Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” took another step on the long road to Oscar by winning the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival People’s Choice Award. The critically acclaimed adaptation of Solomon Northup’s harrowing true story received a standing ovation after both its Telluride Film Festival and Toronto premieres and was long seen as the frontrunner for this year’s honor. The win should immediately assist Fox Searchlight, who produced and is distributing the picture, in convincing moviegoers and Academy members who might be concerned with the brutality depicted in the film to actually go see it.

First runner-up was Stephen Frears’ “Philomena” (huge news for The Weinstein Company who may have found their actual real Oscar player this year) and second runner-up went to Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners.” The latter opens nationwide on Friday and should be a strong word-of-mouth hit for Warner Bros. and Alcon Entertainment.

The TIFF People’s Choice Award doesn’t have a long history as an Oscar bellwether, but it has been an indicator of potential Best Picture nominees over the previous five years. In 2008, “Slumdog Millionaire” took the prize and “Precious” followed a year later. “The King’s Speech” and “Silver Linings Playbook” won in 2010 and last year respectively. Other previous winners include “Amelie” (2001), “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000), “American Beauty” (1999), “Life is Beautiful” (1997), “Shine” (1996) and “Chariots of Fire” (1981). Toronto voters have been streaky in their populist approval, however. From 2002 to 2007 none of the winners figured seriously in the Best Picture race although “Tsotsi” (2005) did win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Like Warner Bros. with the other major potential nominee out of the early festival circuit, “Gravity,” Searchlight will need to manage expectations and hype over the coming months. “12 Years a Slave” will open in limited release on Oct. 18 before slowly expanding across the country.

Other TIFF festival winners this year included “When Jews Were Funny” for Best Canadian Feature Film, “Asphalt Watches” for Best Canadian First Feature Film, “Why Don’t You Play in Hell?” for the Midnight Madness honor and “The Square” for the documentary award.

Overall, this year’s edition of the Toronto International Film Festival delivered a very strong slate of films. While some major titles such as Cannes players “All is Lost,” “Nebraska” and “Inside Llewyn Davis” skipped a repeat at the traditional awards season-friendly event, TIFF could still claim the debuts of “Dallas Buyers Club,” “August: Osage County” and quickly-picked-up acquisitions “Can A Song Save Your Life?” and “Bad Words,” among others. There were reports that festival organizers were annoyed (like their Venice peers) that films such as “Prisoners,” “Gravity” and “12 Years A Slave” all screened at Telluride first, but that didn’t diminish the love from the Toronto audiences who saw them. In fact, those films were the talk of the festival even days after their Toronto premieres.

Moreover, many attendees, press and industry folks were vocal in their concern that the first weekend of the festival has become more and more crowded with the high profile releases. Sadly, the programmers left little reason to stay past Monday unless you needed to catch a second screening of a film you’d previously missed. It’s always been an issue, and at many other festivals, too, for that matter, but this was the worst year in recent memory and TIFF organizers are going to have to seriously address it for 2014 and beyond. That being said, the festival must be credited for a very balanced program of films that included far fewer disasters than previous years. Many of the selections were middle-of-the-road, but you could count the number of God-awful ones on one hand. And, when you’re screening over 300 films, that’s a very good thing.

With the festival less than 24 hours from completion it’s time to put the 2013 edition to bed with our annual look at the best and worst of Toronto. You can discover our choices in the embedded story gallery in this post.

Did you catch any films at Toronto? Agree or disagree with our opinions? Share your thoughts below.

The other day, I described the race for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar as being wide open. That”s still true, but I wonder if at least one nomination slot might now be emphatically spoken for. For in submitting Haifaa Al-Mansour”s “Wadjda” to the Academy, Saudi Arabia – despite never having taken part in the process before – have alighted on both a film and an accompanying narrative that voters could well find irresistible.

Though the film is, in many respects, a traditional audience pleaser, “Wadjda” breaks a lot of new ground historically: the first Saudi film ever made by a female director, it is now also the first film of any description that the Islamic state has entered into the Oscar race. Al-Mansour has spoken frequently of the challenges involved in bringing the film to the screen at all: her insistence on filming on location in the streets of Riyadh came with tricky permission issues, while local tradition dictated that  she couldn’t publicly interact with her male crew members, meaning much of the film had to be directed remotely. German funding, meanwhile, came to the rescue of a film that could hardly count on Saudi investment alone.

As such, the story behind “Wadjda” should be pretty compelling to voters. I suspect, however, that the film itself will prove appealing to this branch, with or without its political import. The latest entry in what I noted earlier this week is a bumper crop of child-driven stories in the race, it tells the endearing, entertaining tale of a rebellious young Saudi girl who defies the religious and gender-based laws of her school and society with her simple dream of owning a bicycle. It’s a simple premise upon which Al-Mansour builds a stirring protest against the oppression of women, and independent thought in general, in traditional Islamic society. Vittoria De Sica and Jafar Panahi are cited as influences, though the universally accessible film isn’t as formally rigorous as such comparisons might imply.

I had previously noted that the film stood to be a significant threat in race if it was entered at all — which, given the givens with Saudi Arabia, was no guarantee. As it turned out, this inaugural national entry was selected by the Saudi Society for Culture and Arts, whose president, Sultan Al Bazie, stated: “We very proud of this film, which is an authentic representation of our country and our culture and are delighted that the themes and the story of this film has connected with an audience far beyond our borders.”

Since premiering at the Venice Film Festival last year, “Wadjda” has been warmly received across the festival circuit, earning accolades at Rotterdam, Palm Springs and London. A sizable art house hit in the UK, it’s been smartly picked up for US distribution by Sony Pictures Classics, an outfit that, of course, knows a thing or two about campaigning for this particular Oscar — they’ve won it six times in the last seven years. “Wadjda” is their first entry in this year’s race, and I expect they’ll be pushing it vigorously. Early days yet, but I sense this stands a fair chance of being our eventual winner.

That’s something that probably can’t be said for The Netherlands’ excitingly eccentric submission: Alex van Warmerdam’s blacker-than-black comedy “Borgman,” a twist on home-invasion horror in which the macabre fate of a wealthy suburban family at the hands of an eerily charismatic stranger also serves as a mordant allegory for the failings of One Percent society. (Drafthouse Films have the US rights.) Reviewing the film for Variety at Cannes, I described it as “a sly, insidious and intermittently hilarious domestic thriller,” noting an absurdist, even Pinter-esque streak to a story in which multiple characters are required to act in their own worst interests.

It was a predictably divisive title at Cannes, where it played in Competition — the first Dutch film to do so in over 40 years. As such, it’s the pride and joy of the country’s small local film industry this year, which made it the obvious candidate for submission all along, even if little about it seems likely to appeal to general voters in this branch. An executive-committee save can’t be ruled out in this post-“Dogtooth” era, though the film isn’t the kind of across-the-board critical hit for which those might be reserved.

Whatever the outcome, it’s a refreshingly daring selection for The Netherlands, a country that has scored three Oscar wins from seven nods over the years. It’s also the first film from this year’s Cannes Competition lineup to enter this year’s foreign Oscar race; between possible entries for France, Italy and Mexico, among others, one wonders how many will join it.

Check out the updated submissions list here.

Woody Allen never does awards shows. When he popped up at the Oscars in 2002 in the wake of 9/11, it was a huge surprise, and a welcome one. He eschews this kind of stuff and has never been in attendance to accept any of the four Oscars or two Golden Globes he’s received throughout his career.

So it’s a little bit of a surprise that he’s been bestowed — however deservedly — with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Cecil B. DeMille Award. After all, the organization would surely like him to be on hand to actually accept the lifetime achievement honor. It would be a little strange for a big fete without the guy in the wings to accept and give a speech, etc. Nevertheless, whether he shows up or not, it’s an inarguable tip of the hat.

“There is no one more worthy of this award than Woody Allen,” HFPA president Theo Kingma said via press release. “His contributions to filmmaking have been phenomenal and he truly is an international treasure.”

The award is chosen annually by the HFPA Board of Directors. Recent recipients have included Jodie Foster, Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Warren Beatty, Anthony Hopkins, Michael Douglas, Gene Hackman, Harrison Ford, Al Pacino and Barbra Streisand.

Allen’s “Blue Jasmine” is in the thick of the awards conversation this year, particularly for Cate Blanchett’s leading performance, a frontrunner to win the Oscar until someone else comes along to knock her off the perch, in fact. Allen is also in the hunt for original screenplay recognition for the film, which itself could be a Best Picture play for Sony Pictures Classics.

Most recently Allen won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 2011’s “Midnight in Paris.” He has won two Golden Globes for writing throughout his career, for that film and 1985’s “The Purple Rose of Cairo.”

The 71st annual Golden Globe Awards will be held on Sunday, Jan. 12, 2014.

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TORONTO – Like everyone, actors make good choices and bad choices in their career. At this moment, Jake Gyllenhaal is working on a string of great choices. Since the back-to-back 2010 misfires “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” and “Love & Other Drugs,” he has starred in the well-respected box office hit “Source Code,” earned critical acclaim for the surprise success “End of Watch” and should have one of the biggest hits of his career when the ensemble thriller “Prisoners” opens later this month. Plus, he recently took a major creative chance with “Enemy,” an experimental drama he shot with his director Denis Villeneuve before they collaborated on “Prisoners.” Both “Enemy” and “Prisoners” debuted at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival where the Oscar nominee sat down to talk, mostly, about the latter.

