David O. Russell’s “American Hustle” was crowned the best film of 2013 today by the New York Film Critics Circle, capping off a nearly five-hour vote and marking the first critics awards announcement of the year. The film also received wins for Best Supporting Actress (Jennifer Lawrence) and Best Screenplay.

From NY Mag’s Vulture blog, this is worth noting:

“According to our critic David Edelstein, who is one of the NYFCC’s members, the final vote for Best Picture resulted in a rare tie-breaker. NYFCC by-laws prevent the actual numbers from being released, but Edelstein said there was a strong American Hustle camp and a strong 12 Years a Slave camp (reflected in McQueen’s best director win), and that the vote was remarkably close, with some members expressing ‘visible dismay’ when the final number was tallied.”

Interesting. Also, Lou Lumenick has a breakdown of the balloting which I guess you can use to suss out runners-up and whatnot.

Check out a running commentary of the wins below and offer up your thoughts, whatever they may be, in the comments section below.

Best Non-Fiction Film: “Stories We Tell”

It seems like this and “The Act of Killing” are the year’s critical darlings in the category. I love the passion Sarah Polley, an absolutely vital voice, brought to this project, but found it curiously impenetrable for just HOW personal it was. Nevertheless, it’s handsomely crafted and again, so passionately conceived.

Best First Film: “Fruitvale Station”

A nice follow-up to last night’s Gotham Award for Breakthrough Director. Ryan Coogler, as I wrote yesterday, is an exciting new talent. I’m very curious to see how far the film can go with the Academy because it is mentioned here and there, especially actor Michael B. Jordan’s performance. It could be feast or famine with Weinstein’s 2013 slate. Just another element of intrigue this season.

Best Cinematography: Bruno Delbonnel, “Inside Llewyn Davis”

I asked Emmanuel Lubezki the other day about working with the Coens and he immediately mentioned how amazing he thought Delbonnel’s work on the film was, and of course, how jealous he is that he got to do it (he loved his time in the trenches with them on “Burn After Reading”). Anyway, arbitrary namedropping aside, I love Delbonnel’s work on this movie. LOVE. What’s most striking is that it is so of a piece with the aesthetic the Coens have developed with Roger Deakins over the years while still being very much it’s own thing. “It survives the power of Roger,” Lubezki told me, and that’s a good way to put it. DPs are typically nervous stepping into those shoes, not just because Deakins is such a massive figure in their world, but because he’s forged such a deep artistic relationship with the filmmaker siblings. Delbonnel was more than up to the task.

Special Award: Frederick Wiseman

The great documentarian. “Titicut Follies,” this year’s “At Berkeley.” Who can argue with tipping your hat to this guy?

Best Screenplay: “American Hustle”

Look, this is an entertaining film, but you go with something that derivative over truly deep and meaningful writing like “Before Midnight,” “Inside Llewyn Davis,” etc.? Doesn’t compute for me at all.

Best Animated Film: “The Wind Rises”

A film that has really grown on me since I saw and liked it at Telluride, and for me, the obvious choice for the best of the medium this year. If you haven’t already, check out David Ehrlich’s gorgeous countdown of the year’s 25 best films, which features Hayao Miyazaki’s swan song very high on the list.

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

I had a feeling this might happen, and it’s such a wonderful choice. I honestly believe he has a shot at the Oscar, though Jonah Hill could come along and steal a lot of that thunder because his is just the sort of outrageous beast of a performance that wins here (and he’ll certainly do a lot of work on the campaign trail). Leto’s work is refined, heartbreaking: the polar opposite, really.

Best Foreign Language Film: “Blue is the Warmest Color”

I myself finally caught up with the Palme d’Or winner as part of my annual screener bonanza last week. I’ll just leave this here: Team Manohla.

Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, “American Hustle”

Okay, this one I won’t kick up a fuss about. Lawrence is pretty electric in this film and is really best in show overall.

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

And there it is. Finally McQueen’s critically adored film lands a win. Is that foreshadowing of a Best Film victory? It may well be. We’ll know in due time, but I’m happy for McQueen, who I’ve loved since he first hit the scene. I think “Hunger” and “Shame” are superior pieces of work but his artful touch is all over “12 Years a Slave,” so I won’t argue with any awards it wins this season.

Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine”

No shock at all here, really. Is the road paved to Oscar? It may well be, but don’t rule out Emma Thompson just yet. This is easily one of Blanchett’s finest performances and it would be a hugely deserving victory, to say the least. The lingering question with this film, though, is whether it can manage nominations for Best Picture or even Best Director.

Best Actor: Robert Redford, “All is Lost”

The truth is, whether people want to admit it or not, Redford really needed this. He hasn’t put in the campaign work that others on the beat have, and that’s fine. It’s not his bag. But in a tight year such as this, that can be a difference maker, whether your name is Robert Redford or not. And make no mistake: this is HUGELY deserving. Redford gives a stunning performance of behavioral specificity that could go on to win an Oscar.

Best Picture: “American Hustle”

…words escape me. And I like the film!

The Academy has narrowed the field of 147 documentary feature contenders to 15, and the key omissions appear to be Alex Gibney’s “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,” Martha Shane and Lana Wilson’s “After Tiller” and and Errol Morris’ “The Unknown Known,” among others.

However, Gibney can take heart that his other 2013 project, “The Armstrong Lie,” was on the list. And most of the year’s critical hits of the form – “The Act of Killing,” “Blackfish,” “Stories We Tell” – survived the slaughter.

As documentary filmmaking continues to thrive in a golden age, it’s wonderful to see such diverse, exceptional and distinct work continue to be recognized, even if these annual prunings can be maddening at times. What’s left is always exemplary, and that’s certainly the case this year.

My assumption is that “20 Feet from Stardom,” “Tim’s Vermeer” and “Blackfish” are among the strongest contenders. “The Act of Killing” and “Stories We Tell” may be critical smashes but I wouldn’t be shocked if the notoriously fickle branch bristles at them for this reason or that. I would also watch out for “The Square” and a little film that serves as a testament to those who capture the world of non-fiction for the rest to see: “Which Way is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington.”

Check out the full list below and feel free to let us know what YOU think will be nominated from the 15.

“The Act of Killing,” Final Cut for Real
“The Armstrong Lie,” The Kennedy/Marshall Company
“Blackfish,” Our Turn Productions
“The Crash Reel,” KP Rides Again
“Cutie and the Boxer,” Ex Lion Tamer and Cine Mosaic
“Dirty Wars,” Civic Bakery
“First Cousin Once Removed,” Experiments in Time, Light & Motion
“God Loves Uganda,” Full Credit Productions
“Life According to Sam,” Fine Films
“Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer,” Roast Beef Productions
“The Square,” Noujaim Films and Maktube Productions
“Stories We Tell,” National Film Board of Canada
“Tim”s Vermeer,” High Delft Pictures
“20 Feet from Stardom,” Gil Friesen Productions and Tremolo Productions
“Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington,” Tripoli Street

John Ridley’s adaptation of the trials and tribulations of former slave Solomon Northup, Peter Morgan’s account of James Hunt and Niki Lauda’s Formula One racing rivalry and Ryan Coogler’s testament to the tragically short life of Bay Area father Oscar Grant are just a handful of screenplays that won’t be eligible for nominations from the Writers Guild of America (WGA) this year, HitFix has learned.

Each of those films – “12 Years a Slave,” “Rush,” “Fruitvale Station” – and more are not listed on an official guild ballot obtained by In Contention this morning. Others not on the list of 41 Best Adapted Screenplay contenders along with Ridley include Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope’s Venice Film Festival award-winning “Philomena” and William Nicholson’s biopic “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.” On the original screenplay side, where there are 54 contenders listed, Lake Bell’s “In a World…” and Edgar Wright’s “The World’s End” will be joining Morgan and Coogler on the sidelines.

But all of these scripts, of course, are eligible for Oscar consideration and many of them have fair shots at being recognized by the Academy in January.

Every awards season, a number of contenders that might be formidable presences in the Oscar races for Best Adapted and Original Screenplay – or at the very least have ballot support from the Academy’s writers branch – end up left out of the WGA conversation due to tighter qualifying rules. Writers who are not members of the guild, films made with production companies that are not WGA signatories and productions otherwise made outside of the guild’s guidelines are deemed ineligible year after year, leading to such high-profile recent disqualifications as “The Artist,” “District 9,” “Amour” and Best Original Screenplay Oscar winners “The King’s Speech” and “Django Unchained.”

Foreign films can often qualify if made under the rules of affiliated international guilds, but nevertheless, Abdellatif Kechiche and Ghalia Lacroix’s “Blue is the Warmest Color” and Asghar Farhadi’s “The Past” are not on the ballot. Additionally, animated contenders “Monsters University” and “Frozen,” among others, are not eligible, as animated features rarely are.

Others you can strike from your WGA predictions include Richard Curtis’ “About Time,” David Lowery’s “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” and Destin Cretton’s AMPAS Nicholl Fellowship recipient “Short Term 12,” none of which are present on the ballot.

So who benefits from the annual pruning? After all, films like “Knocked Up,” “Crazy Heart” and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” have found their way to the WGA slate in lieu of Oscar contenders that eventually beat them to the Academy’s line-up in the past. This time around, it could be contenders such as “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” (still hanging in there), “Labor Day” (Jason Reitman is a two-time guild nominee) and “Her” (maybe a bigger guild player than Academy) that will be looking to capitalize, among others.

But the biggest impact is clearly felt in the adapted category, where sure-fire nominations hog “12 Years a Slave” won’t be in the mix but could easily walk away with the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay in March.

(Also, a reminder: This year’s slate of documentary WGA nominees could be a bit different than in years past, as the guild recently extended the same strictures to that category as exacted upon the adapted and original screenplay races.)

Theatrical and documentary WGA nominees will be announced on Friday, Jan. 3.

It was 10 Decembers ago that a French composer named Alexandre Desplat burst on to the Hollywood movie scene with his gorgeous score for “Girl With a Pearl Earring.” He earned his first Golden Globe nomination for that work, and after continual quality achievements on films like “Birth,” “Syriana” and “The Painted Veil,” he earned his first Oscar nomination seven years ago for “The Queen.” It has been nothing but up since then, as he has now earned five Oscar nominations and worked with directors ranging from Roman Polanski to Stephen Frears, Wes Anderson to Stephen Daldry, Terrence Malick to Tom Hooper, Kathryn Bigelow to George Clooney and David Fincher – and that”s just in the English language.

His latest score is for the newly released and highly regarded “Philomena.” The chance to catch up recently was particularly meaningful for me, given that we first spoke the year Desplat earned his nomination for “The Queen,” which was both his first Oscar nomination and the first year of In Contention’s Tech Support column.

We began, of course, by looking at the past decade, which Desplat admits has been an incredibly lucky one. “Hollywood has opened the gate for me and has kept it open,” he says. “It is a very fragile world where doors can open but can close very quickly. Many Europeans, not only composers, have tried to break into Hollywood but only get one attempt. I”m very lucky to have continued to work [in the US] while still doing work in the UK and France.”

