ (Universal Pictures)
Producers: Janet Healy, Chris Meledandri

“Epic“ (Twentieth Century Fox)
Producers: Jerry Davis, Lori Forte

“Frozen“ (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
Producer: Peter Del Vecho

“Monsters University“ (Pixar Animation)
Producer: Kori Rae

Additionally, while the PGA announced most of this year’s television nominees in December, the David L. Wolper Award for Outstanding Producer of Long-Form Television was saved for this morning. The nominees are:

“American Horror Story: Asylum“ (FX)
Producers: Brad Buecker, Dante Di Loreto, Brad Falchuk, Alexis Martin Woodall, Ryan Murphy, Chip Vucelich

“Behind the Candelabra“ (HBO)
Producers: Susan Ekins, Gregory Jacobs, Michael Polaire, Jerry Weintraub

“Killing Kennedy“ (National Geographic Channel)
Producers: Mary Lisio, Larry Rapaport, Ridley Scott, Teri Weinberg, David W. Zucker

“Phil Spector“ (HBO)
Producers: Michael Hausman, Barry Levinson

“Top of the Lake“ (Sundance Channel)
Producers: Philippa Campbell, Jane Campion, Iain Canning, Emile Sherman

The nominees for the documentary category were revealed in November.

The 25th Annual PGA Awards will be announced on Jan. 19th.

The last couple of days of the year were pretty electric for Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio and “The Wolf of Wall Street.” The perception out there was that they – particularly DiCaprio, who hopped on the phone with a number of outlets on Monday (including this one) – were backed into a corner and needed to defend their film against an array of accusations. The studio probably wanted the bad press tapered, but whatever the case, it’s been a bumpy road this holiday for a film some consider unequivocally the year’s best, others consider an abomination.

But here at the beginning of the year, whether Oscar and guild nominations are in the film’s future or not, there will be tribute love for the two creative forces from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Paired up, DiCaprio and Scorsese will receive the fest’s Cinema Vanguard Award on Thursday, Feb. 6 at the historic Arlington Theatre.

“Scorsese and DiCaprio’s partnership has become a legendary cinematic pas de deux recalling other great collaborations like John Ford and John Wayne, Fellini and Mastroianni, John Huston and Bogart – and even Scorsese and De Niro,” SBIFF Executive Director Roger Durling said. Indeed, and it’s a nice move to stay away from a singular honor for either and settle on tandem recognition, because five collaborations in, Scorsese and DiCaprio are clicking like a well-oiled machine. And for DiCaprio, it’s a partnership he doesn’t want to end any time soon.

“I want to do more with him and I”d love for there to be a continuation of movies we can do together,” the actor told me in 2010. “At 18 years old, I remember having a conversation with my father and we talked about opportunities that were going to come up and he said, ‘You know, there”s really one guy, if you ever get the opportunity to work for him, you have to go for it.’ So I really researched the films that he was going to do and films that he wanted to do. ‘Gangs of New York’ was something that I took a number of years of tracking and talking to his agents and saying, ‘I want to just throw my hat in the ring. If he ever wants to do this I”m there, whenever, wherever,’ and finally it came around.”

That interview was on the occasion of the thriller “Shutter Island,” the only film from the pair (so far) to miss out on Best Picture recognition from the Academy. Scorsese was filming “Hugo” at the time and found a rare – as of late – bit of down time to consider the partnership while working on a film that didn’t feature DiCaprio.

“You wouldn”t normally pursue the creative relationship if you don”t think it”s going anywhere or you think you”ve explored everything you could explore,” Scorsese told me at the time. “And in this case it seemed there was much more to explore. When I use the word explore, that means that you”re expecting to find something. And I think that”s always there when I work with Leo. That”s a process and it’s a journey and it’s very rewarding for me to have a collaborator at this stage in my life, particularly someone who is 30 years younger than me and of another generation. So I know there”s more there and I like seeing it develop. It seems that he has similar tastes and interests that I do, the stories and characters, the tone, and so we”re just not afraid to go there.”

It’s interesting re-reading those thoughts in the context of “The Wolf of Wall Street,” a film from a 71-year-old Scorsese truly revitalized and fearless in the face of the autumn of his career.

With that in mind, and getting back to the Santa Barbara honor, the Cinema Vanguard Award was created in recognition of those who have forged their own path, taking artistic risks and making a significant and unique contribution to film. On all counts, it seems DiCaprio and Scorsese – particularly in light of “The Wolf of Wall Street” – qualify and then some.

The 29th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival runs Jan. 30 – Feb. 9.

One of the year’s most complex achievements in film editing, I think, is one likely to go unrecognized at Oscar time: Eric Zumbrunnen’s meticulous cutting of “Her,” which goes a long way toward creating a convincing character and a relationship — more or less literally — out of thin air. In the last part of the LA Times’s excellent “Five Days of ‘Her'” series, Zumbrunnen discusses the challenges the film posed, notably the tricky process of replacing a key performance in post-production, as well as the decision over whether or not to feature a physical representation of Scarlett Johansson’s Samantha on screen. Fascinating stuff. [LA Times]

Conor Oberst tried out for the title role in “Inside Llewyn Davis,” apparently. [The Guardian]

David S. Cohen argues against the notion that “The Wolf of Wall Street” glorifies criminals. [Variety]

Joe Reid, meanwhile, argues that the film condemns and celebrates them, and wonders if the film’s critical defenders are a bit too aggressive. [The Wire]

Melena Ryzik profiles two Oscar-shortlisted documentaries banned in their home countries: “The Square” and “Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer.” [New York Times]

Wesley Morris joins the increasingly large anti-“Saving Mr. Banks” contingent, railing against the film’s “appalling chill.” [Grantland]

“Banks” screenwriter Kelly Marcel, meanwhile, describes the scene in the film that she found toughest to write. [Vulture]

R. Kurt Osenlund on the bright Oscar prospects of “American Hustle,” which he describes as the highlight of a year “replete with great trash.” [Slant]

Andy Hoglund on why 2013 was secretly the year of Spike Jonze. [The Film Experience]

I suppose this is an honor of sorts: the first “Hobbit” film was last year’s most-pirated title. But who knew that many people were keen to see “Gangster Squad?” [Screen Daily]

It’s been a pretty good year to be Angela Lansbury — or Dame Angela Lansbury, should you now wish to address her as such. The 88-year-old actress is the most prominent film-related name on the annual New Year Honors list — titles and citations presented by Queen Elizabeth II to those deemed worthy in any number of areas. For her services to the arts, Lansbury has been declared a DBE — or Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, if you want to get wordy about it.

