With the general consensus that this year’s Best Animated Feature Oscar race is a little on the lean side, we’ll be hoping for a better crop next year. That may well be the case, but it’ll have to happen without any help from category stalwarts Pixar. It appears that the blockbuster merchants have bumped their planned summer 2014 feature, “The Good Dinosaur,” forward a full 18 months — it’ll now open on November 25, 2015. That was the date formerly occupied by “Finding Nemo” sequel “Finding Dory,” for which you’ll now have to wait until June 2016. All that will make 2014 the first year since 2005 with no new Pixar feature. Hard news for fans, particularly those of us who didn’t think “Brave” or “Monsters University” were in the studio’s top tier. Here’s hoping they come back firing on all cylinders. [Variety] 

WikiLeaks has released the script for “The Fifth Estate,” accompanied by a 4000-word memo branding the film “harmful.” [Screen Daily]

Excellent piece by Lisa Schwarzbaum on “Blue Jasmine,” and the recognizable fear it taps into. [New York Times]

The Dissolve team weighs up the pros and cons of this year’s many “based on a true story” titles, from “The Butler” to “The Conjuring.” [The Dissolve] 

In the wake of “Salinger,” the Weinsteins are now planning a narrative feature based on the enigmatic author’s life. He’d be thrilled. [The Playlist]

Naomi Watts talks “Diana,” and why the princess needed to “heal herself.” I’m a fan of Watts, but her publicity on this one has been… odd. [Guardian]

Following his Oscar-hosting stint and his new sitcom “Dads,” Steven Zeitchik perceives a backlash against Seth MacFarlane. [LA Times]

On the possibility that “August: Osage County” will have its ending changed. [Hollywood]

Bryan Cranston, gunning for another Emmy win this weekend, is set to star in a biopic of blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. [Cinema Blend]

It had to happen: a website that reviews movie reviews. [Existimatum]

If it’s Fall movie season that means a number of festival favorites from earlier in the year are finally making their way to theaters.  One of those highlights is John Krokidas’ “Kill Your Darlings” which received positive reviews out of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival before popping up again at Venice and Toronto over the past month.

The film is something of the first of three breakout roles for Daniel Radcliffe [read my in-depth interview with the “Harry Potter” star here], but also reminds us of the great talents of Dane DeHaan and Michael C. Hall.  The trio form something of an unexpected love triangle as “Darlings” chronicles the long forgotten murder that shadowed a young Allen Ginsberg (Radcliffe).  It’s a fantastic debut for Krokidas and a peak at what we can expect down the road from the talented Radcliffe and DeHaan.

Sony Classics has been kind enough to provide us with some exclusive images from “Kill Your Darlings” which you can view embedded in the story gallery below.

“Kill Your Darlings” opens in limited release on Oct. 16.

It’s been a pretty good year for veteran re-recording mixer Andy Nelson. First, he scooped a pair of Oscar nominations for “Lincoln” and “Les Miserables.” Then, he won the Oscar itself — the second of his career — for the latter. Springtime brought us a high-profile showcase for his work in the form of “Star Trek Into Darkness.” And now his professional guild, the Cinema Audio Society, has announced that he will receive their Career Achievement Award at their awards ceremony next year.

This comes months after the CAS also handed him their Best Sound Mixing award for “Les Mis,” plus a nomination for “Lincoln” and a third mention, in their animated category, for his work on “Rise of the Guardians.”

Nelson began his career in London in the 1970s, first at a regional documentary company, with subsequent stints at the BBC film department and Shepperton Studios, among others. The 1980s brough collaborations with such directors as Stanley Kubrick (“Full Metal Jacket”), David Cronenberg (“Dead Ringers”) and Ken Russell (“Gothic”), before Hollywood beckoned toward the end of the decade. Since 1999, he has been busily ensconced at Fox Studios, where he serves as their Senior VP of Sound Operations.

The range and success of Nelson’s achievements can be amply demonstrated simply by listing his 18 Oscar nominations: “Gorillas in the Mist,” “Schindler’s List,” “Braveheart,” “Evita,” “L.A. Confidential,” “Saving Private Ryan” (for which he won his first Oscar), “The Thin Red Line,” “The Insider,” “Moulin Rouge!,” “Seabiscuit,” “The Last Samurai,” “War of the Worlds,” “Blood Diamond,” “Avatar,” “Star Trek,” “War Horse” and, of course, that aforementioned pair of 2012 Best Picture nominees.

He has the same amount of nominations from the CAS, which has singled him out for such films as “Super 8,” “Catch Me If You Can,” “Shrek” and “The X-Files.” All of which still amounts to a mere fraction of his 140-plus feature film credits. “Heat.” “The Commitments.” “Face/Off.” You get the idea. He’s one of the best.

CAS president David E. Fluhr says, “I am thrilled to announce Andy Nelson as this year’s Cinema Audio Society Career Achievement honoree. Andy is a long time colleague, and I have had the pleasure of watching Andy skyrocket to the top of our craft over these last few years. Andy”s easygoing demeanor, natural mixing and storytelling talents, along with his ability to guide large productions with ease and confidence, have led the CAS Board of Directors to bestow this honor. We are looking forward to an exciting evening on February 22, 2014, as the CAS celebrates our 50th year.”

Previous winners of the Career Achievement Award include Walter Murch, Robert Altman and the recently departed Ray Dolby.

Another day, another nibble from an interview with Alfonso Cuarón leading up to a larger piece dealing specifically with his work on the space spectacle “Gravity.” Yesterday it was a quick take on his buddy Guillermo Del Toro’s “Pacific Rim.” Today, given the scale and high level of difficulty of a film like “Gravity,” I found myself curious about the lessons Cuarón learned on 1998’s “Great Expectations” and how they might have shaped the filmmaker he’s become.

The modern-day adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic novel was a very troubled production for the director, one he has called a “bitter lesson” in the past. Script issues in particular wreaked havoc as the film clumsily took shape, producer Art Linson bringing on an uncredited David Mamet to write voiceover to counterbalance Cuarón’s hyper-stylized take on the material. But regardless of it all, I’ve always found the film to be a touching vision of my favorite book. And Cuarón, for all his disenchantment with the experience, doesn’t want to take that away from anyone.

“I’m the worst judge of my films,” he says. “I don’t want to trash anything. What I’m certain of is that Chivo’s cinematography is stunning, but maybe it was a bit over the top the way we were doing stuff, you know? We were a bit too precious, lighting too much, maybe, over-stylizing some things. But also it has these amazing paintings by Francesco Clemente. I mean, that’s worth the ticket.”

