Next week brings a return to our film festival coverage: on Monday I’ll be traveling to the in-progress Edinburgh Film Festival for four days, followed immediately by a five-day trip to the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Both are obviously lower-key affairs than the exhausting whirlwind of Cannes or Sundance, and I’m looking forward to them: these are the festivals where I can either dig around for undiscovered gems or catch up with previous festival highlights at a civilized pace. In festival-going terms, I consider it my summer vacation before the heavy work starts up again at Venice in August, kicking off the fall festival season. And while Venice currently seems a safe distance away, those 10 weeks will go faster than you think.

With that in mind, Variety’s Justin Chang has done a nice job of previewing what lies ahead at the Venice Film Festival — which is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, and looks likely to have a suitably sparkly lineup. Venice may be smaller and less attended than the supersized Toronto Film Festival, with which it overlaps for a few days, but every year it offers critics first dibs on an assortment of eagerly awaited auteur titles: last year’s world premieres included Terrence Malick’s “To the Wonder” and Harmony Korine’s “Spring Breakers,” while recent films that began their awards journey on the Lido range from “Brokeback Mountain” to “The Hurt Locker” to “Black Swan.”

So far, all we know of this year’s festival is that Bernardo Bertolucci is heading the jury, while Paul Schrader’s “The Canyons,” written by Bret Easton Ellis and starring Lindsay Lohan, will be playing out of competition. (Schrader is also heading the jury for the festival’s Horizons sidebar.)

But what can we expect from the lineup? Top of the list, of course, is Alfonso Cuaron’s eagerly awaited sci-fi drama “Gravity,” which has been deemed a likely Venice selection from the off — not least because of the Mexican director’s friendly history with the festival. (Both “Children of Men” and “Y tu Mama Tambien” premiered there, the latter winning him Best Screenplay.) It would also return George Clooney to the festival where he’s been a near-annual presence: 2012 was his first year off after a five-year streak of presenting films there. Could Clooney also bring his star-studded directorial effort “The Monuments Men” to the Lido? Both “Good Night, and Good Luck.” and “The Ides of March” had Venice premieres.

Chang is also hearing that Paul Greengrass’s “Captain Phillips” — a film that I thought might head straight to Toronto — is in line for a Venice premiere. The true-life hostage thriller, which unveiled an impressive trailer last month, would bring Tom Hanks to Venice for the first time since “The Terminal” opened the fest in 2004 — and would also, neatly enough, premiere there a year after comparable Danish film “A Hijacking” wowed critics on the Lido.

Another A-list Oscar hopeful that looks likely to show up in Venice is Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave.” The film was initially pegged as a likely Cannes inclusion, but with Fox Searchlight having made their awards ambitions for the all-star slavery drama clear (a release date of December 27 was recently confirmed), the fall festival circuit would now be the logical place for an unveiling. McQueen’s last film, “Shame,” got started at Venice with a Best Actor win for Michael Fassbender; Fassbender’s in “Slave,” as are Brad Pitt and Benedict Cumberbatch, but all eyes might be on Chiwetel Ejiofor’s lead performance this time. 

My most anticipated film of the remaining year, meanwhile, is almost certain to be in Venice: I rather optimistically put Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin” on my Cannes wishlist, but he was always likelier to stick with the festival that placed his last film, the extraordinary “Birth,” in Competition back in 2004. Hopes are high for his long-delayed latest, an adaptation of Michel Faber’s dark sci-fi novel that stars Scarlett Johansson as a voracious alien in human form. (Johansson’s been on quietly resurgent form of late, and this challenging lead could cap her return to form; she’s also the best thing in Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s upcoming “Don Jon.”)

Other films Chang suggests we should look out for on the Lido include Kelly Reichardt’s “Night Moves” (again, widely expected after Venice placed the allegedly Cannes-rejected “Meek’s Cutoff” in Competition), Atom Egoyan’s “Devil’s Knot,” Terry Gilliam’s “The Zero Theorem,” Catherine Breillat’s “Abuse of Weakness” (one of the more surprising omissions from this year’s Cannes lineup) and “Moebius” — which promises more gruesome fun and games from South Korean provocateur Kim Ki-duk, who won last year’s Golden Lion, in contentious circumstances, for “Pieta.”

Titles I would add that seem primed for Venice debuts are Austrian director Jessica Hausner’s “Amour Fou” (her last film, “Lourdes,” was a 2009 Venice highlight) and Abel Ferrara’s “Welcome to New York” (he’s been in Competition four times, most recently with 2011’s “4:44 Last Day on Earth.” Another four-time Venice visitor is Spike Lee: he brought his Michael Jackson doc “Bad 25” to the Lido last year, so they could well welcome him back with his Josh Brolin-starring “Oldboy” remake. Stephen Frears’s “Philomena,” featuring what is said to be an awards-baiting performance by Judi Dench, could show up — Frears’s “The Queen” began its awards sweep for Helen Mirren at Venice, after all.

Canadian director Denis Villeneuve’s English-language double-shot of “An Enemy” and “Prisoners,” both starring Jake Gyllenhaal, are being pegged as likely Toronto premieres given the director’s nationality, but not so fast: many forget that Villeneuve’s last film, “Incendies,” first appeared quietly in Venice. By that rationale, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Xavier Dolan’s “Tom at the Farm” premiere in Italy before heading to the Canadian boy wonder’s home country. Dolan’s first three films premiered in Cannes, after all, so he has the aura of a Euro festival regular. And speaking of Cannes favorites, who knows where to expect Lars von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac” to show up? The only time von Trier has premiered a film on the fall festival circuit, it was at Venice (the film was 2003’s “The Five Obstructions”), and unveiling his high-profile latest at Cannes’s chief rival on the fest circuit would be a neat rejoinder to 2011’s “persona non grata” controversy.  

According to Chang, one auteur title not likely to be at Venice is Bong Joon-ho’s English-language debut “Snowpiercer,” while we should also expect such films as Oliver Hirschbiegel’s “Diana” and Bennett Miller’s “Foxcatcher” — both of which have more of a Toronto look about them, if you ask me — to skip the Lido. Still, there should be more than enough for a 70th-anniversary feast. 

It’s a good year to be Quentin Tarantino. The middle-aged enfant terrible of American cinema won his second Oscar back in February for “Django Unchained,” and this autumn he will receive a career achievement award at the Lumiere Film Festival in Lyon, France — a festival devoted to classics, restorations and reissues, headed up by veteran French auteur Bertrand Tavernier and Tarantino’s good friend (and current Cannes festival director) Thierry Fremaux. 