“Prisoners” is a moody, slow-burning thriller (thank you Roger Deakins) featuring a stellar cast of Oscar favorites including Hugh Jackman, Viola Davis, Terrence Howard, Melissa Leo and Maria Bello. Gyllenhaal admits he was interested in the script and reuniting with Villeneuve, but the longtime Lakers and Dodgers fan made a sports analogy about joining the ensemble that just makes too much sense to ignore.

“Look, you’re on a team, hopefully trying to play in the major leagues,” Gyllenhaal says. “I know a lot of people are gonna hate me for saying this, but it’s not bad to be on the Yankees. You walk in and you’re like, ‘The lineup’s pretty good. I’m pretty sure I’ll get on base and probably hit home.’ [Laughs] I think that’s nice and I think [when] you’re in every single scene it’s like you’re alone on a raft. And I think you want to feel like you’re all…a part of it.”

Granted, we’re assume he’s referring to the Yankees teams of the past 15 years or so and not the team on the verge of playoff elimination this season. On the other hand, an all-star cast can only mean so much. When it really comes down to it, it was Gyllenhaal’s earlier experience with the “Incendies” director that sealed the deal.

“I think what really drew me to it was how extraordinary it was when we were making ‘Enemy’ together,” Gyllenhaal says. “He is just so amazing and loving and as a human being I sort of consider him a big brother. I love him and hate him at exactly the same time. He can say probably the same thing about me. But, creatively, I think we were just totally simpatico. I would try something or I would experiment with something or give him a suggestion or an idea and he was always fascinated by it. It would always inspire him into something else.”

Gyllenhaal continues, “‘Enemy’ was much more of an experiment. It’s an experience. I’m not even sure I’d call it a movie in a certain way; it’s just a journey through the unconscious. It really is, and I think no one should go to it expecting to use their conscious mind.”

The passion you hear in his voice regarding “Enemy” and “Prisoners” should completely explain why we haven’t seen Gyllenhaal in another potential franchise flick since “Prince of Persia” (Hollywood would certainly give him multiple chances to headline one) or following the “one for them, one for me” mantra that’s working so well for many of his peers. As he emphasizes toward the end of our interview, “Even if you make a product, that experience, that process, is what you remember.”

For more from a highly energized and enthusiastic Gyllenhaal check out our complete interview embedded at the top of this post.

“Prisoners” opens nationwide on Sept. 20. “Enemy” is currently looking for a U.S. distributor.

Fun fact: it’s 10 years ago to the day that Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation” went on limited release in Los Angeles, mere days after doing the Venice-Telluride-Toronto stretch that was a rarer feat for prestige films then than it is now. In some respects, it does feel that long since we first laid eyes on Coppola’s woozy Tokyo kinda-love story, which is not to say it doesn’t hold up rather beautifully. The director’s three subsequent films, albeit variations on a consistent theme, exhibit an arc of wearied, cooled maturity, while indie film festivals are still awash with atmospheric imitators that may or may not know the source of Coppola’s own cribbing. 

What doesn’t feel a decade old, however, is the accompanying avalanche of Next Big Thing hype for one Scarlett Johansson, then just 18 years of age. The New Yorker with the odd, implacable gaze hadn’t exactly come out of nowhere. Two years before, she’d made attentive critics’ one-to-watch lists with droll, gangly turns in “Ghost World” and “The Man Who Wasn’t There”; five years earlier than that, she’d scored a precocious Best Actress nod at the Independent Spirit Awards for her turn as a pre-teen runaway in “Manny and Lo.”

From “The Horse Whisperer” to “Eight Legged Freaks,” then, Hollywood had seemingly been ready for the talented teen for some time. The media, however, hadn’t, and proceeded to shower such superlatives on Johansson and her very fine (and very fine-textured) performances in “Lost in Translation” and another fall festival discovery, “Girl With a Pearl Earring,” that one began to fear for the girl. Excellent though she was as, respectively, a lonely, prematurely married modern hipster and Johannes Vermeer’s 17th-century working-class muse, both roles demanded a similarly taciturn, liquid-eyed intensity of her. There was ample reason to suspect we hadn’t seen the half of what she could do. 

SAG and the Academy, perhaps distracted by a confusing campaign to pass off Johansson as a supporting actress in “Translation” and thereby nab her twin nominations, decided they’d wait to see that undiscovered half, nominating her for neither film. (They’re still waiting; 10 years on, she remains unnominated.) They were among the very few not fuelling the hype. The Golden Globes nominated her in both the drama and comedy fields, while the BAFTAs — and it’s funny how swiftly this gets forgotten — handed her their Best Actress award for Coppola’s film, beating out, among others, herself for “Earring.” Sundry magazine covers were an additional prize.

Having crowned its new princess, the industry then, as is its wont, ran almost immediately out of ideas of what do with her. The next two years brought misconceived vehicles of various shapes and sizes — small and creaky (“A Good Woman”), medium and thankless (“In Good Company”) and large and boneheaded (“The Island”) — none of which even permitted Johansson to be bad in compelling ways. The Globe voters, sticking doggedly to the narrative, tossed her another nomination for the limp indie “A Love Song for Bobby Long” — they might remain the largest group of people to have seen it.

Temporary respite came from the unpredictable figure of Woody Allen: his London-set moral thriller “Match Point” provoked a flushed, angry sexuality in the actress that her more demure breakthrough roles hadn’t, duly (and this time deservedly) landing her a fourth Globe nod. It was a welcome indication that the actress, in addition to looking at certain angles like an Old Hollywood bombshell, could act at certain angles like one too. While she assumed the mantle of Woody’s Muse, however, the director seemed less engaged by her later on, penning her pretty featureless characters in their follow-up collaborations “Scoop” and “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”

If Woody lost interest, so, it seemed did most others: she made a pleasing femme fatale in  Brian De Palma’s undervalued “The Black Dahlia,” though she didn’t seem to have been directed so much as art-directed. And that was a higher point of a late-2000s run that peaked in respectability with a left-blank-for-your-message role in Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige,” and bottomed out with such admittedly diverse calamities as “The Nanny Diaries,” “The Other Boleyn Girl” and “The Spirit.”

I know, newsflash: Hollywood has a dearth of intelligent, identifiably human roles to offer young actresses, even (or perhaps especially) one who meets its physical ideals as obligingly as Johansson. Yet it’s amazing how swiftly the counter-narrative set in across the internet that the woman couldn’t act; that the moody, impassive mien we were used to seeing from her marked the narrowness of her natural ability, not of what directors and their projects demanded of her. “You’re kidding, right?” came the response of several readers when, in 2009, I included Johansson’s name on a list of the 10 best actors under 30. It’s a standard backlash pattern: many of the same observers who perhaps glided too easily past her limitations following her 2003 breakthrough now seemed incapable of admitting any of her virtues. 

And yet slowly, and not without some hard graft, the tables began to turn once more for her. (Maybe any sliding actress needs to record an album of Tom Waits covers before things can get better. How about it, Ms. Zellweger?) Like many a Hollywood actor seeking to regain technique and credibility in one fell swoop, she headed to the stage, testing the waters with Off-Broadway fare before garnering warmly surprised reviews — and a Tony Award — for a 2010 revival of Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge.” A few months later, she was a small but sparky presence as Black Widow in “Iron Man 2,” a gig that would see full fruition in 2012’s world-beating blockbuster “The Avengers” — an ensemble film in which, I’d venture, she’s best in show. It’s not Shakespeare, granted, and it’s not passing any Bechdel tests either, but as showcase paycheck roles go, it’s a clear step up from, oh, “The Island.”

As for a return to prestige fare, last year’s “Hitchcock” proved a bit of a false start — though her archly sexy take on Janet Leigh provided that embalmed film with one of its few flickering signs of life. This year, however, it’s fair to say the Scarlett Johansson Comeback has finally taken root, with a pair of sensational performances in two buzzy, risque festival hits that couldn’t come from more different planets, and a faceless but significant role in a third yet to come.

When reviewing Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s smug sex comedy “Don Jon” (then titled “Don Jon’s Addiction”) at the Sundance Film Festival in January, I rather blandly singled out Johansson’s against-type performance as a bright spot. The further I get away from the film, however, the more Johansson’s performance as Gordon-Levitt’s gum-chewing, deceptively assured girlfriend Barbara seems a genuinely inspired comic turn.

The unapologetically broad New Joisey mannerisms — Drea DeMatteo’s tragic bimbo Adriana LaCerva from “The Sopranos” seems the obvious point of reference here — amuse on their own dead-on terms, but also bracket the character’s cunning intelligence and people-reading instincts, assets she takes care to reveal only when it suits her to do so. Likened for years to Marilyn Monroe by any number of film critics and fashion editors, Johansson cleverly plays her as a woman who knows the value of playing dumb. We have yet to see how “Don Jon” plays when it opens theatrically in two weeks’ time, but the Academy could do a lot worse than consider a Best Supporting Actress nod.

