I held off on this one until the film made its way out into wider release, which it did on Friday. I’m very eager to know what readers think of the Coen brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis,” which was my #3 film of the year and just a rich experience that delivers more and more upon subsequent viewings. The work from T Bone Burnett on the soundtrack, curating a spectacular, thematically relevant assortment of period songs and then producing gorgeous new renditions is the kind of thing that deserves its own category. And Oscar Isaac delivers the year’s best performance, one I delighted in mulling over in my lengthy interview with the actor. I could really go on, but again, I want to know what you all thought, so when you get around to seeing the film, tell us what you thought in the comments section below and vote in our poll. (Also, if you happened to catch the “Another Day, Another Time” concert documentary on the film, which T Bone Burnett discussed with us here, tell us what you thought of that, too.)

Lots of drama — certainly in the pages of LA Weekly — met the release of “Saving Mr. Banks,” though certainly the studio ought to have known it was coming. A whitewashing of history? A self-glorification that avoids the nuance? Yeah, that’s all in there. It’s a Disney product romanticizing a Disney product. What’s to be expected? I found the film charming and Emma Thompson to be wonderful but it’s really just cotton candy for me this season. And it’s now in theaters for your judgment, so if you’ve gotten around to it, tell us your thoughts in the comments section and feel free to vote in our poll.

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” – will get its own space in the next few days.

(“The Departed” SPOILERS throughout.)

In 2006, Martin Scorsese was coming off a pair of prestige – some might say Oscar-baiting – efforts in “Gangs of New York” and “The Aviator,” films no less exemplary in his portfolio for their place in the season. Each, however, failed to bring the legend his first Academy Award, surely disappointing for Harvey Weinstein and Miramax Films at the time. It wasn’t until “The Departed” and a shrewdly unassuming non-campaign campaign from Warner Bros. that Scorsese would finally pick up his hardware.

Thelma Schoonmaker landed her third Oscar for film editing to date for her work on the crime drama, an early signifier that evening that a very tight and unpredictable race might well fall Scorsese’s way. Upon accepting the award she called the career-long collaboration “tumultuous, passionate [and] funny,” and that had to be specifically the case on a film like “The Departed,” which seemed to have such energy, as if the director were free of some unseen shackles, delighting in remake territory with low stakes but a lot of artistic courage.

“At that point political correctness was sort of really becoming the thing, and Marty said, ‘I want to make a politically incorrect movie,'” Schoonmaker recalls.

The editor had a big board in front of her laying out the various elements of the film and the over-arching framework of the story. But that framework changed frequently. It was a film truly shaped by the post-production, and throughout its bulky 160-minute running time, the viewer is consistently confronted by flourishes of unencumbered editorial passion. Whole sequences mesh with others in what plays out at times like a symphony of moments and events, strung together with typically exciting (and excited) song choices.

“We had to struggle with that movie,” Schoonmaker says. “We had a lot of writing problems and structural problems, but that happens on a lot of films and that’s part of your job. Restructuring it helped. We pulled up the love affair and things like that. In ‘Kundun’ we pulled up the Chinese invasion. Things like that you have to do as an editor. It’s part of the job.”

The process made for a very loose and caffeinated edit, but some of that looseness also came as a result of something Schoonmaker has dealt with a number of times on Scorsese films over the years, most recently on “The Wolf of Wall Street”: improvisation.

“For Leo it was hard because Jack [Nicholson] was unpredictable,” Schoonmaker says. “That scene where he goes into the restaurant alone with him and he sort of accuses him of being a rat, Leo had no idea what was going to happen and he was just flying by the seat of his pants, hoping he could hang in there with Jack. Marty didn’t know what Jack was going to do. He pulls the gun on him, he burns the tablecloth, and poor Leo is sitting there trying to react to all of this! So the first take was the best because he was really reacting to it.”

The film had to be test screened for audiences, a thorn in many a filmmaker’s side but a particular bone of contention for Scorsese. However, Schoonmaker recalls one such screening in Chicago that couldn’t have gone better in their wildest imaginations.

“He was mumbling and grumbling,” she says. “But then the audience was just going with the movie. The stripping away of the DiCaprio character was so unexpected and sudden and powerful. There was this wonderful woman who reacted when he gets shot. I mean, her reaction was unbelievable. And then when Matt Damon gets shot she says, ‘That’s what I’m talking about!’ Marty and I were just sitting there, ‘Oh my God. It works!’

“It’s so terrifying, those things,” she continues. “We’ve had bad ones. We had a really bad one on ‘The Age of Innocence.’ So bad. And the studio head was great. It was Mark Canton. He said, ‘This is the wrong audience. We recruited the wrong audience. Go back and work on it and forget about it.’ I must say that was wonderful. They can be brutal, you know. They say it’s just for marketing but the film is not ready to be shown! It’s torture for us.”

Nevertheless, the film went on to win four Oscars, for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing. And upon receiving the directing trophy from industry buds Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, Scorsese made sure to thank his “old, good friend Thelma Schoonmaker.”

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” opens on Christmas Day.

This holiday season brings with it all the debauchery, crookedness, triumph and tragedy of Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street.” And all of those characteristics and more are exemplified by Leonardo DiCaprio’s full-bodied, committed performance as conniving scumbag Jordan Belfort, the latest in a long line of impressive big screen portrayals from the actor.

With that in mind, it seemed like a great opportunity to look back at DiCaprio’s work over the last two decades and surmise his greatest performances. He has really run the gamut throughout the years, always surprising, and often an Oscar bridesmaid, perhaps because his is a talent many take for granted. Guy and I put our heads together to come up with the 10 best examples of that work to date, so click through the gallery story below for our thoughts on each, and feel free to offer up your own favorites in the comments section.

“The Wolf of Wall Street” opens Christmas Day.

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” – will get its own space in the next few days.

If you go back and look at “Who’s That Knocking At My Door” now, the first collaboration between director Martin Scorsese and his long-time film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, you’ll see a movie at once alive with the verve of a fresh film school talent and assured with the control of a filmmaker making his way into art as a profession. A cross-fade image of Zina Bethune’s smitten face over an aerial shot of Harvey Keitel recalling an amusing anecdote punch-lined by his character’s world view feels of a piece with a studied understanding throughout of the cinema form. And that makes some sense, for “Who’s That Knocking” is a tale of two movies.

