Continuing our preview of the 20 titles in the running for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, which kicks off next week. Today’s selection includes new films from Hayao Miyazaki, Peter Landesman, Errol Morris, Alexandros Avranas and Gianni Amelio.

“The Wind Rises,” directed by Hayao Miyazaki: It’s been five years since the last Miyazaki-directed feature, “Ponyo,” premiered in Competition at Venice — and honestly, that sweet but unapologetically minor children’s film wasn’t enough to satisfy Miyazaki fans’ cravings for over half a decade. Since the veteran Japanese animator ascended to festival auteur status (a promotion sealed when eventual Oscar-winner “Spirited Away” won the Golden Bear at Berlin), his work has arrived with crossover expectations that “Ponyo”‘s gentle maritime charms couldn’t quite fulfil. That looks likely to change with “The Wind Rises,” a significant change of pace for the director, and one of the most ambitious projects of his big-dreaming career.

Downplaying — if not entirely forgoing — his customary fantastical storytelling in favor of history, this fictionalized biographical drama (based on Miyazaki’s own manga) is inspired by the life of Jiro Horikoshi, a designer of Japanese fighter planes in the Second World War. Covering Horikoshi’s life from small-town boyhood through to professional triumphs and the loss of his wife, the 126-minute film reportedly uses elaborate dream sequences to portray it subject’s inner life — and, presumably, as an outlet for Miyazaki’s unfettered imagination — but otherwise sounds like one of Studio Ghibli’s more grown-up efforts. This change in direction, however, hasn’t hurt Miyazaki’s latest in its homeland, where it’s been another commercial smash for him. The film has also drawn its share of awestruck reviews (as well as a smattering of local controversy over its factual liberties.)

We already know that an English-language version of the film will not be ready this year. The subtitled, Japanese-language version that premieres at Venice will also be the same one that is entered this year for Oscar consideration in the Best Animated Feature category. (It remains to be seen whether Japan enters the film as its submission in the Best Foreign Language Film race.) Whether or not the Academy bites, it’s not hard to imagine the Venice jury welcoming Miyazaki back with a major award. This is the third time he’s vied for the Golden Lion — “Howl’s Moving Castle,” which won a technical achievement prize from the jury in 2005, precedes “Ponyo.”

“Parkland,” directed by Peter Landesman: It’s hard to read any blurb about this American biographical drama — the last addition to the Competition lineup — without Emilio Estevez’s “Bobby” springing to mind. I’ll leave it to you to judge whether that’s a good thing or not, but the on-paper similarities between the two are obvious: Peter Landesman’s debut feature may cover the already amply-covered assassination of JFK rather than his younger brother, but it appears to use a comparable all-star ensemble to revisit the old “where were you when you heard” meme that still surrounds his death.

Zac Efron (returning to Venice after “At Any Price” premiered there last year) has received the bulk of the publicity so far for playing Jim Carrico, the first doctor to attend to John F. Kennedy after his shooting. Jeremy Strong (“Lincoln”) stars as Lee Harvey Oswald, the ubiquitous Jacki Weaver his mother Marguerite. Others in the ensemble include Marcia Gay Harden, Billy Bob Thornton, Paul Giamatti, James Bade Dale and Colin Hanks. indeed, it’s a Hanks family effort: Tom Hanks, apparently not quite busy enough this year, co-produced the film with three others, including Bill Paxton.

Landesman is best known as a writer and journalist; he was at the center of a minor media controversy a few years ago when he was accused of fabricating research for a New York Times piece about sex slavery. Biographical drama, of course, can fudge as many details as it pleases; the question is whether Landesman can be as crisp as persuasive in a visual and aural medium as he is on the printed page. Luckily, he has brilliant Britain cinematographer Barry Ackroyd and eight-time Oscar nominee James Newton Howard along for the ride. Hit or miss, this doesn’t look like the kind of film festival juries reward as a matter of course; reviews at Venice (and later Toronto) will help determine whether or not this has future awards potential.

“The Unknown Known,” directed by Errol Morris: Or, to use its full, self-explanatory title, “The Unknown Known: The Life and Times of Donald Rumsfeld.” Not that you need the full title to know what this is about. Veteran documentarian Morris won his long-awaited Oscar for 2003’s “The Fog of War,” an astute, clear-eyed portrait of former US Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara. Ten years later comes what appears to a companion piece to that film: a feature-length interview with a certain more recent Secretary of Defense, delving deep into his controversial role in the Iraq War.  Morris is a measured, unflinching interviewer, so this promises to be a valuable addition to the growing library of post-9/11 cinema, though it will probably find Morris on less playful form than in 2010’s media scandal study “Tabloid.” (Danny Elfman, however, provides the score, as he did in 2008’s “Standard Operation Procedure.”)

It’s still rare for documentaries to appear in Competition at the major festivals. Morris’ Abu Ghraib-themed feature “Standard Operating Procedure” did so in Berlin in 2008, while this is the first year he’ll be competing for the Golden Lion — moreover, his is one of two docs in this year’s Competition lineup. It won’t exactly be the most propulsive film in the running, but it could win something if jurors are in a rather austere mood, and keen to highlight the growing presence of non-fiction filmmaking on the festival circuit. The Weinsteins’ Radius label will distribute the film in the US.

“L’intrepido,” directed by Gianni Amelio: 68-year-old Italian veteran Amelio is, along with Tsai Ming-liang, one of only two former Golden Lion winners in the running this year: he won in 1998 for his Sicilian family saga “Così ridevano,” and has competed on three others occasions, winning non-jury awards each time. (He also won the Grand Prix at Cannes for his best-known film, 1992’s “The Stolen Children.”) He’s therefore a name to reckoned with, though still perhaps more highly regarded at home than elsewhere. Judging from the rather confusingly worded festival blurb for the film, his latest seems steeped in Italian cultural and political reference points that may not translate as well to outsiders. Antonio Albanese (“To Rome With Love”) plays an irregularly employed jack-of-all-trades trying to eke out a living in contemporary Milan; his plight is contrasted with that of his musician son.

“Miss Violence,” directed by Alexandros Avranas: One of the Competition’s real wild-card selections, this Greek drama is the second feature from Avranas, whose 2008 debut “Without” didn’t travel very far even on the festival circuit. His follow-up, however, caught the eye of Venice and Toronto alike: opening with the shocking suicide of an 11-year-old girl from a comfortable, middle-class household, this reportedly chilling film digs into not just the familial fallout from this tragedy, but the domestic history that led to it. Greek cinema is in the midst of a mini New Wave at the moment: Venice gave it an additional boost two years ago by programming Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Alps” (which eventually won Best Screenplay) in Competition; here’s hoping this one is similarly striking.

Join me tomorrow for another roundup of five Venice Competition titles, as we count down to our festival coverage — which kicks off on Wednesday. What films are you most looking forward to?

Years from now, when the dust has settled on the multiplex offerings of summer 2013 — and I have a feeling we’re talking quite a lot of dust here — people will still be confusing “The World’s End” with “This is the End,” and vice versa. (In fact, the passage of time will only render the distinction fuzzier.) Perhaps they’ll be put together in a box-set, so people will have their bases covered. Anyway, both are casually structured apocalyptic comedies, both have boisterous, largely male ensembles, and both are reasonably amusing. It’s the British one, however, that has won the critical war.

Edgar Wright’s “The World’s End” has, if anything, been even more warmly received by US critics than their UK counterparts, matching the reviews of its Cornetto Trilogy predecessors, “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz.” (HitFix’s Drew McWeeny was certainly tickled by it.) It opens Stateside today, while many of our international readers will have already seen it, so vote in the poll below, and share your thoughts in the comments. Is it the comedy of the summer, as many critics are claiming? (I say no, but my love for “The Heat” is unyielding.) And between Wright’s film and “This is the End,” who won the end of the world?

I think I’m in, like, Russellville, Arkansas or something like that. Mid-trek cross-country. Checked into the hotel, grabbed a shower, settled in and…Holy Argo, Batman — Ben Affleck has been cast as the new Dark Knight in Zack Snyder’s still untitled “Man of Steel” sequel (tentatively being called “Batman vs. Superman”).