If it makes you feel slightly old that Tarantino — now 50, believe it or not — is entering the realm of lifetime achievement awards, well, that makes two of us. It hardly seems two decades ago that the mouthy video-store geek was scandalizing the system with his chatty, blood-spattered crime stories.

Still, the festival is at pains not to label this as a gold-watch award. “This is not a lifetime award, it”s about where Quentin Tarantino is now, how he is such a great ambassador for a love of cinema,” said Fremaux, who has twice selected Tarantino for the Cannes competition (with “Death Proof” and “Inglourious Basterds”), and appointed him president of the jury in 2004. Before Fremaux’s reign, of course, Tarantino won the Palme d’Or for “Pulp Fiction.” Unsurprisingly, he remains a beloved figure in France, where critics and filmgoers alike hold American genre filmmaking in high regard: so far, “Django Unchained” is the second-highest grosser of 2013 in the country. 

The press release, meanwhile, states that Tarantino is receiving the Lumiere Award “for his entire film career, for his radiant passion for the cinema, for the tributes paid even within his films to the whole mythology of cinema… and for the way he often exclaims, ‘Vive Le Cinema!”” Previous recipients of the award, now in its fifth year, are Clint Eastwood, Milos Forman, Ken Loach and Gerard Depardieu.

Tarantino will accept the award on October 18; the festival, meanwhile, runs from October 14 to 20, and will also include posthumous tributes to Ingmar Bergman, Hal Ashby and Henri Verneuil.

As regular readers will know, costume design is one of the below-the-line disciplines I find most fascinating, while Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” is one of my favorite films of all time. So I’d trade a lot to be at the Los Angeles Film Festival for tonight’s “Iconic Moment” event, in honor of the Academy’s newly separate Costume Designers’ branch.

As the name suggests, the evening will look back on iconic moments in film costume, with Laura Dern moderating a discussion between five leading designers: Academy branch head Jeffrey Kurland (an Oscar nominee for Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway”), three-time Oscar winner and Tim Burton favorite Colleen Atwood, Mark Bridges (last year’s winner for “The Artist”), Michael Kaplan (unjustly never Oscar nominated, despite landmark contemporary designs for the likes of “Fight Club” and “Blade Runner”) and Ellen Mirojnick (whose recent work in “Behind the Candelabra” should net her an Emmy nod). It’s a formidable lineup of some of the most creative artists in the field right now, and I’d love to hear what their favorites and inspirations are.  

The discussion will be followed by a screening of “Vertigo,” the wardrobe for which was designed by legendary eight-time Oscar winner Edith Head. It’s an interesting choice of film for the occasion, given that its costumes — while essential to, and now inseparable from, the film’s narrative and iconography in all sorts of ways — are hardly flashy or elaborate creations in the vein that the Academy traditionally celebrates.After all, this is one film for which Head — who racked up 35 nominations in her lifetime — wasn’t nominated. (Of course, with mixed reviews and just two Oscar nods for production design and sound, the film famously received less than its due back in 1958.)

The Academy has always been reluctant to recognize contemporary costume design — recent exceptions include nominees “I Am Love” and “The Devil Wears Prada” — so it’s nice to see the discipline being represented here with a textbook example of how (then) contemporary and/or casual clothing can have just as much impact in a film as extravagant hoop skirts and ruffles. Kim Novak’s iconic gray suit, chic and character-defining in its first incarnation on the mysterious Madeleine, gains an extra signifying layer when it’s used to remake her double, Judy, in her image. As Kurland explains to the LA Times, “It was a foreshadowing of who she is and why she is. It was so important to Alfred Hitchcock and the storytelling that the character be wearing the suit in that color.”

Perhaps it’s not coincidental that several members of the “Iconic Moment” panel are particularly accomplished in the area of contemporary (or at least modern period) costume design. Kurland may have got his one Oscar nomination for period work, but the bulk of his career has seen him working with great flair and imagination in latter-day garb: think of the role played by clothing in “Ocean’s Eleven,” “Erin Brockovich,” “My Best Friend’s Wedding” or “Inception.” Mark Bridges may have finally received Academy recognition for “The Artist,” but his most award-worthy work has drawn from the latter half of the 20th century: think “Boogie Nights” and “The Fighter.” Mirojnick received a deserved Guild nod for “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” while the influence of Kaplan’s thrift-store wardrobe for “Fight Club” extended far beyond the film world. And Atwood may be best known for fantastical and/or period spectacle, but her stark work in the likes of “Gattaca” and “The Silence of the Lambs” is up there with her best. (What, or rather who, would Clarice Starling be without her cheap, dun-colored suits?) 

Here’s hoping tonight’s panel recognizes that the most iconic moments in film costume aren’t always the most opulent ones. And costume concerns aside, it’s always nice for “Vertigo” — which, you might recall, was voted the greatest film of all time in last year’s decennial Sight & Sound critics’ poll — to get another festival date.

I finally met James Gandolfini last year. It was Paramount’s Christmas party at Spago in Beverly Hills and he was there with his “Killing Them Softly” director Andrew Dominik. He was, in a word, imposing. I shook his hand and it engulfed my own. He seemed incredibly unwilling to suffer a fool and I loved that about him, as I do people like Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, etc. But he was willing to engage, willing to give a glimpse of that soft-center.

Now, suddenly, he’s dead. A heart attack in Italy. Too soon doesn’t begin to say it, but as the news makes its way across the wires I find myself, as we always do at times like this, thinking back on the work. And Gandolfini had a wealth of it. You see, he wasn’t always this star, this “name.” He made his hay as a character actor in film after film, always leaving a deep impression, long before “The Sopranos” came calling.

Immediately, I remember his performance as Bear in Barry Sonnenfeld’s “Get Shorty,” which in many ways summed up at least my impression of the man. Big, imposing, but ultimately, a teddy bear. I remember him standing out in “Crimson Tide” and the TV version of “12 Angry Men.” I remember “Night Falls on Manhattan” and “Fallen.” A welcome standby at every turn.

And who can forget his psychotic mob man Virgil in Tony Scott’s “True Romance,” pouncing on fragile Alabama (Patricia Arquette) and taking devilish delight in every blow. That kind of character detail is what made him spark, what made people remember.

Then, stardom. “The Sopranos” made him (he won a Golden Globe, three Emmys and three SAG Awards for his work on the show), and suddenly he found himself a name on a poster. He showed up in “The Mexican” with Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts and stirred early awards chatter for his villainous portrayal in Rod Lurie’s “The Last Castle,” both DreamWorks films right at the moment the new studio was finding its footing.