Scorsese filmed much of the black and white effort as an NYU student short film in 1965 on a misframed 35mm Mitchell Camera. After graduating, Scorsese and a ragtag crew, including Schoonmaker, came together to shoot more elements, which were added to the short and fleshed it out into the (later re-titled) feature length film “I Call First.” The film premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival in 1967, and it was there that a young Roger Ebert, Schoonmaker recalls, perhaps helped set Scorsese’s career in motion.

“He was the person who saw that and said, ‘Ah, this is a great new talent,'” Schoonmaker recalls. “And he was a tremendous supporter of it.”

When Ebert formally reviewed the film for the Chicago Sun-Times in March of 1969, he was measured in his enthusiasm, noting “serious structural flaws” and “a melodramatic hand” when necessary. But on the whole he was eager to see what Scorsese would do next, acutely aware of what was clearly a vital new voice in American independent cinema.

“The movies, in their compulsion to be contemporary, too often give us an unreal picture of ‘swinging youth,'” Ebert wrote. “We get discotheques, anti-establishment cliches, New London fashions and Christopher Jones being cooler at 21 than we hope to be by 50. If we like these films, it is because we identify with them–not because they understand us. In ‘Who’s That Knocking,’ Scorsese deals with young manhood on a much more truthful level.”

It was promise that excited him so. And that promise wasn’t lost on Schoonmaker and Scorsese’s fellow classmates even years earlier. “If you see Marty’s student films, like ‘It’s Not Just You, Murray!,’ you’ll see why we could see right away he had it,” she says. “The first shot, the camera is on the floor and a hand comes in and guides it up and the guy starts talking to the camera. It’s just brilliant, great humor.”

Schoonmaker says it was a crew of seven who came together to complete “Who’s That Knocking” basically “at cost,” because certainly no one was being paid. “I would drive the car with the cameraman on the front for a dolly shot and I learned to tie into power sources in the basement,” she recalls. “They said to bend your knees because if you get the jolt then you’ll collapse and that’ll break the connection! You know, I would get the lunch, I would edit the movie. It was a great time when all of us were constantly occupied. And then the editing, I was learning. I was learning, learning, learning. I think it’s got some real seminal Scorsese in it.”

Indeed, much of Scorsese’s (and Schoonmaker’s) voice, much of his world view as an artist, certainly much of his aesthetic, can be traced right back to that first collaboration. The seeds of a hugely influential talent are being planted right before your eyes in glorious black and white. But of course, at the time, it was just the excitement of the job that made for all the drive in the world. And to have someone like Ebert speak up for it was very special, because “not many other people did,” Schoonmaker says. “But then, we started getting used to that, our films not being recognized in their time. Fortunately ‘Aviator’ and ‘Departed’ did very well; that was a bit of a change. Marty’s agent told him how much his films have made over the years and it’s quite a bit of money, but it doesn’t ever feel like that to us!”

Then again, that kind of thing keeps one honest as an artist, no?

“Absolutely,” Schoonmaker replies. “They have to make money so we can survive, but that’s not why we do it.”

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” opens on Christmas Day.

The Academy caught me off guard yesterday when it announced the nine finalists for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar — I’m used to that news landing in January, and hadn’t even thought to serve up any shortlist speculation or predictions. Which is just as well, since after a few years of sussing out most of their choices in advance, I’d probably have been far wide of the mark this time round. Already, three of the films I was predicting in the sidebar as eventual nominees — Chilean crowdpleaser “Gloria,” Canadian charmer “Gabrielle” and Saudi Arabian milestone “Wadjda” — failed to make the cut.

Of course, reducing 76 films to nine in one fell swoop is always going to be a very unkind cut, and the high-profile omissions didn’t end there. I was less surprised than most that Asghar Farhadi’s “The Past” missed the cut: outmoded as the idea is, the Academy still likes to think of this as a national competition, and I always suspected that Iran submitting a wholly European production (despite Farhadi’s insistence on its Iranian spirit) might prove a sticking point for some. (Of course, maybe it wasn’t; perhaps voters simply weren’t that jazzed about the film itself.)

Though they were always less certain prospects, I was disappointed for Romania’s riveting Berlinale champ “Child’s Pose” and Brazil’s hypnotic, formally inventive “Neighboring Sounds,” while two provocations from the Cannes competition — The Netherlands’ “Borgman” and Mexico’s “Heli” — were wildly long shots that would certainly have spiced up the shortlist. Australia, meanwhile, was foiled again, despite picking another contender (the whimsical child-led survival drama “The Rocket”) that ticked any number of Academy boxes.

Still, the films that didn’t get shortlisted this year are, on balance, more surprising than those that did. Looking at the shortlist the Academy has compiled, it’s easy to see how most of the selections would have found devoted pockets of support in this branch — while a film like Demark’s “The Hunt” was a sure thing all along. (The surprising outliers, to me, are Bosnia’s “An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker” and Cambodia’s “The Missing Picture” — both innovative semi-documentary contenders that I would bet were among the three titles added to the shortlist by the branch’s more discerning executive committee.)

What, then, are the nine finalists, and where did they come from? Given that I’m in the unusual (for me) position of having already seen eight of the films — Germany’s very baity-sounding “Two Lives” is the exception — I thought this a good opportunity to take a closer look at the contenders left standing, and roughly guesstimate their chances. Click through the gallery below, and share your own thoughts, favorites and predictions in the comments.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – Film editor Thelma Schoonmaker has been with Martin Scorsese since the beginning. Their collaboration, which extends over 19 feature films, a handful of shorts and even a Michael Jackson music video, has made for some of the richest, purest, most alive American cinema in history, and “The Wolf of Wall Street,” opening next week, is just another notch on that belt.

I recently sat down with Schoonmaker to discuss all of that and more, and I don’t mind saying, I couldn’t help but gush. Anyone with a passion for cinema, I imagine, will fight the urge to bow at the feet of a woman like this, who has been such a consistent force behind some of the most indelible film imagery of our time.

Schoonmaker has been nominated for six Oscars for her collaborations with Scorsese, having won for “Raging Bull,” “The Aviator” and “The Departed.” Meeting him changed her life, as meeting her surely changed his. And that certainly came across in our hour-long conversation, which you can read through below. It’s another long one, so settle in, or bookmark it and enjoy it over the holiday.

(NOTE: There are mild “Wolf of Wall Street” SPOILERS indicated here and there in this interview.)

