I’ve already expressed how over the moon I am for Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine” and particularly Cate Blanchett’s performance therein. I spoke with Blanchett this morning and specifically asked if it was an actor’s dream to work for Allen. More like greatest fear, she noted, as the bar has been set so high.

Indeed, 16 performances in Woody Allen films have been nominated for Academy Awards over the years. Six of them have won. That’s some track record, and it’s only partly indicative of the wide-ranging, impressive array of work he’s been able to draw out of actors of all sorts. Actors just seem to click on a different level when they’re collaborating with him, so Guy and I figured, yeah, that’s fodder for a listicle.

So here we are. Click through the gallery story below for our combined picks for the best performances in Woody Allen’s films, and feel free to tell us your favorite in the comments section below. Check back later this week for that interview with Blanchett.

“Blue Jasmine” arrives in theaters Friday.

It was revealed today that Bill Condon’s “The Fifth Estate,” starring Benedict Cumberbatch as WikiLeaks found Julian Assange, will be the opening night film of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, which kicks off on Sept. 5. The closing night film will be Daniel Schecter’s “Life of Crime” with John Hawkes, Mos Def and Jennifer Aniston.

Also announced were a slew of titles expected to figure into the upcoming awards season. Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” and John Wells’ “August: Osage County” will see their world premieres at the fest, and in the case of the former, the revelation that it’s skipping Venice leads me to suspect more than ever that it could pop up at Telluride first (as I speculated yesterday). Making the trip to Colorado from Venice can be difficult (though McQueen did it two years ago with “Shame”), but dropping as a sneak preview in Telluride before heading up to Toronto is easy enough, and as noted yesterday, Fox Searchlight has plenty of history with the festival. (NOTE: See below in the comments for an explanation of why a film can premiere at Telluride but still maintain its “world premiere” status at Toronto.)

In the case of “August: Osage County,” I’m a little surprised to see it take the festival approach if only because of its late-December release date. Films like “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” and “Grace of Monaco” make more sense given their positioning in the season, and indeed, “Mandela” was also part of today’s announcement: it will receive its official world premiere at the fest. Another Weinstein film, Stephen Frears’ “Philomena,” was part of the announcement, too, though it was only noted as a North American premiere, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we discover later this week that it receives its world premiere at Venice.

It’s no surprise that Jason Reitman’s “Labor Day” was also announced as a world premiere for Toronto, but as with “Juno” and “Up in the Air,” it could easily show up at Telluride first. Reitman sees that particular trajectory as a good luck charm of sorts, though with “Young Adult” a few years ago, an entirely different strategy of pop-up screenings was employed. Ron Howard’s “Rush,” meanwhile, is also set for Toronto. Given that it is Universal’s best shot at awards attention (and given what I’ve heard of the film), could be a definite Best Picture play later this year.

Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” will make the trip from Venice’s opening night to Toronto (no surprise — here’s hoping for a Telluride pitstop, though it doesn’t really read as that kind of film). Palme d’Or winner “Blue is the Warmest Color” will play, as well as Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin” (with Scarlett Johansson — really interested in that one) and Mike Myers’ “Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon,” a project we reported on yesterday.

Others announced include one of a handful of films still looking for distribution that I’ve been keeping an eye on, Jonathan Teplitzky’s “The Railway Man” (with Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman), Jean-Marc Vallée’s “Dallas Buyers Club” (a potential Best Actor play for Matthew McConaughey), Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners” (with Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ralph Fiennes’ latter-life Charles Dickens biopic “The Invisible Woman.” The film on the list that most grabbed my attention, though? David Gordon Green’s “Joe” with Nicolas Cage and Tye Sheridan.

For more a full list of the line-up, click over to the next page.

The 2013 Toronto Film Festival runs Sept. 5 – 15. HitFix will be there giving you the latest as it unfolds.

2013 TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL LINE-UP

GALAS

“American Dreams in China” (Peter Ho-Sun Chan)
“The Art of the Steal” (Jonathan Sobol)
“August: Osage County” (John Wells)
“Cold Eyes” (Cho Ui-seok and Kim Byung-seo)
“The Fifth Estate” (Bill Condon)
“The Grand Seduction” (Don McKellar)
“Kill Your Darlings” (John Krokidas)
“Life of Crime” (Daniel Schechter)
“The Love Punch” (Joel Hopkins)
“The Lunchbox” (Ritesh Batra)
“Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” (Justin Chadwick)
“Parkland” (Peter Landesman)
“The Railway Man” (Jonathan Teplitzky)
“The Right Kind of Wrong” (Jeremiah Chechik)
“Rush” (Ron Howard)
“Shuddh Desi Romance” (Maneesh Sharma)
“Supermensch” (Mike Myers)

SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

“12 Years a Slave” (Steve McQueen)
“All is By My Side” (John Ridley)
“Attila Marcel” (Sylvain Chomet)
“Bad Words” (Jason Bateman)
“Belle” (Amma Asante)
“Blue is the Warmest Color” (Abdellatif Kechice)
“Can a Song Save Your Life?” (John Carney)
“Cannibal (Caníbal)” (Manual Martín Cuenca)
“Dallas Buyers Club” (Jean-Marc Vallée)
“Devil’s Knot” (Atom Egoyan)
“The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her” (Ned Benson)
“Dom Hemingway” (Richard Shepard)
“Don Jon” (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)
“The Double” (Richard Ayoade)
“Enough Said” (Nicole Holofcener)
“Exit Marrakech” (Caroline Link)
“Felony” (Matthew Saville)
“For Those Who Can Tell No Tales” (Jasmila Žbani?)
“Gloria” (Sebastián Lelio)
“Going Away (Il est parti dimanche)” (Nicole Garcia)
“Gravity” (Alfonso Cuarón)
“The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza)” (Paolo Sorrentino)
“Half of a Yellow Sun” (Biyi Bandele)
“Hateship Loveship” (Liza Johnson)
“Ida” (Pawel Pawlikowski)
“L’intrepido” (Gianni Amelio)
“The Invisible Woman” (Ralph Fiennes)
“Joe” (David Gordon Green)
“Labor Day” (Jason Reitman)
“Like Father, Like Son” (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
“Man of Tai Chi” (Keanu Reeves)
“MARY Queen of Scots” (Thomas Imbach)
“Night Moves” (Kelly Reichardt)
“Omar” (Hany Abu-Assad)
“One Chance” (David Frankel)
“Only Loves Left Alive” (Jim Jarmusch)
“The Past (La Passé)” (Asghar Farhadi)
“Philomena” (Stephen Frears)
“Pioneer (Pionér)” (Erik Skjoldbjærg)
“Prisoners” (Denis Villeneuve)
“Quai d’Orsay” (Bertrand Tavernier)
“REAL” (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
“Starred Up” (David Mackenzie)
“Third Person” (Paul Haggis)
“Those Happy Years (Anni Felici)” (Daniele Luchetti)
“Tracks” (John Curran)
“Under the Skin” (Jonathan Glazer)
“Violetta” (Martin Provost)
“Visitors” (Godfrey Reggio)
“Walesa. Man of Hope. (Walesa. Czlowiek z nadziei.)” (Andrzej Wajda)
“We are the Best! (Vi är bäst!)” (Lukas Moodysson)
“Le Week-End” (Roger Michell)
“You Are Here” (Matthew Weiner)
“Young and Beautiful (Jeune & jolie)” (François Ozon)

So in 1991 talent manager Shep Gordon supposedly held Mike Myers over a barrel for a few weeks before filming on “Wayne’s World” began regarding an Alice Cooper song that Myers wanted to use in the film. I assume that was “Feed My Frankenstein?” I dunno. Regardless, the two struck up a friendship that’s still strong 22 years later, so much so that Myers will be making his directorial debut with a documentary of the legend.

“Supermensch” will tell the story of the man who is best known for managing the careers of Cooper, Blondie and Luther Vandross, among others.  He also invented the “celebrity chef,” which is a huge part of pop culture today. The press release also notes that he’s personal friends with the Dalai Lama. His story will be told in the film by those who knew him best, from Michael Douglas to Sylvester Stallone, Willie Nelson to Emeril Lagasse.

Says Myers in the release, “I thought he was a perfect combination of Brian Epstein, Marshall McLuhan and Mr Magoo. I’ve been trying to get Shep to agree to let me make a movie about him for 10 years. Last year he finally he said yes.  I loved him like a brother before we started making this film and now having sifted through his life and his legacy, I love him even more.”

The film is funded by A&E IndieFilms (“Murderball,” “Jesus Camp,” “Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer”).

In a little over a month the fall festival season, and with it, the awards circuit, will officially be under way in the mountains of Colorado with the 40th annual Telluride Film Festival. It's the calm before the storm, a soothing handful of days over the Labor Day weekend to watch a few movies set to dominate the latter-year calendar, do a bit of Berlin and Cannes catch-up and even soak up some of the non-awards stuff that really helps round out the experience as a deep breath of fresh cinephile air. I can't wait.

With the fest on the horizon, and with the Venice and Toronto line-ups coming in the next few weeks, it seemed worth it to spitball some of the expected titles for Telluride. As you know, the slate is traditionally kept under wraps until the first day of the festival, leaving it to the truly dedicated who are willing to take a leap of faith on the festival's programmers and curators. And though this factoid gets a bit overstated in the media, Telluride has played host to the eventual Best Picture Oscar winner four of the last five years, including first-ever screenings of “Slumdog Millionaire” in 2008, “The King's Speech” in 2010 and “Argo” in 2012. What does the 2013 anniversary program have in store?

As noted, Telluride is a good opportunity to catch up on films that already played international fests. With that in mind, it's possible we'll see award winners like “Blue is the Warmest Color,” “Like Father, Like Son,” “Child's Pose” or “Gloria,” among others. But I have a pretty good feeling we can anticipate the Coen brothers' first-ever Telluride appearance with “Inside Llewyn Davis.” Meanwhile, Alexander Payne has become a huge fan of the festival since serving as guest director in 2009. His latest, “Nebraska,” is a safe bet, perhaps even in conjunction with a Silver Medallion tribute for Bruce Dern.

Another director who loves to premiere in the mountain air before heading up to Toronto the next week is Jason Reitman. He came to Telluride with “Juno” in 2007 and “Up in the Air” in 2009, but skipped all the festival shenanigans with “Young Adult,” a film that had a more creative marketing strategy on the whole. I think we can expect “Labor Day” to play, particularly given that applicable title. If so, could a tribute for Kate Winslet could be in the cards?

Sony Pictures Classics always takes a few films as Michael Barker and Tom Bernard like to roll their art house entries out through the festival circuit (and the cinephile crowd of Telluride is typically a great audience for their product). They could bring “The Past” and “The Lunchbox” from Cannes, though I've heard more definitive rumblings about Ralph Fiennes' “The Invisible Woman” showing up. We'll see if those rumblings play out.

Speaking of rumblings, I've heard Paul Greengrass' Somali pirate drama “Captain Phillips” could pop up, maybe even with a tribute for Tom Hanks (who will be quite visible this awards season between this and Disney's “Saving Mr. Banks”). Meanwhile, the Warner Bros. teams on “Gravity” and “Prisoners” are making the pilgrimage, but is it just to soak it up or is it with films in tow? There is plenty of time for Alfonso Cuarón to bring his Sandra Bullock/George Clooney spectacle after opening the Venice fest, while Denis Villeneuve showed up with “Incendies” a few years back and could have a prestige/commercial hybrid with his latest. However, it could be neither: a little film from the studio called “The Good Lie” with Reese Witherspoon, Corey Stoll and shades of “The Blind Side” would be worth keeping an eye on here.