He was outrageous and hilarious in Armando Iannucci’s 2009 comedy “In the Loop.” I secretly kept hoping for a cameo of his Lt. Gen. George Miller in Iannucci’s HBO series “Veep.” But I think he was perhaps most effectively used, ironically enough, by Spike Jonze as the voice of Carol in 2010’s “Where the Wild Things Are.” Like the actor himself, it was a larger-than-life character. But even though Gandolfini wasn’t on screen, he breathed such soul into the role that it was really a next-level kind of vocal performance.

Most recently Gandolfini flirted with the awards season last year in “Not Fade Away,” “Sopranos” creator David Chase’s first foray into feature filmmaking. He gave what might be one of his finest performances as a conflicted father, eager for his son to become his own man but careful to not see it happen too fast. All the while he embodied the film’s spirit of a life lived free versus one lived in regret. It was a delicate piece of work, unsung, really.

Last year also brought a bit part in “Zero Dark Thirty.” Kathryn Bigelow knew exactly what she was doing casting him as CIA director Leon Panetta. It needed to be someone who could show up and impact the film immediately. For all the reasons stated above, Gandolfini was that guy, able to make you sit up and take note.

He’s gone but his work will stick around just a bit longer. This summer he can be seen in Geoffrey Fletcher’s “Violet & Daisy” and will at some point show up in Nicole Holofcener’s latest as well as the Dennis Lehane adaptation “Animal Rescue” from director Michaël R. Roskam.

But it goes without saying, there was a lot more left in that tank. Dead at 51 years old. We’ll never see that instantly identifiable outline again. We’ll never feel the impact of his work on a project again. Well, we will, through the memories. Through the re-watches. He lives on, in these roles and more. But he’ll nevertheless be missed.

Too soon. Yeah, it still doesn’t begin to say it.

Earlier this month, as Kris reported, Cyndi Lauper got herself one Oscar away from joining the elite club of EGOT winners — those over-achieving individuals who have managed to win competitive Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Awards over the course of their careers. It is, needless to say, a pretty rare achievement: Scott Rudin became the most recent EGOTist with a Grammy win last year.

With only the Emmys left to unfold this year, however, the EGOT club could welcome one new member before 2013 is out: Alan Menken. The 63-year-old composer, best known and loved for his musical contribution to the Disney animation revival of the late 1980s and early 1990s, already has multiple Oscars and Grammys to his name, and took his first Tony last year for the Broadway musical “Newsies.” Now he stands to add an Emmy to his groaning mantelpiece, with a song written for ABC alien-themed sitcom “The Neighbors.”

Like the Oscars, the Emmys have a Best Original Song category, and Menken’s composition “Sing Like a Larry Bird” is angling for a nomination. The song, a Broadway showtune pastiche in a similarly parodic vein to his Oscar-nominated work on “Enchanted,” is a jaunty celebration of the Great White Way’s charms from an extra-terrestrial perspective. You can check it out below. Menken co-wrote the tune with lyricist Glenn Slater; their other collaborations include the film “Tangled,” which netted Menken his most recent Oscar nomination (and Grammy win) for the song “I See the Light.” (Kris had a lengthy chat with Menken about the film back in 2010.)

To date, Menken has won eight Oscars — more than any living individual — from 19 nominations. He was a virtual fixture at the awards 20 years ago, winning both Best Original Score and Best Original Song for Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” (1989), “Beauty and the Beast” (1991), “Aladdin” (1992) and “Pocahontas” (1995). (The score win for the last of these came in the short-lived Comedy/Musical category.) 

He also has 11 Grammy Awards — mostly in the film and television categories for his Disney-related work, though the “Aladdin” theme “A Whole New World” also won him and his late partner Howard Ashman the award for Song of the Year in 1994, beating Neil Young, Sting, Billy Joel and Jim Steinman. 

An Emmy win would make Menken only the third composer ever to achieve the EGOT, putting him the company of Richard Rodgers and Marvin Hamlisch. Check out the song below — do you think he can do it?

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiVWqLUZVtc?rel=0&w=640&h=360]

When it was announced this week that Relativity has moved the release date of Scott Cooper’s “Crazy Heart” follow-up “Out of the Furnace” from October 4 to November 27, I wondered what that might mean for the film’s original film festival circuit plans. And indeed, as I hear it now, the plan is to skip that altogether and keep the mystery going until it hits screens in a post-Thanksgiving frame that has done well for recent Oscar players like “The King’s Speech,” “The Artist” and “Silver Linings Playbook.”

Of course, all of those films built word of mouth at Toronto, and this is a star-studded film that therefore plays well to that environment. So things could change. Relativity, per president Robbie Brenner’s quote, sees awards in this film’s future and that’s all certainly part of the box office strategy, too (as it always is). It’ll be interesting to see how it navigates the always crowded waters of that late-November, early-December frame.

Meanwhile, a teaser poster for the film has dropped, playing up that aforementioned cast and the murky atmosphere of the revenge thriller. Just the title and the heavy-hitting names. Give it a look below, and expect the first trailer to hit sometime very soon. For more, check out my interview with Cooper about the road after “Crazy Heart” and the full plate of potential projects he’s loaded up here.

One film we’re keeping half an eye on for the upcoming awards season is Scott Cooper’s “Out of the Furnace,” a starry thriller about fraternal loyalties tested to the limit, with a starry cast led by Christian Bale and Casey Affleck. It’s Cooper’s first film since 2009’s “Crazy Heart,” which won two Oscars (including Best Actor for Jeff Bridges), while producers include Leonardo DiCaprio, Ridley Scott and the late Tony Scott.

It’s a top-drawer project all round, and distributors Relativity Media seem understandably high on its awards prospects — which is a big deal for them, having never steered a major Oscar contender before. (Earlier this year, Tarsem’s “Mirror Mirror” reaped the still-young company its very first Oscar nod, in the field of Best Costume Design.) So confident is the company, in fact, that they yesterday announced they’re changing the film’s release date from October 4 to November 27, going wide on December 6 — placing it right in the post-Thanksgiving prestige crush.

One could go back and forth on the wisdom of this move. Relativity president Robbie Brenner makes no bones about the intent behind it: “Scott Cooper has made a powerful, moving and brilliant film that we think will generate a tremendous amount of conversation and attention during this awards season. We are confident that this new date will give Scott”s film the platform and support it deserves.” 

That may be the case, but opening in or around December has been a riskier strategy since the Academy compressed its awards calendar 10 years ago. (As we so often note, the last December release to take the Best Picture Oscar was 2004’s “Million Dollar Baby.”) Smaller films, in particular, have often fared better with an earlier release to build up buzz. Actually, that goes for some bigger films, too: “Argo,” after all, was an early October release.