So if you’re keeping score at home, that puts last year’s Best Picture winner in the weirdly rare air of having played Superman (2006’s “Hollywoodland”) AND Batman in his career. Oh, and Daredevil, too. But let’s break this down…

Affleck, you’ll remember, was a name being tossed around to direct the still struggling-to-be-properly-conceived “Justice League” film. “I would love it,” he told me of the prospect of tackling the DC Universe on film. “My interest is really just in, you know, if I like the characters and if the stories seem smart and surprise me. The things that people look for. So those things exist in the superhero genre. And when they do, I think it”s really exciting. I think they exist in the science-fiction genre. If you look at ‘Blade Runner’ to ‘Alien’ to ‘Aliens’ on down through today. So it”s just about finding a good script, honestly. I wouldn”t be into something or not based on the genre.”

Though while it may be about a “good script,” is there even much of a script to speak of here yet? Snyder made it clear at Comic-Con that they were still working through the thing conceptually, teasing something in the tone of Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” and announcing that, indeed, Batman would be featured in his Superman sequel. It was pretty clear that Warner Bros. was looking for a big splash as “Man of Steel” — though it didn’t exactly make mere peanuts — didn’t hit the box office mark the studio was hoping for. Some read the move as desperate but I thought it was smart and exciting, even if it did have a whiff of being, well, a bit of a slap-dash decision.

Enter Affleck, carrying major weight at the studio these days, fresh off big Oscar success in “Argo.” It’s such an interesting decision for him to make. Does he need this kind of role? Not at all. He’s in a position to be able to push production of his latest commitment to the studio, the Dennis Lehane adaptation “Live By Night,” so he can go off and act for David Fincher in “Gone Girl.” That move made a lot of sense. It’s another chance to work with a compelling and talented director. You can bet Affleck has been at least somewhat envious of seeing his buddy Matt Damon collaborate with the likes of Robert Redford, Martin Scorsese and the Coen brothers over the years, and he’s eager to learn from masters like Fincher and Terrence Malick, etc.

But Batman? It’s almost like he’s doing the studio a solid. I’m totally just thinking out loud here. And by the way, this casting decision doesn’t rub me wrong at all. It’s just, again, interesting to me. Affleck is keeping his career very diversified right at the time when it seemed he was drilling down and focusing on being a filmmaker.

I can’t wait to see the sure-to-be intense reactions to this on both sides of the line. What do you think? Thumbs up? Thumbs down? Thumbs…sideways?

The further I get away from the Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Inside Llewyn Davis” — which won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, along with adulation of critics — the more I find myself thinking of Oscar Isaac’s performance before I do the film surrounding him. That’s no slight on “Davis,” which is every bit as cool and acute and exquisitely crafted as the brothers’ top-tier work, but it’s Isaac who carries its soul, warming and roughing up its wintery reserve. I still have no idea what the film’s profile will be this awards season — it could as easily be the critics’ cause as the distantly admired outsider — but if it lands right with Academy voters, I hope Isaac lands with it.

He’s showcased perhaps more generously in this new trailer for the film than in the initial one from the beginning of the year — there’s more of a sense of the human desperation that drives him, not just his scruffy, zonked charm. Otherwise, it’s, well, another trailer — and a handsome one at that, further luxuriating in Bruno Delbonnel’s glorious, typically mossy cinematography (there’s one Oscar nod I’m sure we can chalk up). I do wonder if CBS Films are showing us a little too much of the film a little too early, considering it’s only out of December 6 — there will surely be others before then — but with the film pointedly skipping the Toronto crush, the new trailer gives us something to remember it by as newer attractions arrive in the next few weeks. 

Check out the trailer below — or don’t, if you prefer keeping your gifts wrapped until December — and tell us what you think. 

I can hardly believe we’re at that point in the year already, but it’s less than a week until Alfonso Cuaron’s “Gravity” opens the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday — kicking off a long, busy, hype-filled run of fall festivals, and in turn, priming us for the even longer, even busier, even more hype-filled awards season that lies ahead. As usual, I’ll be in attendance at Venice, and this year, we’ve heard your requests for a more detailed festival preview than usual. Time is too short for me to preview the 20 Competition titles individually, as in my Cannes Check series. Each day for the next few days, however, I’ll be casting an eye over a mixed selection of five Golden Lion contenders — beginning today with the latest from Stephen Frears, James Franco, Tsai Ming-Liang, Philippe Garrel and Merzak Allouache.   

“Philomena,” directed by Stephen Frears: “Philomena,” of course, is one of the more known unknowns in this year’s Competition; the publicity machine is already in motion for this British comedy-drama, with The Weinstein Company having released a trailer that promises a certain laughter-through-the-tears approach. That’s something it doesn’t have in common with 2006’s “The Queen” — the last Frears film that premiered in Venice — but in many other respects, “Philomena” fits the profile of that Oscar-winning biopic with canny precision. Also a true-life story serving as a showcase for a revered British dame (Judi Dench this time, rather than Helen Mirren), the film even boasts a no-doubt-tastefully-understated score by Alexandre Desplat to help the association along. And given that “The Queen” won both Best Actress and Best Screenplay on the Lido, opening a virtually unobstructed path to the Oscar for Mirren, that’s an association “Philomena” is keen to foster.

Dench stars as the title character, an elderly Irish woman who travels to America in search of the son she gave up for adoption as a teenager, when she was forced into a convent. Steve Coogan, meanwhile, stars as Martin Sixsmith, the political journalist who assists Philomena in her quest. Coogan co-wrote the film, too, capping off a good year for the comedian: he received positive notices for his turn as 1970s porn baron in “The Look of Love,” recently topped the UK box office with his NYFF-bound sitcom spinoff “Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa,” and also turned up aainst type in “What Maisie Knew.” If “Philomena” really takes off as an awards vehicle for Dench, perhaps he could nab the odd mention as well — especially with the BAFTA crowd.

Looking only as far ahead as Venice, meanwhile, it’ll be interesting to see how the film, which appears to trade heavily in matters of Catholicism, plays with the Italian crowd. Advance word is that it’s a small film, but an affecting one, with a gentle comic undertow throughout. Will it prove too slight for festival honors, or could Dench — never before rewarded at a major festival — take the Volpi Cup? We’ll see. Frears has a reputation to recover after such recent misfires as “Lay the Favorite” and “Tamara Drewe,” but Venice has been a happy hunting ground for him this century: in addition to “The Queen,” “Dirty Pretty Things” and “Liam” were also warmly received in Competition. Finally, the presence of cinematographer Robbie Ryan (“Wuthering Heights,” “Ginger and Rosa,” “Fish Tank”) is reason enough to see anything these days.

“Child of God,” directed by James Franco: Another festival, another James Franco joint. Venice, however, is the first of the major festivals to go the whole hog and put one of the self-styled renaissance man’s directorial efforts in Competition. Maybe, then, this will be the first one to justify festival programmers’ ongoing fascination with him (or to persuade distributors to actually release it). Only three months ago, Franco’s ambitious, fussy stab at filming William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” premiered at Cannes to middling reviews: it wasn’t the embarrassment some poison-penned critics were hoping for, but it wasn’t a success, either. Undaunted, he’s hitting the Lido with another attempt at adapting a Great American Novelist: this time, Cormac McCarthy’s “Child of God.”

As in “As I Lay Dying,” Franco has been modest enough to cast himself in a supporting role. Instead, it’s little-known actor Scott Haze (also featured in “Dying,” along with co-star Tim Blake Nelson) who stars as Lester Ballard, a social outcast in rural Tennessee whose personal and economic disenfranchisement descends to hellish levels of sin and degradation. It’s one of McCarthy’s bleakest visions (and yes, that’s saying something) and not one of his more cinematically friendly, so Franco has his work cut out for him. He co-wrote the screenplay with actor-producer Vince Jolivette, with whom he also collaborated on his avant-garde but sketchy Sal Mineo biopic “Sal” — which, as it happens, premiered in a Venice sidebar two years ago. Color me curious (again), but not overly optimistic.    