Speaking of Venice, I'm betting “Philomena” shows up on the Lido, typical of Stephen Frears. If so, could The Weinstein Company bring the film back to Telluride, or will they just wait for Toronto? Other Weinstein hopefuls that are possible include “The Immigrant” (director James Gray attended a cocktail party in honor of the upcoming 40th annual fest in Los Angeles last month) and the documentary “Salinger.” I wouldn't count on their other heavy-hitters making the trip (particularly not December release “August: Osage County”), but you never know. They don't always have a considerable presence, though again, Best Picture winners “The King's Speech” and “The Artist” made the trip.

Another studio with some history at the festival is Fox Searchlight. They brought a trio of films in 2010 (“Black Swan,” “Never Let Me Go” and “127 Hours”) and picked up Telluride player “Shame” from director Steve McQueen not long after it premiered there in 2011 (the studio was there with Payne's “The Descendants”). So that's all a long-winded way of saying McQueen's “12 Years a Slave” MIGHT pop up after potentially premiering in Venice, just as “Shame” did, but that could easily go either way. (UPDATE: It's been revealed that “12 Years a Slave” will have its world premiere at Toronto, not Venice, which frankly makes it seem even more likely as a Telluride possibility.)

Outside the big titles, I'm hopeful of a couple of other things, starting with an absolute classic and one of my favorite films of all time. The 40th annual fest will be unveiling the Werner Herzog Theatre, a new 650-seat venue named after one of the festival's most famous annual attendees (who always ends up celebrating his birthday over the weekend). A restoration of Herzog's 1972 masterpiece “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” opened in the UK courtesy of the British Film Institute earlier this year, and if it shows up on the Telluride line-up, it will be one of the highest priorities for me, just as a 70mm print of “Baraka” was last year.

Also possible is Steve James's Roger Ebert documentary “Life Itself.” The film's executive producer, Martin Scorsese, has shown up at the fest in the form of his Bob Dylan and George Harrison opuses “No Way Home” and “Living in the Material World” in past years, so it seems worth hanging a hope on that one. It sure would be great for Ebert to have that kind of presence at the fest, and considering he's one of a few notable critics who haven't received a Special Medallion Award (which has gone to the likes of Leonard Maltin, Andrew Sarris, Richard Schickel and David Thomson in the past), maybe now is the time.

Errol Morris got a tribute once upon a time and has a new film called “The Unknown Known: The Life and Times of Donald Rumsfeld.” Given that Morris is a Telluride regular and given the Sony Pictures Classics connection here, I'd say it's a solid bet.

Speaking of all these tributes, other possibilities include the Coen brothers, Judi Dench and, if “All is Lost” shows up, Robert Redford. But really, you never can tell with those. I doubt anyone saw Mads Mikkelsen coming last year and the festival is great about digging deep and spotlighting the likes of Pierre Etaix, Janus Films, Elmore Leonard, Walter Murch, etc. And that's what makes it a wonderful discovery festival.

So with that in mind, let's just say I'm not desperately hoping for big awards season surprises so much as marinating in what has to be the best film festival environment in the world. I don't do a lot of fests, so I'm not speaking from a ton of experience on that, but I do get the feeling that I've been spoiled by my years taking in Telluride's offerings. I can't imagine anything really measures up to the atmosphere, and this newly expanded edition for the 40th anniversary will surely be, in a word, heaven.

The 2013 Telluride Film Festival runs August 29 – September 2.

So Comic-Con is over but the little ripple repercussions will keep spreading this week, I imagine. One nugget that dropped over the weekend that immediately caught my eye this morning was the fact that “Fight Club” author Chuck Palahniuk is working on a graphic novel sequel to the book that spawned David Fincher’s 1999 consumerism-lynching film.

The news came during a panel and was confirmed by the author to the website chuckpalahniuuk.net. “It will likely be a series of books that update the story 10 years after the seeming end of Tyler Durden,” Palahniuk told the outlet. “Nowadays, Tyler is telling the story, lurking inside Jack, and ready to launch a come-back. Jack is oblivious. Marla is bored. Their marriage has run aground on the rocky coastline of middle-aged suburban boredom. It’s only when their little boy disappears, kidnapped by Tyler, that Jack is dragged back into the world of Mayhem.”

As long as it doesn’t spawn another movie (because the first is so pristine, part of that glorious year of filmmaking, and has no need for revisitation), I’m in love with this. It’s a great concept and the graphic novel format is a wonderful playground to work through it.

Pahalniuk said that due to contract obligations, the project can’t come to light for a while, but that his publisher might allow him to launch it earlier than 2015 since it will be serialized. It will, he promised, “be dark and messy.” Naturally.

I’ve been working on a separate project about 1999 lately and so I’ve been steeped in the films released that year, particularly “Fight Club.” Like so many gems of that period, it wasn’t well-represented at the Oscars, picking up a lone (albeit deserved) nomination fro Best Sound Editing. It reminds me of “Drive” in that way.

But 1999 wasn’t well-represented on the whole at the Oscars that year, I’d argue. Where was “Three Kings?” Where was “Eyes Wide Shut?” Where was “Run Lola Run?” Why such limited recognition for “Election” and “Topsy-Turvy” and “Magnolia?” I’d be tempted to just chalk it up with a dismissive “typical,” but it seemed a rather embossed quality of the film awards season that year that the truly great, year-defining work wasn’t very well-represented at the Oscars. And the best film of the lot — Michael Mann’s “The Insider” — walked away with zero trophies. Sigh…

Anyway, be on the lookout for this follow-up when it finally makes its way to the page. It sounds intriguing and it would be nice to catch up with Jack and Marla and, of course, Tyler after all this time.