*********

HitFix: First of all, it’s just such an honor to sit down with you. I have to gush a bit, I’m sorry. Yours is simply one of the storied collaborations in all of cinema.

Thelma Schoonmaker: Well, thank you. Marty was quoted the other day as saying we’ve been working together for half a century, which is pretty staggering! I said, “My God.” Actually there were 10 years when I couldn’t work with him because I wasn’t in the union out here. When he came out here we didn’t have to be in the union back there [in New York]. And then finally on “Raging Bull” I got in. But yeah, I mean who knew when I first met him that this would happen? It changed my life. I would never, probably, have become a filmmaker. It was just a summer course and I had wanted to become a diplomat. The state department told me I was too liberal. I passed all the exams and they said I was too liberal, I would be very unhappy there. So I took a job with this horrible guy who was butchering the films of Fellini, Truffaut for late-night television slots. And it was so awful, that job, that I saw an ad for a six-week course and I thought, “Well, I can just barely afford that.” And there was Marty. I could’ve just taken that six-week course and it would have been a lark and I would have gone on to something else, but because I met him my whole life changed.

Did he just awaken something in you with his passion?

Oh yeah. There were a lot of very talented people there that year. But Marty’s student films were – right away I saw that he was someone exceptional at it. And so we all banded together, started making documentaries for PBS and ‘The Merv Griffin Show’ and things like that, and we’re helping Marty finish his first feature film, which was ‘Who’s That Knocking.’ And he taught me how to edit. I knew nothing about editing – nothing. He taught me everything I know. Because of that and his wonderful high standards, my values are his values, so we worked really wonderfully together in a collaboration. We don’t fight.

I suppose it can be good to fight sometimes, no? You butt heads and get at something creative in the process?

It’s not that we don’t disagree, but we don’t fight. A lot of the director/editor relationships are really acrimonious. That’s not good for a film.

What did you learn early on from Marty that has been kind of a cornerstone for you in your work? What’s something that stays with you every time you’re in the editing suite?

Well, you know, going for the truth. Always to avoid sensationalism or anything like that for its own effect, but to really try and get down to the truth. We had learned that also on documentaries, which we were making because it was the great explosion of cinema vérité. It was a great period in American filmmaking. I would think that his philosophy is not to use gimmicks and not to tell the audience what you think, but to make them feel it. And you have to engage with his movies. If you don’t, it’s hopeless. He taught me that. The editing style is really, again, about simplicity and not gimmicks, you know? So it’s a little hard for us right now with the modern style of blender editing, where everything is two frames long. He keeps saying, ‘Where is the shot?’ Whatever happened to the great shot like Kubrick used to do? And you could watch it for six minutes and never get bored because it was so beautifully framed. It had such beautiful music. And what was going on inside was so great. Now it’s just, the image doesn’t mean anything. It’s just…

The music video after-effect on the industry, I suppose.

Commercials, everything. And they seem to be getting so short now that I wonder if they’re going to come to the end of the road. I don’t think they can make each cut any shorter! I wonder if there will be a big backlash and everything will go back to being slow again.

It’s interesting because there are actually a number of movies this year that speak to that, with photography and editing of great patience. “12 Years a Slave” and “Gravity” let shots play out, for instance.

Good. Probably “Nebraska,” too, right? And the Coen brothers’?

That’s an amazing movie, “Inside Llewyn Davis.” And interesting editorially because of the live singing and the lack of a click track. So they’re cutting…

…multiple takes. Yeah, that’s hard. That’s like cutting improvisation in our movie. It is hard but it’s tremendous fun and really worth it. But it is hard. I was brought up on it, you know? I mean, “Raging Bull,” two of the greatest improvisers in the world, De Niro and Pesci. So I always loved it. And the documentary training was helpful because you’re given a slew of footage of a documentary and you have to find the story. And so that was the case with some of the “Raging Bull” improvisations, that I had to find a dramatic structure in it. And similarly here [in “The Wolf of Wall Street”], I mean these guys were just – once Marty saw he had this formidable body of people, we could improvise, he just decided to be very brave and let them go, you know, within a framework. And they all say that he was laughing a lot of times because there was so much great stuff happening. The sound man said his laughter is on the track, but I never had a problem with it, and of course, the actors, when they hear Marty laugh, that’s great. They were so wonderful the way they worked together as a team and kicked each other off. Jonah Hill is just brilliant at it.

[MILD “WOLF OF WALL STREET” SPOILERS]

Well, the sequence that everyone will be talking about, obviously – the quaaludes sequence – is just great. Everyone erupted into applause at my screening after that scene.

I was very surprised to hear that. That rarely happens. Yeah, I heard that. I think it was Jonah told me that people applauded after that. It must’ve been the same – was he there?

He was sitting right in front of me, actually.

Oh, he was? Was that the first time he saw it?

That’s what I was told, yeah. But it’s such an extended sequence. It’s like a little movie in the movie.

That’s right, that’s right. And Marty was quite adamant about the long shot of him crawling towards the car. He took no close-ups, no frontal angles. He said, “No, I want to hold on that part,” because that’s the humor, his body language and opening it and his leg getting stuck up. And the great thing I love is when he finally does pull himself in and his wife is telling him that Donnie’s on the phone with Switzerland and he’s trying to talk to her. And then finally he pulls his two legs in. It’s all just silent film comedy, really.

[END SPOILERS]

Does it feel like it’s been this long working with Marty?

No, not at all.

Does it feel like yesterday for you?

It does seem like yesterday, because he’s so – he’s never boring. He never repeats himself. Every film is a new challenge and he’s such a fascinating person to be around. I mean, very up and down, you know? He can be very moody, usually when someone’s messing with his art. But he’s so fascinating. And then it’s like being in the greatest film school in the world because we have on the – we look this way when we’re editing and on the right we have TCM on silent. So we’re watching, constantly, classic movies. And every once in a while he’ll turn over and say, “Wait a minute, look, there’s a great shot coming up. This director did this great thing here.” So, you know, it’s like being in the greatest film school in the world as well.

Maybe there’s some osmosis or something going on there!

Yeah. It’s inspiration. So every once in a while we look over. It’s so intense and fascinating. It’s an extraordinary thing to be around him. Both of us don’t feel our age, also, which is rather staggering when you think of it! We’ve had a very rich life, my God. Between him and then my husband, who he introduced me to – Michael Powell, the great British film director – I’ve had the best job in the world and the best husband in the world. So, I mean, what more can you ask for?

