UPDATE (7/5): Okay, this is probably due an update by now. Fireworks on and offline over the holiday, it seems. Weinstein appealed, Lee Daniels begged (and got a private reply, which I’m stunned hasn’t shown up somehow in the reporting given the pettiness of all of it) and now this Hollywood Reporter story pretty much lays out WB’s beef. Straw/camel’s back for them. Waiting on Weinstein retort.

EARLIER (7/2): Lee Daniels’ “The Butler,” the Precious” director’s follow-up to 2012’s sultry train wreck/masterpiece (depending on who you’re asking) “The Paperboy,” showed up here and there in our uncovered Oscar Contenders section earlier this week. I get a “Bobby” vibe from the film (and hey, I actually liked “Bobby”), but whatever. We’ll see what it is when we do, but in the meantime, the film has some unexpected branding decisions to make.

Deadline reported yesterday that Warner Bros. was seeking to block usage of the title “The Butler,” claiming copyright on a 1916 short film. I guess it turns out the film violated Title Registration Bureau rules by using “The Butler” and judgment was swift, levied today: The Weinstein Company has to find a new title for the film. The clock is ticking, too: the term has to be removed from all marketing by midnight tonight, so hang onto those posters, movie theater workers. They might be worth something.

After WB was awarded ownership of the title, the Weinsteins lawyered up with attorney David Boies, with whom the company has recent history.* Crying foul, they issued the following statement:

“The suggestion that there is a danger of confusion between TWC”s 2013 feature movie and a 1917 short that has not been shown in theaters, television, DVDs, or in any other way for almost a century makes no sense. The award has no purpose except to restrict competition and is contrary to public policy.”

It doesn’t sound good for TWC. Look at the bright side, though, Here’s an opportunity for marketing to gift the film with something less, er, forgettable than “The Butler.”

Per the official synopsis, the film tells the story of a White House butler who served eight American presidents over three decades. The film traces the dramatic changes that swept American society during this time, from the civil rights movement to Vietnam and beyond, and how those changes affected this man”s life and family. Forest Whitaker stars as the butler with Robin Williams as Dwight Eisenhower, John Cusack as Richard Nixon, Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan, James Marsden as John F. Kennedy, Liev Schreiber as Lyndon B. Johnson, and many more. Academy Award-nominated Lee Daniels (“Precious”) directs and co-wrote the script with Emmy®-award winning Danny Strong (“Game Change”).

The Film Formerly Known as “The Butler” arrives in theaters August 16.

*It was recently reported Boies put up millions to save production on the film “Jane Got a Gun” with his daughter, actress/producer Regency Boies (the embattled production will be jointly distributed by TWC and Relativity Media.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, “The only things certain in life are death, taxes and a new Woody Allen movie every single year.” I paraphrase, but only for the sake of greater accuracy: now 77 years old, the quintessential New York writer-director shows no sign of relaxing his work rate. And why would he? His output is hit-and-miss, but only two years ago, “Midnight in Paris” proved that he can still hit pretty squarely, scoring the highest box office returns of his career and a fourth Oscar to boot.

This year may up his hit ratio further: after last year’s “To Rome With Love” fizzled into oblivion, good buzz is brewing for his latest, the Cate Blanchett-starring dramedy “Blue Jasmine,” which opens on July 26. Allen, however, has already moved on: resuming his recent European tour that has seen him shoot in London, Paris and Barcelona, he’s currently on the set of his 2014 project in the South of France.

As ever, the film is still untitled and we have no plot details to go on. And as ever, the cast is enviable: we already knew that Emma Stone and Oscar winner Colin Firth were attached — both stars collaborating with Allen for the first time. Today, meanwhile, he received further casting details, and the director’s capacity for attracting top-drawer character actors is undiminished.

Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden and two-time nominee Jacki Weaver are now on board, with both actresses also making their Woody debuts. (Doesn’t it seem like Harden should have done one of these by now?) Also along for the ride are two distinguished Brits: near-octogenarian theater dame and Emmy winner Eileen Atkins, most recently seen (albeit fleetingly) in “Beautiful Creatures” and Simon McBurney — whose last film appearance, coincidentally enough, was also alongside Colin Firth in “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” Erica Leehrsen and Jeremy Shamos round out the ensemble at this point.

That’s all we have for you right now, so speculate away. Will Weaver have enough material for a third Oscar nod, for example? She doesn’t need much, after all. And are you happy to see Woody back on the Continent after “Blue Jasmine” briefly returned him to the US?

All-star music festivals are a dime a dozen every summer — as, for that matter, are film festivals, at any time of year. Festivals that mix the two, however, are still relatively thin on the ground. The US, famously, has South by Southwest in the spring, and for the last three years, the Swedes have taken a leaf from their playbook (right down to the hat-tipping name) with the Way Out West fest, which takes place this year in Gothenberg on the weekend of August 8 to 10.

Of course, the Swedish festival is a more compact affair, and one whose film programme is more concerned with cherry-picking aims at the non-festival-going public than world premieres — with a music documentary sidebar that makes perfect sense for this crowd. Way Out West began seven years ago solely as a music festival; the film programme was added three years ago. I met Svante Tidholm, their dynamic film programme director, in Cannes, and while he admits the festival’s still growing up, he’s determined to make it a more prominent stop on the European circuit.

For now, it’s a nice opportunity for a number of 2013’s best films — most of which will be new to Scandinavian audiences — to be showcased in an alternative environment, sharing space on the bill with pop and rock royalty. Fancy chilling out after Neil Young’s set with a screening of “Before Midnight?” Or warming up for Alicia Keys with the very different New York spirit of “Frances Ha?” Here’s your chance.

Aside from Young and Keys, headlining music acts at the festival include Azealia Banks, Kendrick Lamar, Miguel and Cat Power. The high-profile films, meanwhile, also include Steven Soderbergh’s “Behind the Candelabra” (remember, it’s being treated as a theatrical feature throughout Europe), Wong Kar-wai’s “The Grandmaster,” Zal Batmanglij’s “The East,” James Franco’s Sundance provocation “Interior. Leather Bar.,” Berlinale Audience Award winner “The Broken Circle Breakdown,” Xan Cassavetes’ vampire film “Kiss of the Damned,” and well as the world premiere of Swedish film “Easy Money: Life Deluxe,” the third instalment in a hit franchise that is already being retooled by Hollywood with Zac Efron.

The documentary lineup, meanwhile, is headlined by the year’s most beloved music doc so far, “Twenty Feet from Stardom,” with Peaches’ outrageous performance piece “Peaches Does Herself,” Shane Meadows’s first foray into rock-doc territory “The Stone Roses: Made of Stone,” “Reincarnated: Snoop Lion” among the others in the mix. Something for everyone, essentially.

Tidholm says of the film lineup: “The films we premiered last year went on to become the most successful Scandinavian films of the year. This year we’re aiming even higher, with more international films, more Swedish, European and World premieres as well as more international talent.” 

The full lineup is here, and all in all, I can think of far less pleasant ways to spend a weekend — if you can swing the trip to Sweden, of course. But it’s good to see a festival mixing up the formula a bit; I’m interested to see how they grow. 

Fairly soon, the first formal contenders will start trickling into the race for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, as individual national committees make their official selections and submit them to the Academy for consideration. It’s a trickle that will swiftly turn into a flood as the submission deadline of October 1 nears. Last year, 71 countries entered the race — an all-time record that could well be beaten this year. But in a race that’s all but impossible to handicap at this stage — dependent as it is on the whims and politics of different countries, rather than the Academy itself — what are the films we’re expecting to see in the mix?

One high-profile title we know won’t be in the running this year is France’s “Blue is the Warmest Color,” which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes back in May. With French distributors Wild Bunch having confirmed a local release date of October 9, that narrowly takes Abdellatif Kechiche’s vastly acclaimed romantic drama out of the eligibility timeframe: Academy rules stipulate that entries for this year’s award must be released in their home countries between October 1, 2012 and September 30, 2013. So “Blue” could feasibly be entered next year — rather like “The Intouchables,” which was entered into last year’s race over a year after its San Sebastian festival debut — but the French will have to consider other options this year.

That may prove to be a blessing in disguise for the French — who are never short of candidates for entry, after all. A Palme d’Or winner tends to be a practically mandatory entry in the race: you have to go back to 1997 to find a foreign-language winner of Cannes’ top prize that failed to be entered by its country for Oscar consideration. (The films were joint winners “A Taste of Cherry,” from Iran, and “The Eel,” from Japan.) So while “Blue” might well have been the French committee’s first choice this year, it might not have been the most tactical submission. The Academy’s been getting more adventurous in this category in recent years (the nomination of “Dogtooth” three years ago being a crowning never-say-never moment), but a sexually explicit, three-hour study of young lesbian love would certainly have been an extreme test of this older-skewing branch’s limits. 