Lansbury’s response to the news: “I’m joining a marvellous group of women I greatly admire like Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. It’s a lovely thing to be given that nod of approval by your own country and I really cherish it.” 

Of course, it’s not the first nod of approval Lansbury has received in 2013. In November, she received one of four Honorary Oscars allocated by the Academy this year at the annual Governors’ Awards — a less fustily prestigious honor that was a long time coming for the three-time nominee.

The Oscar and the damehood now join her record-equalling career haul of five Tony Awards on her list of accolades. (Perhaps those 18 fruitless Emmy nominations — also a record — bother her less now.) She’s not done working yet, either: she hasn’t appeared on screen since “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” two years ago, but she’ll return to the West End stage next year  in a revival of Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit,” playing the same role that won the actress her last Tony in 2009.

One other Oscar winner was recognized on the New Year Honors list: special effects supervisor Chris Corbould, who won a Best Visual Effects Oscar recently for his work on “Inception.” He was previously nominated in the category for “The Dark Knight,” while his other credits include “John Carter,” “X-Men: First Class” and no fewer than 13 Bond films, up to and including “Skyfall.” He was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his contribution to film.

Finally, composer and conductor Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was named a Companion of Honor: he’s best known as the current Master of the Queen’s Music, but received an Oscar nomination way back in 1971 for his adapted scoring work on Ken Russell’s “The Boy Friend.” (He lost to John Williams for “Fiddler on the Roof.”)

The full Honors list, should you be interested, is here.

With Emmanuel Lubezki almost certain to take the Best Cinematography Oscar for “Gravity,” few will argue that he’s well past due the award — but many will take issue with the technical implications of such FX-integrated work being recognized in such a fashion. It’s an issue that now surfaces on a near-annual basis (wins for “Avatar” and “Life of Pi,” in particular, caused a stir), and filmmaker Jamie Stuart thinks it’s time “to redefine what constitutes cinematography.” Part of that movement, he says, should be to divide the Oscar into two awards: “one for conventional live-action cinematography, and another for CGI-based filmmaking,” much as black-and-white and color work was recognized separately until 1967. He’s not the first to advocate such a change. What do you think? [Indiewire]

U2 will be honored with the Visionary Award at the Palm Springs Film Festival. Not for their contribution to film, you understand, but for their “unparalleled humanitarian work.” [Screen Daily]

Anne Thompson outlines the 10 steps it takes to get a Best Picture Oscar nomination, including some mathematical nitty-gritties. [Thompson on Hollywood]

A whole lot of movies are disappearing from Netflix tomorrow, so if you’ve been dying to stream “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” or “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” that’s your New Year’s Eve sorted. [Cinema Blend]

“Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” stars Idris Elba and Naomie Harris were both honored at the Capri Film Festival. [Variety]

Scott Feinberg profiles two ideal Academy voters: ones who watch every eligible film before voting in the foreign-language and documentary races. [Hollywood Reporter]

Swedish cinematographer Linus Sandgren talks about to process of shooting “American Hustle” — only his second U.S. feature. [Below the Line]

The LA Times’ directors’ roundtable includes Nicole Holofcener, Paul Greengrass, Steve McQueen and Spike Jonze. [LA Times]

Next year’s holiday season has arrived a tad earlier than expected.

Our first look at Ridley Scott’s “Exodus” (currently slated to hit theaters on Dec. 12, 2014) is certainly an eye-popping image, as the Biblical prophet Moses (Christian Bale) rides his horse into a scene that appears to feature an under-construction version of the Great Sphinx of Giza. Scripted by Steven Zaillian (“Moneyball,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) from an earlier draft by Bill Collage and Adam Cooper (“Accepted”), the forthcoming epic will focus on the Biblical exodus of the Israelite slaves from Egypt under Moses’s leadership. It also stars Joel Edgerton as Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II, Aaron Paul as Israeli spy Joshua, Sigourney Weaver as Ramesses’ mother Tuya, John Turturro as Ramesses’ father Seti I and Ben Kingsley as a Hebrew scholar.

“Exodus” began shooting in October. It is the second of two Biblical epics slated for release next year after Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah” starring Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman and Anthony Hopkins.

Check out the image below.

(via Empire)

“Saving Mr. Banks” is currently delighting audiences with its take on Walt Disney, P.L. Travers and the making of “Mary Poppins.” But part of the magic of the movie is the recreation of a time and place, and the individual in charge of the art department that brought that world to life is production designer Michael Corenblith.

Corenblith has worked with director John Lee Hancock since 2004’s “The Alamo,” which was a project of note at the time due to a 51-acre set that was the largest and most expensive set built in North America. Both proud natives of Texas, the two have had a deepening relationship that began on that first feature, which was a personal project for both. “It was amazing – the congruence of the way we saw,” Corenblith says with a degree of marvel. “Our processes were immediately aligned. We began to grow in depth and complexity when we collaborated on ‘The Blind Side.'”

Because of his association with Hancock, Corenblith was aware of “Saving Mr. Banks” before it had been really greenlit. When the casting process began, he was able to dig into the screenplay and start into deep background research on the film’s central characters, particularly Valerie Lawson’s biography of Travers, “Mary Poppins, She Wrote.” “I started getting foundational knowledge,” he says. “When this appeared on [Hancock]’s radar, I knew I was going to be there by his side.”

Creating the world of such an iconic figure in the film industry was a dream project for Corenblith, but also one that was more than a little intimidating and came with an enormous amount of responsibility. “I’m of a generation where when I grew up, every Sunday night we watched Walt,” he says. “Even though now I sadly realize we weren’t really in Walt’s office [when he was on TV], having grown up with that being such an important, iconic office, it was staggering what that meant when recreating it, not just to our audience but to the institutional legacy of Walt Disney. And it’s remarkable that Walt has been gone for nearly 50 years now and some people out there think that Walt Disney is a brand the way Aunt Jemima or Uncle Ben’s is a brand. The film was an opportunity to present Walt and his world.”

At the same time, however, the film is first and foremost Travers’ story, not Disney’s, and it was as important to create a personality for her with fewer sets as it was to create one for Disney with the numerous pieces that made up his larger-than-life persona. “One of the things the movie does is open in Travers’ home in London in 1960s,” Corenblith explains. “We had to tell a lot about who Travers was in a quick, opening montage. What was motivating her all this time? What was at stake for Travers?”

This required a difficult mix of conservatism and eclecticism. The film’s British producers were very attuned to what Georgian architecture would have looked like, Corenblith says, but it was equally important to add details revealing character, particularly of such a unique and creative persona as Travers.

