Oh yeah, “This is the End” hits theaters today. Well, sneak previews in advance of tomorrow’s official release. YOU SHOULD ABSOLUTELY GO SEE IT. Seriously, I laughed so hard in this movie that my face hurt. But lest you think it’s brainless humor, the film is actually very smart about how it pitches its theme, while at the same time sending up Hollywood image and culture. There have been few times this year that I’ve had this good a time watching a movie. Here’s Drew McWeeny’s review. So with that endorsement, I’ll be waiting here to hear back from you on what you thought. If you’re way ahead of me, rifle off your take in the comments section and vote in our poll. The rest of you: GO!

When “After Earth” crashed and burned at the US box office last week — the latest in a long line of commercial misfires for director M Night Shyamalan, though a comparatively rare one for star Will Smith — many column inches were spent dissecting, explaining and, in some cases, frankly revelling in its failure. After it dropped a calamitous 61% in its second weekend Stateside, tumbling to seventh place and inching to a total gross of just $46 million, casual box office surveyors eagerly prepared to read the film’s last rites.

But not so fast. It’s no surprise that this has been a quieter story, given the media’s tendency even outside North America to focus on US grosses as the be-all and end-all, but internationally, “After Earth” is far from over. According to Screen Daily, the film opened in over 60 territories on Friday, and topped the charts in a number of them, including the UK, Russia, France, Germany, Italy, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Mexico — enough to push it just past “Fast & Furious 6” on the global box-office chart for the weekend.

Its international total is now approaching $49 million — not a triumphant result from such an extensive release, but nothing like a bomb either. Here in the UK, where advance publicity from the US was pretty toxic and critics were no kinder than their damning American counterparts, its #1 debut (pushing two-week champ “The Hangover Part III”) into the runner-up spot. Indeed, the $3.5 million weekend gross for “After Earth” in the UK is higher than that of any Shyamalan film since “The Village” in 2004.

Want further proof that the US and UK can be very different markets? Check out low-budget horror sleeper “The Purge” — which topped the US box office over the weekend with $34 million, a figure 10 times the size its budget. That’s a major result, but in the UK, where “The Purge” opened the Friday before last, it was a very different story: despite no other major new releases, the film opened in a lowly sixth place with just under $1.6 million. The victor that weekend, for the second week running, was the latest “Hangover” cash-in — a moderate underperformer in the US, where it never topped the chart and currently sits in eighth place, relative to #2 in the UK. (It opened day-and-date.) 

So, aside from the fact that there’s a lot of gray territory between “hit” and “bomb,” what are we to take away from this? Well, for starters, if Warner Bros. ever feels like investing in a fourth Wolf Pack adventure, they could do worse than set it in London. And perhaps have M Night Shyamalan direct it. But seriously, it’s worth paying more attention to the discrepancies between a film’s US and global box office performance — in addition to being interesting from a cultural standpoint, they can often save a seemingly fried film’s bacon.

The total global gross for “After Earth” currently stands at over $95 million, still $35 million short of what it needs to recoup its budget — though with the help of foreign markets, it should creep toward that goal. It won’t be the first time a Shyamalan film has relied on non-US audiences to this extent. Perhaps his earnest brand of fantasy simply plays better abroad, and in other languages. Perhaps the film’s much-ballyhooed Scientological subtext is less of a sticking point in regions where the faith isn’t as culturally prominent.  Or perhaps, while many of us are considering calling time on the traditional construct of the movie star, Will Smith is the kind of universal brand who can still sell a locally rejected vehicle to trusting international viewers. That’s cold comfort for “After Earth,” but it’ll take what it can get.

When AMPAS last year set the unprecedentedly early date of January 10 for the unveiling of their nominations, several other precursors — those that feel duty-bound to precede the Oscars, come what may — duly felt the crunch. None more so than the BAFTAs, which have been fashioning themselves as the Oscars’ principal shadow event since 2000, and thus found themselves announcing their nominations a mere day before the Academy. It was a slightly chaotic bit of scheduling, and not one we’re in a hurry to repeat.

Next year, however, there will a little more breathing room between the two. The date for the Oscar nominations has been moved back to January 16 — just six days, but that makes a world of difference in the compressed awards timetable — while sporting events have forced the ceremony itself, which took place on February 24 this year, back to March 2.

BAFTA, meanwhile, is taking advantage of this loosened schedule to allow its members an extra week to consider their options in the second phase of voting. While next year’s BAFTA ceremony has been set for February 16 (effecively a week later in the calendar than this year’s February 10 event), it was announced today that BAFTA nomination day will be staying more or less put on January 8, thus allowing voters exactly five weeks to mull over their ballots before they’re due on February 12. (Unlike at the Oscars, phase two of BAFTA voting opens as soon as the nominations are announced.)

Does this make much of a difference to anything? Not really. While last year, the Academy’s nomination ballots were due before BAFTA nods were announced, this year, they’re not — though the window between the two is now less than a day, so it’s not as if the Brits’ choices will wield any more influence than before.

One thing that remains unchanged from last year is that Oscar voters will be receiving their final ballots two days before the BAFTA ceremony — though as Kris and I have said time and again, any semi-surprising correlation between BAFTA and Oscar winners is less a result of direct influence than the fact that the BAFTAs’ place in the calendar makes them a useful barometer of late-breaking shifts in voter sentiment. Sometimes those shifts extend to the Oscar vote (Marion Cotillard, Tilda Swinton, Alan Arkin); sometimes, as Emmanuelle Riva found earlier this year, they don’t.

Anyway, anything this makes the season a little less frantic is fine by me. Here’s a schedule of key BAFTA dates (with comparable Oscar dates in italics): 

11 December 2013 – BAFTA voting opens (Phase One)

27 December 2013 – Oscar voting opens (Phase One)

3 January 2014 – BAFTA voting closes (Phase One)

8 January 2014 – BAFTA nominations announced, voting opens (Phase Two)  

8 January 2014 – Oscar voting closes (Phase One)  

16 January 2014 – Oscar nominations announced

12 February 2014 – BAFTA voting closes (Phase Two)  

14 February 2014 – Deadline for all BAFTA-eligible films to open theatrically in UK

14 February 2014 – Oscar voting opens (Phase Two)  

16 February 2014 – BAFTA ceremony

25 February 2014 – Oscar voting closes (Phase Two)  

2 March 2014 – Oscar ceremony

At the stroke of 8pm PT last night, reviews for Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel” hit the internet like a speeding bullet. The verdict? Mostly positive, in some corners, breathlessly so. HitFix’s Drew McWeeny gave the film a glowing A+ review, calling it the Superman movie he’s waited his whole life to see, “a winner top to bottom.” Some will find the spectacle overwhelming, others will warm to its exciting vision, but few can argue that it’s not a unique entry in the franchise to date.

All eyes are on the Father’s Day weekend, when this first contact story of an alien with two dads crashes onto screens nationwide, bringing with it the hopes for a new DC universe on screen. It enters a long legacy of screen incarnations that stretches back to 1951’s “Superman and the Mole Men” and features a bold new take on a legendary icon and myth. So how does it stack up in that legacy, and what can be expected as it soars into theaters? In another “3 on 3” installment, a trio of HitFix’s staffers ponders that and more.

1. Where does Henry Cavill’s “Man of Steel” fit into the legacy left by George Reeves, Christopher Reeve and Brandon Routh?