What safer options might the French consider this year, then? The other French-language critical hit of this year’s Cannes fest, Iranian auteur Asghar Farhadi’s “The Past,” will strike many as the obvious alternative — and certainly, this powerful domestic melodrama could find many fans in the branch, particularly among those who would Farhadi in high regard from his “A Separation” triumph. But the French are not in the habit of submitting films by non-French directors. (The last one was Israel’s Moshe Mizrahi, whose “Madame Rosa” won the Oscar in 1977.) Meanwhile, the film will probably be deemed insufficiently Iranian to be submitted by Farhadi’s home country — not that the political odds favor them submitting an emigrant production anyway. 

If the French are feeling parochial, Francois Ozon’s acclaimed literary comedy of manners “In the House,” released late last year and rewarded with multiple Cesar nods, is a viable alternative. They could also consider Ozon’s follow-up, teenage prostitute study “Young and Beautiful” — though that’d be a less wise choice. They could submit Michel Gondry’s “Mood Indigo,” a high-whimsy adaptation of a local cult novel starring Audrey Tautou and Romain Duris — but for all the name-recognition factor, it’s an eccentric vision that many in the Academy simply wouldn’t jive to.

Speaking of Duris, it’s quite possible the French could submit fluffy retro-romcom “Populaire,” about a winsomely amorous typist in the 1950s. This attractive, somewhat over-cute film — pitched optimistically on the UK posters as “‘Mad Men’ meets ‘The Artist!'” — hasn’t gathered the buzz The Weinstein Company was presumably hoping for when they acquired it last year, but they’d certainly hawk the hell out of it if it’s submitted. In a considerably less sweet vein, it’s hard to gauge how the Academy might respond to Bruno Dumont’s austere historical biopic “Camille Claudel 1915.” They like Juliette Binoche, who’s on fierce form in the Berlinale entry, and they nominated a previous, more melodramatic telling of Claudel’s story back in 1989, but Dumont’s rigid formalism would be a turn-off to many.

Kiddie charmer “Ernest and Celestine,” already a likely contender in the Best Animated Feature race, would be a real wild-card choice. While animated films have been entered before (and “Waltz With Bashir” broke the barrier by landing a nomination in 2008), they’ve been in a more adult vein than this adorable bear-and-mouse friendship tale — the film’s all but impossible to dislike, and its gentleness and novelty factor could work in its favor.

No need to pity the French, then: that was just a superficial glance at the various other irons they have in the fire. But what other countries could find themselves in the running? The world is obviously too vast to give a complete rundown of the possibilities, but here are five filmmaking nations who could really make an impact on the race with the right selection:

Denmark: I’ve been saying this for over a year now, but if the Danes submit Thomas Vinterberg’s “The Hunt,” soon to be released in the US, they could be the ones to beat. Interestingly, this popular moral drama has been in a comparable situation to “Blue is the Warmest Color”: a hit at Cannes last year, where it won Best Actor for Mads Mikkelsen, it couldn’t be submitted for the Oscar because it was only released at home this January (unusually, well after it was released in several other European territories). Other Danish options have emerged since then, but none with the crossover appeal (and global star power) of this one: I personally find this story of a schoolteacher falsely accused of pedophilia by his small community contrived and disingenuous, but I sense it could hit many voters right where they live.

Romania: The much-vaunted Romanian New Wave has yet to score an Oscar nomination, but they landed on the shortlist for the first time this year with Cristian Mungiu’s bleak convent drama “Beyond the Hills.” Could Calin Peter Netzer’s “Child’s Pose” do the same, or even go one better? I think so. The film was a well-received winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in February, and after catching up with it in Karlovy Vary this morning, I can confirm that it’s sensational — I’ll offer further detail in a review, but this riveting tale of a mother doing whatever it takes to save her doltish son from manslaughter charges should keep wowing audiences on the festival circuit. Romania’s made a habit of submitting their biggest festival hit of the year, and this is the one. 

Italy: Another country that routinely has much to choose from, Italy could benefit this year by going for the less obvious solution. Paolo Sorrentino’s lavish portrait of contemporary Roman social decay, “The Great Beauty,” found many admirers at Cannes, but his indulgent vision could be a bit rich for Oscar voters. Actress-turned-director Valeria Golino’s “Miele,” however, might be a smarter option. The film was one of the surprises of this year’s Un Certain Regard crop: a stylishly composed story of a young euthanasia practitioner, it’s moving and thought-provoking in the way that voters respond to, without being overly provocative.

Chile: The clear choice for Chile, which nabbed its first ever nomination last year for “No,” is Sebastian Lelio’s “Gloria,” a vastly entertaining but emotionally substantive tale of middle-aged female liberation that proved a huge crowdpleaser in Berlin, where it won the Best Actress award for unlikely breakout star Paulina Garcia. What’s particularly interesting is that the film was picked up for US distribution by Roadside Attractions: an indie outfit that been a savvy Oscar campaigner of late. Even if the film somehow doesn’t get submitted, they could do a lot worse than try and make Garcia this year’s Fernanda Montenegro.

Japan: The Japanese rarely pick the film most favored by festival-watchers, often plucking a local hit that has yet to build an international profile. So while there’s no guarantee that they’ll select Cannes Jury Prize winner “Like Father, Like Son” this year, they’d be wise to do so. I was no fan of this schematic, sentimental story of two families on opposite sides of the class divide discovering that their sons were switched at birth, but I’m in the minority: it’s an effective heart-tugger that had grown men in tears at Cannes, and softer-hearted Academy voters would eat it up with a spoon. The Japanese selectors submitted director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s last Cannes winner, “Nobody Knows,” in 2002, so there’s reason to believe they might favor him again — and if they do, it’ll be a major threat for the award.

So, there’s a brief taster of the kind of speculation you’ll be hearing a lot of over the next few months, as we track the submissions as they come in. It’s entirely possible none of these films will end up in the mix — even the most high-profile countries can make perverse choices in some years. As for “Blue is the Warmest Color,” fingers crossed for 2014.

Will the Coen brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis” be a big awards player at the end of the year? CBS Films is sure positioning it for that but forget all of that, forget the Grand Prix win at Cannes, etc. I just really, really want to see this movie. A Coen film just feels like an oasis in every dreary film year, so while “The Lone Ranger” may be stinking up the multiplexes next weekend, remember, we have stuff like this coming around the corner.

A new trailer for the film has dropped with a gorgeous cover of “Dink’s Song” (one of the songs from the upcoming insta-purchase soundtrack) playing throughout, and boy is it splendid. I really love the hues and the richness of color, ever since the first trailer however many months back. It looks like the filmmaker siblings didn’t miss a beat moving from Roger Deakins to Bruno Delbonnel behind the camera. For more on the movie, check out Guy Lodge’s B+ review out of Cannes.

Check out all the 1960s beauty in the trailer below. “Inside Llewyn Davis” hits theaters December 6.

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-VG5IZGwT4&w=640&h=360]

It seems like just yesterday Ben Affleck was on stage at the Dolby Theatre accepting his Best Picture Oscar for “Argo” and one of the more dramatic awards seasons was drawing to a close. Since then we’ve had a refreshing handful of months away from the fray, but today, we’re going to ruin all of that, just for a moment.

Last week Greg, Guy and I offered up our “for your consideration” Oscar picks from the year’s first half that we’d like to see remembered come year’s end. With that as a launching off point, and with today marking the actual mid-way point of 2013, let’s really dig in. How has the year shaped up for awards hopefuls so far?

January proved to be the typical dumping ground for new films and expansion area for December limited releases, but the Sundance Film Festival brought a number of possibilities. The Weinstein Company struck first, picking up (for VOD shingle RADiUS-TWC) the documentary “20 Feet from Stardom” and later the tear-jerking Grand Jury and Audience Award winner “Fruitvale Station” (née “Fruitvale”). The latter went on to Cannes and is set for a late-July release, but we’ll just have to see if it can be viewed as more than a strong Independent Spirit player.

Sundance also brought Richard Linklater’s “Before Midnight,” which Sony Pictures Classics picked up after the fest. It could yield a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination like its predecessor, “Before Sunset,” but stars Ethan Hawke and particularly Julie Delpy could find room as well. As of right now it would appear the film is SPC’s most suitable awards player, unless rumors of Sony’s “Foxcatcher” being shuffled over to the indie shingle pans out.

Those were probably the biggest players coming out of Park City this year, though certainly there are idle possibilities in this and that, from “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” to now-playing controversial doc “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks.” Jeff Nichols’ “Mud” also popped back up after a Cannes 2012 debut, but more on that in a moment.

RELATED: Which 2013 Sundance films might find Oscar traction next season?