A difficult challenge for a production designer on a film like this is the fact that in addition to recreating both London and Los Angeles of 1961, parallel stories of 1906 Australia were also being conveyed. It was important that this remain both distinct and related.

“Travers’ memories and reveries are now sort of awakened by going through and trying to write the screenplay,” he says. “In some way, I had to have stories going on separate, parallel tracks, but at the same time ensure the connection because the memories of 1906 connect to the creative process of trying to write the screenplay, present the storyboard, write the song.”

With all these macro-level challenges, the process did become simpler due to good fortune that happened to present itself. “The producers could not have been more cooperative in terms of opening their office to us,” he says, referring to the Disney studios where Walt had once spent his days. “At the same time, there was an exhibit at the Ronald Reagan Library [of Disney materials], and to our great fortune, there was a recreation of Walt’s office. It had all of his original furniture.”

Corenblith studied many of these matters with costume designer Daniel Orlandi. Recreating a particular time and place could not have worked without the entire design team being on the same page. Fundamentally, though, Corenblith attributes this to the vision that Hancock had for the project.

“It’s like playing in the world’s greatest band,” he says. “Collaborate with the writer, the costume designer, cinematographer. Everybody’s contributions are unique and add to complete picture.”

“Saving Mr. Banks” is now playing in theaters.

Martin Scorsese’s latest film, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” hit theaters over the holiday and was met with very interesting reactions. In some corners, it’s an unqualified masterpiece, willfully overt and satirical in its depiction of greed and excess. In others, it’s an irresponsible culprit that appears to be delighting in the wild ride it depicts.

For the film’s producer and star Leonardo DiCaprio, it is a bit of both, as the sheer entertainment of the piece isn’t meant to be at odds with its social indictment. That, in some ways, is the horror of it. But it certainly isn’t the first Scorsese film to cause a stir upon release and it won’t likely be the last.

DiCaprio recently spoke to HitFix about the high ambition of the project, the gobsmacked reaction it has received and how not just his work in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” but his involvement in Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” earlier this year and Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” in 2012 have all been an examination of a shared theme: pursuit of a corrupted American dream.

********

HitFix: I don’t know if you recall but we spoke after the Golden Globes last year when you were in the middle of filming “The Wolf of Wall Street” and you told me you thought it was going to be your best work. Does it feel that way now that the whole thing has finally come to fruition?

Leonardo DiCaprio: I think that at least the attempt going into it was to try to do something really outside of the box and I think Marty had the same approach. Every time we wanted to make a choice to go into a sort of traditional story structure or make choices for the characters that were things that we’ve seen in films before, we tried to do something a little different. In that regard I feel very proud of this performance. I think we took a lot of chances, and no matter what people think of the movie, we swung for the fences on this one. That’s what I’m really excited about and happy that we just had the opportunity to do, to tell you the truth, because I’ve been in this business for a long period of time and certainly when you’re doing an epic of this scale, you don’t get an opportunity to do that very often. That was in large part due to the people that were financing this, who said, “We want to take this chance. We think there’s a marketplace for something like this.” I keep referencing “Caligula” but you think about “Scarface,” films like that, I don’t know how people are going to react to it right off the bat, but I think as the years roll by people will appreciate what we were trying to do here.

Well that’s what’s interesting because, like a great many of Scorsese’s movies, this one is being met with a touch of controversy right off the bat for its depiction of excess. There are those who see it as more of an irresponsible glorification than a satirical takedown. What’s your response to that?

I think anyone who thinks that missed the boat entirely. I grew up in a generation of watching Marty’s movies and when you come from a standpoint of being someone who is so influenced by him and De Niro’s work, to hear specific reactions they had to films that, now, as the years roll by – we’re all desensitized to those things, you know what I’m saying? To hear that there were any type of reactions that weren’t – I’m not saying people should particularly praise this film for that reason, but I think it takes a while to permeate into the culture a little bit. When I see his movies now, it’s a shock to me that there was ever any kind of – I mean I listened to stories of “The Last Temptation of Christ.” I listened to stories of “Goodfellas” and “Taxi Driver” and even “Mean Streets,” but to me they’re a classic part of American cinema history that have influenced so many other filmmakers and so many other genres. It’s insane.

It’s exciting to be a part of a film, in a way, that is kind of bold and is taking a chance like that, and I think that anyone that thinks this is a celebration of Wall Street and this sort of hedonism – yes, the unique thing about Marty is that he doesn’t judge his characters. And that was something that you don’t quite understand while you’re making the movie, but he allows the freedom of this almost hypnotic, drug-infused, wild ride that these characters go on. And he allows you, as an audience – guilty or not – to enjoy in that ride without judging who these people are. Because ultimately, he keeps saying this: “Who am I to judge anybody?” I mean ultimately I think if anyone watches this movie, at the end of “Wolf of Wall Street,” they’re going to see that we’re not at all condoning this behavior. In fact we’re saying that this is something that is in our very culture and it needs to be looked at and it needs to be talked about. Because, to me, this attitude of what these characters represent in this film are ultimately everything that’s wrong with the world we live in.

It’s “warts and all.” It’s, “Here it is. Can you believe it? Can you handle it?”

It’s true, and, look, I’m going to be 40 years old, but I see the new generations – of course there are a lot of very conscious minds out there that want to do good for the world, but there’s this incessant need for consumerism and wanting more and wanting to give into every indulgence that is more rampant than ever. That shift doesn’t seem to be happening in the evolution of our species. It just seems to be getting larger and larger. So yeah, to me, look, this movie is incredibly entertaining. But what we’re talking about is, to me, a very serious subject. That’s the best way I can put it.

I spoke with Thelma Schoonmaker recently about the improvisation of the movie and how that is what ended up blowing the film up like a balloon, and then they shaved it down from there. But it was crucial to getting what you were going for. So what did that improvisation open up for you as an actor.

This is our fifth collaboration together and everything coming into the process of “Gangs of New York” was a different experience for me. I really wanted to just support Marty in making this epic about the history of New York that he had wanted to do for so long. And then through the years, we did a lot of work that I’m very proud of, but they were very beholden to a very specific plot structure – not specific plot structure but we had certain endings and certain things needed to happen from a story perspective that would culminate in that specific ending. This, we knew we weren’t taking on Shakespeare. We knew we weren’t taking on precious material. This was a character study. We were trying to capture something in the characterization of these people. So very early on, every time the screenplay or the rehearsals got to a point of taking a traditional approach, he would challenge all the actors to free things up.