“Don Jon” is a rare role that finds the actress — even more so than in “Match Point,” now eight years ago — in full possession of her physicality. It’s that quality, if nothing else within the films themselves, that binds “Don Jon” to “Under the Skin,” Jonathan Glazer’s oblique sci-fi chiller. Johansson’s first excursion into heavy-duty art cinema might also have brought about her most enthralling performance to date: as an alien clueless about all aspects of human behavior save for the jellifying effect (first figuratively, then literally) she has on it, her performance fuses the stillness of her 2003 breakout turns to the brash, steaming sexual weaponry she picked up on later projects.

That this creative high-water mark arrives in the most radically polarizing film she has ever appeared in is all to the good in terms of publicity; super-cool US distributors A24 are sure to play up the film’s cultish potential (and the iconographic role Johansson plays within it) as they did “Spring Breakers” and James Franco earlier this year. On their own, either “Don Jon” or “Under the Skin” would represent a satisfying advance for an actress who has gone too long untested. Taken together — and with her crucial voice work in Spike Jonze’s “Her” set to land somewhere in between — they amount to an exciting mission statement from an actress regaining her capacity to surprise. It’s taken 10 years for her movies to agree, but perhaps Scarlett Johansson was the Next Big Thing all along.

It’s going to be one of those years, a season where so much is at stake that the back-biting begins very, very early. In fact, too early. We saw signs of these behind-the-scenes shenanigans last season when “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Les Misérables” lost their legit Best Picture-contending statuses in pressure-filled PR takedowns. It’s only September and competing consultants and publicists already appear to be trying to influence the media to do their bidding. A few disparaging quotes heard across Toronto…

“Oh, it’s an HBO movie.”

“It’s brutal and tough for Academy members to sit though.”

“The New York branch is going to hate it.”

Oh, my.

Now, this pundit certainly likes to engage in debate and idle gossip (hehe), but people, it’s September. There is no euphoric “Argo,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” “The King’s Speech” or even “The Artist” in the mix yet. Those were legitimate frontrunners when they were being hyped. Right now? We have a number of fantastic films battling for a slot. We may not have a frontrunner until January. Everyone has more than enough time to take down their competitors. Thank the scheduling gods there are few weeks until the New York Film Festival gets underway so the chatter can die down a bit. My lord, if we’re not careful this is going to distract us from the joy of watching “Jackass: Bad Grandpa.”

That being said, another week brings another Contender Countdown, which you can ponder below. Plus: we’ve also got something special for you. Check out HitFix’s brand new ranking poll. You can take all of the Best Picture contenders listed in this article and rank them as you see fit. Let us know what you think!

1. “Gravity”
Still standing on top. Or should that be floating on top?

2. “12 Years A Slave”
The Oscar hyperbole hit new levels after Steve McQueen’s drama screened in Toronto. Fox Searchlight no doubt appreciates the passion from the press, but being in the position of the underdog might actually be more beneficial this year than being the perceived frontrunner.

3. “Lee Daniels’ The Butler”
At this point it’s the closest thing The Weinstein Company has to a sure bet for a Best Picture nod. Who knew?

4. “Captain Phillips”
Needs Academy reaction to validate its candidacy, but everything so far seems to suggest it will fill a slot.

5. “Inside Llewyn Davis”
Full court press may begin a tad earlier than expected with this one. And that starts with the charity concert “Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of Inside Llewyn Davis” on Sept. 29 in New York.

6. “Blue Jasmine”
Slow and steady, but might be a good idea for SPC to make sure that screener is in voters’ hands a few weeks before Thanksgiving.

7. “Dallas Buyers Club”
People loved this movie in Toronto perhaps a bit more than even Focus thought they might. Will get lots of positive media coverage in terms of both awards and the film’s commercial release. Big question remains: What will the Academy think?

8. “Saving Mr. Banks”
Hearing from long lead press they really like it, but in a commercial release or awards way? 

9. “Nebraska”
Tough one. Going to Toronto might have helped keep the momentum up after a stellar Telluride.

10. “All Is Lost”
Excuse the pun, but it just has to make sure it’s not lost among all the other contenders. Borderline, but will have its fans.

Outside looking in:

“American Hustle”
Not done, no one has seen it (sort of), pt. 1

“The Wolf of Wall Street”
Not done, no one has seen it (sort of) pt. 2

“Philomena”
Judi Dench and screenplay seem the best bets for this one.

“Prisoners”
It’s going to open well and make money. Will it still be standing as a contender by November? Not convinced.

“August: Osage County”
I’m not sure how you can hold a gala premiere your film at the Toronto International Film Festival for reviews then change the ending for theatrical release and still be considered a legit best picture nominee. Does not compute.

“Foxcatcher”
We’ll know in November.

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”
We’ll know in October.

“Rush”
Daniel Bruhl and below the line categories all have a shot, but is it really a best picture player? Still not sure.

“Her”
Paging Independent Spirit Awards, paging the Independent Spirit Awards.

“The Book Thief”
Honestly, I’m waiting to be impressed.

“Lone Survivor”
Eh, I dunno. Feels a year late. Maybe a surprise. Maybe not.

Those entering the Dolby Theatre on March 2, 2014 at the 86th annual Academy Awards will pass under the marquee named after a man who changed the art and science of movies, a man whose thumbprint is on the very form itself, a man who passed away earlier today at the age of 80.

Ray Dolby’s work in the audio space, through his patented Dolby noise-reduction system among countless other innovations, transformed audible media. He helped invent video tape recording while working at Ampex Corp. in the 1950s. He founded Dolby Laboratories, which has been at the forefront of the progressive audio experience from day one, most recently developing Dolby 7.1 and Dolby Atmos, the next steps in surround sound technology that has been advanced by the company every step of the way.

Dolby won an Oscar, a Grammy and two Emmys for his engineering feats in the space. He is, in so many words, a titan of the industry, someone whose work has affected you each and every time you settled in at the local multiplex.

“Today we lost a friend, mentor and true visionary,” Dolby President Kevin Yeaman said in a statement. “Ray Dolby founded the company based on a commitment to creating value through innovation and an impassioned belief that if you invested in people and gave them the tools for success they would create great things. Ray”s ideals will continue to be a source of inspiration and motivation for us all.”

Dolby had been living with Alzheimer’s disease in recent years and was diagnosed with acute leukemia in July. He leaves behind a wife, two sons, four grandchildren and an industry that will forever be grateful. He will be missed.

Just three features into her career, Andrea Arnold has established herself as the kind of filmmaker I’ll invest in (with faith if not finance) on pretty much any project she chooses to pursue. “Red Road” and “Fish Tank” were both richly sensual portrayals of modern working-class Britain that defied the Ken Loach-patented model of British social realism; both deservedly earned her Jury Prize wins at Cannes. (Both, moreover, built on the already lofty expectations set by her 2003 short “Wasp,” another work of spiky grace amid the tower blocks. It won her an Oscar, in case you’ve forgotten.)

Then came the leap: 2011’s daringly stripped adaptation of “Wuthering Heights,” a costume drama at once vividly in period and aggressively contemporary. It split critical opinion more than her previous features, but proved emphatically that Andrea Arnold is incapable of making drab heritage cinema.

What next? In my interview with Arnold last year, she guardedly told me she was working on an original screenplay and had no intention of doing any further adaptations. Since then, details of the project have clarified a bit: her first film to be set in the US, “Mag Crew” will focus on teenage magazine sales crews, and is being developed with Focus Features and Film4. Shooting is set to begin next year.

If you’re curious, we’ll probably hear more about it at the New York Film Festival, for which Arnold has just been appointed the inaugural Filmmaker-in-Residence. In the words of the festival, this initiative is designed to “further the goals of filmmakers at an earlier stage in the creative process.” The aim is for the filmmaker to develop a new project via the festival’s range of master classes, mentorships and film programs — a nice idea, and one you’d usually expect to be designed only for less established filmmakers.

Arnold, incidentally, is becoming quite the film festival regular even between films: she served on the Competition jury at Cannes last year, and did the same at the Venice fest just passed. Yes, she had a hand in those surprising Venice awards; she’s also the one who pushed for last year’s unpopular Cannes Best Director win for Carlos Reygadas’ controversial “Post Tenebras Lux.” Put Arnold on a jury and exciting things happen, it seems. Put her behind a camera — same thing.

As it turned out, Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Wind Rises” wasn’t quite the mighty magnum opus we might have hoped from the Japanese animation master’s farewell feature — but at this stage, the man is a victim of his own high bar. It’s still a lovely, distinctive and technically awe-inspiring achievement: the lulls in its biopic narrative pass fairly easily when the visuals are so consistently ravishing.

I would therefore be pretty surprised if, in what has so far been a pretty unremarkable year for the form, Studio Ghibli doesn’t score their third Oscar nod for Best Animated Feature come January. Miyazaki of course won the 2002 award for “Spirited Away,” and was nominated three years later for “Howl’s Moving Castle”; within the animators’ branch, peer admiration for the new film’s dazzling technique, combined with sentiment surrounding his retirement, should translate into votes.