First reported in the LA Times this morning and confirmed at Warner Bros. Pictures’ Comic-Con panel shortly thereafter, the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight are finally going to share the big screen together in 2015.

“Man of Steel” director Zack Snyder, (executive) producer Christopher Nolan and writer David Goyer are reuniting on the sequel to this summer’s Superman reboot, which will introduce the Caped Crusader to the newly established DC Universe on film. And all I can really say is…it’s about time.

Sure, better late than never, but these properties have been under the same roof for decades. WB/DC have had a crazy running start over Marvel, which whipped its own movie universe together in the span of four years. Part of the issue is Nolan having held the Batman franchise somewhat hostage since 2005 (he repeatedly stated that his vision of the character did not exist in a universe that included other superheroes*), but nevertheless, fans will finally see the World’s Finest coupling on the heels of each character’s 75th anniversary.

*Further to that point about Nolan, he will only be the executive producer of the new film, not the producer.

Zack Snyder was on hand to make the announcement, with “Man of Steel” star Harry Lennix tagging along to help set the flavor of the film. Said Snyder, “He’s gonna read a little thing and some of you will recognize it. It is the thing that will help build this story.” Lennix then proceeded with this quote from Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns”:

“I want you to remember, Clark. In all the years to come, in all your most private moments, I want you to remember my hand at your throat. I want you to remember the one man who beat you.”

And then an animated image combining the Superman and Batman logos appeared on the screen, sending Comic-Con attendees into ecstasy.

It was rumored that WB would announced “Flash” and “Justice League” films, but that didn’t happen. Just the Superman/Batman announcement. Of course, by the time 2015 rolls around, Marvel will be very deep into their next phases, but at least there will be some movement happening for those of us who love and cherish the DC Universe and think it has as much if not more potential than the Marvel world.

I’m not gonna kick the “it’s about time” horse any more, so let me just say that I’m super (no pun intended) excited to see this panning out. Doom and gloom will be shouted from those who despise the brand and sequel explosion (fair enough), but this is simply something too many people have wanted for too long. No one’s asking for an “Alice in Wonderland” sequel. But they’ve been asking for a Superman/Batman movie for decades, so ease up on the bemoaning, eh?

I don’t know what else Goyer and company will be drawing on, but while there’s a wealth of material out there, there’s also plenty of room to expand on the idea of these very different characters meeting and having a conflict. I hope they take the opportunity to stretch, because the comic books themselves are certainly taking liberties with re-imagining characters as of late. Batman is currently having his origin retold by Scott Snyder (not a fan), while Greg Pak is giving a new take on the first-ever meeting between the Dark Knight and the Man of Steel (it’s pretty good, actually).

So fingers crossed this project comes together nicely. I know “Man of Steel” had a ton of detractors but, again, I dug it and I’m excited to see where they go from here. At the very least, I’m excited to see someone finally TRY.

Here is some footage of the announcement:

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m05YaiPnRHU&w=480&h=360]

For more on the project from the official press release, check out HitFix’s report here.

Finally, about a year and a half ago, when it was clear that “The Dark Knight Rises” would be the end of Christopher Nolan’s say on the character, HitFix published a list of potential contenders to inherit the cape and cowl. I’ve taken that list (seen in the gallery below) and combined it with some other names I think would be interested and I’m putting it to you in a poll here. So you tell us, who should be the new Batman? Vote in our poll below.

Here is the logo that appeared on the screen in Hall H today (courtesy of AICN’s Eric Vespe):

And here is the page from “The Dark Knight Returns” that Lennix quoted:

For more from Comic-Con 2013, be sure to follow all of our HitFix team members on Twitter, including @HitFixGregory, @DrewAtHitFix, @HitFixDaniel and @sepinwall.

Well, this whole silly, overblown, maybe-about-something-else mess has finally seen a solution…and everyone’s going to just keep calling it “The Butler” anyway.

It’s been revealed today that the MPAA has overturned its original ruling in the case of Lee Daniels’ upcoming film “The Butler,” which stated that The Weinstein Company had to change the title due to a nearly 100-year-old short film of the same name in the Warner Bros. archives. It is now accepting, however, something of a compromise, as the title can now be “Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” if TWC so chooses — and I imagine they will.

Deadline reports that if Weinstein decides to go this route, the phrase “Lee Daniels'” has to be 75% the size of the phrase “The Butler.” Also, TWC now owes the Entertainment Industry Foundation $400,000 in sanctions for violating the original MPAA order (it kept using “The Butler” to advertise the film and was bleeding money daily as a result), and it will owe $25,000 per day going forward if it continues to just use “The Butler.” That will go up to $50,000 per day if new materials for the film aren’t released by July 26, so expect a new poster and a new trailer any day now. The company also has to pay Warner Bros. $150,000 in legal fees.

This all comes after a drawn-out dispute that had Warner Bros. strangely going to the ends of the earth to force TWC’s hand on an issue that is common and often not overtly disputed, while Weinstein went on a campaign against injustice in print and on television, slinging accusations that WB was even trying to get his rights to “The Hobbit” and yadda, yadda, yadda. It’s over now, though, and we can all move on with our lives.

Forest Whitaker stars in the film as Cecil Gaines, an African-American who becomes an eyewitness to notable events of the 20th century during is tenure as a White House butler. The film is based on the real-life account of Eugene Allen, who served the post during eight presidential administrations from 1952 to 1986.