It was a lot like what I remember the process was like from watching the documentaries on “The King of Comedy.” That’s really one of my favorite films that Marty’s ever done and one of the most under-appreciated films that he’s ever done. I watched a lot of the improv stuff with Jerry Lewis and De Niro. They had a pre-production sort of improv process. So then [on “Wolf”], the scenes would be sort of rewritten, all with the basic structure of what Terry wrote, but then we’d go on set and everything would just fan off into a million different directions. I think it was probably hard for them to contain all of that. I mean, sometimes we’d do certain sequences that would go for a day that we were only supposed to be there for a couple hours on, but that’s what Marty is always trying to capture and I realized that more so than ever on this film. He really is trying to find that one moment in the interaction of the characters or those few little bits of dialogue and the way the characters interact that ultimately define what the entire movie’s about. And that’s where he and Thelma are so unbelievable. They’ll sit and wade through all that improv. Thelma said she had a great time with it but it’s about finding those little gems through an entire day of actors sort of going haywire. For me, this guy, Jordan Belfort, really took on a life of its own within me as an actor. Those features that I got to do, they really were something that I never predicted they would be through this six years of thinking about them.

With all of that in mind, the quaaludes sequence is obviously going to be the scene everyone talks about with this film for years to come.

That was really through the pre-production process, too. We got together and said, “How do we up the ante of adding tension to this stuff?” Because there were three different sequences that I kind of suggested, “Let’s make this like a film within a film,” almost like that great sequence within “Goodfellas” when he’s stirring the marinara and the helicopters and the cocaine and the hat. I wanted it to be something like that. That was Marty’s favorite sequence in the movie, too. And then the Popeye thing came into play, which I thought was just the cherry on the cake.

And getting back to the sort of controversy bubbling around the film, it seems worth it to sit back in awe at a guy in his 70s who is still able to rile people up like this.

To be honest, just as an audience member, to see somebody that is this current and this vital and can get a whole new generation of people excited to go see something that is taking a lot of chances, to me, is a gift in its own right. The response that I’ve been getting from a lot of peers really makes me feel proud that he got to do a movie like this still, and that he’s still that relevant. Maybe there aren’t any directors that are still this relevant at this day and age. It’s incredible to be able to go to a movie theater and be able to see a Martin Scorsese film that is still radical like this. The guy is still swinging for the fences, which is fantastic.

I wanted to touch on Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” a bit, too, which is a film I liked quite a bit with a passion I appreciated. But it’s interesting that you’re depicting these two characters of excess – and Calvin Candie from last year’s “Django Unchained” fits, too. But these two characters this year have fascinating parallels.

Totally different motivations for the characters, but, nonetheless, you know, both characters that are from the east coast accumulating wealth in the underworld. Motivated for different reasons. Obviously we know what Gatsby was doing it for and I think Jordan was doing an entirely self-serving endeavor. And that’s what we wanted to focus on for this was having absolutely nothing that the audience could feel we were trying to create some false sense of empathy or sympathy for the character. We wanted it to be an embodiment of corporate greed in a lot of ways. The book was written by Jordan to be a cautionary tale, and it is. He looks back at this time period as a huge learning process for him and he’s been making a lot of changes in his life since.

For me, the truth is that I’ve obviously been fascinated by this subject matter. In a lot of ways I look at America and the world we live in and the world economy and it’s just surreal. Coming from where I grew up to being an observer of the massive amount of wealth that’s out there and this incessant need that people have to accumulate more and what people deem as important to them is fascinating subject matter for me. It really is. And I suppose that’s why all three of these movies have been, in a way, some sort of an indictment of that, no matter how people perceive it. Because I feel like we’re endlessly expanding. We’re endlessly accumulating more and more and there are more and more billionaires popping up every day, and you often wonder, “Okay, what is their contribution to the world?” When are we going to take that crossroads where they actually have a concern for anyone except themselves? All three of those movies, I didn’t even realize, were about Americans trying to pursue that same corrupted dream.

“The Wolf of Wall Street” is now playing in theaters.

When the shortlist of Best Foreign Language Film Oscar contenders was announced before Christmas, the dreams of 67 competing entrants were dashed in one fell swoop — an unkind cut considering the effort that goes into mounting campaigns for many of them, with no time to spare. In an interesting piece, John Anderson looks at the ins and outs of these low-profile but high-effort campaigns, particularly through those of three films — from Montenegro, Ecuador and Peru — that missed the cut. Publicist Kathleen McInnis explains why it’s worth the effort, even if you know you have no shot: “It”s also the time of year when Hollywood is paying attention to foreign film. Which means I can get my filmmaker in front of audiences who might otherwise never see his film, get him meetings with agents and managers because he was his country”s official selection. I can get him in front of people, not so much for this film, but to help other films.” [New York Times]

Chris Laverty gathers contributors and colleagues (yours truly included) to list their favorite movie costumes of 2013. [Clothes on Film]

With voting under way, Katey Rich, Mike Hogan and Richard Lawson offer some pointers to Academy voters in the top six categories. [Vanity Fair]

Devin Faraci believes “American Hustle” stands to lose a lot by winning the Best Picture Oscar. [Badass Digest]

Joe Queenan on Woody Harrelson in “Out of the Furnace” and his revival of the movie thug. [The Guardian]

Steven Gaydos bemoans the second-class status of non-American cinema in the Best Picture race. [Variety]

Spike Jonze talks about how he came to be part of “The Wolf of Wall Street.” [Vulture]

Still on “The Wolf of Wall Street,” some of Jordan Belfort’s victims weigh in with their thoughts on the film. [The Wire]

Jake Cole ranks Martin Scorsese’s entire filmography (shorts and docs included) from worst to best. [Film.com]

BAFTA nominated composer Wojciech Kilar, whose credits include “The Pianist” and — brilliantly — “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” — has passed away aged 81. [BBC News]

As we inch closer to the end of the year and one capped off by a trumped up “controversy” regarding Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street,” maybe we should all take a moment to appreciate the fact that a 71-year-old artist can still rile us so.

First and foremost, I think the dust-up over this film is symptomatic of things like satire being lost on a great many. I guess I get why someone personally vested might see the film as an endorsement of vile ways and then fire off a dubious open letter tearing it down. And of course I can understand run-of-the-mill simpletons staking out this ground, too. But it’s not as if smart people aren’t taking the film to task.

“‘Endorsing’ [is] a red herring,” New York Times critic A.O. Scott said in a recent Twitter conversation with myself and a few others. “Just as ‘satire’ is a crutch ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ partisans are leaning too hard on…I find defenses of ‘Wolf’ as unequivocally satirical unconvincing, as much wishful. Or at least [as much] projective thinking as the simple condemnations.”