Ghibli and Disney, therefore, are probably making a smart move in giving the film an Oscar-qualifying release in New York and Los Angeles from November 8 to 14 — even if an English-dubbed version of the film won’t be ready in time. This will therefore be Miyazaki’s first film to enter the Oscar race in subtitled, Japanese-language form — though the film is so image-driven, I don’t see that being a significant hurdle.

The film will, however, be dubbed into English in time for its official US release next February, whereupon audiences will have the choice of watching either version. (Incidentally, Disney is releasing it under their Touchstone Pictures banner, which feels appropriate given the film’s more grown-up slant.) It will open in limited release on February 21 and expand the following week — perfectly timed, then, to capitalize on that probable Oscar nod (and to coincide with the last few days of voting). 

In my review of “The Wind Rises” from Venice, I described it as “a work that shows Miyazaki as an artist not just at the very apex of his own creativity, but of the entire animated form. No one in animation — whether hand-drawn, computer-generated or a sleek fusion of the two — is creating canvases quite this epically fluid and color-saturated, yet still alive with witty individual flourishes.”

Do you think “The Wind Rises” can soar in this year’s Oscar race? And which version are you planning to see it in? Tell us in the comments.

You may have heard about Wil Haygood’s 2008 Washington Post article “A Butler Well Served by This Election,” which told the story of Eugene Allen, an African American butler who served 30 years of presidents in the White House, from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan. His story, and that article, became the inspiration for the film “Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” and in some ways, it could be argued as an adapted screenplay.

However, surely sensing that there was leeway, and no doubt taking note of how typically competitive the Best Adapted Screenplay race is this year, The Weinstein Company has kept the rhetoric on “inspired by.” Ergo, the distributor will be angling for Best Original Screenplay consideration on the awards circuit. I called the WGA’s credits department this afternoon, and indeed, the guild classifies the script original as well.

Given the liberties taken with Allen’s story, this isn’t really a surprise. We’ve been running on an adapted assumption around here but there we are. But I’m nevertheless reminded of a somewhat similar situation back in 2005 regarding the screenplay for Stephen Gaghan’s “Syriana.” I remember it well because I broke the story.

In a nutshell, the screenplay for that film was campaigned as adapted from Robert Baer’s book “See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism,” and the guild nominated it as such. It was also nominated for a USC Scripter Award, recognizing adapted screenplays and the subject matter that spawned them. George Clooney went on to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for portraying a Baer-like figure.

The circumstance was unique because the Academy made its decision to classify the screenplay as original in December, yet no one really knew this was the case until ballots went out with reminder sheets featuring “Syriana” in the that category. In the end, the script was in fact nominated for Best Original Screenplay, making it one of few scripts to have ever been nominated in one category by the WGA and another by the Academy.

Will the Academy also consider “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” an original? Well, yeah, probably. It’s a stretch to argue that it’s an adaptation, even if you can buy a deluxe edition of Allen’s story with the film’s key art on the cover. But it’s always worth taking note of these nuances. After all, Stephen Gaghan wasn’t even made aware of the Academy’s decision on his script until a week before the Oscar nominations were announced in January of 2006.

I imagine there will be attention paid to “The Butler” in any case. The film will already be undergoing arbitration to decipher which of the five individuals credited with “produced by” will be eligible if it is nominated for PGA or Best Picture Oscar honors, particularly given that this is a film with a whopping 41 producer credits (associate, executive, co-, etc.) in total.

For now, though, chalk it up as an original screenplay, and one facing a much easier road to a nomination for writer Danny Strong as a result.

From “Forbidden Games” to “Cinema Paradiso,” “Kolya” to “In a Better World,” the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar race has long been friendly to films driven by child protagonists — the more winsome the kid, the better. Last year saw a harder-edged variation on the formula succeed, as Canada’s child-soldier drama “War Witch” scored a nod. This year, however, voters are already spoilt for choice when its comes to determining this year’s semi-annual child’s-eye slot; I’ve already lost count of the number of times I’ve typed “coming of age” during this year’s submission process.

So far, we have Australia’s popular “The Rocket,” about a feisty 10-year-old taking charge of his displaced family; Singaporean critics’ favorite “Ilo Ilo,” about a young boy’s bond with his nanny; Georgia’s “In Bloom,” about the friendship between two pubescent girls; Hungary’s “The Notebook,” which combines a brotherly survival tale with Holocaust drama; and South Korea’s self-explanatory “Juvenile Offender.” Perhaps there are more: I haven’t studied every synopsis yet.

Joining this accidentally themed group is Latvia’s entry “Mother, I Love You.” Janis Nords’ film didn’t really cross my radar at the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix from the youth-focused Kplusjury in the Generation sidebar. I did, however, take notice when it won the Best Narrative Film award at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June — suggesting that it could well take off with the Academy crowd.   

The story of a 12-year-old boy, the son of a single mother,  who finds himself in a moral quandary after a simple lie spirals out of control, the film has been warmly reviewed on the festival circuit: Hollywood Reporter critic Neil Young singled out its “excellent” young lead, and remarked that this “tale of a wayward 12-year-old’s painful transition toward maturity treads familiar turf with disarming confidence.” Could be one to watch, though Latvia has no record of success in this category.

Also joining the foreign-language race today (though not with a child-based film) is Morocco, whose entry dates back to last year’s Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. (It won the Francois Chalais Award there, and went on to take Best Director at the Seattle Film Festival.) I didn’t see “God’s Horses” there, and confess that I have limited memory of it at all, but responses were generally positive to this topical drama about the recruitment and training of terrorists in Moroccan slums, praised by the Reporter’s Deborah Young for its “brutal poetry.” Sounds a mite too hard-edged for the general votership, though it could be something that appeals to the executive committee. Like Latvia, Morocco has yet to crack a nomination in this category, though they earned a surprise shortlist spot two years ago for “Omar Killed Me.”

Finally, some news in the category that’s grabbing a few undeserved headlines. We don’t yet know what film Spain are going  to choose, but we do know that it’s not going to be the work of previous category winner Pedro Almodovar, as the country announced a shortlist of four comparatively low-profile works: “Cannibal,” “Family United,” “15 Years + 1 Day” and “Scorpion in Love.” Once more, there’s talk of a “snub” for Almodovar, who hasn’t been selected by his country since 2006’s “Volver” — but with his limp sex farce “I’m So Excited!” having emerged as his most tepidly reviewed film in decades, why would, or indeed should, his country submit his work? Especially when one of the shortlisted options is — whaddaya know? — a coming-of-age story.

Check out the ongoing submissions list here. 

TORONTO – Let’s just call it as it is: Jay Baruchel is a freakin’ cool dude. The self-described movie nerd took the train into Toronto Tuesday to help promote “The Art of the Steal,” a new heist comedy that premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. And, thankfully, the 31-year-old Montreal resident is still as blunt and friendly as ever when talking to the press.

Written and directed by Jonathan Sobol (“A Beginner’s Guide to Endings”), “Steal” features an impressive cast including Baruchel, Kurt Russell, Matt Dillon, underrated comedy chameleon Chris Diamantopoulos, Jason Jones (“The Daily Show”), Katheryn Winnick and the legendary Terrence Stamp. It’s familiar territory, but Sobol has a quick wit as a screenwriter and knows how to put together a Hollywood studio-looking production. RADiUS-TWC has rights to the picture in the United States and it’s a film you’ll likely catch on a plane or on cable over the next year or two and go, “Hey, that was actually pretty good.”

Baruchel, on the other hand, has been quite busy on his own. “This is the End” turned out to be one of the surprise smash hits of the summer, he appears alongside another group of well-respected actors in the new “Robocop” remake, he’ll voice Hiccup once more in “How To Train Your Dragon 2” (he says it doesn’t disappoint) and, speaking of sequels, he revealed in our interview that he’s just turned in the script for the highly anticipated follow-up to “Goon.” Wait, you don’t know about “Goon?” Well, prepare to become informed during this highly entertaining chat with Baruchel that even touches on the always-sensitive topic of the City of Angels and much, much more.

*****

Q: So, I actually just finished watching the movie on a screener and it was very fun.

Jay Baruchel: Oh, cool.

Q: I’m assuming Jonathan sent you the script to try and get you on board?

Yeah. I mean I got sent the script and then I was in Italy with my ex and she was working and I did a Skype call with Jonathan. I was miserable in Rome. I actually fucking hate it there. I was like so happy to hear a Canadian voice and was just happy to be able to talk hockey in the middle of fucking 40°C Roman heat. And so yeah, I just kind of dug him, man. He’s really a lovely guy and I just loved his ideas and kind of what he was interested in and, you know, what types of movies he wanted to make and then this one. It was a fun part and it was in Toronto. It was a five-hour train ride away from where I live and I would get to be with some pretty fucking cool people. It was very, very easy; I was never on the fence.

Q: So, really quickly, you don’t like Italy? You don’t like Rome?

Well, I shouldn’t say I don’t like Italy. I don’t like Rome. At least I don’t like Rome in August.

Q: Okay. Have you been to France and Spain?

I’ve been to Spain and France yeah.

Q: Which do you like better?

Well, Barcelona is one of the world’s great towns.

Q: Yes!

I could be there for months. I love that. See, I’ve been there in the summer and had no problem. I fucking love it there.

Q: I love Barcelona. I love Spain. I could move there in a second.

Yeah, they’re good people.