Gregory Ellwood: Even as a kid, George Reeves never seemed anything like the Superman I read in the comic books. So, personally, I have little affection and don’t understand his appeal to old school Man of Steel fans. For comparison’s sake to the other three, Cavill is certainly light years ahead of Routh, but it’s hard to imagine anyone outshining Reeve with one movie. Then again, it took Christian Bale two films to appear fully comfortable in Batman’s cloak. Ask me again in three years. By then he might be much closer to Reeve than anyone would expect.

Drew McWeeny: Cavill brings a very different physical approach to the role. While obviously Reeve and Routh were well-defined guys, they were not bulky, and Cavill is a giant slab of holy crap in his first shirtless scenes in the movie. There is also a strong difference in that there’s no sense of a secret identity in this movie. Clark, Kal-El, Superman… they’re all different names for the same person, still trying to figure himself out in this film and sort out where he belongs in this world. I think Cavill benefits from the script taking such a different approach because you really can’t compare him to the guys who came before, something which hurt Routh right out of the gate.

Kristopher Tapley: To some extent, I’ve always felt that Superman is, you know, Superman. It doesn’t call on a lot of actorly faculties. That doesn’t mean I don’t think Reeves’s original, classic portrayal, Reeve’s humorous take on a bumbling Clark Kent or Routh’s stoic revisitation of the Reeve incarnation. Cavill, though, is the first actor to dig into the character’s split sense of loyalties in a realistic and meaningful way. He seems to take the biggest thoughtful bite out of the character to date, and that has a lot to do with the script and re-imagining of the character by Nolan and Goyer.

2. How is DC Comics distinguishing its film brand from Marvel, and is it working?

Gregory Ellwood: Arguably, Warner Bros. has allowed its filmmaker’s more creative freedom and, so far, that’s provided us with the Nolan films and the impressive “Man of Steel.” When they have tried to go “straight” commercial they have flopped with duds like “Jonah Hex” and “Green Lantern.” Marvel, on the other hand, should only be judged by the Marvel Studios films that began with “Iron Man.” As entertaining as they have been, Marvel has mostly kept the look and feel of the pictures as uniform as possible. The production design, the costumes and the cinematography have rarely strayed from one particular world. It’s allowed the studio to quickly bring its bands of heroes together, but it’s also been somewhat unimaginative. Fans and moviegoers may hold Marvel’s “The Avengers” up as a great movie, but it will never be seen as the cinematic achievement “The Dark Knight” was. That being said, if “Man of Steel” is the success many assume it will be, then it’s hard to argue that WB is that far behind.

Drew McWeeny: It’s strange. In the world of comics, Marvel was always the company that dealt with a more “real-world” approach, and DC struck me as more overtly comic book and fantasy oriented. Now, looking at the way the Marvel movies feel as a whole and then looking at the Nolan Batman films and now “Man Of Steel,” it’s DC that has tried to create a world that feels real, like this could be happening in cities we live in, to people we know. It sounds crass to say it, but the main distinction here is that DC/Warner spent real money to bring “Man Of Steel” to life, and Marvel pinches every penny they can, squeaking their heroes onto the screen. It’s a successful model for them, but it’ll be interesting to see how they approach “Guardians Of The Galaxy” and “The Avengers 2” after audiences get a load of the scale of “Man Of Steel.”

Kristopher Tapley: It’s interesting, because the DC universe isn’t as intrinsically grounded in a hyper reality as the Marvel universe is. Which is why Batman has always been so unique in that world. So DC has to overcompensate a bit on the gritty/realism angle. I had doubts that the tactic would work for “Man of Steel,” and indeed, we’re still talking about a Superman movie full of fantasy. But the grounding of the material, that Nolan edict, has worked in a way I didn’t expect, so I’d say DC is doing a good job of building its own world and distinguishing it from the colorful Marvel universe on film.

3. Given the early tracking and a likely ceiling on opening weekend expectations, what kind of box office should be seen as a win?

Gregory Ellwood: Box office is always in the eye of the beholder. Warner Bros. would love to hit the $100 million mark (and may), but a likely $90 million opening should still be viewed as a big success. “Superman Returns” debuted to just $52 million seven years ago. Even with 3D ticket prices and inflation that’s still a much larger impact on moviegoers than “Returns” and proves there is much life in the last son of Krypton’s cinematic fortunes.

Drew McWeeny: Hard to tell. Last time around, there was a lot of affection being played on with the ad campaign, and Warner did everything they could to make sure audiences knew they were getting something familiar. This time, they’re trying to sell this as a brand-new take on the myth, and that’s always a little scary for a studio. They know they’ve got the epic imagery, though, and they’ve cut one of the most aggressive and masterful campaigns of the summer. I’d say anything less than $90 million by Monday would be a frustrating start for the studio, but I think word of mouth could send them into orbit very, very quickly.

Kristopher Tapley: Box office isn’t my forte but I think anything that trumps the woeful showing of “Superman Returns” would be welcome. Sights are probably set on north of $300 million total, which the film may or may not reach, but look at “Batman Begins,” which barely made $200 million stateside and was seen as a modest success. Audiences have to warm up to the new depiction, and they will. The sequel will be huge. But starting around $100 million and trusting word of mouth to give the film solid legs (I imagine there will be lots of repeat business) shouldn’t be seen as weak in a marketplace that has increasingly seen that number become the norm since “Spider-Man” reached the milestone over a decade ago. You have to build something here. And if you build it, they will come.

The Broadcast Television Journalists Association (BTJA) couldn’t make up its collective mind in a number of key races at tonight’s BTJA Critics’ Choice Television Awards. Three categories ended in ties, two of them major categories of Best Drama Series (which went to “Breaking Bad” and “Game of Thrones”) and Best Reality Series (which went to “Push Girls” and — dear lord — “Duck Dynasty”).

HBO’s “Behind the Candelabra” picked up its first two awards in what will likely be a bit of a steamroll for the film throughout the TV awards season. It won Best Movie or Mini-Series and Best Actor in same (Michael Douglas).

Meanwhile, the Television Critics Association (widely considered a more prestigious organization) handed out nominees Monday. Alan Sepinwall has those up here if you’re interested in a look.

Check out the full list of BTJA award winners below. Nominees here.

