LONDON – Two promises are fulfilled — one with more time to spare than the other — in David Mackenzie’s “Starred Up,” a wholly prison-set nightmare picture that careers wildly between the punchy and the plain punch-drunk, and fascinates equally in either register. For the hitherto raggedly gifted Scots filmmaker Mackenzie, it’s the film that most satisfyingly stitches together his twin impulses toward grit and grace, energizing familiar genre terrain with a coarse but literate ear and violently poetic eye. For his 23-year-old leading man, Jack O’Connell, it’s a gratifyingly early arrival, a seemingly bespoke vehicle that jolts his wild, woolly talent into something that looks a lot like stardom. “Starred up” is British penal jargon for the contentious promotion of a juvenile offender promoted to adult status; for a film that consolidates this much raw potential, it seems an oddly appropriate title.

The scarred, sometimes scarring progress of young men to maturity has been an ongoing preoccupation for Mackenzie, previously peaking with the perverse sexual exploits (or exploitation) of Ewan McGregor in 2003’s “Young Adam,” and bottoming out with, well, the perverse sexual exploits (or exploitation) of Ashton Kutcher in 2009’s “Spread.” Sex is a more latent concern in “Starred Up” — occasionally surfacing to riotous, aggressive effect, as it does in many an all-male prison drama — though its protagonist’s evolution through the course of the film is corporeal in a different way. Hand-to-hand combat is the alternative sexual currency in this cage of masculinity gone stir-crazy; life lessons and father-son conflict are on the cards too, but this is as much a story of physical education, of the human body made impenetrable. It’s as numbing as it is moving.

Scarily feral 19-year-old Eric (O’Connell) begins the film sturdy enough, the camera taking in his naked, knotted, crudely tattooed form as he arrives for inspection at an unnamed prison in an unspecified region of Britain. It’s a risk and a strength of first-time feature writer Jonathan Asser’s low-fat screenplay that it spares us a great many details of past and external circumstance, allowing us to reach for best- and worst-case scenarios: we never learn what Eric’s youthful crime was, though his hair-trigger temper and flair for grievous bodily harm suggest it was precociously horrific. Nor do we know the backstory of his wiry-looking but equally dangerous dad Neville (Ben Mendelsohn, shorn of his Down Under accent but none of his stoat-like intensity), except the fact that he’s been locked up in the same place for the past 14 years — effectively for as long as his son (whose mother is out of the picture, we’re bluntly told) can remember.

It’s not exactly a joyful reunion. Eric and Neville are strangers in one sense, and utterly, maddeningly recognizable to each other in another: as one man’s alpha egotism and unmanaged anger is increasingly mirrored in the other, it becomes clear how many destructive patterns of behavior have been indirectly passed from father to son, and how irrevocable they may turn out to be — for all the bureaucracy-impeded efforts of Rupert Friend’s dedicated but unidealistic counselor.  

It’s a story so stark and spare that some might be tempted to read it as allegory, though neither Asser nor Mackenzie’s perspectives suggest these lowlifes — uncomfortably likeable as they occasionally, if only flickeringly, appear to be — are anything but their own special, sorry cases. Though even in this hellish, unnatural social context, there’s something identifiably affecting about the relationship between Eric and Neville, however tentatively it thaws.

Neville’s half-hearted sense of paternal protectiveness gives way as he realizes that his son is both stronger than him, and stronger without him — that internal wound grounds the film even as it becomes an ugly kind of ballet in pursuit of external ones. There’s a higher concentration of fleshy fighting in “Starred Up” than anything I’ve seen this year, observed by Mackenzie with an awed, aesthetically conscious stillness that recalls the work of Nicolas Winding Refn: the film’s tendency toward bristly, ironic wit keeps it from blood-fetish territory, though Michael McDonough’s unexpectedly serene camera, bathed in the bleakly bright primary hues of Tom McCullagh’s production design, tests the audience’s impulse to look. (Kudos, too, to Jake Roberts and Nick Emerson’s brisk but often unblinking editing.)

Mackenzie’s sharp, wily craft has never been married to more effectively simple material, but if the film runs out of narrative rope with about 20 minutes to go, it’s the unpredictability and go-for-broke physicality of O’Connell’s performance that lends it emergency fuel, and looms largest in the memory. (It positively boggles the mind that he was initially cast in this year’s teen-lit adaptation “Beautiful Creatures” as Ethan Wate, the dorky Southern daydreamer so beautifully played by his replacement, Alden Ehrenreich.)

A veteran of British teen TV series “Skins,” O’Connell’s scuzzy charisma and chippy swagger has enlivened a handful of B-level Britpics in the past, though his presence has never been so fearsomely concentrated as it is here: it’s as hard to look at this snarling, sneering delinquent as it is to look away from him. (When an actor keeps winning scenes against a switched-on Mendelsohn, you know he’s got the goods.) He has surprising delicacy, too: a wordless triangular exchange as Eric finally latches on to the level of affection Neville and his cellmate hits just the right note of gently mortified acceptance. It’s a scene indicative of everything this tough but textured film gets right: some bruises are born of untempered testosterone, but they’re still tender where it counts.

Speaking with Matthew McConaughey about his work in Jean-Marc Vallée’s “Dallas Buyers Club” last week, it was obvious — as it was at Sundance when he was promoting “Mud” — that the actor is savoring every step of his career’s newfound upward trajectory. He’s taken to the “McConnaissance” like a duck to water, and it’s because he’s clearly a guy who relishes an experience.

That’s just what he told me when I got around to the subject of Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar,” the big budget blockbuster that serves as the director’s first outing since the “Dark Knight” trilogy wrapped up his ascendance in the Hollywood sphere, and a film no one would have expected a guy like McConaughey to be headlining three years ago. For what it’s worth, that fact isn’t lost on McConaughey, and while he’s surely thankful for the opportunity to take the big spotlight again in his career, he’s mostly stoked about the contrast and the chance to try something new.

“You know, Chris is a great mind,” McConaughey told me. “His brother wrote the script, he’s got a hand in the script, and this is a big movie. So there’s a lot of things that have to be coordinated to make a scene work, which is different than something like [‘Dallas Buyers Club’]: 25 days, one camera, no lights, it’s about performance, follow this guy’s life, ‘go.’ There’s no time to be ‘considerate.’ So there’s a lot of things to ‘consider’ with a larger-scope movie like this where also the director is doing many things with the story. But when we’re shooting the scenes, it’s like you’re on an independent. It’s, ‘Get after it,’ a couple of takes, ‘We got it; move on.’ It’s not overly precious.”

But what McConaughey is trying to do is preserve what is absolutely precious to him: something formative and meaningful, a professional adventure that will remain something he’ll carry with him the rest of his life. And being a cog in a major production wheel like “Interstellar,” even if it’s a leading man cog, brings with it the danger of losing that kind of grace note.