“Stray Dogs,” directed by Tsai Ming-liang: It’s been four years since Taiwanese-Malaysian auteur Tsai, a defiantly individual stylist to say the least, debuted his last feature, “Face,” at Cannes; opalescently elusive and beautiful, the film proved decidedly distributor-averse. It was a long way removed from the wistful, humane pleasures of his 1994 breakthrough film “Vive l’amour,” which won the Golden Lion at Venice; he has since returned to the Lido with “I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone” and “Goodbye, Dragon Inn.”

“Stray Dogs” sounds like it may be a return to more accessible territory, at least by Tsai’s enigmatic standards. Explores his pet themes of social alienation and marginalization, the film centers on a young, homeless brother and sister, and their struggle to survive on the outskirts of Taipei with their father, who works as a human billboard. Lest you be imagining Ken Loach-style urban miserablism, it sounds like Tsai’s mysterious wooziness is still very much at play here. Expect little dialogue, some rapturous imagery and a lump in your throat. If the director is on his best film, this could well be among the jury’s favorites.

“Jealousy,” directed by Philippe Garrel: Venice programmers remain steadfastly devoted to Garrel, but reader, I cannot lie: I walked out of his last film, “A Burning Hot Summer,” two years ago, and nothing has made me regret it since. A dull, muggy assemblage of trysts and tiffs between a selection of predictably languorous bohemians, it found the 65-year-old Frenchman some way off the form of 2005’s Silver Lion-winning “Regular Lovers” — itself something of an acquired taste. I’m willing to forgive and forget, though on paper, “Jealousy” sounds alarmingly like Garrel-by-numbers. Again starring his son Louis, it tells the story of a theater actor caught between two lovers: one the mother of his child, the other an unfaithful, washed-up actress. I have a feeling I know how this is going to go, but I’ll try stay the course this time.

“The Rooftop,” directed by Merzak Allouache: Like Garrel, 68-year-old Algerian director is one of the elder statesmen of the Competition, though he’s a less familiar presence: it’s his first time vying for the Golden Lion, and I confess I’m not well acquainted with his work. In his latest, the director professes to explore the troubled underbelly of Algeria after emerging from a decade of terrorism. The ensemble drama interweaves five narratives — covering themes of torture, prejudice and economic hardship — over the course of a single day, and linked by a single rooftop terrace. It sounds like the kind of socially conscious international fare that often finds favor with festival juries, but that’s pure projection; Allouache has won awards outside of Competition at both Cannes and Berlin.  

Join me tomorrow for another roundup of five Venice Competition titles, as we count down to our festival coverage — which kicks off on Wednesday. What films are you most looking forward to?

Ah, it’s that time of year again. Do you feel it in the air? Pundits from coast to coast have been roughly awoken from their off-season slumber to groggily begin walking the long, tedious road to Oscar. There will be amazing moments of euphoria, oceans of tears, rivers of laughter, shocking upsets and devious betrayals, but eventually the Academy gods will come down from Mount Olympus (really, it’s right around the corner from Hollywood) and proclaim who is truly worthy of their golden gifts.

That magical night is still a little less than, cough, seven, cough, months away. In the meantime, we have the first look at a consensus field from the ever prestigious…

…Gurus of Gold.

Yes, we’re back again. Ringleader David Poland, Kristopher Tapley, Anne Thompson, Pete Hammond, Mark Harris, Sasha Stone and myself, among others, combine our years of knowledge as we predict the players months before the first For Your Consideration ad has even run. And for the first edition before the annual trifecta of awards-friendly festivals begin we’ve voted on the top 15 films we think are major contenders. Some of the results — which can be found in their entirety here — are quite telling.

– Not one film received a vote from every single pundit.

– Only three films received votes from 14 of the 15 Gurus. Those films are “12 Years A Slave,” “American Hustle” and “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.”

– Both myself and Glenn Whipp of the LA Times were the only prognosticators not to vote for “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

– Early expected awards season player “Before Midnight” only received five of 15 votes.

– Tapley and I disagree on “Wall Street” and “Blue Jasmine” respectively.

Most importantly, however, is the simple fact this list could look radically different by the time the Toronto International Film Festival ends on Sept. 15. How many pundits got it right beforehand? Well, we’re certainly not going to keep track, but that doesn’t mean you can’t.

What surprised you about the Gurus’ contenders list? What should be more prominent and what should be less? Share your thoughts below.

Calling all “Oscar and Lucinda” fans! The New York Film Festival has a reunion of sorts for you. Back in 1997 — one year before her star-making role in “Elizabeth,” that little-seen Australian romantic drama announced 28-year-old newcomer Cate Blanchett to the moviegoing public; the striking actress was then an unknown quantity beside the headlining name of her more seasoned co-star Ralph Fiennes, by then a two-time Oscar nominee and high-end heart-throb.

Sixteen years later, Blanchett has done some catching up. The star, who currently chasing her sixth Oscar nomination for Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine,” has been named as one of the Gala Tribute honorees at this year’s NYFF. The other, of course, is Fiennes, whose second film as a director, “The Invisible Woman,” has its world premiere at the festival. Okay, so it’s not actually a reunion — the Tributes are a week apart — but it’s a sweet confluence all the same.   

The Gala Tributes are a relatively new fixture in the NYFF lineup. The festival introduced them last year, with Nicole Kidman (whose film “The Paperboy” played in last year’s fest) and festival programme director Richard Peña selected as the inaugural honorees. They evidently proved popular enough for the festival to continue them, this time with more star power. Perhaps one slot will be reserved every year for an Australian screen goddess.

Blanchett is an interesting choice of honoree, given that (bar a surprise appearance by George Clooney’s “The Monuments Men”) the actress doesn’t have a film in the festival lineup. What she does have, however, is resurgent star heat. After a couple of years away from the spotlight — taking secondary roles in the likes of “Hanna” and “Robin Hood” while she busied herself with theater work in Australia — she’s returned to leading-lady status with a vengeance in “Blue Jasmine.” It seems silly to declare locked Oscar nominations in August, but the Best Actress race would have to become fiercely crowded in the next few months for the actress not to figure in next year’s race; some pundits even think she can win her second Oscar for her brilliantly barbed turn as a disenfranchised New York socialite in Allen’s critical and commercial hit.

So it seems a good time for the festival to take stock of her career thus far — as well as an opportune moment for Blanchett to keep her profile aloft as campaign season heats up in October. (It certainly didn’t do Kidman any harm last year.) Film Society Lincoln Center director Rose Kuo says in the press release: “In the year that many critics are hailing her most recent – and perhaps greatest – performance (in ‘Blue Jasmine’), the Film Society is delighted to celebrate the career of Cate Blanchett. Since her breakthrough in ‘Oscar and Lucinda’ in 1997, Ms. Blanchett has consistently mesmerized audiences with some of the boldest screen performances of the past twenty years, with roles as diverse as Queen Elizabeth I and Bob Dylan.” 

Fiennes will also be hoping for his Gala Tribute to be the start of a successful awards season run. “The Invisible Woman” is currently creeping under the radar, but the literary biopic, in which he stars as Charles Dickens in a story centered on his secret romantic life, could conceivably be something that appeals to Academy types. His imperfect but arresting directorial debut, an adventurously updated take on Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus,” demonstrated both his cinematic ingenuity and, less surprisingly, his facility with actors. Nabbing the first showing of his sophomore effort represents yet another coup for the NYFF programmers.

Of Finnes, Kuo states: “In just his third screen role, Ralph Fiennes’s performance as the monstrous Amon Goeth in Steven Spielberg’s ‘Schindler’s List’ terrified audiences with its personification of evil. Since then, Mr. Fiennes has brilliantly embodied the larger-than-life creations of writers such as Shakespeare, Dickens, and Graham Greene, among others, and given us an extraordinary body of work to celebrate. The Film Society is excited to honor him at this year”s New York Film Festival not only as an actor, but as the director of ‘The Invisible Woman,’ truly one of the noteworthy films of the year.”