Best Comedy Series
“The Big Bang Theory” – CBS

Best Actor in a Comedy Series
Louis C.K. (“Louie”) – FX

Best Actress in a Comedy Series
Julia Louis-Dreyfus (“Veep”) – HBO

Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Simon Helberg (“The Big Bang Theory”) – CBS

Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
(TIE) Kaley Cuoco (“The Big Band Theory”) – CBS and Eden Sher (“The Middle”) – ABC

Best Guest Performer in a Comedy Series
Patton Oswalt (“Parks and Recreation”) – NBC

Best Drama Series
(TIE) “Breaking Bad” – AMC and “Game of Thrones” – HBO

Best Actor in a Drama Series
Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”) – AMC

Best Actress in a Drama Series
Tatiana Maslany (“Orphan Black”) – BBC America

Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series
Michael Cudlitz (“Southland”) – TNT

Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
Monica Potter (“Parenthood”) – NBC

Best Guest Performer in a Drama Series
Jane Fonda (“The Newsroom”) – HBO

Best Movie or Mini-Series
“Behind the Candelabra” – HBO

Best Actor in a Movie or Mini-Series
Michael Douglas (“Behind the Candelabra”) – HBO

Best Actress in a Movie or Mini-Series
Elisabeth Moss (“Top of the Lake”) – Sundance

Best Supporting Actor in a Movie or Mini-Series
Zachary Quinto (“American Horror Story: Asylum”) – FX

Best Supporting Actress in a Movie or Mini-Series
Sarah Paulson (“American Horror Story: Asylum”) – FX

Best Reality Series
(TIE) “Push Girls” – Sundance and “Duck Dynasty” – A&E

Best Reality Series – Competition
“The Voice” – NBC

Best Reality Host
Tom Bergeron (“Dancing with the Stars”) – ABC

Best Talk Show
“The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” – Comedy Central

Best Animated Series
“Archer” – FX

Most Exciting New Series (honorees)
“The Bridge” – FX
“Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” – ABC
“Masters of Sex” – Showtime
“The Michael J. Fox Show” – NBC
“Ray Donovan” – Showtime
“Under the Dome” – CBS

Critics’ Choice Television Icon Award
Bob Newhart

Critics’ Choice Inspiration Award
“Bunheads” – ABC Family

Don’t get too excited. Unlike “Star Trek,” the Superman franchise hasn’t yielded all that much fodder for a discussion of Academy Awards along the way. But there are a couple of things worth mentioning, as well as, of course, speculation to be tossed around regarding the Oscar chances of the latest installment. So let’s take a look.

While not the first theatrical Superman movie (that would be 1951’s “Superman and the Mole Men”), “Superman: The Movie,” though, came out at just the right time, on the heels of George Lucas’ “Star Wars” when blockbusters were really starting to light the way for the business. The film was a big box office story in 1978 (along with “Grease” and “Animal House,” in fact), and it picked up three nominations from the Academy, for Best Film Editing, Best Original Score (for John Williams’s iconic work) and Best Sound. It was bested by “The Deer Hunter” and “Midnight Express” in those fields, however.

While no competitive award for visual effects was handed out that year, the film did receive a Special Achievement Award for its effects work. (Reminding me again: Why can’t we bring those back given how rapidly technology is changing modern filmmaking?) That awe-inspiring effects work would become a hallmark of the series, but no other film of the Christopher Reeve run — not “Superman II,” so certainly not the Richard Pryor-starring “Superman III” or the absurd (but, I’ll admit, fun) Golan/Globus “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace” — would pick up another tip of the hat from the Academy.

It wasn’t until nearly three decades later that a Superman film would get some Oscar recognition, but a lone nomination for 2006’s “Superman Returns” had to nevertheless be seen as a disappointment given the investment. The nomination was for, you guessed it, Best Visual Effects. The film came up shy with critics and audiences, barely scraping past $200 million domestically and failing to reach $400 million globally (for a film whose ultimate budget has been whispered to be around $300 million). To that end, it lost the Oscar to box office overachiever “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.”

And now, “Man of Steel.” What can we expect?

To say the least, the film is breathless in its action and CGI splendor, crafting a gorgeous world of Krypton that could fill its own movie, an aggressive alien invasion and, of course, plenty of that “you’ll believe a man can fly” wonder. So Best Visual Effects will absolutely be in the conversation, perhaps even for a win.

Beyond that, I would say the sound mixing and particularly the sound editing deserve room in the line-up. I’d be a bit surprised if it didn’t at least figure into the latter race. Hans Zimmer’s score is big and ominous and awesome, but likely too outside the traditional confines for the music branch (typical — and he’s used to it by now). Meanwhile, the film editing is really special given that the film is essentially wall-to-wall action. I wouldn’t expect the as-of-late Best Picture-cribbing editors branch to give it a fair shake, but they should.

Performances? Michael Shannon is the MVP in my book. He absolutely crushes the role of General Zod, even ultimately bringing a dose of empathy to a monster who is only doing what he’s meant to do. But it’s not the towering, iconic kind of portrayal — like Heath Ledger’s Joker — that can rise out of the genre ghetto at the Oscars.

The two biggest names involved in the film are Oscar winners already: Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner as Kal-El’s parental figures, Jor-El and Jonathan Kent. Costner, though, is the name on everyone’s lips first when discussing favorite elements of the film, I’ve discovered. And he gets one truly emotional moment in particular that will endear. Crowe, meanwhile, is stoic and in an interesting zone with his work. But performances, again, are tough to get through the AMPAS gauntlet.

There is, however, one area I absolutely believe deserves some consideration and could make a play, and that’s the costume design. Three-time Oscar-winner James Acheson (“The Last Emperor,” “Dangerous Liasons” and “Restoration”) and Snyder regular Michael Wilkinson breathe a life into the Kryptonian segment of the film that can’t be understated. Production designer Alex McDowell (woefully overdue for his first nomination) deserves to be mentioned for his work in those sequences as well, but the costumes particularly stood out as singular and detailed and impressive.

For more “Man of Steel,” check out Drew McWeeny’s glowing A+ review. I’m not as unflinchingly positive as he is, but I will say that I greatly enjoyed the film and see it as a big win for all involved. And I can’t wait to see it with my dad over the Father’s Day weekend, because boy, what a great film about fathers and sons. Hopefully it will mark the beginning of something big for Warner Bros. and DC Comics. Indeed, they’ve already reportedly fast-tracked a sequel. DUH.

The Weinstein Company’s “Grace of Monaco” is something of a question mark on the year-end prestige slate. Some pundits believe that Olivier Dahan’s dramatization of Grace Kelly’s ascent to European princess status has the makings of an awards contender: the Academy often looks kindly on biopics of Hollywood royalty and actual royalty alike, after all, so why wouldn’t they go nuts for a film that combines the two?

Still, Dahan’s uneven track record and the slightly questionable casting of Nicole Kidman as the 33-year-old Kelly has others wondering if the film could go awry — a sneak peek of the film at the Weinsteins’ Cannes showcase didn’t answer any questions.

However the film pans out, however, its producer and writer are evidently confident enough to forge ahead with another biopic of a Golden Age Hollywood goddess — and now three-time Oscar winner Ingrid Bergman is the subject under scrutiny. “Seducing Ingrid Bergman,” based on a yet-to-be-published Matt Greenhalgh book, will focus on the torrid romance between the Swedish-born “Casablanca” star and Robert Capa, the celebrated Hungarian war photographer; the pair met in 1945 while Bergman (then still married to Swedish doctor Petter Lindstrom) was entertaining US troops in Paris at the close of WWII, and conducted a year-long clandestine affair.

Unlike her much-publicized extramarital affair a few years later with Italian neorealist director (and eventual second husband) Roberto Rossellini — a tabloid scandal that dramatically altered her pure-as-the-driven-snow star image, and put her American career on ice for seven years — the Capa affair only became public knowledge via her 1980 autobiography. So it’s a relatively underexposed piece of Hollywood lore. Indeed, it’s rather surprising that no part of Bergman’s tumultuous personal life and storied career has attracted the biopic treatment until now.