“What I’ve gotten out of the last two years that’s been so rewarding to me is I’ve been getting these experiences, man, just feeling like I’m in the clay, man, I’m deep in, man, I’m in it,” he told me, talking with his hands for emphasis. “So going into a big movie I had a bit of fear, going like, ‘Was it so much of a machine that I’m going to still be able to have an experience?’ So that’s what I’m working on, that I am getting. Because I’m holding on and saying, ‘No, I’m still going to have an experience today. I still had an experience on Friday.’ I’m serving his story but I’m still having a personal experience. And that was my biggest fear, or biggest trepidation going into it, but I have to say, I’m getting one out of it.”

The hotly anticipated film is certainly high on the radar for filmgoers given the man behind the camera, but in front of the camera, it promises to be a culmination of the last few years in McConaughey’s career, the coronation of a rebirth. That moment in and of itself will certainly be an “experience” the actor will also cherish.

“Interstellar” hits theaters Nov. 7, 2014. In the meantime, check back soon for our full interview with McConaughey about “Dallas Buyers Club.”

Welcome to the most packed acting category of 2014: Best Supporting Actor. Though that’s always the case, isn’t it? Well into every season hope consistently springs eternal for potential players across the spectrum, particularly in ensemble pieces of which there tend to be plenty.

This year we have singled out a whopping 32 possibilities based on the usual: buzz, campaign considerations and, of course, analysis of films already revealed and in play. The contenders range from first-time actors to perennial awards legends of the screen. The crop is so extensive some names even show up twice with multiple shots on goal in this category or in tandem with Best Actor.

In a nutshell, it’s another busy year for supporting actors. So let’s see who’s registering. Click through the gallery story below to see what Team HitFix is projecting and feel free to offer up your thoughts in the field in the comments section below. Also, if you haven’t already, sign up for HitFix Oscar Picks and make your own predictions today.

It’s been obvious for some time that Michael Fassbender isn’t all that fond of the publicity game — particularly when it comes to awards season. He’s currently among the Best Supporting Actor favorites for his brutal turn in “12 Years a Slave,” but if/when he nets that overdue first nomination, it’ll be without much campaigning on his end. Speaking to GQ, Fassbender says he’ll be avoiding the awards circuit to focus on work: “That’s just not going to happen, because I’ll be in New Zealand … You know, I get it. Everybody’s got to do their job. So you try and help and facilitate as best you can. But I won’t put myself through that kind of situation again.” Fair enough. Mo’Nique let her performance speak for her in 2009, and it didn’t obstruct her path to the Oscar. Can Fassbender do the same? [GQ]

Bruce Handy makes the case for 2013 as the best year for movies since Hollywood’s Golden Age. I liked “We’re the Millers” more than most, but it’s a strange example to pick. [Vanity Fair]

Oscar-nominated screenwriter and playwright Patrick Marber (“Closer,” “Notes on a Scandal”) is polishing the “Fifty Shades of Gray” script. Well, work is work. [Variety]

Oscar-winning film editor Christopher Rouse talks about creating suspense and chaos in “Captain Phillips.” [Hollywood Reporter]

Still on “Captain Phillips,” Eliana Dockterman breaks down what’s fact and what’s fiction in the film. [TIME]

Hugh Jackman sang and performed on stage in Los Angeles at a benefit of the Motion Picture & Television Fund. [LA Times]

With “Frozen” on the way, head Disney animator Lino Disalvo says female characters are more difficult to animate than male ones. Hmmm. [Slate]

Speaking of Disney, with regard to “Escape from Tomorrow,” Matt Singer looks into our ongoing fascination with the dark side of the Mouse House. [The Dissolve]

David Denby calls “12 Years a Slave” “easily the greatest feature film ever made about American slavery.” [New Yorker]

Why over-acting is under-appreciated. [The Guardian]

LONDON – Disenfranchised families, displaced by water, scouring an unaccommodating landscape for some semblance of home — it’s easy to see why the “Beasts of the Southern Wild” references surfaced when “The Rocket,” a bright, appealing debut narrative feature from Australian documentarian Kim Mordaunt, blew up at Berlin and Tribeca earlier this year. As with most such loose-fitting comparisons — useful when trying to articulate enthusiasm for something otherwise unfamiliar-looking — they don’t much describe or favor either film. Set in a post-Katrina South, “Beasts” used tragedy to immerse audiences into a state of positively unearthly social decay; set in a war-scarred Laos, “The Rocket,” predicated on a bureaucratic rather than natural disaster, undercuts its exoticism with recognizable social comedy at every turn. It’s a feel-good film that only momentarily pauses to feel otherwise.  

That’s not a criticism, exactly: there’s something to be said for a film that finds the sunlit positivity in poverty, and appears entirely ingenuous about it. Homes are lost, families are broken, and people die (some rather harshly) in the course of “The Rocket,” but Mordaunt can be surprisingly sanguine about such misfortune; its characters seem to suffer in service of a larger, less tangible spiritual good. Those willing to indulge the film have to accept such practicalities with a hefty side of syrupy fabulism — not for nothing has Australia submitted this as their best bet for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.  

It comes down, as such global stories of hard-won hope so often do, to a single child to lead the light out of the darkness, and 10-year-old Ahlo (Sitthiphon Disamoe, an artless but charismatic discovery) is handed a gruelling symbolic load from the get-go. We meet him womb-fresh, the surviving half of a twin birthing — an involuntary status that immediately puts him on the wrong side of Laotian folklore, which dictates that twins are potential harbingers of misfortune. Ahlo’s mother persuades her own not to kill the newborn, though the burden of proof is on him — at least, according to his cantankerous gran, who blames the family’s every instance of bad luck upon him. (Credit Mordaunt for dodging easy sentimentality in at least one area: played by a scowling, squawking Bunsri Yindi, the old woman is impressively vile.) 

The film’s opening stages certainly give him a lot of blame to carry. The family, together with the entire community, is turfed out of their idyllic rural settlement by the government to make way for a vast dam-building project — promises of new, improved housing are, unsurprisingly, false, as they’re relocated to an already overcrowded shanty ghetto. Ahlo’s mother is unceremoniously killed by a falling canoe in the move; his self-pity is stemmed when he befriends button-cute orphan girl Kia (Loungnam Kaosinam). Kia’s woes, too, have an alleviating factor: she’s the ward (though, in practice, the guardian) of her amiable alcoholic uncle (Thep Phongam, a comic star in his native Thailand), whose vocational passion for James Brown impersonation is little in demand in a community that still wants for electricity.

If you can already sense the cute factor and its close cousin, the quirk factor, figuring heavily into this ostensibly sad story, nothing that follows will much surprise you, as prank-prone Ahlo leads his conjoined new clan out of this informal prison in a quest for their place in the sun. (A figure of speech, of course: luxuriating in the fervid mud-and-mango-tree landscape of rural Laos, Andrew Commis’ gleaming widescreen cinematography appears sun-dappled even in nighttime scenes.) You may not exactly call the whimsical deus ex machina of a local rocket-building contest, with its all-solving prize, but it’s part and parcel of the classical quest narrative Mordaunt unapologetically pursues.