February was more drought in the multiplexes. Steven Soderbergh’s supposed final foray into theatrical, “Side Effects,” was a curiosity, but really, not much to discuss beyond Jude Law’s performance and the stunning digital photography.

March brought the first animated feature film contender of the year, “The Croods,” as well as the first major box office draw, “Oz the Great and Powerful.” The latter may be able to find its way through the crafts races. Landing on the art house side of things were “Ginger & Rosa” (potential Indie Spirits player with a top-notch Elle Fanning performance and gorgeous photography from rising star Robbie Ryan), as well as Focus Features’ “The Place Beyond the Pines” (a screenplay hopeful among other pushes). Harmony Corine’s “Spring Breakers” also landed, bringing with it a fun potential nomination for supporting actor James Franco.

Things got a little more serious in April with the arrival of “Mud.” The Mark Twain-inspired Jeff Nichols drama currently sits at a whopping 99% on Rotten Tomatoes, easily the first significant Best Picture player of the year, with a supporting performance from Matthew McConaughey that could make him a double nominee come year’s end. Terrence Malick’s “To the Wonder” also made its way to screens (a possible cinematography nomination for Emmanuel Lubezki, who has “Gravity” coming later this year), but it was mostly dismissed, while baseball biopic “42” also landed, bringing with it a supporting performance from Harrison Ford that will be looking for traction.

In May, the summer movie season announced itself with releases such as “Iron Man 3” and “The Great Gatsby.” The latter was mostly savaged but could still end up remembered for its design, while the former was mostly appreciated and might pop up in sound and visual effects races.

Also in May, three films from the 2012 Telluride Film Festival finally hit theaters: Noah Baumbach’s “Frances Ha” (a screenplay and Best Actress player for Greta Gerwig but it could end up relegated to the Spirits bin), Ariel Vromen’s “The Iceman” (a showcase for actor Michael Shannon) and Sarah Polley’s “Stories We Tell” (a definite documentary feature contender). It’s also worth mentioning Zal Batmanglij’s “The East,” an effective thriller that could show up at the Indie Spirits like his debut last year, “Sound of My Voice.”

Mostly, though, May was all about the Cannes Film Festival, which brought a few things to the table. As mentioned, “Fruitvale Station” was reprised, but the Coen brothers’ Grand Prix-winning “Inside Llewyn Davis” seemed to have the most awards prospects coming off the Croisette. Scott Rudin, Terry Press and CBS Films will be priming it to gather momentum throughout the fall festival season and we could see nominations across the board, from Best Picture to Best Actor (Oscar Isaac) to Best Supporting Actor (John Goodman) and notices throughout the crafts as well.

Elsewhere at the fest, J.C. Chandor’s “All is Lost” stirred buzz, particularly for lead actor Robert Redford, while Paramount brought Alexander Payne’s “Nebraska” looking for more international interest. The legendary Bruce Dern walked away with the Best Actor prize for the latter, and he already has a slew of Hollywood staples lining up to support him in the season. But will he be moved over to the supporting category? The decision is still being made.

Also worth mentioning from Cannes is Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Only God Forgives,” which may not be a big player overall, but Kristin Scott Thomas’s outrageous performance could certainly figure in. And, of course, on the TV awards side of things, Soderbergh’s supposed swan song in features came in the form of “Behind the Candelabra.” Expect Michael Douglas to be hitting stage after stage. Palme d’Or winner “Blue is the Warmest Color” can hope for foreign language film recognition, but that’s about it. And can Sony Classics translate the fest’s Best Actress winner Bérénice Bejo from Asghar Farhadi’s “The Past” into latter year awards success? Time will tell.

VIDEO: Oscar contenders coming out of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival

Finally, June kept the summer flowing with Zack Snyder’s critically smacked “Man of Steel.” It was never going to be a prestige-level superhero thing like Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy, but it could still figure into the crafts races. A second animated feature hopeful came in the form of Pixar’s “Monsters University” (also a player for Randy Newman’s original score) and another curiosity, Joss Whedon’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” found supporters as well. But mostly, it was more bubblegum and popcorn, from “World War Z” to “White House Down.”

There have been a handful of other films that could be mentioned: “The Bling Ring,” “I’m So Excited!,” “The Sapphires,” SXSW debut “Short Term 12,” “Stoker,” “Unfinished Song,” “What Maisie Knew,” etc. But mostly, that’s how the awards hopefuls break down for the year’s first half.

Alright, take a breath. What does the rest of the year hold in store?

…

Let’s not go there quite yet. We’re all looking forward to the same stuff at this point and we’ll just have to let it all come to us as it may. I’ll be interested to see if McConaughey’s rumored amazing work in “Dallas Buyers Club” forms a perfect storm with his performances in “Mud” and “The Wolf of Wall Street” (as well as his stellar year in 2012) to give him a huge platform. And speaking of Martin Scorsese’s adaptation, I’ll also be curious to see if Jonah Hill finds his way to a second nomination (and more ammunition when press attempt to break the ice with humor when he’s trying to be SERIOUS, OKAY? in interviews).

But there’s time to chew on all of that, so let’s let it lie for now. We have, however, polished off the Contenders section, which you may have perused already throughout the weekend. And even though we weren’t going to do this yet, we’ve gone ahead and offered up our first set of predictions for the season, too. Please don’t take these too seriously quite yet.

You will also notice that the Contenders section is a little bit different. We’ve done away with the overly obsessive tiered system and boiled it down to a simple top 10 “frontrunners” in each category, with a wealth of somewhat curated (rather than anything and everything) list of other hopefuls below them. Check out all of that here and remember you can click through to look at each category via the photos in the predictions sidebar to the right.

And that should bring us up to speed for now. I’ve got another month-and-a-half in New York and I’d like to enjoy it Oscar-free, but believe me, we have some fun things planned for you in the season, which will be here before you know it!

When Guillermo del Toro’s “Pacific Rim” crashes into theaters on July 12, you’ll only be getting part of the story. The universe of the film was too big for one movie, you see. It inevitably spilled over the edges and left an excess of material without a home, but with so much to say.

Luckily for screenwriter Travis Beacham, that material wouldn’t go homeless forever. It turned out Legendary Pictures, which financed and produced the film, wanted a comic book tie-in, and so the idea of a graphic novel was taking flight. But there weren’t any specific ideas about what it should be. The immediate, unspoken assumption was to do an adaptation of the film, but very quickly, when Beacham was approached to write the graphic novel (something he’d never before attempted, by the way), he had a bright idea.

“I was like, ‘Sure, I”d love to write it but, let”s do something that”s sort of additive as opposed to adaptive,'” he tells me. And so “Pacific Rim: Tales from Year Zero” started to take shape.

The 112-page book, currently on shelves, is a prequel to the upcoming film, filling in shades and information only alluded to via glancing blows on the screen. Following the exploits of a news reporter writing a bit of a puff piece on the shuttering of the Jaeger program, the graphic novel collects stories from individuals in the “Pacific Rim” universe recounting the brief history of disaster that has become a matter of course by the time the film begins. And one of the things it did was allow Beacham to salvage some of the elements that may have been workshopped out of the screenplay as the film project developed and give them a new purpose and life.

“Early on, we knew it should have a few episodes,” he says. “Like it should have a sort of historical, episodic sort of thing happening in it. But we needed something to tie it all together. And there was no real framework story at first. Then I thought, ‘Oh, we jettisoned that reporter thing from the first draft. I could just use that, sort of ‘Citizen Kane’-style. She”s going around interviewing people for this article that she”s writing.”

But mostly it was a way to build on the world and employ what Beacham calls the lingering “dark matter” of the story that never found an organic way into the screenplay. We learn about “K-Day,” the day the first kaiju monster made landfall in San Francisco. We learn about Stacker Pentecost’s Air Force roots and how seeing a boy playing with toy robots and monsters sparked the idea for the Jaeger program in a Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld. All of this was part of a larger mythology that Beacham had always hoped he could include in some way, peppering in the detail where he could like one of his favorite world-building authors, China Miéville.

“The graphic novel was just a perfect chance for it,” he says. “And Guillermo was definitely on the same wavelength. I think that was probably something that he”d been picturing from the graphic novel the whole time. And there wasn’t a lot of resistance to it. Nobody was like, ‘No, no, no. This has to be an adaptation. We need people to see this as the movie that they already watched.'”

The format of writing a comic book took a little while to get used to, but it was ultimately an interesting way for Beacham to further explore the humanity of his story. When you’re thinking about a movie script, there’s a lot of consideration of movement and sound, the experience of events taking place before you. But it just doesn’t work the same on the comic book page, he says, and that was a bit enlightening.

