Well, you don’t see this too often. Eschewing the usual Apple/Yahoo!/MSN launching pads, Sony premiered the trailer for David O. Russell’s “American Hustle” on ABC’s Good Morning America earlier today, with Russell on hand to talk about the movie.

The movie looks like a delicious little romp, actually, and as I had suspected given early images, it’s marinating in the period flavor of the piece. We might see some attention paid in the design races later this year, particularly the costumes.

As for performances, Bale — who will have an incredibly solid year between this and Scott Cooper’s “Out of the Furnace” — looks fully immersed in the part. I’ve heard Jeremy Renner is pretty great. But it’s a big ensemble with lots of moving parts — a “wild world of amazing characters,” as Russell put it — so we’ll have to see how it all shakes out later this year.

“Everyone is playing someone they haven’t played before,” Russell said on the program. “Christian Bale is playing this kind of a New Yorker, a guy from the Bronx, a big softie who’s got killer instincts as a business man. Amy is playing a vixen who is really cunning and crafty and is smarter than her partner in many respects.”

The director also began the zeitgeist push with the film by drawing a line to the current economy and his story of people doing what they can to survive.

“America’s always about reinvention,” he said. “The theme is about how much we have to con other people to sign in our own jobs, to talk ourselves into jobs or relationships that we don’t necessarily believe in.”

Check out the trailer and the interview below. “American Hustle” arrives in theaters on Dec. 13.

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences made history Tuesday night by electing its first African-American president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs. The marketing and publicity veteran replaces Howard “Hawk” Koch who served one eventful year-long term. Isaacs is only the third woman to hold the position and the first since Fay Canin was president between 1979 and 1981.

Isaacs has been an Academy governor for 21 years so she has first-hand knowledge of all the changes the organization has gone through over the past decade. Currently the head of her own marketing consultation company, Isaacs is the former president of marketing at New Line and one-time head of publicity at Paramount Pictures. The Hollywood lifer’s credentials are noteworthy, but her election is another positive sign for an institution that has struggled to diversify its membership quickly enough to silence its critics.

There was significant change among the other elected board positions as well. John Lasseter was elected first vice president (he previously served as secretary and treasurer). Noted costume designer Jeffrey Kurland and makeup artist Leonard Engelman were elected to vice president posts. Former Disney studio chief Dick Cook was elected treasurer and screenwriter Phil Robinson was elected secretary.

Academy board members may serve up to three consecutive three-year terms, while officers serve one-year terms, with a maximum of four consecutive years in any one office.

Koch broke with tradition by bringing back last year’s Oscar producers, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, before the end of his term. Usually, that hire is left to the incoming president. Isaacs is not expected to change producers at this time. Hollywood may not get a chance to see how Isaacs would put her stamp on the show unless she’s re-elected a year from now.

Well, the race is on. Officially, at any rate. We’ve been waiting for one country to open the floodgates on submissions for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, the deadline for which is almost exactly two months away, on October 1. It can be hard to keep pace with the process — last year, a record 71 countries entered the race. But things have kicked off this year with an auspicious entry: Calin Peter Netzer’s “Child’s Pose,” which THR reports was announced today as Romania’s official submission.

That news comes as no surprise, of course. Netzer’s film, a tangled drama of ethics, corrupt authority and misplaced maternal love, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in February, and Romania has a reliable habit of picking their biggest festival hit of the past year for the Oscar race. I noted as much a few weeks ago in my preview of the category, where I listed “Child’s Pose” as one of five films to watch out for in the race; it’s a riveting, coolly accessible film that could well wow the branch’s more sophisticated voters. The Romanian selection committee seems to agree: the film, which has been a domestic box-office smash, was their unanimous choice. 

It follows in the footsteps of such Romanian festival successes and subsequent Oscar entries as “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu,” “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” and “Police, Adjective” — defining titles in the so-called Romanian New Wave that has been one of the most prominent world cinema movements of the past decade or so.

None of them, however, impressed the Academy sufficiently to move past the submission stage; famously, the outcry over the branch’s omission of Palme d’Or winner “4 Months” from the 2007 shortlist factored into a significant revision of the voting system. Romania is still awaiting its first Oscar nomination in the category, but made a minor breakthrough last year when Cristian Mungiu’s “4 Months” follow-up, the challenging convent drama “Beyond the Hills,” cracked the pre-nomination shortlist. Could “Child’s Pose” be the first Romanian film to go one better? It’s bound to be among the best works in contention, and the country is overdue some Academy respect, so my fingers are crossed.

Should it manage a nomination, it’ll be the third Golden Bear winner in five years to do so: Peru’s “The Milk of Sorrow” was a surprise nominee in the 2009 race, while Iran’s “A Separation” was 2011’s overwhelmingly popular winner. “Child’s Pose” is also the fifth consecutive Berlinale champ to be entered by its home country into the Oscar race. Though underestimated by awards pundits, Berlin has lately been as crucial a festival as Cannes in uncovering potential Best Foreign Language Film contenders: in addition to those mentioned, recent nominees that premiered at Berlin include Denmark’s “A Royal Affair,” Canada’s “War Witch,” Belgium’s “Bullhead,” Austria’s “Revanche,” Israel’s “Beaufort” and 2007’s winner, “The Counterfeiters.” 

You can read me gushing at greater length about “Child’s Pose” in my review from the Karlovy Vary fest earlier this month; if the film doesn’t end up in my 2013 Top 10 come December, it’ll have been a very good year indeed. It’s still awaiting a US distributor, however, and has yet to show up in the Toronto lineup — here’s hoping that situation changes soon.  

I’ve had my eye on a number of films that are still looking for distribution this year and could, potentially, figure into the awards season. Of course, a decent rule of thumb is if a film hasn’t been picked up by now (and isn’t set for fests), there’s usually a good reason for that. But you never know. More on those titles later this week, but for now, strike one from the list: Anton Corbijn’s “A Most Wanted Man,” which has just been acquired by Lionsgate.