Mordaunt’s background may be in non-fiction — a training evident in the film’s textured social fabric and unshaped performances — but realism is a mode little on his mind here. For every moment where “The Rocket”‘s sweetened lyricism sticks in the throat, there’s another that’s purely, pictorially lovely: a plunging dive to the murky bottom of the existing dam, as Ahlo peruses the forgotten, built-over treasures of his ancestors, or his first vision of a tree-climbing Kia, drawing gaze upward with a floating violet trail of tropical blossom. If there’s something unavoidably pandering about “The Rocket,” at least it’s tempered with a James Brown squeal and the odd earthy environmental detail: this is a fairytale, after all, whose magic ingredient turns out to be — quite literally — bat-shit.

We’ve weighed the contenders and early declarations have been made. The whisper campaigns and casual takedowns have begun with no real (comfortable) frontrunner to emerge for a while yet. But as we look out over this year’s Oscar contending crop, what does it have to say about where and who we are?

It’s interesting that “Gravity” makes it to theaters nearly 50 years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a president who made serious goals and challenged us to dream big. Today, NASA funding is gutted, the space shuttle program has been shuttered and government interest in exploring the cosmos has faded. Commander Chris Hadfield, however (who attended the Toronto Film Festival premiere of “Gravity”), caused a bit of a spike in interest with his Twitter coverage of a recent space station stint. The privatization of space travel is inching toward reality. It’s an interesting crossroads. A movie like this, thrilling as it may be in the genre space, speaks to the wonder of exploration at a crucial time.

“Captain Phillips” speaks to its theme directly early on in the film, and it’s a powerful one, about the rift in opportunity between the first world and the third world. The film’s most intelligent stroke was painting its antagonists with empathy, presenting a very different breed of desperation on another side of the world, and even some difficulty in arguing with it.

J.C. Chandor plays in the abstract with “All is Lost,” allowing a number of interpretations. But he won’t shy away from telling you that the story of a man lost at sea had something to say about financial ruin, much like the direct considerations of his debut, “Margin Call.” But mostly he was concerned with the boomer generation looking back at its collective life and the decisions made that led the country down some unfortunate paths.

I find “The Monuments Men” to be an interesting example. The recent trailer for the film was heavy on the “art is important” message, and that speaks to something. A recent National Arts Index study revealed that government arts funding in the US reached a record low in 2011 and that local government spending on the arts dropped by 21 percent between 2008 and 2011. On a federal level, arts spending made up just .28 percent of the government’s non-military budget (NASA, by the way, was allocated .5 percent). I could keep throwing the stats around and we could have a debate about it, but it’s a little hard to imagine a covert operation to save precious works of art during wartime in this day and age.

Obviously films like “12 Years a Slave” and “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” reflect the African-American experience of our country, the former particularly definitive. Similarly, “Fruitvale Station” landed at an apt time with the Trayvon Martin case going to trial.

Elsewhere, something like “Her” ponders the encroachment of artificial intelligence and the consistent rise of technology in guiding our lives. “Out of the Furnace” has something to say about the effects of war on the blue collar class. “Blue Jasmine” is partially concerned with the collateral damage of the financial crisis and “The Wolf of Wall Street” (assuming it makes it to the party in time) is obviously taking aim at excess in banking.

However, there is one film, to my mind, that speaks most directly to the moment. It’s a film about a health care crisis, about being denied access to proper care due to bureaucracy, about how a lack of empathy keeps the have nots in disrepair. No, I’m not talking about “Elysium” (which computes), I’m talking about Jean-Marc Vallée’s “Dallas Buyers Club,” which deserves a real shot in this race and could find the passion to vault into the Best Picture ranks. It reflects our zeitgeist in the most immediate of ways as we sit and wait for a government to turn the lights back on after a troubled sect could not abide affordable health care for all.

It’s always worth taking stock of this stuff, because art is forever a reflection. What movies have to say about the era into which they are released is always important, particularly when it comes to awards season, because ultimately the Oscar race serves as a time capsule. This looks to be our snapshot of 2013. How will that snapshot look to us in 10 years? In 20? That’s the wonder.

The Contenders section has kinda/sorta been tweaked, but more importantly, you may or may not have heard about our new feature: HitFix Oscar Picks. It gives you a chance to record your own predictions, so if you haven’t read up on the system yet, we urge you to do so here and dive right in!

The story of the weekend, as you may have heard by now, is that Spike Jonze’s “Her” went down a storm at the NYFF this weekend. Critics (including HitFix’s Drew McWeeny) are nuts for the oddball techno-romance. Can all that critical love translate into Academy attention, as it did with Jonze’s first two features? Steve Pond belives so, declaring the film a likely bet for Best Picture and Best Original SCreenplay nominations, though he thinks acting nominations will require some adventurousness from the actors’ branch — particularly if Scarlett Johansson is to be the first actor ever nominated for a voice-only performance. [The Wrap]

Jonze and Takashi Miike are among the directors in Competition at next month’s Rome Film Festival. [Variety]

The Weinstein Company has mistakenly categorized “Fruitvale Station” stars Octavia Spencer and Melonie Diaz as lead actresses on the film’s Academy screeners. [The Race]  

Danny Boyle is the latest A-list filmmaker to turn his hand to television. [The Guardian]

Veteran British director Richard Lester will receive a lifetime achievement award from the LA Film Critics. “A Hard Days’ Night” is the title everyone connects with him first, but go seek out “Petulia.” [LA Times]

With a heavy majority of Best Actress winners this century having played real-life figures, Susan Wloszczyna discusses women and biopics in the Oscar race. [Women and Hollywood]

Steve McQueen, Chiwetel Ejiofor and others discuss the “essentially American narrative” of “12 Years a Slave.” [New York Times]

Fellow genre geeks Quentin Tarantino and Bong Joon-ho shoot the breeze at the Busan Film Festival. [Screen Daily] 

Disney chairman Bob Iger will receive the Milestone Award at the Producers’ Guild Awards in January. [Deadline]

Breathe easy, everyone: Abdellatif Kechiche believes “Blue is the Warmest Color” should be released after all. [The Playlist]

R. Kurt Osenlund on why, early in the season as it is, “Gravity” already has two Oscars — at least — locked down. [House Next Door] 

Still, it wasn’t exactly a celebratory one, and if I felt an odd twinge after walking from this two-hour-plus reconstruction of an unimaginable human ordeal into an evening of amaretto sours and celebrity-spotting — not to mention imagining the unheard exchanges between Tom Hanks, Tom Ford and Labour Party leader Ed Miliband — that was largely to the film’s credit.