Q: You’d have to pay me to move to France.

Yeah. You and me both, bud. I’m with you. No, I’m with you.

Q: So, back to the movie. The cast is pretty great.

Agreed.

Q: Any improv on this or is the script just so tight that you guys couldn’t do it?

Well, the script is incredibly mathematic, right? There’s a lot of moving parts and so it’s a very, very specific, measured thing. That being said, within that context, Jonathan was always like, if we have a sexier, more interesting, more direct way of doing anything, he gave us the freedom to kind of play around. And I think a large part of that, why he was okay with us doing that, was all of Kurt’s input throughout that movie. All the questions he asks Jonathan were about the script and the story and the movie as a work. It was not about really, “How should I play this?” or “How much of me are you seeing?” It was always like, “OK, but Jonathan, we established this three scenes ago. So that means we need to track this, this and that.” Kurt was reading the script I think almost every night.

And so it’s kind of like systemic. So when a guy like that gives that much of a shit, it’s incredibly inspirational. And so like there was a lot of eyes on the script to make sure that it all made sense. And so Jonathan was like, “All right, cool boys. You can try to, like, mess around a bit, too.”

Q: And what was it like working with Kurt? Had you met him before?

Oh, never. He’s been one of my favorite actors since I was a kid. And he’s been in so many of my literally favorite top 10 all-time movies. I never know when I work with guys that established, and who have been around as long as he has, if they’re going to be interested and cool with me picking their brain and asking them shit. He couldn’t have been any more like a making-of documentary in a DVD if he tried. It was the fucking coolest. Like I got super interesting [stuff]. Everything from like candid gossip to super technical [details] to “how we did that shot” or “who was supposed to be there that day and wasn’t.” So I just got film journal anecdotes about “Tombstone,” about “John Carpenter’s The Thing,” about “Big Trouble in Little China,” “Tango and Cash.” Oh my God, man, it was like really the fucking coolest.

I think, you know, the more he talked to me the more he saw that I wasn’t bullshitting. Like I have seen “The Thing” and “Big Trouble” and “Tombstone” easily a dozen times apiece. And so I would be able to ask, “What about this moment, this line of dialogue?” And it was just like I got to nerd out and pick the brain of one of the great actors of my life, of my time.

Q: Have you had that chance on any other film?

Yeah. I’ve been lucky. Not everybody was super interested in talking about that stuff. And that’s kind of like, not a sad thing, but it’s just a bit of a downer, you know? But I got to work on the remake of “Robocop” with Michael Keaton and Gary Oldman. And pretty much all my scenes were with Keaton. Oldman was in most of ’em and Jennifer Ehle and Marianne Jean-Baptiste. And so here I am with Commissioner Gordon and Batman from two different generations together and I was there privy to the moment where that penny dropped and they realized that. It was like, “Wait a second, you’re in the new one? Who you playing, Gordon?” “Yeah, Batman.” It was like, “Oh my God!” But then to hear production stories about “The Dream Team,” about “Johnny Dangerously” and fucking “Batman,” “Beetlejuice,” I mean — and then from Oldman I got to pick his brain about “State of Grace,” about “The Professional,” the Nolan Batmans. And that’s the thing, it’s like it’s like a bit of an agreement. I think they’re fine talking about it if I’m actually interested. And they saw that I am [really] a movie nerd. That’s the one thing I’ll be super fucking arrogant about and say I know my shit. And so when they talk to me they can see that. And it was just like it’s a movie nerd’s dream to get to be with fucking Keaton and Oldman every day.

Q: Since you proclaim yourself a movie nerd, should we take that as a stamp of approval that before you made “Robocop,” you thought it would be good?

Well, yeah.

Q: Because I was at Comic-Con this summer and they showed the footage for the first time. And a lot of us went in very skeptical.

I know, yeah, as well you should, as well you should.

Q: And I was like, “Huh. This looks a lot better than I thought it would.”

Yeah. Because it’s all pros and cons when you have an opportunity like this. And I had to weigh, sort of, getting the chance to be alongside Oldman and Keaton, five-hour train ride away from where I live every day [and] working with a director who I was a fan of before. I was a fan of José years before this movie ever came about because I had sought out “Elite Squad” and “Elite Squad 2.” And I love “City of God.” He was a guy who I’d been checking myself as a film fan. And so when they said he’s directing, he’s finally doing a movie in English and it’s with these guys and it’s a remake of “Robocop” and it’s in Toronto, like it was pretty obvious to me that I had to do it.

Q: You keep saying the five hours from Toronto.

I live in Montreal.

Q: Right, but you’re not like taking the train every morning?

Not every morning, no. But when I come here I take the train usually. I took the train in yesterday.

Q: But, you’re not going home like every night are you?

Fuck no. I stay here. [Laughs.]

Q: Like you love your home so much you…

No, I’ll stay here when I’m shooting but I just mean like as opposed to fucking having to leave the continent or something or, you know, or across the continent even.

Q: Well, that’s my next question. “This Is the End.” Great movie. You’re playing a version of yourself that most people think you are really like in person. And that raise the question, honestly: do you really hate L.A. that much?

I can’t – I don’t like shitting on people’s homes.

Q: No, no, it’s okay. I had to ask. [Laughs.]

It’s just like cup of tea, right? And you were just talking about what places we don’t, you know, you’d have to be paid to be in France. But for some people it’s the greatest place on Earth. L.A.’s just not for me. It never has been. Never once did I have that moment where I am like, “I’m home.” I was always fucking square peg there. There’s a lot about it that I like because it’s a city of square pegs and it’s a city where no one gives a shit what you look like because everyone’s so high on themselves. So, like, you can walk around in fucking athletic gray sweatpants and no one gives a shit. And that’s nice and that’s liberating and I have a lot of friends there and there’s, like, some great restaurants, but it’s just not my fucking city. It never felt like it. And unfortunately, when I’m there, I am exposed to a very narrow aspect of Los Angeles. Like I’m not working at Northrop Grumman or something like that. So I’m seeing a part of L.A. that fucking grates on me.

Q: But don’t you have friends who say, “Oh, but if you lived in this part of town or if you…”

Oh, a ton. Constantly. Since I’m 18. And I tried and I listen to them and I’ve given them the fucking chance. ‘Cause honestly…

Q: But the Kings, the Kings are doing, I mean there’s hockey…

Honest to God, when the nicest thing people say to me is, “You find something you like.” I’m like “Yeah, OK, fine.” I imagine that same truth would apply to Kandahar. I’m sure if I was there long enough I’d find something I like. Like that’s, you know, fuck sakes that’s…

Q: Pittsburgh. I’m sure I’d find something I love too.

By the way, Pittsburgh, if the film industry was based in Pittsburgh, “This Is the End” would be a completely different movie because I adore that town.

Q: All right, so it’s your cup of tea.

That’s all it is man. It’s just taste, yeah.

Q: Now I totally get it. Speaking of hockey, let’s talk “Goon.” Is there a sequel coming?

We’re literally writing it right now. We hand it in in about a week, week-and-a-half, sometime in the next week.

Q: And the idea is to shoot in the Winter or next?

Hopefully. Not this year.

Q: You have to do it off-season, right?

It would be next year. Ideally we would shoot it like around now-ish so we would be able to get some NHLers before they go back to work and to do some cool parts, little cameos. But we also, it can’t be in the middle of summer because…

Q: It’s too hot.

Yeah and we have exteriors. But ideally we would get it going for next year, yeah

Q: You’re probably like, “I hate to hear this,” but I heard it was good, but I’m a basketball guy, I’m not a hockey guy. And I finally saw it on a plane and I was like, “It’s great.” I thought it was awesome.

Thanks.

Q: I know that there’s a lot of people who are fans of it. Do you find when you come to the States or go outside Canada that people are discovering it in different ways?

Well, up here, when we opened up here, we were number one. We beat the American pictures, which never happens. A Canadian-English movie never beats an American movie. And so we were number one, so that was massive. Up here it’s just like it’s Canada’s movie and they’ve taken ownership of it. I won’t say it’s an institution but it’s a fucking movie people give a shit about. Down in the States it’s either hockey fans, who are already the black sheep of American sports, the fourth-tier fans. So they feel sort of like their own kind of – they wear that as a badge of honor that they don’t watch sports.

Q: Oh, no. Soccer fans are worse now.

Oh, without a doubt.

Q: In the U.S. they’re much worse.

Oh no, I know, the Seattle Sounders and the Houston guys. Without a doubt, but, you know, when the movie came — and it wasn’t well-publicized in the States and so that added to the sort of, like, “Fuck.” And so hockey fans in America love it as much as Canadians do. The average American reaction is akin to yours of people being like, “It was actually good.” People thinking that it was going to be two hours of us filming a pile of dog shit and people being surprised that it had a merit. [Laughs]

Q: It’s more like you see so many sports movie and you’re like…

Well, yeah. I would go one further. Most movies are terrible. Period. Most of anything is terrible. Most music is terrible. Most food is terrible. There is a slim minority of anything that’s really good in anything, I think.

Q: That’s true.