Still, Cooper’s last film opened in mid-December and fared well in the race. That was a Fox Searchlight release. Relativity is obviously a less seasoned outfit, but they currently have no other major awards hopefuls on their books, so “Out of the Furnace” should benefit from their undivided attention. (Unless you count Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s slight sex comedy “Don Jon” and the umpteenth redo of “Romeo and Juliet,” neither of which look like significant factors at the moment.)

“Out of the Furnace” stars Bale as a blue-collar worker forced to take independent action when his Iraq-vet brother (Casey Affleck) joins a dangerous crime ring and disappears. The story sounds familiar, but if Cooper and his cast — which also includes Woody Harrelson, Sam Shepard, Zoe Saldana and Willem Dafoe — bring authentic feeling to it, that shouldn’t matter. It didn’t with “Crazy Heart,” after all.

Upon reading the news that James Franco is the latest name talent to take the crowdfunding route on a new film project, my first reaction was, “Well, of course.” My second reaction was, “Wait, is this only the first time he’s doing this?” Franco’s extracurricular activities beyond acting — filmmaking, art, writing, what have you — are so many and varied, and executed with such can-do scrappiness, that the crowdfunding model seems like something he might have invented just to keep them all going.

Nevertheless, he’s following the likes of Zach Braff and Melissa Joan Hart into this increasingly popular trend, seeking $500,000 from the public to produce a trilogy of feature films based on his own short story collection “Palo Alto.” He’s using the website Indiegogo rather than Kickstarter, but otherwise, the drill pretty much the same: $10 gets you a PDF script when the films are released, $10,000 gets you an executive producer credit and dinner with the man himself, with various permutations in between. (Always wanted James Franco to record your voicemail greeting? Knock yourself out.)

At first glance, this could be dismissed out of hand as a vanity project: a self-styled filmmaker seeking money to bring his self-styled literature to the screen. (I’ve read “Palo Alto,” and while it’s not without its moments, it’s fair to assume no other filmmakers are clamoring to adapt it.) But this isn’t just the James Franco Experience, and there’s actually a noble element to the project — beginning with the fact that Franco won’t be directing the films at all. 

Instead, he’s inviting four new filmmakers — three of them NYU grad students — to develop and direct the films. Meanwhile, profits generated from the sale of the films will be donated to The Art of Elysium, a charity fuelled by artists and performers in aid of children with serious medical conditions. Yeah, it’s still a vanity project, but one that could help some other people along the way — which you might say is something it has over Zach Braff’s controversial Kickstarter effort from earlier this year. 

Franco, who has directed and producted six independent features of his own — most recently the middling William Faulkner adaptation “As I Lay Dying,” which premiered at Cannes last month — deflects the standard why-doesnt-he-stump-up-the-cash response by reminding potential supporters that he’s no stranger to self-funding: “I have put in my own money to produce my films and my student”s films. However, this time it”s different; We need more funding, I will still fund part of it but I need of your help, filming three feature films back-to-back requires more funding than I can give.”

The films, “Yosemite,” “Memoria” and “Killing Animals,” will all combine the narratives of multiple stories in Franco’s collection, all of which focus on teenage experience in suburban California. Two of the directors, Gabrielle Demeestre and Bruce Thierry Cheung, also collaborated with Franco on “Tar,” a portmanteau feature inspired by the work of poet C.K. Williams (played by guess who), that has played the Rome and SXSW fests; Mila Kunis and Jessica Chastain also feature.

Not that he’s ever been much for down time, but this has been a busy year for Franco so far: he had “Interior. Leather Bar.,” “Kink” and “Lovelace” in Sundance in January, “Maladies” in Berlin in February, “Spring Breakers” and “Oz the Great and Powerful” released in March, the aforementioned “As I Lay Dying” in Cannes, with summer comedy “This is the End” now in theaters. London, meanwhile, is currently hosting his latest art exhibition, the Hitchcock tribute “Psycho Nacirema” — a high-kitsch reconstruction of the Bates Motel strewn with dildos, bloodied rubber ducks and images of Franco in drag as Marion Crane.

I checked it out last week (the same day he presented a screening of “Psycho” at the British Film Institute) and it’s rather a lot of fun — certainly more worthwhile than the collection he presented in Berlin a couple of years ago. “As I Lay Dying,” meanwhile, showed some formal progress from his previous directorial efforts, so is Hollywood’s oddest career starting to yield some fruit outside the acting realm? And are you at all tempted to help fund his latest project? 

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4912236474001

The trailer for Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew McConaughey and Jonah Hill among others, sent a shock wave last night when it finally dropped. Set to the pulse of Kanye West’s “Black Skinhead” (releasing tomorrow as part of the rapper’s already-leaked sixth studio album, “Yeezus”), it announced a whole new shade for the filmmaker that has brought us delicious bite in a wide array of films, from “Taxi Driver” to “Goodfellas” to “The Departed.”

Will this take on capitalism’s great shame, coming at just the right time, stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those classics? Time will tell. Will Marty dance with the awards season once more after nearly owning it two years ago with “Hugo?” Time will tell. But for now, the electric new tease raises a couple of questions, so three of HitFix’s staffers take a stab at answering them in a new installment of our “3 on 3” feature. Check out the conversation below.

1. Is Martin Scorsese’s work with Leonardo DiCaprio becoming the defining collaboration of his career?

Gregory Ellwood: Not yet, but it’s possible. Arguably, the only one of their collaborations we can say is in Scorsese’s top five is “The Departed.” On the other hand, Robert De Niro and Scorsese, at the least, have “Raging Bull,” “Cape Fear” and “Goodfellas.” But based on the fact that they’ve made five films together there’s no reason to believe it couldn’t eventually top his work with De Niro.

Guy Lodge: Not a chance, in my opinion — and I say that as a great admirer of three of the four DiCaprio/Scorsese joints we’ve seen so far. But not one of their collaborations — not even Best Picture winner “The Departed” — has attained the long-term (or even short-term) critical standing of a “Raging Bull,” the era-reflecting cultural import of a “Taxi Driver” or even the immediate genre canonization of a “GoodFellas.” Could “The Wolf of Wall Street” be the film that takes this relationship to the next level? Never say never. But Scorsese’s work with De Niro will always be the defining collaboration of both men’s careers, not necessarily because they’re better films, but because it’s the work that announced them to the world at large. Scorsese’s DiCaprio collaborations can’t define him because he was already defined way before “Gangs of New York” rolled onto screens. Whether this will be the defining collaboration of DiCaprio’s career, however, is another question.