This one appeared to present a lot of challenges as it came down the stretch. The financiers were eager to release it in 2013 and you had such a large cut to bring down. How did you navigate that as the deadline approached?

Well, it was hard. When we got the four-hour – you know, what happened was five lines in the script mushroomed into a five-minute, brilliantly improvised scene, so the whole thing just blew up. I was very worried and I said to Marty, “There’s no way we can get an hour of this out of this movie,” but we did by just shaving it down slowly. Instead of cutting out scenes, which would have been really devastating, we just shaved things down and did three or four screenings and kept going and kept going and finally we got there. And I would never have believed we would have done it. So it was fortunate because it would’ve been disastrous if we hadn’t. I mean you can’t distribute a four-hour movie.

I can’t imagine anyone wanted to do that, either.

But people loved the four-hour cut.

I guess maybe you could have done something like “Kill Bill.” Volume one and volume two.

Well, we thought about it. We did. But the film doesn’t work split in half. It has to have a certain arc. We did think about it, believe me, because people loved the four-hour version.

I heard second-hand from people who had seen that version early on that they had no idea what you could cut.

That was a thing, too. People kept saying, “Oh, well, yeah it is too long but I couldn’t tell you what to cut.” So that kept happening over and over again, but fortunately, as I say – it would’ve been horrible if we had it cut out whole scenes.

Were you pleased with where it ended up or did you feel like there was more work that could have been done?

Oh yeah. There are improvs I would still like to have in it, but no, no. It’s got to sustain itself. And I don’t think it would have been good to be longer than this.

What about shorter?

Yeah, maybe if we had a little more time maybe we could have gotten a little more out. I don’t know. But I have kept the long cuts for the actors because they did so many wonderful things. I want them to see them.

It’s interesting because, at least for me personally, I walked out of the movie feeling like it was something that wanted to be longer.

Really?

Yeah, like it could have been a mini-series if it wanted to be. Getting it down to what you got it to was a tough chore, but it just felt like it had more to say. Not that it felt like it was withholding anything, it’s just a robust portrait, you know?

It was actually a little more complicated and was making more statements, actually, in the longer version. But I don’t know. It’s impossible. There is some film – I think there is some film that Lars Von Trier has done that’s a four-hour movie.

Yes, that’s “Nymphomaniac.” It was actually five-and-a-half hours originally! And it looks to be quite racy. Speaking of which, I had heard that Marty was keen on releasing “Wolf” with an NC-17 rating, kind of like “Midnight Cowboy.”

You know, I think what happened is because he’s been working on HBO, where you can get away with a lot more – he’s an executive producer of “Boardwalk Empire” so he’s been seeing a tremendous amount of stuff, and he got used to it. And I think he sort of almost forgot. So when I said to him, “What about censorship,” he said, “Oh, no, we don’t have to worry about that.” But I must say they [the MPAA] were very good with us. They like Marty’s films and they really like this one. So they worked with us. And if we agreed to do certain things then they let us have some things. Once he realized he had to do it he was angry about it but he did it.

I was still frankly surprised this version made an “R.”

I know. I know.

[MILD “WOLF OF WALL STREET” SPOILERS]

There’s one scene in particular toward the end that, how should I put this delicately, displays a lot of “motion.”

The last one, you mean. Yeah. And it’s very hard to watch [that scene]. And it’s supposed to be. Marty wanted it to be painful. It’s very painful to watch that. Yeah, that was the other thing they gave us was that scene. They were not happy about it.

[END SPOILERS]

So how has this experience been in the grander scheme of working with Marty for so long? Does it ever get to a point where it’s just another one? Of course each brings with it its own experience but at this volume…

Never. I mean this film couldn’t be any more different from “Hugo” if you tried! And it couldn’t be more different from our next film. So the great thing about this, it never feels like same old, like I’m in a rut, never – because they’re always so different. I mean “Gangs of New York” is so different from “The Aviator,” which was so different from “The Departed” or “Age of Innocence” or “Kundun.” So every one is a great new challenge. This one was great because of the improvisation and I love cutting improvisation and I hadn’t done it in a while. So it was really fun. I was just roaring with laughter in the editing room. I mean my assistants would come in and look to see what was going on because it’s not normal with dailies to be laughing so much. Usually we have to create the humor, but because it was improv and long stretches of improv it was – I couldn’t stop laughing, which was a new experience.

When was the last time you remember cutting improv on this level?

Well, we did a little bit – had to do a little bit – in “The Departed” with Jack Nicholson and Leo. But the biggest one before that would have been “Casino.” And then, of course, “Goodfellas,” “After Hours” and “Raging Bull.” “King of Comedy,” also, a tremendous amount.

Yeah I think maybe it was Leo who said something about watching a making-of video about “The King of Comedy” specifically because of the improvisation.

Yeah, a tremendous amount of improv. But it’s funny that we haven’t been doing it. And suddenly here it was again. Boy, I mean, just tons of it pouring in. They were having such a great time, the actors. I don’t know if they’ll ever have such a wonderful project again. They were just having one hell of a good time making it. I couldn’t understand how they could not laugh during the scenes because they’re sitting there talking about dwarfs, throwing dwarfs around, and one of them can be a bowling ball. I said to Leo, “How did you do it without cracking up?”

Do you ever make it down to the set at all? This certainly would have been a fun one to be on.

I love to go to watch Marty work but I don’t have time, usually. Also, it influences my eye. I don’t want to be told what I’m going to see the next day. I really like to see it evolve on the screen. And I don’t read the script except once and then I put it away, because I want to see it evolve. And Marty doesn’t put a lot of what is in his films in the script. A lot of it goes in as he’s making it. I would love to go but – particularly this one, we were in New York and it was the first movie we made in New York in a long time, but they were so far away in Westchester that it’s just too long a commute. I can’t afford the time. I need to be cutting! But there have been other films I’ve been on the set more for.

You mentioned the period of time you couldn’t work with Marty due to the union situation. I think most people just assume you cut all of his movies.

Right, it was ‘Boxcar Bertha,’ ‘Mean Streets,’ I didn’t cut his wonderful documentary ‘Italianamerican,’ have you seen that?

Yes, it’s wonderful.

“New York, “New York” and there’s one other I’m missing. “Alice,” did I say “Alice?” Usually he was working with a team of three editors in those days, one of them being Marcia Lucas, George Lucas’ wife. And then when he hit it with “Star Wars” she wanted to go and work on his movie so she left and that’s when he called me.