Though I think the film clearly deals heavily in satire, I do partially agree with those sentiments. The film has become an extrapolation magnet for many over the last few months, I think. And things like this brouhaha, which ultimately bubbled to the surface in an Academy screening report from TheWrap that wasn’t quite news (but made for a grabby holiday headline), box out real discussions to be had. Few have really gotten into the formal elements of the film, lost in a fog of their own farts. I guess the “controversy” is simply the sexier topic.

But how boring. Scorsese is not new to controversy. Going all the way back to “Taxi Driver,” it has been a simmering threat in his work. In order to secure an “R” rating for that film, he had to desaturate the colors of the climactic shoot-out to make the bright red color of the blood less prominent. Casting a young Jodie Foster (13 years old) in the role of a prostitute who bears witness to that sequence was an equally raw nerve. Attempted Reagan assassin John Hinckley Jr. infamously obsessed on the film.

When “The Last Temptation of Christ” was released, fundamentalists lost their marbles. A Paris movie theater showing the film was burned to the ground, severely injuring many. Scorsese needed bodyguards.

“Kundun” caused quite the stir with the Chinese government, which threatened distributor Disney’s access to the ever-growing China market (after Universal – which distributed “Last Temptation” and had likely had its fill – declined the opportunity to distribute the film). Scorsese, screenwriter Melissa Mathison and others involved with the production were banned from ever returning to the country, and there are even those who surmise the film played a significant role in the firing of then-Disney president Michael Ovitz.

And by the way, “The Wolf of Wall Street” isn’t the first Scorsese Academy screening to draw jeers from the crowd. “Casino” was met with the same kind of heated tongue lashing at its screening nearly 20 years ago.

“Marty hates doing things that are politically correct or expected,” Scorsese’s longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker told me in a recent interview. “He absolutely hates cliché. And because he wants the audience to decide about the film, he doesn’t want them being told what to think, which too many films, I think, are doing, frankly. They just throw things out there. They don’t make you believe it. That’s anathema to him.”

Those final points provide – or should provide – plenty of insight into Scorsese’s intentions with a film like “The Wolf of Wall Street.” The very idea of “intention” starts to fade away. The work as a Rorschach becomes its significance. If your response to the debauchery on display in “The Wolf of Wall Street” is an adrenaline-laced sense of euphoria, perhaps you checked your brain at the door (and that’s a point Scott made unequivocally in his review of the film, by the way). But more importantly, has Scorsese’s track record not afforded him the benefit of the doubt where ambiguity in the text of his work is concerned? Apparently not.

(NOTE: “Wolf of Wall Street” SPOILERS in the next paragraph.)

“Some audiences cheered Travis’ rampage in ‘Taxi Driver’; [the film is] not ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ anything,” film critic Matt Zoller Seitz said in the aforementioned Twitter discussion. To which Scott, rather stunningly, asserted: “I’m not sure those audiences were ‘wrong’ with regard to [that] film’s intentions. Same when audiences laugh at Naomi’s humiliation by the security cam or cheer Jordan’s abuse [in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’].”

I don’t quite know how to come at that one. But on that last bit, there is the question of misogyny in the film. “Critics who see misogyny not just depicted but enacted are not deluded, prudish or failing to ‘get it,'” Scott said. Perhaps not but they seem to be married to an interpretation that doesn’t hold a lot of water in light of Scorsese’s history.

I don’t think “The Wolf of Wall Street” is the great masterpiece some of my colleagues do, and I certainly don’t think it’s the abysmal, misshapen joke others do. I think it’s somewhere in between, clearly made by an analytical artist with something to say (and at three hours, somehow not enough time to say it). But the controversy surrounding it, however overstated it may well be, probably says more about us than it does the film.

So how’s this for an extrapolation: perhaps that was the point.

“The Wolf of Wall Street” is now playing in theaters.

As the year ticks to a close, the Central Ohio Film Critics Association has collectively spoken up with its list of nominees, and “12 Years a Slave” led the way with nine mentions. “Her” was a few steps behind with seven. Actors recognized for superlative bodies of work in 2013 include Amy Adams, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jennifer Lawrence. Check out the full list of nominees below and remember to keep track of all the ups and downs of the season via The Circuit.

Best Film
“American Hustle”
“Before Midnight”
“Frances Ha”
“Gravity”
“Her”
“Inside Llewyn Davis”
“Nebraska”
“12 Years a Slave”
“Upstream Color”
“The Wolf of Wall Street”

Best Director
Alfonso Cuarón, “Gravity”
Spike Jonze, “Her”
Steve McQueen, “12 Years a Slave”
Alexander Payne, “Nebraska”
David O. Russell, “American Hustle”
Martin Scorsese, “The Wolf of Wall Street”

Best Actor
Chiwetel Ejiofor, “12 Years a Slave”
Tom Hanks, “Captain Phillips”
Michael B. Jordan, “Fruitvale Station”
Matthew McConaughey, “Dallas Buyers Club”
Joaquin Phoenix, “Her”

Best Actress
Amy Adams, “American Hustle”
Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine”
Adèle Exarchopoulos, “Blue is the Warmest Color”
Greta Gerwig, “Frances Ha”
Brie Larson, “Short Term 12”

Best Supporting Actor
Barkhad Abdi, “Captain Phillips”
Michael Fassbender, “12 Years a Slave”
James Franco, “Spring Breakers”
Jonah Hill, “The Wolf of Wall Street”
Jared Leto, “Dallas Buyers Club”

Best Supporting Actress
Scarlett Johansson, “Her”
Jennifer Lawrence, “American Hustle”
Lupita Nyong’o, “12 Years a Slave”
Julia Roberts, “August: Osage County”
June Squibb, “Nebraska”

Best Adapted Screenplay
“Before Midnight”
“Captain Phillips”
“The Spectacular Now”
“12 Years a Slave”
“The Wolf of Wall Street”

Best Original Screenplay
“American Hustle”
“Her”
“Inside Llewyn Davis”
“Nebraska”
“Short Term 12”

Best Cinematography
“Gravity”
“Her”
“Inside Llewyn Davis”
“Spring Breakers”
“12 Years a Slave”
“Upstream Color”

Best Score
“Gravity”
“Her”
“Nebraska”
“Saving Mr. Banks”
“12 Years a Slave”

Best Animated Film
“The Croods”
“Despicable Me 2”
“Frozen”
“Monsters University”
“The Wind Rises”

Best Documentary
“The Act of Killing”
“Blackfish”
“Leviathan”
“Room 237”
“Stories We Tell”
“20 Feet from Stardom”

Best Foreign Language Film
“Beyond the Hills”
“Blue is the Warmest Color”
“The Grandmaster”
“The Hunt”
“The Wind Rises”