“Captain Phillips” isn’t misery porn, and it’s too brisk and orderly to feel like it’s wallowing in the title character’s pain — even with that pain stretched to 134 minutes. But it is a film more about suffering than survival, one content to present both its white middle-class hostage and his have-not captors as differing kinds of victim. Where some of Greengrass’ other fact-based films have pursued a stony detachment from the atrocities under scrutiny, this one boasts a passionless moral conscience: questions of right and wrong are in play here, if not actively addressed. More, perhaps, than in any of his previous work — even the Oscar-winning whiz-bang pyrotechnics of “The Bourne Ultimatum” — Greengrass is luxuriating in the heft of Hollywood studio craft, but his film’s upper lip is resolutely stiff.

In a sense, the ironclad craft of “Captain Phillips” is its narrative: many viewers will already be aware how Richard Phillips’ story turned out, so it’s the mechanics and sensory realities of the situation that hold more intrigue than the outcome. (If any recent film better defines the difference between “tension” and “suspense,” I can’t think of it.) Billy Ray’s script is a thing of terse proficiency, but editor Christopher Rouse and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd — both on their most disciplined, electrified form, with Ackroyd rebounding from the botched aesthetic of last week’s release “Parkland” — play as much of a storytelling role here, vividly defining physical space and perspective, shrinking and modifying both in accordance with the characters’ exact degree of panic.

The film boasts a very good performance by Tom Hanks, and an even better one by newcomer Barkhad Abdi, with the former astonishing in a closing scene that opens the faucet on the professional retention of fear and feeling that Phillips maintains throughout his kidnapping. It’s as emotionally acute a moment as Hanks has ever had on screen, and is destined for Oscar-clip status, even if its climactic catharsis — while hardly in spoiler territory — shouldn’t really be viewed out of context.

Abdi is granted no such moment, which makes the psychological specificity of his hair-trigger invader Muse all the more impressive: a visibly nervous captain with none of Phillips’ patience or practicality, he nonetheless has a go-for-broke desperation — born of nothing-to-lose social circumstance — that somehow wrests him the upper hand for much of the fracas, even as his inevitable defeat looms large. Days later, I’m still wondering if the strength of Abdi’s performance — abetted by those of his three wired, restless Somali co-stars — lets the film off the hook for an element of indecision in its characterization of the pirates: Ray’s script grants them broadly sympathetic motivation, but little personal detail or backstory. Perhaps he and Greengrass were cautious of assuming a patronizing, bleeding-heart tone toward the criminals while also requiring viewers to root for a heroic escape that can only end badly for them.

If “Captain Phillips” finally amounts to no more than the sum of its parts — not exactly a slight when the parts are this considerable — it may be the artifice of its assumed objectivity that’s getting in the way; it’s the rare film that might seem a little more even-handed if it were a little more expressive. (I have similar reservations about Greengrass’ much-revered “United 93,” so obviously mileage will vary on this one too.)

Why, then, was I more moved by 2013’s first thriller to pit the wits of white seafarers against Somali pirates? If anything, Danish director Tobias Lindholm’s far more modestly scaled “A Hijacking” (which I reviewed for Variety at Venice last year) is even more rational and refrigerated than Greengrass’ film, and makes even less of an attempt to humanize the other half of the equation. Yet it felt the more human of the two to me, less concerned with the palpitating, immersive immediacy of the hostage dilemma — which is just as well, since it hasn’t the technical wherewithal to compete with “Phillips” on that front — and more with the fragile politics of negotiation. 

Much of the most compelling action — if that’s the word — in “A Hijacking” is far removed from the scene of the crime, putting the onus on the dry, polite CEO of the affected shipping company to defuse the drama from the comfort of corporate Copenhagen. The audience isn’t even party to the invasion of the ship itself — one of the rhythmical and atmospheric trump cards of “Captain Phillips” — though the film doesn’t want for sweaty-palmed peril once the deed is done. Lindholm (a collaborator on Thomas Vinterberg’s more melodrama-inclined “Submarino” and “The Hunt”) places human life as currency in a drawn-out transaction between the Danes and the Somalis’ most agreeable spokesman — an agonizing matter of months when the initial demand is $15 million, and the initial offer $250,000. That’s not to say human life is secondary or disregarded, however: the film’s own chilliness (and its gut-punch of a third act) seems a comment on the questionable effectiveness of first-world diplomacy.

It should be clear by now that “Captain Phillips” and “A Hijacking,” for all their remarkable, coincidental narrative overlaps, are very different films with very different strengths: I do wonder how much my preference for the latter is dictated by the simple fact that I saw it first, and went into Greengrass’ film at least somewhat primed for its situational shock. Neither film invalidates the necessity of the other, and I imagine they’d be rather productive viewed in close succession. If you haven’t seen “A Hijacking” yet, it rather cannily hits American DVD shelves next week — smart move, Magnolia — so the option of a bracing (if gruelling) double-bill is yours.

Indeed, 2013 is beginning to seem the year of the cinematic twin-pack: pairs of films, premiered or released in relatively swift succession, that are so specifically alike in subject matter as to be mutually interest-enhancing, even in cases where one is emphatically better than the other.

Earlier this year, and in a significant different action register from the Somali-pirate combo, we had “Olympus Has Fallen” and “White House Down,” a delightfully soft-headed brace of Capitol-under-siege films whose subtly different brands of reactionary, in-the-name-of-something vigilantism (and very different ideas of America’s optimal fantasy POTUS) said more about the present political layout than either film intended on its own. (“White House Down” was also one of the best studio movies of the summer, but that’s a conversation for another time.) Just yesterday at the London Film Festival, I saw the second half of what could be a fascinating Israeli-Palestinian standoff in the foreign-language Oscar race: two similarly plotted, similarly furious thrillers — Israel’s “Bethlehem” and Palestine’s “Omar” — about across-the-wall tensions as experienced by turncoat police informants that have much to say individually about the dire futility of that unending territorial conflict, but even more together. (More on “Omar” soon.) 

When I mentioned this odd trend on Twitter yesterday, people were quick to come up with other examples, albeit ones slightly more abstract in their parallels: the teens-gone-wild duo of “The Bling Ring” and “Spring Breakers,” or the solitary survival tales of “Gravity” and “All is Lost” (which could also, in a mordantly prankish way, be mashed up with “Captain Phillips”).

In the past, practical industry thinking has deemed such doubling unfortunate for at least one of the films involved — usually the second, if they’re of an equivalent commercial scale. Remember how Milos Forman made his own “Dangerous Liaisons” (titled “Valmont”) a year after Stephen Frears? Most people don’t. Ditto “Capote” and “Infamous,” “Braveheart” and “Rob Roy” or 1991’s sparrings Robin Hoods (one relegated to TV in the US). This year, “White House Down” felt the commercial brunt of the second-born twin effect, though “Captain Phillips” is hardly in a position to be affected by “A Hijacking.” Still, at a critical level, I’m surprised to find myself intrigued rather than jaded by all this pairing-up — particularly in cases when the filmmakers going head-to-head are as mutually yet contrastingly smart as Paul Greengrass and Tobias Lindholm.

