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Over the weekend, Jeff Nichols’ “Mud” quietly overtook “The Place Beyond the Pines” at the box office to become the specialty release champ on the year so far. Fingers crossed that its success there and with 151 of 154 critics noted at Rotten Tomatoes (boy do these three look silly) helps it find room in the upcoming Oscar season.

The film — along with “Pines,” in fact — is set for release on DVD/Blu-ray tomorrow, so if you haven’t caught it yet, you’ll have your chance. To whet the appetite, Lionsgate Home Entertainment has offered us a glimpse at the special features of the package with this brief take from Nichols and Reese Witherspoon discussing the actress’s character in the film.

Check out the clip embedded above and if you’ve seen “Mud,” remember to tell us what you thought.

A couple of weeks ago, we reported that George Clooney will receive the Stanley Kubrick Award for Excellence in Film at the Britannia Awards, an annual event held by BAFTA’s Los Angeles division to celebrate unity between the British and US film industries. Today, two further honorees were confirmed for the November 9 ceremony: Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Kingsley.

Bigelow will receive the John Schlesinger Award for Excellence in Directing. An honor that was previously a wholly non-American affair — with recipients including Peter Weir, Anthony Minghella, Stephen Frears, Danny Boyle and Christopher Nolan — until Quentin Tarantino was awarded it last year.

Bigelow is the first female director to receive the award since it was inaugurated in 2003 — which is apt, since across the pond, she was also the first woman to win BAFTA’s Best Director prize, when “The Hurt Locker” cleaned up at the 2009 awards. She was nominated in the same category earlier this year for “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Veteran British actor Kingsley, of course, has a longer BAFTA history — 30 years ago, he won both Best Actor and Best Newcomer for “Gandhi,” and has since received one further film nomination for “Schindler’s List.” Interestingly, none of the last three roles that garnered him Oscar nods (“House of Sand and Fog,” “Sexy Beast” and “Bugsy”) caught BAFTA’s eye.

Perhaps Los Angeles is simply a kinder place to him, since BAFTA/LA are awarding him the Albert R. Broccoli Award for Worldwide Contribution to Filmed Entertainment — an honor that has previously been presented to John Lasseter, Kirk Douglas and Tony and Ridley Scott.  

NAFTA/LA chairman Gary Dartnall states: “Sir Ben is a true icon of our industry, with a proven ability to captivate filmgoers around the world with his daring and powerful performances, and Kathryn is a tremendously talented and versatile director whose work consistently challenges and entertains, no matter the genre or subject matter. As previous Academy Award and BAFTA winning artists, BAFTA Los Angeles is proud that Kathryn and Sir Ben will join us for what is certain to be a memorable evening.”

The Britannia Awards will be presented at a gala dinner on November 9, with BBC America televising the event the next day.

We have a host. Studios have made their fall festival moves. Potential season players like “Captain Phillips” and “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and “The Fifth Estate” and “Gravity,” etc., have secured their big reveals. Telluride is on the horizon and with it, the season. You ready to do this?

I’m not. Not yet, anyway. We looked at the sidebar and figured it’s been a month, let’s refresh the predictions and typically, a column comes with that. But what’s there to say? Okay, there is this and that…

Warner Bros. has a little film called “The Good Lie” that is rumored to be Telluride-bound and, given what’s on paper, could be something to watch out for this season. From “Monsieur Lazhar” director Philippe Falardeau, it stars Reese Witherspoon as a straight-talking American woman who takes in a Sudanese refugee (one of many orphans displaced during the Second Sudanese Civil War). Yes, “The Blind Side” has been invoked. Or it could pass on to 2014. We’ll see.

So far Fox appears to be following the “Life of Pi” playbook by dropping footage of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” at CinemaCon, stirring Oscar talk there, grabbing a high-profile gala screening at the New York Film Festival and getting its ducks in a row for Oscar season. The trailer was hugely impressive as far as I’m concerned and if the film Ben Stiller has been dying to make shapes up, it could be his first major awards player to date. Or it could just be some holiday commercial appeal. We’ll see.

Speaking of studio strategy, Sony Pictures Classics sent “Before Midnight” back out into 200 more theaters this weekend, a tactic they used to great effect a few years ago on Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.” I’d like to think that means it’s being primed as an awards season big gun (no word yet on the fate of “Foxcatcher”). I’ll still be talking about Julie Delpy when everyone else stops, that’s for sure. Or she and the movie could just fade away into the forgotten early months. We’ll see.

“Lee Daniels’ The Butler” has started screening and apparently The Weinstein Company is happy to let noted Harvey shill Roger Friedman write it up while the rest of us stick to an embargo, and that’s fine. But the news is it’s a softball that could absolutely land right in the right spot for the Academy with performances from Forest Whitaker and particularly Oprah Winfrey that might pop up on the circuit. Or it could barely make a box office splash and go away before the season even revs up. We’ll see.

The rest is what it is. The summer was a bit of a disappointment for many, which will hopefully shine a light back to great early stuff like “Mud,” “The Place Beyond the Pines” and the aforementioned “Before Midnight.” But mostly, all eyes are on the end of the year and a back-loaded season.

Lots of release date shuffling has been going on. Universal inched “Rush” back a bit. TWC sent “August: Osage County” hurtling toward Christmas (then turned around and set it for a Toronto premiere over three months prior). Relativity has moved “Out of the Furnace” deeper and deeper into the glut of the season. Meanwhile, the first two weekends of November are free and clear for anyone looking to drop adult content earlier. Surely there will be more maneuvering before it’s all said and done.