Cuarón says he has never learned so much from an experience in his entire life. “Probably everything is projected in the material, but I guess that I entered filmmaking with the innocent naiveté of Pip,” he says of the story’s protagonist (who became “Finn” in the film). “When I did ‘Great Expectations,’ I was a Pip who got arrogant and corrupted by a fake idea of success. And I came out the other side with the maturity to move on, hoping that I would move on from my mistakes. In other words, one of the things that I’m grateful of with ‘Great Expectations’ is that I learned what never to do again. It was not a happy experience.”

When Cuarón finishes a film, he says he watches it with an audience once and then he never watches it again. “For me, the aftertaste, a lot of it is the experience of making the film and my impressions,” he says. “So let me put it this way: ‘Great Expectations’ is probably not my favorite.”

It was all part of a collective build to the filmmaker he is today, however. So if it took the lessons learned on “Great Expectations” to yield the discipline that gives us “Gravity,” then it’s all for the better. And, again, I’m a big fan of what he accomplished on “Great Expectations,” however harrowing the experience must have been for the artist.

“Gravity” opens nationwide in 3D and in IMAX on Oct. 4.

It hasn’t been the best professional year for Pedro Almodóvar, with his sex comedy “I’m So Excited!” having opened to some of the chilliest reviews of his career, bypassing the festival circuit in the process. (Unsurprisingly, Spain will not be putting it forward for Oscar consideration.) But here’s a silver lining: he’ll receive the European Achievement in World Cinema Award at this year’s European Film Awards in December. (“I’m So Excited!” is also eligible for those, though this award suggests they’re not anticipating any big wins there.) “I am very thankful for this award,” says the director. “From its creation, the European Film Academy has been very generous with me and my closest collaborators… I share with them the joy of this award.” Almodóvar has five previous EFA wins to his credit, most recently for “Volver” in 2006. [EFA]  

Veteran Oscar-winning screenwriter Robert Towne (“Chinatown”) has joined the writing staff of “Mad Men” for the show’s final season. [Variety]

Alex von Tunzelmann weighs up the historical accuracy of Ron Howard’s “Rush”: seems the bitter rivalry between its two protagonists was actually quite friendly. [The Guardian]

On the long road to getting Nelson Mandela’s full life story in a feature film. [LA Times]

The Academy’s planned Museum of Motion Pictures has received a $20 million donation from the Chinese owners of AMC. [Screen Daily]

Tim Robey counts down the 10 most inadvertently hilarious moments in “Diana.” [The Telegraph]

Gregg Kilday wonders if the excess of awards hopefuls at Toronto this year led some too peak too early. (If they peaked at all?) [Hollywood Reporter]

Screenwriters Billy Ray (“The Hunger Games”) and David Goyer (“The Dark Knight”) were among those re-elected to the Writers’ Guild of America board. [Variety] 

Why Hollywood needs more information on box office performance outside the theatrical realm. [New York Times]

Joey Magidson wonders if a lighter film might charm the Academy in the midst of such solemn contenders as “12 Years a Slave” and “Captain Phillips.” [Scott Feinberg]

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4912087583001

It can’t be easy being the third choice for a coveted role, but after viewing “Gravity” it will be hard to imagine anyone besides Sandra Bullock playing Dr. Ryan Stone in Alfonso Cuarón’s groundbreaking new film.

Originally, Angelina Jolie was attached to the film when it was set up at Universal Pictures and for some time Natalie Portman was the leading candidate to replace her when it went to Warner Bros. Eventually, Bullock, coming off an Oscar win for “The Blind Side,” became the unexpected choice. Four months from now, you’ll hear her name among the best actress nominees for the 86th Academy Awards. And, barring a last minute surprise from “American Hustle’s” Amy Adams or “Saving Mr. Banks'” Emma Thompson, it will likely come down to Bullock and “Blue Jasmine’s” Cate Blanchett for the win. Yes, America’s former sweetheart is that good, that triumphant in Cuarón’s immersive drama.

“Gravity” finds Bullock playing a first-time NASA astronaut who gets caught unprotected in space after a massive debris field destroys the ship.  She then endures a dangerous journey from one space station to another in an attempt to land safely back on Earth. George Clooney co-stars as the more experienced astronaut Matt Kowalsky, but a majority of the screen time is just Bullock and the stars. And, frankly, that would terrify any actor. Speaking to HitFix earlier this week [in an interview you can view at the top of this post], Bullock admits if the acclaimed filmmaker of “Y Tu Mama Tambien” and “Children of Men” wasn’t behind it all she might have turned the role down.

“Because of Alfonso and his work before I don’t think there is anyone else I think I would have had the balls to step in and do it with because my desire to work with him was so strong,” Bullock says. “And after meeting him as a human being I went, ‘I can’t believe this person I sort of idolized turned out to be an extraordinary human being. Usually you’re disappointed. We let people down a lot. [Laughs.]” 

Bullock continues nothing Cuarón, “exceeded who he was as an artist to me. If this person can feel what he feels about life and have these point of views and tell this emotional story…I know it scares the crap out of me to do the rest of it, but if I thought about it too long I probably would have said no.  I said, ‘Make my child happy while I’m there. He has to be there with me, I can’t be there without him. If you can create that atmosphere there then I’ll show up and make it.'”

Cuarón’s film is a mixture of visual effects and practical effects, but the film contains much less CG then you’d expect. One fantastic sequence finds Ryan (Bullock) floating through a space station as the camera follows her from one module to another.  At first glance you think it must be CG, and while there has to be some element of that in the frame the image is mostly Bullock. In order to pull this off, Cuarón brought in the puppeteers from the acclaimed stage play “War Horse” who devised a mechanism to duplicate the look of weightlessness for his actors.  They invented a 12-wire harness that carried Bullock, in this case, around like a puppet. “The Heat” star admits it was painful, but it’s also “so cool.”

“Long story short, they had all these cameras taking pictures of my body. Created almost like a Xerox copying thing, a carbon fiber copy of my chest plate. Just breasts, rib cage that seamlessly placed over my body. I could put my clothes over it,” Bullock reveals. “It then had little hooks in it and I would lay down on a table, it was like an operating table, where all these technicians would come in and they would hook me up to the wires and strap my legs [into them].  And then they would lift me up and the puppeteers from ‘War Horse’ were in the back puppeteering me. And then I had to move the body, do the swing and do everything myself while they would push me in one direction where zero g would push you, not where earth would push you.  Everything was designed so I then had to react the way zero g is. It was the closest thing to feeling like I was flying making this movie, the 12-wire. It was painful, but it was so cool.”