I’ve been keen on this one. Corbijn’s transition to feature filmmaker has been interesting to me. The former music video director (“Enjoy the Silence,” “Heart-Shaped Box”) burst onto the scene in 2007 with the Ian Curtis biopic “Control” (which landed on my top 10 that year). He followed it up with 2010’s “The American” with George Clooney, which didn’t make much of a dent but I found it a very refined piece of work.

Adapted from the John le Carré novel, “A Most Wanted Man” stars Daniel Brühl as an on-the-run Chechen-Russian immigrant who arrives in Hamburg to claim his late father’s suspiciously acquired fortune. US and German security agencies try to snuff out whether he is an oppressed victim or an extremist and it’s all so deliciously…le Carré. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright and Willem Dafoe also star.

No release date has been set for the film. I rather expect it to land in 2014 but it would be cool to see it pop up at the end of this year. I’m very excited to see what Corbijn does next.

Here is a video with the author discussing the novel:

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRGz-DJPQnQ&w=640&h=360]

Yesterday, I posted some new images from Ben Stiller’s upcoming remake of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” while noting that the film’s more extravagant flights of fancy were clearly being saved or a later unveiling. Immediately, a few of you replied with your thoughts on the film’s first trailer (which hit theaters with “The Wolverine” last weekend) and suggested that it could indeed be something special.

Well, the trailer has just hit the web, and it has done its job — color me fully intrigued, even if its sets my twee-alarm buzzing just a little. Stiller’s not an inexperienced or unaccomplished director, but he’s clearly aiming to surprise fans and skeptics alike with the visual scope and narrative reach of this romantic fantasy, in which he stars as the eponymous picture editor daydreaming his way to a more fulfilling existence.

The largely dialogue-free trailer does a nifty job of stirring interest whilst maintaining that essential “what the hell is it” allure. It offers just enough indication of how the film might manage its multiple levels of reality — it looks more convincingly dreamy than “Inception,” for starters — but is clearly still holding a lot of spectacle up its sleeve. Cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh (an Oscar nominee way back when for “The Piano”) evidently has much to work with here, for starters.

So far, so good. 20th Century Fox is hoping audiences will be in the mood for the film’s whimsy when it arrives on Christmas Day, but the prestige veneer on this initial marketing push suggests they think awards voters might be similarly inclined. What do you think? Check out the trailer below, and share your thoughts in the comments. 

Ben Stiller’s upcoming remake of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is a project I’ve been dimly aware of without ever really stopping to think about it — and certainly not in an awards-season context. I take Stiller’s directorial output more seriously than most, and can quote hefty chunks of “Zoolander” dialogue on command, but somehow imagined he was taking the popular 1947 Danny Kaye vehicle in a sketchier direction than that suggested by this breathless Empire preview of the fantasy, in which Stiller stars as a magazine employee escaping his mundane existence (and pursuing love) via lavish daydreams.

To be fair, they’re not the first to do so: writing from CinemaCon in April, where Fox previewed some footage of the Christmas Day release, Anne Thompson was sufficiently wowed by what she saw to anticipate “a no-holds-barred year-end Oscar campaign” from the studio — noting that eventual Oscar winner “Life of Pi” was first teased by Fox in the same slot. Empire writer Mark Dinning, after seeing a 13-minute reel of footage, doesn’t mince words, describing what he saw as “fucking magical.”

Fox is keeping that magic tightly under wraps for the moment: the new images released with the Empire piece don’t exactly give much away — except that one of the fantasies evidently involves a skateboard and an austere Icelandic landscape. Dinning’s verbal description of the footage he saw is rather more intriguing: Kristen Wiig, as a fantastical incarnation of Stiller’s love interest, sings David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” while Stiller’s Mitty jumps in and out of a helicopter, before facing a Great White in the ocean. Yeah, I’m curious.

The film also stars Shirley MacLaine, Patton Oswalt, Sean Penn and Adam Scott, though will surely be primarily a showcase for Stiller, who has drawn indirect “Forrest Gump” comparisons. Fox chairman Jim Gianopoulos, unsurprisingly, likens it to “Life of Pi.” In other words, there’s hardly enough information yet to sensibly guess if the film’s a feast or a folly, but it has my attention. Kris currently has it down for a Best Makeup nod — which would already be an improvement on the Oscar record of its 1947 predecessor — but there may be more to it than that. Or not. You know how it is. 

Well, consider this a major coup for the Big Apple. Paul Greengrass” “Captain Phillips,” a fact-based thriller about a hijacking at sea, was widely expected to make its festival debut in Toronto, or even Venice, ahead of its US release on October 11. Instead, however, it will have its world premiere as the Opening Film of the 51^st New York Film Festival, which runs from September 27 to October 13.

It”s the third time in four years that the NYFF has kicked off with a first look at a major-league Oscar hopeful: last year, “Life of Pi” did the curtain-raising honors, starting off a robust awards-season run that ended in four Academy Awards, including Best Director for Ang Lee while “The Social Network” was 2010’s selection. And in 2011 “Hugo” screened as a work in progress.

Previously better known for its cherry-picking of previous festival highlights than its own major premieres, New York really announced itself as a major player on the festival circuit last year: in addition to “Pi,” it also unveiled “Flight” and “Lincoln” to the world. Today”s announcement proves they”re set on maintaining this elevated status.

“Captain Phillips” stars Tom Hanks as the eponymous commanding officer of a US container ship, the Maersk Alabama, that was taken hostage by Somali pirates in 2009; based on Phillips” own memoir, it”s a survival story that seems likely to prompt comparisons to the recent Danish festival standout “A Hijacking,” which told a fictionalized tale of a similar incident. That film presented a high bar to clear, but this kind of tension-fuelled true-life thriller territory is where Greengrass has excelled in the past – the British director, who last attended the NYFF with 2002 docudrama “Bloody Sunday,” was Oscar-nominated for 2006″s “United 93.” Expectations are duly high, egged on by a promising trailer.