Blanchett’s Gala Tribute will take place on October 2; Fiennes’ on October 9. The NYFF runs from September 27 to October 13.

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While we’re waiting for the breakout films of this year’s Cannes Film Festival to make their way over to theaters — in many cases, via the fall festival circuit — we still have some unfinished business from Cannes 2012. Opening in limited release tomorrow is French period melodrama “Thérèse” (at different points dubbed “Thérèse Dequeyroux” or “Thérèse D”), which was the Closing Night film of last year’s fest.

Films in that slot at Cannes tend to come and go rather quietly — not least since half the Croisette crowd has packed up and left by the time they premiere — but “Thérèse” was one of the festival’s more handsome closers in recent years. The final film by the late, celebrated auteur Claude Miller, whose greatest films include 2001’s “Betty Fisher and Other Stories” and 1998’s Cannes Jury Prize winner “Class Trip,” it’s a fresh adaptation of a 1927 novel by Nobel laureate François Mauriac that was previously filmed by Georges Franju in 1962 — interestingly enough, with recent Oscar nominee Emmanuelle Riva in the title role.

This time round, it’s Audrey Tautou playing the lonely, restless trophy wife who resorts to devious measures to escape her provincial dullard of a husband (Gilles Lellouche), and her performance may come as a surprise to those who still think of the “Amélie” actress as the poster girl for gamine Gallic perkiness. It’s one of her hardest, most subdued turns, in a film that plays its melodrama in a surprisingly low key — but it’s intelligent, elegantly mounted art house fare, and a dignified sign-off for Miller’s career. (He passed away a month before the film’s Cannes premiere.)  

If you think that sounds up your alley, we’re pleased to present this exclusive clip from the film, which offers a suitable taste of its well-appointed French charms — and I’m not just talking about Tautou looking fetching in a cloche hat. Check it out above, and tell us what you think.

This week HitFix is revisiting some of the key turning points in recent entertainment history and considering what would have happened if history had turned a bit differently. What if…?

At the turn of the millennium things were looking up for actor Dougray Scott. He had been hand selected by Tom Cruise to be the villain in the anxiously awaited sequel to the megastar’s 1996 blockbuster “Mission: Impossible” and he was all set to follow that up with what might have been a breakout role as Wolverine in Bryan Singer’s big screen adaptation of the X-Men comic book series. But when the production schedule of “Mission: Impossible II” went long, Singer had to make a snap decision and settled on an unknown by the name of Hugh Jackman.

What if Dougray Scott had played Wolverine in “X-Men” and not Hugh Jackman?

Three things that might not have happened:

1. We could have been robbed of one of the finest Oscar telecasts in history. That would be the one held in early 2009 celebrating the films of 2008 (the year “Slumdog Millionaire” dominated the scene). Oscars producer Laurence Mark and director Bill Condon tapped Jackman to host that year, a very unique choice but one with a bit of synergy, seeing as “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” was set to open two months later. Without an already extensive history with the franchise (and therefore, without such a film to “promote” by his presence on the show), would Jackman have still been picked? Maybe at some point along the way, since he got his start as a song and dance man on stage after all. But it’s highly unlikely this would have been the year and we’d have been robbed of one of the best hosts the typically taxing telecast has ever seen.

2. Hugh Jackman would have seen a very different start to his career. Getting your start as Wolverine in an “X-Men” movie, of all things, pretty much sets you on a fanboy path from the start. But coming off of musical performances in shows like “Oklahoma!” and “The Boy from Oz,” it seems a stretch to think that, without this serendipity, Jackman would have launched onto the movie scene in such a populist sort of film. So would we have even ever really seen him in things like “Swordfish” or “Van Helsing?” It’s possible he would have landed in, and maybe stuck with, more prestigious projects like “Les Misérables” and, well, “The Prestige.”

3. Scott’s “what if” career still wouldn’t have mirrored Jackman’s real one. It’s tough to say this with any certainty because, as a result of missing out on such a high profile role, Scott didn’t necessarily get a chance to choose from the same projects Jackman did (more on that below). When you look at Scott’s career, you don’t exactly see similar choices being made throughout. He probably wouldn’t have gone on to be the heartthrob/romantic comedy “star” that Jackman became, though he obviously would have had a much bigger, or at least more popularly recognizable, career on his own terms if he had been fitted for the claws.

Three things that might have happened:

1. Hugh Jackman would definitely still be a big deal. No matter how he was going to get his start, I think it’s pretty clear he was made for this business. He has the charisma and inner light of a full-on movie star, and if it wasn’t going to be “X-Men” that launched him onto the map, I have every confidence that it would have been something else. It might have been something less overt without the pop culture trappings, but we were always going to know this guy’s work on the big screen.

2. It goes without saying, Scott’s opportunities would have been much different. This ties in with the note above, but when you’re Hugh Jackman and you spark in a superhero movie that makes decent bank, you suddenly have such variety as “Kate & Leopold” and “The Fountain” and “Real Steel” to choose from. Scott never saw that big a door open for him, but if he had played the most exciting character in the first film adaptation of the X-Men comic book series, you can bet it would have been a different story. Whether he would have made good on the opportunity, we’ll never know, but he certainly would have had a different pile of scripts on his desk.

3. People might care about “Mission: Impossible II” a little more? Sure, John Woo’s is largely considered the weakest of the franchise, but it had its fans in 2000. After all — OMG! — it was the MTV Movie Award winner for Best Movie! But it feels mostly forgotten, perhaps willfully, in the 13 years since its release. However, I’m betting that it would have taken on a whole new curiosity factor with kids today talking about, “Hey, you know that guy that played Wolverine? He was a bad guy in a ‘Mission: Impossible’ movie! With Tom Cruise! Seriously!” And now I feel old.

Did history work out for the best?

Yes. Hugh Jackman is always a great cheerleader for his movies and that’s been particularly the case on the “X-Men” franchise. He could have just shown up, done the work and moved on to the next thing, but being who he is, he never stops taking it seriously and he always serves as a wonderful steward for the character of Wolverine. I’m sure Dougray Scott would have been committed, too, but the charismatic spark Jackman has afforded really means a lot. And it’s interesting to note that a respected actor launched onto the scene in a superhero movie that came at the dawn of a decade that would eventually be bursting at the seams with similar brand product.

This article first appeared in part at InContention.com in 2010. In light of recent news, It seemed like a good time to re-purpose it for new readers here at HitFix, with a few updates.

It’s an announcement that we weren’t wondering about so much as waiting for: this year’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner, French-Tunisian auteur Abdellatif Kechiche’s epic-length romantic drama “Blue is the Warmest Color,” has been slapped with an NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Association of America — meaning, of course, that no children under 17 will be permitted to see the sexually explicit film in theaters, with or without a guardian.

The explanation given by the MPAA for the rating is, obviously enough, “explicit sexual content.” No arguing with that: the film features multiple scenes of graphic sexual activity between its two female leads, one famously lasting 12 minutes. One may note the irony of a fact that a story of teenage sexual awakening is being denied to teenagers the same age as Adele Exarchopoulos’ protagonist is at the outset of the film, but so it goes with the MPAA: the ratings aren’t there for the chief benefit of the precocious.

US distributor Sundance Selects has done the right thing by accepting the certificate — even if it comes with certain marketing restrictions, and imposes a further obstacle in the film’s already steep path to Oscar recognition. Cutting the sex scenes to meet the requirements of an R rating would have been destructive.

“An NC-17 rating no longer holds the stigma it once did,” said IFC president Jonathan Sehring in response to the news, and that’s true. (Of course, coming from the UK, where films are routinely barred to under-15s and under-18s, the NC-17 certification has never seemed that radical to me.) 23 years after it was introduced as an artistically respectable alternative to the porn-associated X rating, more than enough significant and substantial films have been handed the rating for it to have lost any Scarlet Letter implications. Or so one would like to think. In over two decades, only one NC-17 title has ever hit the upper reaches of the box office charts — the mildly disreputable “Showgirls,” at that.