Of course, luck is not all that Desplat is riding on. Talent and a sheer love of film music has also driven him. He would hardly be so prolific otherwise, turning out an average of six feature film scores per year since that first Oscar nod, and sometimes as many as nine. “You have to believe in what you do and do it with passion,” he says. “It”s what I”ve always wanted to do – write film music. By being a crazy cinephile and being able to talk cinema with my directors and because of my passion for music, I am able to show that I can offer anything that the history of music has to offer.”

This of course requires significant discipline. He admits he still needs to work and train after 10 years of improving his range, “to be able to approach a wide range of films and wide range of scores – 120 piece score like ‘Harry Potter,” or big successes like ‘The Ides of March” or ‘The King”s Speech.””

And yet he confesses he still, always, frets about landing his next job. That”s the thing that occupies his brain. All these doubts and fears that a composer has – opening a new chapter and new history and millions of notes. The blank page is as terrifying for him as it must be a screenwriter.

Clearly, though, much of Desplat”s success has been attributable to the directors who have a desire to keep working with him. “Most of these directors have called me again for one, two, three, four movies,” he says. “It”s the directors who have heard my work somewhere and think I can bring something to their film.”

When asked why this might be, Desplat becomes pensive, but believes it ultimately is related to an ability to ensure that his music complements their work and does not overwhelm it. “I have to be dedicated to the film as well as to the music,” he says. “There”s a respect I have for the dialogue and the sound and trying never to overwhelm their cinema…Directors speak together. They speak to film editors. They share the idea that I”m completely devoted to what I do and the films I work on. I always try to elevate the movie – even if it”s very high. I try to make it look better without making me look better.”

Even on massive blockbusters such as “Harry Potter,” Desplat goes out of his way to emphasize the importance of what”s on the screen. That was a huge franchise film with a massive orchestra but director David Yates, he says, has a very European sensitivity. “We were always on the same page aesthetically,” Desplat says. “In American scoring, there is a tendency to underline every emotion. Sometimes you need to do that, like in ‘Rise of the Guardians”  – animation is, by essence, not real. But in a way, ‘Philomena” or ‘Harry Potter,” in the gentle sections, the films are not so far away. Of course, when there”s a huge battle with thousands of soldiers and monsters, it can”t sound like ‘Philomena!””

Something that Desplat has strong views on, and which he believes is a large reason for much of the success that he has experienced, is his background in European approaches to film scoring and filmmaking. But what does he mean by that? “I think maybe that”s why directors call me on both sides of the Atlantic,” he muses. “I”ve kind of combined the grandeur, epic, Romanesque scores that you can hear in American cinema since the ’40s/”50s until John Williams, and the restrained scores of Nino Rota, Georges Delerue.”

In Desplat”s view, this is related to the history of filmmaking. It started in the French New Wave, he says, because the enterprising filmmakers of that movement started to find a new way of telling stories and filmmaking. “When you”re shooting with a camera held on the shoulder, couldn”t have a full orchestra, what did they do,” he ponders. “Just what I said: Picture does not decide what the music will be, story decides what the music will be. I see in movies in America, and sometimes also in music, where the music is just mimicking what you see on screen. And that”s something the Nouvelle Vague would not allow.”

He is nonetheless the first to admit that this isn”t necessarily an area where cut-and-dry distinctions can be made. There have been many great American composers, he points out, who have alterred their personal signature. He mentions Danny Elfman and John Williams with movies like “Presumed Innocent” and “The Accidental Tourist,” as well as the great  Bernard Herrmann, even. “So when I say ‘American cinema,” we can”t put everything in the same basket as an animated movie where everything needs to be precisely following the action,” he says. “The scores of Carter Burwell for the Coen brothers are an example of this.”

Turning to “Philomena,” Desplat cites his relationship with Frears as a prime example of a very good rapport he has built over the past seven years. The film represents their fourth collaboration (after “The Queen,” “Chéri” and “Tamara Drewe”). “He”s a man with a great sense of humanity and has great respect for people he collaborates with,” Desplat says. “He knows they”ll be giving 200 percent of their time and energy for the film. We share the same taste for wit. His movies are also very European – something almost Francophile. I”m always very inspired very early on because [his work] is just so related to my own personality.”

With respect to how Frears works with his composers on a day-in, day-out basis, Desplat says the director is not hands-on with details, but he certainly keeps an eye on things “with benevolence, but it”s always about how much more or less drama music can we bring. He can just guide me in kind words, such as, ‘Maybe lighter here.” He has a great sense of how the movie should flow and he knows that the music is very important for that flow. It”s never, ‘Oh, I like major chords or minor chords.’ It”s always about film and the storyline.”

Turning to the actual score, Desplat says “the title is ‘Philomena,” so guess what? I had to find Philomena”s color, tone, physicality. That”s the main thing I focussed on.”

The most memorable aspect of the score is the lovely melody which plays throughout, which Desplat says he came up with in order to reflect the eponymous character’s gentleness, her pain, this wound that she has that never healed and the obsession of the “original sin,” which was the moment when she made love with a boy and got pregnant. “As usual with me, it”s not only the melody,” he says. “When the fairground organ plays this melody, I”m going to use the melody of this sound all along the film. Sound of orchestra is not just playing – sound is an echo of what we heard on the fairground. It creates an eerie but gentle, not-at-all-foreboding sound that both conveys the melody and the memory of that moment.”

As the film goes on, the melody needs to change to reflect the shifts in tone for the film. “We had to build following the story,” he says. “When they go to America, there”s more and more Hitchcockian investigation-type of music. Stephen used to say ‘more Hitchcock” – the music was too gentle, it”s safe to go into more into Bernard Herrmann-style instruments.”

Also, on a film like this, there was a temptation to bring in Irish/Celtic-style music. But it was a temptation that Desplat and Frears quickly found unappealing. “After screening,” he recalls, “we had a meeting where I asked, ‘Irish?” and everyone there said ‘nope!” We knew very quickly that there would be an Irish thread all along the film. To add a tin whistle or a bull drum makes no sense. It would be overdoing it. We needed to find the thin red line between Martin”s cynicism and Philomena”s seeming weakness, when she”s in fact very strong. It”s more important than playing Irish countryside music. Irish countryside is there on screen but the story could be anywhere; the themes are universal.”

We are of course now at the beginning of yet another awards season and I couldn”t help but ask Desplat what he thinks about this. “Having an award is not ‘the truth,”” he says. “When you lose at an Oscar ceremony and the person beside you is John Williams, and he has also lost, you say, ‘It”s not that bad to lose,” and it”s not that you lose, because you”ve been nominated. Not that I wouldn”t like to have an Oscar one day but when I look back over the past 10 years, I think of the music I”ve written and the movies…who remembers who won the Oscar for Best Score in 1956 or 1991? If there was a recipe to do a great movie, with great director, write a fantastic score and get an award, great. But that”s not why I write music.”

Nevertheless, I”m confident that golden statuette is coming his way one of these years.

This weekend the revival of “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” finally becomes a reality. The hard work Jamieson McGonigle has put into this thing behind the scenes is something to behold and notice has been taken across the net, his mission statement even making it into a New York Times Business section piece a few weeks back. I’ve been honored to have a hand in it all and look forward to hopping a plane later this week to share in the spirit out in Queens Saturday night.

In the run-up to that event, a number of outlets – Ain’t It Cool News, Film.com, Film School Rejects, The Film Stage and HitFix – will be offering up appreciations of various elements from the film. As you might have expected, it’s on me to look back on Roger Deakins’ next-level photography, and the pleasure is all mine.

I phoned Deakins up a while back specifically for this piece, to gauge his reflective thoughts on the project. It was a great year for him: he was double-nominated by the Academy for “Jesse James” and “No Country for Old Men.” Robert Elswit won the Oscar for “There Will Be Blood” and the other nominees were exemplary as well. It was really a great year for the form, so much so that it inspired an annual feature reflecting on the top 10 shots of the year here at In Contention. And yes, the most iconic image of “Jesse James” not only made the list, but took the top spot.

Deakins is pretty low key about this kind of thing. He immediately, for instance, extends the credit of the film’s visual poetry to novelist Ron Hansen’s work on the page. “It almost visualizes that world itself,” he says, “that descriptive nature of the writing.” But nevertheless, what Deakins saw through that lens was pure magic, kissed with mythology and iconography.

The film is a sort of tone poem, he concedes, but the aim was to get the authenticity right. More to the point, the elegiac aspect of the story was something he and director Roger Deakins wanted to capture, “that moment in history when the world was changing and industry was arriving – the old west was dying.” It’s something that’s rarely been done in movies and that excited Deakins. You can call it a western, he says, but it crosses over into something else. It is, as he has said plenty of times, a “Victorian western.”

It’s also worth noting that Deakins preferred the longer version of the film, which Dominik is still hoping can see the light of day. It delved more deeply into the characters, he says, what happened to Zee and Frank James, “and it just had a better sense of the changing times and the idea that this world was dying,” he says. “And in a way, that’s what Jesse James knew. It was a much more kind of reflective and thoughtful piece. And most of that extra time went on in the latter part of the movie after Jesse James was killed.”

It was a very ambitious shoot. Deakins and the rest of the crew were tasked with filming a large and sprawling piece of work in something like 60 days. Finding the right weather for this look or that was always a chore and concessions you’d never have noticed were made, this scene or that forced off an uncooperative location and onto a sound stage.

But Deakins is rare for having lensed two westerns in the modern era, the Coen brothers’ “True Grit” in addition to “Jesse James.” And he opts to stretch that to three as he very much feels that “No Country for Old Men” deals in the themes and, in some ways, frontier crucial to the genre. But with “True Grit” in particular, he marks just one shared element between the two: a sense of reflection.

“It had some of the same melancholy sort of feel about it,” he says. “And certainly with Rooster’s character there were certain moments that became almost, dare I say, existential. It was that kind of reflective material at times.” But beyond that, the visual acumen of the Coens and that of Dominik are so strikingly different that it made Deakins’ experience on the two films completely different.

“Jesse James” was also one of the last features Deakins shot on film, as he has made a full transition to digital filmmaking and embraces it wholeheartedly now. Part of what he achieved on Dominik’s film was done digitally, in fact, because the digital finish went a long way toward giving him control over the image. “I couldn’t actually do what I wanted to do photochemically,” he says.

And when I say his work in the digital sphere doesn’t quite have the digital “look” so prevalent in other such work, he’s not really having any of it. “I don’t really know what that is when you say a ‘digital look,'” he says. “I know some movies look digital but it’s kind of the way they’re shot and the technology and processing that’s being used on them. But I don’t think the average person would notice it.”