“Grace of Monaco” producer Uday Chopra, whose previous credits are in the Bollywood sphere, has optioned Greenhalgh’s book, which hits shelves next year. Though Greenhalgh has screenwriting experience of his own — he adapted 2009’s “Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky” from his own biography — “Grace of Monaco” scripter Arash Amel will be doing the honors. Amel’s one previous credit is the formulaic, Aaron Eckhart-starring Eurothriller “Erased,” released earlier this year. Amel tells Deadline’s Mike Fleming that the Kelly and Bergman projects are strongly linked for him: 

“I realized I had the beginnings of an exploration of the consequence of life-changing choices made by two of the most iconic women of the 20th century. It struck me that Grace and Ingrid had to deal with identical dilemmas for these modern women in repressed times. Grace surrendered to the forces that shaped her fate, but Ingrid refused to surrender and ended up in this scandalous affair with Rossellini and became the first and only actress denounced by the U.S. Senate. One ran away from Hollywood and the other was exiled, and this gave me the spark to tell the second story. Each sacrificed in her own way.”

The Bergman story also boasts a somewhat dashing male figure in the gifted, reckless Capa, who died in a Vietnamese landmine explosion aged just 40, less than a decade after his fling with Bergman. So the project effectively boasts two sexy starring roles. No names are attached yet, though one doesn’t envy the young actress tasked with bringing Bergman, both one of the screen’s greatest actresses and greatest natural beauties, back to life.

Interestingly, she’ll now joins Katharine Hepburn as the second member of the three-or-more Oscar club — an elite group that now boasts six actors — to feature in a biopic. Playing Hepburn netted Cate Blanchett an Oscar of her own; can someone else repeat the trick with Bergman? 

The American Theatre Wing’s 67th annual Tony Awards were presented tonight at Radio City Music Hall in New York, and it was Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein’s “Kinky Boots” that basked in the glow of glitz and glitter, walking out with the most awards on the night.

The nominations leader nabbed six awards, including Best Musical, Best Actor in a Musical (Billy Porter) and Best Original Score for Lauper. “I can’t say I wasn’t practicing in front of the shower curtain for a couple of days for this speech,” Lauper said after brushing away some tears. “I want to thank Broadway for welcoming me. I understand how hard you work and I’ve never been a stranger to hard work, but your hard work inspires me.” She thanked her mother, admitting, “I wrecked all her albums when I was a kid, the cast albums. That’s how I learned to sing.”

That leaves the musician an Oscar away from an EGOT. Are you paying attention, Hollywood?

“Matilda: The Musical” and “Pippin” duked it out otherwise throughout the musical categories, but at the end of the day, it was “Kinky Boots” that dominated the spotlight.

Elsewhere, while Douglas Carter Beane’s Nathan Lane-starrer “The Nance” won a number of awards throughout the design races, it was Christopher Durang’s “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” that won the Tony for Best Play. That would, however, be the play’s only award of the night after landing six nominations. Tony voters seemed more enamored by Pam MacKinnon’s revival of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” which won three awards throughout the play categories

Speaking of which, for only the second time in the ceremony’s history, both Tony Awards for direction (of a play and of a musical) went to women. MacKinnon was recognized in the play category while Diane Paulus won the musical honor for “Pippin.” Both productions also won top honors for Best Revival in their respective categories.

In 1998, Julie Taymor (“The Lion King”) and Garry Hynes (“The Beauty Queen of Leenane”) marked the first time the awards were both won by women. Not only that, it was, in fact, the first year a woman won either award.

Tom Hanks made his Broadway debut this year in “Lucky Guy,” the Nora Ephron-penned story of New York journalist Mike McAlary. He was nominated for his work, but the two-time Oscar winner didn’t add a Tony to his mantle. He was instead nudged out by “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” star (and Broadway staple) Tracy Letts. Letts previously won a Tony in 2008 for writing “August: Osage County,” which is getting the Hollywood treatment later this fall from director John Wells.

Hanks’s co-star, Courtney B. Vance, however, was recognized for his featured performance. The play ended up winning two awards on the night. And Lauper performed her song “True Colors” during an In Memoriam segment that was lead off by an Ephron remembrance from emcee Neil Patrick Harris.

Faring a bit better on her first Tony nomination was legendary actress Cicely Tyson, whose performance in the revival of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful” brought her a win in the lead actress category. “When I think of this moment, I cannot help but think of all the thumbprints that have touched this being during the course of her career,” she said after receiving a standing ovation from the crowd. “My mother and father, my sister and brother, none of whom are here with me. I’m the sole survivor of my immediate family, and I’ve asked myself over and over again, ‘Why?’ And now I know why. It’s been 30 years since I stood on a stage. I didn’t think it would ever happen again in my lifetime, and I was happy with that, except I had this burning desire to do just one more.”

It was Harris’s fourth time hosting the ceremony, showing all comers how it’s done in the process. His opening routine, combining a handful of stage productions in a typical mish-mash, brought the Radio City Music Hall audience to its feet in a standing ovation.

Jokes were aimed at Scott Rudin (ribbing the Broadway and Hollywood producer’s ad dressing down New York Times reporter Patrick Healy over a “Testament of Mary” interview) as well as Shia LaBeouf (who abruptly quit the production of nominee “Orphans” in February after feuding with co-star Alec Baldwin and was replaced by Ben Foster). But Hollywood wasn’t immune.

Offering a bit of a shot at filmmaker Tom Hooper, director of last year’s Oscar nominated musical adaptation “Les Misérables,” Harris asked mid-routine, “Can I have my Tom Hooper ‘Les Mis’ close-up, please?” And as the camera pushed in: “See, on Broadway we don’t need extreme close-ups to prove we’re singing live.”

Performances from the productions of “Matilda,” “Bring It On,” “Once,” “Annie and “The Phantom of the Opera” were featured throughout the ceremony.

Check out a full list of 2013 Tony Award winners on the next page. Nominees here. And if it’s your thing, relive the show via Dan Fienberg’s live blog.

Best Play
“Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike”

Best Musical
“Kinky Boots”

Best Revival of a Play
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Best Revival of a Musical
“Pippin”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play
Cicely Tyson, “The Trip to Bountiful”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play
Tracy Letts, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical
Patina Miller, “Pippin”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical
Billy Porter, “Kinky Boots”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical
Andrea Martin, “Pippin”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play
Courtney B. Vance, “Lucky Guy”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play
Judith Light, “The Assembled Parties”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical
Gabriel Ebert, “Matilda: The Musical”

Best Book of a Musical
“Matilda: The Musical” (Dennis Kelly)

Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre
“Kinky Boots” (Cyndi Lauper)

Best Direction of a Play
Pam MacKinnon, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Best Direction of a Musical
Diane Paulus, “Pippin”

Best Choreography
“Kinky Boots” (Jerry Mitchell)

Best Orchestrations
“Kinky Boots” (Stephen Oremus)

Best Scenic Design of a Play
“The Nance” (John Lee Beatty)

Best Scenic Design of a Musical
“Matilda: The Musical” (Rob Howell)

Best Costume Design of a Play
“The Nance” (Ann Roth)

Best Costume Design of a Musical
“Rogers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella” (William Ivey Long)

Best Lighting Design of a Play
“Lucky Guy” (Jules Fisher & Peggy Eisenhauer)

Best Lighting Design of a Musical
“Matilda: The Musical” (Hugh Vanstone)

Sound Design of a Play
“The Nance” (Leon Rothenberg)

Best Sound Design of a Musical
“Kinky Boots” (John Shivers)

Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre
Bernard Gersten
Paul Libin
Ming Cho Lee

Regional Theatre Award
Huntington Theatre Company

Isabelle Stevenson Award
Larry Kramer

Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre
NYC Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
Career Transition for Dancers
William Craver
Peter Lawrence
The Lost Colony
The four actresses who created the title role of Matilda: The Musical on Broadway: Sophia Gennusa, Oona Laurence, Bailey Ryon and Milly Shapiro

With her Tony win in the Best Original Score category tonight for her work on the Broadway smash “Kinky Boots,” musician Cyndi Lauper has inched a step closer to some elite industry awards company.