For now, we wait. And I feel like I type that phrase every year, but it’s true. One final update to the charts before the festivals shed more light. By the time they’re updated again, I’ll have concluded a year of living in New York (which has been fantastic) and I’ll be back in the LA freakshow. Until then, enjoy the rest of the summer before the awards season madness sucks all the air out of the room.

A quick note on the podcast. Thanks everyone for asking in any and every possible way — Twitter, comments, emails, etc. — but yes, Oscar Talk is coming back. We’re doing it differently this year, however. In my opinion, the noise of Oscar season can too often lead to a dull roar and the clutter is useless. Anne and I, as I’m sure you know, end up twiddling our thumbs, grinding well-made points into the ground, repeating ourselves and basically just running out of steam on the weekly schedule. So we’re scaling the podcast back to a 10-special series, running roughly monthly (with special reports on this and that thrown in as big news moments dictate). So you’ll get less of us, but hopefully, more refined considerations. That starts Aug. 16 with a review of the year’s best so far and a fall festival preview.

Now…forget all this for another few weeks.

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If you were A24 Films you had to be a tad worried going into the opening weekend of “The Spectacular Now.”  The Sundance favorite received, um, spectacular reviews (81 on Metacritic, 90% on Rotten Tomatoes), but the art house market and audience can only expand so much in the summer.  “Blue Jasmine” is already a powerhouse and “Fruitvale Station” and “The Way Way Back” continue to do very strong business.  Could “Spectacular” find an audience during this traditionally slow time for prestige indies?  Thankfully, there was no need for concern. “Spectacular” is off to an excellent start grossing $200,000 or $50,000 per theater.  And, happily, it means the great performances from Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley will not be forgotten.

Speaking to the two twentysomething actors last week I was struck by how little they have changed since I first met them on separate occasions. Teller still comes across as a jovial open book and Woodley seems to have little concern for the trappings of potential stardom.  If there charismatic and warm personalities are all a charade they really are the two finest actors of their generation. In either case the duo have obvious chemistry and it’s one reason why director James Ponsoldt was able to craft awards-worthy performances from them with little to no rehearsal time.

You can check out our interview in the video embedded at the top of this post. We started discussing film festivals before the cameras rolled (I had the pleasure of attending a dinner with Woodley at Telluride for “Descendants”) and Teller immediately recalled how his grandmother almost died of pneumonia attending “Spectacular’s” premiere at Park City last January (I think the festival would prefer you keep that quiet Miles). There is some discussion about the difficult scene with Kyle Chandler’s character (amazingly, no rehearsal for any of them) and how “Spectacular’ helped Teller land his role alongside Woodley (again) in “Divergent.”  Most of all, like the movie itself, you’ll come away just hoping these two keep working together again. And again.

“The Spectacular Now” is now playing in New York and Los Angeles.  It expands to select cities on Aug. 9.

Well, AMPAS brass decided to end the speculation mercifully early this year, announcing Ellen DeGeneres as the host of next year’s Academy Awards ceremony — her second stab at one of showbiz’s trickiest gigs, having first done the job to amiable effect back in 2007. And predictably enough, the news has met with a mixed response: for everyone who’s happy to see DeGeneres return with her warm, non-confrontational approach, there’s another (like our own Greg Ellwood) who thinks it’s too conservative a choice.

Today’s range of responses simply underlines what we already know, however: that hosting the Oscars is a pretty thankless task, in which it’s virtually impossible to please everybody. Play it too safe, and the viewers at home think you’re boring; play it too risqué, and the crowd in the room turns against you.

While the Academy was once happy to let a comfy comedian like Bob Hope take the reins year after year (and Hope, in turn, was happy to do so), times have changed, ratings have dropped and Oscar producers have got increasingly restless in their quest for the right host. This century, they’ve taken a diverse range of approaches, from the edgy, impolite comedy of Chris Rock to the old-school showbiz sparkle of Hugh Jackman to the reliable Borscht Belt schtick of nine-time host Billy Crystal.

The only thing these hosts — and several others, including Whoopi Goldberg, Steve Martin and last year’s left-field choice of Seth MacFarlane — have in common is that none of them met with universal approval. (I’d say “disapproval” as well, but I’ve yet to hear anyone call for an Anne Hathaway/James Franco encore.)

But how do they all measure up with the benefit of hindsight? With the appointment of DeGeneres, Kris and I thought this a good moment to review the 10 hosts (well, eight individuals and two duos) who have done the job this century, looking back on their strengths and weaknesses, and assigning them a grade for their efforts.

It’s a highly subjective process, of course — so we’re eager to hear your own feedback on this issue. Click through the gallery below, rating them as you go if you wish, and tell us how you think they stack up in the comments below and/or by voting in our poll.

I very rarely run a transcript/Q&A-style interview because, well, on one hand I think it’s kind of lazy (not always). On the other, I’m a writer and I like to write, I like to paint a portrait of someone and use their words as tools toward those ends.

But sometimes you talk to someone whose every word you want to print, and filmmaker Derek Cianfrance is definitely one of those guys. The director of “The Place Beyond the Pines” has been making the rounds lately to discuss the film again as it heads for DVD/Blu-ray next week and so it was a great opportunity to finally see the film (I had missed it in theatrical) and talk to him about his vision for it.