Maybe, maybe not. But having a master behind the camera makes all the difference in the world, whether it’s a film magazine or a hard drive in play. And that was certainly the case on “Jesse James”: a master was behind the camera, cranking out some of the most memorable cinematic imagery of the modern era, some of the 10-time Oscar nominee’s finest work to date on one of the greatest films ever made.

How’s that for superlatives?

The “Jesse James” Revival gets its moment on Saturday, Dec. 7.

Be sure to check out other “Jesse James” appreciations at Ain”t It Cool News, Film.com, Film School Rejects and The Film Stage all week.

At present, Baz Luhrmann’s spring hit “The Great Gatsby” has at least two Oscar nominations in the bag: bids for Production and Costume Design are assured, and it could well win both. Other tech nods are feasible, but while Warner Bros. are putting the campaign dollars in, above-the-line nominations seem unlikely. At the Australian Academy Awards, however, it’s a different story: the blockbuster scored a leading 14 nods, including Best Picture and a quintet of acting citations for Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Elizabeth Debicki and Isla Fisher. (Sorry, Tobey.) I suspect it’ll lose out to Australia’s heartwarming Oscar submission “The Rocket” in the top races, but “Gatsby” devotees can briefly savor heavyweight status.[AACTA]

Clio Barnard (“The Selfish Giant”) and Anthony Chen (Singapore’s Oscar entry “Ilo Ilo”) are among Variety’s 10 Directors to WAtch, set to be honored at the Palm Springs fest. [Variety]

Jordan Hoffman on the expertly maintained public image of Jennifer Lawrence, and its “wonderful alignment” with the character of Katniss Everdeen. [Vulture]

Steve Pond on the likeliness (or otherwise) of the Academy ever creating a slate of 10 Best Picture nominees, even in what’s perceived as a strong year. [The Wrap] 

Foreign-language Oscar entries “The Great Beauty” and “The Broken Circle Breakdown” were among the big winners at this year’s Black Nights Film Festival. [Screen Daily] 

Two-time Oscar nominee Julie Walters will received the Richard Harris Award for outstanding contribution to British film at the British Independent Film Awards. [BIFA]

Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply on the striking arrival of “The Wolf of Wall Street” in the awards race: its event status isn’t in doubt, but does it pose a problem to Paramount? [New York Times]

Mary Ann Skweres profiles editor Joe Walker, and his subtle, deliberate work on “12 Years a Slave.” [Below the Line]

Peter Bart on how Bruce Dern (who is everywhere this season) is proving the value of Q&A availability in awards campaigning. [Variety]

A BFI study shows that only 7% of UK films made between 2003 and 2010 turned a profit. (That pretty much covers the “Harry Potter” franchise, right?) [The Guardian]

For someone who has already won a BAFTA, been nominated for an Oscar, trodden the Broadway boards and worked with such singular filmmakers as Steve McQueen, Baz Luhrmann and Michael Mann – all with years to spare before her 30th birthday – you wouldn’t think “unattainable” is a word that often enters the mind of Carey Mulligan.

Yet that’s exactly how the British actress regarded the prospect of working with the Coen brothers – perhaps the most enduring offbeat members of America’s current filmmaking establishment – before they approached her for a small but viciously significant role in “Inside Llewyn Davis,” their melancholy, elliptical journey to New York’s folk music scene of the early 1960s.

The actress is a longstanding fan of the duo – “Fargo,” at least until “Davis,” was her favorite of their works – but was thrown for a loop when she was selected to play Jean, the scaldingly caustic ex of Oscar Isaac’s shambling title character, with whom he has some crucially unfinished business. And it wasn’t just because of the against-type nature of the part. “I just never imagined I”d be in a Coen brothers film,” she says. “You know the actors that get to be in their films, and they’re brilliant. I’m not one of those actors. So just getting the email with the script – and it said at the top ‘a Coen brothers film’ – was incredible.”

So, she thought upon actually reading it, was the script. “Honestly, I was just so happy to read a female character who was given more than a few words strung together,” she laughs. “But such words, in her case. To be given whole paragraphs of that kind of vitriol was sort of amazing. Everyone has a temper, but I don”t think I”ve ever reached that level.”

Jean is the most high-temperature character in a film otherwise very much in a Coens shade of cool. She gets much of the script’s quickest, most verbal comedy, but also its blackest, most unruly reserves of feeling – a refreshing register for an actress often called upon to play more demure, sensibly guarded individuals, be it the precocious, well-spoken teenager of her breakthrough film “An Education” or the fine-china delicacy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Daisy Buchanan. For Mulligan, it was an opportunity to don the disguise of a character bearing precious little resemblance to herself, while still finding ways to empathize with her.

“She has so many brilliantly written lines, and they’re so much fun to deliver, and that’s the unmistakably the Coens, of course,” she says. “You could only dream of coming up with that stuff on the spur of the moment. At the same time, however, there are glimpses of a real relationship behind it, and that’s what Oscar and I worked on. These people, genuinely in pain, who genuinely feel for each other but kind of can”t see past all the dirt that”s come their way. The only way you can be so incredibly unpleasant and brutal to someone is if you have a real intimacy and a history. Llewyn is who she really is herself around. So, ugly and not very nice. But honest.”

That’s the measured, sensitive answer, of course. She goes on to explain that and Isaac devised an entire back-story for the ex-lovers. (“It wasn’t particularly sophisticated,” she allows, before giving a potted history of their “drunken slip-ups.”) But that’s not to say onscreen anger doesn’t offer more immediate pleasures: “It’s just so fun to scream at the top of your lungs, at seven in the morning in Washington Square Park, at an actor that you love acting with.”

Mulligan’s affection for Isaac dates back to their experience playing husband and wife – to less raw emotional effect – in Nicolas Winding Refn’s sleek neon thriller “Drive.” Her familiarity with him, and the non-prescriptive nature of the Coens’ direction, she says, encouraged her to “let loose” in ways she hadn’t before. “I assumed they would reign me in,” she says, “but more often than not, they pushed me further and made her more brutal, meaner, harsher. But they”ve entrusted you to play a part and you”ve put all your faith in them in turn. And I felt that comfort with Oscar too: he”s a friend and a great actor, so I got to spar with him.”

Sparring with the Coens, however, was slower to come: Mulligan first met with them by phone and admits her nerves put paid to any future memory of their conversation. “They just kind of said a bunch of things on the phone for, like, 15 minutes, and they were kind of laughing the whole way through” she recalls. “I was in LA doing practice for ‘Shame,’ so I didn”t meet them until the following year, when we came together to rehearse the music.”

By that point, she’d completed both “Shame” and Baz Luhrmann’s gaudy, glittering adaptation of “The Great Gatsby”; it took some time, she says, for her “head space” to catch up to the new project. “Nothing about the entire film was remotely stressful to do,” she enthuses. “I”ve never had that on anything. I”ve done jobs that I”ve absolutely adored and there have been really, really difficult ones. But this was just so fun, so freeing. That’s what the Coens set up for you as an actor, just by being who they are. The great thing about them is that when you’re filming, you don”t feel the labor or the art or the set ups or the design. Everything moves so quickly and is so planned out: the world that they created is there, so you just don”t really think about it.”

“There was something really cathartic about it after ‘Gatsby,’ which was a great experience, but a big, big, big film – very visual in a way that I wasn”t used to,” she continues, and she’s not just referring to the film’s own mise-en-scene.

“I”d never played a girl that was meant to look pretty before. I played girls that were just girls; I”d never played a character that had all these fantastic descriptions of her beauty. That was something that I had to tackle in ‘Gatsby.’ So going to the Coen brothers and playing this girl who doesn”t wear makeup and has a big ill-looking face and black wig – just, generally, looking kind of crap – was wonderfully liberating. There”s no vanity to her. it”s quite a feminist idea.”

 “Inside Llewyn Davis” also required Mulligan once more to exercise the singing chops she demonstrated in a famously torchy, slowed-down version of “New York, New York” in “Shame.” The Coens’ film required her to adopt the more distinct vocal style of Greenwich Village folk, but the actress found this is a different experience in other respects too.

“‘Shame’ was a very different experience because that scene was really sort of a message to her brother,” she says. “This is so light and, after my initial nerves, so much fun. We kind of figured out our little trio and our homage to Peter, Paul and Mary. And T-Bone Burnett was incredible the whole way through – not just for the singing but through filming. He’s a lovely person to have around. He gave me confidence to do it.”

Burnett, of course, wasn’t the only person Mulligan could turn to for some musical encouragement. Her husband is Marcus Mumford, frontman of Grammy-winning folk-pop band Mumford & Sons – who was attached to the film in a musical capacity before Mulligan came on board. “I”m mostly influenced by the music that we listen to at home,” she says. “I”m not a massive music fan, actually – I mean, I am not an expert. I have such broad taste: from really cheesy pop rubbish that I listen to in the gym to decent music that I”m exposed to by my family.

“We had a great week before we started filming, just working on our comfort levels with the other actors and the music – just people hanging around and playing guitars and being creative, and me, sort of sitting in a corner watching. There”s something really enviable about musicians: they have this effortless sense of community. People can walk into a room having never met, pick up a musical instrument and start playing and they”re already together. They”re already sort of united by it, which is not the same with acting. It would be kind of awful if it was!”

For her part, Mulligan is choosing her jamming partners pretty carefully, admitting that she “hasn’t felt a need” to work at every given opportunity: “I’ve waited for the right things to come along, and I”m so lucky at the moment to be able to do that,” she says. “Things work best for me when I”m playing a part because I can”t bear the idea of anyone else playing it. I don”t want to do anything where I”m sort of half-arsing it.”

She has just completed shooting on Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s new adaptation of “Far From the Madding Crowd,” and is plainly excited about it: “He’s such a brilliant filmmaker,” she gushes. Mulligan is building up an impressive portfolio of director collaborations: she actively sought the role in “Drive,” a project for which she was an unlikely fit, based on her enthusiasm for Nicholas Winding Refn’s previous work. Similarly, she pursued “Shame” director Steve McQueen based on her admiration for his debut.

She admits that, for the right director, she’s willing to take a leap of faith even if the role or script might not call out to her otherwise. “I get really swept up in people”s work, and the notion of what being in one of their films is. Like, the Coen brothers, I wouldn”t even have neded to read the script. I’d have played a tea lady. Some filmmakers, it’s a no-brainer. With the right person at the helm, even if it”s not your dream role on the page, it can get somewhere really interesting.”

The 23rd annual Gotham Independent Awards were handed out tonight at Cipriani Wall Street in New York, and it was the Coen brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis.” However, “Fruitvale Station” walked out with a pair of awards in the breakthrough categories.

It’s a huge boost for the Coens’ film, which is set for limited release on Friday. Interestingly, though, nominations leader (both here and with the Independent Spirits) “12 Years a Slave” walked away empty-handed. But more on the winners and losers in a moment.