The term “EGOT,” coined by actor Philip Michael Thomas, was launched into notoriety by the television series “30 Rock” and has become a bit of a running joke in the business, particularly on the various entertainment awards circuits.

So far, 11 individuals have “won” the figurative EGOT — an acronym for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. The last was producer Scott Rudin, who reached the peak last year after winning the Grammy for the cast album for Broadway sensation “The Book of Mormon.”

Tonight, Lauper found herself on deck for the honor should an Academy Award ever come calling.

Lauper’s Grammy came in 1985 when the artist burst onto the scene with the album “She’s So Unusual,” which featured the Grammy-nominated singles “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” and “Time After Time.” Her Emmy Award came 10 years later for her work on the television series “Mad About You.” And now, a Tony for “Kinky Boots.”

So pay attention, Hollywood.

Others on the verge of an EGOT include actress Julie Andrews (who needs a Tony), musician and actress Cher (Tony), actor Jeremy Irons (Grammy), singer/songwriter Elton John (Emmy), Cynthia Nixon (Oscar), actor Al Pacino (Grammy), “South Park” and “Book of Mormon” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone (Oscar) and actress Kate Winslet (Tony). Who’s going to be next?

Check out the on-going list of Tony winners as they’re announced here.

The 40th annual Student Academy Awards were held tonight in Beverly Hills. It’s worth keeping an eye on these because you never know if they can turn around and show up at the Academy Awards, like Luke Matheny’s “God of Love” and Timothy Reckart’s “Head Over Heels” have in recent years.

The event was hosted by comedian and — did you know? — 1978 Student Academy Award-winner Bob Saget. Presenters included “Boys Don’t Cry” writer/director Kimberly Peirce, “The Avengers” star Clark Gregg, last year’s Oscar-nominated golden girl Quvenzhané Wallis (“Beasts of the Southern Wild”) and star of the upcoming “Saving Mr. Banks,” Jason Schwartzman.

Sixteen students from colleges and universities around the world were honored. Check out a full list of winners below.

Alternative
Gold Medal: “Bottled Up,” Rafael Cortina, Occidental College
Silver Medal: “Zug,” Perry Janes, University of Michigan
Bronze Medal: “The Compositor,” John Mattiuzzi, School of Visual Arts

Animation
Gold Medal: “Dia de los Muertos,” Lindsey St. Pierre and Ashley Graham, Ringling College of Art and Design
Silver Medal: “Will,” Eusong Lee, California Institute of the Arts
Bronze Medal: “Peck Pocketed,” Kevin Herron, Ringling College of Art and Design

Documentary
Gold Medal: “A Second Chance,” David Aristizabal, University of Southern California
Silver Medal: “Every Tuesday: A Portrait of The New Yorker Cartoonists,” Rachel Loube, School of Visual Arts
Bronze Medal: “Win or Lose,” Daniel Koehler, Elon University

Narrative
Gold Medal: “Ol” Daddy,” Brian Schwarz, University of Texas at Austin
Silver Medal: “Josephine and the Roach,” Jonathan Langager, University of Southern California
Bronze Medal: “Un Mundo para Raúl (A World for Raúl),” Mauro Mueller, Columbia University

Foreign Film
Gold Medal: “Miss Todd,” Kristina Yee, National Film and Television School, United Kingdom
Silver Medal: “Parvaneh,” Talkhon Hamzavi, Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland
Bronze Medal: “Tweesprong (Crossroads),” Wouter Bouvijn, RITS School of Arts, Erasmus University College Brussels, Belgium

From the press release:

This year saw first-time honors go to Elon University, Occidental College and the University of Michigan in the U.S. competition, as well as to Zurich University of the Arts and RITS School of Arts, Erasmus University College Brussels, in the foreign competition.

The Student Academy Awards were established in 1972 to support and encourage excellence in filmmaking at the collegiate level. Past Student Academy Award winners have gone on to receive 46 Oscar® nominations and have won or shared eight awards. The roster includes such distinguished filmmakers as John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Robert Zemeckis, Trey Parker and Spike Lee.

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4912223138001

Though he remains an all-time favorite, I try to keep my expectations firmly clamped down for any new Woody Allen these days: even supposed return-to-form “Midnight in Paris” didn’t quite land right with me, so it’s best to let the sporadic pleasures of his latter-day work come as pleasant surprises. Yet I’ve broken protocol and allowed myself to get increasingly excited about his dramedy “Blue Jasmine,” which hits theaters on July 26.

There are a couple of reasons for this. Allen’s films never want for good actors, of course, yet this one features an ensemble of players I’m particularly keen to see click with his dialogue — including the wonderful Bobby Cannavale, not to mention more intriguingly offbeat choices like Louis C.K. and (!) Andrew Dice Clay. Also exciting is the prospect of a meaty lead role for Cate Blanchett: the Australian virtuoso has been largely preoccupied with her family and her native theater company for the last few years, making this the first film since 2007’s “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” to put her front and center. It’s about time.

In a related point, not his “Melinda and Melinda” has an Allen film was structured around a solo female protagonist; indeed, bar “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” women have got a pretty bum deal in much of his recent work. But it’s a perspective that has brought out the best in his writing in the past — and the semi-serious premise of “Blue Jasmine,” which finds Blanchett’s pampered New York trophy wife forced to move to reexamine her life when her husband is arrested for fraud, suggests this could be one to file alongside “Alice” or “Another Woman,” two of my favorite (and most undervalued) Allen films. That the film is obviously inspired by the recent Bernie Madoff scandal adds further layers of intrigue.

The ensemble also includes Alec Baldwin (who himself previously starred in “Alice,” as well as last year’s negligible “To Rome With Love”) as the Madoff proxy; as Blanchett’s San Francisco-based sister, meanwhile, “Happy-Go-Lucky” star Sally Hawkins looks to have a richer part than she did in Allen’s 2007 “Cassandra’s Dream.” But the trailer suggests this is chiefly a showcase for Blanchett, who looks to be in fine, flinty form. If the film is as well-received by critics as “Vicky” and “Paris,” say, could she be the latest in the long line of stars to impress the Academy in an Allen film?

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

Ah, the “early, funny ones.” That seemingly innocent, but bitterly loaded, phrase for the evolved artist’s simpler, less conflicted juvenilia was coined by Woody Allen in his 1980 film “Stardust Memories” to playfully antagonize fans with limited patience for his tonal experimentation. He was hardly the first nor the last filmmaker to look down his nose at his own foundational work, even as he backslid towards less risky creative territory in years to follow. Rarer is the established auteur who exhibits an active hankering for his own “early, funny ones,” whether or not his audience is demanding the same — but then, Pedro Almodóvar has never played by anyone’s rules but his own.