Oh, and “Taxi Driver.”

Right, “Taxi” I didn’t do. It was, again, the team of editors. One of them was Tom Rolf, a very well-known editor. He was not happy working on it but he did some great work. He did the ‘are you talking to me?’ and the great scene up in Harlem. But he was unhappy. I don’t think he really liked Marty’s movies. Marty suffered a lot in his early days in Hollywood with rejection, you know. A tremendous amount. People don’t realize that. He really has had a very, very rough time here. For example, I mean “Taxi” was horrendous. It was really bad when it got to the distribution stage. And he just didn’t feel welcome here. And that’s why he moved back to New York. I think it was his redemption coming back to New York. And that’s when he made “Raging Bull,” so it was a real important shift. I mean his films before that are all very, very good. But he just felt he wasn’t welcome here. It’s sad. It’s interesting.

How does he feel about it now?

You know, it’s just part of the function of our lives, that’s all. He would never want to live here. He doesn’t feel comfortable here at all. But boy, recently he’s been telling me some stories of his early days. It was rough. It’s interesting that you have to have such a strong drive in you that you have something to say that you can survive that. I don’t know if I could have survived the stories he’s told me. But he had this burning desire to make films and it sustained him. Then when he sort of almost lost it, “Raging Bull” brought him back. And De Niro was a very big part of that. Marty was in the hospital and De Niro just kept saying to him, “Come on, don’t you want to see what we’re going to be like when we get old? We’ve got a lot to do ahead of us.” And he helped pull Marty around. Marty didn’t want to make it. Bob just gave him five minutes to make up his mind finally. He just said, “Either you make it or I’m going to go get somebody else,” and then Marty said, “Okay.”  And look what happened.

Stay tuned over the next few days leading up to the release of “The Wolf of Wall Street” for more with Schoonmaker about her collaborations on some of Martin Scorsese’s greatest films.

Schoonmaker’s 19th feature collaboration with Scorsese, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” opens everywhere on Christmas Day.

Greetings from Ireland — where, coincidentally enough, I touched down shortly before the Dublin Film Critics’ Circle announced their 2013 award winners. And an interesting list it is, too. Don’t look for “12 Years a Slave” here — only films released locally this year are eligible — but “Gravity” took Best Picture, Director and Cinematography. It’s the runner-up lists, however, where their individuality emerges: there are 10 or more in each category (the Irish have a funny way of counting ties, it seems), and choices range from “What Maisie Knew” for Best Picture to Brady Corbet in “Simon Killer” for Best Actor to “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” for Best Cinematography. A refreshing change from the usual-usual. Full list after the jump; check out every group’s winners so far at The Circuit.

Best Picture
1. “Gravity”
2. “The Great Beauty”
3. “The Act of Killing”
4. “Blue is the Warmest Colour”
5. “Before Midnight”
6. “Behind the Candelabra”
7. “Django Unchained”
8. “Beyond the Hills”
9. “The Selfish Giant”; “Blue Jasmine”;”Zero Dark Thirty”
10. “What Maisie Knew”

Best Director
1. Alfonso Cuarón, “Gravity”
2. Paolo Sorrentino, “The Great Beauty”
3. Clio Barnard, “The Selfish Giant”
4. Kathryn Bigelow, “Zero Dark Thirty; Abdellatif Kechiche, “Blue is the Warmest Color”; Steven Soderbergh, “Behind the Candleabra”; Quentin Tarantino, “Django Unchained”
5. Ben Wheatley, “A Field in England”
6. Richard Linklater, “Before Midnight”
7. Derek Cianfrance, “The Place Beyond the Pines”
8. Shane Carruth, “Upstream Color”
9. Cristian Mungiu, “Beyond the Hills”
10. Joshua Oppenheimer, “The Act of Killing”; Woody Allen, “Blue Jasmine”

Best Screenplay
1. “Before Midnight”
2. “The Great Beauty”
3. “Nebraska”; “Django Unchained”
4. “Blue Jasmine”
5. “Blue is the Warmest Color”
6. “The Place Beyond the Pines”
7. “Prisoners”
8. “Compliance”
9. “Mud”
10. “The Selfish Giant”; “Behind the Candelabra”

Best Actor
1. Bruce Dern, “Nebraska”
2. Tom Hanks, “Captain Phillips”
3. Michael Douglas, “Behind the Candelabra”
4. Daniel Day-Lewis, “Lincoln”
5. Toni Servillo, “The Great Beauty”
6. Matthew McConaughey, “Mud”
7. Hugh Jackman, “Prisoners”
8. Leonardo DiCaprio, “Django Unchained”; Brady Corbet, “Simon Killer”
9. Ethan Hawke, “Before Midnight”; Daniel Bruhl, “Rush”
10. Gael Garcia Bernal, “No”

Best Actress
1.Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine”
2. Adéle Exarchopoulos, “Blue is the Warmest Color”
3. Judi Dench, “Philomena”
4. Emma Thompson, “Saving Mr Banks”; Julie Delpy, “Before Midnight”
5. Paulina Garcia, “Gloria”
6. Rooney Mara, “Ain”t Them Bodies Saints”; Sandra Bullock, “Gravity”
7. Greta Gerwig, “Frances Ha”
8. Julianne Moore, “What Maisie Knew”; Emilie Dequenne, “Our Children”
9. Lake Bell, “In a World…”
10. Onata Aprile, “What Maisie Knew”

Best Cinematography
1. Emmanuel Lubezki, “Gravity,” “To the Wonder”
2. Luca Bigazzi, “The Great Beauty”
3. Roger Deakins, “Prisoners”
4. Sean Bobbitt, “The Place Beyond the Pines”
5. Bradford Young, “Ain”t Them Bodies Saints”
6. Larry Smith, “Only God Forgives”
7. Phedon Papamichael, “Nebraska”; Simon Duggan, “The Great Gatsby”
8. Benoit Debie, “Spring Breakers”
9. Mike Eley, “The Selfish Giant”; Barry Ackroyd, “Captain Phillips”
10. Sergio Armstrong, “No”; Oleg Mutu, “Beyond the Hills”

Best Documentary
1. “The Act of Killing”
2. “Blackfish”
3. “West of Memphis”
4. “Far Out Isn”t Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story”
5. “The Summit”
6. “We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks”
7. “McCullin”
8. “Beware of Mr. Baker”
9. “The Gatekeepers”
10. “Michael H – Profession: Director”

Best Irish Film
1. “Good Vibrations”
2. “Pilgrim Hill”; “Citadel”
3. “Broken Song”
4. “The Irish Pub”
5. “The Summit”
6. “Life”s a Breeze”
7. “The Hardy Bucks Movie”
8. “Very Extremely Dangerous”
9. “Jump”; “Black Ice”
10. “Kelly + Victor”

Best Newcomer
Adele Exarchopoulos

Breakthrough of the Year
Lake Bell, Joshua Oppenheimer

The Nevada Film Critics Society has hopped on the “12 Years a Slave” bandwagon, awarding the film Best Film honors (though nothing else). Meanwhile, Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” picked up three prizes, including Best Director, while Meryl Streep landed her first prize of the year for her performance in “August: Osage County.” Check out the full list of winners below and remember to keep track at The Circuit.