Cianfrance is an incredibly thoughtful filmmaker and his take on this material was full of such interesting insight and his stories so compelling that I’d rather they just speak for themselves. So read on to learn more about his approach to the visual grammar distinguishing the film’s three acts, what he was looking for in filling out the cast and how he almost had a very game Ben Mendelsohn pull out his own teeth for his role. Some of this you may have heard or read already but it’s a nice dive back into the talking points before the film comes back around, and maybe even makes a dent in the awards season. Also, check out a pair of exclusive new clips from the film below.

Tell me a little bit about the visual grammar of the film. It’s a triptych, so did you want to visually distinguish those sections at all?

No. I mean, on “Blue Valentine,” I had approached that movie as a duet. And I wanted to let the aesthetic approach to the film kind of drive the two worlds that I was dealing with. The one world of the past was about these two people falling in love. I shot it all on super 16, completely handheld. We shot it with one 50 mm lens; we never changed the lens. To me it was about seeing the world with this kind of one eye. I kind of wanted to have some opportunity in the frame that if the characters wanted to move they had a freedom to move and kind of mirror the choice that you had when you were young. I always thought about it as like if you were a fish in the ocean you could go anywhere and that’s what I wanted the past of “Blue Valentine” to feel like. I wanted it to be very physical as well. If the character was running the camera was running. It was physical filmmaking. Whereas the present, I shot it all on digital format on a RED. I shot it with two cameras at a time because I wanted to break the perspective. It was no longer about this one vision, it was about this kind of duplicity in vision of these two characters living in the same world but kind of split. I shot it all with long lenses on tripods and I wanted it to be about the kind of claustrophobia of the choices that you made and kind of being stuck, being trapped. So you’re using my metaphor of the fish in the ocean on the past, the present all of a sudden was fish in a bucket, that these people were caught and had less choices, less actual room to breathe. And it was very important that there were two different distinct styles.

With “Pines,” because I was telling a linear story and it was all about these people living in this same place, the city of Schenectady, New York, very early on Sean Bobbitt and I decided that it would be a unified vision, that we weren’t going to deal stylistically with different worlds. So in terms of the aesthetic approach of the film, in terms of formats, in terms of how we approached our scenes, we wanted to make a film that was more about echoes of the past and the repetition of actions and the consequence of those actions. And so we decided to shoot it all in the same kind of visual language, and the only thing that’s different, that changes, is the location, because this movie is also about class, social structures that people are born into. So the Ryan Gosling/Eva Mendes thread, while it’s shot in the same kind of cinematic grammar as the Avery section, the Avery section feels much different because his world takes place in a suburban household and in kind of marble civic centers and city halls. It’s the same visual grammar, it’s just kind about crossing the tracks in a town.

Why did you choose Schenectady, New York for the film’s setting? I’ve read some comments from you about the city’s violent history.

My wife is from Schenectady. I’ve been visiting that place for 10 years. I love that place and the people. And like any American city, it has its history of controversies and its own histories of corruption. To me Schenectady as represented in the film, it could be anywhere in America, but it’s specific to Schenectady. And we weren’t necessarily trying to make a documentary about what had happened in Schenectady. I was just dealing with the town on more of a human level, just trying to imagine what it would be like to grow up there on one side of the railroad tracks and the other side of the railroad tracks and to see what happened when those two sides collided and to try to imagine what that reverberation would be. So I was only dealing with it on a real human level, but trying to be true to the social kind of class implications that exist there.

The film’s theme of legacy is clear. Why did you want to sit down and build a film around that?

In 2007 my wife was pregnant with our second son and I was reading a lot of Jack London books, thinking about ancestry quite a bit and Darwinism and survival of the fittest. I started thinking about my baby son that was going to come into the world and thinking about all this I was going to pass on to him. And I was thinking about this fire that I had always felt inside of me and how that fire had helped me extremely as a filmmaker. It helped me have success as a filmmaker but it had also burned a lot of things down in my life and it also caused a lot of pain in my life. I started thinking about my father and knowing that he had that fire and thinking about my grandfather and knowing that he had that fire and my great-grandfather and knowing that he had that fire. And I was just thinking about my baby that was going to come into the world and I didn’t want him to have the fire. I wanted him to be born clean. I wanted him to be born without any history of choices already made for him. And very quickly this movie came to me, this movie about legacy and kind of being the choices that we make in our life, how they reverberate throughout generations.

The movie also seems to have something to say about the absolute fear of responsibility you have to what you leave to your children.

I never learned to be a writer. I never took screenwriting courses. I never read anyone’s scripts. As a writer, my only guiding principle has been to write about things that scare me, write about things that make me feel vulnerable, write about things that will expose my deepest fears, so that’s how I write. I go into those things that make me anxious, that make me nervous, that make me feel unsure, because to me that’s where I’m getting at kind of my deepest truths.

With a couple of collaborations with Ryan Gosling under your belt now do you find yourself often writing with him in mind?

Yeah. Ryan is just a magic human being. And it felt like destiny to make ‘Pines’ with him because I was at his agent’s house in 2007, two years before I shot “Blue Valentine” with him and, you know, I was asking him, “Do you fantasize about things? You’ve accomplished so much in your life. Do you still dream about things?” And he says, “Well, I always wanted to rob a bank but I’ve always been too scared of jail.”  I said, “Well, that’s crazy, I’m making a movie about a bank robber. Have you ever thought about how you would ever do it? Have you given it any thought?” And he said, “Yeah, I thought I would do it on a motorcycle because I could go in with a helmet and no one would know who I was and then I’d leave on the motorcycle because they’re fast and agile. And then I pull into a U-Haul truck parked about four blocks away and, you know, leave in a U-Haul truck and the cops would be looking for a motorcycle not a U-Haul truck.” And I said, “That’s crazy; that’s exactly what we’ve written into the script!” So it was destiny, you know? And that’s how it’s felt with Ryan for a long time. As I write new things it’s like he’s the best, you know, and such a magic performer and such a magic collaborator. I really feel like as a human being he makes the world a better place. And if you put a human being like that in your movie he makes your movie a better movie.