And I didn’t make our trailer. But that’s none of my goddamn business. They pick how they want to sell it and they sell the sizzle not the steak, whatever. The problem with that is, like, so many people walk out of it being like, “I didn’t expect to give a shit. I didn’t expect to cry.” And I have people crying for different reasons. Like, I have people equal parts telling me that they cried. I have really fucking hard men telling me that they cried when Doug stands up at the end after he breaks his fucking ankle and he keeps fighting. And then I have girls, you know, crying for some of the more lovey stuff. And so I just think more than anything we ninja’d in some sort of substance and merit and I think, like, it’s been a — I did not expect to like that movie. There was a friend of mine at our L.A. screening who said, “I have no notes.”

Q: What a friend! “I have no notes.” I think a lot of it is “Goon” is a term most Americans don’t know, but when they watched it they went, “Oh, it’s Bill Laimbeer. It’s that guy.”

Yeah, because sports are universal and those characters are universal.

Q: Now that you’ve talked about this massive fanbase for the original how much pressure is there for you to deliver for the sequel?

Oh, so much more. So much more. The first one we had a pressure on ourselves because we gave ourselves a pretty lofty goal of what we wanted this movie to be, what we wanted it to be in terms of, like, cultural ramifications. We wanted [it to be a hockey] “Hoosiers.” We wanted to give Canadians the movie that we thought they’d been wanting for a while. And it was proof positive and we can still, at 85 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and we won the Golden Box Office Award here for the highest grossing comedy film last year. All that shit, so – and it’s becoming referenced. People are quoting it; hockey players are quoting it in locker rooms and wearing gear and shit. So it’s, like, becoming a thing. And it means a lot to a lot of people. So that means that one misstep and we all button the gate and undo all that goodwill. So, like, there’s a degree of importance to it.

“The Art of the Steal” should be released in the U.S. sometime in 2014.

Harvey Weinstein is busy as ever this festival season. After picking up “Tracks” during Telluride/Venice and “Can a Song Save Your Life?” at Toronto, he’s landed two more distribution deals up north as the festival begins to draw to a close.

The first is “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: His/Hers” from director Ned Benson with James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain. The film tells the story of a New York couple’s relationship from the point of view of both the husband and the wife separately, hence the subtitle.

Also today, Weinstein locked up a $2 million deal for Jonathan Teplitzky’s “The Railway Man,” with Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman. You might recall it was on our recent list of potential awards contenders that were lacking distribution. Funny that “Tracks,” too, was on that list. Does Harvey see Oscar prospects in these films? Possibly. As ever, he loads up on product and susses out what sticks and what doesn’t.

“The Railway Man” could certainly stick. Firth and Kidman (who also stars in The Weinstein Company’s “Grace of Monaco,” due out later this year) make for a compelling combination on screen. The true story of a British Army officer who is tormented at a Japanese POW camp and, decades later, confronts the Japanese interpreter responsible for the brutality, might pop up in the discussion next year. I’m not so sure about “Tracks,” though (maybe some talk for Mia Wasikowska but little else).

“Can a Song Save Your Life?” was a huge Toronto hit and “Eleanor Rigby” has its fans, too. With “August: Osage County” not exactly blowing up everyone’s skirt, you’d almost wonder if Weinstein would try and launch one of these acquisitions this year, but all will be held for 2014. He has plenty on his slate this year, though none of it has a sure path to Oscar recognition at the moment.

There are still four days left at Toronto. We’ll bring you whatever news might come as it draws to a close.

I remember a little script on the Black List called “The F Word.” Shows how much I’ve been paying attention that I didn’t know it was being made, let alone ready to show in Toronto. So it was, so it is and so it’s been acquired, by CBS Films.

I enjoyed reading through Greg Ellwood’s interview with Daniel Radcliffe from the fest, which featured talk about “Kill Your Darlings” (still on the festival circuit after bowing at Sundance), “Horns” and “The F-Word.” You get a real sense of a young man who’s grown up in the business and learned, quickly and early, not just how to navigate it but how to figure out what he wants out of this career. Sharp fella.

“I think I’ve got it in the back of my head somewhere that it might have come about because of [my hosting] ‘Saturday Night Live,'” Radcliffe told us about the film. “I’m not sure but I have a feeling that…Michael Dowse might have seen me do that and thought, ‘Oh, he can do some comedy. I wonder if he’d be more interested to explore that as well?’ It’s interesting ’cause literally every job I’ve got for the past few years has been as a result of somebody seeing me do like ‘Equus’ or one of the things that, you know…you wouldn’t expect.”

I haven’t seen “The F Word” but I’m told it’s very “‘500 Days of Summer’ in Toronto,” making its world premiere north of the border all the more apt. There are other comparisons, too, I suppose. “This is a romantic comedy for a new generation that calls to mind classics like ‘Say Anything’ and ‘When Harry Met Sally,'” CBS Films Co-President Wolfgang Hammer said via press release.

Zoe Kazan, Adam Driver, Rafe Spall, Megan Park and Mackenzie Davis also star. Here’s the official synopsis:

“The F Word” is the story of medical school dropout Wallace (Daniel Radcliffe), a hopeless romantic who”s been repeatedly burned by bad relationships. Deciding to put his life on hold, Wallace strikes up a friendship with animator Chantry (Zoe Kazan) who lives with her boyfriend Ben (Rafe Spall). Wallace and Chantry click immediately, becoming best friends; but with the chemistry between them, can that last?

No release date has been set as of yet.

More as it happens from Toronto right here at HitFix.

Last year, I had the great pleasure of attending the European Film Awards — the continent’s answer to the Oscars — in Malta. As predicted by pretty much everyone, Michael Haneke’s “Amour” cleaned up that night — much as it did almost every Best Foreign Language Film prize on the awards circuit across the pond. This year, it seems a much more competitive field, as indicated by the longlist of 46 films for this year’s EFAs.

Unveiled by the European Film Academy, the list is the combined result of national committee selection and outside adjudication: the 20 countries with the most EFA members each put forward one film to represent them, while a panel of experts, including festival programmers and critics, select the remain entries. From this list, the EFA’s 2,900 voting members will determine the nominees, which will be announced on November 9.

Looking down the list, it’s hard to identify a potential sweeper in the “Amour” vein, though plenty of worthy titles catch the eye. A film one might have assumed would be a slam-dunk for EFA glory — France’s Palme d’Or winner “Blue is the Warmest Color” — is absent from the list, ineligible by virtue of its late domestic release date. (Same deal with the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.) It’ll surely be a robust presence in next year’s awards.

Meanwhile, the only two French productions on the list (not counting the country’s participation in numerous international co-productions) are Alain Guiraudie’s “Stranger by the Lake” and Francois Ozon’s “In the House.” I doubt the French selection committee would be so naively adventurous as to select Guiraudie’s sexually explicit cruising-ground thriller to the Academy, so is this a sign that Ozon’s deliciously black-hearted comedy of tale-telling could be the country’s eventual Oscar entry? It might just be. (If you’re wondering Asghar Farhadi’s “The Past” is absent from the list, that’s because eligibility is limited to films by European directors.)

A number of the shortlisted films are already in this year’s foreign-language Oscar race, including Romania’s “Child’s Pose” (a sure bet to be EFA-nominated for its star Luminita Gheorghiu, at the very least), Bulgaria’s “The Color of the Chameleon,” Sweden’s “Eat Sleep Die,” Greece’s “Boy Eating the Bird’s Food,” Serbia’s “Circles” and Georgia’s “In Bloom.” Also in the running are Spain’s “Blancanieves,” Iceland’s “The Deep,” Israel’s “Fill the Void,” Norway’s “Kon-Tiki” and Afghanistan’s “The Patience Stone” (here by virtue of its European co-production status), all submissions for last year’s Oscar.

Due to the continent-spanning remit of the awards, eligibility dates for the EFAs can be a bit elastic, meaning a number of what we might see as 2012 films are up for the awards this year — among them such high-profile titles as Joe Wright’s “Anna Karenina” (sure to feature in the technical races) and Juan Antonio Bayona’s “The Impossible.” The latter selection gives Hollywood a degree of rooting interest in the nominations, as does the unexpected inclusion of Nicolas Winding Refn’s predominantly Danish production “Only God Forgives.” The latter seems something of a long shot, though I’m all for any attempt to get Ryan Gosling to attend the December 7 ceremony in Berlin.

Meanwhile, with the caveat that there’s plenty here I haven’t seen, the six titles I’d most like to see up for the Best European Film award are: “Berberian Sound Studio” (UK), “Betrayal” (Russia), “Child’s Pose” (Romania), “A Hijacking” (Denmark), “In the House” (France) and “The Selfish Giant” (UK). Oh, go on, throw in Ireland’s “What Richard Did” as a seventh nominee. I won’t complain.

The full longlist is on the next page. What are you rooting for?    