“It”s funny because if you look at storyboards and then you look at comic book pages, you see they look really similar,” Beacham says. “But a screenplay isn”t written in such a way where you”re describing a storyboard. And that”s really different in the comic context because you literally are describing like, you know, ‘here”s what this panel shows’ and ‘here”s what this panel shows.’ And you”re really trying to put a story together as a fuse of images as opposed to something with a sense of movement. The peculiarity of the format focused on the details and the intimacy of it, having this book that”s in your hand as opposed to this giant screen that”s in front of you.”

He also felt it let him talk about character in a different way, allowing for more subtlety than a blockbuster movie might allow. “In movies, it”s so paced and it”s so deliberate that you have to be sort of blunt at times with what your character is saying and what they”re feeling. In the comic book I feel like you can get away with being not quite as blunt, because somebody can sit there and look at the page for a really long time. And [when developing a graphic novel], you”re really only talking to like a handful of people as opposed to a movie script, which is a letter to, you know, an army of people.”

That love for the format extends to the book’s supplementary pages as well, which feature a brief education on the process, from script to pencils, inks to colors and lettering.

Given the wealth of “dark matter” floating around from the “Pacific Rim” universe, waiting to be served up as greater context, Beacham says he would love to explore further adventures on the comic book page.

“I think they’ve only published graphic novels, so I don”t know if that”s Legendary’s bent, you know, or if they”re planning on doing single issues or anything,” he says. “But I would totally be up for it. And I think that”s sort of the way I look at the entire property. The movie is fantastic and I love it with all my heart and all my soul. But also I see it as sort of being one of many shadows cast by this thing, which is the ‘Pacific Rim’ universe. And coming to it as a fan of that sort of thing, as the kind of person who looks up stuff on like ‘Game of Thrones’ wikis and ‘Aliens’ wikis and ‘Star Wars’ stuff, I just always try to think in terms of the universe outside the movie. I think my sense of curiosity just goes there automatically.”

More from Beacham on the “Pacific Rim” universe next week when we dig in on the movie itself.

“Pacific Rim” opens nationwide on July 12.

I  haven’t yet had a chance to see “The Heat,” but it’s one of the summer studio movies I’ve been looking forward to most this year. Director Paul Feig’s “Bridesmaids,” if not a home run, made me laugh more than any film of its type in the last couple of years, and I’m a fully paid-up member of the Sandra Bullock fan club. (Why, yes, I do own a “Forces of Nature” DVD. Thanks for asking.) If you haven’t been paying attention, this is Bullock’s first leading role since winning the Oscar for “The Blind Side” nearly four years ago. Drew McWeeny didn’t enjoy the film but gives it a respectable B- rating, while many critics seem to be higher on Bullock’s chemistry with Melissa McCarthy than the film itself. Fine by me — commercial movies headlined by two female stars are rare enough these days that I can accept some compromise. Is this buddy comedy worthy of them? Vote in the poll after the jump, and share your thoughts in the comments.

This weekend Roland Emmerich’s “White House Down” hits theaters. While it’s a minor romp that will either delight you or cause you to roll your eyes out of your head, it reminds of that old staple of the cinema: the movie president.

One almost imagines playing a movie president is a right of passage for actors. Sometimes it’s a silly walk-on, like Tim Robbins in “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me” or Tommy “Tiny” Lister in “The Fifth Element.” Other times it’s a well-crafted performance that speaks as profile, like Josh Brolin in “W.” or Phillip Baker Hall in “Secret Honor.” Still others, it can be a wonderful caricature, like Donald Moffat gave us in “The Right Stuff,” or a stalwart fictional Commander-in-Chief facing blockbuster crisis, like Morgan Freeman in “Deep Impact” or Danny Glover in “2012.”

Jamie Foxx gets his turn in “White House Down,” and so I decided to use the occasion to poll a few HitFix peeps and narrow down a list of the very best movie presidents to ever rule on the big screen. Not everyone could make the cut, however. Movie POTUSES (POTUSI?) that just missed include Bill Pullman’s Thomas J. Whitmore from “Independence Day” (I know!), John Travolta’s office-seeking Governor Jack Stanton from “Primary Colors” and the zany antics of Terry Crews and Jack Nicholson in “Idiocracy” and “Mars Attacks!” respectively.

So who DID make it? Click through the gallery below to find out, and tell us YOUR favorite movie president in the comments section below. Also, vote in our poll to let us know which of our picks you would have put at #1.

I’ve certainly voiced my share of regret with regard to Pixar sequels. I’m honestly not against them in principal (some might argue the “Toy Story” films got better with each subsequent installment), but I do understand frustration from those who’d like to see the animation studio steer away from the brand expansion market and back to original concepts.

That said, it’s odd to me that “Monsters University” seems to be such a last straw for so many. I couldn’t stand “Cars 2,” and yes, I’m pretty perturbed at the notion of my favorite Pixar film receiving the sequel treatment while a film that seems to be aching for it — “The Incredibles” — remains singular. But I was charmed by the new “Monsters,” which landed to one of the biggest openings in the studio’s history last weekend. It’s not the poster child here, in my opinion.

Nevertheless, it seems Pixar has heard the moaning and taken it to heart. In an interview with Pixar president Ed Catmull, Buzzfeed reveals that the studio is planning to scale back on sequels and aim for one original film each year.

“For artistic reasons…it”s really important that we do an original film a year,” Catmull told the site. “Every once in a while, we get a film where we want or people want to see something continuing in that world — which is the rationale behind the sequel. They want those characters, which means we were successful with them. But if you keep doing that, then you aren”t doing original films.

“We”re going to have an original film every year, then every other year have a sequel to something. That”s the rough idea.”

It’s interesting because I recently finished Nicole LaPorte’s “The Men Who Would Be King,” an absolute must-read tome about the rise and fall of DreamWorks, and there is plenty of talk about Pixar in those pages, about Jeffrey Katzenberg attempting to poach talent from the studio and about former Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s place in it all. Apparently Eisner was a bit annoyed early on about the lack of sequels that were coming out of Pixar in the early days, when Disney merely had a distribution deal with the animation house. Eventually Pixar sold to Disney outright and, of course, things changed.

Now they look to be changing again. Well, a compromise seems to have been struck. Albeit a “rough idea.”

Pixar’s next film will be “The Good Dinosaur,” which landes in theaters next May. Later this year, Walt Disney Animation will spin the world of “Cars” off into “Planes,” which will be an attempt to forge a new franchise from a former one. We’ll see how that one plays.

Here is my list of the 10 best Pixar films from last year, published on the occasion of “Brave.” I think I might tweak it now to have “Monsters University” bump “Brave” off the list and maybe flip-flop “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2.”

Lars von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac” — a supposed sexual odyssey with a starry cast including Shia LaBeouf, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Uma Thurman, among others — is currently enjoying such a feverish level of anticipation that it could announce a new typeface for its credits and the internet would collectively freak out for a minute. So it’s inevitable that the first, minute-long clip to be revealed from the film has been eagerly seized upon by the web — and even more inevitable that von Trier has punked us with a wholly chaste clip that, alluring as it is, doesn’t reveal much of anything (or any of its famous faces). Come on, you didn’t think Lars was going to let the cat out of the bag just yet, did you?

Anyway, the scene comes from the first of eight chapters in the film, and features Stacy Martin as the youthful incarnation of Gaisbourg’s character, receiving some beginner sex tips on a train. It’s coolly sensual enough to keep our appetites as thoroughly whetted as they’ve been all along, and promises more gorgeous images from “Melancholia” DP Manuel Alberto Claro, but what else is there really to say? Other than that I can’t wait to see this, of course. My fingers are firmly crossed for a Venice Film Festival premiere.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMnJDyv2a1Y&w=640&h=360]

One of the pleasures I”ve allowed myself at this year”s Edinburgh fest is more time than usual to graze the handpicked short film programme – annually a point of pride for the festival, though inevitably swamped in the attention stakes by even the most negligible features in the lineup. That”s understandable: it”s hard to cover films that your readers have no certain way of accessing, and even with advances in online exhibition, distribution of shorts remains a niche affair. Taking aside from the annual release of those fortunate shorts rather randomly singled out by the Oscars, civilian cinemagoers are unlikely to see any at all.

That”s a shame, since a film like “Vultures of Tibet,” from Austin-based director Russell O. Bush, is one of the standout documentaries of the festival, length be damned. This 20-minute study of the fascinating, somewhat poetically macabre Buddhist ritual of ‘sky burial” – whereby a human corpse is sacrificed to carrion vultures, birds believed to house the souls of spiritual elders – belies its length with remarkable depth of interpretation, as anthropological observation gives way to sobering socio-political commentary. Coupled with the poised, panoramic sweep of Drew Xanthopoulos”s lensing, it”s a reminder that “short” and “small” are not interchangeable adjectives.