Even though he’s only in a small slice of the film his impact is felt throughout the rest of the movie. I imagine there are few actors who can pull off that kind of presence.

He has that ability in this film to kind of haunt the rest of the movie and his presence always lingers over the film and it’s because he’s so powerful. We always talked about his character in this movie as being almost like the myth or a bit of a prologue to the movie, an extended prologue. And actually when I look at the film I feel like the first two acts are almost the prologue for the movie, which is the third act, you know? And initially how I always conceived of that third of the movie was that there was going to be an intermission in the film. That right before the third act of the film you wouldn’t have a title card that said “15 years later.” It would’ve been an intermission and you would have gone out and gone to the bathroom, gotten your popcorn and then come back to it and 15 years would have passed. But I guess I found out very quickly you can’t do that in the marketplace.

That’s funny because I didn’t catch up to the movie until recently on Blu-ray. My wife finished cooking dinner right when the second section wrapped up so I paused the movie, ate dinner, then came back to watch the third act.

Nice. That’s how it should be seen. With the intermission.

There are obviously a lot of hugely talented actors involved. How did you go about casting the film? What were you looking for in some of these distinct actors who fill out the ensemble?

With each character in a movie I’m looking for a human being. I ‘m looking for a person. And to me, I’m looking for a person that’s full of strengths and weaknesses, a person that’s full of successes and failures, a person that’s full of joy and sorrow. I’m interested in people that are human beings that are alive. And so when I cast actors, I want actors to bring a life to it and I always ask all my actors to surprise me. I ask them to fail for me. I ask them to get it wrong, because I know that in getting it wrong, they can also get it right. I feel like if an actor or anyone in life is too scared of falling on their face and making a fool of themselves then they’ll never truly be great. And so I ask all my actors to get it wrong for me. And I know if they can get it wrong and be laughably bad they can also be incredibly inspiring and great. So there’s no judgment; I don’t judge. The only time I judge an actor on set is if they’re not failing; if they get it right all the time, I start to question it. I feel like it’s too easy. So specifically, all of those actors were absolute blessings, gifts. I felt so fortunate to work with each and every one of them.

I was particularly taken with Ben Mendelsohn.

I can tell you stories. I had seen him in “Animal Kingdom” and thought he was great. I had no idea that he had been acting since he was a boy in Australia and he was kind of Australia’s national treasure. I was meeting with a number of actors one day in L.A. and I had a meeting with Ben and he came three hours early to his meeting. He showed up to this meeting and he looked like he was a wreck. He was wearing a plastic wristband and I couldn’t tell if it was from a party the night before or if it was from the hospital. And Ben, the first thing that he says to me was, “I really hope that you don’t want me to audition for you today because if you do that will be the last thing I’ll ever be able to do for you.” He says, “I hope you just give me the job because if you just give me the job I’ll carry a spear for you.’ And I said, “Okay, I’ll give you the job.” So within two minutes of knowing Ben I hired him because he came to me like that. The character of Robin was written as a little bit older then Ben and so Ben said, “Hey dad what do you…” — because for some reason he started calling me dad — “Dad what are we going to do about the teeth because the teeth of the character, Robin was written to have all false teeth.” I said, “Well, what do you think we should do about the teeth?’ Ben says, “Well, I could have them pulled out for you. I’ve had quite a lot of dental work done and I could give you this number of my dentist and I’ll be happy to pull them out for you.” And I said, “Okay, well give me the number of your dentist.” And to kind of show you like how crazy making a film can get, I actually called his dentist. A week later I actually had his dental x-rays in my possession and I was preparing, Ben and I were preparing a trip for him to go to Australia to have his teeth pulled. Thankfully my producers came in with clear conscious and they told us that we absolutely could not have Ben’s teeth pulled. And Ben and I, we couldn’t understand why we couldn’t pull his teeth. But I’m so thankful now that we didn’t pull his teeth. I remember a day before shooting Ben and I were eating peaches at a farm stand in Schenectady and I was watching the juice drip down his chin as he was biting into these peaches. And I was so thankful that he still had his teeth. But that’s the kind of actor Ben is. He’s willing to absolutely go for it and I’m embarrassed that I actually considered his offer. But he’s one of the best human beings I’ve ever met.

In terms of Ray Liotta, when I was a teenager growing up in Colorado, I didn’t have pictures of girls on my wall. I had pictures of Ray Liotta on my wall. Along with Mike Patton he was one of my heroes. And when Ben Coccio and myself started writing the script we found out that both of our favorite movie was “Goodfellas” and so we decided we’d write a role for Ray Liotta. The next thing I know, five years later, I have an opportunity to cast Ray in the movie. There was some talk with Ray about it’s a role that we had seen him in before in terms of like the corrupt cop. But I felt like this movie was taking so many kinds of narrative chances that some familiarity every now and again would be good. It kind of reminded me of making mix tapes back in the day. I remember making mix tapes for people. I always remember I could do like three or four songs that were out there and then like every forth for fifth song on a mix tape I’d have to put something familiar on there, because you want to keep the person who’s listening listening. You want to give them something that they just can chew on for a little bit and then you can get away with doing all your other crazy stuff. And so working with Ray, I felt like I was working with an American national treasure. He’s absolutely one of the best actors and the thing I loved so much about working with Ray is he has an ability to unnerve everybody and kind of throw everyone, myself included, off center.