But with “Blue is the Warmest Color” becoming the first Palme d’Or winner to go NC-17 — adding an extra degree of dignity to the rating — I was reminded of a previous Top 10 I compiled in 2010 of notable NC-17 trailblazers. (The film that inspired the list that time was “Blue Valentine,” briefly and rather inexplicably handed an NC-17 rating before The Weinstein Company successfully appealed for an R.) It may not be the label any distributor dreams of receiving, but at least it puts you in some fine company. 

Check out the list below, and share your own thoughts in the comments — which NC-17 movies made an impression on you? (Please bear in mind that not all the images in the gallery are necessarily SFW.)

It’s the role that, according to theatrical cliché, every actress dreams of playing at least once in her life: Lady Macbeth. The conniving, persuasive, power-hungry — and, finally, guilt-plagued — wife of the stage’s favorite tyrannical Scot has been played by everyone from Judi Dench to Simone Signoret to Vivien Leigh. But Natalie Portman — for now, at least — will not be joining that esteemed club, as Justin Kurzel’s upcoming new screen version of “Macbeth” has swapped one Oscar-winner for another. Marion Cotillard will now be crying “Out, damned spot!” opposite Michael Fassbender’s Mac. And, as far as I’m concerned, one of 2014’s most exciting projects just got a little more so. 

I must admit, it’s been a while since I actively looked forward to a new big-screen Shakespeare adaptation. Ralph Fiennes’ “Coriolanus” — rarely filmed and intriguingly cast — got my juices going, but an umpteenth do-over of “Romeo and Juliet?” Fine, but what ground is left to cover? Joss Whedon larking about with “Much Ado About Nothing?” Why not, I guess, but it’s been done as a youthful romp, and better.

“Macbeth,” however, is another story. The superstitiously nicknamed “Scottish Play” may be one of the Bard’s most widely read and compelling works (as well as one of the most obviously cinematic) but it’s surprisingly under-filmed — especially compared to fellow high-school standard “Hamlet,” which seemingly comes up for screen renewal once a decade or so.

There hasn’t been a major, straight-ish screen adaptation of “Macbeth” since Roman Polanski’s appropriately bleak and bloody 1971 version — a film that remains under-valued, despite the relative lack of competition. Yet arguably, no film to date has captured the play more definitively than Akira Kurosawa’s vivid samurai spin, “Throne of Blood,” in 1954. (Several films have recontextualized the play since, including 2006’s Shakespearean-language, Sam Worthington-starring “Macbeth” set in the Melbourne underworld, but none has served its spirit more evocatively.)

So, in short, the time is ripe for a fresh “Macbeth.” And I can’t think of a more apt and exciting director to take on the task than Kurzel, a fiery new Australian talent whose startling debut, “Snowtown,” was one of my favorites of 2011: a stomach-knottingly brutal study of a small-town serial killer as viewed through the eyes of an impressionable teenager, it was a true-crime drama both unflinchingly candid and non-exploitative, cool and humane and repulsive all at once. If anyone can avoid a lacquered prestige-film treatment, instead taking “Macbeth” to its violent, tortured core, he can. 

Meanwhile, it’s hard to think of a contemporary male star more physically, professionally and stylistically equipped to play Macbeth than Fassbender, an actor whose brooding physicality and emotional volatility has already seen him improve on Orson Welles’ Mr. Rochester in “Jane Eyre.” Welles gave cinema one of its most forceful Macbeths in his own 1948 film; can Fassbender take him on again? He’s pretty much the first actor I’d think of for the role, but sometimes the obvious choice is the right one.

Cotillard, however, is a more counter-intuitive choice — and, I think, a shrewd one. I was intrigued by Portman’s initial casting, while also fearing that the actress might be a shade too brittle for the part, and contemplating someone slightly older and more playfully seductive in her place. Cotillard has six years on Portman — a significant gap when it comes to this role, I think — and a full-bodied performing style that, to date, none of her English-language roles have quite tapped to the extent of “La Vie en Rose” or “Rust and Bone.” I can see Lady Macbeth bringing out that side of her, with Cotillard in turn bringing out the character’s often-underplayed romanticism. The fact that we haven’t seen her perform in this kind of classical context lends the casting a compelling unpredictability.

Kurzel said of the decision: “I feel extremely blessed that Marion is joining our film. She is one of the bravest and most compelling actors I have watched in recent years and I cannot wait to collaborate with both her and Michael in bringing to screen this very human and tragic love story.” 

“Macbeth” will commence shooting in the UK in January, with producers Iain Canning and Emile Sherman (“The King’s Speech,” “Shame”) steering the project. Bring it on.

Are you excited for Fassbender as “Macbeth?” And whose Lady Macbeth would you prefer to see: Cotillard’s or Portman’s? Tell us in the comments.

It may be taking the stealth approach in this year’s awards season, but Kris has already flagged up “The Book Thief” as one to keep an eye on as the Oscar race takes shape. Fox 2000 quietly scheduled the prestige drama for a November 15 release — prime real estate in the awards game, as we all know — and the film ticks any number of baity boxes: based on a 2006 international bestseller by Markus Zusak, the film centers on Liesel, a nine-year-old girl in Nazi Germany, studying her relationship both with her foster parents and the Jewish fist-fighter her family shelters in their household.

Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush and Oscar nominee Emily Watson play her guardians, while Liesel herself is played by 12-year-old French-Canadian prodigy Sophie Nélisse. If you don’t believe the youngster has the potential to be this year’s Quvenzhane Wallis or Keisha Castle-Hughes, check out her devastating performance as an emotionally traumatized schoolgirl in last year’s foreign-language Oscar nominee “Monsieur Lazhar” — she’s more than a cute kid who can be coached into winsome reactions. British director Brian Percival is pretty green when it comes to feature films, but has won both an Emmy and a BAFTA for his work on “Downton Abbey,” and another BAFTA for his 2001 short “About a Girl.” Could he be this year’s Tom Hooper?

The name currently drawing the most eyeballs to the project, however, is that of venerable composer John Williams. The legend hasn’t scored a film outside the Spielberg-Lucas realm in almost a decade — does his attachment bode well for this potential awards sleeper? (If nothing else, it means we can pretty much set at least one nomination in stone — the music branch is powerless to resist him.) 

Fox is skipping the festival circuit with this one, which could be a smart move — sometimes it pays to reveal yourself after the glut of Toronto/Venice/Telluride hopefuls. And the trailer, released today, promises a polished production that could well be up the alley of the Academy’s more traditionalist voters. Check it out below and tell us what you think.  

The Toronto International Film Festival lineup, staggered as it is over multiple announcements, never quite seems to be complete: just when you think they can’t possibly add any more films to the gargantuan programme, a fresh batch is added.  Today’s additions, however, appear to be the last ones, and here’s the final tally: this year, 288 features and 78 shorts will play in the 11-day festival. A whopping 146 of those features are world premieres. I’ve never been to Toronto, and am not going this year, but the very thought makes me want to lie down with a cool flannel over my head.

Among today’s additions are the selections for the Masters, Discovery and Maverick sections of the festival, while onstage events with such figures as Spike Jonze, Harvey Weinstein and Jason Reitman are also on the bill.

Eleven films were selected for the Masters programme, which is devoted to international auteurs of note. Several of them have already been celebrated at other festivals. From Cannes, we have Jia Zhang-ke’s “A Touch of Sin” (which won the Best Screenplay award from Steven Spielberg’s jury), Claire Denis’s “Bastards” (not her finest, but mid-level Denis is still better than most things out there) and Lav Diaz’s four-hour epic “Norte: The End of History.”