While Cuarón and crew created intricate storyboards for the picture, Bullock says she didn’t have a clear idea how it would all eventually come together. Like many moviegoers, she was overwhelmed by the final result.

“I had never seen George’s side. I’d never seen the stars, the space shuttle. I didn’t know what the music was. I didn’t know what I looked like in the suit. I didn’t know what we were making or what that looked and felt like. And, I felt like, all of a sudden, this was a gigantic organism that had been created out of technology. And to see it in that beautiful 3D where it was used so sparingly and emotionally? I don’t know how to describe it. But, I was able to be moved by Alfonso’s work rather then shred myself because I hated my work which will come later on when I’m like, ‘Why did I do this? I look so bad. I look so bad.’ [Laughs.] But, you’ve got to appreciate the ride.”

“Gravity” opens nationwide in 3D and in IMAX on Oct. 4

We’re going to have a few nibbles of a recent interview with director Alfonso Cuarón leading up to a larger piece dealing specifically with his work on the space spectacle “Gravity.” Today, with the summer movie season not too distant a memory just yet, I thought I’d ask Cuarón for his thoughts on “Pacific Rim.”

It’s not arbitrary. You might recall back in 2006 when Cuarón’s “Children of Men” was in the race with Guillermo Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Babel” that much was made of the “three amigos,” this trio of Mexican filmmaker friends from way back who had accomplished their greatest feats in one year, each of them in the thick of the circuit. All three ended up with nominations, whether for writing, directing or editing. “Gravity” is Cuarón’s first films since “Children of Men,” though Del Toro and Iñárritu have respectively made “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” and “Biutiful” in the interim.

“I love ‘Pacific Rim,'” Cuarón tells me. “I know that’s Guillermo and his passion, since I first met him and was going through his film collection and seeing all these Japanese films. As a kid I was a fan, myself, of this Japanese show called ‘Ultraman’ and I could see all of his amazing love for that.”

“Gravity” has taken up nearly four years of Cuarón’s life as of late. He and his team had to invent the proper technology to achieve the look he was looking for (much like what happened on “Children of Men,” in fact) and the result is a massive film with humbling scale. So it’s high praise when he says Del Toro’s film made his work feel minuscule by comparison.

“When I saw ‘Pacific Rim,’ I said, ‘Man, I’ve been three-and-a-half years now doing ‘Gravity,’ and now you’re making me feel that I just did this tiny, tiny indie Sundance film.’ But what I love about ‘Pacifim Rim’ is it’s done without any post-modernist, ironic approach. He really loves his characters. He loves his monsters. And at the core of it, what he loves is the characters inside the robots.”

“Pacific Rim” recently crossed $400 million at the worldwide box office. A sequel from Del Toro and screenwriter Travis Beacham may well be on the way after overseas receipts helped balance out lackluster domestic numbers.

Stay tuned for more from Cuarón as we build toward that big “Gravity” feature. In the meantime, mark your calendars.

“Gravity” hits theaters nationwide on Oct. 4 and you’ll want to be there.

It may or may not come as a surprise to you that one of my most eagerly anticipated titles of 2014 is “Paddington,” a British family film that begins shooting at the end of this month. Chances are some American readers are unfamiliar with the antics of Paddington Bear, the accident-prone hero of British author Michael Bond’s best-selling series of children’s books, but he was a rather significant part of my childhood.

The adventures of the lovable ursine hero, a Peruvian stowaway adopted by a well-to-do London family with predictably chaotic consequences, were read to me as bedtime stories by my dad — himself a child when the character first appeared in print in 1958, and a dyed-in-the-wool fan. I continued through the series (which now numbers 21 books, the most recent, Olympic-themed volume appearing last year) as I learned to read myself. I had a heavily-played VHS cassette of his stop-motion animated shorts from the 1970s. And yes, I had a small Paddington teddy bear, complete with his signature duffel-coat and shapeless hat. Paddington was to me as Harry Potter is to a younger generation of kids.

So it’s somewhat appropriate that Paddington’s first-ever feature film is being produced by David Heyman, the BAFTA-winning British super-producer who shepherded all eight installments of the “Harry Potter” series to the screen. “Paddington” is obviously a very different prospect: this is a jauntier, more episodic literary franchise, the only supernatural element of which is that its hero is, well, a talking bear. Still, it’s a project dependent both on a blithe sense of English whimsy and state-of-the-art visual effects, both areas in which Heyman has ample experience.

Speaking of state-of-the-art visual effects, Heyman’s also a producer on Alfonso Cuarón’s outer-space spectacle “Gravity.” In a recent interview with HitFix for that imminent release, Heyman also shared some of his perspective on “Paddington” — which, he says, “has been a long time in the making.”

Once a Warner Bros. project, it’s now been adopted by StudioCanal in the UK, with director Paul King (best known for way-out British TV sitcom “The Mighty Boosh” and the striking, semi-related avant-garde film “Bunny and the Bull”) at the helm. Colin Firth has been tapped to voice the ever-polite title character, while the film’s live-action cast includes Nicole Kidman, Jim Broadbent, Sally Hawkins, Julie Walters and Hugh Bonneville. Framestore, the London-based VFX outfit that won an Oscar for “The Golden Compass” and also worked on the entire “Harry Potter” series, is handling the magic side of things.

So far, so good. “I’m very excited about what we will do,” says Heyman. “It’s got a good cast and it’s fun. It’s great, having worked on it for even longer than ‘Gravity’ — a lot longer — to finally see it becoming real.”

If you’re wondering whether there’s a contemporary audience for what some may see as a rather quaint children’s character — and one celebrating his 55th birthday this year, to boot — Heyman has no such doubts. Explaining that the stories have been updated to a present-day setting, he notes that though the original tale “was written in the 50s, and [the script has] that spirit, we’ve adapted it and modernized it. It’s set contemporary in our story. The author, Michael Bond, is really pleased with what we have done. And I think that it is timeless.”

Moreover, Heyman believes that “Paddington” has universal reach; it won’t just be Brits who relate to the fish-out-of-water story of character who leaves his family behind in the Peruvian capital of Lima to seek a better life in London.

