Well, that was fast. Late on Tuesday, the news dropped that Sony was pulling George Clooney’s “The Monuments Men” from the release calendar. Yesterday, Kris, Greg and I speculated as to when the film would (or should) open in 2014.  Today, we got our answer — and, as Clooney hinted when the news initially broke, the all-star WWII story will indeed be a February release. Deadline revealed that the film has been set for February 7, 2014, booting Sony’s “Robocop” remake to February 12 instead.

One of Sony’s remaining 2013 Oscar hopefuls, “American Hustle,” is also affected by the shuffle: it will now go into wide release on December 18, five days after its limited opening.

Yesterday, we speculated that a February release for “Monuments Men” may tie into a Berlin Film Festival premiere — is that still a possibility? The German fest kicks off on February 6, meaning the only way the film can have its world premiere there is as the Opening Film, one day before its US release. That seems an overly tight window, though an international premiere at Berlin — in or out of competition — is now a strong possibility.

Either way, the film looks to be more or less emulating the path set by Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island” in 2010. Bumped from the 2009 Oscar race by Paramount, the twisty psychological thriller instead premiered at Berlin in February and opened a few days later. Reviews were heavily mixed, and the film was all but forgotten when the 2010 awards season rolled round. (It’s the only Scorsese film since 1999’s “Bringing Out the Dead” not to score a single Oscar nod.)

But that hardly matters given how the public embraced it: “Shutter Island” raked in over $128 million, making it the highest grosser of Scorsese’s career. We can only speculate, but chances are the film wouldn’t have performed quite so well in the more crowded fall frame — Paramount made a smart move in recognising that the genre film wasn’t necessarily awards fodder, but did have strong adult appeal, and would be welcomed by audiences starved for high-spec entertainment at a time of year when studios tend to dump their least appetizing fare. 

Could “The Monuments Men” benefit similarly from the move, providing solace to filmgoers who have just finished watching this year’s batch of Oscar players? By placing it in February, Fox and Sony are perhaps admitting that the film — the comic aspects of which were foregrounded in its first trailer — is more of an audience romp than a heavyweight prestige drama, but there’s no shame in that. And in a funny way, it can still benefit from this year’s awards race: with Clooney and ensemble member Cate Blanchett likely to be red-carpet fixtures for the next few months (for “Gravity”/”August: Osage County” and “Blue Jasmine” respectively), the cross-promotional possibilities are significant. There is, however, the question of whether the Winter Olympics — which also kick off on February 7 — will compete for its audience. 

In further explaining the move to Deadline (and angrily dismissing The Wrap’s allegations that he admitted to tonal problems with the film), Clooney himself makes the “Shutter Island” comparison, but also indirectly aligns the films with Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s” series:

“When we started this movie, we said all along this was something we wanted to do in the tradition of ‘The Guns Of Navarone’ and ‘The Great Escape.’ That’s what we wanted all along and we took the date because we’d had so much luck on it with ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ and ‘Ocean’s Twelve.’ We wanted it to play through the holidays. Last night we had a nice meeting and said, let’s be honest. We’re not going to get our effects done in time. As hard as we’re working, the truth of the matter is, we only started principal photography on this in March. So the idea we’d have all the effects ready was a stretch anyway. And we didn’t make it. It’s that simple. It’s certainly not about tone of the film, because it’s testing through the roof. We said, let’s just find a spot where the movie can find an actual audience instead of fighting with 22 other films in December.” 

Will you be seeing “The Monuments Men” on February 7? And do you think Clooney and the studios have done the right thing? Tell us below.

I guess you could say awards season has officially kicked off, with the Gotham Independent Film Awards — as usual — providing the race with its first slate of nominees. And to the surprise of absolutely no one, “12 Years a Slave” leads the field with three nominations — get used to it coming out on top in pretty every nomination list for the next three months. Those nods include Best Feature (of course), and Best Breakthrough Actor for Lupita Nyong’o, while Chiwetel Ejiofor is mentioned in the newly created Best Actor category.

Its rivals for the top award include the Coen Brothers’ upcoming “Inside Llewyn Davis,” and three critics’ favorites from earlier in the year: “Before Midnight,” “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” and “Upstream Color.” (“Upstream” lead Amy Seimetz has much to celebrate this morning, having scored a Best Actress nod, as well a Best Breakthrough Director nod for her first feature “Sun Don’t Shine.”)

This is a nice boost for “Before Midnight,” as Celine and Jesse’s latest episode looks to score more than just screenplay attention this awards season — though it’s a bit disappointing that Julie Delpy was denied a place in the inaugural Best Actress lineup. Still, competition was strong: Oscar favorite Cate Blanchett is there, alongside indie dark horse Brie Larson (“Short Term 12”) and three rank outsiders in Seimetz, Shailene Woodley (“The Spectacular Now”) and Scarlett Johansson (delightfully included for her smart comic turn in “Don Jon”).

Ejiofor’s fellow Oscar frontrunners Robert Redford and Matthew McConaughey join him in the Best Actor race, along with Oscar Isaac for “Inside Llewyn Davis,” making this an unusually Oscar-resonant category for the Gothams — though the resurgant Isaiah Washington (chilling in the superb “Blue Caprice”) is there to fly the flag for indie underdogs. 

Solid choices all round. I’m particularly pleased for “Concussion” and the wonderful Robin Weigert, whom we interviewed earlier this month. Least welcome omission? “Frances Ha” for me, though I’m sure you all have your own ideas. Have your say below.

The Gotham Independent Film Awards take place in New York (duh) on December 2.

Best Feature
“Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”
“Before Midnight”
“Inside Llewyn Davis”
“12 Years a Slave”
“Upstream Color”

Best Documentary
“The Act of Killing”
“The Crash Reel”
“First Cousin Once Removed”
“Let the Fire Burn”
“Our Nixon”

Bingham Ray Award for Breakthrough Director
Ryan Coogler, “Fruitvale Station”
Stacie Passon, “Concussion”
Adam Leon, “Gimme the Loot”
Alexandre Moors, “Blue Caprice”
Amy Seimetz, “Sun Don’t Shine”

Best Actor
Chiwetel Ejiofor, “12 Years a Slave”
Oscar Isaac, “Inside Llewyn Davis”
Matthew McConaughey, “Dallas Buyers Club”
Robert Redford, “All is Lost”
Isaiah Washington, “Blue Caprice”

Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine”
Scarlett Johansson, “Don Jon”
Brie Larson, “Short Term 12”
Amy Seimetz, “Upstream Color”
Shailene Woodley, “The Spectacular Now”

Best Breakthrough Actor
Dane DeHaan, “Kill Your Darlings”
Kathryn Hahn, “Afternoon Delight”
Michael B. Jordan, “Fruitvale Station”
Lupita Nyong’o, “12 Years a Slave”
Robin Weigert, “Concussion”

Last week this pundit discussed the buzz that was circling back on “Saving Mr. Banks” before its world premiere as the closing night film at the 2013 London Film Festival. And as chronicled by Guy Lodge’s review and my own rundown of “Banks'” Oscar chances, the film is truly a player. Fast forward two days and in something of a surprise, another potential contender, “The Monuments Men,” moves to 2014. That means we have just two unseen contenders left: “American Hustle” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

As for “Hustle,” word on the street is David O. Russell’s period drama is quite funny (a trademark of his films at this point), features great performances all around and portrays an intriguing perspective on the ABSCAM scandal of the late 1970s and early 1980s. “Hustle” has not been shown to members of the media yet and isn’t a part of the upcoming 2013 AFI Fest, which will include debut screenings of Scott Cooper’s “Out of the Furnace” and Peter Berg’s “Lone Survivor.” Instead, the film will screen sometime before the end of November, very close to its limited release on Dec. 13.