From Berlin, we have embattled Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi’s “Closed Curtain” (rewarded with the Best Screenplay prize by Wong Kar-wai’s jury); from Locarno, prolific South Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s “Our Sunhi.” Three Masters picks will premiere in Venice first: Ettore Scola’s “Scola Narrates Fellini”; “Heimat” director Edgar Reitz’s “Home From Home: Chronicle of a Vision,” and reigning Golden Lion winner Kim Ki-duk’s already-controversial latest, “Moebius.” The lineup is rounded out by three world premieres: Robert Lepage and Pedro Pires’ “Triptych,” Pirjo Honkasalo’s “Concrete Night” and, most notably, Catherine Breillat’s “Abuse of Weakness” — a film many expected to show up first in Cannes or Venice.  

The already-announced Midnight Madness lineup has been completed with “Witching and Bitching,” the latest from Spanish genre stylist Alex de la Iglesia. He’s a talent whose charms continue to elude me, but I won’t be so churlish as to deny the bonkers intrigue of the film’s logline: “Desperate dad José and his friends run from a coven of witches hell-bent on their souls and on the 25,000 wedding rings the guys stole from a Cash-for-Gold shop in a desperate attempt to escape their lives of wife troubles.” Three years ago, de la Iglesia’s “The Last Circus” was a multiple prizewinner at Venice, so it’s interesting to see this making its world premiere in Toronto.

Among the 28 films selected for the Discovery programme — a section devoted to debut and sophomore films from across the globe — it’s worth singling out Singaporean director Anthony Chen’s “Ilo Ilo,” which played in Cannes to rave reviews (I heard Edward Yang comparisons being bandied about) and wound up beating several higher-profile titles, including “Fruitvale Station,” to the Camera d’Or. Also in the lineup is Gia Coppola’s “Palo Alto,” an adaptation of a James Franco short story starring, believe it or not, Jamers Franco.

The Mavericks sections includes five world premieres, among them Ron Howard’s documentary “Made in America,” a behind-the-scenes glimpse of a Jay-Z-curated music festival in Philadelphia. (Opie and Hova? You read that right.) Another concert film, “12.12.12,” documents last year’s all-star Hurricane Sandy benefit concert. Howard and Harvey Weinstein, respectively, will be on hand for live discussions after the screenings. Documentaries “InRealLife,” “Our Man in Tehran” and “What is Cinema?” will also make their first appearance in the Maverick lineup. As a bonus, Spike Jonze joins the festival’s In Conversation With… series, and will present  exclusive clips from his upcoming feature “Her” — premiering at the New York Film Festival in October.

Finally, for those feeling a little movied-out at the festival, Jason Reitman will once more be presenting his Live Read event: a one-take read-through of a well-known film script using an all-star cast. The script and cast for this year’s edition will be announced at a later date; last year’s reading of “American Beauty” featured Christina Hendricks, Bryan Cranston and Adam Driver, among others.

You can feast on the full festival lineup here.

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4912098599001

Exciting news, we’re getting a new Nichole Holofcener film next month. Sad news, it features one of the last performances of the late, great James Gandolfini.

Holofcener’s first film since 2010’s “Please Give,” “Enough Said” introduces us to Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a divorced woman looking for love who strikes up an unexpected romantic relationship with a recently divorced man, Albert, played by Gandolfini. Unbeknownst to her, Albert is the ex-wife of her new friend Marianne played by longtime Holofcener collaborator Catherine Keener. Before she knows it, Eva is hearing all slew of negative aspects of Albert she’d never considered and it begins to affect her opinion of him. The official synopsis says “Enough Said” promises to take a look at the difficulties of maintaining or even finding a second long-term relationship.  And, judging by the trailer, there will be some laughs along the way.

The film will premiere at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival next month and arrive in theaters only a few weeks later on Sept. 20.  So, it’s coming around the corner rather quickly. 

Fox Searchlight provided HitFix with some exclusive images from the new movie including a sweet photo of Holofcener, Gandolfni and Louis-Dreyfuss sharing a laugh in-between filming. Check out the photos in the gallery embedded below as well as a new clip from the film at the top of this post.

What do you think of what you’ve seen so far of “Enough Said”?

This week HitFix is revisiting some of the key turning points in recent entertainment history and considering what would have happened if history had turned a bit differently. What if…?

In the long and luridly storied history of Hollywood breakups, you’d be hard pressed to find an uglier one than the nuclear meltdown that occurred between Woody Allen and his longest-serving muse, Mia Farrow, in 1992. The quintessential New York writer-director and the Beverly Hills-born actress — an industry princess who had already been married to Frank Sinatra and Andre Previn — were an unlikely match when they got together in 1980, but their relationship proved a fruitful one, producing three children and 13 films together. Allen’s a director known for reusing favorite actors, but not even former partner Diane Keaton approaches Farrow for the title of his most frequent collaborator: between such films as “Zelig,” “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” “Hannah and Her Sisters,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” “Alice” and their brilliant parting effort “Husbands and Wives” — a film released in the heat of their breakup, and a brutally close-to-the-bone blueprint thereof. 

If you don’t know what happened then, it’s safe to assume you weren’t of headline-reading age 21 years ago. Here’s the short version: Allen had an affair with Farrow’s 20-year-old daughter Soon-Yi, and in the bitter separation and custody battle that ensued, Farrow alleged that Allen had sexually molested their seven-year-old daughter Dylan. The charges were dismissed, but the scandal lingered long after Farrow handily won the court battle and Allen quietly married Soon-Yi.

Yet while it was Allen whose personal reputation took the biggest knock from the whole messy occurrence, it was Farrow whose film career receded once their collaboration was over. Allen continued his film-a-year routine without a hitch, with Hollywood’s great and good still flocking to be cast in films and the Academy nominating him for such follow-up efforts as “Bullets Over Broadway” and “Mighty Aphrodite.” Farrow made a trio of features in the mid-1990s, before giving herself over largely to TV and — far more significantly — her extensive charity work. Hardly surprising, given Hollywood’s usual treatment of middle-aged actresses. But what if — hard as it may be to imagine now — things in the Allen-Farrow household hadn’t gone so vertiginously south, and their collaboration had continued? 

What if Woody Allen and Mia Farrow had stayed together?

Three things that might not have happened:

1. The Woody Allen-Diane Keaton reunion. This, we know, definitely wouldn’t have happened. Allen wrote “Manhattan Murder Mystery,” his fizzy 1993 Hitchcock homage, with Farrow — as usual — in mind for the female lead, the neurotic wife-turned-amateur-sleuth of Allen’s even more neurotic New York literary editor. That, of course, was before their relationship collapsed, so when the time came to make the film in the immediate aftermath of the breakup, Allen called in a favor from his former muse Diane Keaton. Their first film together (bar her fleeting cameo in “Radio Days”) since “Manhattan” 14 years previously, it was a fun nostalgia trip that earned Keaton a Golden Globe nod, though Allen admitted he’d have written the film differently for Keaton: “[Mia’s] not as broad a comedian as Diane is… Diane made this part funnier than I wrote it.” Might the Farrow-starring “Manhattan Murder Mystery” have been a more dramatic affair? In any event, the Woody-Diane reunion proved to be a one-night-only deal. She’s not doing much these days — how about it, guys? 

2. Woody’s Eurotrip. Given that Allen didn’t make a single film without Farrow in the 12 years they were an item, it seems reasonable to project that she would have remained a fixture in his ensembles as long as they’d remained together. That opens pretty much a limitless realm of “what if” questions regarding Allen’s subsequent filmography. It’s easy enough to see where Farrow would’ve slotted into, say, “Mighty Aphrodite” (sorry, Helena Bonham Carter); “Sweet and Lowdown,” not so much. But it’s his European phase of the new century — his diversions into London, Barcelona and Paris — that is hardest to imagine with Farrow on board: the liberated production focus and youthful focus of those films feel very much the result of a set-in-his-ways auteur consciously making a fresh start. Could he have made them with a partner of over 25 years’ standing? An older-skewing “Midnight in Paris” could conceivably have been made with Allen and Farrow in for Owen Wilson and, perhaps, Rachel McAdams — but would “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” have been written at all? 