“It’s about an immigrant trying to find a home,” he says. “Home is not necessarily where you’re from but it’s about making your own home. Listen, America is a nation made up of immigrants. The UK and the West Indian — the Indian immigrants… it’s a big part of our world. World wars, refugees – it’s an issue in many, many places. He’s an immigrant as a character, but really it’s about finding a home.”

We’ll no doubt be hearing more about “Paddington” as it heads toward our screens next year. Meanwhile, look out for our “Gravity” interviews — including ones with Alfonso Cuarón and Sandra Bullock — heading your way soon.

Every year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar race brings its share of sore points, and the sorest at this early stage is France’s inability to enter Palme d’Or winner “Blue is the Warmest Color” into the race — an eligibility issue that ultimately resulted in the country selecting lower-profile period biopic “Renoir” to represent them. It’s not exactly an unusual situation — plenty of festival hits aren’t released in time to compete in that year’s foreign Oscar race. (“Renoir,” after all, premiered in Cannes last year.)

Nonetheless, in this case, some ill feeling has been brewing over French distributor Wild Bunch’s refusal to shift the film’s domestic release date to the window of eligibility in the category. (Academy rules stipulate that the film must open in its home country on or before September 30; Wild Bunch releases “Blue” in France on October 9.) Jonathan Sehring, president of the film’s US distributor IFC/Sundance Selects, has been vocal in expressing his disappointment over the issue, describing it as “unfortunate.”

Now Wild Bunch co-founder Vincent Maraval has expressed his side of the story, bluntly explaining to Deadline’s Nancy Tartaglione why they weren’t willing to change the date. And his bottom line is: he doesn’t think the foreign-language Oscar is worth the effort for a film already carrying the prestige of a Palme d’Or.

“There was never any question for us to modify in any way our release strategy to legitimize the stupidity of the Oscar rules,” he says. “Should we risk our strategy for France for a Foreign Language Film Oscar which doesn”t add anything to a Palme d”Or?” He continues: “[The rules are] unique, specific and make no sense. At the same time, no one cares about this category. We”re aiming for … all categories, the only ones that count.”

Obviously, there’s an element of nationalistic chest-beating to these comments: you can argue back and forth about whether or not — and in what marketing context — the most prized of all film festival awards carries more weight than a ghetto-category Oscar. It stands to reason that the film’s French distributor is going to be less invested in the latter, just as Sundance Selects obviously want to contend for the smaller, more reachable Oscar category.

Wild Bunch’s top priority is obviously setting a release date that gives the film the strongest commercial shot in the French marketplace, so it’s understable that US awards prospects are a secondary concern for them. (You also can’t blame them for finding the system an exasperatingly arbitrary one.) Sundance Selects, meanwhile, is releasing the film Stateside only a couple of weeks later, on October 25, making their desire for Oscar attention less an immediate commercial concern than a wish to gild the film’s longer-term reputation when it comes to DVD and beyond.

A Best Picture and/or Best Actress nomination would do more for that reputation than a foreign-language win — Maraval is right in that respect. But hopeful as Sehring’s team are, they’re not naive: they know they face an uphill climb getting the Academy, with its older, conservative leanings, to vote in significant numbers for a three-hour erotic drama about teen-to-twentysomething lesbians. In French.

Frankly, my unprovable hunch is that the film would have been a long shot even for a Best Foreign Language Film nod — the executive committee might have stuck up for it, but even in the post-“Dogtooth” era of this category, there’s no guarantee it’d have been up this often-milquetoast branch’s alley.

Maraval evidently feels the same way, arguing to Deadline that “Renoir” makes for a more tactical French submission anyway. Citing the film’s healthy US box office (the highest for a French release so far this year), he describes “Renoir” as “a perfect film for the Academy: classic, aesthetic and cultural in the same vein as ‘Belle Epoque’ or ‘Mediterraneo’ … Objectively, it”s the most legitimate candidate.” He may yet be proven right.

The question that remains, and to which I can’t find a conclusive answer, is whether France can submit “Blue is the Warmest Color” for next year’s foreign-language race — even if Sundance Selects campaign for general categories this year. It’s unusual for a foreign festival hit’s domestic and US release dates to fall so close together as to take it out of the foreign-language eligibility window while remaining in that year’s larger awards race: I can’t think of a relevant precedent, and the Academy’s rulebook for the category sheds no light on the matter.

Films have competed in general categories the year after being submitted for the foreign race, of course, but what about vice versa? It’s a quirky Academy rule that films nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film can’t be eligible in general categories when released in the US the following year. To reverse that rationale, could “Blue” compete in the 2014 foreign-language race if it doesn’t succeed in getting any nominations in this year’s race? I sense the Academy wouldn’t permit a film to be nominated in any category 15 months after its US release, but I wonder. Answers on a postcard, please.

I often go back and watch “Slacker” just for the unencumbered burst of independent creativity. It has a different spirit than the films that came after it, films like “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction,” etc., that would define the indie film movement.

And Linklater has maintained that spirit, setting up shop in Austin, Texas long before it was the posh thing to do. Free of the Hollywood ties even if he mingled with them from time to time. So if ever there was someone fit for an independent film fete, he’s the guy. And with “Before Midnight” on the circuit this season, the Independent Filmmaker Project has seized the opportunity to honor him with a Director Tribute at the 23rd Gotham Independent Film Awards.

“It is with great enthusiasm and pride that we give honor to a man who has played a significant role in expanding the language of film through the last 25 years,” IFP executive director Joana Vicente said via press release. “Richard Linklater’s unique vision and voice — in addition to the special characters he has created  — place him among the most prolific and poignant directors working today, and we are honored to celebrate his work.”

Last year’s honoree was “Silver Linings Playbook” director David O. Russell. The Dec. 2 event will hopefully keep Linklater and “Before Midnight” in the conversation that will by that time be dominated by latter-year prestige pictures. It remains one of the best films of the year, ever since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

Nominees for the 23rd annual Gotham Independent Film Awards will be announced on Oct. 24.

Kris and I disagree on the merits of Alexander Payne’s new dramedy “Nebraska,” in which veteran Oscar-nominated actor Bruce Dern and “Saturday Night Live” alum Will Forte play a father and son mending their fractured relationship on a bittersweet road trip through the eponymous state.