The ceremony marked the first awards show of consequence this season and featured a quartet of tributes, beginning with Katherine Oliver, Commissioner of The New York City Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, who was introduced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Elsewhere, “Enough Said” star James Gandolfini, who passed away in June at the age of 51, was honored by actor Steve Buscemi. Buscemi has starred with the late actor in “The Sopranos” and the films “Romance & Cigarettes” and “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” and counted the late actor as a close friend. “As an artist, Jimmy gave everything he had,” Buscemi said as he started to choke up. “I absolutely cherished working with him.”

Also receiving a tribute was “Before Midnight” director Richard Linklater, which was presented by his stars and co-writers Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Hawke recalled being told once upon a time about Linklater’s debut “Slacker,” how a friend told him he had to see it because “there’s a new voice in the universe.” Great way to put it. “Most filmmakers love to dazzle,” Hawke said, but Linklater understands that life itself is dazzling. Said Delpy to the filmmaker, “I want to thank you from the bottom of my big, fat, French heart.”

It was heartening seeing Linklater up there accepting an award, by the way. “Dazed and Confused” was a pretty big event in my film-going life and he’s continued to be, throughout his career, so uncompromising. He said an honor like this tends to get you to think retrospectively, but he turned his attention to the New York film world and how eternally grateful he was for it. “The template for personal expression in film, that will always be New York for me,” he said, calling out Scorsese, Cassavetes and Jarmusch, among others.

Also: “Before Midnight” took 10 weeks to write and 15 days to shoot. A little over 80 days to crank out a masterful piece of work like that? Wowsers.

“Fruitvale Station” producer Forest Whitaker was also recognized with a tribute, presented by director Lee Daniels. It was a classy intro, even when Daniels had to chide the notoriously rude Cipriani crowd (as did Jared Leto earlier in the evening) for talking too loud through the evening. “Forest told me to keep my anger in, to not be a stereotypical angry black man,” Daniels said, before mentioning the unfortunate Upper West Side situation Whitaker recently dealt with. “I would have been arrested,” Daniels said. “But he lives on a higher plane.”

Said Whitaker upon taking the stage, “I’m just trying to lift the veil that’s in front of my eyes, to try and discover my place in this world, my connection to the universe. So when I approach a character, I’m attempting to pull back the layers of the soul of the person I’m portraying.”

Full list of winners with some commentary on the next page.

2013 GOTHAM INDEPENDENT AWARD WINNERS

Best Feature: “Inside Llewyn Davis”

It’s a movie made in New York about New Yorkers, filled with New Yorkers,” Oscar Isaac said, playing well to the home town crowd. Sweet justice for the film after the Coens were somehow passed over in the directing and writing categories at the Independent Spirit Awards.

Best Actor: Matthew McConaughey, “Dallas Buyers Club”

Jared Leto was on hand to accept in McConaughey’s stead. He read a statement from the actor, who he had on the telephone while reading it (that’s a first). At the end Leto left it with a “just keep livin’.”

Oh, and Leto jumped on the loud crowd: “Shut the fuck up… you can eat your crème brûlée later.” Git ’em, Jared.

Best Actress: Brie Larson, “Short Term 12”

Really, it’s an embarrassment of riches in this category. But Larson might be the best of the lot. Her work in this underrated gem is so raw and authentic. “This may be the only time I accept an award,” she said, which may or may not be true for “Short Term 12,” but is certainly not true of her future. We’ll be talking about her for years to come.

Best Breakthrough Actor: Michael B. Jordan, “Fruitvale Station”

I say again, there’s a lot of love for Jordan out there on the circuit. He’s charmed a lot of people along the way and is just such a bright young man. He thanked his parents tonight for their sacrifices along the way as he was growing up across the river in New Jersey, dreaming of becoming an actor. “Oscar [Grant]’s story needed to be told,” he said.

Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award: Ryan Coogler, “Fruitvale Station”

A strong voice and a vibrant new talent, it’s hard to argue with this, even if it was the bigger player in the category. This film’s story stretches way back to Sundance, where it picked up a few key prizes. “A few years ago I was just a film graduate student trying to figure things out, and I went into Forest [Whitaker]’s office to tell him what kind of movies I wanted to make,” Coogler said about his producer and a tributee tonight. “He said he wanted to make this one, and I’m indebted to him for that.”

Best Documentary: “The Act of Killing”

One of the most critically acclaimed films of the year. Just topped the Sight and Sound poll. Will it translate to a nomination or will the branch, as ever, go its own way?

Audience Award: “Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings”

This beat out a couple of heavy-hitters. “12 Years a Slave” and “Fruitvale Station” were in the mix. “I think it’s cool that all the films in this category were about strong, dynamic people of color,” writer/director Tadashi Nakamura said. No doubt.

Euphoria Calvin Klein Spotlight on Women Filmmakers: Gita Pullapilly, “Beneath the Harvest Sky”

Tributes: James Gandolfini, Richard Linklater, Katherine Oliver and Forest Whitaker

Unless you were holding out hope that “A Madea Christmas” or “47 Ronin” would make an impact on the Oscar race, it's fair to say all the cards are on the table. “American Hustle” was shown to guilds and press last weekend and has been screening in earnest ever since. “The Wolf of Wall Street” was shown to guilds and HFPA over the last two days with further press screenings set for later this week. All the cats are out of the bag, and just in time, too. Because the critics are about to have their say.

But before I get to that, where do we find ourselves with these final two reveals? I've made my case that “Wolf” could really pop in a somber season that has carried with it themes of survival and hardship. And indeed, reactions from those guild screenings have been through the roof, like everyone's been craving something to take the edge off. “Hustle,” meanwhile, has received a bit of a mixed reaction, some thinking it's set for double-digit nominations, others viewing it as a minimal player at best. Both films, in my humble opinion, are slightly disappointing in their own ways, but I like them both. However, if David O. Russell was looking to put a period on the year, Martin Scorsese has certainly come along and added an exclamation point. (And ironic, that, given how much “Hustle” owes to Scorsese's aesthetic.)

So…here we are. Beginning tomorrow, the critics will start their roll-out of superlatives as the New York Film Critics Circle – which once again desperately scrambled to the head of the pack, one day ahead of the National Board of Review, in order to be “FIRST!” with its announcement – reveals its winners. Last year, it was “Zero Dark Thirty,” right on the heels of the film's first press screenings. Others followed suit for the most part before the tide began to turn toward “Argo.” Did the early critics paint a bull's-eye on Kathryn Bigelow's film, much like the media has done with “12 Years a Slave” this year? Perhaps. Plenty of the film's fall was owed to shenanigans in Washington, too, though.

This year, I imagine “12 Years” is fully primed to be the critical giant. But maybe “Her” goes over well with NYFCC tomorrow, a film that, like “The Master” last year, could also mark a disparity between critics and Academy voters. The Rudin presence in New York might help “Captain Phillips” and particularly “Inside Llewyn Davis” along. And with “The Wolf of Wall Street” fresh on their minds tomorrow (NYFCC is seeing the film today), who knows how much of a presence it could have?

The LA critics will speak up less than a week later and could easily go with “12 Years a Slave,” too. Though last year there was clearly a desire to spread love to “The Master” when it was completely ignored by the New York crowd. Their winners seemed to have a more adventurous spirit, less drunk on the shiny new toy that was “Zero Dark Thirty.” Maybe their actor pick stands out. Bruce Dern seems like a good bet, for instance. And he may well need that boost in a very, very competitive category.

And even after all those critics have spoken, we still have a completely different group of people to suss out the Oscar nominations and, ultimately, winners. Interestingly enough, I currently have both “12 Years” and “Gravity” chalked up for 10 nominations apiece. It could easily be more or less for each but that has been the apparent race for a couple of months now, ever since the films released two weeks apart. Both have done very well in their own ways at the box office and are critical hits, meaning neither would be an embarrassing winner by any stretch. (Though let's not forget the power of instant revisionist history, when a film like “Argo” – same Rotten Tomatoes percentage as “12 Years,” box office hit – suddenly becomes a terrible choice in the eyes of the bored.)

“Saving Mr. Banks” is a sleeper possibility, though, and “Nebraska” has been on an upward trajectory since Telluride. And if “Wolf” drops to the kind of reaction SAG has given it, well…watch out.

But my bet, still, is “Gravity.” It's the milestone. It doesn't have the baggage that “Avatar” did (which is what it has been compared to as far as Oscar races go) and it has a savvy campaign – last year's Best Picture winners, in fact – pushing it along, keeping their head down, steering clear of the usual pitfalls. Maybe when the widespread fear of violence vis a vis “12 Years” dissipates within the Academy and everyone finally watches it, it won't be too late. If the critics come out in force for it, that will certainly go a long way toward making that happen. But ever since the media set the film up for a steep fall, I've been skeptical.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though. Winner talk isn't necessary. Let's get to the nominations first. All the players are lined up. Who's going to get there?

The Contenders section has been updated, with, finally, an attempt at narrowing the bet to less than 10 best Picture nominees (which, it will inevitably be less).

FINAL UPDATE: After this, I'm done with it…as long as Ms. Van Blaricom is. The following is the last of an email exchange we had with the IPA president following her side of the story appearing in a report at Gold Derby (subsequently amended to further support our initial report):

“Much to my dismay, Mr. O”Neil misquoted my discussion with him. The International Press Academy members, who could attend the SAG-AFTRA Film Society 'The Wolf of Wall Street' screenings, did so, and subsequently submitted their votes for the film, resulting in enough votes for the film to be nominated.”

This email was also sent to The Wrap following Steve Pond's coverage of the story. Pond conveyed O'Neil's response thusly:

“O”Neil told TheWrap that he did not misquote Van Blaricom, and that he 'took careful notes' while she twice repeated the specific numbers about how many IPA members attended the screenings.”

Van Blaricom is now claiming to the studio that she saw the Sunday screening, not the Saturday screening, where she originally said she and 26 of her colleagues were in attendance.

You can make up your own mind, but we're done here. Read the rest below.

UPDATE: You can read this afternoon's report below for the background. Earlier today, Gold Derby's Tom O'Neil called up Mirjana Van Blaricom to get her side. “I saw ['The Wolf of Wall Street'] on Saturday at 12:30 at the SAG screening,” she told him. “I was with nine other members of my group. Over all, I saw 27 of us at that screening. Many other members saw the movie at the three other industry screenings that were held over the weekend.” She also said “AFTRA and SAG voters are permitted to bring two guests and we go with them. That way we get to see movies first.”

I'm not entirely sure why someone would want to keep digging this hole, but in any case, it turns out, at least according to the studio, none of that is true. And O'Neil has since updated his own post to reflect further information that backs up our story.

First and foremost, SAG-AFTRA members were not, according to Paramount, permitted to bring two guests to the screening Van Blaricom said she attended with 26 of her organization's membership present (the same screening I actually attended). That screening was arranged in collaboration with the SAG Foundation. Due to limited seating, no guests were allowed, a studio source says, save for a few instances when SAG Nominating Committee members were permitted guests.