Others make a virtue of the form”s limitations, like Karin Hammer and Stefan Hafner”s nifty gallery experiment “Funny Games Ghost,” a series of synchronized, overlaid scenes from both the Austrian and American versions of Michael Haneke”s brutal home-invasion chiller. In feature form, it”d be a gimmicky endurance test; at 10 minutes, it”s precisely as long as it needs to be to convey the eerie oppressiveness of repeated narrative, proffering the remake as a form of voluntary confinement.

I”ve also seen more snazzy animated shorts than I can list here, the range of techniques and effects between them driving home the point of just how aesthetically conformist most feature animation – even at its most expensively hi-tech – can look by comparison. I was particularly taken with “Woody,” the debut short from Australian animator and editor Stuart Bowen. A monochrome stop-motion charmer about a wooden artist”s mannequin whose lifelong dream of becoming the next Liberace is thwarted by his fingerless, paddle-shaped hands, it”s jauntily animated and shot through with mordantly goofy Down Under wit: most inspired is an instructional montage demonstrating appropriate lines of work (air traffic controlling, pancake flipping) for the non-articulated likes of Woody. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Seattle Film Festival a few weeks ago, which, if I remember correctly, qualifies it for Oscar consideration: I wouldn”t be surprised to see it pop up in that race.

One way of ensuring wider attention for shorts – if only those by the name auteurs who tend to participate in these endeavours – is the trusty old portmanteau picture. There”s at least one of these patchwork affairs at almost any major festival: an omnibus of shorts linked by a common theme or cause, bound together as a feature-length film. They invariably receive (and deserve) the “mixed bag” label, but the strike rate is pleasingly high in “Historic Centre,” an alternately whimsical and mournful anti-travelogue commissioned by the Portuguese city of Guimaraes to celebrate their appointment as 2012″s European Capital of Culture.

A Portu-portmanteau then, if you like – though Finnish eccentric Aki Kaurismaki and elusive Spanish master Victor Erice have been tapped alongside local luminaries Manoel de Oliveira and Pedro Costa to offer their peculiar interpretations of Guimaraes”s heritage. The good news is that three of these veterans are enchantingly on their game; the bad news is that Costa has opted to set his turgidly off-topic segment almost entirely in an elevator.

Significantly more enjoyable than Costa”s marathon 30-minute misfire was his amusingly sour pre-screening introduction, in which he made no attempt to disguise his disdain for the enterprise: “It”s the kind of thing they make when they have money they don”t know what to do with,” he said with a shrug. It”s tempting to imagine that he agreed to participate as an act of perverse sabotage; that possibility at least makes his unpromisingly titled film “Sweet Exorcist” – a dour post-colonial conversation between the protagonist of Costa”s colossal youth and the bronze-painted spirit of a battle-weary soldier – interesting in its impenetrability.

In far better humor, clearly, is Kaurismaki, who kicks off the project with the wholly delightful “Tavern Man,” a brief but deliberately sketched portrait of a lonely restaurateur attempting to embrace the city”s growing culinary revolution with hilariously inept results. Abetted by his hangdog leading man Ikka Koivula, Kaurismaki strikes his trademark Chaplin-esque balance of the droll and the doleful with sweeter precision (and better sight gags) than any of his last few features: our chef”s version of bouillabaisse alone would redeem the effort of sitting through three more “Sweet Exorcists.”

Also bettering his recent longer-length work is de Oliveira, the oldest filmmaker at work today (or, perhaps, ever): the last and shortest film of the four, “The Conquered Conqueror” is a single, perfectly timed skit that pokes fun at the glib, fleeting engagement of passing tour groups. Pondering the daily indignities inflicted upon a noble statue turned prime holiday-snap hodder, de Oliveira strikes the tone of half-amused, half-desolate resignment that rings awfully true coming from a 104-year-old artist.

At 72, Victor Erice is a mere stripling beside de Oliveira, but there”s graceful world-weariness in his contribution, “Broken Windows” – the most substantial and emotionally rewarding of the four, as you might expect from the poetically inclined director of “The Spirit of the Beehive” (one of the greatest films ever made, in my book). Erice hasn”t made a feature since 1992, though he also won the portmanteau game in 2002″s “Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet.”

The only documentary in the compilation, it”s a formally simple piece, the cumulative power of which is hard to convey on paper. In the canteen of a vast, now-disused textile factory, former workers offer bruised personal testimonies about their times there, shot and structured by Erice as a series of “screen tests”; in turn, they each reflect on a photo of an earlier generation of workers, contemplating their predecessors” yearnings much as we contemplate theirs. “At 77, I still don”t know what happiness is,” says one tiny, wiry woman without ceremony or self-pity. “Joy, sure. But not happiness.” At 38 minutes, “Broken Windows” is perhaps the single most extraordinary thing I saw at Edinburgh this year. “Historic Centre” left me wishing some directors would make more shorts, and that Erice would make more, period. 

The Academy has announced its annual list of invitees to its esteemed membership, including 276 names from actors Jason Bateman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jennifer Lopez and Milla Jovovich to directors Steve McQueen, Todd Phillips and last year’s wunderkind Benh Zeitlin.

Also on the list is last year’s oldest-ever Best Actress nominee, Emmanuelle Riva.

Throughout the crafts departments, a wealth of great talent was included. Cinematographers Greig Fraser and Eric Gautier, film editors James Haygood and Mary Jo Markey, makeup artist Lisa Westcott and composers Cliff Martinez and Prince (yes, that one — 30 years after winning the Best Original Song Score for “Purple Rain”) are just a few of them.

And in the writers branch, “Before” trilogy collaborator Julie Delpy made the cut, as did “Girls” creator Lena Dunham and “Looper” scribe Rian Johnson, among others. Last year’s Best Adapted Screenplay winner Chris Terrio also landed an invite.

Three individuals — writer/director Ava Duvernay, director/documentarian Jafar Panahi and composer/documentarian J. Ralph — were invited by multiple branches and must select one of them up accepting membership.

“The difference this year is we relaxed the quota system,” Academy president Hawk Koch told Variety. “In the past eight or nine years, each branch could only bring in X amount of members. There were people each branch would have liked to get in but couldn”t. We asked them to be more inclusive of the best of the best, and each branch was excited, because they got to bring in the people who should be in the branch.”

Check out the full list below.

Actors
Jason Bateman – “Up in the Air,” “Juno”
Miriam Colon – “City of Hope,” “Scarface”
Rosario Dawson – “Rent,” “Frank Miller’s Sin City”
Kimberly Elise – “For Colored Girls,” “Beloved”
Joseph Gordon-Levitt – “Lincoln,” “The Dark Knight Rises”
Charles Grodin – “Midnight Run,” “The Heartbreak Kid”
Rebecca Hall – “Iron Man 3,” “The Town”
Lance Henriksen – “Aliens,” “The Terminator”
Jack Huston – “Not Fade Away,” “Factory Girl”
Milla Jovovich – “Resident Evil,” “Chaplin”
Lucy Liu – “Kill Bill: Vol. 1,” “Chicago”
Jennifer Lopez – “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” “Selena”
Alma Martinez – “Born in East L.A.,” “Under Fire”
Emily Mortimer – “Hugo,” “Lars and the Real Girl”
Sandra Oh – “Rabbit Hole,” “Sideways”
Paula Patton – “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”
Michael Peña – “End of Watch,” “Crash”
Emmanuelle Riva – “Amour,” “Hiroshima, Mon Amour”
Jason Schwartzman – “Moonrise Kingdom,” “Rushmore”
Geno Silva – “Mulholland Drive,” “Amistad”
Danny Trejo – “Machete,” “Heat”
Chris Tucker – “Silver Linings Playbook,” “Rush Hour”

Cinematographers
Luca Bigazzi – “This Must Be the Place,” “Certified Copy”
Benoît Delhomme – “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” “The Proposition”
Simon Duggan – “The Great Gatsby,” “Killer Elite”
Greig Fraser – “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Snow White and the Huntsman”
Jonathan Freeman – “Remember Me,” “Fifty Dead Men Walking”
Greg Gardiner – “Race to Witch Mountain,” “Elf”
Eric Gautier – “Into the Wild,” “The Motorcycle Diaries”
Agnès Godard – “Sister,” “Beau Travail”
Eduard Grau – “Buried,” “A Single Man”
Jess Hall – “The Spectacular Now,” “Brideshead Revisited”
Fred Kelemen – “The Turin Horse,” “The Man from London”
Mark Lee Ping Bing – “Norwegian Wood,” “In the Mood for Love”
Reed Morano – “Little Birds,” “Frozen River”
Oleg Mutu – “Beyond the Hills,” “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”
Alex Nepomniaschy – “Narc,” “Safe”
Christian Sebaldt – “Resident Evil: Apocalypse,” “Race to Space”
Ben Seresin – “World War Z,” “Unstoppable”
Adam Stone – “Mud,” “Take Shelter”
Checco Varese – “Girl in Progress,” “The Aura”
Ken Zunder – “Bending the Rules,” “That’s What I Am”