The film also forms half of Hanks” planned one-two punch this Oscar season, along with his second biographical turn of the year – as Walt Disney in the heavily-buzzed “Saving Mr. Banks.” Once an Academy favorite, the two-time Best Actor winner has been away from the game since 2000. Could he return this year as a double nominee?

Lincoln Center director Rose Kuo said of the selection, “It is a pleasure to welcome back Paul Greengrass to the New York Film Festival with the world premiere of his gripping drama ‘Captain Phillips.’ Tom Hanks is terrific at capturing the vulnerability, terror and heroism of the harrowing journey of Captain Phillips.”

Woody Allen films have had a built in art house audience for years, but this weekend buzzworthy reviews sent the box office for “Blue Jasmine” to record levels.

“Jasmine” debuted in six theaters grossing $613,000 or a sterling $102,167 per screen.  That breaks Allen’s per screen record set by “Midnight in Paris” which found $99,834 per in 2011. It’s a spectacular start for “Jasmine” as Sony Classics would love to gross even half of “Paris'” impressive $56 million cume.  It’s also a nice smash for the Sony division after somewhat disappointing tallies for “Before Midnight” and “I’m So Excited.”

The “Jasmine” opening is the highest per screen debut of the year surpassing the $87,667 per screen “Spring Breakers” earned in three theaters this past March.  It’s also the sixth film in recent history to average a $100,000 per screen debut. That puts it alongside modern classics such as “Dreamgirls,” “The Master,” “Brokeback Mountain,” “Precious” and “Moonrise Kingdom.”  

With critical acclaim centered around an awards worthy turn by star Cate Blanchett, “Jasmine” should easily surpass the $16.5 million Allen’s “To Rome With Love” earned last summer. “Jasmine” does have some competition in the prestige marketplace, however.  The Weinstein Company’s “Fruitvale Station” expanded to over 1,000 theaters earning another $4.6 million for $6.3 million to date.

Other upcoming major limited players include A24’s “The Spectacular Now,” “Lovelace,” “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” and “Austenland.”

Woody Allen’s latest hits theaters this weekend. I’m a huge fan of it, particularly Cate Blanchett’s searing performance (which I think even detractors can admit is an accomplishment, one that showed up on our list of the greatest performances in Woody Allen movies, in fact). We’ve also talked to Blanchett about working with Allen and digging in deep on the character. But now it’s your turn to speak up. When and if you get around to seeing it, please give us your take in the comments section and feel free to vote in our poll below. And, as always, if there are any other films you’ve seen recently that you want to discuss, have at it. Open thread.

For about 80% of James Mangold’s “The Wolverine,” I had a huge smile on my face. It was a pretty solid adaptation/re-imagination of the Chris Claremont/Frank Miller miniseries from 1982, it got the most out of a fresh environment for Hugh Jackman’s eponymous mutant and you could tell, for a variety of reasons, that an actual filmmaker was at the helm. Then…that third act. I won’t go into spoilers here (though assume the comments section will), but it was heartbreakingly awful and not in a nifty comic book way. It was more reminiscent of the dreadful “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” than anything else in the film and that just bummed me out.

But that’s me. Drew McWeeny had some forgiveness for it, and certainly I do, too, but I’d love to hear what you made of the film, which is kicking off midnight screenings on the east coast as we speak. So when/if you get to the movie this weekend, head on back here with your thoughts and feel free to vote in our poll below. (And remember to stay for the credits.) Or if there’s anything else you’ve caught up with recently that you’d like to discuss, consider this an open thread to do just that.

NEW YORK – The obvious question when you’re talking to an actress who has just finished a collaboration with Woody Allen, an actress like “Blue Jasmine” star Cate Blanchett, for instance, is whether that specific collaboration an actor’s dream. After all, so many performers have produced some of their best (in many cases, award-winning) work under the director’s helm. But the answer isn’t necessarily the one you might expect.

“It’s an actor’s dream and an actor’s greatest fear, I think,” Blanchett says. “Obviously when you hear he’s interested in working with you, you take the call, and you’ve already said ‘yes’ before you take the call. There’s such reverence and awe for his work that the danger is you can make your offerings to this sacred altar, but in fact he’s a bit profane as a filmmaker. He’s extremely practical and I really relished it.”

The script, about an Upper East Side New York socialite who loses her privileged lifestyle when her husband is busted for investment scumbaggery, was impeccably structured, Blanchett says. But within that there was a lot of opportunity to nail down the character through specificity and attention to detail.

“She’s on a cocktail of Xanex and alcohol but there’s no discussion with Woody about any of that stuff,” Blanchett says. “It was important to chart all of that — when she was taking what, when she was on what — because obviously films by their nature are shot out of sequence. And she’s a very broken individual with an incredibly romanticized sense of self, so she’s unreliable. You couldn’t always trust what she’s saying about her situation and what is true and what wasn’t.”

And that’s great insight into the tragedy of the story, Blanchett says. Many of Allen’s films get at a sort of truth through a tightrope walk between highs and lows, never bogging down in the dramatic or the comedic alone. “It’s about always trying to keep it buoyant and keeping the absurdity of the situation alive,” Blanchett says. “I think that’s the challenge when you’re in one of Woody’s films. He’s a total shapeshifter, and so you don’t know which way it’s going to land. His films, to me, when they’re at their absolute best, they’re always true. How absurdly deluded some of these characters are. And it’s also the incompatible warmth of some of the various characters that produces the comedy, I think.”

Keeping the absurdity alive wasn’t her responsibility alone, of course, and another tight Allen ensemble helped inform Blanchett’s performance along the way. Filling out the cast this time around are Alec Baldwin (who worked with Allen on his last film, “To Rome with Love”), Sally Hawkins (“Happy-Go-Lucky”), Bobby Cannavale (“The Station Agent”), Peter Sarsgaard (“An Education”), Andrew Dice Clay (HBO’s “Entourage”) and Louis CK (FX’s “Louie”).