We don’t have to wait until the holiday season for the Oscar movies to start flowing thick and fast — while “Gravity” is still hogging the conversation and burning up the box office, a different kind of white-knuckle survival story land in theaters today. I’ll be writing more about Paul Greengrass’ “Captain Phillips” later today, but having caught up with it earlier this week at the opening night of the London Film Festival, I was pleased to find the awards talk mostly justified. This is technically immaculate filmmaking, smart and tight and clean as can be: I certainly didn’t feel 134 minutes passing. It boasts some of Tom Hanks’ finest work, with a career-topping final scene that should clinch one of several Oscar nominations for the film, though I’ll be rooting for livewire newcomer Barkhad Abdi to crack a nod too.

We’re curious, however, to know what you think: is the hype justified? Is it an Oscar contender? And if you’ve seen the markedly similar Danish film “A Hijacking” from earlier this year, which one came out on top? Tell us in the comments, and be sure to vote in the poll below.  

Mark Harris’ latest Oscar column is, as usual, a good read. The first half of it deals with the already much-discussed Oscar prospects of “Gravity,” but things get really interesting when he turns to the Best Actress race, which is in danger of becoming only the second acting category ever to consist wholly of past Oscar winners. (The first, of course, was last year’s Supporting Actor lineup.) And that, Harris writes, is “deplorable”: “I don’t know what’s most dispiriting, the strong suggestion the Best Actress field lacks a deep bench, the comparative paucity of opportunities for actresses that a non-deep bench implies, or the assumption that Academy voters are disinclined to look beyond people they already know can give a nice speech.” Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. Delpy, Gerwig, Exarchopoulos, Garcia: think outside the box, Academy. [Grantland] 

Why “Gravity” should brace itself for the same backlash that “Avatar” faced. [Movies.com]

Updates on category classifications at the Golden Globes: “Blue Jasmine” will be competing as a drama, “Before Midnight” as a comedy. I guess you can make a case for either as either. [Gold Derby]

Writer-director Dan Mirvish offers 13 screenwriting pointers for successful adaptations. [Filmmaker]

“Blue is the Warmest Color” is unable to play in Idaho’s only art house cinema to an arcane obscenity law. [Hollywood Reporter] 

Quentin Tarantino on why Batman is “not very interesting,” and why “The Lone Ranger” is awesome. No comment on the former, but he’s dead right on the latter. [The Playlist]

Honored at the NYFF earlier this week, Ralph Fiennes reflects on his experience of directing “The Invisible Woman.” [Variety]

Matt Singer on the unsolvable problems that 3D presents, even in films where it looks great. [The Dissolve]

Thinking ahead: why independent-minded filmmakers should capitalize on the tentpole-heavy slate that looms in 2015. [Tribeca Film]

And looking back: Richard Corliss pays tribute to the influential, invaluable film critic Stanley Kauffmann, who passed away this week aged 97. [TIME]

George Clooney’s “The Monuments Men” will be among the last of the season’s potential Oscar candidates to reveal itself — skipping the festival circuit, the film will open in the US on the prime holiday-season date of December 18. And while we have little else to go on right now, the project certainly doesn’t lack for kerb appeal: a high-gloss Second World War adventure with an all-star cast including Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Hugh Bonneville and Bob Balaban.

Clooney, it seems, can do no wrong with Oscar voters at the moment: at eight-time nominee across six categories, he nabbed his second Oscar in February as the producer of Best Picture champ “Argo,” joining the likes of Michael Douglas and Emma Thompson on the elite list of actors to have won for their work before and behind the camera. And his last directorial effort, “The Ides of March,” earned him a writing nomination despite wilting elsewhere in the race: They like him, in case the point had escaped you.

Still, the marketers behind “The Monuments Men” aren’t merely counting on Clooney Power to sell the film as a major contender. This second trailer for the true-life tale of wartime derring-do, centered on a specialist military crew of art experts who team up to rescue an array of stolen classic works from the clutches of the Nazis, goes all in on the virtuous “art is important” message — one that’ll surely resonate with Academy types. (Hey, they’ve gone three years without a WWII film in the Best Picture mix. How long can they hold out?)

Where the film’s first trailer, unveiled in August, underlined the film’s more comic aspects — lending it the appearance of “Ocean’s Eleven” in jackboots — the new one is heavy on the stirring drama and ennobling music. I thought the first one was rather more fun, but they clearly mean serious business. Will the film deliver on its promise? Check out the trailer below and tell us what you think. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izTbur3YYiY?rel=0&w=640&h=360]

In a film such as Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity,” which takes place in orbit and embraces the reality that “in space, no one can hear you scream” — or anything else, for that matter —  music was always going to have an expanded role in the experience. The director was very determined from the outset that, like so many other elements in the film, the score would need to serve the immersive ends he was aiming toward. It was always going to be sort of moving around the audience in the theater, making you feel as though you were part of the action taking place on screen.

That directive naturally ended up influencing the way composer Steven Price, who initially came onto the film just as a music editor, wrote the pieces that became the score, as well as how they were recorded and, eventually, how they were mixed (particularly via the immersive Dolby Atmos technology, which added a whole new level to the experience of the film).

The word “textural” was something that came in very early when it came to actually writing the music. Cuarón didn’t want it to ever feel like a conventional Hollywood movie score and he didn’t want it to feel beholden to action genre tropes. Like so many things in the development of the film, the score was an adventure, a chance to try new things and risk failing.

So a lot of the early conversation revolved just around sounds that Price and Cuarón liked, without the structure of considering tunes and melody and percussion. They talked about ways to make the soundtrack as intense as what was happening visually on the screen, and indeed, the idea of juggling two extremes was a concern from the beginning.

“The visuals are incredibly beautiful, but equally, it’s the most terrifying thing you’ve ever seen in lots of ways,” Price says. “So the music had to do both of those things and feel kind of very organic and very textural, but equally kind of help your stomach to drop when things were spinning around you.”

There was never a point in the process where there was a typical temp track — an amalgamation of other score cues to help dictate the aural tone of the film as post-production progressed. That tone was consistently directed by work-in-progress bits of Price’s work. And yet with all the unique elements at play in the score throughout, the music really goes for it in the end, embracing the emotional journey of the lead character and allowing that sort of overt release on the soundtrack.

“I think it was felt that Ryan [Bullock’s character] kind of merited it,” Price says. “It always felt like you had to go with the achievement and go with her strength and the fact that she achieved so much since the first reel, from being nervous and feeling sick just doing her job up in space, to all the things that she goes through. A lot of the film is about her strength, I think, and I certainly didn’t want to underplay that; it felt like you had to honor the achievement.”

There were a number of things discussed from the early stages that Cuarón didn’t want implemented in the score. For instance, “no percussion” was a directive, largely because, again, he didn’t want it to feel like a typical Hollywood action score. A lot of processing would happen to recorded elements as well, giving the tracks the electronic sheen they have now.

“I would do like a string octet,” Price says, “but then we would use them as an effect, almost in reverse, using the texture of the strings rather than using kind of traditional playing. I remember there was one session where it was a bigger orchestral session and one of the execs was there and they said a nice thing about how it was playing. And I kind of looked at a couple of people I was working with like, ‘Oh, God, I hope they still like it when we’ve trashed it!'”