Best Film: “12 Years A Slave”

Best Director: Alfonso Caurón, “Gravity”

Best Actor: Matthew McConaughey, “Dallas Buyers Club”

Best Actress: Meryl Streep, “August: Osage County”

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

Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, “American Hustle”

Best Youth Performance: Sophie Nélisse, “The Book Thief”

Best Ensemble Cast: “August: Osage County”

Best Animated Movie: “Frozen”

Best Production Design: “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”

Best Cinematography: “Gravity”

Best Visual Effects: “Gravity”

The Academy has narrowed its list of foreign language film contenders to nine in advance of the nominations announcement for the 86th annual Academy Awards.

The biggest surprise omission has to be Saudi Arabia’s “Wadjda,” a film many thought might go the distance and win the Oscar. Two other films we’ve been predicting, Canada’s “Gabrielle” and Chile’s “Gloria,” were left off the list as well, while other high profile contenders like Iran’s “The Past,” Australia’s “The Rocket” and Israel’s “Bethlehem” were nowhere to be found, either.

RELATED: Asghar Farhadi on why ‘The Past’ is a brother to ‘A Separation’

Films from 76 countries were originally submitted for consideration in the category. The nominations are being determined in two phases. The Phase I committee screened the original 76 submissions between mid-October and Dec. 16. The group’s top six choices were augmented by three additional selections voted on by the executive committee and voila, nine-film shortlist. (Any guesses as to the three that were saved?)

The five nominees will be selected by invited committees in New York and Los Angeles who, between Friday, Jan. 10 and Sunday, Jan. 12 will view three films per day and then cast their ballots.

The nominees in the category will be announced alongside all other Oscar nominees on the morning of Jan. 16, 2014.

Here is the shortlist of contenders remaining in the Best Foreign Language Film category:

Belgium, “The Broken Circle Breakdown,” Felix van Groeningen, director

Bosnia and Herzegovina, “An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker,” Danis Tanovic, director

Cambodia, “The Missing Picture,” Rithy Panh, director

Denmark, “The Hunt,” Thomas Vinterberg, director

Germany, “Two Lives,” Georg Maas, director

Hong Kong, “The Grandmaster,” Wong Kar-wai, director

Hungary, “The Notebook,” Janos Szasz, director

Italy, “The Great Beauty,” Paolo Sorrentino, director

Palestine, “Omar,” Hany Abu-Assad, director

Well, I sensed this was coming. Even though some sources stringently maintained that Lars von Trier was not pursuing a festival berth for his gargantuan sex epic “Nymphomaniac,” the timing simply made too much sense for this not to happen: the Danish director’s, er, extended cut of the film will have its world premiere out of competition at the Berlin Film Festival in February.

Well, half of it, at least.

“Berlinale audiences will be the first to see the long uncut version of ‘Nymphomaniac: Volume I,'” confirmed Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick. “Lars von Trier, a guest of the Berlinale for the first time in 1984, returns to the festival with this film. The aesthetic he has created in ‘Nymphomaniac’ is impressive and radical.”

This is, of course, something of a qualified unveiling: critics and industry folk have already seen the “shorter” four-hour edition of “Nymphomaniac,” which was edited with von Trier’s approval, but not under his direction. It opens for Danish audiences, meanwhile, on Christmas Day. (What could be more festive, after all?)

The Berlin premiere, however, will be the first glimpse of the film as the provocateur intends it to be seen, and I’m quite content to wait for that. (I didn’t make it to a screening in London earlier this week, and while my Lars-love dies hard, I’m not overly inclined to sit through 80% of the film twice in the space of two months.)

It’s going to feel odd seeing a Lars von Trier opus unspool at Berlin. While “The Boss of it All” premiered at Copenhagen, and “The Five Obstructions” at Berlin, Cannes has been the director’s second home throughout his career — persona non grata and all. A whopping nine of his films have competed for the Palme d’Or, though he’s never been in equivalent competition at Venice or Berlin.

The out-of-competition status of “Nymphomaniac: Part I” won’t change that, of course. (Given that Berlin has never been opposed to having pre-seen films in Competition, I wonder if there was any push to have things otherwise.) Either way, however, it’s a major coup for the usually-less-glamorous sister of the European majors, which is already shaping up quite enviably with Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel” as its opening film. Given that Anderson’s last film opened Cannes, Kosslick is encroaching on Thierry Fremaux’s turf a fair bit this year.

This year’s Berlin Film Festival will run from February 6-16, 2014. The first Competition selections were announced earlier this week.

When last week’s Golden Globe nominations were announced, one of the chief talking points was the unusual degree of prestige attached to the comedy/musical nominees — and, by genre-bias extension, the relatively un-comic nature of a number of them. Disagreement exists as to whether the classing-up of these frequently daffy categories is for better or worse, and Jen Chaney examines the pros and cons: “They aren”t comedies, but they also aren”t not comedies … Assuming that anything productive can come from this much deep thought about the Golden Globes, maybe the most productive thing we can do is to stop framing the comedy classification as a trivialization. Maybe it would be better to think of this year”s crop of Golden Globe nominees as further proof that comedies can be just as rich, complex, and thought-provoking as the most gravely serious dramas.” [The Dissolve]

In this screener-heavy season, Tim Gray lists five Oscar contentenders that really need to be seen on the big screen. [Variety]

The Guardian has named “The Act of Killing” the best film of 2013. [The Guardian]

Scott Feinberg calls this year’s “the most competitive Oscar race in years.” [Hollywood Reporter]