The scene when he pulls Bradley over was pretty incredible. Just with a look he’s searing.

Yeah and you can only see half of his face. Everybody was so uncomfortable. The scene at the dinner table with Rose Byrne, Rose got up for an hour and left set for an hour because Ray is a human knife and he can cut you. And to me it’s the best. It’s an absolute gift to have him on set doing that.

I believe I’ve read that you wrote the film with Bradley Cooper in mind. Is that true?

Well, I did not know who I had in mind for that role. We had written the character of Avery and I was meeting a number of factors and I met Bradley. Before I met him I liked the “Hangover” movies and thought he was good in those but I wasn’t sure. This was before “Silver Linings” when I cast him. I wasn’t sure what kind of actor he was but I met with him anyway. And I remember immediately being struck by Bradley because I felt like he had a storm raging inside of him. I felt like on the outside he looked like People’s sexiest man but on the inside there was something going on, something that I felt a kinship to. And I felt like if I could rewrite this character and kind of let the audience experience that same kind of misdirection, that I had with Bradley that I thought he was going to be this kind of good looking America’s hero guy, but that he actually had something much deeper going on inside of him. I felt like if I could create this character who on the outside the audience saw as a hero but on the inside he felt corrupted, he felt a toxic shame, I felt like it could be interesting. So I rewrote the role specifically with Bradley in mind thinking that I can get into that storm, into that secret, those fissures that I saw inside of him that I could try to write a role about a guy who’s burying those things and trying to keep on the politician’s face. I think when I gave him the rewrite of the script it made him a little nervous. In fact, he dropped out of the film after he read my rewrite of the script and I had to go up to Montreal. I asked him where he was, he was like, “I’m in Montreal shooting ‘The Words,'” and I said, “Okay, I could be there in five hours.” I drove up and had a middle-of-the-night dinner with him. It was a four-hour dinner and for three hours and 45 minutes he was out of the movie. The last 15 minutes of the meeting I was able to turn him. I think I just tired him out.

“The Place Beyond the Pines” arrives on DVD/Blu-ray Tuesday, Aug. 6.

Yesterday, Kris and I looked over a number of upcoming potential prestige films that, despite high-profile festival appointments, are still seeking a foothold in the distribution market. Today, coincidentally enough, a trailer has arrived that handily proves just how long the journey from a festival premiere to an actual release can be — even for a relatively big-name project. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Billy Bob Thornton’s “Jayne Mansfield’s Car.”

This deep-fried slab of Southern quirkiness made its first appearance in Competition at the Berlin Film Festival in February last year — that’s 18 months ago, for the math-challenged — and is only now inching its way toward US audiences, with a VOD release planned for August 20, and limited theatrical on September 13. Reviews at Berlin were mixed, and Thornton’s stock as an actor and filmmaker has dropped significantly since the 1990s. (Remember when his 1996 directorial debut, “Sling Blade,” beat “The English Patient” to the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar?) Still, you wouldn’t expect a film with an ensemble that includes Robert Duvall, Kevin Bacon, John Hurt and Thornton himself to disappear from view entirely.

If you’re guessing that the film has languished in limbo for this long because it isn’t very good, I’m afraid you’d be right — but that’s not to say “Jayne Mansfield’s Car” isn’t interesting. “So wilfully random in structure and elusive in subtext that it”s easy to project the influence of anyone from Wes Anderson to Wim Wenders onto it,” I wrote in my Berlin review, “it”s as genuinely inscrutable a curio as any bit of world-cinema esoterica in the Berlin lineup.”

The trailer below, meanwhile, does a good job of disguising the film’s untempered weirdness, giving the impression of a straightforward rambling-family drama: set in 1969, it’s about two estranged halves of an extended family (one American, one British) unharmoniously united for a funeral. But there’s plenty the trailer keeps hidden, including a delightful performance by Frances O’Connor as a frisky stepsister who seduces Thornton’s slow-witted Vietnam vet. I can’t wholeheartedly recommend the film, but I’m glad it’s seeing the light of day.

When I woke up this morning I checked my inbox on my phone and quickly saw there were a number of E-mails with the headline “Ellen DeGeneres returns to host…” My first thought was, “Wow, FOX must have spent a ton of money to get DeGeneres to return as an ‘American Idol’ judge.  I wonder if that means Jennifer Lopez is still coming back?”  Of course, a host and a judge are two very different things (don’t worry Seacrest your job is safe and I was half awake) and it quickly dawned on me that, instead, DeGeneres is heading for her second go around as Oscar host.

Oh, well.