With “Monuments” out of the year, now “Hustle” has a much better shot of landing a nod (not that “Monuments” was a lock itself) and has enough star power to cha cha its way to some dynamite box office over the holidays. “Hustle,” like “August: Osage County,” may use its charming cast to will a nomination out of the Academy even if the reviews aren’t on the level of “Gravity” or “12 Years a Slave” (not that I have clue yet to how it will be perceived). Lots of questions, yes. But if you’re a betting man (or woman)…it’s hard to ignore a player that seems this confident.

As for Martin Scorsese’s “Wolf of Wall Street,” Paramount still hasn’t officially announced that it’s moving to December, which is quite silly considering a Nov. 15 release date is basically an impossibility right now.* Why the new date hasn’t come to pass is still confusing. Are they unsure where to put “Jack Ryan?” Are they debating limited release vs. going wide on Christmas day? Or, even worse, are they really not sure whether Scorsese can make the date? Curiouser and curiouser.

*Do you realize “The Best Man Holiday” is the only wide release on Nov. 15 right now? In the middle of November? It’s shocking no one has moved on that date yet, but it’s just too expensive for many studios to move their TV media buys only three weeks out. Still, nutso.

Of course, the dirty little secret plaguing this year’s awards season is that every time a major film moves to 2014 somewhere a competing studio Oscar publicist cries tears of joy. Yes, the Best Picture race is that competitive and it’s not just one or two possible contenders that are going to feel the pain on Jan. 14. It’s likely three or four (yikes). Many of my peers are predicting the Academy to pick 10 nominees this year after two ceremonies with just nine nominees respectively. Sadly, this industry veteran isn’t one of them. Once again, nine at the most. That being said, let’s run down this week’s contender countdown and see where the Best Picture race stands today.

1. “Gravity”
Does George now dedicate more of his awards season time to pushing this critically acclaimed masterpiece?

2. “12 Years a Slave”
Another masterpiece at Oscar’s door. Who would have thought two in the same year?

3. “Saving Mr. Banks”
The Academy is gonna adore the scenes with the Sherman Bros. and author P.L. Travers. Simply adore.

4. “Captain Phillips”
Creeping into “lock for a nomination” territory.

5. “Lee Daniels’ The Butler”
The Weinstein Company’s weakest link or best chance for a nod?

6. “Inside Llewyn Davis”
Quietly playing the game.

7. “Her”
You may not think it’s a player, but then you’d be wrong.

8. “Nebraska”
Paramount’s little movie that could. Er, or will.

9. “American Hustle”
It’s gotta have a great soundtrack, right?

10. “Dallas Buyers Club”
May be the biggest victim of the desecration of Focus Features. Fans have to be worried

On the outside looking in: “All is Lost,” “August: Osage County,” “Philomena,” “Blue Jasmine,” “Fruitvale Station,” “The Book Thief,” “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Agree? Disagree? Share your thoughts below.

Palme d’Or winner “Blue is the Warmest Color” may still be one of my favorite films of the year, but director Abdellatif Kechiche sure is doing his damnedest to make me sick of hearing about it. His ongoing feud with the film’s stars and Palme co-winners — in particular, Léa Seydoux — has been a hot media topic for a couple of months now, with Kechiche rather melodramatically stating at one point that the film had been tainted and shouldn’t be released. He’s since retracted that particular outburst, but if you thought he was done, you thought wrong.

In an open letter, sprawling over 6,200 words, on French news site Rue 89, Kechiche vents a whole lot further. The letter is titled “To those who wish to destroy ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’,” and while it covers many issues, the section that is unsurprisingly receiving the most media attention is the 600-word one headed “The opportunistic calculations of young Léa.” (I’m not going to lie to you: my French translation skills are adequate, but I’ve got better things to do than wade through the whole thing.)

Referring to Seydoux’s earlier allegations that she felt “trapped” on set and was negligently treated by the director during the film’s challengingly explicit allegations, he writes (my translation):

“As young Léa is full of opportunism, is the (self-)proclaimed star of the moment, and no doubt imagines herself belonging to an untouchable caste that makes her a sort of ‘Princess and the Pea’ figure, she does not feel obliged to explain herself. For the star, it is about her. Not the film. Not even Adèle [Exarchopoulos] … It is enough for her to let her mother speak in her defense, or to declare, with a spoiled child’s arrogance, that she has ‘said what she said,’ that she is not returning to it, that the damage is done. But no! That is not enough. She has obligations that she must fulfil, and I will return to it. It is for her to explain in court, because she is an adult and responsible for her actions.” 

Well, this sounds far from over, and no doubt we’ll be hearing plenty more about it, whether he acts upon his threat of legal action against Seydoux or not. But how much of this do we want to hear? Why has it been made our business? The film is a thing of beauty, something of which all its participants deserve to be proud — regardless of the unhappy circumstances behind its production.

The longer Kechiche and Seydoux keep airing their dirty laundry in public, the harder it’s going to be for audiences to dissociate the ugly backstory from the art itself — and even if you make the case for Kechiche’s letter as some kind of perverse publicity measure for the film, I’m not convinced the “all publicity is good publicity” maxim apples here. (“Blue” opens in the US on Friday, and is currently on release in France, where it’s doing big business — as it would always have done anyway.)

Kechiche and Seydoux are hardly the first warring director and actor to have produced a great film amid the conflict. (To a lesser extent, Exarchopoulos counts too: she’s been more diplomatic in her assertions, and evidently has a better relationship with Kechiche, though she joined her co-star in saying that she has no intention of working with him again.) Lars von Trier and Björk. Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski. David O. Russell and Lily Tomlin. And plenty of others that we don’t know about because they had the good sense to keep it to themselves.

Unless actual violence or psychological abuse took place on set, harping in public about a personal clash only cheapens your work — and that of your collaborators — for your audience. The film, however arduous it was, is done. You need never work together again. Have words with each other if you must. But at least consider how much of this we really need to know, and how you want your presently much-loved film to be remembered.

And another one, as they say, bites the dust. Well, for this year, anyway. Most Oscar pundits had George Clooney’s WWII adventure “The Monuments Men” placed fairly prominently on their prediction lists, and with the unveiling of a high-toned new trailer last week, the all-star attraction seemed primed for the season ahead. That is, until Sony Pictures dropped the bombshell that the film would not be ready for release this year after all. “The Monuments Men” thus becomes the highest-profile film so far — following others like Sony Classics’ “Foxcatcher” and The Weinstein Company’s “Grace of Monaco” — to bow out of the awards race before it’s begun.

Is it the right move? Obviously, it’s hard to say until we see the film itself. Clooney’s official line is that they need more finishing time for the effects and score on this large-scale production, which may well be the case. Though perhaps Sony simply has a different future in mind for “The Monuments Men” as the studio readies for a season that, between “Captain Phillips” and “American Hustle,” will certainly still keep them busy.

With all that in mind, we thought this development merited closer scrutiny in another round of 3 on 3. We consider the implications of this movie both for the film and its competitors, and suggest what its best course of action might be next year. 

Who benefits the most from “Monuments Men” moving to 2014 in terms of awards?