Kristopher Tapley: The truth is, we can’t really know yet. Scorsese made classics with Robert De Niro. No question. And they will endure. But meanwhile, his work with DiCaprio continues to reach new generations, which could arguably have a deeper impact given the way pop culture deals with these things. These are, quite possibly, the “new classics,” if you will, and if this partnership is to continue, and continue to reach significant highs, I see no reason not to one day consider the Scorsese/DiCaprio years more definitive than the Scorsese/De Niro years. It has very little to do with the quality of output and everything to do with the way history views it. History already views Scorsese/De Niro as a landmark, so it goes without saying, even with five films already, Scorsese/DiCaprio have a long way to go yet.

2. Could the film show up in the comedy/musical category at the Golden Globes?

Gregory Ellwood: Based on the trailer, sure, but movie previews can be deceiving. Expect Paramount to push it to whatever is the weaker of the two categories. And, yes, that’s obviously comedy/musical. But at this point it’s just too early to call.

Guy Lodge: I daren’t expect anything yet, because as slick, smart and grandly entertaining as the trailer is, it doesn’t make entirely clear to me what kind of animal the film is. There may be plenty of wit in the piece, but this is also tough-minded, potentially bleak material — how much of that is being disguised in the sexy sell? Of course, the film may well qualify in our minds as a comedy, but that’s not to say the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will agree — from “American Beauty” to “The Descendants,” many prestige films have walked a fine line between drama and comedy, and been categorized as the former at the Globes, lending their awards campaigns a little extra weight. (One might speculate that male-driven films, often, tend to fall on that side of the borderline.)

Kristopher Tapley: You find the word “hilarious” thrown around a lot when reading about Jordan Belfort’s tell-all. And obviously, the trailer is playing the film up as a high-key romp in many ways (though I’ve also, by the way, heard it’s borderline NC-17 due to the sex on display). I’ve never read the book but it would be an interesting proposition for Paramount to consider submitting it as a comedy if indeed it has an argument there, because it would breathe more wind into its sails while Jason Reitman’s drama “Labor Day” can have room to itself. And given the HFPA’s adoration of stars, well, DiCaprio could have a clearer path to a potential win in the comedy field. He told me at the Golden Globes last year that he thinks this is the best work he’s done, after all. So…we’ll see; it goes without saying, we need to see if the film has the goods at all first.

3. Could Matthew McConaughey be having the best two-year comeback ever?

Gregory Ellwood: It’s hard to argue against it. McConaughey is now the textbook case for a Hollywood star completely reviving his career in the art house circuit. Based on “Bernie” ($10 million) and “Mud” ($20 million), indie theater owners would love for him to keep making more in that vein. And thanks to the success of “Magic Mike” and possibly now “The Wolf of Wall Street,” he’s made the difficult transition to a supporting player who can bring in an audience (is Russell Crowe next?). “Dallas Buyer’s Club” could land him his first Best Actor nomination to date, plus he’s got a little new movie by Christopher Nolan on the way (“Interstellar”). Yep, it’s good to be Matt.

Guy Lodge: It’s up there, for sure. Not that films like “Fool’s Gold” give you anywhere to go but up, but he’s barely put a foot wrong since his pretty nifty turn in “The Lincoln Lawyer” — even a relative flop like “The Paperboy” has built up enough cult cachet to reflect well on him. Though he’s always had charisma, I never quite bought McConaughey as a charmer: there’s a slippery, slightly venal quality to his all-American hunkiness that worked in character turns like “Lone Star” and “13 Conversations About One Thing,” but was slightly off-putting in the endless spate of rom-coms he kept getting cast in. He seems to have realized that now he’s in his 40s, and revealing a seedier side in films like “Magic Mike,” “Killer Joe” and “Mud” has resulted in career-best work. His first Oscar nod should have come earlier this year, but it can’t be far away.

Kristopher Tapley: I smile when I think of this. I really do. McConaughey is a guy who detoured to the paycheck dark side (“mailbox money,” as he’s called it), but now finds the freedom to do what he wants, and he’s making some of the most varied and interesting choices of any actor in the business. And let’s also not forget his segue to the small screen in HBO’s “True Detective.” That will bring a whole new evaluation of his worth in the industry. For a guy to be working with heavyweights like Christopher Nolan and Steven Soderbergh, upstarts like Cary Fukunaga and Jeff Nichols, art house helmers like Lee Daniels, (old buddy) Richard Linklater and Jean-Marc Vallée and legends like William Friedkin and Martin Scorsese, that says to me he’s hungry and wants to expand. And I really can’t think of anyone who’s turned it around with that kind of ferocity before.

Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Only God Forgives” was arguably the most contentious film at last month’s Cannes Film Festival, prompting a broad spread of reactions ranging from outrage in the moral-police quarter to disappointment from genre-friendly “Drive” fans to the odd rave review. But it certainly left the festival slightly worse for wear, and when it came to the awards, no one even considered the possibility of it winning anything from Steven Spielberg’s jury.

Well, it turns out the Sydney Film Festival is a very different animal. Australia’s largest film festival wrapped last night with an awards ceremony where jury president Hugo Weaving handed the top prize to “Only God Forgives” — though it was by no means unanimous.  The five-person jury took more than six hours to reach the decision, and Weaving admitted that not everyone was a fan of the ultra-violent thriller, which stars Ryan Gosling as an ice-cool drug trafficker in Thailand and Kristin Scott Thomas as his domineering mother.

“After 10 days of captivating and diverse film viewing and passionate conversations, the jury arrived at a majority decision,” stated Weaving, the British-Australian star of the “Matrix” and “Lord of the Rings” trilogies. “In the true spirit of the competition criteria, we award a visually mesmerizing and disturbing film, which polarized our opinions.”

Among the 11 films it beat were far more universally acclaimed festival hits, including two unique documentary sensations: Sarah Polley’s “Stories We Tell” and Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The Act of Killing.” Berlinale Golden Bear winner “Child’s Pose” was also in the mix, as well as Cannes Competition titles “Borgman” and “Grigris.” “Wadjda,” a crowd-pleasing childhood tale that is also the first female-directed film to emerge from Saudi Arabia, has been an audience favorite on the festival circuit, while the lone local entry in the lineup, Laos-set coming-of-age story “The Rocket” won multiple awards at both Berlin and Tribeca.