Outside of her core fan base (viewers of her popular daytime talk show) the selection of DeGeneres will be met with a collective yawn.  The 55-year-old comedienne is almost the antithesis of pseudo frat boy Seth MacFarlane’s hire a year ago. She’s beyond safe and to say she’ll be nice to the Dolby Theater crowd is an understatement of epic proportions (and her hire is a huge confirmation that Academy members were more upset with MacFarlane’s performance than AMPAS was willing to publicly admit).  Chances are there won’t be any huge musical number even with Craig Zaden and Neil Meron back for another go around as producers (although I’m still waiting for a 10-year “Memoirs of a Geisha” tribute).  Of course, DeGeneres first hosted in 2007 and she was fine in what turned into a safe, but pretty unmemorable show. Check out her opening monologue.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLX_jGOTUL4&w=640&h=480]

She’ll be fine, she’ll be cute and she won’t offend anyone. It’s an easy choice  These aren’t digs at DeGeneres. I have a huge amount of respect for her as a trailblazing openly gay entertainer. You could easily argue that without her brave public step in 1997 gay and lesbians might not have the level of public acceptance and legal rights they have today. But, as an entertainer? Personally, I find her just a tad too bland for Oscar.

Surprisingly and not so surprisingly, the announcement of DeGeneres as host came only three days after Cheryl Boone Isaacs was named Academy president.  With the creative team behind the show pretty much set at the beginning of August it now gives Isaacs more time to focus on what is increasingly becoming AMPAS first priority, locking down fundraising for the new Academy Museum.  From a business perspective it’s all very textbook. Clear away the issues that can suck up time first (like convincing, er, finding someone to host) and move on to the tough stuff.

For DeGeneres, it’s a good career move. She made it clear she did not want to host back-to-back (Jon Stewart returned after her) and now is much better timing. “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” is entrenched as the premier daytime talk show, but it hasn’t expanded its audience following the end of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 2011. The Oscars bring some welcome attention to the DeGeneres and the program which could use a little jolt of energy.

It’s become increasingly clear that finding someone buzzworthy to host the Academy Awards is getting tougher and tougher. Finding a “perfect” host such as Johnny Carson or Billy Crystal is clearly a once in a generation (or possibly two or three) thing. MacFarlane’s hire brought a lot of attention to the show last year because of his hardcore fans and his hardcore detractors.  Before that the last host anyone got really excited about was Eddie Murphy and that turned into a public relations nightmare thanks to Brett Ratner. Ellen’s hire still doesn’t eliminate the fact that if NBC can create more anticipation for Tina Fey and Amy Poeher hosting the Globes (shoot, even pairing Poehler with someone else would do that).  Ellen? She’ll be fine. I’m hoping she just won’t be forgettable.

Someone pass me a vodka martini with a splash of lemon and wake me when it’s over.

The 86th Academy Awards will be held on March 2, 2014 and broadcast live on ABC.

There are an awful lot of ifs, maybes and “in talks” still attached to this story, so don’t get too excited (or bewildered) just yet, but it’s certainly the least expected pre-production news of the day: veteran Chinese director Zhang Yimou is in the frame to direct his first Hollywood studio feature, “Quasimodo” — obviously enough, a take on the oft-filmed Victor Hugo chestnut “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

The film is set to star Josh Brolin, whose rugged everyman quality makes him a somewhat counterintuitive choice to play the hideously deformed, socially isolated church bell-ringer, though that could work in his favor — either way, expect prosthetics galore. It’s a project that has been on the Warner Bros. books, with Brolin attached, for two years now: Tim Burton was mooted to direct at one point, though that has obviously fallen through.

The potential appointment of Zhang isn’t as surprising as it would have been a few years ago, before his previous film, the Christian Bale-starring historical epic “The Flowers of War” — China’s Oscar submission in 2011 — announced his designs on crossover fare. But this would be his first film both set and shot outside his homeland, making him something of a wild-card choice for the project.

Zhang’s compatriot and contemporary Chen Kaige floundered when he hit Hollywood to make the infamously abysmal erotic thriller “Killing Me Softly,” though one would hope “Quasimodo” represents a slightly more comfortable match of director and material. The cultural context may be new for him, but Zhang has form in the area of sweeping, romantic period adventures: “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” shot in the style of 2002’s “Hero” (the martial-arts spectacular that was the most recent of Zhang’s three Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominees) could be pretty nifty.

The director’s output since 2004’s acclaimed “House of Flying Daggers,” up to and including the glossy but turgid “Flowers of War,” hasn’t really been up to par, so a change of scenery might reinvigorate him a bit. Whether it works out or not, he’s a more inspired choice than Burton — now let’s see if it actually happens. Things will have to go very right, however, for “Quasimodo” to feature in a future edition of the list below.

You can hear the machinery clicking to life. We’ve moved into August, meaning the Telluride Film Festival is just four short weeks away. Trailers are landing, festival announcements are filling email inboxes and soon enough the awards season will be in full swing.

As we inch closer, however, there are still a number of films that, at least on paper, would appear to have a lot of awards season potential. Many of them are playing the early fall fests, Toronto in particular, given the market for product at that annual showcase. It’s possible this studio or that decides some added firepower is needed and they go shopping for more Oscar players, but just as many will be scooped up for 2014 release.

With all that in mind, Guy and I have put our heads together to come up with a list of 15 that, at least to our eye, could figure into the race in some way big or small if acquired in a timely fashion. We’ve noted festival players, though in the case of Telluride — as ever — all we can do is guess. So we’ve hung a “maybe” out on a few in that regard.

Click through the gallery below to learn more and tell us what currently homeless film you think could be an awards season player in the comments section.

Four years ago James Cameron’s “Avatar” made a huge impact on the film industry landscape. Raking in over $2 billion worldwide, it became the highest grossing film of all time and altered the business pattern of distribution by (unfortunately) ushering in the era of inflated ticket prices for 3D movies.