“Anna Karenina” (UK)

“Araf: Somewhere in Between” (Turkey/France/Germany)

“Berberian Sound Studio” (UK)

“The Best Offer” (Italy)

“Betrayal” (Russia)

“Blancanieves” (Spain/France)

“Block 12” (Greece/Cyprus)

“Borgman” (The Netherlands/Belgium/Denmark)

“Boy Eating the Bird’s Food” (Greece)

“The Broken Circle Breakdown” (Belgium)

“Burning Bush” (Czech Republic)

“Child’s Pose” (Romania)

“Circles” (Serbia/Germany/France/Croatia/Slovenia)

“The Color of the Chameleon” (Bulgaria)

“The Congress” (Israel/Germany/Poland/Luxembourg/France/Belgium)

“Crossing Boundaries” (Austria)

“The Deep” (Iceland/Norway)

“Eat Sleep Die” (Sweden)

“8-Ball” (Finland)

“An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker” (Bosnia and Herzegovina/France/Slovenia)

“The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas” (Greece)

“Fill the Void” (Israel)

“The Great Beauty” (Italy)

“Hannah Arendt” (Germany/Luxembourg/France/Israel)

“A Hijacking” (Denmark)

“I Belong” (Norway)

“Imagine” (Poland/France/Portugal)

“The Impossible” (Spain)

“I’m So Excited!” (Spain)

“In Bloom” (Georgia/Germany/France)

“In the House” (France)

“In the Name Of…” (Poland)

“Kon-Tiki” (Norway)

“The Last Sentence” (Sweden)

“A Long and Happy Life” (Russia)

“My Dog Killer” (Slovakia/Czech Republic)

“Oh Boy!” (Germany)

“Only God Forgives” (Denmark/France)

“Paradise: Faith” (Austria/Germany/France)

“The Patience Stone (France/Germany/Afghanistan)

“The Priest’s Children” (Croatia/Serbia)

“Rosie” (Switzerland)

“The Selfish Giant” (UK)

“A Strange Course of Events” (Israel/France)

“Stranger by the Lake” (France)

“What Richard Did” (Ireland)

TORONTO – Things are going well for Daniel Radcliffe.

It isn’t easy transitioning from playing one of the most iconic figures in recent literary and cinematic history for over half your life to seemingly less magical roles. Or, perhaps that should be edited to note the transition is about an industry and not the actor himself. Because, as you’ll learn, even Radcliffe has had to fight for roles in independent films you’d assume would kill to have someone with his notoriety on board. 2013, however, has seen the fruits of his labors. In January, he received strong reviews for his portrayal of Allen Ginsberg in the period drama “Kill Your Darlings.” Sony Classics acquired the picture and it screened at the Venice Film Festival last week. It plays the Toronto International Film Festival this evening.

Radcliffe has also had two other films premiere at Toronto with strong reviews: “Horns” and “The F Word.” CBS Films appears close to picking up the latter and it seems inevitable that the former finds a home as well. Good times for the young Brit, and a perfect time to sit down for a chat.

Speaking about all three projects during an interview Monday, Radcliffe waxed on his fear of being told he won’t be allowed to act again, finding his projects, the inherent difficulties of making “Darlings” on a now infamously small budget and much more. Oh, and by the way, he’s the one who brought up Amanda Bynes…

*****

Q: Your director (John Krodikas) was a first time filmmaker who took years trying to get “Kill Your Darlings” off the ground. How did he convince you to jump on board?

Daniel Radcliffe: Well, that’s the thing. I mean there wasn’t much convincing needed to be done. I mean the script that he and Austin [Bunn] wrote was so good. I mean you mustn’t underestimate the power of a good script to an actor because we read so much crap. You read a lot that’s not good. And so when you read something that is just smart and funny and true and well-crafted in terms of the structure of the story…And like every scene, every scene in “Kill Your Darlings” teaches you something about one of the characters. There is no scene in the film that doesn’t move along at least one character story at least somewhat. And that’s I think the mark of a really good script, where the story’s being told constantly rather than in chunks of exposition. And so, you know, that was just so impressive. And I leapt at the chance. And then when you meet John, have you met John?

Q: Yeah.

Well, then you know. He’s very charismatic and very charming and he’s not somebody who you doubt. I have complete faith. When he talks to you about his film and he has such confidence in his vision for the film and he knew absolutely the type of film he wanted to make, he knew what all these characters were going through, you know? I feel like I’ve been presented evidence that he was gonna be fantastic, and he was. He’s become a very good friend and somebody I have huge amounts of respect for as a professional as well as a person.

Q: You mentioned about all the crap scripts you get. How many scripts do you actually read a week? Five? 10?

Not anymore. I used to read probably a lot more than I do now. It’s a process. You know, after coming out of “Potter,” my agent sent me a lot more scripts because they wanted, I think, to find out what kind of things I wanted to do, what my taste was. And then as that developed and they got a sense of that more, now they don’t send me the ones that they know, “Oh, he’s never going to go for that.” So, you know, I can’t read everything I get sent, but I read, you know, a lot of it. I mean I got lucky because John Krokidas came and saw “Equus” in New York. And that was really, you know, as far as I’m concerned, that was what got me this part. That was what got me in the room for it.

Q: Well, what about your other films here at the festival: “Horns” and “The F Word?” If you hadn’t made “Kill Your Darlings” would you not have gotten them? Or had you already shot those and worked on those before?

You know what, no. “Horns” I had to really sort of fight for I think a little bit because there were — I think at the time that they were casting it, possibly [director Alexandre Aja] had originally thought of somebody slightly older for Ig. And somebody more closer to probably Alex’s age. He’s only 30 or 31. But the late ’20s, I think, was how they were thinking originally. So, I think I had to convince Alex a little bit that I had the maturity and that I could play that as well. But also I went into that meeting and I happened to have a little bit of an obsession with the way the devil is portrayed in the popular culture. And “The Master and Margarita” is one of my favorite books and I spent a lot of time reading, or having bits of “Paradise Lost” explained to me at school. The Devil’s kind of a great character. Traditionally he’s a much more interesting character than anybody else in the Bible. You know, Milton wrote “Paradise Lost” and he made [such a different] Devil. That’s sort of where the idea of this kind of very charismatic Devil sort of initiated from. But then he had to write “Paradise Regained” ’cause he was so upset by himself at how appealing he had made the Devil. And, you know, and so in that sense I was able to go in and talk a lot about the script and about themes and about things like that that I was really into.

And with “The F Word,” I think I’ve got it in the back of my head somewhere that it might have come about because of [my hosting] “Saturday Night Live.” I’m not sure but I have a feeling that that’s where maybe like Michael Dowse might have seen me do that and thought, “Oh, he can do some comedy. I wonder if he’d be more interested to explore that as well?” It’s interesting ’cause literally every job I’ve got for the past few years has been as a result of somebody seeing me do like “Equus” or one of the things that, you know…

Q: That you wouldn’t expect.

…that you wouldn’t expect. And, in retrospect, “Equus” was a brilliant decision. Not just for me to make at the time so that I got better as an actor, which I did because I learned so much from it, but actually just as a statement of intent about what I want my career to be. I think it made everyone sit up and take note and go, “Oh, you know, he might do this. He might do ‘Kill Your Darlings.'” Because there’s some people that would’ve probably said, “Oh, this guy’s coming off a big franchise. He’ll never want to do this.” But I think doing stuff like “Equus” showed people that I was actually serious about it and that I was more about script than I was about money or anything else like that.

Q: It’s been nine months since “Kill Your Darlings” premiered at Sundance. And the festival is always full of casting directors, producers and directors. Did the movie’s response in Park City provide you with offers you hadn’t gotten before?

I’m definitely being talked about in a different way, I think, now, and that’s really exciting for me. But yeah, there have been offers of lots of different stuff since Sundance, lots of sort of very intense stuff. A couple of other gay characters. [Laughs.] But, you know, yeah, it’s been great. I think once these films start coming out that’s the next step. But since finishing “Potter” I’ve been thrilled with the great variety of scripts that I’ve been getting and the fact that they’re all totally different and I’m very pleased by that because I think it means that people are sort of getting the message that I want to do diverse things.

Q: I actually spoke to John at Sundance and we had this long, like, 30-minute conversation about “Darlings.” And, you’re right, his energy is just like, boom! He was talking about the fact that he had shot this in 27 days or so, sort of guerrilla style, which is very hard for a period piece. In theory, I’m still confused on how that actually happened.

So are we.

Q: I don’t think you’d made a movie like this beforehand. Even though you trusted John and the movie had a great cast, were there moments where you were like, “Is this gonna actually happen? Did you ever doubt, like, “Is this gonna come together?”

Not about the film as a whole, more about certain scenes. There’s one scene in the film that I won’t say the scene because if you’re looking for it you can see it. But if you don’t look for it you won’t see it. But there’s one scene in the film, which we started shooting at 10:00 PM at night in pitch black and finished shooting at 6:00 AM in the morning in broad daylight. And we definitely walked away from that day going, “How the fuck will that scene ever work?” And it does.

Q: They just cut it around it?

They cut around it, they graded it, they did all kinds of stuff. They were very clever and our DP is a fucking genius. Frankly Reed Morano deserves a shout-out for that scene alone. I’m not gonna tell ’em which one it is Reed, don’t worry. I’m saying that to Reed ’cause if she’s reading this she’ll be, “Don’t fucking tell ’em which one it is, Dan!” It’s more like where if John comes in saying, “OK, we need a close shot, we need the close shot, we need the close shot.” And somebody says, “We can’t. We have to move on.” Then as an actor you leave set going, “How are we gonna cut it together? We didn’t get the close shot,” you know? “We can’t use all that one take.” So there’s stuff like that, but ultimately those things can always be fixed; if you have a clever enough director and a clever enough editor and a clever enough DP, you can always fix that stuff.