Wes Anderson’s production designer Adam Stockhausen talks about his less fanciful work on “12 Years a Slave.” [Below the Line]

Edgar Wright names “Spring Breakers” and “Rush” among his 10 favourite films of 2013. [Digital Spy]

From Claire Denis’s “Bastards” to Chad Hartigan’s “This is Martin Bonner,” the most undeservedly overlooked films of the year. [The Film Stage]

Chuck Bowen on the “evolving and closeted humanity” of the Coen Brothers. [Fandor]

Oscar-winning “Argo” screenwriter Chris Terrio has been drafted for “Batman vs. Superman.” [Vulture]

“Sundance to explore failure.” Gotta say,  the headline got my attention. [Screen Daily]

The Utah Film Critics Association has come along and done for Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” what no other US critics group has: handed it its own, tie-free win for Best Picture of 2013. It also received Best Director and Best Cinematography from the group, while recent circuit hog “12 Years a Slave” walked away with just one prize: Best Actor. The script was flipped in a few other areas, particularly in the Best Supporting Actor and Best Original Screenplay categories. Check out the full list of winners below and remember to keep track of the season via The Circuit.

Best Picture: “Gravity” (Runner-up: “12 Years a Slave”)

Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón, “Gravity” (Runner-up: Steve McQueen, “12 Years a Slave”)

Best Actor: Chiwetel Ejiofor, “12 Years a Slave” (Runner-up: Oscar Isaac, “Inside Llewyn Davis”)

Best Actress: Adèle Exarchopoulos, “Blue is the Warmest Color” (Runner-up: [tie] Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine” and Sandra Bullock, “Gravity”)

Best Supporting Actor: Bill Nighy, “About Time” (Runner-up: Michael Fassbender, “12 Years a Slave”)

Best Supporting Actress: Scarlett Johansson, “Her” (Runner-up: Jennifer Lawrence, “American Hustle”)

Best Adapted Screenplay: “Before Midnight” (Runner-up: “12 Years a Slave”)

Best Original Screenplay: “The World’s End” (Runner-up: “The Way, Way Back”)

Best Cinematography: “Gravity” (Runner-up: “Inside Llewyn Davis”)

Best Animated Feature: “Frozen” (Runner-up: [tie] “From Up on Poppy Hill” and “The Wind Rises”)

Best Non-English Language Feature: “Blue is the Warmest Color” (Runner-up: “The Past”)

Looking for something to cheer up your day? The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Paul Feig and Ellen DeGeneres have something that just might do it.

Set to the tune “The Walker” by Fitz & The Tantrums (iTunes sales go up!), the promo features a tuxedo-clad DeGeneres dancing through the Warner Bros. backlot as more and more dancers join her in the song’s crescendo. It’s all in the theme of this year’s Oscar telecast, “Here We Go!” and it’s probably the best promo the Academy has done in a decade. Smart (but not too hip for the room), energetic and youthful. It’s also a subtle way of saying, “Hey, we know all the nominated pictures are serious as hell, but we’re gonna have a great old time anyway.”

You can watch it in the embedded video below. And if it doesn’t make you smile? Well, enjoy that coal in your stocking this Christmas.

For more behind the scenes looks at the production, including what may be a sneak peek at a gorgeous official poster design, click here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DisioPE86AY&w=640&h=360]

“You can’t go home again,” wrote Thomas Wolfe, and that much-worn phrase echoes mournfully in the mind as one observes the chilly corridors and gaping personal distances of “The Past,” Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi’s first feature since winning the Oscar for his crisp, complex and universally acclaimed marital drama “A Separation.”

An elegantly turned melodrama, detailing the terse emotional warfare that ensues when an Iranian man travels to Paris to finalize his divorce from his estranged French wife, it might well have been titled “Another Separation”: Farhadi’s fascination with the politics and shadow structures of marriage and family — within and without Iranian tradition– is a binding element of his filmography.

“The Past” may seem a natural thematic follow-up to “A Separation,” but the idea behind actually began germinating even before Farhadi made his 2006 film “Fireworks Wednesday” — prompted by a personal anecdote related by a friend. “He told me that he was going on a trip to officially finalize his divorce from his wife, though they had been separated several years,” he explains, via a translator, from Los Angeles. “And that thought never really left my mind: how strange it must be to have been apart from a woman all that time, and then spend several days with her to say goodbye. It had a certain dramatic aspect. So I began the screenplay just before ‘A Separation’ premiered and wrote it while we were travelling with the film.”

He feels strongly that “The Past” and “A Separation” are siblings, and in rather a specific sense: “Although they are independent of one another they”re borne of the same family — but one of them is female and the other is male. That”s what differentiates them.”

Any gender-based disparity between them is not immediately obvious: both films, after all, are notably even-handed in their examination of heterosexual relationships. “‘A Separation’ is more preoccupied with the future, particularly that of the young girl at its center,” explains Farhadi.”‘The Past’ is more backward-looking. Everywhere in different cultures, men stand for the past and tradition, while women stand for change and the future.”

“Backward-looking” it may be in one sense, though for Farhadi, it represented at least one significant step into new territory — set and shot entirely in France, with French and Italian funding, it’s the first film he has ever made outside Iran. “It’s something I never imagined I would do,” he says. “What drove me to make the film there was the story itself — I always let the story dictate how I make a film. The film could certainly have been made in other locations, but it needed to be where the past was visible in the space and atmosphere. You’ll find that specificity in Paris or Rome, say, but probably not in Hong Kong.”

It was also Farhadi’s first experience of working outside his native tongue — the film’s dialogue is mostly in French, not a language in which the director claims any fluency. It was less of an obstacle than you might imagine, he says: “There are several aspects to language: there’s the music of it, the information that is imparted through it, and the cultural roots of a nation. Very often, we may know another language but are incapable of penetrating its culture and identity.”I was in France for two years, so on numerous days I walked the streets and listened to people talk to each other. I didn’t understand much but I did try to absorb the melody and music of it. Taking on that challenge was partly what attracted me to this idea.”

The project therefore entailed putting a lot of trust in his French-speaking stars — particularly Berenice Bejo. The Argentinian-born actress who received an Oscar nomination two years ago for her fizzy breakout turn in “The Artist,” but cuts a far steelier figure here as a hard-bitten mother caught between past and present loves. It’s a change of pace that earned her the Best Actress award at Cannes — though she only got the role when Marion Cotillard pulled out due to scheduling conflicts.