The source tells me a total of nine individuals – yes, including the person who got me in – were allowed guests, and that even of the talent in attendance, only Rob Reiner brought a guest: his wife. So if you're keeping score, that's a total of nine people (guests) who could even have theoretically been IPA members in attendance, yet Van Blaricom claims there were 27 and that she was among them.

“She wasn't there,” the source says. “And neither were 26 of her friends. We are aware of everyone who was on the guest list in that room as it was a very managed process. Each member was required to show a SAG-AFTRA membership card upon check-in to gain admittance,” save, again, for guests of Nominating Committee members who attended. All nine of them.

We stand by our original report, and will leave it with this excerpt from O'Neil's piece, which reflects other inconsistencies in the IPA's nominations list this morning:

That controversy aside, there are other problems with today's Satellite Award nominations. “Louie” is nominated for Best TV Comedy Series and Best Comedy Actor even though the show didn't air during the 2013 eligibility period. The last “Louie” episode aired on September 27, 2012.

“We made a mistake,” Van Blaricom admits. “Our members didn't realize that when they were voting. We will fix that.”

She also said that she will investigate a curious contradiction in placement of “Once Upon a Time.” On the IPA's website, it's nominated for Best Comedy Series, but not in the official press release where it's up for Best TV Series or Miniseries, Genre. “We will look into that,” she promised when we pointed this out.

“Veep” appears on the press release as nominee for Best Comedy Series, but not on the website. She says the website version is wrong – “Veep,” yes, is nominated – and she blames her website software. “WordPress works strangely,” she says.

EARLIER: Former HFPA president Mirjana Van Blaricom is the founder of the International Press Academy (IPA). Some years ago she and the HFPA went their separate ways. It was some mysterious scandal. No one really knows what happened. She went off and formed the IPA and I'm told the HFPA's stance is, “If you work with the IPA, don't work with us.” So naturally, the IPA, which annually hands out the dubious Satellite Awards, doesn't have much of a relationship with the studios. Few of them submit films and/or screen for the organization.

With that out of the way, and I'm not trying to kick up a petty war about something that doesn't even matter, but these questionable if harmless nominations caught my eye today when I saw “The Wolf of Wall Street” throughout. The film landed five nominations, including Best Motion Picture, Director and Actor. Had they seen it? After all, it's only screened for guilds and HFPA so far. Turns out, according to sources, no, they haven't seen it.

The studio confirmed today that they neither submitted nor screened “Wolf” for Satellite Award consideration. And specifically, Van Blaricom, I'm told, didn't see the film. So chalk its mentions up as what they likely are: an attempt to get people like Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio to show up at the March 9 ceremony. And you can probably apply similar logic throughout, whether the films were seen or not. As a result, the organization's list of nominations – which basically reads like an Oscar predictions crib sheet (“Gravity” and “12 Years a Slave” led the way with eight mentions apiece) – loses any shred of credibility it may have had to begin with.

All of that's not to say that Van Blaricom hasn't been spot on in her criticisms of the HFPA. She also recently testified in the HFPA/Dick Clark Productions dispute. But this is beyond, even by awards season standards. And it shoots any claims of her organization being “more legitimate” than the HFPA in the foot.

So count this as the last time we bother covering the International Press Academy and the Satellite Awards. At least they go out on an amazing year for movies…

(Nominations on the next page.)

Motion Picture
“All Is Lost”
“American Hustle”
“Blue Jasmine”
“Captain Phillips”
“Gravity”
“Inside Llewyn Davis”
“Philomena”
“Saving Mr. Banks”
“12 Years a Slave”
“The Wolf of Wall Street”

Director
Woody Allen, “Blue Jasmine”
Joel and Ethan Coen, “Inside Llewyn Davis”
Alfonso Cuarón, “Gravity”
Paul Greengrass, “Captain Phillips”
Ron Howard, “Rush”
Steve McQueen, “12 Years a Slave”
David O. Russell, “American Hustle”
Martin Scorsese, “The Wolf of Wall Street”

Actor in a Motion Picture
Christian Bale, “American Hustle”
Bruce Dern, “Nebraska”
Leonardo DiCaprio, “The Wolf of Wall Street”
Chiwetel Ejiofor, “12 Years a Slave”
Tom Hanks, “Captain Phillips”
Matthew McConaughey, “Dallas Buyers Club”
Robert Redford, “All is Lost”
Forest Whitaker, “Lee Daniels' The Butler”

Actress in a Motion Picture
Amy Adams, “American Hustle”
Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine”
Sandra Bullock, “Gravity”
Judi Dench, “Philomena”
Adèle Exarchopoulos, “Blue is the Warmest Color”
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, “Enough Said”
Meryl Streep, “August: Osage County”
Emma Thompson, “Saving Mr. Banks”

Actor in a Supporting Role
Bradley Cooper, “American Hustle”
Michael Fassbender, “12 Years a Slave”
Harrison Ford, “42”
Ryan Gosling, “The Place Beyond the Pines”
Jake Gyllenhaal, “Prisoners”
Tom Hanks, “Saving Mr. Banks”
Casey Affleck, “Out of the Furnace”
Jared Leto, “Dallas Buyers Club”

Actress in a Supporting Role
Sally Hawkins, “Blue Jasmine”
Jennifer Lawrnece, “American Hustle”
Lupita Nyong'o, “12 Years a Slave”
Julia Roberts, “August: Osage County”
Léa Seydoux, “Blue is the Warmest Color”
June Squibb, “Nebraska”
Emily Watson, “The Book Thief”
Oprah Winfrey, “Lee Daniels' The Butler”

Motion Picture, International Film
“Bethlehem” (Israel)
“Blue is the Warmest Color” (France)
“The Broken Circle Breakdown” (Belgium)
“Circles” (Serbia)
“Four Corners” (South Africa)
“The Great Beauty” (Italy)
“The Hunt” (Denmark)
“Metro Manila” (United Kingdom)
“The Past” (Iran)
“Wadjda” (Saudi Arabia)

Motion Picture, Animated or Mixed Media
“Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2”
“The Croods”
“Epic”
“Ernest & Celestine”
“Frozen”
“Monsters University”
“Turbo”
“The Wind Rises”

Motion Picture, Documentary
“The Act of Killing”
“After Tiller”
“American Promise”
“Blackfish”
“Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie”
“Sound City”
“The Square”
“Stories We Tell”
“Tim”s Vermeer”
“20 Feet from Stardom”

Screenplay, Original
“American Hustle”
“Blue Jasmine”
“Enough Said”
“Her”
“Inside Llewyn Davis”
“Saving Mr. Banks”

Screenplay, Adapted
“Before Midnight”
“Captain Phillips”
“Lone Survivor”
“Philomena”
“12 Years a Slave”
“The Wolf of Wall Street”

Original Score
“The Book Thief” (John Williams)
“Gravity” (Steven Price)
“Her” (Arcade Fire)
“Philomena” (Alexandre Desplat)
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (Theodore Shapiro)
“12 Years a Slave” (Hans Zimmer)

Original Song
“Happy” from “Despicable Me 2”
“Let it Go” from “Frozen”
“Young and Beautiful” from “The Great Gatsby”
“I See Fire” from “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”
“Please Mr. Kennedy” from “Inside Llewyn Davis”
“So You Know What It's Like” from “Short Term 12”

Cinematography
“Gravity”
“Inside Llewyn Davis”
“Prisoners”
“Rush”
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”
“12 Years a Slave”

Visual Effects
“All is Lost”
“The Croods”
“Gravity”
“Oz the Great and Powerful”
“Rush”
“World War Z”

Film Editing
“American Hustle”
“Gravity”
“Prisoners”
“Rush”
“The Wolf of Wall Street”

Sound (Editing and Mixing)
“All is Lost”
“Elysium”
“Gravity”
“Inside Llewyn Davis”
“Rush”

Art Direction & Production Design
“The Great Gatsby”
“The Invisible Woman”
“Lee Daniels' The Butler”
“Oz the Great and Powerful”
“Rush”
“Saving Mr. Banks”

Costume Design
“The Great Gatsby”
“The Invisible Woman”
“Oz the Great and Powerful”
“Rush”
“Saving Mr. Banks”

Honorary Satellite Award
Ryan Coogler

Breakthrough Performance Award
Sophie Nelisse, “The Book Thief”

Best Ensemble, Motion Picture
“Nebraska”

It was Universal’s “Despicable Me 2” leading the way today with 11 nominations for the 41st annual Annie Awards. But Disney’s “Frozen” – not far behind with 10 mentions – received nominations for Best Animated Feature, Best Direction and Best Writing. It’s sure to dominate the scene this season en route to a likely Best Animated Feature Film Oscar win.

(Worth noting: two of those “Despicable Me 2” nods were for TV and shorts material, but nevertheless, the brand got the most notices.)

Pixar’s “Monsters University” also received 10 nods, while DreamWorks’ “The Croods” landed nine. Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Wind Rises” picked up three. Those five films, it would seem, are in the best position to land Oscar nominations in January, but indie distributor GKIDS had a decent showing today. Both “Ernest & Celestine” and “A Letter to Momo” were nominated for Best Animated Feature (the latter being its only nomination, the former picking up six nominations total including the same major trifecta “Frozen” scored). If there is any wiggle room, “Ernest” could still figure in, but it will be interesting to see how the new process of opening up the voting to a larger cross-section due to the distribution of screeners will impact things.

Blue Sky/Fox’s “Epic” only netted five nominations and failed to pop up in the Best Animated Feature field, but it’s definitely still a contender, too. “Turbo” had one more than that, but…

In the organization’s lone live action category – Animated Effects in a Live Action Production – “Man of Steel,” “Pacific Rim” and “Star Trek Into Darkness” (x2) picked up nominations.

It’s been a typical note this year that 2013 has been a weak year for animated films. But within even the most underwhelming of overall features can be found specific triumphs in craft work, character design, animated effects, etc. And the Annie list reminds us of that.

Check out the full list of nominees below.

The 41st annual Annie Awards will be held on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2014.

PRODUCTION AWARDS

Best Animated Feature
“The Croods”
“Despicable Me 2”
“Ernest & Celestine”
“Frozen”
“A Letter to Momo”
“Monsters University”
“The Wind Rises”

Best Animated Special Production
“Chipotle Scarecrow”
“Listening Is an Act of Love”
“Room on the Broom”
“Toy Story OF TERROR!”

Best Animated Short Subject
“Despicable Me 2 – Puppy”
“Get A Horse!”
“Gloria Victoria”
“My Mom is an Airplane”
“The Numberlys”

Best Animated TV/Broadcast Commercial
“Despicable Me 2 – Cinemark”
“The Polar Bears Movie”
“Sound of the Woods”

Best General Audience Animated TV/Broadcast Production For Preschool Children
“Bubble Guppies”
“Disney Sofia the First”
“Doc McStuffins”
“Justin Time”
“Peter Rabbit”

Best Animated TV/Broadcast Production For Children”s Audience
“Adventure Time”
“Beware the Batman”
“Disney Gravity Falls”
“Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness”
“The Legend of Korra”
“Regular Show”
“Scaredy Squirrel”
“Teen Titans Go!”