“I don’t know how else to do it unless I’m doing it with other people,” Blanchett says. “I’ve been doing theater back-to-back for five years and not making films at all, really. There were a lot of theater animals in the cast, Bobby Cannavale and Sally and Alec and Peter. And then you’ve got the two unique stand-up presences as well. Everyone really threw themselves at the material.”

The actress did plenty of people-watching in New York to help build the character. But she says that even though Allen’s characters are so particularly drawn, there’s a universality to them. “Something I find quite pathetic, in the true sense of the word, is the loss of identity that happens to a lot of women when they attach themselves to a partner,” she says. “They lose a sense of self. That’s something you don’t necessarily observe sitting in a restaurant.”

Indeed, the film called for Blanchett to tiptoe into some truly dark areas as a result of that take on the character. She’s not the sort who has a tough time breaking free of such a thing, however. “I’ve got three boys and they’re a great leveler,” she says. It’s more about winding up into it than out of it. But there were times when the need to dig all of that back up was a challenge.

“The ending we shot a couple of times because he wanted to write something slightly different,” Blanchett recalls. “And so I thought, ‘Oh, phew, we’ve got that out of the way,’ and then you had to go back and revisit it. He wanted to do it in one set-up, so it was quite sort of theatrical in that way. You had to just be on.”

More to the point, though, Blanchett admits that, while she has no trouble compartmentalizing, as an actress, she never truly rids herself of characters and whatever tragic flaws might inform them.

“There’s so much to do and there’s not much time to hold onto it,” she says. “But having played Blanche DuBois [in “A Streetcar Named Desire”] on stage a while back now, that does stay with you. You don’t consciously reference that stuff but the residue sits somewhere. I’m sure the residue of Jasmine is there somewhere, waiting to rear its ugly head.”

“Blue Jasmine” is now playing in theaters.

When James Gandolfini suddenly and tragically left us last month, he had a few final films left to be completed. His swan song would appear to be Michaël R. Roskam’s “Animal Rescue” from a screenplay by Dennis Lehane starring Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace. But before we get that, we’ll have Nicole Holofcener’s “Enough Said” which stars Gandolfini along with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Toni Collette and Catherine Keener.

The film was part of the Toronto Film Festival’s announcement of selections for the upcoming 2013 edition. Louis-Dreyfus stars as Eva, a divorced soon-to-be empty-nester wondering about her next act when she decides to take a chance on a new love interest, Albert, played by Gandolfini. It promises to be a sweet and charming role for the actor, though one with another edge, as Eva soon discovers Albert is the “dreaded” ex-husband of a new friend, Marianne (played by Holofcener regular Catherine Keener.

That’s all from the official synopsis Fox Searchlight has provided today as part of an announcement that the film will be released on Sept. 20 just a few days after Toronto wraps up. That means it’s another element for them to play with in the awards season (along with Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave”), so we could be hearing more about it along those lines in the next few months.

It seemed like the trailer for John Lee Hancock’s “Saving Mr. Banks” turned a number of people around on the project, at least judging by comments I’ve seen here and there. And make no mistake, it will have a presence in the awards season; Disney is circling its wagons, has brought on a key Oscar strategist and will probably be all in on this one.

Not only that, but if the tone of George Cooney’s “The Monuments Men” is indeed a touch lighter than anticipated (and not that this particular film is “Schindler’s List”), then “Saving Mr. Banks” starts to look like that most dreadful of things: the early frontrunner. Or maybe not. We’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, Disney has released the first poster for the film. Check it out below.

“Saving Mr. Banks” arrives in theaters on Dec. 20.

Cate Blanchett has been making the rounds on behalf of Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine” this week, which premiered in Los Angeles last night. And again, we’ll be talking about that performance quite a bit over the next few months, but when I got her on the phone recently to discuss the film, I also took a few choice moments at the end to talk about two other projects that have me intrigued.

When we laid out our first set of Oscar predictions a few weeks back, the film that was standing out across the board as an on-paper, sight-unseen sure bet kind of thing was George Clooney’s “The Monuments Men.” World War II, Nazis, stolen art, heroism — it sounded like a perfect storm for an awards season kind of movie, particularly with Clooney coming off a Best Picture win as producer of “Argo.”

But then I began to hear rumblings that it might be more of a commercial play, broader in scope. Which, given that Clooney has brought us stuff like “Leatherheads,” wasn’t exactly a surprise to me. Then it was revealed that Sony was somehow brave enough to let Jeffrey Wells onto the set for a report and he came close to comparing the film to “The Dirty Dozen” and “Kelly’s Heroes” before pulling that punch and writing, “It feels more like a ‘movie’ than a ‘film,'” essentially saying it doesn’t have the weighty gravitas we might have initially expected from a mere plot description. That squared with what I was beginning to hear, so I put the question to Blanchett, who stars in the film: What exactly is the tone here?

“It’s an extraordinary story,” she said. “I mean, it’s one I wasn’t particularly familiar with, this group of architects, curators, historians who go in and locate and save this stolen art that the Nazis were amassing, and with the Nero Decree, it was about to be destroyed so it’s a ticking time bomb. And talk about absurd. I mean you’ve got Bill Murray and Matt Damon and George all trying to locate the art, so it doesn’t always go to plan.”

The key to Clooney, she said, “is his sense of humor. There’s an incredible gravitas to him but he’s silly. So there is a silliness to it but you never forget where you are and what their job is.”

So it really sounds like the kind of thing guys like Clooney and, as proved with “Argo” last year, Ben Affleck are interested in being good at: providing “movies” (to steal Wells’ pejorative-ish phrase), easily consumable, with elements of weight and importance woven in here and there. I’m guessing here, much as Wells was, but again, I was hearing that the film might be playing in a lighter key and Blanchett seemed to confirm that a bit.