Best Ensemble
“American Hustle”
“Nebraska”
“Short Term 12”
“12 Years a Slave”
“The Wolf of Wall Street”

Best Overlooked Film
“Mud”
“Short Term 12”
“The Spectacular Now”
“Stoker”

Actor of the Year (for an exemplary body of work)
Amy Adams (“American Hustle,” “Her,” “Man of Steel”)
Benedict Cumberbatch (“August: Osage County,” “The Fifth Estate,” “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” “Star Trek Into Darkness,” “12 Years a Slave”)
Leonardo DiCaprio (“The Great Gatsby,” “The Wolf of Wall Street”)
Jennifer Lawrence (“American Hustle,” “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”)
Matthew McConaughey (“Dallas Buyers Club,” “Mud,” “The Wolf of Wall Street”)

Breakthrough Film Artist
Lake Bell, “In a World…” (actress, director, screenwriter)
Ryan Coogler, “Fruitvale Station” (director, screenwriter)
Destin Cretton, “Short Term 12” (director, screenwriter)
Adèle Exarchopoulos, “Blue is the Warmest Color” (actress)
Brie Larson, “Don Jon,” “The Spectacular Now,” “Short Term 12” (actress)

This has been an exceptional year for a certain breed of acting, I’ve found. There has been a wave of unaffected work, eschewing capital “A” acting for a certain lived-in thing that is rare enough as it is, let alone prevalent throughout a year’s greatest performances.

I wanted to pay some tribute to that, and to a number of more outwardly vibrant portraits this year that also go toward making it an exemplary year. It has been said a few times that 2013 has been a great year for movies, but that quality is owed in no small part to the work we saw on the screen.

Before we get to the best of the best, though, there are a couple of performances that didn’t make it that I’d like to spotlight here. The charismatic determination of Matthew McConaughey in both “Dallas Buyers Club” and “Mud,” for instance, or the colorful caricature James Franco offers in “Spring Breakers” that nevertheless hints at some deep sadness. The voice-only passion of Scarlett Johansson in “Her” deserves mention, as does the textbook comedic precision of Emma Thompson in “Saving Mr. Banks” and the startling confidence of Miles Teller in “The Spectacular Now.”

Bruce Dern in “Nebraska,” Forest Whitaker in “Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” Barkhad Abdi in “Captain Phillips,” all portraits of quiet grace, to say nothing of the brilliant tandem of Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux in “Blue is the Warmest Color.” And the moving builds offered by Veerle Baetens in “The Broken Circle Breakdown,” Paulina Garcia in “Gloria” and Lupita Nyong’o in “12 Years a Slave” are right up there, too.

And frankly, there are plenty more. I could honestly go on. It was an embarrassment of riches, and a wide variety of them, at that.

Click through the gallery story below for my alphabetical, unranked list of the cream of the crop. It’s unranked because I couldn’t possibly order these apples and oranges. Frankly, in the collective, they just have more power as an overall argument for a stellar year. Fell free to chalk up your favorites in the comments section.

Nearly three decades ago, two young Minnesotans named Joel and Ethan Coen went down to Texas to shoot a film called “Blood Simple.” It was their first feature. And to use a cliché, “the rest is history.” But they were not the only artists making their debuts on that film who would later go on to become staples in the American film industry. Actress Frances McDormand, sound designer Lee Orloff, cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld, composer Carter Burwell, sound editor Skip Lievsay and boom operator Peter Kurland also cut their teeth on “Blood Simple.”

Lievsay, now sound re-recording mixer and supervising sound editor, and Kurland, now production sound mixer, have worked with the Coens on every feature film the siblings have made since then, the most recent of which, “Inside Llewyn Davis,” is a sound showcase.

But as is often the case in this industry, both Lievsay and Kurland found their way to their careers in very unlikely ways. Kurland had just a small degree of sound and theatre experience in high school when he was hired as a production assistant on a production in Nashville where help was needed in the sound department.

“It wasn’t my first choice,” he admits. “My wife was also on that project. And she got hired to go down to Texas to work on ‘Blood Simple,’ and because I had a couple of weeks experience, that opened a door to at least look for that gap on the ‘Blood Simple’ crew.”

That gap was in the position of boom operator, and three decades of sound work for the Coens has followed. “Virtually everyone I’ve worked with came from that first shoot down in Texas,” he says.

Lievsay’s journey began in a much different field. “I wanted to be an architect and I was working as a field engineer and a surveyor when I was young,” he says. “The recession in the ’70s made that a bad idea.” The transition to movies came as Lievsay thought he could maybe build sets for commercials. “I understood that maybe they made some movies there but I didn’t know about it,” he says. “I met some nice people and one of those people I met early on introduced me to Joel and Ethan. And I could not have been more fortunate.”

The family idea, Lievsay says, is very important to the Coens. It’s very rewarding to be a part of a “gang” as production as they are, working at such a high level and with such high ambitions. “There is an idea we’re really trying to do our best all the time and do something special whenever we can,” he says. “And the comfort is that they know that and they’re very grateful for the relationship and the contributions. It makes the whole thing fantastic and very rewarding.”

Despite numerous players working consistently with the Coens in this period, Lievsay and Kurland have an especially close relationship. And even though the two sound artists do not work together on a day-to-day basis (due to their different roles), they remain two of the only people who have worked with the Coens on every single one of their feature films.

“Skip and I are friends and we talk on a frequent basis,” Kurland says. “I’m not involved in the overall soundtrack, though I need to make sure I provide what he needs. We try to plan that out as much as possible.”

Music is always important to a sound mixer’s work, leading to Carter Burwell being an important player that both Kurland and Lievsay cite. While Burwell was not involved on “Inside Llewyn Davis,” 15 years ago, a particularly important new player emerged on the sound team: T Bone Burnett. Involved as the musical archivist on “The Big Lebowski,” Burnett’s talent was on display for the world to see on “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” He has since also collaborated with the Coens on “The Ladykillers” and “Inside Llewyn Davis.” Kurland, however, also worked with Burnett on James Mangold’s “Walk the Line.”

“‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ is, for me, kind of the culmination of that,” Kurland says. “T Bone has ways he likes to work. I’ve gotten to understand him and he’s gotten to trust me. It involves getting together with him in advance and figuring out how to go about certain things.”

As production sound mixer, Kurland ends up being on the set virtually the whole time, which he admits is “the part of the process I really like.” On “Inside Llewyn Davis,” therefore, this presented a significant challenge in capturing the musical performances, which were filmed live. “The amazing talent and skills of Oscar Isaac in addition to the work that T Bone had done allowed us to capture his performance without forcing anything on it in the way of technology,” Kurland says, noting that the goal was to create as full and real a Llewyn Davis as possible. “I hope that helped his performance,” he says.