3. Farrow suffers the curse of “The Omen.” Working with Allen, along with raising their rambling family, was pretty much a full-time job for Farrow: in the time they were together, the only non-Allen feature she appeared in (voice work in “The Last Unicorn” excepted) was 1984’s “Supergirl.” Having only been served her partner’s scripts for over a decade might have dulled her project-choosing abilities a bit — not that Hollywood producers were likely giving the actress much choice as she headed into her fifties. A continued routine of annual Woody joints may well have removed Farrow from such projects (for better or worse) as Zac Braff’s “The Ex,” the “Arthur” animated franchise and sundry second-rate TV movies — but she’d surely have been spared the indignity of chewing the scenery in 2006’s limp remake “The Omen.” She was the best thing in it, but still: better off out of it. 

Three things that might have happened:

1. Farrow does a whole lot more feature films… and perhaps gets that elusive Oscar nomination. With the exception, of course, of Roman Polanski, no filmmaker had a better idea than Allen of what to do with Farrow’s fragile screen presence — whether playing up to it in melancholy character studies like “The Purple Rose of Cairo” and “Another Woman,” or casting her brashly and sucessfully against type in “Broadway Danny Rose.” It’d have been interesting to see what roles he’d have written for her had they grown older together — Farrow wrote in her autobiography that she felt disengaged from her ensemble roles in the later, sourer years of their relationship, but might a happier outcome have yielded more devoted valentines in the “Alice” or “Purple Rose” vein? And if so — with her Allen collaborations having yielded multiple BAFTA and Golden Globe nods for the actress, as well as a National Board of Review win — the Academy would have had to relent sometime, right?

2. Woody produces more dramatic fare. Allen’s aforementioned comment Farrow’s subtler comic style is a telling one: the early years of their relationship produced fleeter comic exercises like “Broadway Danny Rose” and “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy,” but as the 1980s wore on, he seemed increasingly attuned to the inner dramatist that had previously written “Interiors” — whether fused with comedy in films like “Crimes and Misdemeanors” and “Hannah and Her Sisters,” or given to outright Bergmania in “Another Woman” and “September.” It’s speculative, of course, to say that the sensitive, serious-minded Farrow inspired this phase of his career, but it’s worth noting that their breakup was immediately followed by a return to lighter comedies like “Bullets Over Broadway” and “Everyone Says I Love You.” Would this tonal break have occurred had his personal life stayed on course? Perhaps, but we also might have waited a little less long for his return to dramatic writing in 2005’s “Match Point” and this year’s “Blue Jasmine” — a film it’s easy to imagine him writing for Farrow 20 years ago.

3. Woody gets Twitter. Okay, this is a silly one. But Farrow has proved surprisingly active on Twitter, using her feed both to abet her humanitarian work and to show off an unexpected streak of droll humor — her dry, casual tweet a couple of weeks ago about watching “Sharknado” with Philip Roth fooled a lot of people and spawned a short-lived Twitter meme. If she’s embraced it, could she have talked Woody into doing the same? Probably not. One senses he’d regard social media much as he does cars, Los Angeles or the Oscars — with a mixture of disdain and terror. Still, a regular feed of mordant Woody one-liners would be a must-follow. And even if he couldn’t be persuaded, there’s the hope that Farrow would share some choice domestic tidbits.

Did history work out for the best?

Well, yes and no. One is loath to say that any breakup that hurts as many associated parties as this one — and in such a public manner — is “for the best,” though both seem to have effectively moved on: Allen’s marriage to Farrow’s now-estranged daughter is still going strong, while Farrow has further filled her life with children and humanitarian work. But we’re not passing a verdict on anyone’s personal life: are their careers better for the way things turned out? Certainly not in Farrow’s case, though perhaps she’d simply have lost her taste for screen acting anyway. Allen’s filmography may have followed an uneven trajectory in the last 20 years, but it had never been blemish-free: I’d argue that his Farrow period was the richest and most adventurous of his career, but it still produced the occasional misfire. With “Midnight in Paris” having brought him a fourth Oscar last year, and “Blue Jasmine” currently earning him rave reviews, history has worked out pretty well for him — though I’d say cinema is a little poorer for having fewer Allen-Farrow collaborations than it could have done.

Do you think film history was affected by Woody and Mia’s breakup? And if so, for better or for worse? Share your thoughts in the comments.

The Motion Picture Editors’ Guild — a body that covers not just editors, but other post-production professionals too — will present veteran sound re-recording mixer Donald O. Mitchell with its Fellowship and Service Award on October 5 in Los Angeles. The award acknowledges not just the recipient’s screen work but their spirit of collaboration and peer support within the industry.

If you think you don’t know Mitchell’s work, you’ve certainly heard it. Beginning at Fox as the draughtsman in 1955, he moved into sound work in the following decades, going on to mix over 110 features, including some of the biggest blockbusters of the 1980s and 1990s. His very first film as a re-recording mixer, 1973’s “The Paper Chase,” garnered him an Oscar nomination — clearly, he’d made the right move.

It would be his first of 14 nominations in the Best Sound (now dubbed Best Sound Mixing) category, as he also notched up citations for “Silver Streak” (1976), “Raging Bull” (1980), “Terms of Endearment” (1983), “Silverado” (1985), “A Chorus Line” (1985), “Top Gun” (1986), “Black Rain” (1989), “Glory” (1989), “Days of Thunder” (1990), “Under Siege” (1992), “The Fugitive” (1993), “Clear and Present Danger” (1994) and “Batman Forever” (1995). He converted only one of them to Oscar gold: Ed Zwick’s Civil War epic “Glory.”

He retired from film work in 1997, with the little-remembered action film “Steel” (remember the brief period when Hollywood tried to make Shaquille O’Neal a movie star?) his last screen credit. I’m pretty sure the sound was better than the movie. 

MPEG president John Trask explained the decision as follows: “Don Mitchell’s career as a re-recording mixer spans more than 40 years. During this time he has consistently exemplified the qualities that this award has been created to recognize. By his example he has inspired present and future sound personnel, contributing a legacy to our craft that will last well into the future.”

Past winners of the Fellowship and Service Award include editors Dede Allen (“Bonnie and Clyde”), Carol Littleton (“E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial”), Donn Cambern (“Easy Rider”), BAFTA and Emmy-winning sound editor Don Hall (“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”) and IATSE president Thomas C. Short.

File this under “eligibility rules I didn’t know weren’t already in place.” Any seasoned-awards watcher knows that Writers’ Guild of America Awards for Best Original and Adapted Screenplay are inconsistent with other precursor honors in the category because of their highly exclusive eligibility criteria, which dictate that only films written by Guild signatories can be considered. It’s a rule that annually disqualifies many of the leading contenders in the race: earlier this year, “Django Unchained” (which, of course, ueventually won the Academy Award) headed a list of barred titles that also included Oscar nominees “Amour” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

Same as it ever was. What I didn’t know, however, was the documentaries, which have had their own WGA category since 2004, have until now been exempt from this rule: docs not produced by Guild signatories could be nominated, as long as the credited writers then joined the WGA’s non-fiction caucus. No longer, reports Variety’s Dave McNary — documentaries will now be required to meet the came criteria as narrative features.

Non-American scripts written outside the WGA’s jurisdiction may still compete with the collaboration of the equivalent Guild in Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, France, New Zealand, Israel and Quebec.

This seems fair to me, inasmuch as the WGA’s restrictions are fair at all. It’s not clear to me what difference this ruling would have made to the last nine years’ worth of nominees. Chilean documentarian Patricio Guzman was nominated two years ago for “Nostalgia for the Light,” for example — would he have found a way to qualify under the new rules? I guess we’ll gauge its effect when the official ballot is revealed at the year’s end.

The category’s past winners, from 2004 onward, include Morgan Spurlock for “Super Size Me”; Alex Gibney for “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”; Amy Berg for “Deliver Us from Evil”; Gibney again for “Taxi to the Dark Side”; Ari Folman for “Waltz With Bashir”; Mark Monroe for “The Cove”; Charles Ferguson, Chad Beck and Adam Bolt for “Inside Job”; Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega for “Better This World”; and Malik Bendjelloul for “Searching for Sugar Man.” 