Costume Designers
Paco Delgado – “Les Misérables,” “Biutiful”
Sophie de Rakoff – “This Means War,” “Legally Blonde”
Carlo Poggioli – “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” “Cold Mountain”

Designers
Lori Balton – “Argo,” “The Dark Knight Rises”
Judy Becker – “Silver Linings Playbook,” “The Fighter”
Simon Bright – “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” “Avatar”
Martin T. Charles – “Marvel’s The Avengers,” “The Artist”
David M. Crank – “The Master,” “Lincoln”
Stefan Paul Dechant – “Oz The Great and Powerful,” “True Grit”
Tracey A. Doyle – “The Muppets,” “21”
Anna Lynch-Robinson – “Les Misérables,” “An Education”
Maria Nay – “Identity Thief,” “Ray”
David Smith – “Crazy, Stupid, Love.,” “The Holiday”

Directors
Nikolaj Arcel – “A Royal Affair,” “Truth about Men”
Ava DuVernay* – “Middle of Nowhere,” “I Will Follow”
Paul Feig – “The Heat,” “Bridesmaids”
Catherine Hardwicke – “Twilight,” “Thirteen”
Kirk Jones – “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” “Waking Ned Devine”
Ken Kwapis – “Big Miracle,” “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”
Pablo Larraín – “No,” “Tony Manero”
Steve McQueen – “Shame,” “Hunger”
Kim Nguyen – “War Witch (Rebelle),” “City of Shadows”
Jafar Panahi* – “This Is Not a Film,” “The Circle”
Todd Phillips – “The Hangover,” “Old School”
Joachim Rønning – “Kon-Tiki,” “Max Manus”
Espen Sandberg – “Kon-Tiki,” “Max Manus”
Tim Story – “Think Like a Man,” “Fantastic Four”
Benh Zeitlin – “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Glory at Sea”

Documentary
Orlando Bagwell – “Citizen King,” “Malcolm X: Make It Plain”
Rebecca Cammisa – “God Is the Bigger Elvis,” “Which Way Home”
Yung Chang – “China Heavyweight,” “Up the Yangtze”
Michael Chin – “Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple,” “In the Shadow of the Stars”
Christine Choy – “In the Name of the Emperor,” “Who Killed Vincent Chin?”
Bonni Cohen – “The Island President,” “Wonders Are Many: The Making of Doctor Atomic”
Eduardo Coutinho – “As Canções,” “Cabra Marcado Para Morrer (Twenty Years Later)”
Miriam Cutler – “Kings Point,” “Ethel”
Andrea Nix Fine – “Inocente,” “War/Dance”
Sean Fine – “Inocente,” “War/Dance”
Robert Frank – “Cocksucker Blues,” “Pull My Daisy”
William Greaves – “Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey,” “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One”
Lauren Greenfield – “The Queen of Versailles,” “Thin”
Patricio Guzmán – “Nostalgia for the Light,” “The Battle of Chile”
Vivien Hillgrove – “Symphony of the Soil,” “In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee”
Heddy Honigmann – “El Olvido (Oblivion),” “Crazy”
Vikram Jayanti – “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector,” “Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine”
Peter Kinoy – “Poverty Outlaw,” “When the Mountains Tremble”
Claude Lanzmann – “Le Rapport Karski (The Karski Report),” “Shoah”
Kim Longinotto – “Rough Aunties,” “Sisters in Law”
Stanley Nelson – “Freedom Riders,” “Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple”
Jehane Noujaim – “Control Room,” “Startup.com”
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy – “Transgenders: Pakistan’s Open Secret,” “Saving Face”
Marcel Ophuls – “Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie,” “The Sorrow and the Pity”
José Padilha – “Secrets of the Tribe,” “Bus 174 (Ônibus 174)”
Jafar Panahi* – “This Is Not a Film,” “The Circle”
Elise Pearlstein – “Last Call at the Oasis,” “Food, Inc.”
Raoul Peck – “Fatal Assistance (Assistance Mortelle),” “Lumumba: La Mort du Prophète”
Kevin Rafferty – “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29,” “The Atomic Cafe”
J. Ralph* – “Chasing Ice,” “Man on Wire”
Bob Richman – “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory,” “Waiting for ‘Superman'”
T. Woody Richman – “How to Survive a Plague,” “Fahrenheit 9/11”
Veronica Selver – “Berkeley in the Sixties,” “You Got to Move: Stories of Change in the South”
Jon Shenk – “The Island President,” “Lost Boys of Sudan”
Ricki Stern – “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work,” “The Devil Came on Horseback”
Robert Stone – “Earth Days,” “Radio Bikini”
Annie Sundberg – “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work,” “The Devil Came on Horseback”
Renee Tajima-Pena – “Who Killed Vincent Chin?,” “My America (Or Honk If You Love Buddha)”
Agnès Varda – “The Beaches of Agnès,” “The Gleaners and I”
Roger Ross Williams – “God Loves Uganda,” “Music by Prudence”
Pamela Yates – “Granito: How to Nail a Dictator,” “The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court”
Amy Ziering – “The Invisible War,” “Derrida”

Executives
Holly Bario
Jeb Brody
Eric d’Arbeloff
Dean C. Hallett
Lynn Harris
Jeff Ivers
Jonathan King
Robert Kirby
Dylan Leiner
Nick Meyer
Andrew Millstein
Hannah Minghella
Angela Morrison
Brian Roberts
Mark Roybal
Tucker Tooley
Kevin Tsujihara

Film Editors
Michael Berenbaum – “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” “Sex and the City”
Jeff Freeman – “Ted,” “Cruel Intentions”
James Haygood – “Where the Wild Things Are,” “Fight Club”
Stuart Levy – “Savages,” “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”
Mary Jo Markey – “Star Trek Into Darkness,” “Super 8”

Makeup Artists and Hairstylists
Luisa Abel – “The Dark Knight Rises,” “Inception”
Anne Aulenta-Spira – “The Place beyond the Pines,” “Drive”
Terry Baliel – “The Dark Knight Rises,” “J. Edgar”
Thomas Floutz – “The Call,” “Hellboy II: The Golden Army”
Kay Georgiou – “Promised Land,” “Lincoln”
Bernadette Mazur – “Men in Black 3,” “The Campaign”
Kim Santantonio – “Gangster Squad,” “Frost/Nixon”
Lisa Tomblin – “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1”
Kelvin R. Trahan – “Argo,” “Memoirs of a Geisha”
Lisa Westcott – “Les Misérables,” “Shakespeare in Love”

Members-at-Large
Victoria Alonso
Fred Baron
Ben Bray
Pieter Jan Brugge
Jackie Burch
Leo Davis
Susie Figgis
Lori Furie
Glenn S. Gainor
Joe Gareri
Lance Gilbert
Andy Gill
Mindy Marin
Laray Mayfield
Jeanne McCarthy
Neil Meron
Gary Powell
Ned Price
Michelle Satter
Stefan Sonnenfeld
Cindy Tolan
Brent Woolsey

Music
Ramiro Belgardt – “Star Trek Into Darkness,” “Lincoln”
Ramin Djawadi – “Safe House,” “Iron Man”
Jennifer Dunnington – “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” “Hugo”
Siedah Garrett – “Rio,” “Dreamgirls”
Joe Hisaishi – “Ponyo,” “Spirited Away”
Henry Jackman – “This Is the End,” “Wreck-It Ralph”
Cliff Martinez – “Drive,” “Traffic”
Prince – “Purple Rain,” “Happy Feet”
J. Ralph* – “Chasing Ice,” “Man on Wire”
Aaron Lael Zigman – “Peeples,” “Sex and the City”

Producers
Stefan Arndt – “Amour,” “The White Ribbon”
Jason Blum – “The Purge,” “Paranormal Activity”
Finola Dwyer – “Quartet,” “An Education”
Jack Giarraputo – “Anger Management,” “The Wedding Singer”
Veit Heiduschka – “Amour,” “The White Ribbon”
Lloyd Levin – “Green Zone,” “Watchmen”
Julie Lynn – “Albert Nobbs,” “Nine Lives”
Margaret Menegoz – “Amour,” “The White Ribbon”
Andrea Sperling – “Smashed,” “Like Crazy”

Public Relations
Rachel Cadden
Theresa Cross
Jeff S. Elefterion
Julie Fontaine
Jackson George
Anne Globe
Michael Lawson
Dennis O’Connor
Blair Rich
John G. Sabel