As sound re-recording mixer and supervising sound editor, Lievsay started working when shooting was done, and he’s obviously quite used to the Coens’ routine. “After shooting they take a little vacation and then Roderick starts cutting and [the sound crew] start behind them.” (Note: Lievsay refers to Roderick Jaynes, the pseudonym under which the Coens edit their films, as a real person.)

And like all the other collaborators, Lievsay was on the same page as it pertained to the best way to convey the music of the film. “Joel, Ethan, T Bone, Peter Kurland and I wanted to take a live take – people actually singing and playing their instruments in front of the camera,” he says. “The question was how best to get good recordings, live recordings. Everyone needed to make sure locations were quiet and serviceable for that purpose. In some cases, Oscar played the guitar and sang. In other cases, we tried to get the voices and muted the guitar sounds, and gave them a guitar recording so they could have pitch and tempo to sing against.”

One of the biggest challenges was taking multiple angles and takes and making them match well enough in pitch, tempo and phrasing, Kurland says. “We sat offscreen, T Bone with his stopwatchl and that all was really smooth,” he recalls. “There were a couple of other pieces – ‘Please Mr. Kennedy’ was one of them – that were a little more technologically complicated because there were three singers and each person was going to be live. Those required a bit more technical planning and I was very pleased with how well it ended up.”

Lievsay notes that on a very superficial level, the sound mixing of a musical is easier as “the focus is so obvious so all you need to do is organize some high-quality tracks. T Bone and his crew and all the very talented performers did a great job. It became a sort of mechanical effort to do a little trickery and make sure it all looked like it was happening simultaneously.”

Kurland adds that the biggest challenge for him was “to not panic about the live performances. It’s difficult to phrase this in a good way but it did feel a little bit like new territory. And that meant a lot of preparation. For The Gaslight, we had to make sure the place was quiet. Every set had to have some prep work done to it. So that was probably the big challenge. But there are always things I haven’t done. Every day is a whole new experiment. There were a couple of songs in ‘Walk the Line’ and ‘O Brother’ that we did live, but never to the extent that we did this. Whole spots of the movie were whole live recordings without any clipped tracks. Every movie presents its own situation.”

He also surmises that sound is a big part of the Coens’ writing process. When you read their scripts, “they’ve clearly thought through the sound element just as much as the visuals,” he says. “They have an idea of what’s beyond the page and how they want the sound to turn out.”

“Inside Llewyn Davis” is the third Coen brothers film in the past six years that is receiving awards talk for its sound work, after “No Country for Old Men” and “True Grit.” Kurland has been nominated for both these films (as well as “Walk the Line”), while Lievsay has been nominated twice for each title. How does this awards attention feel after decades in the industry?

“They’re all movies I’m really proud of,” Kurland says. “To be recognized by both my peers and people I have tremendous respect for – the Academy and CAS and BAFTA voters – that’s very meaningful for me.”

To him, this represents a happy medium between stardom and recognition that he appreciates. He concedes his work is “relatively anonymous to the great movie-going public, but it’s not totally anonymous to those people who are aware of how movies are made. As much as I’m not looking to be rich and famous, I do appreciate the recognition from my peers. I enjoy watching other people’s movies that are excellent. There’s only ever one production sound mixer on a movie and then I get to hang around [in awards season] with the other mixers who’ve been nominated for other projects. That’s really been fun.”

“Inside Llewyn Davis” is now playing in theaters.

Talking with Thelma Schoonmaker recently, it became quickly apparent that I wasn’t even going to scratch the surface of her career’s work with Martin Scorsese in a single piece. I couldn’t help but play the retrospective game with her, and while I of course didn’t address all 19 feature collaborations, I was curious about six films in particular that I think represent a nice cross-section of their work together. Each of them – “Who’s That Knocking At My Door,” “Raging Bull,” “The Last Temptation of Christ,” “Goodfellas,” “Bringing Out the Dead” and “The Departed” – has received its own space in the last few days.

My favorite is “Goodfellas.” I say it without hesitation. Martin Scorsese has given us some of the most innervating imagery in the history of cinema, carefully assembled by his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker nearly every step of the way. But “Goodfellas” was a pop cultural landmark, a wildly colorful portrait, a strong thematic treatise on the impact of crime on the family and soul.

Perhaps for those reasons, Scorsese’s latest, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” has found itself compared to the 1990 mafia film quite a bit recently. Leonardo DiCaprio himself has noted that one particular outrageous scene from the new film reminded him of the “cocaine and helicopters” sequence from “Goodfellas,” that wonderful, Harry Nilsson and Rolling Stones-laced burst of paranoia that begins to draw the film to a close. “He’s somebody that’s able to sort of encapsulate the underworld with such authenticity and bring such humor to these characters,” DiCaprio said of the director recently, before noting that Scorsese told him “Goodfellas” was originally supposed to be a comedy (which “Wolf” unequivocally is). And indeed, there is just enough levity to balance out the wickedness to put a smile on your face throughout both films.

And it’s such a tight drum. Even at 148 minutes, it flies by (and some might say the same of “Wolf”). It’s incredibly assured and still constantly surprising. And the whole thing found itself with a quickness, Schoonmaker says.

“You just felt like you were working with pure gold,” she says. “‘Raging Bull’ didn’t come together quickly because Bob was gaining weight two times. We shot him first at his fighting weight, then later the middle weight, and in between we were cutting as he was eating his way through Italy. So that one took a long time. But ‘Goodfellas’ came together quite quickly.”

Nevertheless, getting to that place was very much a chore. As with a great many of Scorsese’s movies, he had a hard time selling the movie to the suits. They kept telling him to cut out the drug elements, but of course, he couldn’t possibly do that. That was the whole movie to him, the downward spiral into that world. Without it, it wouldn’t have been “Goodfellas.”

Schoonmaker told her husband, director Michael Powell, about these troubles. Scorsese was hugely influenced by Powell’s work. He resurrected the “Red Shoes” director’s career and brought his films back to the world, and he also introduced Powell to Schoonmaker. So theirs was a close connection.

“He was very upset to hear that Marty was not able to do something he cared deeply about,” Schoonmaker recalls. “So he said, ‘Read me the script.’ So I read it to him and he said, ‘Get Marty on the phone,’ and I did. And he said, ‘Marty, you have to make this movie. This is the best script I’ve read in 20 years.’ Marty went back in one more time and finally sold it.”