Since hitting the conceptual and psychological heights of “Talk to Her” and “Bad Education” on either side of 2003, Almodóvar has spent most of the last decade wallowing in self-nostalgia of a sort — referencing and rehashing past forms and fascinations, to ends both warm and fuzzy (“Volver”) and coldly kinky (“The Skin I Live In”). But never had the Spaniard actively gone in for self-homage until “I’m So Excited!,” a puerile, primary-colored throwback to his name-making sex farces of the 1980s that falls stunningly short of those films in just about every department.

Not many films are worthy of their own exclamation point. Almodóvar got away with two in “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!,” one of the lurid, erotically charged comedies this considerably tamer effort aspires to emulate; given the depleted energy level here, not to mention several bemused-looking performances, a question mark may have been more appropriate. To be fair, the title is punctuation-free in it its original Spanish incarnation, “Los amantes pasajeros,” which hinges on a saucy pun that, like more than a few quips in Almodovar’s pseudo-breezy but ultimately rather fussy script, isn’t easily translatable. In poaching the title of the Pointers Sisters hit that soundtracks the film’s most memorable (which isn’t to say best) set piece — a campy cabin-crew karaoke number that went viral back in December — the international marketers calculatedly chose a peppy universal banner for a film heavy on murky, half-baked Spanish social satire, added that exclamatory adornment and hoped for the best.

Or perhaps the intent of that desperate punctuation mark is simply to tap into our fond memories of “Airplane!,” the evergreen disaster-movie spoof that so thoroughly milked the possibilities of airborne melodrama for comedy, it scarcely left room for new jokes in its sequel, much less a separate send-up 33 years later that makes no attempt to match its mile-a-minute gag rate. In fact, this scattershot, deliberately non-urgent tale of a corrupt crew wreaking havoc with panicked passengers on a botched flight to Mexico City would make a better double-bill with last year’s po-faced Denzel Washington vehicle “Flight”: if nothing else, both films form a convincing argument for the unlikely compatibility of substance abuse and emergency landings.

Unlike “Flight,” of course, the bulk of the drama takes place on the ill-starred flight in question, though not before a bafflingly punchline-free prologue in which amorous airport employees Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz inadvertently cause the technical fault that in turn causes the mid-air crisis. The stars, Almodóvar’s two most loyal servants, beat a hasty, well-advised retreat after this wasteful cameo appearance, never to be seen again. The faces we’re left with are considerably less famous, though at least a couple of them will be familiar to the director’s acolytes.

Javier Cámara, so wonderful in “Talk to Her” and by far the most alert performer here, plays the alpha male of the all-gay trio of air stewards serving (or servicing) the Business Class deck — where “All About My Mother” star Cecilia Roth holds court as the most vicious of the seven passengers on board. She’s a celebrity dominatrix of sorts — such professions being par for the course on Planet Almodóvar, naturally — while the others include a promiscuous soap-opera lothario, a shady investment banker, a contract killer, a virginal psychic and a pair of mescaline-smuggling honeymooners. That “contract killer” can be brushed aside mid-sentence is indicative of the patently trivial tone Almodóvar is going for here: this individual dramas of this oddball assortment are dealt with in passing, yet curiously, never braided the way the director would have done in such madcap early works as “What Have I Done to Deserve This?.” 

With composer Alberto Iglesias an uncharacteristically invisible presence, you may wonder why proceedings are so quiet, even given the vacuum-packed in-flight ambience. Here’s at least one reason why: the Economy Class passengers have been drugged, en masse, at the behest of the flight’s two pilots. One’s an alcoholic; the other’s an uptight family man maintaining a long-term affair with Cámara, a perma-randy cad who, for reasons of narrative contrivance, is physically incapable of telling a lie. You needn’t know the reason for this, or indeed for the mass doping. As those toward the front of the plane get increasingly drunk, high and naked in the face of potential doom, the endgame is an unsubtle yet unilluminating political allegory in which the have-nots are powerless while the wanton haves all but run them into the ground — and, in one of several flatly staged scenes of raunchiness, quite literally screw them over. Contrary to ragged, racy appearances, Almodóvar’s “early, funny ones” could be just as socially touchy as this one, though they were never quite this diagrammatic. 

The problems and perversions of Europe’s One Percent was a prominent theme at last month’s Cannes Film Festival, surfacing in works of variable insight and quality from such filmmakers as Paolo Sorrentino and Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi. Perhaps Almodóvar, a Croisette regular after all, might have joined them if this particular film of his weren’t at once so wispy and exclusive: it seems to have dodged the scrutiny of the Euro festival scene under the auspices of being a rollicking, audiences-first entertainment, when it’s arguably the stodgiest, most dogmatic film this usually extravagantly generous director has made. 

It’s certainly the dullest. So much of the banal construction — despite the presence of Almodóvar’s usual ace collaborators and his obligatory pop-art palette, it’s his first film in eons that doesn’t even look good — and slipshod storytelling on display here could be excused if the film were actually funny. But one-liner after one-liner floats in the recycled cabin air to nary a chuckle, as one physical gag after another lands on its side. Even the much-vaunted rendition (in its entirety, I might add) of the eponymous disco tune, mildly amusing in clipped teaser format, arrives here as an interminable, clumpily edited montage of almost pleading perkiness; at the very least, it’s the kind of grasping-at-straws entertainment that put-upon service staff might well rustle up to distract clients from impending death.

There’s a sense here that Almodóvar is dumbing down his own craftsmanship in the spirit of general japery, pretending to be the ruder, cruder artist he was 30, or even 20, years ago — at least in part to show us how far he’s come. But it’s a hollow, disingenuous trick that backfires horribly as it turns out that “I’m So Excited!” hasn’t the vim or vigour of even his later, “serious” works, much less the delicious silliness of his early cinematic finger-painting. Successful sketchiness requires more commitment than calculation, a formula this self-admiring yet self-demeaning throwaway from one of the modern cinema’s most gifted eccentrics gets almost bewilderingly wrong. It’s always tough to learn that you can’t go home again; what Pedro Almodóvar should hopefully know, however, is that he doesn’t need to.

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4912247474001

With such credible titles as “The Social Network” and the Coens’ recent Cannes sensation “Inside Llewyn Davis” on his CV, Justin Timberlake’s acting career has hit a certain plane of respectability, without any one performance making either critics or audiences stand to attention. Now comes “Runner, Runner” — the first film since Andrew Niccol’s botched 2011 sci-fi “In Time” to pitch Timberlake to us as a bona fide leading man.

Director Brad Furman last brought us the diverting, attractive but none-too-remarkable thriller “The Lincoln Lawyer,” and his latest appears to be, surprisingly enough, a diverting, attractive but none-too-remarkable thriller. Timberlake stars as a gifted Princeton student who loses his tuition money to a fishy online gambling site; confronting the site’s venal owner (Ben Affleck) soon leads to collusion, with the FBI snapping at their heels. Cue lots of running, presumably. 

Will this be the film that makes Timberlake a movie star, as opposed to a charismatic pop phenomenon who acts a bit? I wouldn’t count on it: he looks as amiably serviceable as usual, though at 32, perhaps a little long in the tooth to be playing a wide-eyed college boy. On the evidence of this trailer, it’s Affleck who’s having all the fun in a rare villainous role — though I think it’s safe to say he won’t be returning to the Oscars next year as anything but a presenter. Gemma Arterton does further eye-candy duty, and it’s always nice to see Anthony Mackie, even in a stock government-official role.