Gregory Ellwood: Everyone. This is arguably one of the most competitive Best Picture races in years. Every time a picture drops out it simply means the remaining contenders have a better shot at landing a nomination. In terms of individual films, “August: Osage County” will benefit from having Clooney, who produced the drama, no longer competing against himself and “The Wolf of Wall Street,” which may also qualify for what has become the “entertaining period drama” slot.

Guy Lodge: Well, it goes without saying that every contender benefits from the field being one film less crowded, especially in a year this heavy on studio prestige fare – though we have no idea yet, of course, whether “The Monuments Men” would have been a major or minor player in the game. If you want to be really schematic about it, you could say that a film like, say, “The Book Thief” can take advantage of the “Monuments Men” demographic – though the race is never quite that tidy. “Captain Phillips” and “American Hustle” will now have even more of Sony”s campaign muscle behind them. And I suppose “Blue Jasmine” now gets Cate Blanchett”s undivided attention, not that her campaign needs much extra help.

Kristopher Tapley: One word: Sony. Money may be coming from Scott Rudin on “Captain Phillips” and “American Hustle” may have its ducks in a row with outside Oscar consultation but these movies plus “Monuments Men” would have meant a lot of heavy lifting from staff at the studio. Lighten the load and the rest of the slate benefits a bit, I think, so while Oscar consultants on films like “Dallas Buyers Club” and “August: Osage County” can exhale knowing the path is just a little clearer, publicists at Sony can also wipe their brow and know they can focus that much more on their two other big awards plays.

Who benefits the most from “Monuments Men” moving to 2014 in terms of box office?

Gregory Ellwood: “Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” “Saving Mr. Banks” and “American Hustle.” All three films are currently going into wide release in time for the Christmas frame and are targeting the same over 25 audience. That’s a lot of ticket buyers to try and convince to see two movies (let alone three or four) over the busy holidays. History says there are going to be some big misfires over the holidays (there always are), but “Monuments Men” moving now saves itself or a competitor from a potentially scary debut.

Guy Lodge: Perhaps the answer is “The Monuments Men” itself? We”ve seen before how upscale, adult-skewing fare can reap the rewards of moving out of awards season to a place in the calendar where audiences are traditionally starved for classy mainstream entertainment – “The Great Gatsby,” once predicted to be a bomb, did very nicely for itself this spring, while nearly four years ago, “Shutter Island” became the highest grosser of Martin Scorsese”s career by moving to the wasteland of February. If “Monuments” has the storytelling goods to match its all-star cast, audiences will find it in a quieter month.

Kristopher Tapley: I think the move gives Clooney’s other holiday release, “August: Osage County,” as well as Sony’s platforming-through-the-holiday “American Hustle” more room to breathe, but I agree with Guy. “Monuments Men” itself might be the answer. It could have been dominant during the holiday but in a February pattern (if that’s where it indeed ends up going), it has a shot at landing big outside the fray. And perhaps the residual whiff off the season vis a vis Clooney’s involvement in “August” will help “Monuments” gain even more traction if it releases right in the middle of phase two of this year’s Oscar season in February.

Should “Monuments Men” release in February or another time of year?

Gregory Ellwood: In theory, a world premiere at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival in February would be thematically appropriate and a U.S. release could follow right after. The problem is that this February features another edition of the Winter Olympics. The viewing audience for the Olympics and “Monuments Men” are eerily similar. March 7 is also a possibility, but then “Monuments” is risking losing older males to “300: Rise of an Empire.” March 14 already has four wide releases currently scheduled. March 21 has both “Divergent” and “Muppets Most Wanted” on deck. March 28 makes sense if you don’t mind going up against an epic version of “Noah.” With April just as rough it might make sense for Sony Pictures to throw one out of the old school ’00s release playbook and pitch it as a major summer release. Sure, it’s an older cast, but as alternative fare to the superhero blockbusters it might have a great chance at finding a substantial audience.

Guy Lodge: Unless you”re an auteur with the aura and mystique of a Terrence Malick, I tend to think that the longer you wait, the more people will suspect you”re hiding something – so a first-half debut would probably be for the best. (If it turns out to be a fun audience movie with minimal awards potential, there”s no shame in that; if it”s something more, it won”t be forgotten with all those names attached.) Ordinarily, a February debut following a Berlin premiere would make sense, but as Greg points out, it”s a month of unusual distractions. Perhaps it”d be better to follow the “Great Gatsby” path with a splashy Cannes premiere – it”d make a handsome festival opener – swiftly followed by a May release?

Kristopher Tapley: I have no idea what the film really is so it’s hard to say. February is a bit under-used for this kind of film and there are success stories (like “Shutter Island,” noted above). It could be a fun spring entry that would obviously be a lot different from the surrounding product. But I’m not a box office expert. Greg makes fine points re: the Olympics so I’d maybe glom onto that and the Berlinale.

What do you think? Has “The Monuments Men” done the right thing by jumping to next year? And who stands to gain most from the move? Share your thoughts below.

The best Oscar-related piece on the internet comes from Salon critic Andrew O’Hehir, who examines our fascination with the awards, as as we concede that they mean little in the grand scheme of things: “The Oscar race has things to teach us, every single year; but on the other hand, the manufactured narrative that gets spun out of it is almost entirely devoid of meaning … like electoral politics with the ideology shoved under the carpet.” The difference this year, he says, is that neither of this year’s two apparent race-leaders fit the usual Oscar formula: “12 Years a Slave” is a “valuable historical corrective” and “formally audacious,” while “Gravity” “may have too much catharsis … a remake of Kubrick”s ‘2001’ made by HAL.” [Salon]

An excellent piece by Justin Chang on the balance of brutality and spirituality in “12 Years a Slave” (for consumption only after seeing the film). [Variety]  

Richard Brody, meanwhile, debates the rights and wrongs of depicting slavery on screen at all. [New Yorker]

Robert Downey, Jr., Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence lead Vulture’s Most Valuable Stars list. [Vulture]

Sean Fennessey on the improbable coolness of Best Supporting Actor contender Jared Leto. [Grantland]

15 foreign-language contenders are included in the lineup for AFI Fest. [LA Times]

Christopher Kelly on the Austin Film Festival, where the screenwriter is star. [New York Times]

Matt Noble considers the posthumous award prospects for James Gandolfini in “Enough Said.” [Gold Derby]

Tom Tykwer is the latest film director to move to TV. [Screen Daily] 

Confessions of a serial watcher: why some of us can watch films up to 20 times, and not even ones we love. [The Guardian]

Coming around to the final of the four acting categories this season, Best Supporting Actress isn’t as jam-packed as the Best Supporting Actor field, but it’s pretty dense in its own right. What’s more, while it’s not exactly “wide” open, there is room to navigate and we could end up with a surprise or two.

Like a few of the other acting categories, there is also an opportunity to populate this race with women of color: there are five African-American actresses with a legitimate shot at recognition. We could also see the script flipped on Oscar history as a voice-only performance continues to get a lot of support, at least from the critical fraternity.

So have a look at what we’re thinking via the gallery story below. And feel free to offer up your thoughts in the comments section. Also, if you haven’t already, go ahead and sign up to make your own predictions and see how you do at the end of the season.

It’s interesting watching things shake out so relatively late in the season. First Sony Classics decided that, rather than push “Foxcatcher” out there at the end of the season, it would wait and allow further considerations time to breathe in the editing room. Now that company’s parent, Sony Pictures, has shuffled George Clooney’s “The Monuments Men,” which has been test screening and had a scoring session booked in London yesterday, out of what is already a crazily crowded year.