I also wanted to hear about working with Terrence Malick, as I always do with actors who end up in front of his camera. Blanchett collaborated with the “Tree of Life” director on the upcoming “Knight of Cups,” with Christian Bale and Natalie Portman. Though she offered a typical caveat before even getting into it.

“Who knows whether or not I’m in the film at all,” she said. “He describes it as going fishing. He’s the polar opposite in terms of being a filmmaker from Woody [Allen]. He’s often going out without a script just to see literally what happens and there’s a continual fracturing of any kind of narrative. He’s just run so far away from that and I don’t know that he can return to a conventional narrative now. It was absolutely fascinating.”

Check back tomorrow for my full interview with Blanchett about her experience working on “Blue Jasmine.”

I’ve been trying to figure out how Warner Bros. may or may not handle Telluride in 2013. Last year they took “Argo” there as a sneak preview and it blew the roof off the Chuck Jones Cinema. Then, as we all know, it went on to be a dominant force in the awards season and pick up the Oscar for Best Picture. The year before, however, they dodged it, taking “Contagion” to Venice, “J. Edgar” to AFI Fest and banking on latter-year release “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” So you never can tell.

This year the studio has already set Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” as the Venice opening night selection. The film is then going on to Toronto alongside Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners” (which could end up being an unexpected awards play), so there’s a small chance one or the other could go to Telluride. There’s no word yet on the roll-out for Spike Jonze’s “Her,” though the recently wrapped “The Good Lie” from “Monsieur Lazhar” director Philippe Falardeau and starring Reese Witherspoon and Corey Stoll (with shades of “The Blind Side”) could go to Telluride and end up figuring into the race.

We’ll know all the answers soon enough, but in the meantime, I must say I’m very intrigued by Villeneuve’s film. I’ve been hearing stellar things for a while now and the trailer sold me on it potentially being a touch more than merely commercial. A new poster was released today. Check it out below.

“Prisoners” arrives in theaters on Sept. 20.

Every year, the announcement of the first wave of Toronto Film Festival inclusions takes some of the guesswork out of the Venice Film Festival lineup announcement a few days later. And so it was this year: thanks to those telltale “North American premiere” tags, we knew that such films as Stephen Frears’s “Philomena,” Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin,” Kelly Reichardt’s “Night Moves,” David Gordon Green’s “Joe,” Peter Landesman’s “Parkland” and John Curran’s “Tracks” would be having their world premieres on the Lido — all of those titles, as it turns out, in competition for the Golden Lion.

In case you were worried, however, that Toronto’s announcement would somewhat steal the Italians’ thunder, Venice director Alberto Barbera had plenty of surprises still up his sleeve when he unveiled the lineup this morning for the festival’s 70th edition — a crowded, high-profile selection befitting such an auspicious anniversary.

Among the titles appearing at Venice but not (yet) confirmed for Toronto are: Terry Gilliam’s “The Zero Theorem,” an oddball computer-hacker drama starring Christoph Waltz, Matt Damon and Tilda Swinton; Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Wind Rises,” in which the Oscar-winning animation master takes on the world of WWII fighter planes; and James Franco’s “Child of God,” which finds the restless actor-director returning just months after his Cannes-premiered “As I Lay Dying” for a story of Tennessee cave-dweller. All three will also vie for the Lion — yep, Franco has finally broken through to Competition level.

Also currently exclusive to Venice — though one expects they’ll be added to the Toronto lineup in due course — are a pair of biographical documentaries from American heavyweights of the form. Errol Morris’s self-explanatory “The Unknown Known: The Life and Times of Donald Rumsfeld” will unspool in Competition. Alex Gibney, hot off his WikiLeaks doc “We Steal Secrets,” will unveil his eagerly awaited Lance Armstrong study, “The Armstrong Lie,” out of competition.

Venice also gets first dibs on a pair of tasty prospects for horror buffs: the Ti West-Eli Roth collaboration “The Sacrament,” starring Amy Seimetz and Joe Swanberg, and Greg McLean’s “Wolf Creek 2,” a sequel to the grisly 2004 cult item from Down Under (and my favorite pure horror film of the last decade or so).   

World cinema fans, meanwhile, can look forward to the latest from French-Canadian wunderkind Xavier Dolan, “Tom at the Farm” — his first film to premiere outside Cannes, and one that is surely headed to Toronto. It will play in Competition alongside works from more senior international auteurs, including Amos Gitai’s “Ana Arabia,” Tsai Ming-Liang’s “Stray Dogs,” Philippe Garrel’s “La Jalousie” and local son Gianni Amelio’s “L’intrepido.”

South Korean provocateur Kim Ki-duk, who won last year’s Golden Lion under contentious circumstances for “Pieta,” is back already with “Moebius,” already banned in its home country for scenes of sex and self-castration — but somewhat surprisingly, he’s out of competition this time. Make of that what you will. Another Asian iconoclast who has been demoted from Competition status is Japanese cult favorite Sion Sono, whose new film “Why Don’t You Play in Hell?” is among the higher-profile entries in the Horizons sidebar (Venice’s answer to Un Certain Regard).

Other films to look out for there include the aforementioned “The Sacrament,” Lukas Moodysson’s Toronto-bound “We Are the Best!,” French fashion designer Agnes B.’s “Je M’Appelle Hmmm…,” Uberto Pasolini’s “Still Life,” starring Eddie Marsan and “Downton Abbey”‘s Joanne Froggatt and Gia Coppola’s “Palo Alto” — the directorial debut of Francis Ford Coppola’s 25-year-old granddaughter, starring (and based on the short stories of) the ubiquitous James Franco. High-profile entries of the out-of-competition strand include Sang-il Lee’s samurai remake of “Unforgiven,” starring Ken Watanabe (which has Kris curious), and Steven Knight’s “Locke,” a British thriller starring Tom Hardy and Olivia Colman.     