Berlinale Audience Award winner “The Broken Circle Breakdown,” Scottish Cannes Critics’ Week selection”For Those in Peril” and German hit “Oh Boy” (a likely Oscar submission) rounded out the Competition shortlist; the festival claimed they were seeking to rewarded films with “emotional power and resonance, [that] are audacious, cutting-edge, courageous, and go beyond the usual treatment of the subject matter.”

Most of the selections might have seemed likelier winners of the festival’s top award than “Only God Forgives.” Refn could be forgiven for sounding a little surprised when accepting the $60,000 cash prize, stating, “I am very honored and extremely excited to have received this honorable award from a country that, in my opinion, has one of the great film histories of the world.” The Sydney fest has been good to Refn: he also won their inaugural award in 2008, with “Bronson.”

The festival has a history of throwing curveballs with its top prize: last year, Yorgos Lanthimos’s chilly, not-entirely-loved “Alps” beat such critical darlings as “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “Tabu.” Still, this year’s outcome is pretty remarkable even by their standards: six hours to decide one award is a long, long time, so I imagine jury deliberations must have been pretty heated.

In the grand scheme of things, of course, the Sydney honor is a relatively small one; still, after its rocky reception at Cannes, “Only God Forgives” (and The Weinstein Company) is surely grateful for any additional prestige it can get. It’ll be interesting to see how the film’s reputation settles from here on out; it wouldn’t be the first Cannes controversy magnet to rally with critics after an initial backlash.

Just as the Emmy voting period began last week, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” was all over the news, specifically for lopping off the second half of its show title. Stewart is taking the summer off to direct “Rosewater,” his first feature-length film about Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari”s wrongful imprisonment in 2009. In his place strolled the cheery John Oliver, with a disarming grin and genuine gratitude that his boss would place the show in his hands for almost three months.

Even if these new, impossibly polite episodes aren”t technically in consideration for Emmys, the timing of the ensuing press blitz seems oddly convenient. After all, “The Daily Show” has won 10 Emmys in a row for Outstanding Variety Series, and they”re probably hoping for that to go up to a “Spinal Tap” 11 this year. But at the same time, Stephen Colbert has been up to his own Pavlovian trickery. The stage could be set, finally, for a change-up in the category.

Last week he held a super-sized episode with Paul McCartney in which he treated his audience to a 150-person private concert. Much like the rest of this season”s “Colbert Report,” the bespectacled host stole focus by barely trying. “My guest tonight needs no introduction…so I”ll introduce myself,” he said before bringing out McCartney. Earlier, he”d used McCartney”s foreigner status as a natural segue into the recent NSA whistle-blowing scandal, claiming that as a precautionary measure, they set up cameras and microphones all over the studio to spy on Sir Paul. Colbert had found a way to make McCartney”s celebrity status not only a punchline, but a timely one.

These two moments shed light on the shows” intentions with Emmy voters. “The Daily Show” wants everyone to know it”s business-as-usual without Stewart. “The Colbert Report,” meanwhile, does all it can to stand on its own, celebrating the freedom Colbert has to get even one of the most influential musicians of all time in on his jokes. “The Daily Show” has had a worthy Emmy run, but is it time to pass the torch to Colbert, a man who is already running at full speed anyway?

There will be other nominated shows, sure, but not since the launch of “The Colbert Report” have Comedy Central”s two late night shows been in direct comparison. John Oliver”s “Daily Show” is a fascinating case study: His version of the show is almost exactly like that of Stewart, right down to the way he hunches over the desk and pretends to write notes as the camera spins around him during the opening. The intonation and cadence of his speaking voice is also almost an exact replica of his boss”s.

This isn’t surprising given that Oliver is a writer on the show, but what”s lacking is any trace of the “John Oliver” character he played prior to taking over the desk. As a correspondent, Oliver was free to fluctuate between goofy and genuine, playing up the persona of a wide-eyed UK transplant taking in idiotic American culture. Now he”s a prisoner to the rigid structure of the show, solidified over that decade of Emmy wins.

Free from restraints, Colbert has remained as flexible as the putty of Paul McCartney”s face. “The Daily Show” reacts to the news, but Colbert makes it. Yes, his visit with this larger-than-life Beatle was more for entertainment, but his other stunts this year have taken more of a guerrilla-warfare approach to our fragile country.

Colbert exploited the rules governing political SuperPACs, creating one of his own and running silly ads leading up to the 2012 presidential election. When a South Carolina Senate seat became available, he lobbied hard to take over, hoping nepotism would once again rear its ugly head in political appointments. If “The Daily Show” holds up a mirror to the flaws of our country, “The Colbert Report” throws us a flaw parade.

There is comfort in “The Daily Show.” Late night television hosts become friends of sorts who tuck you in at night. Oliver can be forgiven for emulating Stewart, much like a new cop or teacher, week one on the job, would adopt successful predecessor traits. He”s doing what”s familiar. And without even trying, he”s shown Jon Stewart to be the guy who insists you stay at the bar for one more beer so he can tell you about how our problems are systemic. Colbert is the guy who blacks out and takes to the streets, mocking other drunks in such a subtle and sarcastic way, they barely register they’re a big, fat punchline.

But this was the year comfort also came to “The Colbert Report” — comfort that no, we”re not crazy, things are really messed up, and this brilliant buffoon/puppet master is willing to embody all that is wrong to make it right.

Yesterday’s Variety story about “Despicable Me 2” receiving a standing ovation at its world premiere at the Annecy Animation Festival in France on Wednesday evening didn’t seem especially noteworthy. At any film festival, a standing ovation is just as often a polite formality as it is an acknowledgement of exceptional achievement, and as reporter John Hopewell noted, the French-crafted film was always likely to be warmly received at a local fest.

Perhaps I’m just having a hard time imagining a follow-up to 2010’s perfectly agreeable, perfectly unremarkable slice of family silliness being all that spectacular: beyond more cute minion antics, it’s hard to see much room for growth in the slight (albeit hugely popular) original. Still, I’d welcome the possibility of being pleasantly surprised, since the 2013 animation landscape thus far has been distinctly flat.

Spring turned up DreamWorks Animation’s “The Croods” and Fox’s “Epic” — both reasonable hits with the undiscriminating family market, but both paint-by-numbers works on any artistic level. And the fight for the biggest animated hit of the summer doesn’t look much more inspiring, with a sequel (“Despicable Me 2”) facing off against a prequel (“Monsters University”) that isn’t looking to be one of Pixar’s more beloved efforts. Reviews for the belated follow-up to 2001’s “Monsters Inc.,” which opens next week, are more polite than enthusiastic, marking the third straight year that the animation house, following an uninterrupted streak of critical and commercial smashes from 2007’s “Ratatouille” to 2010’s “Toy Story 3,” has failed to master the formula.