The film may or may not be an awards contender, though mostly I hear Oprah Winfrey (who plays Gaines’s wife) is the one to watch for. We’ll see about that.

UPDATE (7/22): So Harvey took the weekend to think on a statement. Here it is in full, spun to be a victory, invoking Laura Ziskin’s name, etc.:

“We are thrilled this has all come to an end and has been resolved. The MPAA’s overturning of their original decision to now allow the use of ‘butler’ in the title is a victory for Lee Daniels, the film’s 28 investors who believed in it, America”s greatest attorney David Boies, and especially in the memory of my friend and the film’s producer Laura Ziskin. Now we can focus on the importance of Lee Daniels’ film, the amazing performances by Forest, Oprah and the incredible cast who spent countless months bringing this story about American history and civil rights to screen.”

“Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” which, again, we’re probably just going to keep calling “The Butler,” opens August 16.

I kinda feel compelled to post this because, look, I’m not in the tank for “Pacific Rim” or anything, but I’m SUPER happy for a guy like Travis Beacham, a former film school classmate, making it so big that he’s signing autographs for adoring fans at Comic-Con and soaking it up and just, well, I guess I’m living vicariously. Sue me.

The San Diego convention is in full swing and Legendary Pictures has a big panel lined up for tomorrow that will feature peeks at “Godzilla” and “Seventh Son.” But they also have this big kaiju/mech, apocalypse-canceling blockbuster in theaters, so a presence for that was sure to be felt, and Beacham is down there repping the film. When/where is he signing? “Formally, just the one event,” he says (which was yesterday). “In actuality, I guess any time somebody asks.”

So if you’re a huge fan and you see the dude in the video below wandering around the convention center, have your “Pacific Rim: Tales from Year Zero” graphic novel on the ready, or your badass poster or, or your fan art, or whatever.

For more, check out my interview with Beacham on the innovative spirit of “Pacific Rim” and if you haven’t already, be sure to tell us what YOU thought of the film.

The 2013 San Diego Comic-Con runs through Sunday.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcg1JvEX6vk&w=640&h=360]

So, would you like a piece of history for a steep price? If you have $3 million lying around, you can join an eBay auction for one of four original copies of Schindler’s list. No, not a solid gold DVD of Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Best Picture winner “Schindler’s List,” but an actual copy of one of Oskar Schindler’s lists containing the names of 1,200 Jews whose lives the industrialist saved by hiring them as workers in his Brünnlitz factory in Switzerland.

The New York Post reports that collectors Gary Zimet and Eric Gazin are posting the item on the public auction site and are hoping it will go for as high as $5 million. They decided to use eBay, Gazin told the outlet, “because it has over 100 million worldwide members, and this is a global story.” I’m sure the intentions were so noble.

“Don’t miss your chance to own a piece of history that has inspired many on the difference one person can make in the face of great danger,” the listing reads. “This exceedingly rare original Schindler”s List is the only one ever on the market. It emanates from the family of Itzhak Stern, Schindler”s accountant and right hand man (played by Ben Kingsley in the Academy Award-winning film). There are 3 others known which are in institutional hands. It is 14 pages in length and lists 801 male names, dated April 18, 1945. It is guaranteed authentic.”

A carbon copy of the list was discovered in 2009 at the State Library of New South Wales by workers looking through the research materials of author Thomas Keneally, who wrote the 1982 book “Schindler’s Ark” upon which Spielberg’s film was based. That document was given to Keneally two years before and inspired him to write the book.

But this isn’t a carbon copy. This is the real deal for whatever rich soul wants to line Zimet and Gazin’s pockets, so pony up!

“Schindler’s List” won seven Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. It’s widely considered one of the greatest films ever made, landing at #9 on the AFI’s list of the greatest American films in 1997 and at #8 when the list was revisited 10 years later. I humbly suggest Spielberg himself made five better films, but hey, that’s just me.

Now, get out your wallets and head over to eBay…

A mere two months ago people were clamoring to see Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Only God Forgives” in Cannes. This afternoon, I watched it from my couch. Video-on-demand can be pretty awesome like that. The director’s “Drive” follow-up hits theaters and VOD today and I know it’s been at the top of a lot of people’s lists, so assuming you’ve seen it or will over the weekend, tell us what you think. I found it to be little more than an exercise, but I guess I’m okay with Refn keeping in shape, so to speak. Guy wasn’t too high on it at Cannes either, but that’s us. Cut loose with your own thoughts in the comment section here and go ahead and vote in our poll below. And as always, feel free to discuss anything else you might have seen recently. Open thread.

Warner Bros. wasn’t shy about screening James Wan’s latest horror film, “The Conjuring,” which is why my thoughts on the film are now a number of weeks old. They knew they had a tight piece of genre filmmaking on their hands, and that it is; the film is a huge step up for Wan, a patient, rich exercise that doesn’t reinvent the wheel but tells a compelling, familiar story with a lot of control and finely tuned atmosphere. “It is enormously confident, and yet it seems to have enough faith in the audience that it doesn’t come across as a big noisy assault,” Drew McWeeny wrote in his review. But now it’s time to hear what you have to say, so when and if you get around to the film this weekend, chalk up your thoughts in the comments section and feel free to vote in our poll. And if you’ve caught up with anything else you’d like to discuss, consider this an open thread otherwise.

The Weinstein Company has announced it is celebrating “Mandela Day” (today is Nelson Mandela’s 95th birthday and, happily, he seems to be getting a bit better after his recent health scare) by dropping a full-length trailer for Justin Chadwick’s upcoming “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.” It’s a bigger slice than that teaser we got last weekend, which was purely about capitalizing on star Idris Elba’s presence at the multiplexes with “Pacific Rim.”