Reviewing the film at Cannes, where Dern wound up winning the Best Actor award, I was left cold, saying that “Payne can’t seem to decide if he’s coddling these old-school Midwesterners for their rudely rustic values or sneering at the sheer narrowness of their worldview.” Kris, on the other hand, really connected with it at Telluride a few weeks ago, praising it for “[ringing] a lot of genuine notes while never losing its sense of humor.” One thing we both agreed on (where others don’t) is that it’s definitely a leading vehicle for Dern, who hasn’t had a role this generous in decades. 

Interestingly, Paramount chose not to take “Nebraska” to the vast meat market of Toronto — where Payne’s last film, “The Descendants,” really got its Oscar mojo going in 2011. Instead, they’re taking the more specialized route of Telluride and the NYFF — probably a wise course of action for a small film that found its share of admirers at Cannes and Telluride, but hasn’t quite amassed a vocal critical following in the way that Payne’s last couple of films have done. Handled in the right way, this could still well be a year-end prestige player, but it’s in a delicate position.

It’s interesting, then, that this new trailer for the film is arguably selling the film’s offbeat comedy a little harder than the underlying emotion of its concerns with family and aging. Which is by no means a bad thing: it presents the film’s tone and style very much as it is. Check it out below and tell us what you think.

Leonardo DiCaprio, it seems, has never met a prestige biopic he didn’t like. We’ve already seen his respective takes on Howard Hughes (which netted him an Oscar nod), J. Edgar Hoover and the somewhat less immediately recognizable Frank Abagnale Jr., and will soon see him as business shark turned motivational speaker Jordan Belfort in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Next up: Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the US, already played to Oscar-nominated affect by Alexander Knox in a 1944 biopic. DiCaprio will co-produce the new film, based on a recently published biography by Pulitzer Prize winner A. Scott Berg. No denying the star’s conscientiousness and commitment, but would anyone else like to see him do a romantic comedy at some point? [Deadline] 

Justin Chang, Peter Debruge and Scott Foundas’ excellent Toronto wrap-up goes deeper than the standard-issue awards conversation. [Variety]

The National Board of review unveiled a new website, and announced tat it will reveal its award winners on December 4. [NBR]

The American Film Institute has set January 10 for its awards date — it’ll announce its annual list of film and TV honorees on December 9. [Screen Daily]

Some of you already picked up on this yesterday, but for those who missed it, David Cox brashly jumps the gun on the “12 Years a Slave” backlash. Without seeing it, of course. [The Guardian]

Five things you should know about Hayao Miyazaki’s upcoming Oscar hopeful “The Wind Rises.” [LA Times]

Scott Feinberg talks to IFC head Jonathan Sehrings, who’s unhappy with the foreign-language Oscar system that has left “Blue is the Warmest Color” and “Like Father, Like Son” out of the running, So it goes. [THR]

No sooner has the dust settled on the Toronto premiere of a new “Therese Raquin” adaptation than Brian De Palma announces his intention to make another. [Empire]

Filming starts on “The Imitation Game,” a WWII codebreaker biopic starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. [Coming Soon]

This is a week old, but it’s pretty nifty: mapping the “constellations” between directors and their favorite stars. [New York Times]

TORONTO – Saoirse Ronan has been in this business a long time. She may only be 19-years-old, but the best supporting actress nominee for “Atonement” has been a working actor for a decade.  She’s already collaborated with filmmakers such as Joe Wright, Peter Jackson, Peter Weir, Neil Jordan and Gillian Armstrong. She’s shot all over the globe and walked the red carpets at some of the greatest film festivals in the world.  Today, however, Ronan is lying on a couch in a downtown Toronto hotel room as we meet to discuss her latest endeavor, Kevin Macdonald’s “How I Live Now.”

Ronan isn’t being disrespectful or immature, there is just no pretense with her.  She’s tired. She wants to lie down (it’s not like she isn’t smiling).  Perhaps she gets it from her father, actor Paul Ronan, who I’d met while waiting to talk to Saoirse. The elder Ronan was hanging out in an accompanying suite showing a mutual friend a copy of one of his favorite films, Keen Ivory Wayan’s “I”m Gonna Git You Sucka.” (Saoirse later, “Oh yes, that’s one of dad’s favorites.“) There is a genial and energetic bluntness to both Ronans that comes across when you first meet them. And to say it’s refreshing is a bit of an understatement. But, there is work at hand, and that’s chatting about “How I Live Now” which debuted at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.

Set in the near future, Ronan plays Daisy, a young American sent to spend part of the summer with her British relatives in the English countryside. In the midst of her bonding with cousins Edmond (George McKay) and Isaac (Tom Holland) a massive European war breaks out.  When a nuclear bomb goes off in London, Daisy has the chance to escape back to relatively safe America or stay with her cousins whom are without any adult supervision.  She choses the later and the rest of the picture is a pretty realistic look at what would happen to an island nation like the U.K. if this sort of tragedy occurred.

“How I Live” is based on Meg Rosoff’s celebrated novel and it’s not the first movie Ronan has appeared in adapted from a popular book.  That being said, Ronan says that if given the choice she prefers not to read the original source material.

“I’ve been very lucky in the sense that the scripts have always been very strong whenever they’ve been adapted from books,” Ronan says. “So, I’ve always wanted to focus on the script version of the story ’cause that’s what we’re gonna the adapting.  That’s the one were gonna put on the screen.”  

Without skipping a beat, Ronan looks at my orange framed sunglasses hanging from my shirt collar and adds, “So, I like your glasses by the way. I got some as well.”

“They’re free,” I say off the TIFF branded glasses (perfect when you’ve broken your own pair en route to the festival).

“I know,” Ronan says smiling.  “It’s always better when it’s free.”

Back to our interview (the clock is ticking), I have to ask if she really got away with starring in “The Host,” written by none other than Stephenie Meyers, without flipping through the book.  

“I read that book before because there was so much in the book,” Ronan says. “There was so much of a back story that it was kind of important to read it, you know.  And as well, I mean there’s no fan base out there, apart from maybe J.K. Rowling, like Stephenie’s fan base.  But with [‘How I Live Now’] not so much, you know?  It’s basically the same.  There’s a few things that have changed, ages have been altered, some characters have been left in from the books.  Some characters haven’t.”