Farhadi had already befriended Bejo and her husband, director Michel Hazanavicius, over their frequent encounters on the 2011 awards circuit, and was enticed by the opportunity to “exhibit a new face of hers.” “It would have been a very different film [with Cotillard],” he reflects. “Even though the characters are written very precisely in the screenplay, my feeling is that when any actor comes in, they define that character to resemble themselves.”

The 2011 awards season was a charmed one for Farhadi, and not just because it supplied him with a new leading lady — winning the Oscar for “A Separation” underlined Farhadi’s escalation to the upper tier of international auteurs. It’s not an institution he takes lightly, even if he finds the campaigning process rather challenging. “One of the hardest things for a filmmaker is to answer questions about his film after it has been completed,” he admits. “It”s as if you were making several appointments every day to praise your children or defend them. But evidently there”s no recourse. It is a way of publicity, and the films and distributors need it. What is unique about the Oscar is that as a result, the audience of the film grows. That means a lot to me.”

He also takes seriously the responsibility of representing Iran in the race — and has a pithy response to those who question whether “The Past,” as a European production, is an appropriate submission for the country. “If people choose to believe that the identity of a film is determined by where the money comes from, I would allow them to remain in their ignorance,” he says, with an audible shrug. “Here I feel that I am not only a filmmaker, but also an ambassador, the representative of my people.”

Iran has, of course, a difficult history of artistic suppression and censorship — infamously evident in the recent persecution and house arrest of filmmaker Jafar Panahi — but Farhadi insists his decision to leave the country for his latest film was a creative, rather than a political, one. Indeed, he’s cautiously optimistic about the future for Iranian filmmakers, citing the new, “more open-minded” government’s decision to reopen the country’s House of Cinema as a sign that “gradually things are being restored to greater normalcy.” Does he see himself returning home for his next feature, then, or continuing his European exploration? “I have left the door open for both,” he says carefully. “I”m waiting to see what story speaks to me.”

The Black Film Critics Circle has named “12 Years a Slave” the best film of the year. Steve McQueen’s drama won five prizes, but the group eschewed the usual bandwagon in the Best Actress field by finding room to recognize “Short Term 12” star Brie Larson. Check out the full list of winners below and remember to stay current with the season’s goings-on at The Circuit.

Best Picture: “12 Years a Slave”

Best Director: Steve McQueen, “12 Years a Slave”

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

Best Actress: Brie Larson, “Short Term 12”

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

Best Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong”o, “12 Years a Slave”

Best Adapted Screenplay: “12 Years a Slave”

Best Original Screenplay: “American Hustle”

Best Cinematography: “Gravity”

Best Animated Film: “Frozen”

Best Documentary: “20 Feet from Stardom”

Best Foreign Film: “Blue is the Warmest Color”

Best Ensemble: “12 Years a Slave”

The Alliance of Women Film Journalists has crowned “12 Years a Slave” the years Best Film and given Ridley Scott’s “The Counselor” a shellacking. The latter film “won” three awards: the AWFJ Hall Of Shame Award, the Actress Most in Need Of A New Agent award (Cameron Diaz) and the Movie You Wanted To Love But Just Couldn”t Award. Well, then. Check out the nominees here and the full list of winners below. As always, keep track of it all via The Circuit.

Best Film: “12 Years a Slave”

Best Director: Steve McQueen, “12 Years a Slave”

Best Actor: Matthew McConaughey, “Dallas Buyers Club”

Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine”

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

Best Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong’o, “12 Years a Slave”

Best Adapted Screenplay: “12 Years a Slave”

Best Original Screenplay: “Her”

Best Cinematography: “Gravity”

Best Editing: “Gravity”

Best Film Music Or Score: “Inside Llewyn Davis”

Best Non-English-Language Film: “The Hunt”

Best Documentary: “Stories We Tell”

Best Ensemble Cast: “American Hustle”

EDA FEMALE FOCUS AWARDS

Best Woman Director: Nicole Holofcener, “Enough Said”

Best Woman Screenwriter: Nicole Holofcener, “Enough Said”

Kick Ass Award For Best Female Action Star: Sandra Bullock, “Gravity”

Best Animated Female: Anna (Kristen Bell), “Frozen” 

Best Breakthrough Performance: Lupita Nyong”o, “12 Years A Slave”

Actress Defying Age and Ageism: Sandra Bullock, “Gravity”

AWFJ Award Female Icon Award
Angelina Jolie
For continued commitments to humanitarian causes, and for promoting awareness about breast cancer.

This Year”s Outstanding Achievement By A Woman In The Film Industry
Haaifa Al-Mansour
For challenging the limitations placed on women within her culture by making the film “Wadjda.”

EDA SPECIAL MENTION AWARDS

AWFJ Hall Of Shame Award: “The Counselor”

Actress Most in Need Of A New Agent: Cameron Diaz, “The Counselor”

Movie You Wanted To Love But Just Couldn”t Award: “The Counselor”

Unforgettable Moment Award: “12 Years a Slave” – Solomon hanging

Best Depiction Of Nudity, Sexuality, or Seduction Award: Scarlett Johansson and Joaquin Phoenix, “Her”

Sequel or Remake That Shouldn”t Have Been Made Award: (tie) “Carrie” and “Oz the Great and Powerful”

Most Egregious Age Difference Between The Leading Man and The Love Interest Award: “Last Vegas” – Michael Douglas and Bre Blair (36 years)

Have you ever wondered who the power players really are on the awards circuit and how they stack up this time of year? Are you curious to dive deep on the industry side of things to discover just how that element of the Hollywood machinery operates? Then HitFix’s inaugural Oscar Power List is right up your alley.

With all the other “power lists” you find in magazines and online surveying this or that cross-section of the industry, we at HitFix recognized an opportunity to shed more light on this sliver of the film business. Power brokers, influential artists, intrepid businessmen and women and creative strategists populate the Oscar landscape and each of them are cogs in a massive wheel that turns with purpose each and every fall. Many of them our non-industry readers have heard of, others lurk behind the scenes and out of the spotlight, but all of them are of value.

With the HitFix Oscar Power List, we’ve counted down the top 30 names on the circuit. We’ve used a rubric of influence, pedigree and relevance to dictate the list and the ultimate order. As the business changes and the circuit evolves, we certainly expect the shape of the list to morph over the years, but this is a snapshot of the Oscar world for December 2013.

So without further ado, we give you HitFix’s 2013 Oscar Power List.