The move to an unspecified date in 2014 (though Clooney indicates it will be February) is interesting because there have been no indications that the film is in any sort of trouble. The official line on it at the moment is that it needs more time for visual effects elements (“we just didn’t have enough time,” Clooney said), but it’s also a conscious decision on Clooney and Sony’s part to steer clear of what promises to be a bloodbath in numerous categories, to say nothing of the box office. Now Sony can focus down even more on it’s two other awards hopefuls: “American Hustle” and “Captain Phillips.”

But Clooney himself remains in the Best Picture Oscar race. He and partner Grant Heslov are the producers of John Wells’ “August: Osage County,” distributed by The Weinstein Company.

Meanwhile, Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” — which was never set for 2014 despite jump-the-gun reports that embellished what we first told you a month ago — is…doing what we told you it would likely do a month ago: setting its sights on a Christmas release. So if you were fretting that it would be bumped, too, well, don’t do that.

This season never fails to surprise. It should all make for a bumpy ride.

A couple of weeks ago — I don’t recall the context — a reader asked me who I thought deserved consideration for an Honorary Oscar in the near future. Among the names I threw into the hat was Mike Leigh. The 70-year-old British writer-director may still be very much an active talent, but over the course of seven nominations (two for Best Director, five for Best Original Screenplay) in 16 years, Leigh hasn’t really come close to cracking the winner’s circle: his films may just be too intimately English, and his workshop-heavy creative process too unconventional, for the larger Academy ever to “get” him. And that’s a shame.

“What about the Turner film?” the reader countered. Well, quite. Leigh’s upcoming biopic of legendary British Romantic painter J.M.W. Turner — most famous for his vast, light-filled, semi-abstract visions of land and sea — certainly looks a more Academy-friendly proposition on paper than, say, “Happy-Go-Lucky,” promising early 19th-century period splendor and stormy human drama of creation and self-destruction. It also has the hook of being Leigh’s long-gestating passion project: he’s worked for 20-odd years to get the as-yet-untitled film off the ground.

Of course, Leigh has traveled this terrain before: his 1999 Gilbert & Sullivan biopic “Topsy-Turvy” was a critics’ pet and earned Leigh his second writing nod. (It won for its costumes and makeup, making it Leigh’s only film to date to take home any Oscar gold.) Could his Turner film — which reunites him with actor and recurring collaborator Timothy Spall for the first time since 2002’s “All or Nothing” — catch on a bigger way? We’ll see, but for now, the first image from his latest suggests a robust period piece.

The film is currently in post-production in London, readying for a 2014 premiere; Sony Pictures Classics has already secured the US rights. I would bet on it showing up at Cannes next year: the French festival has a mixed history with Leigh (“Secrets and Lies” won the Palme d’Or, while “Vera Drake” was controversially rejected by selectors), but I can’t see them turning down a film that’s this personal to the director.

Other cast members include Marion Bailey, Dorothy Atkinson and Paul Jesson, all of whom have worked with Leigh before; other returning regulars include Oscar-nominated cinematographer Dick Pope (“The Illusionist”) and Oscar-winning costume designer Jacqueline Durran (“Anna Karenina”). TV-reared production designer Suzie Davies is new to the fold.

It’s really hard to hide the disdain this pundit has for the Hollywood Film Awards. There may be no less authentic awards ceremony during awards season. Honestly, it’s pretty much pointless and just an exercise for potential nominees to practice their speeches and red carpet talking points. Damn you Kanye West for giving the event any sort of relevancy.

West was the surprise presenter for honoree “12 Years a Slave” helmer Steve McQueen. It doesn’t matter what award McQueen won (seriously, no one remembers the exact award anyone wins there), because West’s appearance is more about consumers than courting Oscar voters. West’s endorsement for “12 Years a Slave” will assist Fox Searchlight’s mission to expand the critically acclaimed drama to the mainstream and, especially, African-American moviegoers. It was a superb PR move as the film starts to expand over the next few weeks.

That being said, the rest of the night? Well, heck, this prognosticator is still in England and can tell you it barely registered a ripple in awards land. Yes, we realize writing about it only exacerbates the Hollywood Film Awards profile, but then again it allows us to have a bit more fun than usual.

Click on the story gallery and join us as we wonder, along with the stars and presenters, why were they at the Hollywood Film Awards in the first place?

The winners of the Academy’s annual Nicholls Fellowship in Screenwriting rarely get too much attention, gien that these new writers and their scripts are completely unknown quantities. Still, it’s worth keeping these names in mind, since every now and then, a Nicholls winner makes it to the screen with some success. One of 2010’s choices, for example, was Destin Daniel Cretton’s much-beloved indie “Short Term 12”; 1992 winner Susannah Grant went on to write the Oscar-nominated script for “Erin Brockovich.” Perhaps similar things await the writers of this year’s five winners: “Legion,” “Joe Banks,” “Jersey City Story,” “Queen of Hearts” and “Sugar in My Veins.”  [AMPAS]

Steve Pond looks over with list of 151 films — a record number — eligible for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. [The Wrap]

Harvey Weinstein is appealing against the R-rating given by the MPAA to that raunchy romp “Philomena.” [The Guardian]

Glenn Kenny examines the implications of nine key lines from “12 Years a Slave.” [Cinephiled]

The BAFTA Children’s Awards are partying like it’s 2012, as “Brave,” “Life of Pi,” “ParaNorman” and “Wreck-It Ralph” compete for Best Feature. [Hollywood Reporter]

With “The Fifth Estate” performing worse at the US box office than any other wide release this year, Jeff Labrecque wonders what happened. [EW]

Is Joaquin Phoenix the most fascinating actor in the movies today? Diana Drumm believes so. [IndieWire]

Frank DiGiacomo asks if Focus Features’ recent woes foretell the death of the studio indie. [Vulture]

Andrew Kendall looks back with affection on one of the shortest performances ever to win an Oscar: Judi Dench in “Shakespeare in Love.” [The Film Experience]

More retro Oscar talk: Mike D’Angelo revisits the 2001 Best Actress field, deeming Halle Berry “flat-out terrible” and sticking up for Piper Perabo. [The Dissolve]

From the list of film critics’ first world problems, “party exhaustion” must be among the most supremely dickish, so let me just say that the London Film Festival came to a close with a very full final weekend — in addition to her bold programming and tight organization, Clare Stewart (now in her second year as director of the LFF) has made an already enjoyable festival more convivial and night-owl-oriented than ever before. And indeed, they had much to celebrate this year — not least the world premiere of “Saving Mr. Banks,” a grand coup for a fest that usually cedes such major debuts to the likes of Toronto and New York. Last night’s closing bash, decked out in “Mary Poppins”-themed umbrellas and cherry trees, was suitably boastful.

On Saturday night, however, came a more intimate but equally luxurious event: the festival’s official awards dinner. Taking place once more in Whitehall’s gorgeous 17th-century Banqueting House — a stone’s throw from 10 Downing Street — it was an evening that crowned four deserving winners in the competition categories, though the show was stolen by an honorary British Film Institute Fellowship presentation for 91-year-old legend Christopher Lee.

It was privilege enough to be in the presence of the merlot-voiced star of “The Wicker Man,” the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and any number of multiple Hammer Horror treasures, but the festival’s choice of presenter made the moment that much more special. We’d been told to expect a surprise, and when a sprightly Joanna Lumley sauntered onto stage to play emcee for the evening, I thought that was rather a nice one: Lumley, as she reminded the audience with relish, shared the screen with Lee 40 years ago in “The Satanic Rites of Dracula.”