Over Ronan’s career, she’s already learned that her forays into Hollywood studio movies (“The Host,” “City of Ember”) haven’t always been that successful either critically or financially. Luckily, her more auteur driven options are so high profile they likely make peers such as Emma Stone and Kristen Stewart green with envy. Ronan’s next film is Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel” alongside an all-star cast of actor’s actors including Ralph Fiennes, Jude Law, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Jeff Goldblum, Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, Tom Wilkinson, Lea Seydoux and Adrien Brody, among others.  The Brooklyn born Ronan’s eyes lit up when I ask about “Budapest Hotel.”

“I play someone called Agatha and she works in a bakery,” Ronan volunteers. “That’s all I can say.”

Actually, wait a moment. Turns out she can say more.

“It was so much fun.  It was so great,” Ronan adds. “I was nervous about it because his actors in those films have such a specific acting style.  And I was really worried that I wasn’t gonna be able to do it.  And I remember the first day I went in and I had to do just really simple stuff like walking in a corridor. And I had to bring like a little package into a room.  It was all very simple.  And I did it and I thought, ‘O.K., this is probably the way someone like Wes would want it done.’  But you’re still not sure.  And then I did it and he came over and he is like one his own characters in a way.  He does this with his hand [she holds her left hand up and pinches her thumb and forefinger while flaring out her pinky].  He looks from side to side.  Or, you do something and he’d say, ‘Just put your arm up like that, yeah.  And then tilt your head to the side like that.  And then just do a little look.’  And I was like, ‘O.K.,’ so this is how Wes wants his film done.  And once you’ve got that figured out it’s great and it’s really good fun.”

Anderson’s distinct direction sounds exactly like a filmmaker moving a figure in a stop motion animated film. Perhaps like Anderson’s own “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” And, yes, that fact isn’t lost on Ronan either.

“It’s almost like he’s doing an animated movie,” Ronan says. “Basically if you just do what Wes does you’re fine.  And he’s got everything decided before he even shoots the film.  So he’s got these animatics on a little iPad mini that he has with him every day. Story boarded the entire film, every single shot.  And voiced every single character in the way he wants it to be read and the beat that he wants in between.  So he’s like, ‘O.K., this scene is supposed to be a minute and a half.  How long was it,’ he’ll ask the script supervisor and she’ll say, ‘It was about a minute and 50 seconds.’ And he’s like, “Okay.  We need to make this [line] a little bit shorter then.’

Ronan adds, “The result is it works and everything is great that he does.  And his editing doesn’t take that long.”

“Because he’s editing on set,” I interject.

“He’s edited before he’s even shot the film,” Ronan says. “It’s incredible.”

She followed up “Grand Budapest” by going in a completely different direction: Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut, “How To Catch A Monster.”  Ronan admits she thinks Gosling was a bit nervous stepping behind the camera for the first time, but didn’t “pretend that he knew everything.”

Ronan notes, “He had a really great crew around him and these were all people that he had worked with before on things like ‘Blue Valentine’ and ‘Drive.’  So he had his friends around him and people that he really trusted.  And that allowed him to be able to really experiment with this film.”

Working on “Monster” was completely the opposite of “Grand Budapest” according to Ronan as it was almost all improv.  Ronan says, “I mean there was dialogue written in the script but we would go off on a tangent and talk about whatever. It meant that literally every single scene was a surprise.  You didn’t know what was gonna happen.  Very much like the way Derek would have shot ‘Blue Valentine,’ you know?  He’s really kind of influence by him.  But he was very honest.  He wanted everything to be incredibly honest.  And if it wasn’t he would rewrite something to make sure that you felt comfortable.”  

And Ronan continues her praise for Gosling.  She remarks, “I think just like Ryan’s kind of character makes people relax.  He’s really comfortable and he’s really chilled out all the time.  So, you just feel really relaxed and really comfortable being yourself.  It’s amazing to be around somebody like that and have them be your boss.”

Take that to heart all future film directors out there. Ronan may not even be 21 yet, but she certainly knows what she’s talking about.

“How I Live Now” opens in limited release on Nov. 8.  “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “How To Catch A Monster” are both expected to be released sometime in 2014.

I was pretty vocal last year about how the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards, presented by the Broadcast Film Critics Association began to lean too heavily on red carpet glitz (adding more opportunities to honor celebrities with a wealth of new, dubious, categories) while sacrificing potentially great on-camera moments (leaving the great Tony Kushner to accept his screenplay award for “Lincoln” un-televised during a commercial break). Though it might be an uphill battle, I stand by those criticisms as a member of the organization handing out the awards.

This year, the BFCA has staked out the same territory it did last year for its annual awards show: the night of the Oscar nominations. The 19th annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards will be held on Jan. 16, 2014, where the BFCA will hope to continue whatever hot topic conversation will have begun earlier that morning with the announcement of the Academy Award nominees. Last time, that conversation was significant: Ben Affleck, director of “Argo,” had not been nominated for Best Director by the Academy. Yet his film went on to win the BFCA’s Best Picture award, leaving the slighted helmer to say upon accepting the prize (tongue-in-cheek, of course), “I’d like to thank the Academy.”

This also means the Critics’ Choice awards will air after the Golden Globes for the first time in a long while, leaving the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s boozy soiree as, once again, the first televised awards show of the season (on Jan. 13). The Critics’ Choice awards will again be aired on The CW.

(Jan. 16 is also the opening night of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.)

What will be the hot topics at this year’s BFCA event? Time will tell. But first, let’s just hope that whatever list of nominees my fellow voters collectively cook up is more than just a ploy to get more celebrities on the carpet. And let’s hope the show unfolds in at least a somewhat more dignified manner than it did last time around; I heard from more than a few at last year’s ceremony that they weren’t interested in returning.

Nominees for the 20th annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards will be announced on Dec. 16.

When I initially skimmed over today”s press release from Fox Searchlight, I somehow absorbed the information that Tomas Alfredson was directing their new adaptation of Thomas Hardy”s “Far From the Madding Crowd,” and was intrigued by the match of the material to his chilly, literate Swedish sensibility. Upon closer inspection, I was certainly right to be intrigued, but I had the wrong Scandinavian auteur: instead, it”s erstwhile Dogme 95 rebel Thomas Vinterberg who will be steering the prestige production, which began principal photography in the UK today.