Obviously, however, most of the attention will go to the Competition lineup, a 20-film selection in which, as we’ve come to expect from Venice’s unpredictable programming, international arthouse royalty sits alongside American indie princes (and princesses) and a few genuine wild cards. Cannes would be unlikely to select, say, John Curran –an Australian desert odyssey starring Mia Wasikowka and Adam Driver — for its top tier; at Venice, it fits right in. Dolan’s been angling for a Competition berth at Cannes for a while now, but it’s typical that Venice would beat them to it.

And while the Cannes Competition can have something of a members’ club feel to it, with favored auteurs returning year after year, only nine of this year’s Golden Lion hopefuls have been invited before — among them Amelio, Garrel, Gilliam, Gitai, Miyazaki, Reichardt and Tsai. (Only one has actually won the prize: that’d be local son Amelio, who took it for “Cosi ridevano” in 1998.) Frears is back for the first time since “The Queen” in 2006 — Helen Mirren kicked off her Oscar trail with a Best Actress win on the Lido, and Judi Dench will be hoping to do the same for “Philomena.”

Finally, another British director is making perhaps the festival’s most curiously awaited return: Jonathan Glazer hasn’t made a feature since his stunning “Birth” (one of my top 10 films of the previous decade) polarized Venice audiences in 2004. Nine years later, he’s back with “Under the Skin,” an adaptation of Michel Faber’s very dark sci-fi novel, starring Scarlett Johansson as an earth-stalking alien in human form. It’s my most anticipated film of the fest (and, indeed, of the year), but there’s plenty else in this lineup to get excited about.

Check out the full lineup on the next page. 

COMPETITION
“Es-Stouh,” Merzak Allouache
“L’intrepido,” Gianni Amelio
“Miss Violence,” Alexandros Avranas
“Tracks,” John Curran
“Via Castellana Bandiera,” Emma Dante
“Tom at the Farm,” Xavier Dolan
“Child of God,” James Franco
“Philomena,” Stephen Frears
“La Jalousie,” Philippe Garrel
“The Zero Theorem,” Terry Gilliam
“Ana Arabia,” Amos Gitai
“Under the Skin,” Jonathan Glazer
“Joe,” David Gordon Green
“The Policeman’s Wife,” Phillip Groning
“Parkland,” Peter Landesman
“The Wind Rises,” Hayao Miyazaki
“The Unknown Known: The Life and Times of Donald Rumsfeld,” Errol Morris
“Night Moves,” Kelly Reichardt
“Sacro Gra,” Gianfranco Rosi
“Stray Dogs,” Tsai Ming-Liang

OUT OF COMPETITION
“Space Pirate Captain Harlock,” Shinji Aramaki
“Gravity,” Alfonso Cuaron (Opening Film)
“Cuccia: Summer ’82 When Zappa Came to Italy,” Salvo Cuccia “Pine Ridge,” Anna Eborn
“The Armstrong Lie,” Alex Gibney
“Redemption,” Miguel Gomes (short)
“Ukraine is Not a Brothel,” Kitty Green
“Moebius,” Kim Ki-duk
“Locke,” Steven Knight
“Unforgiven,” Sang-il Lee
“Wolf Creek 2,” Greg McLean
“Con Il Fiato Sospeso,” Constanza Quatriglio (short)
“Amazonia,” Thierry Ragobert
“Home From Home: Chronicle of a Vision,” Edgar Reitz
“Gondola,” Paul Rudish, Aaron Springer and Clay Morrow (short)
“Che Strano Chiamarsi Federico: Scola Racconta Fellini,” Ettore Scola
“The Canyons,” Paul Schrader
“La Voce di Berlinguer,” Mario Sesti and Tito Teardo (short)
“Walesa, Man of Hope,” Andrzej Wajda and Ewa Brodzka
“‘Til Madness Do Us Part,” Bing Wang 

HORIZONS
“Little Brother,” Serik Aprymov
“Il Terzo Tempo,” Enrico Maria Artale
“Je M’Appelle Hmmm…,” Agnes B.
“Eastern Boys,” Robin Campillo
“Palo Alto,” Gia Coppola
“Ruin,” Amiel Courtin-Wilson and Michael Cody
“Fish and Cat,” Shahram Mokri
“We Are the Best!,” Lukas Moodysson
“Wolfschildren,” Rick Ostermann
“La Vida Despues,” David Pablos
“Algunas Chicas,” Santiago Palavecino
“Medeas,” Andrea Pallaoro
“Still Life,” Uberto Pasolini
“Piccola Patria,” Alessandro Rossetto 
“La Prima Neve,” Andrea Segre
“Why Don’t You Play in Hell?,” Sion Sono
“The Sacrament,” Ti West

VENICE DAYS
“Bethlehem,” Yuval Adler
“May in the Summer,” Cherien Dabis
“La Belle Vie,” Jean Denizot
“La Mia Classe,” Daniele Gaglianone
“Traitors,” Sean Gullette 
“Nobody’s Home,” Deniz Akçay Katcksiz 
“Kill Your Darlings,” John Krokidas
“Gerontophilia,” Bruce LaBruce
“Alienation,” Milko Lazarov
“Rigor Mortis,” Juno Mak
“Siddharth,” Richie Mehta
“La Reconstruccion,” Juan Taratugo

VENICE DAYS – WOMEN’S TALES (shorts)
“Le Donne Della Vucciria,” Hiam Abbass
“The Door,” Ava DuVernay

VENICE DAYS – SPECIAL EVENTS
“Julia,” J. Jackie Baier
“Tres Bodas de Mas,” Javier Ruiz Caldera
“Venezia Salva,” Serena Nono
“Lenny Cooke,” Benny and Joshua Safdie
“L’arbitro,” Paio Zucca

CRITICS’ WEEK
“The Art of Happiness,” Alessandro Rak (Opening Film – out of competition)
“Class Enemy,” Rok Bi?ek 
“White Shadow,” Noaz Deshe
“The Reunion,” Anna Odell
“Zoran, My Nephew the Idiot,” Matteo Oleotto
“The Quispe Girls,” Sebastián Sepúlveda
“Salvation Army,” Abdellah Taïa
Surprise Film
“Illiterate,” Moisés Sepúlveda (Closing Film – out of competition)

There are arguably five great film festivals in the world: New York, Sundance, Cannes, Venice and Toronto. (Yes, you could argue Berlin is in that mix as well, but how many noteworthy premieres do they really get?) Out of that group, no festival has as many artistic highs and lows as Toronto. It’s partly because of their huge program, partly because it’s a pseudo fall film market and, well, they sort of like to have lots of famous people walk their red carpets (tough love, TIFF, tough love).