But the LFF organizers had something else up their collective sleeve: the hitherto sedate crowd of black-tie-wearing industry folk roared with excitement when Johnny Depp came on stage to hand Lee his award — the BFI’s highest honor, and one he now shares with a host of luminaries from Olivier to Scorsese.

It was a brief presentation, but a highly emotional one. The sincere friendship and mutual respect between these two very different actors — united on four Tim Burton films, most recently “Alice in Wonderland” — was all too evident, as both spoke in tremulous voices and sniffed back a tear or two.

A blond-haired Depp, his Doc Martens shining below his tux, spoke of how Lee’s work has “fascinated and inspired” him from childhood, concluding by calling him “a national treasure and genuine artist.” “I love you,” he finished. Lee, looking frail but visibly moved, countered by saying Depp means “an enormous amount” to him. “He’s one of the few young actors today who’s genuinely a star,” he said. It was sweet to hear the 50-year-old Depp described as a “young actor” — from Lee’s perspective, one can see how it hardly makes a difference.

Lee got several laughs from the crowd in his short speech. “When I take a look back, over 67 years, at the characters I’ve played, I get a truly strange feeling they were all played by somebody else, and not by me,” he said. “There are a few occasions when it has been the case I wish it had! ” It was a sly reference to the fact that much of his most memorable, enduring work has been in the kind of gleefully lurid B-movies that would never have played the London Film Festival back in the day, much less received awards for their actors — which makes this choice of BFI recipient all the more welcome.

It fell to another recent BFI Fellowship honoree — recently retired Observer film critic Philip French, this year’s Competition jury president — to present the night’s top award. The 13-film shortlist for Best Film was full of strong, sometimes unexpected choices: I’d have been happy with a win for Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin,” Xavier Dolan’s “Tom at the Farm,” Clio Barnard’s “The Selfish Giant” or several others.

But I couldn’t argue with the selection of the jury, which also included Miranda Richardson, Lone Scherfig and Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto: Polish-British director Pawel Pawlikowski’s lovely new film “Ida” was a comparatively under-the-radar nominee, but one that built deserved word-of-mouth acclaim over the course of the festival. Shot in exquisitely stark black and white, it’s a spare, affecting story of a young nun in 1960s Poland, orphaned during WWII, and learning of her painful Jewish family history as she prepares to take her vows.

I caught up with it over the weekend, and was thrilled by its own elegant composure and wry writ — but what makes it doubly gratifying is the creative recovery it signals for Pawlikowski, a wonderful filmmaker who made a splash in the early 2000s with “Last Resort” and the BAFTA-winning “My Summer of Love,” before his wife’s untimely passing put his career on hold. Last year’s drab Paris noir “The Woman in the Fifth” wasn’t the comeback we were hoping for; “Ida” certainly is, and this win validates it. Pawlikowski seemed surprised to be accepting the award, singling out “Under the Skin” as he enthused over the standard of competition. (Meanwhile, I overheard French saying the choice had been a very easy one.)

For the record, “Ida” joins previous Best Film winners “A Prophet,” “How I Ended This Summer,” “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and “Rust and Bone” — the prize is five years old and has yet to hit a dud choice.

The festival’s oldest prize, the Sutherland Award for Best First Feature, went to Anthony Chen’s touching Singaporean family drama “Ilo Ilo” — beating such competitors as “Kill Your Darlings” and “Salvo.” The win echoes the young director’s Camera d’Or triumph at Cannes; it may be one to keep an eye on in the Oscar race for Best Foreign Language Film, where it is Singapore’s official submission. Further thoughts in my review here.

Going into the evening, the favorites for the Best British Newcomer award appeared to be the two brilliant child stars of “The Selfish Giant,” Conner Chapman and Shaun Thomas — though once juror and comparable veteran Saoirse Ronan took the stage, we were told that the jury had found it too difficult to separate them. The boys settled for a Special Mention, as first-time screenwriter Jonathan Asser took the award for ferocious prison drama “Starred Up.” The industry novice, who based the script on his own experience as a prison employee, noted with a smile that “it feels funny to be a newcomer at 49.”

Finally, the Grierson Award for Best Documentary went to Austrian director Paul-Julien Robert for his riveting, highly personal doc “My Fathers, My Mother and Me,” in which he unsparingly recounts his experience of growing up in a sex commune rife with psychological abuse — and demands difficult answers from his stricken mother. An unusual and necessarily uncomfortable film, it was a highly popular winner — judging from the whoops that greeted its announcement — even in the face of such acclaimed opposition as Frederick Wiseman’s “At Berkeley,” Alex Gibney’s “The Armstrong Lie” and Cambodian Oscar entry “The Missing Picture.”

To recap:

Best Film: “Ida,” Pawel Pawlikowski

Sutherland Award for Best Debut Feature: “Ilo Ilo,” Anthony Chen
Special Mention: “B For Boy,” Chika Anadu

Best British Newcomer: Jonathan Asser (screenwriter), “Starred Up”
Special Mention: Conner Chapman and Shaun Thomas (actors), “The Selfish Giant”

Grierson Award for Best Documentary: “My Fathers, My Mother and Me,” Paul-Julien Robert
Special Mention: “Manhunt,” Greg Barker; “Cutie and the Boxer,” Zachary Heinzerling; cinematography of “Pipeline,” Alexandra Ivanova

Jean-Marc Vallée was coming off the disappointment of a potential follow-up to 2009’s “The Young Victoria” falling through when the script for “Dallas Buyers Club” first floated across his desk, courtesy of producer Robbie Brenner. The story of Texas electrician Ron Woodroof, who in 1985 was diagnosed with HIV and given 30 days to live, moved the director deeply. It was a story of drive and fire, a portrait of a man who, through smuggling unapproved medications from all corners of the globe, managed to stretch that 30 days into seven years…and prolong a few other lives along the way, too.

But Vallée was skeptical when Brenner brought up the possibility of actor Matthew McConaughey taking on the role. This was before the star’s recent resurgence on the art house scene, before the pendulum of his career had begun to swing away from the paycheck gigs with which he had come to be associated.

“I went to New York and we had a meeting,” Vallée recalls. “He was trying to see if I was the right director. I was trying to see if he was the right actor. And we understood that we wanted to make the same film. It was an instinct thing. I got the feeling that, ‘Okay, I think this guy’s at a place in his career where he wants to change perceptions and he wants new challenges. He wants to show us that he’s a great actor.'”

When it came to Rayon, the transgender woman Woodroof befriends and goes into business with as they set up the film’s eponymous med-pushing organization, 30 Seconds to Mars lead singer and sometime actor Jared Leto was equally unlikely. This was a period of time when Leto had really stopped receiving scripts, his big screen career having hit a lull in the years following the 2007 critical bomb “Chapter 27.”

So they set up a Skype call and Vallée was met with Leto staring back at him in a wig and dress applying lipstick. “He was hitting on me,” Vallée recalls. “I thought he was going to do this for five minutes, two minutes, and he just did it like until the end of the conversation, 25 minutes later. I hung up and said, ‘This guy’s crazy. He just showed me that he wants the part.’ When he arrived on the set, he got off the plane dressed as a woman, with high heels and everything. And at the end of the shoot, he left dressed as a woman…The guy is a rockstar. A natural rockstar.”