That experimental spirit could even be traced to the handful of records Price and Cuarón listened to while thinking through the score, whether it was Canadian rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor or composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Atmos, though, was the real launching off point for taking the score to another level. “There’s a lot of stuff recorded very separately so it could be placed in different speakers,” Price says. “And we were always kind of thinking where the camera was and where the character was. There are action scenes in the film where the notes will follow with the character sort of like within the theater, so you’ve got them moving on screen but the music will move one direction or another direction and they might meet or overlap and that sort of stuff.”

The entirety of the score was conceived to do that, to almost serve as effects. And a lot of options had to be left open in order to tweak the mix in the final development of the aural components of the film. They were still tweaking, in fact, just before the film’s Venice Film Festival world premiere in August.

It was a bit of a challenge, Price says, to get his head around this vision of sound and score on a feature film, even for someone with a background in music editing. He would become endlessly confused with where various elements would be incorporated. But the process was nevertheless immense fun. And creatively, it was quite invigorating. With Atmos, Price and other members of the team could go back to the 7.1 mix and extract a whole array of other elements in order to be more precise with their placement. It allowed for a whole other pass on the mix to make it all the more immersive.

“I hope Dolby Atmos catches on because that seems to be a good system,” Price says. “It means that all the speakers all around you are kind of full bandwidth, so you can really hear everything move and then get a sense of it really shifting…like when you have POV shots where you’re within the helmet and that sort of stuff. A lot of the things that you kind of get nearly there in 7.1, you can get exactly as you intended in Atmos.

“And I think wherever you sit in the theater, you’ll get a slightly different experience, as well, which is an interesting development. You’re actually embracing the fact that it’s an experience again, that it’s something you can only get in a big room with a lot of other people, which I think is great…You just kind of hope that the theater has got all the working speakers, you know?”

“Gravity” is now playing at a theater near you. See it Atmos and hear for yourself.

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4912076525001

Let’s be frank.  Daniel Radcliffe made enough money starring in eight “Harry Potter” films to never have to work a day in his life gain.  And, even at 25, that’s an intriguing proposition.  Instead, like his co-star Emma Watson, Radcliffe has been working his butt off.

Radcliffe has had three independent films debut over the past year and a half including “Horns” (which Radius-TWC will distribute next year, the romantic comedy “The F Word” (that CBS Films will release in 2014) and Sundance favorite “Kill Your Darlings” which ends a long and winding global festival tour by opening in limited release next week.  He’s also completed two seasons of the TV series “A Young Doctor’s Notebook” alongside Jon Hamm and will soon begin shooting “Frankenstein” playing the doctor’s faithful assistant Igor.

I’d been able to chat with Radcliffe for an in-depth conversation in Toronto, but this time was for the cameras, er, camera and time was short. The one thing that’s been clear from Radcliffe’s appearances since “Darling’s” Park City debut is how enthusiastic he is about his post-“Potter” career and I asked him about that right off the bat.

“It’s been really busy and everyone keeps saying ‘Why aren’t you resting?’ because I don’t enjoy it,” Radcliffe says. “I have some time off. I slob out on weekends, but the fact that last year I was able to do ‘Kill Your Darlings,’ shoot ‘Young Doctor’s Notebook’ and then do ‘The F Word’ and ‘Horns’ back to back. And then this year do a play and then the second series of that show and now come out here and talk about all this? It’s been an amazing 18 months. I am, as you say, ‘having the time of your life.'”

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

To read my review of “Kill Your Darlings” from Sundance, click here. To watch my interview with Radcliffe check out the embedded video at the top of this post.

“Kill Your Darlings” opens in New York and Los Angeles on Wed., Oct. 16.
 

The Academy has announced this year’s field of contending documentary short subject films for the 86th annual Academy Awards. The crop has been trimmed down to eight, from which five nominees will be chosen.

Voters from the Academy’s documentary branch viewed the 40 eligible entries and submitted their ballots for tabulation. Last year’s winner in the category was Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine’s “Inocente.” Previous winners have included “Saving Face” in 2011, “Strangers No More” in 2010 and “Music by Prudence” in 2009. (I always over-think it and get the category wrong. Sigh.)

The eight remaining 2013 titles are listed below in alphabetical order. Which five do you think will make the cut?

“CaveDigger,” Karoffilms
“Facing Fear,” Jason Cohen Productions, LLC
“Jujitsu-ing Reality,” Sobini Films
“Karama Has No Walls,” Hot Spot Films
“The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life,” Reed Entertainment
“Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall,” Prison Terminal LLC
“Recollections,” notrac productions
“SLOMO,” Big Young Films and Runaway Films

“Lights. Camera. Action.” This phrase is admittedly somewhat of a cliché, but it is iconic because it captures the feel of making a movie. Interesting that two of the three commands are directed to a film”s camera department. Without a camera, there is no cinema. Cinematography is essential, and when done well, from lighting to camera placement and movement to capturing the mood, there is no purer way to bring the director”s vision to screen.

Cinematography is awarded by every major critics” group, and has, by the standards of the crafts categories, a reasonable degree of public acknowledgment. The Academy”s cinematographers” branch cites five talented directors of photography (DPs) every year before the whole Academy gets to vote on the winner.

“Pretty films” and films of some visual scope, often with luscious and memorable landscapes, tend to do quite well here. Black-and-white titles do disproportionately well in landing nominations, but have difficulty winning. In recent years, there has also been an embrace of digital photography and 3D work. And it shouldn’t be surprising that Best Picture nominees also make up a good chunk of the nominees every year.

The branch is reasonably open to newbies; there are, after all, only two working cinematographers with more than five career nominations. Last year was actually the first time that there were no first-time nominees since 1978! That said, there are many DPs with between two and five career nominations and veterans tend to make up the better part of the branch”s nominees most years.

Emmanuel Lubezki has been robbed of wins in the eyes of some observers for his last two nominations, “The Tree of Life” and “Children of Men.” He has also been nominated for “A Little Princess,” “Sleepy Hollow” and “The New World.” Four of those nominations came from collaborating with two directors: Terrence Malick and Alfonso Cuarón. Malick”s “To the Wonder” already seems forgotten so it”s likely safe to say that Cuarón’s “Gravity” is Lubezki’s ticket to the big show this year. Despite the heavy use of non-traditional photography methods, the absolutely breathtaking nature of the work, as well as the trend in recent winners, makes one wonder if Lubezki will finally get his due this year.

Lubezki is not the only contender with two films in the running (one of them starring George Clooney). Phedon Papamichael has been doing quality work on Oscar contenders for years (“Sideways,” “Walk the Line,” “3:10 to Yuma”). His best chance this year is likely Clooney”s “The Monuments Men.” This category loves a war film and Papamichael will have the chance to show a unique perspective of the World War II battlefield in the film. However, Papamichael also has Alexander Payne’s “Nebraska,” and as noted above, black-and-white films draw the eye of this branch. Landscapes of Americana can”t hurt either. While it”s clear what Lubezki”s major horse is this year, it”s more uncertain with Papamichael. I”m inclined to lean towards “The Monuments Men,” though we”ll have to wait and see.