The film opens Sateside on September 27, and though the opening shot of the trailer rather oddly references “A Beautiful Mind,” this looks to be strictly post-summer popcorn fare. Nothing wrong with that. Will you be seeing it? How invested are you in Timberlake’s film career? Watch the trailer and tell us in the comments.

An email came over the transom today that normally wouldn’t have sparked my attention except it raised an interesting question: Could the Oscars’ all-time champion, Walt Disney, figure into the 86th annual Academy Awards in a big way with the animated short “Mickey Mouse in ‘Get a Horse?'”

The interesting thing about the film is that no one quite knows whether it’s a long lost restoration or a new film done in a throwback style. Disney himself provides the voice of Mickey Mouse in the short, and the studio is billing it as a “never-before-seen” film, which would lead you to believe it’s something Walt Disney Animation has found covered in dust on a shelf.

But who are we kidding? Shelved projects from the Mouse House, and certainly long lost films we’ve never heard anything about, are a bit rare. Everything Disney did or tried to do is well-documented and has been dragged out into the light of day. And trotting out a long-lost hand-drawn classic might be a little awkward in the wake of the studio’s dismantling of its hand-drawn animation division, wouldn’t it? This is surely something new. But to keep the air of mystery going, the studio hasn’t been forthcoming on answers.

Accompanying the film’s world premiere at the Annecy Animation Festival in Annecy, France next week will be director Lauren MacMullan (“Avatar: The Last Airbender,” “The Simpsons”), producer Dorothy McKim (“The Ballad of Nessie,” “Meet the Robinsons”) and animation legend Eric Goldberg (“Aladdin,” “Pocahontas,” “The Princess and the Frog”).

Here’s the official synopsis:

Starring the one and only Mickey Mouse and featuring Walt Disney himself as the voice of the iconic character, this black-and-white, hand-drawn short follows Mickey, his favorite gal pal Minnie Mouse and their friends Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow as they delight in a musical wagon ride-until Peg-Leg Pete shows up and tries to run them off the road.

Disney himself wouldn’t be receiving any posthumous recognition for the film or anything if it were nominated for Best Animated Short, but it’s worth pointing out that he is the Oscars’ all-time champion, having amassed 22 competitive awards throughout his career, all of them in the shorts categories. He even holds the record for most wins in a single year, having picked up four in 1954. Additionally, he’s received an Irving G. Thalberg Award in 1942 as well as three Honorary Oscars, for “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” in 1939, “Fantasia” in 1942 and for the creation of Mickey Mouse (his very first Oscar) in 1932.

And one more thing: He received a single nomination for Best Picture in his lifetime, and that was for 1964’s “Mary Poppins,” which adds another level of intrigue to this potentially being a very Disney Oscars.

The studio has John Lee Hancock’s “Saving Mr. Banks” on the way, from a very well-regarded original screenplay by Kelly Marcel. The film tells the story of Walt Disney’s struggle to get the rights to P.L. Travers’s 1934 book “Mary Poppins” and produce the classic musical film starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. Travers famously detested the outcome and swore to never again allow a Disney adaptation of her work.

In the film, Hollywood golden boy Tom Hanks will star as Disney and Emma Thompson as Travers. It will be interesting to see how it turns out but you can bet Hanks and Thompson will be in the thick of the Best Actor (or perhaps Best Supporting Actor) and Best Actress discussion at the end of the year, as it promises to be a big-time awards hopeful for the studio.

Bringing it back to “Get a Horse,” if the film is in fact an old classic that has been dusted off and revamped, I don’t see anything in the official AMPAS rules for animated shorts that would preclude it from being eligible. It is, after all, receiving its world premiere at Annecy. But, again, it’s surely a fully original piece, so indeed, it will likely be in the awards fray. And who wouldn’t like to see Mickey Mouse at the Oscars for the first time since 1995’s “Runaway Brain?” Only one of the nine Academy Award-nominated Mickey Mouse shorts has ever won, 1942’s “Lend a Paw.” No one would call Walt Disney overdue for a 23rd Oscar, but maybe poor Mickey could use another?

Stay tuned for more as it happens, and check out the poster for the new short below.

“Mickey Mouse in ‘Get a Horse!'” premieres at the Annecy Film Festival on June 11. It will be play in front of Disney’s feature-length film “Frozen,” which opens November 27.

“Saving Mr. Banks” opens in theaters just in time for the holidays on December 20, 2013.

With Seth MacFarlane having ruled himself out of proceedings, the annual pass-the-parcel game for one of the most thankless gigs in showbiz — hosting the Academy Awards — continues apace. Nobody’s taken on the burden for two years running since Billy Crystal in 1998, while in the past decade, seven people have been (thus far) one-night-only hires. Finding a resident host would probably save AMPAS a lot of bother every year, but so far, nobody seems willing and/or able to be the 21st-century Bob Hope. 

And since his name will inevitably be thrown into the hat again by pundits, as it has been for the last few years, Ricky Gervais has publicly declared that he’s open to offers. The sarky British comedian, who provided the Golden Globes with a signature emcee for three years running, has previously ruled himself out of the Oscar discussion. But with his Globes stint over — and with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler having proven a superior replacement act earlier this year — he’s had a change of heart.

Speaking to Tom O’Neil at Gold Derby, Gervais stated that he would now accept an offer from the Academy, though only under certain conditions. After O’Neil informed him that TV super-producer (and fellow Brit) Mark Burnett — best known for steering “Survivor,” but also various awards shows, including the Emmys — believes Gervais is the best man for the job, Gervais responded as follows:

“On the one hand I would be incredibly flattered and whatever you think of those sort of things, it would be a thrill and an honor to be asked. On the other hand I doubt the job offer would come without some strings attached. The worst string being, handing in my credentials as a comedian in favor of a family entertainer. We have to be able to poke fun at society without favoring any part of it because we are beholden to someone. And it’s a fine line between feeling like you’ve sold your soul and feeling like you’re ruining someone’s party. it would be very tempting though, I must admit.”

Gervais, of course, drew a divided response for his take-no-prisoners hosting style at the Globes, where he cheerfully but scabrously ridiculed nominees and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association alike. It’s an approach you can get away with at the Globes, where the boozy party atmosphere, as well as the awards’ generally acknowledged lesser prestige, is more conducive to a celebrity roasting. (Fey and Poehler followed his lead, though their delivery was a shade warmer.)

At the Oscars, though, satire is a more delicate art, and tends to go over better when a Hollywood insider is cracking the jokes. Billy Crystal, Steve Martin and even Whoopi Goldberg repeatedly managed the broadly preferred balance of ribbing and backpatting; Chris Rock’s crueller comedy, for example, drew a much chillier response.

Gervais’s quote suggests he’s not willing to make the affectionate compromises managed by the Crystals of this world, which is just one reason I suspect he isn’t at the top of the Academy’s wishlist — another being that they probably don’t want to be seen as taking the Globes’ sloppy seconds. Still, good to know that he’s around if they’re willing to go there; if the show’s organizers find themselves at the same kind of creative dead end that inspired them to hire Anne Hathaway and James Franco three years ago, they’d do well to make that call.