And so it was off to the races on a month-long indie shoot and a project that, Vallée was well aware, had certain notable parallels to the current health care crisis. “Dallas Buyers Club” is a film about desperation, about fighting for access to the proper care (though “proper” in this case was quite risky, but when your back is against the wall, you’ll do anything to survive). But Vallée makes it clear that it wasn’t an overt statement.

“The goal was just to serve this amazing story, even though it resonates to what’s going on,” he says. “This guy’s fighting to survive and he wants to do it his own way. He wants to try to change the system and they weren’t there yet. They weren’t ready.”

Meanwhile, the director was conscious of not painting things in black and white. The doctors in the film, the FDA, these weren’t meant to be black hat villains. “It just wasn’t the right period when they could all work together,” he says. “Like 13 years later, in 1996 — if we say 1983 is the year where [the AIDS epidemic took off] — it’s only 1996 that the pharmaceutical companies, the activists, the government and the FDA worked together and found some sort of a solution.”

Vallée also concedes, as does McConaughey, that Woodroof may well have been the sort of person who thrived on that adversity to survive for as long as he did. “Just like McMurphy in ‘Cuckoo’s Nest,’ some people need conflicts,” Vallée says. “He’s a kind of guy that I think, if he was told, ‘You’ve got 30 days,’ well, ‘Oh yeah? You watch me. There’s nothing that can kill Ron Woodroof in 30 days.’ He became his own expert, his own doctor, his own specialist…on a seventh grade education with no diplomas.”

That speaks to the spirit of the setting in some ways, too, Vallée says. The contrast of the LGBT community and the AIDS epidemic against the state of Texas was interesting to him. “I think the fact that it’s a cowboy with this cowboy attitude, it’s like you need this attitude, to have the balls to do that,” Vallée says. “And to have this kind of mentality, ‘We’re proud. We’re the strongest. We want to be independent. No one tells me what to do,’ it’s Texan. So this attitude helped the community a lot.”

And of course, that contrast extends to Woodroof himself, a homophobe prior to his ordeal, partnering with someone like Rayon and becoming the figure he did in the community. The truly moving and meaningful aspect of the script, Vallée says, was that arc.

“This guy, who didn’t want to change and didn’t want to become a crusader, without even realizing it and wanting it, he became their spokesperson. That was the beauty of the project.”

“Dallas Buyers Club” opens in limited release on Nov. 1.

Another day, another director feuding with Harvey Weinstein over the editing of his movie. This time it’s Frenchman Olivier Dahan, who’s none too pleased with the postponement of his Nicole Kidman-starring biopic “Grace of Monaco” to next year, and is fighting Weinstein’s proposed changes. Speaking to a French newspaper, he says: “It’s right to struggle, but when you confront an American distributor like Weinstein, not to name names, there is not much you can do. Either you say ‘Go figure it out with your pile of shit’ or you brace yourself so the blackmail isn’t as violent … If I don’t sign, that’s where the out-and-out blackmail starts, but I could go that far. There are two versions of the film for now: mine and his … which I find catastrophic.” So, this bodes well. [Hollywood Reporter]

A.O. Scott on the prevalence of “intimately scaled ordeals” at the movies — specifically, “All is Lost,” “Gravity” and “Captain Phillips” —  this season. [New York Times]

“Saving Mr. Banks” producer Alison Owen delivered the keynote speech at the London Film Festival, discussing the film and our enduring need for storytelling. [Screen Daily]

Nick Schager on how an Oscar for Robert Redford in “All is Lost” would be a validation of movie stardom. [Vulture]

Andrew Stewart asks if “The Fifth Estate” has diminished Benedict Cumberbatch’s stock as a leading man. [Variety]

Bilge Ebiri on the decline of “macho” cinema. [Business Week]

The great Alfre Woodard on why “12 Years a Slave” is an essential American story. [LA Times]

It’s become fashionable lately to say that TV is better than cinema, but David Cox builds a 10-point argument opposing that line of thinking. [The Guardian]

Love this Criticwire discussion topic: lousy films with great soundtracks. [IndieWire]

LONDON – “Saving Mr. Banks” closed the 2013 BFI London Film Festival Sunday night and, as expected, officially entered the 2014 Oscar race. When your movie tells the true story of the sparring relationship between the Walt Disney (played by Tom Hanks, no less) and author P.L. Travers (Emma “where have you been this past decade” Thompson) over the making of “Mary Poppins,” the Oscar bait signs are pretty obvious. Happily, and you can learn more in Guy Lodge’s review, the film is actually pretty entertaining with some honest dramatic moments audiences won’t expect. And yet, whether “Banks” will have a real impact on the Best Picture race might be too hard to gauge Stateside.

Before we get any further, however, let’s make one thing clear: “Saving Mr. Banks” will be nominated for Best Picture. Like “Gravity” and “12 Years A Slave,” you can bet money in Vegas that it’s in. There’s no debate there. Winning Oscar’s top prize? That’s another matter.

What “Banks” immediately has going for it is that Academy members will absolutely eat up the scenes between Travers, the Sherman brothers (B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman) and screenwriter Don DaGradi (an already unheralded Bradley Whitford) as they comb every line of the proposed script. Members will also love seeing a human side to Disney, one that is rarely alluded to as he’s become more of an icon over the decades. Hanks’ Disney is a guy who miscalculates, gets frustrated and has a personal passion about a project as opposed to seeing it as another cash cow (basically, he’s a well-rounded human being). Moreover, for all the film’s faults (we’ll get there), the scenes between Thompson and Hanks are not only memorable, but they are special. They don’t turn “Banks” into a top 10 critics’ pick, but they elevate it far and above its source material.

Obviously, AMPAS always likes to reward a hit when it can and “Banks” is going to be one of the biggest films during the holiday season. It’s simply one of the few movies you can take your parents to and everyone can have a good time. $100 million-plus domestic is guaranteed at this point.

Lastly, and this has not been discussed much, “Banks” will benefit from the love of Los Angeles, UK and — important — Aussie members. The film’s flashbacks take place in Australia (even though it wasn’t shot there) and there are a couple of other Down Under connections in the cast and crew that shouldn’t be spoiled. We’re not talking something as impactful as the Jacki Weaver effect (Aussie members love their Jacki), but these are the sort of nuggets that consultants count on when looking for votes in a close race.

All that being said, “Banks” has its issues. The flashback scenes, for the most part, do not work. Director John Lee Hancock just can’t figure out how to integrate them in a subtle way and Colin Farrell is either miscast or just received terrible direction as Travers’ father. Heads up Disney: you may want to have Hancock stop telling the story of how Farrell fought for the part, as he did before the film’s premiere, because it only reminds you how weak he is when it’s all over. And while I’ve heard a number of ladies say they were emotional seeing the film in Los Angeles, I saw lots of dry eyes at the London public premiere. Does that mean LA industry relate to Travers’ creative battles more? Perhaps it strikes an emotional chord with them? Something to keep an eye on for sure.

Moreover, it’s a tad harsh this early on, but Hancock is not going to earn a Best Director nomination for “Banks.” The issues I’ve already noted will just be too much for that branch to bear. Plus, it’s another incredibly competitive category this year. Hey, I know what you’re saying. “But Ben Affleck got shut out last year and ‘Argo’ still won Best Picture!” Trust me, as someone who kept predicting “Argo” when others said it couldn’t win, I know how history was made. As entertaining as “Banks” is, however, it’s not “Argo.” The quality of filmmaking is just not the same.

Let’s now take a look some of the other categories “Banks” will try to earn nominations in.

Best Director
As noted, just don’t see it happening. Flashbacks are too weak.