Short Films and Feature Animation
Marc Bertrand – “Gloria Victoria,” “Hollow Land”
Bryan Buckley – “Asad,” “The Wake-Up Caller”
Shawn Christensen – “Curfew,” “Brink”
Eric Darnell – “Madagascar,” “Shrek”
John C. Donkin – “Ice Age Continental Drift,” “Gone Nutty”
Ken Duncan – “9,” “Shark Tale”
Danielle Feinberg – “Brave,” “WALL-E”
Sam Fell – “ParaNorman,” “The Tale of Despereaux”
Matt Groening – “Maggie Simpson in ‘The Longest Daycare,'” “The Simpsons Movie”
Vicky Jenson – “Shark Tale,” “Shrek”
Travis Knight – “ParaNorman,” “Coraline”
Steve May – “Brave,” “Up”
Rich Moore – “Wreck-It Ralph,” “Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!”
Robert Neuman – “Wreck-It Ralph,” “Tangled”
Brandon Oldenburg – “Rise of the Guardians,” “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore”
PES – “Fresh Guacamole,” “Western Spaghetti”
Steve Pilcher – “Brave,” “Shrek the Third”
Normand Roger – “Hollow Land,” “The Banquet of the Concubine”
Clark Spencer – “Wreck-It Ralph,” “Bolt”

Sound
Bobbi Banks – “The Call,” “Hustle & Flow”
Jose Antonio Garcia – “Argo,” “Babel”
Simon Hayes – “Les Misérables,” “X-Men: First Class”
Edward J. Hernandez – “Real Steel,” “Basic Instinct”
Daniel S. Irwin – “Prometheus,” “Little Children”
Drew Kunin – “Life of Pi,” “Lost in Translation”
Michael W. Mitchell – “The Dark Knight Rises,” “The Matrix Reloaded”
Tom Ozanich – “Project X,” “Kill Bill: Vol. 2”
Mark Paterson – “Les Misérables,” “The Pirates! Band of Misfits”
Richard Pryke – “127 Hours,” “Slumdog Millionaire”
Erin Michael Rettig – “A Good Day to Die Hard,” “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”
Ann Scibelli – “Prometheus,” “Inglourious Basterds”
Brian T. Slack – “Chéri,” “Crossover”
Bruce Tanis – “Gangster Squad,” “X-Men: First Class”
F. Elmo Weber – “Identity Thief,” “The Kids Are All Right”
Christopher T. Welch – “Silver Linings Playbook,” “(500) Days of Summer”
Dave Whitehead – “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” “District 9”
Stuart Wilson – “Skyfall,” “War Horse”

Visual Effects
Jason Bayever – “Life of Pi,” “The Wolfman”
Mark Breakspear – “The Great Gatsby,” “Tropic Thunder”
Philip Brennan – “Snow White and the Huntsman,” “Minority Report”
Tony Clark – “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”
David Clayton – “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” “Avatar”
Michael Dawson – “Snow White and the Huntsman,” “The Devil’s Double”
Erik-Jan De Boer – “Life of Pi,” “Night at the Museum”
Donald R. Elliott – “Life of Pi,” “Seabiscuit”
John Goodson – “Red Tails,” “Marvel’s The Avengers”
Charley Henley – “Prometheus,” “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”
John McLeod – “Django Unchained,” “The Aviator”
Mark Noel – “Oz The Great and Powerful,” “Transformers”
David Prescott – “Transformers,” “X-Men”
Guillaume Rocheron – “Life of Pi,” “Sucker Punch”
Wendy Rogers – “Puss in Boots,” “Shrek”
David Alexander Smith – “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “The Matrix Reloaded”
Wayne Stables – “The Adventures of Tintin,” “Avatar”
Richard Stammers – “Prometheus,” “Angels & Demons”
Richard Stutsman – “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Independence Day”
Christopher Townsend – “Captain America: The First Avenger,” “The Day after Tomorrow”
Stephan Trojansky – “Marvel’s The Avengers,” “Hereafter”
David Watkins – “Ali,” “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”
Jeff White – “Marvel’s The Avengers,” “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”
Trevor Wood – “Prometheus,” “The Golden Compass”

Writers
Jessica Bendinger – “Aquamarine,” “Bring It On”
Reggie Rock Bythewood – “Notorious,” “Get on the Bus”
Tina Gordon Chism – “Peeples,” “Drumline”
Julie Delpy – “Before Midnight,” “2 Days in Paris”
Lena Dunham – “Nobody Walks,” “Tiny Furniture”
Ava DuVernay* – “Middle of Nowhere,” “I Will Follow”
John Gatins – “Flight,” “Coach Carter”
John Hamburg – “I Love You, Man,” “Meet the Parents”
John Lee Hancock – “Snow White and the Huntsman,” “The Blind Side”
Rian Johnson – “Looper,” “Brick”
Jeff Nichols – “Mud,” “Take Shelter”
Sarah Polley – “Take This Waltz,” “Away from Her”
Chris Terrio – “Argo,” “Heights”

Associates
Lorrie Bartlett
Paul Bronfman
Markham L. Goldstein
Robert Harvey
Gregory S. Laemmle
Sandra Marsh
Adam Schweitzer
Kimberly Snyder
Matthew L. Snyder
Les Zellan

American audiences will have to wait until December 6 to see “Inside Llewyn Davis,” the Coen Brothers’ folk-scene study that wowed critics (and Steven Spielberg’s jury) at Cannes last month. But take heart: you can hear it — well, sort of — a few months earlier, as the film’s excellent (and highly integral) soundtrack is released on September 17. That’s in time for Grammy consideration, by the way — and while it won’t be eligible for any music Oscars, they may as well start engraving the Best Compilation Soundtrack Grammy statuette right now.

“O Brother, Where Art Thou?” already taught us that when the Coens and producer T Bone Burnett get together, magic can happen: the rich, rootsy bluegrass soundtrack to the brothers’ zany Depression-era take on Homer went eight times platinum, won the Grammy for Album of the Year (and four others) and remained a go-to background-music choice in upscale coffee shops for years afterwards. Has there even been such a vast gap between the number of people who watched the movie, and the number of people who bought the soundtrack? I don’t think so. (Burnett, who has an Oscar for co-writing the original song “The Weary Kind” for “Crazy Heart” in 2009, also worked with the Coens on “The Big Lebowski” and “The Ladykillers” — the vibrant gospel soundtrack for the latter being one of its few redeeming features.)

I don’t expect Burnett’s soundtrack for “Davis,” which is obviously steeped in the sounds of early 1960s folk music, to blow up in quite the same fashion — even with current chart-toppers like Justin Timberlake and Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons (the most recent winners of the Album of the Year Grammy) on the bill alongside leading man Oscar Isaac and Mrs. Mumford, Carey Mulligan. But I do expect to hear it at a lot of dinner parties in the year to come, particularly given how en vogue the folk style that defines the film currently is: Mumford himself has been aping it to mega-selling, Grammy-winning effect for a few years now. In particular, the film’s inspired, infectious interpretation of “Please Mr. President,” as performed by Timberlake, Oscar Isaac and (hilariously) “Girls” star Adam Driver is set to be a playlist staple.

12 of the 14 tracks are new recordings — though not new songs, so don’t go getting your hopes up for next year’s Best Original Song race. (Like “O Brother,” “Inside Llewyn Davis” is an example of a film that would benefit from the Academy having a category for Best Adapted Score or Song Score.) The other two are period nuggets: one from Greenwich folk stalwart Dave van Ronk, the other a previously unreleased recording of “Farewell” by Bob Dylan.

Early birds can pre-order from Nonesuch Records and get an exclusive print from the film into the bargain. The full track listing is as follows:

1. “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” (Traditional; Arranged by Oscar Isaac and T Bone Burnett)
performed by Oscar Isaac

2. “Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song)” (Traditional; Arranged by Marcus Mumford, Oscar Isaac, and T Bone Burnett)
performed by Oscar Isaac and Marcus Mumford

3. “The Last Thing on My Mind” (Tom Paxton)
performed by Stark Sands with Punch Brothers

4. “Five Hundred Miles” (Hedy West)
performed by Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, and Stark Sands

5. “Please Mr. Kennedy” (Ed Rush, George Cromarty, T Bone Burnett, Justin Timberlake, Joel Coen, and Ethan Coen)
performed by Justin Timberlake, Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver

6. “Green, Green Rocky Road” (Len Chandler and Robert Kaufman)
performed by Oscar Isaac

7. “The Death of Queen Jane” (Traditional; Arranged by Oscar Isaac and T Bone Burnett)
performed by Oscar Isaac

8. “The Roving Gambler” (Traditional)
performed by John Cohen with The Down Hill Strugglers

9. “The Shoals of Herring” (Ewan MacColl)
performed by Oscar Isaac with Punch Brothers

10. “The Auld Triangle” (Brendan Behan)
performed by Chris Thile, Chris Eldridge, Marcus Mumford, Justin Timberlake and Gabe Witcher

11. “The Storms Are on the Ocean” (A.P. Carter)
performed by Nancy Blake

12. “Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song)” (Traditional; Arranged by Oscar Isaac)
performed by Oscar Isaac

13. “Farewell” (Bob Dylan)
performed by Bob Dylan

14. “Green, Green Rocky Road” (Len Chandler & Robert Kaufman)
performed by Dave Van Ronk

There’s a lot of apologizing for Roland Emmerich’s “White House Down” going on out there. On one hand, I get it. It’s fun. Etc. And I’ve certainly been an Emmerich apologist in my time. On the other hand, the film is so PAINFULLY derivative and you can only roll your eyes so many times in a film before it just stops being an enjoyable experience, no? I just didn’t realize you could get paid for a script that so liberally cribs another (“Die Hard”). Right down to the Beethoven. Noted. Anyway, HitFix’s Drew McWeeny is on my side of the line, calling the film “inconsequential summer programming.” But let’s hear what you have to say about it. Rifle off your thoughts in the comments section below when and if you see the film, and feel free to vote in our poll, too.