Elba is a terrific actor and he’s inhabiting the character confidently here. But that having been said, I can’t help but feel like something is slightly off. I guess it’s simply the physical differences in the two men, though that seems shallow and unfair. The history of cinema is full of examples of people taking on real-life roles without bearing a huge resemblance and making us forget. Maybe that’s in store yet with this film.

The Weinsteins have a ton of films in play, as usual. This one is positioned just after the Thanksgiving holiday, which is where they’ve had success with “The King’s Speech,” “The Artist” and “Silver Linings Playbook” in recent years. Other films in play include “August: Osage County,” “The Butler,” “Fruitvale Station,” “Grace of Monaco,” “The Immigrant” and “Philomena.” What will stick?

Check out the new trailer for Chadwick’s biopic via Yahoo! Movies below and tell us what you think.

“Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” opens November 29.

Admittedly, any statistic in this business can be unique if you make it specific enough, but David Fincher’s maiden Emmy nomination this morning — Best Directing of a Drama Series for the pilot episode of Netflix’s “House of Cards” — brought him to a unique awards milestone. He’s now the first person to have been nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards, the Emmy Awards… and the MTV Video Music Awards.

The VMA part of the equation entered my mind yesterday, when Fincher racked up his eighth nomination — and his first in 22 years — for Best Direction of a Music Video, for his sleek black-and-white work on Justin Timberlake’s suave “Suit and Tie” clip. Fincher, of course, first came to prominence as a young director of instantly iconic music videos for the likes of Madonna, Paula Abdul, Aerosmith and George Michael, racking up his first seven nominations between 1989 and 1991 — one year before he made his feature directorial debut with “Alien 3.”

The most nominated director in the VMAs’ 30-year history, he also won the category two years in a row for the Madonna videos “Express Yourself” and “Vogue” (the latter a minimal, retro-inspired monochrome clip to which “Suit and Tie” seems a throwback of sorts). Two decades, nine movies and two Oscar nominations later, it’d be fun to see Fincher — now among the leading lights of the modern American cinema — return to his pop roots with a third VMA win. (Although, if we’re speaking strictly on merit, he deserves the nod less than Italian hyper-stylist Floria Sigismondi, strangely unnominated for Timberlake’s exquisite eight-minute “Mirrors” video, which copped a Video of the Year mention.)

Seeing Fincher nominated for a VMA and an Emmy on consecutive days is a nifty one-two from a trivia hound’s perspective, but it’s also an apt summation of his career to date. If the VMA nod for “Suit and Tie” speaks very much to his past, the Emmy nod for “House of Cards” points the way to the future, with Fincher joining the growing ranks of A-list filmmakers who have accepted television as an equal medium. That Steven Soderbergh, Jane Campion and David Mamet also became  Emmy-nominated directors today only highlights the shift in status. (Meanwhile, Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, Mark Romanek, Jonathan Glazer and Tarsem are among the other VMA-endorsed music video masters who have gone on to successful film careers.)

Of course, Fincher’s film career should continue to thrive: he’s currently in pre-production on the big-screen adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s mega-bestseller “Gone Girl,” which is surely a hit waiting to happen. And it seems a reasonable bet that his two Oscar nominations to date — for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (2008) and “The Social Network” (2010) — won’t be his only ones. But this week’s unusual pair of nominations is a reminder that great filmmakers needn’t limit their artistry to a single medium.

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I’ll leave it to those more embedded in Emmy history to tell us whether Oscar winners landing a slew of nominations from the TV Academy is typical or not. But it was nevertheless striking to me how many Academy Award winners popped up on today’s nominations list.

At the top we have to mention Steven Soderbergh, who landed a nomination for directing HBO’s “Behind the Candelabra.” He was also cited for the TV movie’s cinematography and film editing under his pseudonyms Peter Andrews and Mary Ann Bernard respectively. Soderbergh picked up the Oscar for Best Director for the 2000 film “Traffic.”

Sticking with the Liberace biopic, one of the stars of “Traffic,” Michael Douglas, headed up “Candelabra” and unsurprisingly scored a nomination for his efforts. Co-star Matt Damon was nominated right alongside him in the Best Actor in a Miniseries or Movie category. Douglas won the Best Picture Oscar for 1975’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and Best Actor in 1987 for Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street,” while Matt Damon scored a Best Screenplay win as a baby in 1997 for “Good Will Hunting” (along with best bud and “Argo” Best Picture winner Ben Affleck).

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A couple of other HBO movies/miniseries picked up some attention. First there’s David Mamet’s “Phil Spector.” The film’s two leads, Al Pacino and Helen Mirren, were each nominated for Emmys this morning. Pacino won the Best Actor Oscar in 1992 for “Scent of a Woman” (hoo-ahhhh!), while Mirren won Best Actress in 2006 for “The Queen.” And then there’s “Parade’s End,” which landed the great Tom Stoppard his first Emmy nod. Stoppard won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar alongside Marc Norman for 1998’s “Shakespeare in Love.”

Also in the HBO stable was Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom.” The “Social Network” Oscar winning scribe was NOT nominated for an Emmy, but guest actress Jane Fonda was. Fonda is a two-time Best Actress Oscar winner, for 1971’s “Klute” and 1978’s “Coming Home.” Oh, and one more HBO player of note is Alex Gibney, nominated for writing and directing the documentary “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God.” The film was sadly left off the nominees for Best Documentary at the Oscars last year, though Gibney won in that category for 2007’s “Taxi to the Dark Side,” however.

Moving away from HBO finally, Kevin Spacey is a two-time Oscar winner, for Best Supporting Actor (1995’s “The Usual Suspects”) and Best Actor (1999’s “American Beauty”). He was nominated for Best Actor in a Drama Series for his work in Netflix’s “House of Cards.” (You would think the show’s nominated director, David Fincher, could be mentioned in this space — alas, not an Oscar winner yet. He’ll get there one day.)