But being a Goliath like that leaves you victim to a David, and of course, that was the narrative that saw “The Hurt Locker” — from Cameron’s ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow — dominate the circuit en route to Oscar wins for Best Picture and Best Director. But since that big payday, it has been very clear that Cameron is in the “Avatar” business as a franchise was set in motion. Today we find out definitively that the “Avatar” brand won’t be a trilogy, however. It’ll actually be a quadrilogy (or tetralogy, if you prefer the Greek).

This all squares with what “Avatar” star Sigourney Weaver said way back in January of 2012, a claim that was later refuted by producer Jon Landau.

Fox announced today that Cameron has hired several writers to work on the sequels: Josh Friedman (“War of the Worlds,” “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles”), Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver (“Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” “Jurassic Park IV”) and Shane Salerno (“Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem,” “Savages”).

The three movies will be filmed simultaneously. They are set for theaters in December of 2016, 2017 and 2018. Cameron will be producing with Landau once again and will also be working with WETA on effects, which should reflect an even bigger jump in scope and detail from the first Oscar-winning film.

“Avatar” was nominated for nine Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director. It picked up wins for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects.

With a healthy but still humble $7,743,294 gross so far in the US, Richard Linklater’s “Before Midnight” isn’t exactly an art house blockbuster, but it’s one of the summer’s strongest survivors. Ten weeks after it first went into limited release back in May, the critics’ favorite isn’t just hanging around in theaters — it’s expanding once more. Sony Pictures Classics is tripling the film’s screen count this weekend to 226 theaters, a move that should see the season’s artiest franchise entry comfortably through to the fall.

That’s good news for the film commercially, of course — it’s already out-grossed “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset,” and its performance so far proves the validity of releasing well-chosen prestige films as summer counter-programming. (Particularly one that evokes summer as naturally as “Midnight” does.)

But what, if anything, does it mean for its chances in the upcoming awards season? “Before Sunrise,” of course, made no dent on the 1995 awards season, after winning Best Director at the Berlin fest — at that point, Celine and Jesse’s love story (like Linklater himself) was too youthful and too hip to resonate with Academy types. Nine years later, they were feeling it a little more: the slightly more weathered romance of “Before Sunset” was released in early July to even warmer reviews than the first film, and held on quietly through the year to eventually score a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for Linklater, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.

“Before Midnight” is following a similar path. A summer release that is handily one of the year’s most ecstatically reviewed films, it should at least repeat its predecessor’s screenplay nod — the writers being among the Academy’s most receptive branches both to low-key art house fare and early releases. But does SPC have reason to hope for more?

Julie Delpy’s performance is widely agreed to be worthy of Best Actress consideration, though she seems to have had her summer thunder stolen by a fellow SPC stablemate, “Blue Jasmine” star Cate Blanchett. And while the expanded Best Picture category has been kinder to small summer films with devoted critical support — think “Winter’s Bone,” “The Kids Are All Right,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and SPC’s own “Midnight in Paris” — it already has competition in that niche from the likes of “Jasmine” and the Weinsteins’ “Fruitvale Station.”

It’ll probably need critics’ group to rally for it at year’s end to improve on “Sunset”‘s one-nomination haul. That’s by no means an impossibility, however, and with the film’s extended release meaning there will probably be a pretty short gap between its disappearance from theaters and its eventual DVD release, the little film’s doing a good job of remaining subtly on the radar. Either way, between the staying power of “Before Midnight” and last weekend’s remarkable debut for “Blue Jasmine,” Sony Classics is doing a lot right this summer.

Are you still waiting to see “Before Midnight?” Will you be seeking it out this weekend? And do you think it can stay the course? Tell us in the comments.

The latest I’ve heard on J.C. Chandor’s one-man-show “All is Lost” starring Robert Redford is that we can expect to see the film at Telluride. That’s a little bit surprising, given the Sundance connection, though in the same breath I have to wonder whether Redford could be up for a medallion tribute, or if the Sundance Institute itself could be recognized with a Special Medallion, like we’ve seen with the likes of Janus Films and Sight & Sound in the past. There’s certainly little argument against the man or the organization deserving it. (More Telluride spitballing here.)

In any case, the film seems to have Redford all set up for an awards season run. How much work the 76-year-old actor would be willing to put into the grueling circuit is yet to be seen, but the built-in narrative of a 40 year gap since the legend’s last nomination for acting sure will get a lot of mileage this year. “It is a classic Oscar bait movie,” HitFix’s Gregory Ellwood said in sizing up Oscar potential coming out of Cannes back in May. “This is the perfect opportunity to nominate him.”

The Best Actor category will be, as ever, rather competitive. Redford will be duking it out with an on-fir Matthew McConaughey, one of two awards season Tom Hanks portrayals, opportunity to diversify the slate with dug-in work from Chiwetel Ejiofor and Idris Elba, two very different takes from Christian Bale and Cannes winner Bruce Dern (who is poised for a lead push and has a lot of people in the Hollywood community on his side). Oh, and let’s not forget pretty boys George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio.

We’ll see how it all shakes out in due time. For now, though, a trailer for “All is Lost” has been released over at Yahoo! Movies. Check that out below and tell us what you think.

“All is Lost” arrives in theaters on Oct. 18.

The 51st annual New York Film Festival already lined up a splashy opening night premiere in the form of Paul Greengrass’ Tom Hanks-starrer “Captain Phillips.” Today it’s been announced that Ben Stiller’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” will be the festival’s centerpiece gala.