Best known as a spiky, contemporary provocateur, the 44-year-old Dane is an unlikely fit for a British heritage drama – though not as surprising a choice following the crossover success of “The Hunt” as he would have been beforehand. Vinterberg stands a reasonable chance of picking up an Oscar for that Mads Mikkelsen-starring moral melodrama if/when Denmark submits it to the Academy, so Searchlight is plainly striking while the iron”s hot. In any event, it continues a remarkable career turnaround for the director, who was much feted for his 1998 Cannes winner “The Celebration,” but struggled to find favour with his follow-up efforts. He”ll certainly be hoping for a better outcome this this time than his first English-language effort “It”s All About Love,” a bizarre 2000 curate”s egg starring Claire Danes and Joaquin Phoenix.

Like that film, though, Vinterberg has managed to assemble an impressive cast. Carey Mulligan, something of a go-to girl at the moment for high-end literary adaptations, headlines as Hardy”s proto-feminist heroine Bathsheba Everdene, an independent-minded young woman courting the attentions of three suitors of different ages and classes. Belgian star Matthias Schoenaerts, fresh from his English-language debut in Guillaume Canet”s “Blood Ties” will star as brooding sheep farmer Gabriel Oak; bright young Brit Tom Sturridge plays military man Frank Troy; Michael Sheen plays the older, wealthier William Boldwood. Recent BAFTA Rising Star winner Juno Temple (“Atonement,” “Killer Joe”) rounds out the principal cast.

This is obviously a rich dramatic opportunity for Mulligan – who most recently took on other of literature”s great female objects of desire, Daisy Buchanan, in Baz Luhrmann”s “The Great Gatsby,” but didn”t quite get to sink her teeth into the part with all the spectacle surrounding her. Schoenaerts, however, is the most exciting choice here: he certainly has the right physical bearing and magnetism to play Oak, while “Blood Ties” showed us that he”s unexpectedly adept with accent work. (I”m still somewhat surprised that someone passed up the opportunity to have Tom Hardy, who”d be ideal in the role, in a Thomas Hardy adaptation.)

David Nicholls (“One Day”) is penning the adaptation, which gives me some pause: his work on Mike Newell”s “Great Expectations” (released last year in the UK) was proficient enough, but rather vanilla in a CliffsNotes kind of way. He will really need to abandon that kind of moderate tastefulness and tap into the carnal brutality of Hardy”s novel if the film is to match John Schlesinger”s unimprovable 1967 version, which starred Julie Christie, Terence Stamp and Alan Bates and really should be higher up in the canon than it is. (If you”ve never seen it, go seek it out. Nicolas Roeg”s cinematography alone is worth the effort.) Vinterberg, hopefully, will be on his least polite form too.

Below-the-line talent includes Vinterberg”s regular cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen, Oscar-winning editor Claire Simpson (“Platoon,” “The Constant Gardener”) and Oscar-nominated costume designer Janet Patterson (“The Piano,” “Bright Star”). No word yet on which composer will be looking to live up to Richard Rodney Bennett”s magnificent score for the 1967 version (which garnered the film its only Oscar nod).

Vinterberg states: “I am excited to be working with DNA, Fox Searchlight and this talented cast and crew on ‘Far From the Madding Crowd.’ It is a great privilege to bring such a wonderful piece of very English literature to the screen.”

Fox Searchlight will presumably be angling for an awards season run next year – with “12 Years a Slave” currently their prize pony, and Amma Asante”s “Belle” joining their stable in Toronto, it”s interesting to see them extending their stake in British cinema.

Every year, during the busy submissions stage for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, France’s selection is among the most curiously anticipated — if only because they annually have such a surfeit of plausible contenders. This year, there was particular intrigue surrounding their choice — since the film that would otherwise have been the likeliest pick, Abdellatif Kechiche’s Palme d’Or winner “Blue is the Warmest Color,” was ineligible.

What would they choose instead? The options were numerous, with none more obvious than the other. Francois Ozon’s Cesar-nominated “In the House,” or his Cannes contender “Young and Beautiful?” Perky period romcom “Populaire?” Olivier Assayas’ Venice prizewinner “Something in the Air?” Juliette Binoche in “Camille Claudel 1915?” Likely animated Oscar contender “Ernest and Celestine?” The combined hotness of Tahar Rahim and Lea Seydoux in “Grand Central?”

None of those, as it turns out. Instead, France is pinning its Oscar hopes on Gilles Bourdos’ pretty, somewhat floaty artist biopic “Renoir.”

The choice will come as a surprise to many — particularly the many pundits who assumed the country’s second-biggest Cannes hit, Asghar Farhadi’s modern melodrama “The Past,” would get the nod. As I said before, however, that otherwise Academy-friendly film always had a significant hurdle to overcome: the French prefer to submit films by their own directors, and as respected as Iranian import Farhadi (who won the Oscar for Iran two years ago) is, they clearly weren’t about the make him the first non-French filmmaker to represent the country at the awards in 36 years. (The last was Israeli-born Moshe Mizrahi, who won for “Madame Rosa” in 1977.)

Don’t look for Farhadi’s home country to enter him, either, given that the film isn’t a sufficiently Iranian production to pass muster — Sony Classics’ awards hopes for the film will now be concentrated on Cannes winner Berenice Bejo for Best Actress.

The Frencher-than-French “Renoir,” meanwhile, isn’t proving a very popular selection so far on the Twitterverse, with French and English-speaking critics alike complaining that the country’s selection committee has picked the softest option. (Well, maybe not: I hear talk that “Populaire” was also much-favored by the committee, and that’d have been an even softer one.) The seven-member committee, incidentally, had a fair bit of cred this year: Oscar-nominated actress Isabelle Adjani, Palme d’Or winner Laurent Cantet and Cannes festival director Thierry Fremaux are among those responsible for the choice.

Of course, this is nothing new from France — the soft option also won out last year, when they picked crowd-pleasing buddy comedy “The Intouchables” over more sophisticated or auteur-flavored fare, include Jacques Audiard’s “Rust and Bone.” It was a savvily Cademy-minded choice, though it didn’t entirely pay off: the hit film made the penultimate nine-film shortlist, but was a shock absentee from the final nominees.  

Once more, I think the committee has chosen somewhat tactically here. “Renoir,” which premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes last year and opened Stateside way back in March, may not have received an overwhelming critical response either at home or abroad, but its gentle, picturesque charms are ones I can imagine appealing to older voters in the Academy. (It’ll be interesting to see how the film, a January release at home, fares in this year’s Cesar nominations.) It’s a generation-crossing story of sorts, centered on the relationship between celebrated Impressionist painter Pierre-August and his son Jean — the future filmmaking legend — as the latter returns home to recover from a WWI injury.