Best Actress
Emma Thompson will absolutely get nominated. Hard to see her beating Blanchett or Bullock though, even if she can charm the pants off anyone anywhere and at any time.

Best Supporting Actor
Tom Hanks isn’t just in, he could actually win his third statue here. The role is not as emotionally and physically difficult as Michael Fassbender’s work in “12 Years” or Jared Leto’s turn in “Dallas Buyers Club,” but Hanks is superb and it will be even more impressive contrasting with his work in “Captain Phillips,” which should earn him a Best Actor nod. This may be the category where AMPAS spreads the love to “Banks.”

Best Original Screenplay
Wait, do we actually have a competitive original screenplay category this year? Kelly Marcel will share credit with Sue Smith, but it’s worth noting the former’s name must have been brought up four times during the introductions at the “Banks” premiere. The cast and crew see Marcel as the film’s original champion and she’ll be talked up a lot. There is also ton of good work the writers branch can reward her for. They won’t see the issues with the flashbacks as a script problem.

Best Editing
If it earns this nomination it can obviously win, but boy would that be a surprise.

Best Original Score
Personally, I didn’t think Thomas Newman’s score was that remarkable and was overshadowed by the original songs from “Marry Poppins” that pop up during the picture. That being said, he is an 11-time nominee. This may be no. 12.

Best Production Design
There are some really cheap-looking sets in the early Australia scenes that scream “studio lot” (and that’s not what they were going for). Michael Corenblith is a two-time nominee, but if he gets in this time around we’ll have to assume his peers found the recreation of Walt Disney’s office simply amazing.

Best Costume Design
Nothing that remarkable here. If it does earn a nod it will just show widespread support throughout the Academy.

The verdict? Obviously, we have a player. And, arguably, a Best Picture win isn’t out of bounds. Should Warner Bros. and Fox Searchlight now be worried about their own films’ chances to win the big one? Not yet. Not yet. “Banks” isn’t a party crasher, but if a lot of things fall its way it could become consensus option.

Maybe.

LONDON – You needn”t have seen the 1964 Disney family staple “Mary Poppins” — though I shudder to think, almost 50 years after its release, of a childhood completed without it — to be familiar with the practically perfect English nanny”s all-purpose maxim that “a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.” It was a line conceived not by P.L. Travers, the famously prickly Australian author of the children”s books behind the film, but by Richard and Robert Sherman, the Disney studio”s in-house songwriters.

Intentionally or otherwise, it was a cannily appropriate bit of invention: in a sense, it neatly sums up the Disney ethos of using whimsy and cheer to make life lessons more palatable to young viewers. (Or older ones, for that matter.) Disney, after all, was the man who changed the definition of “fairytale” in the public imagination from Grimm-dark allegory to one of mandatory happy endings. Travers, for her part, liked the medicine.

“Saving Mr. Banks,” John Lee Hancock”s bright, entertaining and — inevitably — somewhat selective overview of “Poppins'” conflict-laden journey to the screen, is a film that aims for the inverse of that formula: a small dose of acrid personal history is applied to make its sentimental study of creative collaboration yielding personal catharsis that much easier to swallow. That’s not necessarily a knock against it. If the tidy emotional geometry of Kelly Marcel’s script occasionally feels Disney-esque, that seems only right for a film explicitly about the pervasiveness of Disney”s optimistic storytelling principles in popular culture — and more implicitly about the way even those heightened principles can mirror the odd human truth. Sometimes life is sentimental, and some will fight it more than others.

As played by a hilariously clipped, unaccommodating Emma Thompson — cutting a rigid figure with her poker-like posture and steel-wool hairdo, seemingly sewn from birth into a tweed skirt suit — Travers fights that fight with unflagging conviction, protecting her creation in order, as the film”s honey-lit flashbacks make increasingly clear, to protect her own memories. Art adapts life, and life adapts art, several times over in “Saving Mr. Banks,” and not just for Travers.

The uptight Australian and the ruthlessly twinkly Walt Disney (Tom Hanks, striking the necessary balance of magnetism and Teflon lack of affect) engage in a civil war for artistic custody of “Poppins”; it”s so hard-fought, we learn, because they’ve both built their own fantasy empires upon a foundation of personal hardship and a whole heap of daddy issues. Naturally, they can’t get along because they have so much in common: it’s practically a romantic comedy without a hint of sexual want. (Well, it is a Disney movie, after all.)

“I won’t have her careening toward her happy ending like a kamikaze,” barks Travers to her put-upon agent, as he approaches her for the umpteenth time in 20 years with Disney’s request for the screen rights to her international publishing phenomenon. In 1961, she finally acquiesces to meet the mogul — she’s 61, short on both inspiration and finances — on the further condition that no part of the film be animated. We all know that Disney would break at least one of those commitments: toward the end of the film, Thompson watches the completed “Mary Poppins” for the first time, and her woebegone expression as dancing cartoon penguins fill the frame is a treat.

But did Disney give Poppins herself a happy ending? Arguably not: played to Oscar-winning effect by Julie Andrews, she remains one of Disney’s most sinuous, even sinister, heroines, floating unceremoniously off the screen and leaving the Banks family to their healed devices. It’s a bittersweet conclusion that came about as a result of Travers’ stubborn script demands at the pre-production stage, made while she held her unsigned contract as collateral. The most enjoyable stretches of “Saving Mr. Banks” aren’t, in fact, her terse tête-a-têtes with Disney, but the tortured workshop sessions between the author, screenwriter Don DaGradi (Bradley Whitford) and the Shermans — delightfully played by Jason Schwartzman and B.J. Novak as stooges with a wily streak, as clean-scrubbed and sharply side-parted as a pair of Disney princes.

Travers’ passive-aggressive manipulation of the script to reflect her worldview is not entirely in the interests of cynicism, as she insists upon the redemption (yes, the “saving”) of the film’s unadvertised protagonist, proud English patriarch Mr. Banks — written by DaGradi as a cold prig, and more forgivingly by Travers as a version of her own troubled but devoted father, Travers Goff. Travers may be a maddeningly unreasonable presence in these script sessions, but she’s not a misguided one, as she steadily makes herself heard, enriching a film she still loathes in principle. (She makes some allowances, too, as her resistance to the film’s musical aspects is thawed by Shermans’ infectiously rousing closing number “Let”s Go Fly a Kite”: she”s not a zombie, dammit.)

Thompson’s cunning performance revels in Travers’ withering contempt for all enablers and opponents alike, like a fussier Transatlantic take on Miranda Priestley. However enjoyable, this haughty damedom runs the risk of wearing thin, but the actress suggests enough of the woman’s tightly leashed inner demons to render the film’s frequent flashbacks to Travers’ Outback childhood turgidly on-the-nose by comparison.

That may partly be the fault of a sorely miscast Colin Farrell as the devil-may-care alcoholic Papa Goff, whom the actor elects to play as Johnny Depp’s J.M. Barrie with added man-sprite creepiness. But it’s Marcel”s script that loses its zip and focus in these scenes, resorting to blunt symbolic cues and contrived doubling to convey in shorthand an idyllic childhood gone awry. A climactic scene intercutting the composition of Banks’ number “Fidelity Fiduciary Bank” and Goff’s public humiliation at a country fair is one of the few formal reaches in Hancock’s otherwise workmanlike direction, and falls badly flat.