Best General Audience Animated TV/Broadcast Production
“Archer”
“Bob”s Burgers”
“Disney Tron Uprising”
“Futurama”
“Motorcity”

Best Animated Video Game
“Diggs Nightcrawler”
“The Last of Us”
“Tiny Thief”

Best Student Film
“Chicken or the Egg”
“The Final Straw”
“Kellerkind”
“Miss Todd”
“Move Mountain”
“SEMÕFORO”
“Trusts & Estates”
“Wedding Cake”

INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT CATEGORIES

Animated Effects in an Animated Production
“The Croods”
“Epic”
“Dragons: Defenders of Berk”
“Monsters University”
“Turbo”

Animated Effects in a Live Action Production
“Man Of Steel”
“Pacific Rim”
“Star Trek: Into Darkness”
“Star Trek: Into Darkness”

Character Animation in an Animated Television/Broadcast Production
“Friendship All-Stars of Friendship: Wrong Number”
“Star Wars: The Clone Wars”
“Toy Story OF TERROR! “
“Toy Story OF TERROR! “
“Toy Story OF TERROR! “
“Ubermansion”

Character Animation in an Animated Feature Production
“The Croods”
“Despicable Me 2”
“Epic”
“Ernest & Celestine”
“Frozen”
“Monsters University”
“The Wind Rises”

Character Animation in a Live Action Production
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” – Gollum
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” – Goblin King
“Pacific Rim”

Character Design in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production
“The Awesomes”
“Disney Mickey Mouse”
“Disney Wander Over Yonder”
“Regular Show”
“Steven Universe”

Character Design in an Animated Feature Production
“Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2”
“The Croods”
“Despicable Me 2”
“Frozen”
“Monsters University”
“A Monster in Paris”
“Turbo”

Directing in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production
“Disney Gravity Falls”
“Disney Mickey Mouse”
“Dragons: Defenders of Berk”
“Justin Time”
“The Legend of Korra”
“The Smurfs: The Legend of Smurfy Hollow”
“Toy Story OF TERROR!”

Directing in an Animated Feature Production
“The Croods”
“Epic”
“Ernest & Celestine”
“Frozen”
“Turbo”

Music in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production
“Disney Mickey Mouse”
“Disney Sofia the First”
“Disney Wander Over Yonder”
“Estefan”
“Peter Rabbit”
“T.U.F.F. Puppy”

Music in an Animated Feature Production
“Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2” (Mark Mothersbaugh)
“The Croods” (Alan Silvestri)
“Despicable Me 2” (Hector Pereira, Pharrell Williams)
“Epic” (Danny Elfman)
“Free Birds” (Dominc Lewis)
“Frozen” (Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Robert Lopez, Christophe Beck)
“Monsters University” (Randy Newman)
“Turbo” (Henry Jackman)

Production Design in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production
“Adventure Time”
“The Legend of Korra”
“The Simpsons” – “Treehouse of Horror XXIV”
“Steven Universe” – “Gem Glow”
“Transformers Prime ‘Beast Hunters””
“The Venture Bros.” – “What Color is Your Cleansuit?”

Production Design in an Animated Feature Production
“The Croods”
“Despicable Me 2”
“Epic”
“Ernest & Celestine”
“Frozen”
“Monsters University”

Storyboarding in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production
“Archer”
“Disney Mickey Mouse”
“Dragons: Riders of Berk”
“Gravity Falls”
“Justin Time”
“Monsters vs. Aliens”
“The Simpsons” – “Treehouse of Horror XXIV”
“Toy Story of TERROR!”

Storyboarding in an Animated Feature Production
“The Croods”
“Despicable Me 2”
“Frozen”
“Monsters University”
“Planes”

Voice Acting in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production
“Fairly Odd Parents” (Eric Bauza)
“Disney Mickey Mouse” (Bill Farmer)
“Disney Mickey Mouse” (Chris Diamantopoulos)
“Regular Show” (Mark Hamill)
“Adventure Time” (Tom Kenny)

Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production
“Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2” (Terry Crews)
“Despicable Me 2” (Kristen Wiig)
“Despicable Me 2” (Steve Carell)
“Despicable Me 2” (Pierre Coffin)
“Frozen” (Josh Gad)
“Monsters University” (Billy Crystal)
“Turbo” (Paul Giamatti)

Writing in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production
“Futurama”
“Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness”
“Regular Show”
“The Simpsons”
“The Simpsons”

Writing in an Animated Feature Production
“Frozen”
“Ernest & Celestine”
“Monsters University”
“The Wind Rises”

Editorial in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production
“Adventure Time”
“Disney Mickey Mouse”
“Dragons: Defenders of Berk”
“Futurama”
“Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness”
“Star Wars: The Clone Wars”
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”
“Toy Story OF TERROR!”

Editorial in an Animated Feature Production
“The Croods”
“Turbo”
“Ernest & Celestine”
“Monsters University”
“Frozen”

JURIED AWARDS

Winsor McCay Award
Katsuhiro Otomo, Steven Spielberg & Phil Tippett

June Foray Award
Alice Davis

Certificate of Merit
“I Know That Voice” (Documentary)

One of the great achievements of the year is Emmanuel Lubezki’s lensing of Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity,” which it would seem has all but locked up his first Oscar win for Best Cinematography to date. His work in the film, which the uneducated will dismiss as limited due to the amount of CGI on display (failing to understand his invaluable place in that process), is a work of technical prowess and thematic potency.

On that last point, I recently spoke to Lubezki about some of the specific frames and fluid shots he and Cuarón crafted in the film. Perhaps you’ll be reading those quotes later in the year as part of our annual “Top 10 Shots of the Year” column, but what struck me while discussing one image in particular was how much his thematic view of “Gravity” matches up with another film he made recently, from another master of the form.

First, the shot: the opening image of the film, which is a 13-minute single “take” lingering with Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney). Soon enough, disaster strikes as a debris storm set off in a chain reaction half-way around the globe crashes through the space shuttle and the Hubble Telescope, shredding the technology to tinker toys in orbit. In the chaos, Stone, attached to a piece of wreckage, begins spiraling out of control until, finally, she releases herself. Off she flies, into the void, into the unknown, until finally the first cut of the film brings the viewer back into her space and continues the action of the scene.

But that originally wasn’t going to be a cut, Lubezki says. The camera was going to catch up with Stone and the fluid shot would keep going. But for him, that would have diminished what he felt was the theme of the film and done a disservice to the power of that final image in the take.

“To me that shot is very powerful and tells the real story of the movie: that humans are tiny little specs in space and we’ve always been afraid of that,” Lubezki says. “And it’s very hard for us to understand eternity and infinity. These are the themes that I think are very strong in the movie, and the moment that Sandra is starting to float away into space and getting lost – basically probably lost in space – was losing power, because then the camera had to go and chase her. There was not a true elegant way to keep the shot going and we didn’t want to lose this image of Sandra disappearing into space.”

In other words, the very idea that the camera could catch up with Stone was diminishing that element of human frailty in the universe. And it’s not something that Lubezki ever discussed with Cuarón in an explicit way; he admits this was his interpretation of what he felt Cuarón was trying to do subtextually. But what is striking is how Lubezki’s take on the themes of “Gravity” could be used to describe Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” which he also shot. That 2011 film is structured in such a way as to present humanity’s insignificance in the greater schemes of not just the Earth, but the cosmos.

“Agreed,” Lubezki says. “This happens, that two amazing directors, two amazing artists in two completely different ways try to express something similar. And that’s the beauty about art. That’s when I think movies that usually are not art can become art.”

RELATED: The Coen Bros. on Emmanuel Lubezki: “Chivo is one of the funniest guys on the planet.”

Lubezki has shot five films for Malick (including this year’s “To the Wonder”) and five for Cuarón. He has received Oscar nominations for four of those 10 collaborations, two for Malick (“The New World” and “The Tree of Life”), two for Cuarón (“A Little Princess” and “Children of Men”). He says the two auteurs are very similar in one way: they both believe in the power of visual communication in cinematography, which he feels is all too rare in the industry.

“They don’t use cinematography as an illustration to text,” Lubezki says. “Most directors in Hollywood use cinematography to illustrate text, especially the directors that work on comedy. But I would say 99 percent of the directors don’t know the value or don’t know the power of visual storytelling. And for Alfonso and Terry, cinematography and visuals are not a branch, are not a part of the movie, but are the movie, are as important as the actor, as important as the location, as important as the music. Every single piece of the storytelling is an essential part of what film is for them. And that’s why I love to work with them, because they believe that you can express emotion visually. I know it sounds insane, but most directors don’t use visuals that way. So I’m just incredibly lucky that I get to work with them and learn from them how to approach a scene and how to be able to express something with visuals.”

Since its Cannes premiere, Alexander Payne’s “Nebraska” has more or less divided critics into two camps: those who accept it as a wry but essentially loving study of small-town manners and mores in the director’s home state, and those who see it as something rather more patronizing and misanthropic than that. (I’m in the latter camp.) Steven Zeitchik goes to Norfolk, Nebraska — where much of the film was shot — and finds residents there similarly mixed on its merits. Many are approving: one enthuses that “now the world will get to see” the divisions that exist in their society. Another, however, voices reservations about what he sees as the film’s use of unfavourable stereotypes. Payne’s response? “People want to say it’s condescending? Let them say that. This is my love letter to the state of Nebraska.” [LA Times]

From “Stoker” to “Oldboy,” the Dissolve team discuss the current Asian influence on American cinema. [The Dissolve] 

R. Kurt Osenlund breaks down the Oscar prospects for “August: Osage County” — and, like me, believes that Julia Roberts deserves the lion’s share of its awards attention. [House Next Door] 

Tim Gray reports on the low-flying campaign for “The Place Beyond the Pines” — are voters now catching up with it on airplanes? [Variety]

Melena Ryzik returns for another season as the Gray Lady’s awards-season Carpetbagger. Welcome to the party. [New York Times]

This year, the Hollywood Reporter’s Breakthrough Actors panel ranges from 20-year-old Adele Exarchopoulos to 40-year-old Kathryn Hahn. [Hollywood Reporter]

A selection of Emma Thompson’s five best performances. It’s missing “Love, Actually,” if you ask me — not that anyone did. [The Guardian]

Ang Lee responds to the reports of unfortunate tiger treatment on the set of “Life of Pi.” [Vulture]

“Songs from the Forest” and “A Letter to Nelson Mandela” were among the top prize-winners at the IDFA documentary festival. [Screen Daily]

It’s been quite the somber season in some ways: slavery and racial tension, piracy and health care, dementia-addled fathers and embittered folk crooners. Even the year’s biggest spectacle achievement, Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity,” ultimately takes its weightless heroine to weighty moments of emotion and catharsis (not that we’re complaining). It almost feels like what the 2013 film awards season needs is a nice prestige-level dose of the outrageous, something bonkers, something to take the edge off. And Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” is here to answer the call.