This will be my ninth-straight Toronto and it’s become very easy to look over the program and guess what could be great and what might be a waste of two hours. Taking my experiences into account, here are my initial reactions to this year’s slate. Can you tell which ones are really worth seeing?

GALAS

“American Dreams in China” (Peter Ho-Sun Chan)
Huge blockbuster in China. Curious how the American press will take it.

“The Art of the Steal” (Jonathan Sobol)
Jay Baruchel and Kurt Russell in a movie together? Hope it’s a Canadian classic.

“August: Osage County” (John Wells)
Talk about a red carpet. Personally, I’m a tad worried about the accent Streep is using in the trailer, but when was the last time she made a bad creative choice? 1989?

“Cold Eyes” (Cho Ui-seok and Kim Byung-seo)
New thriller from Korea. Will get to it if I can.

“The Fifth Estate” (Bill Condon)
Just happy to see Condon get to flex his muscles on something serious again.

“The Grand Seduction” (Don McKellar)
Love McKellar’s “Last Night.” Hoping Taylor Kitsch’s recent bad luck on the big screen turns around here.

“Kill Your Darlings” (John Krokidas)
Nice move by Sony Classics to hold the Sundance player until fall. Needs a second look from press and critics to get the attention it deserves. Oh yeah, and, duh, Daniel Radcliffe on the red carpet.

“Life of Crime” (Daniel Schechter)
Based on Elmore Leonard’s novel “The Switch” with Jennifer Aniston, Isla Fisher, Tim Robbins, John Hawkes, Will Forte and Mos Def. Wait – Jennifer Aniston is in this?

“The Love Punch” (Joel Hopkins)
Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan? Check. I’m there.

“The Lunchbox” (Ritesh Batra)
Screened at Critic’s week at Cannes. People liked.

“Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” (Justin Chadwick)
Could be awkward timing with Mandela in his last days. Hope it’s good.

“Parkland” (Peter Landesman)
“A recounting of the chaotic events that occurred at Dallas’ Parkland Hospital on the day U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.” Yeah, I’m worried about this one…

“The Railway Man” (Jonathan Teplitzky)
Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth. These two are at TIFF almost every year.  Do they have time shares yet?

“The Right Kind of Wrong” (Jeremiah Chechik)
Catherine O’Hara’s in it. That’s all I needed to know.

“Rush” (Ron Howard)
Even with Chris Hemsworth on board, Universal will need strong reviews and lots of publicity to help open this racing flick in the states. Is it really an awards player?

“Shuddh Desi Romance” (Maneesh Sharma)
Bollywood romantic comedy. Looks cute.

“Supermensch” (Mike Myers)
Myers’ directorial debut as a documentary filmmaker. Curious.

SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

“12 Years a Slave” (Steve McQueen)
Can’t wait. Hoping it screens at Telluride.

“All is By My Side” (John Ridley)
Andre 3000 as Jimi Hendrix. John Ridley directs. Hmmm. Could go either way.

“Attila Marcel” (Sylvain Chomet)
Director of “The Triplets of Belleville.” Check.

“Bad Words” (Jason Bateman)
Looks like an acquisition battle over this one. Screams commercial.

“Belle” (Amma Asante)
Searchlight flick with stellar cast. Awards season crasher?

“Blue is the Warmest Color” (Abdellatif Kechice)
Good, but not great. Wonder what the reaction will be on this side of the Atlantic?

“Can a Song Save Your Life?” (John Carney)
Looks like the most commercial thing Carney has done since “Once.” Terrible title though.

“Cannibal (Caníbal)” (Manual Martín Cuenca)
Spanish thriller. Eh.

“Dallas Buyers Club” (Jean-Marc Vallée)
Focus’ big awards player that has – smartly – been very under the radar.

“Devil’s Knot” (Atom Egoyan)
Well, good luck avoiding Doctor Strange questions from the fanboy press Mr. Egoyan.

“The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her” (Ned Benson)
James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain together? Check.

“Dom Hemingway” (Richard Shepard)
Intriguing. Searchlight isn’t releasing this film until April of next year, but will let it premiere at Toronto. What’s the benefit?

“Don Jon” (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)
Nice little publicity tour before it opens in October. Should be a crowd-pleaser.

“The Double” (Richard Ayoade)
Ayoade’s “Submarine” was the surprise of Toronto three years ago. Here’s hoping he goes two for two.

“Enough Said” (Nicole Holofcener)
James Gandolfini. R.I.P.

“Exit Marrakech” (Caroline Link)
Gonna have to be convinced to make time for this one.

“Felony” (Matthew Saville)
Joel Edgerton stars in this thriller he wrote with Jai Courtney and Melissa George. Aussie. Aussie. Aussie. Oi. Oi. Oi.

“For Those Who Can Tell No Tales” (Jasmila Žbani)
No clue.

“Gloria” (Sebastián Lelio)
Roadside Attractions will release this hit Chilean drama later this year.  Not a bad endorsement. Berlin hit.

“Going Away (Il est parti dimanche)” (Nicole Garcia)
99% sure I won’t get to this.