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Jane Campion was a double nominee this morning for writing and directing the miniseries “Top of the Lake” (which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year). She won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 1993’s “The Piano.” Melissa Leo, meanwhile, was nominated for her work on FX’s “Louie” three years removed from her Best Supporting Actress Oscar win for “The Fighter,” while Ellen Burstyn was recognized for USA’s “Political Animals.” Burstyn won the Best Actress Oscar for 1974’s “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.”

All of these folks join recent Emmy regulars Maggie Smith and Julian Fellowes of “Downton Abbey” and Jessica Lange of “American Horror Story.” Smith won a pair of acting Oscars for 1969’s “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and 1978’s “California Suite,” while Fellowes won Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 2001’s “Gosford Park” (which, coincidentally, landed Smith her most recent Oscar nomination). Lange, meanwhile, won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for 1982’s “Tootsie” and the Best Actress trophy for 1994’s “Blue Sky.”

I think that about covers it, though we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the Oscars themselves. The 85th annual Academy Awards telecast was nominated for nine Emmys this morning, including Outstanding Special Class Program.

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UPDATE: A few more readers are reminding me of (I knew they’d show up) — Composer Alan Menken, who holds the record for most Oscars of anyone alive for his work on Disney animated films (eight) picked up a songwriting nomination for “The Neighbors,” while last year’s Best Original Score Oscar winner Mychael Danna (“Life of Pi”) landed a nod for the music of “World Without End.” Menken, by the way, will be in EGOT territory if he happens to win.

Elsewhere, Robert Redford, Best Director Oscar winner in 1980 for “Ordinary People,” was Emmy-nominated for the documentary/non-fiction special “All The President’s Men Revisited,” while Gwyneth Paltrow (Best Actress Oscar winner in 1998 for “Shakespeare in Love”) was nominated this morning as executive producer of the informational series “Stand Up to Cancer.” Danny Boyle, who won Best Director for “Slumdog Millionaire” in 2008, was nominated for the art direction of the 2012 Olympics, while Patrizia von Brandenstein (Best Costume Design winner for 1984’s “Amadeus”) was nominated for the art direction of “Phil Spector.”

Check out a list of the major Emmy nominees here, Alan Sepinwall’s analysis here and a breakdown of nominations by program here.

The 65th annual Primetime Emmy Awards will be held on Sunday, September 22.

So the 2013 Emmy nominees were announced this morning. Poor Kate Mara had engine trouble (her plane, not her) in New Mexico and so Emmys host Neil Patrick Harris filled in at the last minute to announce the lucky names alongside “Breaking Bad” star Aaron Paul.

Looking over the nominees, yeah, okay, right, that’s expected, oh that show’s still on?, etc., etc. I rarely find much to get excited about in an Emmy announcement, I mean. I had all my hopes on Rob Lowe’s facelift getting a supporting actor nomination for “Behind the Candelabra” and somehow they spring for the window dressing of Scott Bakula. Huh?

My favorite notices, however, came for HBO’s “Veep,” my favorite comedy show on television right now. Last year it got a handful of looks including, naturally, leading lady Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but this year Tony Hale and (this next part is so awesome) Anna Chlumsky got to tag along in the supporting ranks and that’s just awesome.

I’m also a huge fan of Netflix’s “House of Cards,” which picked up nine nominations including Best Actor for Kevin Spacey (richly deserved), Robin Wright for Best Actress (perhaps even more so) and David Fincher. That’s right, David Fincher is a first-time Emmy nominee, and who can argue when amazing filmmaking talent gets noticed? (So, too, for that matter, is Steven Soderberg, nominated three times as director, cinematographer and film editor — the latter two under pseudonyms — for “Behind the Candelabra.”) I wish Corey Stoll could have been along for the “House of Cards” ride, though, as his work on the show was fantastic.

RELATED: ‘House of Cards’ director David Fincher on making 13 hours for Netflix

The rest is just pretty much the usual, right? “Mad Men,” “Modern Family,” “The Amazing Race,” “Homeland,” “Downton Abbey,” etc., etc. Though I will say I’m happy Jonathan Banks made it to the table for his work in “Breaking Bad.” He’s back in the hunt for an Emmy for the first time since the 1980s series “Wiseguy” and he’s been amazing since he first stepped on the screen. Bring on the final season of that show but fast.

Oh, two more. While I wish “The Newsroom” had been more widely accepted (I get the detractors but eventually, the show hooked me, so I’m fully on board at this point), I’m happy Jeff Daniels managed a nomination. Here’s hoping for more than three nominations next year. Meanwhile, I did not like the direction “Girls” went this last season much at all, but the best part of the series remains, for me, Adam Driver. So I’m glad he got a nomination.

RELATED: ‘The Newsroom’ star Jeff Daniels on cable news, movies vs. TV, and working with Aaron Sorkin

That’s my quick take. Feel free to tell us your favorite nominee from today’s announcement in the comments section below.

The 65th annual Primetime Emmy Awards will be held on Sunday, September 22.

The Venice Film Festival may be celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, but there’s a separate, smaller milestone contained within it: the tenth birthday of the independent Venice Days sidebar. Founded in 2004 by an association of Italian filmmakers to showcase offbeat independent work  outside the main festival selection, Venice Days is effectively the festival’s equivalent of the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, and while it doesn’t get as much publicity, a number of significant films have premiered there over the past decade.

To mark the occasion, and to remind festival-watchers of its programme highlights, Venice Days organizers are holding an online poll, inviting film buffs to select their Film of the Decade from a selection of 50 standout films from the sidebar’s first nine years. Those interested can vote via Facebook: from the 10 titles with the most “likes,” a final winner will be elected and rewarded at the festival.