The film isn’t set to screen for the press at large for another week, but this weekend it began making its way through guild screenings, where plus ones and crossover memberships with critics and the film commentariat are just unavoidable. So it was Saturday afternoon that I made my way to the first of two SAG screenings of this absolutely unrepentant entry (hopefully that caveat saves the studio some disgruntled phone calls – over 100 people were turned away from the two screenings, which were filled to the brim). Stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Rob Reiner, Cristina Milioti, Jon Favreau, P.J. Byrne and Kenneth Choi were on hand to discuss working with a master filmmaker and the life and times of a man, Jordan Belfort, who by anyone’s measure should probably be dead by now.

As first reported by In Contention, Scorsese’s latest found itself tied up in the editing room and on the verge of blowing past an originally-planned Nov. 15 release back in September. It eventually did just that and soon re-calibrated its sights for Christmas Day. The director chopped and whittled a massive first cut down to a, well, still-massive 179 minutes, and that’s what we’re left with: three sensational hours of unbound, naughty (nearly NC-17), bleak comedy that immediately registers as a different sort of contender this season. Someone described it to me a few weeks ago as “Marty on methamphetamine,” and I’m not going to argue with that. Though maybe “Marty on quaaludes” is more apt. I’ll get to that…

During the Q&A, DiCaprio – who also produced the film and received a standing ovation from the guild members in attendance – talked about how when he first read Belfort’s memoir, the debauchery was so outrageous that he was eager to develop it as a film. “To me it was like a modern-day ‘Caligula,'” he said. “The story is out-of-this-world. You can’t believe it happened.”

But while it was all set to be his and Scorsese’s fifth collaboration right after “Shutter Island,” DiCaprio said the financing fell through because the studio balked at some of the more salacious elements of the story. Indeed, the film narrowly avoided an NC-17 rating (which Scorsese liked the idea of releasing in a “Midnight Cowboy” sort of way, a source told me some time ago). But even as the director went off to do “Hugo” and the actor moved on to projects like “J. Edgar” and “The Great Gatsby,” DiCaprio couldn’t envision the material in another filmmaker’s hands.

“I really couldn’t get Marty out of my mind,” DiCaprio said. “He’s somebody that’s able to sort of encapsulate the underworld with such authenticity and bring such humor to these characters. I mean, ‘Goodfellas’ was supposed to be a comedy, he told me. This was tailor-made for him.”

Enter film financiers Red Granite, who came in and told DiCaprio and Scorsese not to hold anything back and to push the envelope as far as they possibly could. “I said to Marty, ‘We just don’t get opportunities like this, ever, in this industry,'” DiCaprio said. “‘People do not give you the freedom that these guys want to give us and the budget to make this an epic tale, so we have to take this opportunity.’ Thankfully he agreed, and that’s what you just saw up on the screen.”

At The Weinstein Company’s Golden Globes after-party last season, DiCaprio told me in no uncertain terms that he felt his performance in “Wolf” was his best work to date. Not quite, I would argue, but it’s absolutely up there as the commitment to the insanity is hugely impressive. One quaalude-driven experience in particular functions in the film almost as a “mini-movie,” as the star put it, giving DiCaprio the opportunity to be quite physical with his work as his character suffers through what must have been one of the worst highs anyone ever experienced. The actor said for him it brought to mind the extended “meatballs and helicopters” sequence at the end of “Goodfellas.”

Reiner, who was seeing the film for the first time Saturday, took a moment to mention that particular scene as well. “That is one of the funniest set pieces I’ve ever seen in a movie,” he said. “You get nervous when you haven’t seen the film because you’ve got to do a thing with a Q&A, and what if it stunk? Then you’re in trouble. Well, luckily, it was the reverse of stunk. It was really good. I knew it had laughs but I didn’t realize how many laughs.”

To that point, the film more than earns its “dark comedy” stripes. Much of that hilarity falls on the shoulders of Jonah Hill, who was also seeing the finished product for the first time and received a big pop from the audience when introduced for the Q&A. He carries the comedy like a champ throughout, delivering, easily, his best performance to date as a version of investment banker Danny Porush.

Without the cooperation of the real Porush, whose surname was changed to Azoff in the film, Hill had to lean on the well of information provided by the real Belfort. “Any time I play someone real in a movie, they ask to have their name changed,” Hill said, referencing his Oscar-nominated work in “Moneyball.” The actor was intrigued by the fact that Belfort, who has a small cameo toward the end of “Wolf,” would rattle off the litany of despicable things he’s done but that “he would never judge himself.” But for his part, Scorsese kept his distance from Belfort, DiCaprio said, “because he wanted to be able to have a different perspective.” DiCaprio and Hill would then serve as middle men, bringing new material and stories not necessarily documented in the book to the director’s attention.

And there were so many stories it was dizzying. One of them, in fact, featuring “German Shepherds and blow jobs in Vegas,” according to DiCaprio, was far too scandalous to make it to the screen. “It was so bad I wish I never heard it,” Hill said. Cue your imaginations. But that’s the kind of outrageousness that was the name of the game here, an almost mercurial sort of spirit that Scorsese even wanted to infuse with the performances.

“It was sort of controlled, calculated chaos,” DiCaprio said, noting that he looked into the making of “The King of Comedy” because of the amount of improvisation that went into that 1983 Scorsese film. “And he wanted it to be like that, specifically. He wanted all the actors to have a loose sort of feeling in their performance. It’s the first film I did with Marty in the sense that there weren’t all these moving puzzle pieces that had to culminate in a powerful ending. This was the story of a man’s life, and an insane one at that. So that was his intent, to let it sort of spiral off into madness.”

The film’s shenanigans therefore play out for a minute shy of three hours, and in many ways, it feels like a film that wants to be longer. Nearly two hours were lopped off during the editing process, but it’s the kind of thing that either needed to be an hour shorter (for the potency of, say, “Goodfellas”) or a full-blown mini-series (because Belfort’s story certainly has the material and the intrigue to sustain that length) to strike the perfect balance. Structure issues start to plague a film this long (particularly a comedy), caught between being a jab and a roundhouse. But it’s an epic yarn no matter how you slice it.

And Favreau – who has maybe 60 seconds of screen time in the film – perhaps put it best, mentioning Scorsese’s ability to drive out nuanced and subtle performances despite how over-the-top the circumstances of the narrative may be. “It never loses its sense of grounding, and I think that’s a hallmark of Scorsese’s work,” he said. “And as you guys who have seen ‘Swingers’ know, I’ve been really fixated on this guy since my earliest moments. So to be a fly on the wall, it was very intimidating, but it was quite an honor.”

We’ll dive deeper into “The Wolf of Wall Street” in due time, including its Oscar potential, which, I don’t mind saying, seems like a bit of a mixed bag, though reaction so far has been hugely enthusiastic. Hill is a great bet for Best Supporting Actor and DiCaprio could frankly nudge someone out of that seemingly locked-up Best Actor race. If she had a few more scenes, it seems to me that Margot Robbie (who will nevertheless be a star after this film comes out) could have pushed into the Best Supporting Actress race, but I’m not so sure beyond that. We’ll see how the rest of this week’s guild screenings go.

More on all of that in Monday’s Oscar column.

“The Wolf of Wall Street” arrives in theaters on Christmas Day.

Less eccentric than the Cahiers du Cinema list, and more representative than the awards of individual critics” groups, the annual Sight & Sound poll is about the best monitor of international critical consensus at the year”s end – recent winners include David Fincher”s “The Social Network,” Terrence Malick”s “The Tree of Life” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master.” But if those choices were easily seen coming, the 100-odd critics surveyed this year have thrown a collective curveball: Sight & Sound”s top film of 2013 is “The Act of Killing.”

It”s an unusual winner, but not an entirely surprising one: Joshua Oppenheimer”s boundary-breaking documentary has inspired reverent critical superlatives from the start, and is singularly cinematic enough to escape the non-fiction compartment in year-end lists. It”s triumph here underlines its status as the year”s most lavishly acclaimed documentary – if it”s not on the Academy”s shortlist in this category (and given the branch”s past form, I wouldn”t be stunned to see it miss), expect an outcry of major proportions.

At #2 is Alfonso Cuaron”s “Gravity” – the most mainstream film on the list, its placing here again proves its rare blend of highbrow and populist appeal. It”s interesting to see the blockbuster auteur piece placing so much higher than its presumed Best Picture rival “12 Years a Slave”; I had thought Steve McQueen”s film was a likely contender for the top position, but it lands instead at #14. (The film hasn”t been extensively screened for UK critics, which may partly account for that outcome – but then again, festival-only films like Jia Zhang-ke”s “A Touch of Sin” made the top 10.) It”s enough to make me wonder if “Gravity” may take a greater share of the upcoming critics” awards than most most are currently predicting.

The joint #9 film in the S&S list, by the way, came in at #1 on venerable French journal Cahiers du Cinema”s poll earlier this week: Alain Guiradie”s sexually explicit queer thriller “Stranger by the Lake.” Three others films made both lists: “Gravity,” Abdellatif Kechiche’s “Blue is the Warmest Color” and Jia Zhang-ke’s “A Touch of Sin.” Both lists are below, beginning with Sight & Sound’s top 30:

1. “The Act of Killing” (Joshua Oppenheimer)
2. “Gravity” (Alfonso Cuaron)
3. “Blue is the Warmest Color” (Abdellatif Kechiche)
4. “The Great Beauty” (Paolo Sorrentino)
5. “Frances Ha” (Noah Baumbach)
6. “A Touch of Sin” (Jia Zhang-ke)
=”Upstream Color” (Shane Carruth)
8. “The Selfish Giant” (Clio Barnard)
9. “Norte, the End of History” (Lav Diaz)
=”Stranger by the Lake” (Alain Guiraudie)
11. “Before Midnight” (Richard Linklater)
=”Stray Dogs” (Tsai Ming-liang)
13. “Leviathan” (Lucien Castaing and Verena Paravel)
14. ”All is Lost” (J.C. Chandor)
=”A Field in England” (Ben Wheatley)
=”12 Years a Slave” (Steve McQueen)
17. “Bastards” (Claire Denis)
=”Gloria” (Sebastian Lelio)
=”The Missing Picture” (Rithy Panh)
=”Story of My Death” (Albert Serra)
=”Under the Skin” (Jonathan Glazer)
22. “At Berkeley” (Frederick Wiseman)
=”Beyond the Hills” (Cristian Mungiu)
=”Blancanieves” (Pablo Berger) 
=”Blue Jasmine” (Woody Allen)
=”Django Unchained” (Quentin Tarantino)
=”Ida” (Pawel Pawlikowski)
=”Inside Llewyn Davis” (Joel and Ethan Coen)
=”It”s Such a Beautiful Day” (Don Hertzfeldt)
=”The Last of the Unjust” (Claude Lanzmann)

And the Cahiers top 10:

1. “Stranger by the Lake” (Alain Guiraudie)
2. “Spring Breakers” (Harmony Korine)
3. “Blue is the Warmest Color” (Abdellatif Kechiche)
4. “Gravity” (Alfonso Cuaron)
5. “A Touch of Sin” (Jia Zhang-ke)
6. “Lincoln” (Steven Spielberg)
7. “Jealousy” (Philippe Garrel)
8. “Nobody’s Daughter Haewon” (Hong Sang-soo)
9. “You and the Night” (Yann Gonzalez)
10. “La Bataille de Solferino” (Justine Triet)

We’ve reached a critical phase of the season, Oscar watchers. We’re not talking about the shortened shopping season or families reuniting across the country for the holidays. No, Hollywood is heading into the high season.  A time when we stop talking about who’s going to get a nomination and who’s going to actually win.