As I was saying the other day, James Franco has a lot going on. As an actor, he’s already had four films out this year, others from Sundance and Berlin still awaiting release, while his sixth feature as a director, the William Faulkner adaptation “As I Lay Dying,” just premiered at Cannes. He’s got an art exhibition on the go in London, and, with his producer’s cap on, is currently seeking crowdfunding for three feature-length adaptations of his short stories. Whether you love, loathe or are simply bemused by Franco, you can’t accuse him of hiding his light under a bushel. 

So my first thought upon hearing that Franco had abandoned his latest directorial project, “The Garden of Last Days,” was innocent enough: everyone needs to take a vacation sometime. But neither that, nor any conflicting scheduling, are the reason Franco has pulled out of the project just two weeks before it was set to go into production.

Deadline’s Mike Fleming reports that there’s been a fallout between the star and financiers Millennium Films, who have recently funded such films as “The Paperboy” and “The Iceman” (in which Franco also appears), and had rustled up a $3 million budget for Franco’s latest. The point of contention was reportedly the hiring of the crew: Franco, who’s committed to showcasing new talent, assembled a relatively inexperienced team of collaborators with which to proceed, but the bond company (and, consequently, Millennium) preferred a more tried-and-tested approach. Franco, who evidently likes to make film on his own terms, bailed.

Some films with tricky preproduction dramas along these lines weather the storm: look at the embattled “Jane Got a Gun,” which has been something of a revolving-door project ever since British director Lynne Ramsay left production at similarly short notice, Against the odds, it’s still going, albeit with someone else in the director’s chair. In the case of “The Garden of Last Days,” however, Franco’s withdrawal means the entire project is being shut down.

The film, which boasted Gerard Butler among its producers, was to have been an adaptation of Andre Dubus III’s novel of the same title, a three-part story about life in the American margins in the days leading up to September 11, with a young mother-turned-stripper and a potential terrorist of a client among the principal characters. I assume Butler was going to be in the film, as, of course, was the director. First-time screenwriter Hannah Weg wrote the script.

Franco hasn’t been one to shy away from adapting high-end material — taking on Faulkner, after all, was nothing if not ambitious. Dubus III’s “House of Sand and Fog,” meanwhile, didn’t take to the screen with complete success. Looks like we’ll never know if this one would have turned out better, or if Franco simply dodged a bullet here, but you can be sure of one thing: he’s got the next project, whatever it may be, planned out already. 

When you take a look across Sony Pictures’ impressive slate for the upcoming fall movie season, it becomes clear that the studio has a lot to work with. There’s George Clooney, fresh off “Argo”‘s Best Picture Oscar win with his directorial effort “The Monuments Men.” There’s also another heavyweight from last year’s Oscar race, David O. Russell, back in the saddle with a big cast in “American Hustle.”

Those two would be more than enough for any awards campaign to handle, but then there’s Paul Greengrass’s “Captain Phillips,” the true-life account of a 2009 Somali pirate raid starring Tom Hanks. And finally, “Moneyball” director Bennett Miller will be back with “Foxcatcher,” the bizarre true story of convicted millionaire murderer John duPont with Steve Carell, Mark Ruffalo and Channing Tatum. Something might need to blink, and the way I hear it, it may just be “Foxcatcher.”

Multiple sources have told me the film could be distributed through Sony Pictures Classics, no stranger to juggling numerous films during an awards season. However, it’s also possible the film, which hasn’t been dated yet, doesn’t make it out for 2013 at all. Sony would certainly like to hold onto its prestige/potential awards product, so in that case, it may just stay with the studio.

Sony Classics wouldn’t confirm a move and Sony Pictures did not respond to a request for comment, so treat all this as (awful, terrible, rumor-mongering) speculation for now, but it seems to me it would be a good fit. “Foxcatcher” would give SPC a latter year release with real meat on its bones, and Miller is hot, coming off of 2011’s “Moneyball,” which went out through Sony. Plus, the director has a history with Sony Classics: his 2005 debut “Capote” was distributed by the art house shingle and picked up Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. Philip Seymour Hoffman went on to win the Best Actor award for his performance as the eponymous author.

Elsewhere this season, SPC’s best bet for awards might just be Ralph Fiennes’s “The Invisible Woman,” which will be released at the end of the year. The Abi Morgan script is adapted from Claire Tomalin’s book about the latter years of Charles Dickens’s life, when he took on an 18-year-old mistress, Nelly Ternan, long since effaced from the public record. Fiennes stars as Dickens with Felicity Jones as Ternan.

There’s also Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine” (a Best Actress possibility for Cate Blanchett) and Richard Linklater’s “Before Midnight” (easily one of the year’s best films that could figure into the acting and adapted screenplay races). But those are early-to-mid 2013 releases in danger of being forgotten by short-sighted Academy members.

Beyond that, there isn’t a whole lot to work with. Pedro Almodóvar is a prestige staple who is nevertheless drawing mixed reviews for his latest, “I’m So Excited!” The frothy Sundance pick-up “Austenland” is likely a better play for box office than awards. Robert Redford’s “The Company You Keep” was a mixed bag that didn’t draw audiences and Ramin Bahrani’s “At Any Price” starring Zac Efron and Dennis Quaid fizzled on arrival.

Asghar Farhadi’s “The Past” was picked up out of Cannes, however, and that could be spun into some major categories (perhaps for festival Best Actress winner Bérénice Bejo or for Farhadi’s original screenplay, much like 2011’s “A Separation”).

Last year Sony Classics ushered Michael Haneke’s “Amour” from a Palme d’Or win at Cannes to nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress. The film won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and was one of the company’s biggest awards successes since 2000’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” In recent years, Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and their team have landed Best Picture nominations for films like “An Education” (2009) and “Midnight in Paris” (2011) as well as the aforementioned “Capote,” with other notices coming for “Junebug” (2005), “The Lives of Others” (2007) and “Frozen River” (2008).

Sony, meanwhile, landed five nominations for Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” last year, including Best Picture, but hit a snag when the film was criticized by US Senators for its depiction of torture. Critics stood up for it by and large, but at the end of the day, it walked away with half an Oscar, tying with “Skyfall” for Best Sound Editing. Miller’s “Moneyball” was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Brad Pitt), Best Supporting Actor (Jonah Hill) and Best Adapted Screenplay in 2011, but like “Zero Dark Thirty,” failed to pick up a Best Director nomination and managed zero Oscar wins. The last major Oscar the studio won was Best Adapted Screenplay for 2010’s “The Social Network,” but that could certainly change this year with the promising crop of films on the horizon.

We’ll find out where “Foxcatcher” ends up in due time. More on the forthcoming Oscar season on Monday when we take stock of 2013 at the mid-way point.

Boy, make $400 million at the box office and everyone wants to hop on your franchise. Young Adult adaptation “The Hunger Games” hit last year and it hit big, making a bigger star of Jennifer Lawrence and establishing a giant money magnet for Lionsgate in the process. The sequels were immediately set up with Lawrence and co-stars Woody Harrelson and Josh Hutcherson returning, with director Francis Lawrence at the helm.

Then Philip Seymour Hoffman joined the cast of “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” which turned my head. I wasn’t a fan of the first film but I’m somehow anticipating the sequel, and Hoffman was a big reason why. Now it looks like yet another prestige actor may be joining the cast of “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay” (which, in the tradition of the “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” denouements, will be divided into two parts for a prime money-grabbing opportunity).

Deadline reports that Lawrence is eyeing Julianne Moore for the role of President Alma Coin in the film. The character is a manipulative politician who “figures brightly in the finale as Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) becomes a symbol of rebeliion against the autocratic Capitol government.” Sounds juicy.

I’m sure we’ll all know a lot more about what’s going on with the “Hunger Games” films when Lionsgate brings “Catching Fire” to San Diego for Comic-Con next month. HitFix will be there, bringing you the latest.