Perhaps DreamWorks Animation’s summer offering, the snail-race comedy “Turbo,” might surprise, though it doesn’t look too promising from afar — and the company has had a wobbly record of late. DisneyToon’s “Planes” awaits in August, but as a spin-off of Pixar’s profitable but widely disliked “Cars” franchise that was once slated for a direct-to-video release, it’ll have its own critical preconceptions to overcome.

All of which means we might have to wait until the colder weather sets in for the Best Animated Feature Oscar race to begin in earnest. That’s par for the course in all other Oscar categories, of course, but for the last six years running, the winning animated feature has been a pre-July release in the US — and in all but one of those cases, the film practically walked to victory. If that’s the case this year, it’ll be a sorry race indeed.

Of course, as we learned earlier this year, you underestimate Pixar in this race at your peril. Since “Monsters, Inc.” lost the inaugural animated feature Oscar to DreamWorks’s “Shrek” nearly 12 years ago, the only Pixar productions to lose this race have been, tellingly, “Cars” and “Cars 2” — the latter failing even to secure a nod. Many thought last year’s amiable Highland fling “Brave” — liked by many, but widely agreed to be one of the studio’s less inspired efforts — would join the talking cars on the Oscar sidelines, but it ended up winning the mostly hotly contested race in the category’s uneventful history, beating Disney’s hipper, more acclaimed (and many might say more Pixar-esque) “Wreck-It Ralph” in the process.

“Brave”‘s come-from-behind victory proved that the lure of the familiar can be a key factor in this race, but can that voter complacency really extend to “Monsters University?” The only sequel to take the award to date has been “Toy Story 3” — but there can be no doubt that its two predecessors would also have won the Oscar had it been there for the taking in 1995 and 1999, respectively. Is the Academy will to hand the gold to a sequel to the film they passed over?

Meanwhile, “Despicable Me 2” and, later this year, “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2” are looking to take the question even further: in a field this seemingly weak, will the animators’ branch be forced to include sequels to films they didn’t even nominate? We don’t yet know if the 2013 animation slate will be large enough to force a five-wide nominee field, but if it does, that’s that distinct possibility. (“Despicable Me,” it’s worth remembering, would surely have been nominated in a field of five back in 2010, but despite a healthy precursor showing, it was rightly kept out of the final three by Sylvain Chomet’s arthouse underdog “The Illusionist.”)

If the Academy does indeed decide (for the first time since “Happy Feet” took the 2006 Oscar) that the year’s spring and summer releases aren’t up to snuff, it could finally be Disney’s year in the category. Kris recently discussed the possibility of the buried Mickey Mouse short “Get a Horse!” being a force in the Best Animated Short race, but we could be in for a package deal: the short will released in theaters in November alongside the studio’s elaborate feature fairytale “Frozen,” which might emerge as the one to beat.

“Frozen,” the Mouse House’s long-mooted adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen story “The Snow Queen,” has rather a lot riding on it, and the first trailer will be eagerly scrutinized when it land next week. Like 2010’s Rapunzel riff “Tangled,” it’ll be looking to match the studio’s classic storytelling sensibility to the demands of a 21st-century kiddie audience — it’s no coincidence that both films opted for snappy, past-participle title changes in an attempt to sound more contemporary (and, sadly, disguise the female focus of their narratives).

The inordinately expensive “Tangled” succeeded to a degree, grossing $200 million in the US — though it missed out on an Oscar nod. (Like “Despicable Me 2,” it was a victim of 2010’s three-wide field.) Other late-year options include Relativity Media’s Thanksgiving comedy “Free Birds,” while GKIDS’s delightful “Ernest and Celestine” — a critical hit at Cannes last year that has yet to set a release date — should be a welcome specialty option in the mix. But if “Frozen” doesn’t deliver, we could be in for a less-than-animated race.

With midnight screenings underway, I think it’s time to poll that masses. Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel,” produced and written by the one-two punch that brought Batman back to the screen — Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer — has finally flown into theaters. I liked it quite a bit. Drew McWeeny was over the moon. “No one has ever staged superhero action like this,” he said. “What a great film about fathers and sons,” I said. The critical reception has been…typical, I guess. I don’t disagree with some of the criticisms, just the intensity of them. But I guess I’m just a geek. Speaking of which, we’ve offered up elements from the Superman mythos that we’d like to see in subsequent installments and we’ve outlined key Superman arcs that would make a great primer. But now we’re interested in hearing what you think, so let us know in the comments section and feel free to vote in the poll below.

If you thought Tom Hardy being mooted to play Elton John was the week’s unlikeliest Brit-related biopic story, think again. (Incidentally, the Elton John project, “Rocketman,” found a US distributor today in FilmDistrict.) Eddie Redmayne is in line to play Stephen Hawking in “Theory of Everything,” a biopic of the famed, ALS-afflicted theoretical physicist currently being developed by UK company Working Title.

The film is to be directed by James Marsh, the documentarian who won a 2008 Oscar for “Man of Wire,” but who has also been making strides in narrative cinema — his excellent IRA thriller “Shadow Dancer,” starring an award-worthy Andrea Riseborough, was recently released in the US. Anthony McCarten’s script will reportedly focus chiefly on Hawking’s relationship with his first wife Jane Wilde, which began before his diagnosis with motor neuron disease in the early 1960s and ended in divorce in 1991. (The role of Wilde has yet to be cast.) With Working Title involved, we could be in “A Beautiful Mind” territory here, though Marsh should keep it from getting too sticky.

Either way, the film presents a plum dramatic opportunity for Redmayne, an actor on the cusp of stardom following his breakout turn as Marius in another Working Title production, “Les Miserables” — widely agreed to be one of that divisive film’s strong points. He looks more boyish than his 31 years, and certainly a long way from the image of Hawking in the public imagination — all of which sets the stage for a showily transformative performance. 

It goes without saying that this could be Redmayne’s ticket to the awards attention that narrowly eluded him for “Les Mis.” (If the film had been the Oscar juggernaut it initially threatened to be, it could easily have swept him into the Best Supporting Actor lineup.) It goes without saying that the Academy loves both biopics and portraits of disability — past actors to parlay that combination into Best Actor gold include Geoffrey Rush in “Shine” and Daniel Day-Lewis in “My Left Foot.” That’s a pretty high bar to clear, but he may as well go for it.