The convergence of the critics’ groups’ end of year honors, SAG nominations and, to a lesser extent, Golden Globe nominations, will start to make things even more competitive than it’s already been. And if you’re a regular reader of HitFix and In Contention, you are well aware this is arguably the most competitive season in years.

It all begins on Tuesday when the New York Film Critics’ Circle announces year end awards. The National Board of Review and its swanky new website (welcome to the 21st Century, guys) drop their winners list the next day, Wednesday, Dec. 4. LAFCA will follow on Sunday, Dec. 8.  While all the winners will affect the races, it’s the Best Picture selections that everyone will be paying the most attention to. Does “12 Years A Slave” sweep all three? Do all three organizations pick three different winners? Does “Gravity” or another film surprise with two wins? And if “12 Years” wins all three, is it effectively “over?” If it is, thankfully there will be a ton of other competitive races to discuss.

Oh, me. Oh, my.

With that in mind, here is the current Contender Countdown before all the drama begins.

Nov. 29, 2013

1. “Gravity”
Look for the critics honors, pt. 1.

2. “12 Years A Slave”
Look for the critics honors, pt. 2.

3. “Saving Mr. Banks”
Can’t win the big one, but might put a scare into the frontrunners.

4. “Captain Phillips”
This one could use a little boost. Just sayin’.

5. “Lee Daniels’ The Butler”
The one Harvey doesn’t have to worry about (or does he?).

6. “Inside Llewyn Davis”
I have never heard competing publicists or consultants diss a movie that has no shot of winning Best Picture, but is getting a nomination, more than this one. Bizarre.

7. “Nebraska”
Anyone notice its six Indie Spirit nominations? Slowly but surely the lock no one even talks about.

8. “Blue Jasmine”
If Sony Classics can do a full court press, now is the time to start it.

9. “Dallas Buyers Club”
Another movie only competing publicists and consultants seem to dislike. Not landing a Best Feature nod at the Spirits doesn’t help. December is make or break.

10. “Wolf of Wall Street”
Hearing reactions all over the place on this one. Guild screenings this weekend. Studio holding to show to “most” press a week from today. (Questionable, yes.)

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4911999599001

It’s hard to believe that the Coen Bros.’ “Inside Llewyn Davis” debuted at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival over six months ago. Now, after numerous festival screenings and events, its theatrical release is finally around the corner. Sure, it won’t be anywhere near nationwide yet, but Coens fans will take it.

CBS Films has provided fans an early holiday treat by releasing a complete clip of the best musical moments from the picture just in time for Thanksgiving. Featuring Llewyn Davis himself, Oscar Isaac as well as Justin Timberlake and “Girls” star Adam Driver, “Please Mr. Kennedy” also happens to be one of the most entertaining set pieces in the movie and drew spontaneous applause at its media screening back on the Croisette. More impressively, you may never think of Driver the same way again.

[And no, you won’t see it nominated for best original song. It was not submitted.]

Take a break from the holidays and check out the performance embedded at the top of this post.

“Inside Llewyn Davis” opens in limited release on Dec. 6.

It is a cruel rule of thumb that extraordinary lives rarely make for extraordinary films. The more densely storied the personal narrative of its subject, the harder it is for dutiful screenwriters to resist tackling it whole, checking off every compelling accomplishment in thorough, linear fashion, even if such orderly diligence comes at the expense of more time-consuming character nuance. Critics have taken to calling this approach – not inaccurately – the “Wikipedia biopic,” though of course it dates back to the dustiest days of 1930s studio prestige drama, while Richard Attenborough effectively rebranded the genre in his own name decades later with the nobly dreary likes of “Young Winston” and “Gandhi.”

Attenborough comes frequently to mind while watching Justin Chadwick”s competent but predictably (perhaps inevitably) featureless “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,” the latest and largest of several attempts to cinematically totemise the most consecrated of all living politicians: South Africa”s first democratically elected president, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.

That”s not just because the film”s elevated but textbook-solemn tone so closely recalls “Cry Freedom,” Attenborough”s own stab at apartheid-era myth-making – nor because “Mandela””s screenwriter, the reliably fusty William Nicholson, has twice worked with the British lord. “Cry Freedom” was released in 1987, three years before Mandela emerged a free man from the gates of Victor Verster Prison; Steve Biko may have been its worthy subject, but it was effectively a stand-in for a Mandela biopic that, at that heated point in history, had no satisfactory ending.

Chadwick, then, is making the film that many an august filmmaker has wanted to make for the better part of a quarter-century, and directs it with enough respectful anonymity to honor them all: the first official adaptation of Mandela”s 1994 doorstop memoir, produced by South Africa”s foremost industry mogul Anant Singh, it has the hefty but guarded presence of any authorized biography. It”s also the first film to follow Mandela from cradle to dotage. Recently, Bille August”s “Goodbye Bafana” and Clint Eastwood”s “Invictus” both attempted to capture the man entire by covering a more contained section of his life. That”s generally the approach of the more discerning and insightful biopic – see “Lincoln” or “Capote” for proof – but neither of those drab spirit-lifters felt equal to Mandela”s personal magnetism, and Chadwick”s more substantial film doesn”t come much closer.

To be fair, I”m not sure Mandela”s own sincere but shrewdly self-positioning book – written at the outset of his presidency, a delicate time of national healing when he very much needed to be all things to all men – does either. Mandela is and always has been a conflicted hero, one whose positively miraculous professional accomplishments sit in fascinating balance with the ruthless personal streak by which he achieved them: not just the romantic guerrilla action for which the political right continues to judge him, but his manifold failings as a husband and father. “Mandela” isn”t so hagiographic as to sweep those under the sprawling carpet – indeed, some of its most engaging stretches are those which cover the man”s early incarnation as a shark-suited lawyer and heedless township cocksman. But it does ultimately present those facets as immaterial in the face of his self-sacrificing Goodness, which overrides the filmmaking as much as it more justifiably does his historical standing.

Nicholson”s plainly overworked script scores points for showing us both sides of the man, but is rarely so deft or daring as to show them at once. Mandela is callous in one scene – invariably a domestic one, and most joltingly in those involving his first wife Evelyn (a too-swiftly discarded Terry Pheto) – and pious in the next, with the scales favoring the latter as the stakes of his political crusade escalate.

The film isn”t afraid to suggest that Mandela may have been slickly self-concerned when taking on small-potatoes legal cases like that of a domestic worker accused of thievery by her racist madam. But once his activism moves to the more consequential stages of pass-burning and his decisive rejection of non-violent protest, his character motivation is wholly For The Greater Good, as his dialogue turns to policy-centered rhetoric, delivered by Idris Elba with a faraway granite gaze. By the time the film reaches his 27-year prison spell – later than chronological proportion would usually dictate, given that his stoically endured incarceration, however reputation-defining, is dramatic quicksand – the fix is in, and the man begins to disappear irretrievably behind the legend.

Given the dull polarities he has to work with, Elba makes a dedicated fist of Mandela: his attempt at that froggy, distinctively deliberate phrasing is detailed but not coldly academic, and he conjures something approximating the older Mandela”s weary-defiant posture, even when burdened with the phoniest variety of Play-Doh old-age prosthetics. But dedication can”t overcome miscasting, and Elba, besides looking only marginally more like Mandela than I do, is too bullish a screen presence to evoke Mandela”s quieter physicality or wiry fortitude. He”s not a man you”d ever underestimate, which puts the wrong accent on late scenes where a close-to-release Mandela barters for racial equality with apartheid”s last, sweaty-faced guardians.

Considerably more electric is Naomie Harris, a canny choice to play Mandela”s endlessly interesting second wife Winnie – whose arc from idealistic social worker to destructively radical firebrand, taking out her political impatience on her own people and baldly confronting her estranged husband”s values in the process – is more frankly and commendably covered in the film than it might have been. (It”s certainly an improvement on the absurdly rose-tinted Jennifer Hudson vehicle “Winnie,” on levels of both characterization and performance.)

Harris, too, must contend with the script”s unfortunate short cuts. Following her own arrest by the authorities in 1969, an 18-month period in solitary confinement – staged with gaudy horror-movie angles and sound design – is enough to trigger a day-night transformation from starry-eyed ally to wild-eyed vigilante. There”s more to Winnie on both sides of that coin, of course, but the slink-and-steel physicality of Harris” performance locates some of the connective tissue missing in the writing. She”s whole and human enough for the dissolution of the Mandelas” marriage, telegraphed a good 30 years in advance, to carry a genuine tang of sadness.

Ultimately, though, the character most shortchanged in “Mandela” is South Africa itself, as the film”s trudge through its subject”s life and work reduces the country”s own feverishly long walk to freedom, via several stages of terrifying disorder and difficult counter-movements, to bland bullet points. (Local culture is sidelined too, as it”s the voice of Bono that sings us out in the closing credits.) Chadwick and Nicholson pay lip service to the Sharpeville massacre and the 1976 Soweto riots, for example, without paying much attention to how they swelled or shifted national feeling – in camps both black and white. The country”s post-democratic scars are similarly brushed aside: Mandela”s personal liberation is the narrative endgame here, but the man himself would admit (as he does in his autobiography) that it was a small step towards mending a ruinously segregated nation.

Alex Heffes” heavily ennobling, John Williams-style score surges loudly enough in the closing beats to drown out any thoughts of South Africa”s present-day problems – from its venal Jacob Zuma administration to its sharpening social inequalities to the ominously declining health of the 95-year-old Mandela himself – in favour of one-note triumph. Lens flares at the ready, the camera lingers on the blush-colored sunset over the rolling Transkei hills of Mandela”s youth, bookending the similarly iridescent opening scenes of his boyhood. In those, Chadwick uses alluring tribal music and mystically saturated reds to exoticise an unspecified coming-of-age ritual that informed viewers will know is painful adolescent circumcision – typical of a well-meaning film that has its facts more or less straight, but misses any amount of life at the edges.