Perhaps the safer bet for a first time nomination is Sean Bobbitt for “12 Years a Slave.” Steve McQueen”s latest is a crafts category behemoth. Bobbitt has lensed a variety of memorable interiors and exteriors in the American South – the use of lighting and landscape is just what this category tends to embrace. With the massive nomination haul I”m expecting for this film, I”d be quite surprised if it didn’t show up here.

Frank G. DeMarco”s work on J.C. Chandor”s “All is Lost” looks set for great acclaim. I waiver in my mind about the extent to which this film will catch on with the Academy, but if gets major traction outside its lead performance, I”d expect to see this among the first potential categories – it is, after all, a film whose crafts will be key to its success, given that it only has one performance and almost no dialogue (and thus is about as far away from Chandor”s wordy ensemble debut as one could imagine).

Bruno Delbonnel has managed nominations for “Amélie,” “A Very Long Engagement” and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” Each of these films had a great look and the fact that he”s earned the nominations demonstrates branch respect, because these were very singular nominations for films that weren’t embraced throughout the Academy. This year, Delbonnel has lensed the Coen brothers” acclaimed “Inside Llewyn Davis.” Given the popularity of this film, Delbonnel”s history and the acclaimed look of the film, I”d say he has an excellent shot at a nod.

The Coens’ typical DP of choice is Roger Deakins, and he would likely have shot “Inside Llewlyn Davis” were it not being filmed at the same time as last year’s “Skyfall.” This year he has Denis Villeneuve”s “Prisoners.” Deakins’ photography captured the mood exquisitely in this film – the lighting and use of windshields and rain show that he never misses an opportunity to make images pop, but not distractingly. The film”s somewhat surprising box office success, as well as its respected status with critics, mean that Deakins must be considered a threat.

An additional late September release with a very memorable look (albeit glossy rather than dark) would be Ron Howard”s “Rush,” lensed by Anthony Dod Mantle (winner for “Slumdog Millionaire,” which also remains his only Oscar nomination to date). Capturing these car races was no easy task, and the look of the film as a whole is sleek, memorable and professional. But will lackluster box office ultimately hurt it here? It”s hard to say but it can”t help.

Another film without “look at me” cinematography per se but with a tremendously memorable look would be Paul Greengrass”s “Captain Phillips.” Barry Ackroyd”s neo-realistic photography was finally recognized by the Academy with a nod for “The Hurt Locker.” I fully expect “Captain Phillips” to grab a good handful of Oscar nominations. Ackroyd, whose handheld camera captured the tension on the sea, has a good shot at being one of them.

Ackroyd is not the only DP in the hunt for nod #2 with a Tom Hanks movie. Also in that boat would be John Schwatzman, a former nominee for “Seabiscuit.” It is unclear how well “Saving Mr. Banks” will be received, though Hollywood treating itself usually goes over well. But live action Disney movies? Hit-and-miss (usually miss) with Oscar. Also, it isn’t clear if the cinematography will be the highlight. But if it does hit it off big, it”ll have to be considered a contender down the line in the crafts categories.

Another title in the “to be seen” category is David O. Russell”s “American Hustle.” Will this continue the director’s amazing run from recent years? If it does, Linus Sandgren”s retro photography could score big. But then again, Russell”s recent contenders haven”t really been a factor in this category.

There must be some reason that “The Book Thief” was brought forward to 2013. It”s a cliché but films about the Holocaust do tend to find favor with the Academy. In the midst of so many contenders with higher profile actors, writers, directors and crew, I cannot help but wonder if this one will get lost in the shuffle. But if not, then Florian Ballhaus” camerawork could find itself in contention. Ballhaus” father is three-time nominee Michael Ballhaus.

Finally, I don”t want to entirely rule out Simon Duggan”s lensing of Baz Lurhmann”s “The Great Gatsby.” Lurhmann”s film was typical of the director: divisive but absolutely gorgeous. I think it will likely survive in the production design and costume design categories, and maybe it”s just a hunch, but I don”t want to rule it out here yet either.

I suspect the nominees will come from these 14 contenders. But I could have missed something. Do you think I did? And who do you see making the cut here? Who are you rooting for? Tell us in the comments section and pick and rank your personal predictions with our new HitFix Oscar Picks feature.

Still, the show must go on, and the film’s profile just received a bit of a boost with the news that it’s been selected as this year’s annual Royal Film Performance — an annual charity fundraiser screening attended by the Royal Family that has been a fixture on the British industry calendar since 1946. The Performance takes place on December 5 in (where else?) London’s Leicester Square — one week after its US release, though nearly a month before it bows in the UK.

“We are thrilled to be able to host the Royal Premiere of this momentous South African/British co-production,” said Barry Jenkins, president of the event’s benefiting charity, the Cinema and Television Benevolent Fund.

The selection of “Mandela” for the occasion is an unsurprising one — fun as it would have been to make the Royals squirm through “Diana,” had it only not been released so early. Films selected for the occasion are generally required to be conservative, reasonably wholesome and not overly high-minded, often (though not always) with a British element. This is not the moment to test the Windsors’ boundaries with “Under the Skin,” in other words.

As a noble, nutritious prestige film with a beloved local star in the lead — and taking into account the Royal Family’s personal acquaintance with its subject — “Mandela” fits the bill neatly enough, regardless of its aesthetic merits.

The Royal Film Performance has something of a mixed record: for every enduring classic that has taken the slot (inaugural selection “A Matter of Life and Death,” “West Side Story,” “Titanic”), there’s another title that’s rightly gathering dust (“White Nights,” “True Blue,” “Ladies in Lavender”). Recently, they’ve been especially hit-and-miss: “Hugo” and “Casino Royale” were well-regarded picks, “The Lovely Bones” and “The Other Boleyn Girl,” not so much. (Last year’s selection was “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”; I guess simply following up with “The Desolation of Smaug” would have been too easy.)

With that in mind, something tells me “Mandela” won’t be among the more affectionately remembered selections, but for now, it’s a nice feather in the film’s cap — and a handy photo opportunity for Elba as he tries to claw back some ground in the crowded Best Actor race. If nothing else, at least he gets to shake hands with the Queen.