Q: Well, “Horns” and “The F Word” were also low-budget films as well. Did you have any…

You can’t even compare the budget “Horns” has to “Kill Your Darlings.” “Horns” has so much more substantial budget than “Kill Your Darlings.” Yeah, like almost ten times the budget.

Q: Oh wow. OK.

You got to bear in mind like “Kill Your Darlings” had a very, very low budget.

Q: I think it’s somewhat o fa secret how low a budget it was.

Yeah. I used to say [what it was], and then somebody said to me, “Dan, could you stop saying how low our film costs?” In fact, it was John came up to me and said, “Dan, could you stop telling people how little I made this film for because then they’ll always expect me to make it for that much.” And he’s right, so I have.

Q: Sure, but “The F Word” is an indie romantic comedy. I’m guessing it did not cost that much.

No, no, no, no.

Q: Are there moments on those films where you’ve been sort of like, “How are we gonna pulls this off?”

The only difference is like sometimes I think I sound like a spoiled actor. The example I use from “Kill Your Darlings” is that we were scouting locations one day around New York and John said to our producer, “Oh, that’s great ’cause that’s the day we’ll have the crane.” And I just turned around to him and I stopped myself because the question I was about to ask was, “Will we not have the crane every day?” On “Potter,” we just had two crane cameras just there, lying around. Even if we weren’t using ’em we just have ’em. ‘Cause that’s the money, the difference in studio money. On an independent film you rent a crane camera for one day and you get all your crane shots.

Q: You get the lights for that day.

Yeah, exactly. I mean I think if you were talking to an actor that maybe didn’t prepare in the way I do, there might be some differences, because like it’s definitely a jump. You’re going from shooting maybe an eighth of a page a day on “Potter” to shooting nine pages a day. And I imagine that would be a job for some people. But I’ve kind of found that I’ve thrived in it. I think all that money and time buy you is the luxury of indecision.

Q: Well, what’s really interesting is, no joke, an hour before this I spoke to one of your contemporaries who also grew up on set, Dakota Fanning.

Oh right, OK.

Q: And one of the things that she talks about is that she just loves acting so much that she doesn’t really – I mean she cares about the final product, but not that much. I mean she cares about it and she’s glad people like it but the experience for her is actually…

Yeah, doing it.

Q: Is that the same for you?

Yeah, that’s why you do it. You do it to be on set. I don’t do it so I can watch myself back in a movie. I do it so I have a great time on set. And I think the thing that so many people often ask me, like, “What drives me?” And I think frankly there is some very irrational but very real thought in my mind that one day some guy’s gonna appear out of nowhere and say, “You can never work on a film again.” And that would fucking break me. I wouldn’t know what to do with my life. I’ve grown up on film sets since I was nine. Dakota Fanning probably about the same age, probably even younger, actually.

Q: Six, I believe.

Six, Jesus Christ. But probably, we literally almost probably started at the same time. In fact we did start at the same time because we both appeared…

Q: Well, she’s 19, how old are you again?

I’m 24. But she and I, if I’m right in saying, were both picked in Variety’s 10 kids to watch [or something like that] in 2001, which I still have it framed. My mom and dad still have it framed in their bathroom so that’s why I remember it. And I remember there’s definitely me and Dakota Fanning. I believe possibly Jonathan Lipnicki and Haley Joel Osment and Amanda Bynes.

Q: Oh wow.

I can’t remember who else was up there, but so far me and Dakota are doing well. It’s good.

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

I honestly can’t wait to talk to Matthew McConaughey again this year. We sat down at Sundance to discuss Jeff Nichols’ “Mud” in some detail, but I’m ready to really dig in on what has driven the actor to such a profound turnaround in his career. It’s been covered in fits and starts and superficial flourishes by the media, but I’m ready to get serious. It’s fascinating to me.

We’ve been keyed into the “McConaissance,” as it were, for quite some time. Over a year ago we were pondering 2012 as a watershed year for the actor, noting the kinds of talent he was working with: Nichols on “Mud” (which premiered at Cannes in 2012), William Friedkin on “Killer Joe,” Steve Soderbergh on “Magic Mike,” Lee Daniels on “The Paperboy,” Richard Linklater on “Bernie,” etc. When you’re trying to turn your career around, the first thing you do is sign up to work with a different breed of filmmaker.

This year, “Mud” has finally arrived and become one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year. McConaughey has landed the lead role in Christopher Nolan’s next big blockbuster, “Interstellar.” Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” is still to come, the trailer for HBO’s “True Detective” promises an intriguing transition to television for the actor and, oh, that Oscar buzz we were expecting to accompany his performance in Jean-Marc Vallée’s “Dallas Buyers Club?” It’s here.

To start, this film is wonderful. The script carves a fascinating portrait of a character who experiences a profound emotional and spiritual arc. The filmmaking is crisp and mostly stripped down but has an identity, a vision and a voice. The editing deserves commendation for how swiftly it tells the tale, gliding in and out of scenes with no fat, coming in late, leaving early: textbook. And the performances across the ensemble deliver, particularly in the case of Jared Leto — broad at first but ultimately heartbreaking — and, of course, McConaughey.

All eyes have been on this performance for obvious reasons. We could see the performance at work even when McConaughey wasn’t on set; he dropped a lot of weight, visible when he was making the press rounds for “Magic Mike” last year. But now that the film has landed at the Toronto Film Festival, we’re really able to see if it delivers, if it was all build-up and no pay-off. But let me just say, for my money, the pay-off is substantial.

As Ron Woodroof, a rodeo homophobe in the mid-1980s who contracted the HIV virus and found himself in a fight for his life with the FDA over unapproved medications that mitigated symptoms, McConaughey gives us something really special. It’s fully realized. He disappears into the character, melting his usual quirks and affectations into the performance in ways he hasn’t quite achieved before. It’s the performance of his career, and it puts him square in the hunt for an Oscar.

I look at those five men we’re predicting in the Best Actor category to the right there and I struggle to understand how anyone is going to crack it. The race for the win, I believe, will be between McConaughey and Chiwetel Ejiofor (and Greg Ellwood has McConaughey in the frontrunner position). Their performances bring tears. Robert Redford could absolutely shoot past them, the most unique performance in the category, a near-silent portrayal that will have an impact on older Academy members because of the narrative being built behind the work: Redford wanted to know what he was still capable of accomplishing at his age. Bruce Dern also comes with an attractive narrative — finding recognition as a leading man — that will attract empathy among his friends and colleagues in the Academy. And Tom Hanks hits some notes he hasn’t quite reached in a long, long time (with another potential nomination still to come for “Saving Mr. Banks”).

Where’s the wiggle room? It might just be with Hanks, whose film received some criticism (with which, let the record show, I absolutely disagree) at the end of last week when reviews for “Captain Phillips” hit. Also, his presence in “Banks” could give voters an out as they can chalk him up for supporting there instead if they so desire. I’m really just thinking out loud, though, because he’s so good in “Phillips” that I can’t see him missing.

Steve Carell will be the next contender to really shake up this race as his “Foxcatcher” portrayal looks to follow in the shoes of Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Capote” and Brad Pitt in “Moneyball” (the other two performances Bennett Miller has directed to Best Actor nominations). Meanwhile, Forest Whitaker is hanging in there as “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” remains a box office constant. But how long before that one just goes away amid the intensity of a very strong year?

Christian Bale gives career-best work in “Out of the Furnace” and he has a completely different performance in “American Hustle” on deck. How fun will Leonardo DiCaprio be in “The Wolf of Wall Street?” How surprising will Joaquin Phoenix be in “Her” (particularly when juxtaposed with last year’s explosive Oscar-nominated work)? How much will Ben Stiller’s work in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” drive that film through the awards season? You really start to feel sorry for guys like Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Fifth Estate”), Ethan Hawke (“Before Midnight”), Hugh Jackman (“Prisoners”), Idris Elba (“Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom”) and Michael B. Jordan (“Fruitvale Station”) who give quality performances that would, in any other year, be in the thick of the discussion.

Oh yeah, and then there’s the best performance of the year in any category: Oscar Isaac in “Inside Llewyn Davis.” The competition, in a word, is just brutal.

But to swing it back around to McConaughey and “Dallas Buyers Club,” Focus has more than just a performance movie to work with here. Yes it could tread “Boys Don’t Cry” waters and end up with a lead win and a supporting performance, but it’s a Best Picture contender. It’s a Best Original Screenplay contender. And it will have passionate supporters. And before long we’ll probably be talking about it in terms of an over-stuffed Best Picture race just as we’re talking about McConaughey in terms of an over-stuffed Best Actor race.

So, can we have more than 10 Best Picture slots this year? Can we have more than five Best Actor slots? Pretty please? It’s an embarrassment of riches so far and there’s still more to come. 2013 is one of the great years already and it’s just September. We can only hope that the Oscars are at least somewhat representative of that when all is said and done, and let me say this: McConaughey winning an Oscar for his best work amid a career renaissance would be an excellent representation of where we are in cinema at the moment.

“Dallas Buyers Club” arrives in theaters on Nov. 1.