Among the films voters can choose from is one of the year’s most acclaimed releases so far, Sarah Polley’s playful, deeply personal docu-memoir “Stories We Tell,” as well as a 2010 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Denis Villeneuve’s politically-minded family melodrama “Incendies.”

Other notable options include Ramin Bahrani’s “Man Push Cart” (2005), Jean-Marc Vallee’s “C.R.A.Z.Y.” (2005), Hubert Sauper’s Oscar-nominated documentary “Darwin’s Nightmare” (2004), Shane Meadows’s “Dead Man’s Shoes” (2004) and Andrea Segre’s “Shun Li and the Poet” (2011). You can check out the full list of 50 titles here. Voting closes on August 20, if you feel like playing catch-up.   

The Venice Film Festival runs from August 28 to September 7, with the full lineup likely to land next week.

A couple of weeks ago, the news landed that this year’s vastly acclaimed Palme d’Or winner, Abdellatif Kechiche’s romantic drama “Blue is the Warmest Color,” is ineligible to be the French entry in the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar race. The simple reason: its domestic release date falls nine days after the submission deadline, making it eligible for consideration in the category next year, but not this time round.

It’s a tough break for a great film — but in a problematic category plagued almost annually with controversy and injustice, this hardly registers as a scandal. Every Oscar race, after all, has an eligibility calendar: if you fall outside of it, you don’t compete. “Blue”‘s US distributors Sundance Selects, however, feel sufficiently hard done by to voice their dissatisfaction with the system to Deadline’s Pete Hammond.

“It”s a global business right now and [it’s not good] to hold the Foreign Language titles to a September 30th date,” says Sundance Selects president Jonathan Sehring. “This present Academy administration has been really great about revisiting things that don”t really make sense and I”m just hoping that will happen.”  

Sehring reveals that he pleaded with the film’s French distributors, Wild Bunch, to move up the local release date in order for the film to qualify — though the company, understandably more concerned with giving the film the most commercially advantageous date possible than with the Oscars, chose to stay put. (A limited qualifying release was mooted, though Academy rules demand that the film be widely released at home before the cutoff date.)

Again, this strikes me as unfortunate rather than unfair. Hammond describes the eligibility date as “arcane” and the situation as “embarrassing,” but the submissions process would be unworkably inconsistent without a precise 12-month eligibility period. That period may run from October to September rather than the calendar-year framework that applies in the general race, but that’s a necessity of the category’s more time-consuming viewing and voting process: switching to a January-to-December window, and therefore inviting countries to prematurely submit films that may not yet have been released by September, makes little sense.

“Blue is the Warmest Color” isn’t the first festival hit to fall foul of this cutoff date: Greece’s “Dogtooth” wound up nominated for the Oscar nearly two years after winning the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, while “The Hunt,” if selected as Denmark’s submission this year, could follow a similar course.

The differentiating complication in “Blue”‘s case is that the film’s US release date is set for October 25, meaning it could theoretically be nominated in such general categories as Best Picture, Director and Actress this year, while entering (at France’s discretion, of course) the Best Foreign Language Film race next year, an odd situation the Academy would likely devise some rule to prevent. (Note that I said “theoretically”: superb as it is, I find it hard to imagine the sexually explicit drama gaining traction in the general Oscar race. Backed by a smart Sony Pictures Classics campaign, “Amour” made the transition last year, but it should be obvious that this is a very different proposition.)  

I remain unconvinced that “Blue,” while a likely executive-committee pick, would necessarily have been a top contender even in the foreign-language race. Sehring and Hammond both speak as if the film was the most viable choice for the French, but as I discussed earlier, its ineligibility means they could well end up competing with something more readily Academy-friendly.

The obvious solution to the category’s multiple problems, I maintain, would be to abandon the national selection system and adopt a process closer to the current one used for documentary features: attentive Academy committees could monitor and consider all the foreign-language titles being theatrically released in the US that year, giving the Academy a more active role in their own award, while making it more relevant to movie-going audiences. But we’re still a long way from there. I’d venture that the standard of winners and nominees in the category has been raised in the last couple of years, in part because of the Academy’s willingness to experiment with a system still ridden with flaws — of which the September deadline seems to me a minor one.

I recently caught up with Alex Gibney’s terrific documentary “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,” a no-nonsense study of Julian Assange’s rise and fall that plays, for all our familiarity with the elements at hand, very much as a thriller. Still, the material was bound to make for a narrative film sooner or later, and sooner it is: Bill Condon’s “The Fifth Estate” opens on October 18, presumably after premiering on the fall festival circuit. Now the first trailer for the film has landed, and it looks to be glossy, smart mainstream entertainment.

The film marks Condon’s return to dramatic material in the “Kinsey” vein after directing the final two installments of the “Twilight” franchise, and has a classy, suitably international cast, including Laura Linney (whom Condon directed to an Oscar nomination in “Kinsey”), Stanley Tucci, Alicia Vikander, Carice van Houten, Anthony Mackie, David Thewlis, Peter Capaldi and “Downton Abbey” escapee Dan Stevens. All eyes, however, will be on Benedict Cumberbatch’s turn as the enigmatic, flaxen-haired Assange, and the trailer hints at a compelling characterization beneath the accoutrements of accent and coiffure.

Daniel Brühl, meanwhile, plays Assange’s colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg. This looks likely to be a breakout year for the German star, with Oscar talk already circulating for his turn as Formula 1 legend Niki Lauda in another biographical drama, Ron Howard’s “Rush.” His presence here can only help his cause.

Check out the trailer below, and share your thoughts in the comments.

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