“Gravity” (Alfonso Cuarón)
Venice, Toronto…Telluride? Hope it’s not playing in the Roy Thompson. I can’t imagine the 3D will look good in that venue.

“The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza)” (Paolo Sorrentino)
Missed it at Cannes. Heard mixed.

“Half of a Yellow Sun” (Biyi Bandele)
Chiwetel Ejiofor’s second movie at the fest after “12 Years A Slave.” Looking for a U.S. distributor.

“Hateship Loveship” (Liza Johnson)
I think Kristen Wiig is very talented. I’m not sure she’s a leading dramatic actress yet.

“Ida” (Pawel Pawlikowski)
“My Summer of Love” helmer looking for a comeback?

“L’intrepido” (Gianni Amelio)
Acclaimed Italian director looking for more love in Toronto. Assuming this will be at Venice as well.

“The Invisible Woman” (Ralph Fiennes)
Thought Fiennes did a superb job directing “Coriolanus.” Looking forward to this one.

“Joe” (David Gordon Green)
David Gordon Green in serious mode with Nic Cage? Surprise me guys.

“Labor Day” (Jason Reitman)
A Jason Reitman movie at the Toronto International Film Festival? Shut up! When has that ever happened before?

“Like Father, Like Son” (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
Saw it a Cannes. Solid. Potential foreign language film winner.

“Man of Tai Chi” (Keanu Reeves)
I would love to believe this is an amazing film and its inclusion in the festival isn’t just about having Reeves walk the red carpet. Again, I’d love to believe that.

“MARY Queen of Scots” (Thomas Imbach)
Can we get enough movies about the Elizabethan era? Nope.

“Night Moves” (Kelly Reichardt)
Reichardt is a great American filmmaker. Must see.

“Omar” (Hany Abu-Assad)
Missed it at Cannes.

“One Chance” (David Frankel)
Looks like another movie from Frankel your parents would love.

“Only Loves Left Alive” (Jim Jarmusch)
I feel I’m part of a small minority that really enjoyed it at Cannes. Hoping it finds more fans at TIFF.

“The Past (La Passé)” (Asghar Farhadi)
Expected. Also expected at Telluride.

“Philomena” (Stephen Frears)
Would love Frears to make a great movie again. Fingers crossed. Probable Venice premiere.

“Pioneer (Pionér)” (Erik Skjoldbjærg)
No idea.

“Prisoners” (Denis Villeneuve)
Warner Bros. really believes in this one. They don’t see it as just another star-packed thriller.

“Quai d’Orsay” (Bertrand Tavernier)
Someone’s gonna have to convince me.

“REAL” (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
Already opened in Japan. Not feeling it.

“Starred Up” (David Mackenzie)
The director of “Young Adam.” Yeah, it’s been awhile since he’s made anything with that much buzz.

“Third Person” (Paul Haggis)
Haggis goes “Babel!” Sort of.

“Those Happy Years (Anni Felici)” (Daniele Luchetti)
Another Italian filmmaker. Another film someone’s gonna have to convince me to make time for.

“Tracks” (John Curran)
Adam Driver and Mia Wasikowska make a movie in Australia. Fun!

“Under the Skin” (Jonathan Glazer)
Glazer hasn’t made a movie in nine years. This one has been buzzed about for over a year. Good? Bad? We’re gonna find out.

“Violetta” (Martin Provost)
The man did “Seraphine.” Might need to make time for this one.

“Visitors” (Godfrey Reggio)
It’s been 10 years since the QATSI trilogy ended. Hoping this one makes Telluride first.

“Walesa. Man of Hope. (Walesa. Czlowiek z nadziei.)” (Andrzej Wajda)
One of Europe’s greatest filmmakers chronicles the life of Lech Walesa? Yes please.

“We are the Best! (Vi är bäst!)” (Lukas Moodysson)
Three tween girls starting a punk band in 1982 Sweden. If I don’t see it at TIFF I may never have the chance to see it anywhere else.

“Le Week-End” (Roger Michell)
I’m still trying to get Michell’s last two terrible films out of my head. At least this one has Jeff Goldblum in it.

“You Are Here” (Matthew Weiner)
The feature film directorial debut of the creator of “Mad Men” with Owen Wilson and Zach Galifianakis. Tough ticket.

“Young and Beautiful (Jeune & jolie)” (François Ozon)
The teenage prostitute dramedy you’ll completely forget a few hours after you see it. Again, “a teenage prostitute dramedy” that doesn’t stick with you. Yeah…

Which of these TIFF titles are you most intrigued by? Share your thoughts below.

The Toronto International Film Festival announced the first 71 selections for the 2013 edition of the annual awards-season kick-off this morning and there is plenty to choose from and send any festival-goer’s schedule into a tizzy. New films from Bill Condon (“The Fifth Estate”), Ron Howard (“Rush”), Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave”) and Jason Reitman (“Labor Day”) will be at the top of most people’s lists, while others from the likes of David Gordon Green (“Joe”), Atom Egoyan (“Devil’s Knot”) and Ralph Fiennes (“The Invisible Woman”) sit primed to be potential discoveries. I’m not sure a program could be much more stuffed than this, but I look forward to taste-testing whatever early gets we see at the Telluride fest a week before Toronto takes off.

A slew of new production stills accompanied today’s announcement offering first looks at stars like Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Chris Hemsworth, Reese Witherspoon, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Matthew McConaughey and more, so we’ve made it easy on you and collected a bunch of them here for your perusing pleasure.

Out of all of the films announced today (and remember, there are more still to come), I’d have to say I’m most interested in David Gordon Green’s “Joe,” Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin” and Ron Howard’s “Rush.” But, like you, I’ll be anxiously awaiting first word on all of them from our HitFix crew when they descend on the fest in September.

Click through the gallery below if you’d like a first look at many of these movies and fresh looks at others that may have already released stills or trailers.

The 2013 Toronto Film Festival runs Sept. 5 -15.