It was sweet victory. But unfortunately, Powell, who was suffering from cancer, would not live see the film. Scorsese shut down production as Schoonmaker took her husband home to die in England, but having given him the encouragement to see the film through, Powell ensured the immortality of a modern classic. After all, who can imagine a world without “Goodfellas?”

“It’s emotionally quite a powerful film for me, aside from the content,” Schoonmaker says. “I wish he’d seen it because he really just gave Marty the hope to try one more time. He had just been turned down so many times, and look at what’s happened.”

The truthfulness of the film, Schoonmaker says, is the power of it. “Marty hates doing things that are politically correct or expected,” she says. “He absolutely hates cliché. And because he wants the audience to decide about the film, he doesn’t want them being told what to think, which too many films, I think, are doing, frankly. They just throw things out there. They don’t make you believe it. That’s anathema to him.”

More importantly, Scorsese has never forgotten to be the audience when he observes his own work. He told Schoonmaker once that he learned a tremendous amount about filmmaking from sitting with his teenage friends, watching Hollywood movies and taking note of when they would laugh at things they simply didn’t believe, or that were done badly.

“So when he’s watching his dailies, he is watching them as the audience,” she says. “It’s so great to be working with someone with such high standards all the time. On the set, in the editing room, the choice of music, the way it’s mixed, all the way through to the end, he’s very tough on himself.”

And speaking of that “cocaine and helicopters” sequence that DiCaprio mentioned, it’s clearly one of the great scenes in modern cinema. At nearly seven minutes, it captures and conveys so much and is almost the identity of the film itself. But it’s interesting because Schoonmaker feels as though it may have had a hand in popularizing the breed of frantic editing she decried in our longer Q&A.

“We wanted it to be jagged and raw and driving, frenetic,” she says. “We kept saying we could make it faster, we could make it faster, faster, faster. And I think, in a way, it sort of started this whole jump cut idea of cutting now that’s taken over a little bit too much.”

Much like that scene, “Goodfellas” was a fast-moving, driving force one it finally got the green light. “It was like we were riding a horse, that film,” Schoonmaker says. “It knew where it was going. Nick Pileggi had written the book and when Marty wrote the script, we dropped one little tiny scene, the boy learning to drink espresso. That’s it. It was stunning. And everyone just loves that movie. People tell me in video stores – when there were video stores – that families would come in and when they couldn’t agree on something, they would all say, ‘Let’s watch ‘Goodfellas.” And often the mother would be the one!”

CONCLUSION: I wanted to add an addendum at the end of this series, which I hope you have enjoyed over the holiday. I didn’t know if I would actually get around to all of this with travel and family, etc., but every time I sat down to write each piece over the last few days, diving into the film-specific quotes and conveying a legend’s perspective on a master filmmaker’s work, it totally kept me going. It was hugely enlightening every step of the way, like the best kind of film school, and I hope you’ve found as much value in it as I have. In case you missed the series, check out the links to each below.

“Who’s That Knocking At My Door” (12/21)
“The Departed” (12/22)
“Raging Bull” (12/23)
“Bringing Out the Dead” (12/24)
“The Last Temptation of Christ” (12/25)

Don’t forget to read our longer interview with Schoonmaker about “The Wolf of Wall Street” and its place in the grander scheme of her career’s work with Scorsese.

“The Wolf of Wall Street” is now playing in theaters everywhere.

There’s been much talk  about how this stands to be a banner year for black-themed film and black artists at the Oscars — though how much does that reflect any kind of industry upswing? Not enough, writes John Horn: “A few weeks of feel-good inclusion can’t alter the more troubling fact that opportunities for people of color remain scarce and that, for all of the Academy Award interest these directors and actors are receiving, Hollywood ultimately will judge their value using the only yardstick it believes matters: box-office performance.” He goes on to list the hard facts and stats that need improving on the racial and gender front; not to kill the holiday mood, but a good read. [LA Times] 

“Identity Thief” and “The Heat” were the two most-rented titles of 2013. Still think Melissa McCarthy needs a new agent, Alliance of Woman Film Journalists? [The Playlist]

Tim Gray wonders why “Lone Survivor” isn’t getting more awards attention. [Variety]

A Forbes study shows that young women like Emma Stone and Jennifer Lawrence are Hollywood’s “best value” movie stars. Most underpaid, in other words? [Forbes] 

Glenn Dunks looks back on the year in queer cinema, from “Blue is the Warmest Color” to “Philomena.” [Junkee]

Nathaniel Rogers debates the wisdom of nominating (or not nominating) “Gravity” for Best Original Screenplay. [The Film Experience]

Chris Willman lists the year’s best movie-music moments, from “Spring Breakers” to “The Broken Circle Breakdown.” [Hollywood Reporter]

On the age of ’80s male power dressing, as evoked by Sandy Powell in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” [New York Times]

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4911817642001

“Nebraska” star Bruce Dern has said the same thing all season when the conversation has inevitably turned to his personal history as an actor: “I knew if you wanted to be an actor, you had to do three things. You had to go to New York, you had to try to get into the Actors Studio, and you had to work for Mr. Kazan.”

He pulled all that off and tomorrow he gets a bit of a homecoming as he and daughter Laura will be appearing on Bravo’s “Inside the Actors Studio” with James Lipton. The episode will air at 7pm ET/PT.

Paramount has provided us with an exclusive clip from the discussion in advance of the airing. In it you can hear Dern explain the backstory he cooked up for the character of Woody Grant in the film, how he put some of his own track racing background into the character, and how, above all, he wanted their to be notes of fairness in Woody’s dealings with and understanding of the world.

“When you cross the Mississippi and go west in America, two things become apparent: honesty and fairness,” Dern says in the clip. “That’s what I felt Woody was.”

Check out more in the clip embedded at the top of this post.

He kept us waiting, but it’s finally heeeeeere: for a time, it seemed that Martin Scorsese’s long, crazed trip through the stock-market hedonism of the 80s and early 90s might not manage a 2013 release at all, but it’s now in theaters as the year’s most deliciously inappropriate Christmas gift. It was such a late arrival that I still haven’t got a bead on the critical consensus, though it already has a number of fiercely devoted admirers — including HitFix’s Drew McWeeny, while you can read Kris’s early reaction here.

I’m still sorting out my feelings about it: it’s certainly a frenzied blast of energy, and I was more stimulated than I was by Scorsese’s last two films. At the same time, however, I wasn’t left with much when the circus was over: its moral stance, such as it is, is laid out early on, leaving us jogging furiously in place for three hours. Largely the point, no doubt, but still. Anyway, we’re curious to know how you land on this one: share your thoughts here, and vote in the poll below.