It’s low-incident stuff, but I had more time for it than some of my colleagues did: there’s an appealingly wistfulness to its symbolic study of one artform making way for another, and it’s exquisitely shot, in suitably dappled, Renoir-esque light, by the marvelous Mark Lee. It wouldn’t be the first middlebrow biopic to catch the Academy’s eye, and it certainly wouldn’t be the worst.  

Portugal, meanwhile, has picked a French co-production to represent them this year. Napoleonic war epic “Lines of Wellington” is, to some extent, the last film by the late, prolific Chilean auteur Raul Ruiz (“Mysteries of Lisbon”). He was in preparations for the film when he passed away in 2011; it was completed by his widow, Valeria Sarmiento, and premiered at last year’s Venice Film Festival to a muted response.

Still, it’s not too hard to imagine to the Academy warming to this high-end Europudding, with its sprawling historical narrative and star-studded cast. John Malkovich plays the titular Duke of Wellington, leading Anglo-Portuguese forces in a wearying battle against Napoleon during the Peninsular War in 1810, while the supporting cast includes Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Mathieu Amalric, Marisa Paredes, Elsa Zylberstein and Michel Piccoli, some of them in mere cameos. Of course, the recognizability factor only goes so far with the Academy if your film is deemed too stodgy: even the presence of Christian Bale couldn’t get voters on board with China’s “The Flowers of War” two years ago. So we’ll wait to hear how it plays.

Finally, Pakistan returns to the Oscar race, exactly 50 years after they last submitted a film, with immigration comedy “Zinda Bhaag.” The film focuses on three young men who yearn to leave Lahore for the West and “succeed in ways they least expected,” to use the film’s own logline. It hasn’t even opened in Pakistan yet, so I can’t glean much more than the fact that veteran Indian star Naseeruddin Shah is in the cast. Still, the submission — after years of Pakistan sitting apart from the world cinema scene — is perhaps more significant than the film itself. Selection committee chair Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy said, “I feel proud that today we are taking a small step towards recognizing our own filmmakers. ‘Zinda Bhaag’ is proof of the fact that sheer will, passion and talent can achieve incredible feats.”

Check out the updated submissions list and chart here.  

Well, it’s safe to say we can already strike one of this year’s princess biopics from the list of Oscar contenders, with Oliver Hirschbiegel’s “Diana,” starring Naomi Watts, having been unveiled the week before last to across-the-board critical derision in the UK, where it opens on Friday. I have yet to see it myself, but have been assured even by more temperate colleagues that its chances of recovery are hovering around nil. I guess we now know why it skipped Toronto.

But can Watts’ compatriot (and best pal) Nicole Kidman fare any better with her take on an iconic 20th-century royal? 

We’ll find out in due course, but this teaser trailer for Olivier Dahan’s “Grace of Monaco” — in which Kidman plays Oscar-winning Hollywood goddess turned European princess Grace Kelly — doesn’t shed any light on the matter. 

We don’t hear Kidman speak in the teaser, though we do get to see how proficiently she can wear a dress — not something that was ever in much doubt. Other than that, the 72-second glimpse amounts to a lot of luscious Cote d’Azur scenery, crystal light fittings and swooning operatic accompaniment. “Ferrero Rocher: The Movie,” in other words — not that you’d expect much sweat and grit and blood on the lens from a Grace Kelly biopic.

My best hope for the film is that it turns out to be a kind of lavish camp bauble. Dahan had some success (and won Marion Cotillard an Oscar) with his messy, abrasive Edith Piaf bio “La Vie en Rose” six years ago — but unless the marketing is pulling a real bait-and-switch here, this doesn’t appear to be a work of similarly eccentric gusto. (Dahan, meanwhile, needs to prove himself in English, following the riotous calamity of his Renee Zellweger-Forest Whitaker road movie “My Own Love Song.”)

The Weinstein Company, meanwhile, already has formidable Best Actress prospects in Judi Dench (“Philomena”), plus Meryl Streep and/or Julia Roberts (“August: Osage County”), so Kidman will really need to wow in this to move up their priority ladder. “Grace of Monaco” opens in limited release on November 27. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgY1YMq3eDY?rel=0&w=640&h=480]

The Toronto Film Festival always showers Oscar buzz on a critical and audience favorite, but I can’t remember the last time a film was quite so aggressively elevated to frontrunner status as “12 Years a Slave” — which had many rational critics and pundits going so far as to declare the Best Picture race over before it’s begun. So just wait a minute, says Mark Harris: “It’s a long road to the Oscars, and even if ’12 Years a Slave’ ends up crossing the finish line first, no movie makes it from September to February without hitting some speed bumps – other movies, backlash, op-ed page harrumphing, hype fatigue.” “Argo” stealthily weathered those obstacles after emerging as the ordained frontrunner at Toronto last year; will “Slave” do the same? [Grantland] 

Well, whaddaya know — the “op-ed page harrumphing” starts here. “12 Years a Slave” and “The Butler” are “created for a white, liberal audience to engender white guilt,” says Orville Lloyd Douglas. It’d help if he saw the films. [The Guardian]

Anyway, Toronto’s all well and good for major titles like “12 Years a Slave,” but what about its 146 other world premieres? Wendy Mitchell wonders if the festival is just too big. [Screen Daily]

Larry Rohter on the recent boom of the Canadian film industry. Can they nab a fourth consecutive nod for Best Foreign Language Film? [New York Times]

The Creative Arts Emmy ceremony brought good news for “Behind the Candelabra,” Oscar winner Melissa Leo and genius Aussie cinematographer Adam Arkapaw. [HitFix] 

Is British cinema on the crest of a new wave? Richard Ayoade (“The Double”), Jonathan Glazer (“Under the Skin”) and Clio Barnard (“The Selfish Giant”) are among the directors profiled. [The Guardian]

Tom Brueggemann on the impressive art house box office for Saudi Oscar submission “Wadjda.” With the film already in a good position, this only boosts its chances. [Thompson on Hollywood]

On the more mainstream end of the box office conversation, why low-budget horror continues to be a good investment. [LA Times]

Joss Whedon? Benedict Cumberbatch? J.J. Abrams? Michael Cusumano wonders who cinema’s current King of the Nerds is. [The Film Experience]

On the tension between long titles and hashtag marketing in the modern cinema. Are you looking forward to Ben Stiller’s “#Mitty?” [Ultraculture]