This rather literal extraction of pathos from the material eventually bleeds into the film’s present, crucially in a lengthy monologue for Disney wherein he makes a last-ditch attempt to woo Travers by laying out the parallels between their respective backstories in exhaustive detail. Hanks delivers it well, maintaining a venal, self-serving edge to a pitch Don Draper would be proud of, but it’s hard to tell just how emotionally resonant Marcel intends it to be, not least because the scene professes to lay bare the defenses of two characters the film keeps largely hidden to the very end. Aside from one veiled allusion to estranged family, “Saving Mr. Banks” makes no mention of Travers’ troubled relationship with her adopted son, nor her reputedly fluid bisexuality. Given the Disney remit, it’s understandably more convenient to present her as a kind of spinster-aunt figure, though considering how much the film is predicated on the notion that Travers wrote — and Team Disney rewrote — her life through her art, these seem significant omissions.

Yet “Saving Mr. Banks” charms in spite of its movie-world airbrushing, a process that extends all the way from character arcs to costume. (This is the kind of painstakingly finished, beautifully dressed period piece where no one’s clothes look worn for longer than the length of the shot: that Farrell’s white banker’s collars remain so crisply laundered through the sweat and dust of rural Down Under is a trick worthy of Poppins herself.) Perhaps it charms because of that very artifice. If any film has a free pass to Disney-style distortion of reality, it’s surely a Disney movie about the creation of a Disney movie. “Mary Poppins,” after all, is a great film that resulted from considerable infidelity to its source: P.L. Travers was right about some things, and Walt Disney about many others.

It’s tempting to wonder what both fiercely protective artists would have made of “Saving Mr. Banks,” a respectably lesser film that takes their hostile but ultimately magical collaboration as its own happy ending.

Paul Greengrass’ “Captain Phillips” is currently entering its second week at the box office having riveted both critics and filmgoers. Much of the praise the film has received has focused on its exceptional realism. Much of that is courtesy of the film’s director of photography, Barry Ackroyd, who spoke to HitFix earlier this week about his work bringing the saga to life.

Ackroyd previously worked with Greengrass on “United 93” and “Green Zone.” It’s clear they see eye-to-eye on most matters; both have backgrounds in documentaries and both are keen to make their films as realistic as possible and appropriately respectful of their subjects. “Sometimes you have to get a very blunt instruction,” Ackroyd says. “But when it’s working well, very little discussion is necessary. It’s an understanding that you have.”

Ackroyd says working with Greengrass is quite the immersive experience as the director is ever focused on placing the viewer in the story. “Paul is going to throw you into this world that is tough: ‘How do we film a war zone?’ With some directors, you’d have to find some highly technical way with CGI. But with Paul, it comes down to ‘let’s just do it.'”

There was discussion as to whether “Captain Phillips” should be shot digitally, and in that realm of cinematography’s consistent evolution, Ackroyd says he’s quite flexible. But in the end, “it’s about texture and reality and grain,” he says, so they “decided to go with something more reliable.”

Old-fashioned problems regarding practicality began to emerge, naturally. “You start to find out the limitations,” Ackroyd says. “Once we realized what we had to achieve – fishing boats in high seas chasing a rather large container ship, etc. – then we’re going to have to be as flexible as we can. I can’t carry the zoom lens on a 35mm format. It had to be 16mm, and that’s going to have to capture the story.”

Ackroyd and Greengrass are also famous for their use of the hand-held camera. Ackroyd says he likes the change to, again, capture things in a real-time vein. “It becomes a natural process,” he says. “You can put it on a little tripod with a slider. I also use long lenses, long zooms. Soon, where the camera goes, your mind goes. During each take, it’s organic to know when to run at someone, when you let someone come to you.”

This is not to say that much of the film wasn’t daunting, and Ackroyd knew there would be challenges as soon as he read the script. “Undoubtedly when you read a script set at night with three navy war ships, a lifeboat and a helicopter and the lifeboat needs to be taken down, you’re going out there thinking it can’t be done,” he says. “But with someone like Paul Greengrass, you’ll know he’ll be supporting you.”

Even with Ackroyd’s background in documentaries and filming around the world, each new project poses new challenges, and this title was no exception. “I’ve been about everywhere and every place,” he says. “I actually filmed on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf War. I have lots of familiarity with container ships. The bridge or engine room of a ship wasn’t a surprise to me. But taking down a cargo ship at sea was something I hadn’t done before.”

In the midst of the grandiosity of the ships at the heart of the plot, it became very important not to forget what the film was about: the story of an individual and his crew. Truth in a story, he says, “is not something you can reproduce,” which is an interesting takeaway given the criticism the film has come under as of late. But that’s not to say it isn’t a goal.

“Once you’ve decided on a technique, basically you’re talking about how to represent different parts of humanity clashing together in the way they do in the film,” he says. “I need to put the camera on and treat the subject with the dignity that it deserves, whether it is the navy or the captain or the crew of the Alabama or the pirates.”

Ackroyd particularly remembered one moment of honesty and drama when Muse [the leader of the Somali pirates] comes out with the line “look at me…I’m the captain now.” Actor Barkhad Abdi “has the audience and then the captain of the ship,” Ackroyd notes. “It’s precious and you have to be ready. That’s what I’m doing constantly, all day…asking where to position cameras to capture ‘that moment.’ Iit’s kind of a chess game.”

The film has been praised for the neutrality with which it shows its events and the empathy with which it depicts the pirates. For Ackroyd, this was exciting. “It was walking in there, handheld, documentary-style, using every frame of the shot to tell the story,” he says. “But that only exists in the background of an incredibly large panoply, a juxtaposition of two totally different worlds.”

In order to create the feel of the film, it was shot, insofar as possible, sequentially. Ackroyd was convinced this natural “building from beginning-to-end approach” was crucial. “I’ve done that in a lot of films,” he says, particularly noting director Ken Loach, who employs the technique with absolute rigor. “Your rehearsal for the next scene is what you did just before it. You know where you’re coming from and where you’re going is a bit of surprise. For example, when the Somalis take the bridge, no one knew exactly what would happen. Tom was surprised. And he had been kept away from the Somali actors. There was shouting in Somali…he had no idea what they were saying.”

Of course, Ackroyd did roughly know where he was going, which was essential but also difficult as the audience was only meant to know as much as the characters. “Sometimes you get drawn into a shot and it takes you somewhere, but it’s not part of the story yet,” he says.

Multiple cameras were operated at once to ensure the audience got to see the scene from different angles if need be. Greengrass insisted on keeping some cameras running even when it seemed extremely unlikely that the shots from the camera would be used. And whenever capturing something of this magnitude, it was important to know what the audience would see next. “We’d always have to keep the cameras running and I’d have to see it as a whole,” Ackroyd says. “I’m trying to look around the corner – need to see the helicopter turning and then something on the boat itself. That’s kind of the thought process. I’m not trying to plan one shot. I’m trying to plan four.”

At the end of the day, all this work built up to an incredibly suspenseful film that is visually arresting, to be sure, but also one that said something deeper. It was the final scene of the film that got to Ackroyd the most. “It’s the scene lots of people are talking about,” he says. “The end sequence of any film has to be powerful. We had versions of how this film would end. But none of us conceived of what we were going to do until we actually did it. It involved Tom pulling out things in his psyche.”

Throughout the production, Ackroyd sought to not only keep his audience riveted as if they were watching real-life events unfold, but also keep them involved in a story about the human condition. “Humanity is pretty readable,” he says. “And that’s universal. I’ve filmed in 50-60 countries and we are all pretty much the same.”

“Captain Phillips” is now playing in theaters nationwide.