Some striking new character posters from “Nymphomaniac.” Click through only if you’re prepared for Udo Kier to haunt your dreams. [Screen Daily] 

Nicole Kidman was honored at Variety’s Power of Women Awards for her humanitarian work with UN Women. Read her impassioned acceptance speech here. [Women and Hollywood] 

Scott Feinberg handicaps the foreign-language race, and says “The Past” is the film to beat. Can’t say I agree there. [The Race]

Darren Aronofsky claims that “Noah” boasts the most complex visual effects work in Industrial Light & Magic’s history. [/Film]

Steven Zeitchik wonders whether “12 Years a Slave” deserves a “hard to watch” reputation. [LA Times]

Mike D’Angelo revisits the Best Actor race of 1939, widely considered Hollywood’s miracle year. Do the performances hold up? [The Dissolve]

It”s safe to say that reviews for Bill Condon”s WikiLeaks thriller “The Fifth Estate” were not quite what DreamWorks was hoping for when it opened the Toronto Film Festival last month. It was no embarrassment, and a number of critics had kind words for Benedict Cumberbatch”s performance as Julian Assange, but the middling response meant any opening-night buzz was swiftly subsumed by the prestige films that followed. (In contrast, “Gravity” opened Venice and was still a talking point by the festival”s close.)

With the film out in the UK tomorrow, and in the US next week, it needed a publicity lifeline to get back onto the radar – and one was kindly provided yesterday by none other than Julian Assange himself.

Well, not that kindly – since the flaxen-haired enigma evidently isn”t too keen on the film. Or, at least, the idea of it. In a personal letter to Cumberbatch sent back in January, the WikiLeaks founder expresses his admiration for the actor — somewhat unnervingly stating that “our paths will forever be entwined” — before venting that he “does not believe that this film is a good film,” and that it is adapted from “a deceitful book by someone who has a vendetta against me and my organisation.” In conclusion, he turns down Cumberbatch’s prior request for a meeting.

That all seems fair enough, even if the wording of the rather long letter is more than a little unsettling. It’s an occupational hazard of making biopics about living, active figures that they often won’t be delighted by the prospect.

It’s amusing, however, that WikiLeaks elected to publish this latter now, just as the film is about to be released — when even publicity that’s this unsupportive of the film can only stoke public interest in it. Is Assange oblivious to the irony? Or does he surreptitiously want to draw people’s attention to a film that, for better or worse, is devoted entirely to him? The man knows how to keep us guessing.

I could quote further eccentric highlights of the letter, but you’re better off reading the whole thing on the next page. (Yes, I’m sharing the whole letter: it’s the WikiLeaks way, after all.)

Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2013

From: Julian Assange 

To: Benedict Cumberbatch

Subject: Message from Assange



Dear Benedict,



Thank you for trying to contact me. It is the first approach by anyone from the Dreamworks production to me or WikiLeaks.



My assistants communicated your request to me, and I have given it a lot of thought and examined your previous work, which I am fond of.



I think I would enjoy meeting you.



The bond that develops between an actor and a living subject is significant.



If the film reaches distribution we will forever be correlated in the public imagination. Our paths will be forever entwined. Each of us will be granted standing to comment on the other for many years to come and others will compare our characters and trajectories.



But I must speak directly.



I hope that you will take such directness as a mark of respect, and not as an unkindness.



I believe you are a good person, but I do not believe that this film is a good film.



I do not believe it is going to be positive for me or the people I care about.



I believe that it is going to be overwhelmingly negative for me and the people I care about.



It is based on a deceitful book by someone who has a vendetta against me and my organisation.



In other circumstances this vendetta may have gone away, but our conflict with the United States government and the establishment press has created a patronage and commissioning market – powerful, if unpopular – for works and comments that are harmful to us.



There are dozens of positive books about WikiLeaks, but Dreamworks decided to base its script only on the most toxic. So toxic is the first book selected by Dreamworks that it is distributed to US military bases as a mechanism to discourage military personnel from communicating with us. Its author is publicly known to be involved in the Dreamworks production in an ongoing capacity.



Dreamworks’ second rights purchase is the next most toxic, biased book. Published and written by people we have had a bitter contractual dispute with for years, whose hostility is well known. Neither of these two books were the first to be published and there are many independent authors who have written positive or neutral books, all of whom Dreamworks ignored.



Dreamworks has based its entire production on the two most discredited books on the market.



I know the film intends to depict me and my work in a negative light.



I believe it will distort events and subtract from public understanding.



It does not seek to simplify, clarify or distil the truth, but rather it seeks to bury it.



It will resurrect and amplify defamatory stories which were long ago shown

to be false.



—



My organisation and I are the targets of political adversary from the United States government and its closest allies.



The United States government has engaged almost every instrument of its justice and intelligence system to pursue-in its own words-a ‘whole of government” investigation of ‘unprecedented scale and nature” into WikiLeaks under draconian espionage laws. Our alleged sources are facing their entire lives in the US prison system. Two are already in it. Another one is detained in Sweden.



Feature films are the most powerful and insidious shapers of public perception, because they fly under the radar of conscious exclusion.



This film is going to bury good people doing good work, at exactly the time that the state is coming down on their heads.



It is going to smother the truthful version of events, at a time when the truth is most in demand.



As justification it will claim to be fiction, but it is not fiction. It is distorted truth about living people doing battle with titanic opponents.  It is a work of political opportunism, influence, revenge and, above all, cowardice.



It seeks to ride on the back of our work, our reputation and our struggles.



It seeks to cut our strength with weakness. To cut affection with exploitation. To cut diligence with paranoia. To cut loyalty with naivety.  To cut principle with hypocrisy. And above all, to cut the truth with lies.



The film’s many distortions buttress what the prosecution will argue. Has argued. Is arguing. In my case, and in that of others. These cases will continue for years.



The studio that is producing the film is not a vulnerable or weak party.



Dreamworks’ free speech rights are not in jeopardy – ours are.



Dreamworks is an extremely wealthy organisation, with ties to powerful interests in the US government.



I must therefore question the choices and motives behind it: the opportunism, fears and mundanity; the unwritten rules of film financing and distribution in the United States; the cringe against doing something useful and brave.



I believe that you are a decent person, who would not naturally wish to harm good people in dire situations.



—



You will be used, as a hired gun, to assume the appearance of the truth in order to assassinate it. To present me as someone morally compromised and to place me in a falsified history. To create a work, not of fiction, but of debased truth.



Not because you want to, of course you don’t, but because, in the end, you are a jobbing actor who gets paid to follow the script, no matter how debauched.



Your skills play into the hands of people who are out to remove me and WikiLeaks from the world.  



I believe that you should reconsider your involvement in this enterprise.



Consider the consequences of your cooperation with a project that vilifies and marginalises a living political refugee to the benefit of an entrenched, corrupt and dangerous state.



Consider the consequences to people who may fall into harm because of this film.



Many will fight against history being blackwashed in this way. It is a collective history now, involving millions of people, because millions have opened their eyes as a result of our work and the attempts to destroy us.



I believe you are well intentioned but surely you can see why it is a bad idea for me to meet with you.



By meeting with you, I would validate this wretched film, and endorse the talented, but debauched, performance that the script will force you to give.



I cannot permit this film any claim to authenticity or truthfulness. In its current form it has neither, and doing so would only further aid the campaign against me.



It is contrary to my interests, and to those of my organisation, and I thank you for your offer, and what I am sure is your genuine intent, but I must, with inexpressible regret, turn it down.



Julian Assange