Meanwhile, Redmayne’s filling his schedule with A-list projects: he’s currently shooting Andy and Lana Wachowski’s sci-fi project “Jupiter Ascending” with Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis. His name has also been connected,with Thomas Vinterberg’s new adaptation of “Far From the Madding Crowd,” set to star Carey Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts, though the Hawking project may put paid to that.

Susan Lucci couldn”t catch a break. For 18 nonconsecutive years between 1978 and 1998, she was up for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series at the Daytime Emmys for her work on “All My Children” and lost. That”s a hell of a track record, accent on “hell.” Her losing streak ended with a win in 1999 (though losses in 2001 and 2002 twisted the knife), but her many, many strikeouts transformed her into the go-to talking point for anyone who hasn”t won a Primetime Emmy.

“I”m the Susan Lucci of pay cable,” Michael C. Hall told The Huffington Post. It was a sentiment echoed by longtime Daily Show director Chuck O”Neil in a Variety story written by an extremely handsome journalist. Even in Primetime Emmy categories, Lucci is a running joke.

Yet she did win that one time, and no amount of her show “being canceled” can take that away. Her victory, against overwhelming odds, should give hope to this year”s Lucci-inspired contenders — each poised to transform from future “Jeopardy” answer to future highly specific statue-acquirer.

(For more on the run-up to this year’s Emmy nominations, check out What’s Alan Watching and The Fien Print.)

2013 is evidently the year for South Korean genre masters to spread their wings. Earlier this year, Park Chan-wook (“Oldboy,” “Thirst”) made his English-language debut with the wild Southern Gothic noir “Stoker,” still one of my favorites of the year; somewhat less successfully, we also had Kim Jee-woon (“I Saw the Devil,” “The Good, the Bad, the Weird”) directing Arnold Schwarzenegger in “The Last Stand.” Now their compatriot and colleague Bong Joon-ho — who last hit our screens in 2009 with the acclaimed thriller “Mother” — is making the switch as well, with his post-apocalyptic action film “Snowpiercer.”

Chris Evans headlines the Weinstein Company release, which boasts Park Chan-wook as a producer and is written, promisingly, by playwright Kelly Masterson — who hasn’t done any film work since his auspicious first screenplay, “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” in 2007. Based in a French graphic novel, the film is set in 2031, shortly after Earth has been plunged into a new ice age; the few human survivors inhabit the Snowpiercer, a vast train that circles the planet and is oppressively segregated, with the poor subjected to dire conditions in the back carriages. Evans plays one of the lower-class passengers who leads a revolution against the elite classes, led by Tilda Swinton — seemingly offering her own take on Maggie Thatcher. The impressive ensemble also includes Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Ed Harris, John Hurt and Alison Pill.

The film was originally expected by many to show up at the Cannes Film Festival, though this international trailer suggests it’s being positioned more as a commercial prospect than a prestige item. That’s not meant as a slight, however, and Bong’s distinctive atmospheric stamp is all over this. No US release date has been set yet, so this could feasibly still show up in Venice and/or Toronto. Check out the rousing trailer below, and tell us what you think.  

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pek2kRn-gV8&w=640&h=360]

“Diana,” German director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s biopic of the late Princess of Wales, is eagerly awaited in many quarters — it’s hard to underestimate the devotion the so-called People’s Princess still inspires in millions across the globe, nearly 16 years after her death, and this is the first major feature film to take her as its principal subject. Two-time Oscar nominee Naomi Watts is filling the princess’s chic shoes, and the wordless teaser trailer below promises a reasonable physical approximation.

Hirschbiegel’s film focuses on the last two years of her life, covering her anti-landmine activism and her romances with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan and billionaire producer Dodi Fayed, and therefore steering clear of her royal marriage woes. Either way, I must confess that Diana — a nice woman no doubt — doesn’t hold much fascination for me as either a public or private figure. Hopefully Hirschbiegel (who broke out with the Oscar-nominated last-days-of-Hitler drama “Downfall” in 2004) and writer Stephen Jeffreys (“The Libertine”) can persuade me otherwise; for now, “Diana” strikes me as one of the less enticing dishes on the late-year prestige buffet.

The film hasn’t set a US release date yet (Entertainment One is the distributor), but it’ll open in the UK on September 20 — presumably after premiering on the fall festival circuit. Whether it film lands more like “The Queen” (in which, of course, or “The Iron Lady” with critics, Watts’s performance will be carefully scrutinized for its awards-season potential. As we’ve been reminded all too often in recent years, famous people playing other famous people is a trick Oscar voters never seem to tire of — and if they have a royal title, so much the better. Watts, meanwhile, got back on the Academy’s radar last year with “The Impossible” and is well positioned for a follow-up nod.

It all adds up on paper, but the performance still has to impress. Is Diana a sufficiently meaty character to take her there? Hard to say. This brief glimpse doesn’t give much away, but check it out and share your thoughts in the comments.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/68235760 w=640&h=360]

I hate that this project doesn’t have a title yet so I can give it a proper headline, but anyway, Legendary Pictures announced start of production today on Michael Mann’s untitled latest feature. The director hasn’t gone back to the feature film well since 2009’s “Public Enemies,” which was widely dismissed, but I was a fan. There was a detour into television (and some nasty brawls with David Milch, as I hear it) with HBO’s short-lived “Luck,” but he’s getting back on the horse with a Morgan Davis Foehl-scripted cyber-theft thriller starring Chris Hemsworth and Viola Davis.

Mann is my favorite working director so I’m very keen on this one. He’s been developing it with Legendary for over a year and the that partnership has me doubly excited. Legendary, of course, has played a major part in Warner Bros. successes like the “Dark Knight” trilogy and the upcoming “Man of Steel” and “Pacific Rim.”

The film will center on cyber-theft and cyber attacks but that’s all we know. It sounds like a world that will be a perfect fit for Mann’s icy cool aesthetic, though he’s teaming with DP Stuart Dryburgh (who shot the “Luck” pilot) rather than his prior feature cinematographer collaborators, such as Dante Spinotti and Dion Beebe. The crew rounds out handsomely, with Oscar nominees such as production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas (“Inception”) and costume designer Colleen Atwood (“Chicago”). Joe Walker (“Shame”) will edit.

Another reason I’m curious about this film is the presence of Tang Wei on the cast. Tang lit up in her feature debut, Ang Lee’s “Lust, Caution,” in 2007. It was one of my favorite movies of the year and she gave one of the most electric debut performances I’ve ever seen. She’s been working since but not domestically, so I’ll be stoked to see what a collaboration with Mann, notoriously thorough with his actors, yields.

The film is slated for a 2014 release. And that…is all we know for the moment. More as it comes.