Something I didn’t know before reading this news, meanwhile, is that the creation of a documentary award rendered docs ineligible from the other writing categories — something that would have prevented Michael Moore winning that surprising Best Original Screenplay award in the 2002 race for “Bowling for Columbine.” Bit of a shame, that.

Last month, the Academy’s Board of Governors created a new branch for casting directors, 30 years after they were first invited to join the Academy. Few could argue that the move wasn’t overdue, but there was more debate over the inevitable question that followed: should the Academy Awards have a category for Best Casting? There are arguments to be made in either direction, but I’d ultimately say no: casting is a highly skilled profession, but not a screen craft, and I don’t think most Academy members are qualified to assess it. (Yes, most Academy members aren’t qualified to assess sound editing either, but that’s another discussion.)  

In any event, until a Best Casting Oscar becomes a reality — if, indeed, it ever does — the top honor in the discipline will remain the Casting Society of America’s Artios Awards, the nominations for which were announced today. The awards take place in November, and as such, the awards cover an odd mix of releases from the first half of 2013 and the last of 2012: if, nearly six months after its Academy Awards triumph, you can’t stomach one more awards citation for “Argo,” you may want to avert your eyes.

The nominees don’t do much to dispel the notion that a Best Casting Oscar would rather unimaginatively benefit the leading Best Picture nominees in any given year: look at the Big Budget Drama category, for which the nominees are “Argo,” “Life of Pi,” “Lincoln,” “Les Misérables” and “Zero Dark Thirty.” 

Happily, the CSA’s awards contain enough sub-divisions — with films divided by genre and, somewhat fuzzily, by budget — to allow for some out-of-the-box choices. It’s nice to see a cleverly, counter-intuitively cast non-prestige film like “Magic Mike” in the mix, for example. Or “Pitch Perfect,” with its youthful but carefully balanced ensemble. Or “The Place Beyond the Pines,” with its smart experimentations with type.

The latter, incidentally, is one of the few 2013 releases amid the film nominees — yet another example of how little early releases figure into the awards conversation. Others include “Mud,” “Frances Ha” (a terrific pick), “Pain & Gain,” “Epic” and “Oz the Great and Powerful,” a film I would argue was rather inhibited by the casting of certain key roles. I guess the pros see it differently.

TV nominees include “Girls,” “House of Cards” and “Game of Thrones,” while “Behind the Candelabra” and “Top of the Lake” both, of course, figured into the miniseries or TV movie category. 

The bicoastal awards ceremony, which also honors theater work, takes place in New York and Los Angeles on November 18. Full list of film and TV nominees below.

Best Casting in a Big Budget Feature – Comedy
“Oz the Great and Powerful,” John Papsidera
“Pain & Gain,” Denise Chamian, Lori Wyman, Ania Kamieniecki-O”Hare
“Silver Linings Playbook,” Mary Vernieu, Lindsay Graham, Diane Heery
“Ted,” Sheila Jaffe, Angela Peri
“The Watch,” Alyssa Weisberg, Shay Bentley Griffin, Yesi Ramirez, Karina Walters

Best Casting in a Big Budget Feature – Drama
“Argo,” Lora Kennedy
“Life of Pi,” Avy Kaufman
“Lincoln,” Avy Kaufman, Erica Arvold, Pat Moran
“Les Misérables,” Nina Gold 
“Zero Dark Thirty,” Mark Bennett, Richard Hicks, Seher Latif

Best Casting in a Studio or Independent Feature – Comedy
“Hitchcock,” Terri Taylor, John McAlary
“Moonrise Kingdom,” Douglas Aibel, Henry Russell Bergstein
“Pitch Perfect,” Kerry Barden, Paul Schnee, Tracy Kilpatrick
“Seven Psychopaths,” Sarah Halley Finn, Tamara Hunter
“To Rome with Love,” Patricia DiCerto, Beatrice Kruger

Best Casting a Studio or Independent Feature – Drama
“The Company You Keep,” Avy Kaufman
“Lawless,” Francine Maisler
“Looper,” Mary Vernieu, Lindsay Graham, Lisa Mae Fincannon, Craig Fincannon
“Magic Mike,” Carmen Cuba, Wittney Horton
“Mud,” Francine Maisler, Diana Guthrie
“The Place Beyond the Pines,” Cindy Tolan, Adam Caldwell

Best Casting in a Low Budget Feature – Comedy or Drama
“Celeste & Jesse Forever,” Angela Demo
“Compliance,” Kerry Barden, Paul Schnee
“Frances Ha,” Douglas Aibel, Henry Russell Bergstein
“The Sessions,” Ronnie Yeskel
“Smashed,” Avy Kaufman, Kim Coleman

Best Casting in an Animated Feature
“Brave,” Kevin Reher, Natalie Lyon
“Epic,” Christian Kaplan
“Frankenweenie,” Ronna Kress, Jennifer Rudin
“Ice Age: Continental Drift,” Christian Kaplan
“Wreck-It Ralph,” Jamie Sparer Roberts

Best Casting in a Short Film
“200 Years,” Sherrie Henderson, Dan Velez
“Hotel Pennsylvania,” Donna DeSeta
“Little Shadow,” Donna DeSeta
“Room 8,” Rose Wicksteed
“The Learning Curve,” Kendra Patterson

Best Casting in a Television Pilot – Comedy
“Animal Practice,” Lisa Miller Katz
“Guys with Kids,” Geraldine Leder
“How to Live With Your Parents (For the Rest of Your Life),” Susan Edelman, Jeff Greenberg
“The Mindy Project,” Felicia Fasano
“Partners,” Julie Ashton-Barson

Best Casting in a Television Pilot – Drama
“The Americans,” Cami Patton, Christal Karge, Julie Tucker, Ross Meyerson
“Bates Motel,” April Webster, Sara Isaacson, Jennifer Page, Corinne Clark
“The Following,” Greg Orson, Lesli Gelles-Raymond, Lisa Mae Fincannon
“House of Cards,” Laray Mayfield
“The Newsroom,” Francine Maisler

Best Casting in a Television Series – Comedy
“Girls,” Jennifer Euston 
“Modern Family,” Jeff Greenberg, Allen Hooper
“New Girl,” Anya Colloff, Michael Nicolo, Jessica Munks
“Nurse Jackie,” Julie Tucker, Ross Meyerson
“30 Rock,” Katja Blichfeld, Jessica Daniels 

Best Casting in a Television Series – Drama
“Game of Thrones,” Nina Gold
“The Good Wife,” Mark Saks, John Andrews
“Homeland,” Judy Henderson, Lisa Mae Fincannon, Craig Fincannon
“House of Cards,” Laray Mayfield, Julie Schubert
“The Newsroom,” Francine Maisler, Nancy Perkins

Best Casting in a Television Movie or Miniseries
“American Horror Story,” Robert J. Ulrich, Eric Dawson, Carol Kritzer, Eric Souliere
“Behind the Candelabra,” Carmen Cuba, Wittney Horton
“Phil Spector,” Sharon Bialy, Sherry Thomas, Mia Cusumano
“Political Animals,” David Rubin, Melissa Pryor, Jason Loftus
“Top of the Lake,” Kirsty McGregor

Best Casting in a Daytime Drama Series
“Days of Our Lives,” Marnie Saitta
“General Hospital,” Mark Teschner
“The Young and the Restless,” Judy Blye Wilson

Best Casting in a Children”s Series
“Good Luck Charlie,” Sally Stiner, Barbie Block
“iCarly,” Krisha Bullock, Jennifer K.M. Treadwell
“Jessie,” Sheryl Levine
“Victorious,” Krisha Bullock, Jennifer K.M. Treadwell
“Wizards of Waverly Place,” Howard Meltzer

Best Casting in Television Animation
“American Dad!,” Linda Lamontagne
“Bob”s Burgers,” Julie Ashton-Barson
“Family Guy,” Linda Lamontagne
“Robot Chicken,” Linda Lamontagne
“SpongeBob SquarePants,” Sarah Noonan