The film, adapted and expanded from the James Thurber short story, released a very intriguing trailer earlier this week and, as of now, appears to be 20th Century Fox’s best bet in the awards race. Such murmurs were stirred for the film when footage was shown at CinemaCon back in April, and if all of that sounds familiar, it should: Fox and Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi” started with a footage presentation at CinemaCon, got the “O” word circulating, went on to premiere at the New York Film Festival and, as well all know, landed four Oscars at the Academy Awards, including Best Director.

Will “Walter Mitty” end up on a similar trajectory? Time will tell. But it certainly has a lot of people excited to see the film Stiller has wanted to make for some time.

Stiller has “crafted a beautifully lyrical comic epic, grounded in present day realities and concerns,” NYFF director of programming Kent Jones said via press release. “He is wonderful in the lead, Kristen Wiig is nothing short of magical as the woman of his dreams, and it”s great to see Shirley MacLaine in perfect form. ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ is one terrific ride, and I”m thrilled that we”re able to present it as our Centerpiece screening.”

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” arrives in theaters on Christmas Day.

Well, if it’s good enough for New York, it’s good enough for London. On Monday, Paul Greengrass’ fact-based thriller “Captain Phillips” was announced as the curtain-raiser for next month’s New York Film Festival, where it’ll have its world premiere. And nearly two weeks later, it’ll have its European premiere as the Opening Film for the BFI London Film Festival, which runs from October 9 to 20. 

It would appear, in fact, that “Captain Phillips” is the Opening Film du jour this autumn: it’s also doing the honors at the Tokyo fest in October. These repeat engagements lend a further veneer of prestige to the Oscar hopeful, seemingly justifying Sony’s decision to bypass the first wave of fall festivals and unveil the film closer to its US release date on October 11. It’s been a much-desired title on the fest circuit: Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera has admitted that he was keen to secure the film’s world premiere, but was denied by the studio. 

As a public-oriented “festival of festivals,” London isn’t usually able to nab high-profile world premieres: “Frost/Nixon” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox” made their first appearance on the LFF’s opening night in 2008 and 2009 respectively, but those were exceptional occurrences. With that in mind, “Captain Phillips” makes perfect sense as an opener: Greengrass is a local son, while the appearance of Tom Hanks on the red carpet will bring a media-friendly shot of Hollywood sparkle to the proceedings.

The rest of the lineup for the London Film Festival, which is being overseen for the second year by former Sydney fest director Clare Stewart, will be announced on September 4. Last year’s festival opened with Tim Burton’s “Frankenweenie,” while Jacques Audiard’s “Rust and Bone” took the Best Film prize.

Back in June it was announced that Universal would be slating Peter Berg’s Afghanistan drama “Lone Survivor” for an Oscar qualifying run. With only Ron Howard’s “Rush” to work with otherwise (a film I hear is a knock-out), the studio needed the extra firepower.

The film stars Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Eric Bana, Ben Foster and Emile Hirsch. A trailer has been released through Moviefone which gives it a commercial sheen. Who knows whether it will have the muscle to play the circuit, but Berg could sure use a palette cleanser after last year’s “Battleship.”

Check out the trailer and poster below. “Lone Survivor” arrives in theaters on Dec. 27.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMFLzf-DXXU&w=640&h=360]

The Academy’s Board of Governors has announced the creation of a new branch for casting directors, who began to be invited to Academy membership more than 30 years ago, many of them admitted as Members-at-Large. The decision was approved at the regularly scheduled board meeting on Tuesday, July 30, which saw Cheryl Boone Isaacs nominated president of the Academy.

Said Isaacs in the press release, “Casting directors play an essential role in the filmmaking process. Their inclusion on our board will only broaden our perspective and help ensure that the Academy continues to accurately reflect the state of filmmaking today.”

The Casting Directors Branch brings the Academy to 17 branches, with three members representing each branch on the Board of Governors. The Academy will hold special elections this fall to select the three governors of the newest branch.

As one person asked me on Twitter, how long before we get a Best Ensemble/Casting award that goes hand-in-hand with the Best Picture honor?

The Independent Filmmaker Project has announced that the first true film awards show of the season, the Gotham Awards, will be held this year on Dec. 2. Not only that but a couple of new categories have been added to the mix.

The show has typically been a lean one with just one acting honor, for breakthrough performances. This year, however, the IFP has tacked on Best Actor and Best Actress prizes, which should blow wind into the sails of this independent hopeful or that. Bruce Dern? Michael B. Jordan? Julie Delpy? Greta Gerwig? They’ll all be looking for that added boost against the season’s heavyweights.

Meanwhile, the Breakthrough Director Award, given for the best first feature, has been renamed in honor of Bingham Ray, the late distribution executive. The award for Ensemble Performance will henceforth be presented on occasion as a special award, while the award for the best film without distribution (Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You) is being discontinued as an award. To that I simply ask, why? Why get rid of a nice honor for struggling films that actually diversifies your awards show in the glut of same?

The release makes sure it’s clear, however, that “the best undistributed films of the year will continue to be showcased through IFP”s partnership with The Museum of Modern Art to present the ninth annual Best Film Not Playing At a Theatre Near You screening series.”

Tributes for the 23rd annual ceremony will be announced in the coming weeks. Last year, David O. Russell, Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard and Jeff Skoll were feted by the organization.

Nominees for the 2013 Gotham Awards will be announced on Oct. 24. The awards will be held once again at Cipriani Wall Street.