We’ll be getting into refreshing our Oscar contenders and predictions and whatnot in a few weeks, we promise. It’s nice to just leave it alone while, you know, we remain in the dark on what most of the season has to offer. But moves are being made here and there as studios start looking into the fall for prestige rollouts, and Universal has just made a bold move.

Peter Berg’s “Lone Survivor” tells the story of four Navy SEALS ambushed in an ill-fated covert mission to thwart a high0level Taliban operative. It’s apparently solid enough for the studio to position it in the thick of the awards hunt with a 12/27 qualifying release platformed out to other markets in January of 2014. After the disaster that was “Battleship,” Berg could sure use a bounce back.

Universal has Deadline carrying some water for them on this as Pete Hammond says he’s seen the film “in unfinished form” and — naturally — sings its praises. “Notwithstanding some of the most intense and realistic battle scenes in recent memory,” he writes, “it goes beyond the average war film in fleshing out real three-dimensional human beings caught up in the moral consequences of war, and in that way is more reminiscent of past Best Picture Oscar winners like ‘Platoon’ (1986) and Universal”s own ‘The Deer Hunter’ (1978).”

The film also stars Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch, Eric Bana and Taylor Kitsch. It’s based on the New York Times bestseller, “Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account Of Operation Redwing And The Lost Heroes Of SEAL Team 10” by Marcus Luttrell (with Patrick Robinson). The author is portrayed by Wahlberg in the film.

Universal could use a little extra firepower in the season. It really only has Ron Howard’s “Rush” to play with at the moment.

The last December release to win the Best Picture Oscar was Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby” in 2004. It’s certainly been difficult as of late to come out last and make a big impression, particularly when playing the qualifying run game. But a move like this will get it in the conversation and therefore help it out on the box office front in the otherwise dumping ground that is January.

More on the upcoming Oscar season in due time.

You have to hand it to Jennifer Lawrence — not that the 22-year-old Oscar-winner and industry princess needs anything to be handed to her right now. But even with her career currently at supernova status, the hard-working star isn’t resting on her laurels and waiting for all the plum opportunities to come her way. Instead, she’s moving toward developing her own projects. It was announced today that she’ll be making her producing debut with the prestige drama “Rules of Inheritance,” in which she’ll also obviously take the lead role.

Also attached to the project is Danish director Susanne Bier, who accepted the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar two years ago for “In a Better World,” and who made her first American feature in 2007 with “Things We Lost in the Fire.” Lawrence and Bier are evidently comfortable working together: the pair’s first collaboration, the period drama “Serena,” is out later this year. (“Serena” reunites Lawrence with her “Silver Linings Playbook” co-star Bradley Cooper; they play a Depression-era couple whose marriage is placed under strain by her infertility.)

“Rules of Inheritance” similarly fits Bier’s taste for angst-ridden domestic drama, and should provide a meaty role for Lawrence. Based on a recent, bestselling memoir by Los Angeles psychotherapist Claire Bidwell Smith, it’s a coming-of-age story recounting the experiences of a young woman whose parents are both diagnosed with cancer when she is just 14; facing this reality throws her prematurely and hazardously into adulthood over the ensuing decade.

Bidwell Smith’s book has been adapted by British screenwriter Abi Morgan, currently hot in the industry despite a mixed track record: her credits include “Shame,” “The Iron Lady” and TV series “The Hour.” It’s significant, though, that Lawrence is producing her first feature with a celebrated female director and screenwriter, and heartening to see an A-list project of this nature countering the industry’s gender imbalance.

Co-producing with Lawrence, meanwhile, is a Hollywood heavyweight: Bruce Cohen won a Best Picture Oscar for “American Beauty,” and received further nominations for “Milk” and “Silver Linings Playbook,” on which he and the young star presumably made a good impression on each other.

This is smart work all round by Lawrence: while franchise duty in the “Hunger Games” and “X-Men” sequels may be keeping her comfortably in the green, she knows that a recent Oscar win hardly guarantees a steady stream of quality dramatic scripts, particularly given the dearth of female-led projects even in Hollywood’s prestige sphere. So she’s seeking out her own, and building on productive professional partnerships from previous projects to make them happen. The onscreen role in “Rules of Inheritance” sounds baity enough, but is Lawrence angling to join Barbra Streisand as the only actress ever to score a Best Picture nod? Sky’s the limit for her right now.

In principle, when it comes to English-language remakes of successful foreign-language films, I’m not as militantly opposed to the idea as some critics. With the right balance of respect and initiative, a reinterpretation can often stand proudly beside the original. William Friedkin’s “Sorcerer” (a remake of “The Wages of Fear”), Christopher Nolan’s “Insomnia,” Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning “The Departed” (a remake of “Infernal Affairs”) and, soon to be in theaters, Jim Mickle’s ingenious gender-flip of Mexican horror hit “We Are What We Are” are among the notable exceptions to a subset of cinema that is, admittedly, crammed with such embarrassments as “Diabolique” and “Swept Away.”

So I’m not immediately panicking at the news that Sony Pictures has optioned a US remake of French auteur Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet” — the critically adored prison drama that won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2009, and scooped an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film the following year. But it does give me pause. The film, of course, is one we hold dear to our hearts here at In Contention: coincidentally, Kris and I both named it our #3 film of the year in our Top 10 lists for 2010 and 2009 respectively. As far as I’m concerned, they’re not taking on a property that allows them much room for improvement — so it had better be a very fresh take indeed.

The news that the remake is being driven by the production team of Neal H. Moritz and Toby Jaffe won’t exactly be music to the ears of the film’s arthouse-inclined loyalists. Moritz is most famous for producing all six entries to date in the “Fast and Furious” action franchise, while he and Jaffe have previously collaborated on two less-than-distinguished remakes of Hollywood fare: 2008’s “Prom Night” and last year’s disastrous “Total Recall.” If you’re unfamiliar with Moritz’s lengthy, hit-sprinkled filmography, further perusal will turn up such titles as “Dead Man Down,” “Jack the Giant Slayer,” “The Change-Up,” “The Green Hornet,” “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and “Not Another Teen Movie.” In happier news, he also has last year’s delightful “21 Jump Street” to his credit.

Still, it’s not the résumé you’d necessarily expect for a producer on this particular project, and you have to raise your eyebrows slightly at Columbia Picture production president Hannah Minghella’s statement that  “[Moritz] has a great track record with this kind of film.” What kind of film exactly is she referring to? He was an executive producer of the hit TV series “Prison Break,” which may be his closest point of reference to “A Prophet,” but even that high-flown jailbreak fantasy is essentially cheese to the chalk of Audiard’s brutal, finely wrought character study.

With those doubts now on the table, it’s only fair to note that there’s no reason why a remake of “A Prophet” shouldn’t be a commercially-minded enterprise: Audiard’s original, after all, was a vast success in its home country, and hardly a specialized item. Indeed, perhaps the best possible alternative incarnation of the film is as a broad, muscular American genre film — one that is hopefully graced with stars as galvanizing as Tahar Rahim and Niels Arestrup, and most importantly, finds an intelligent counterpoint for the original’s fascinatingly conflicted French-Algerian cultural context.

This last point seems crucial to me: stripped of its fractious social politics, “A Prophet” would have been a rather ordinary self-realization narrative. A suitable parallel in the melting pot of America’s prisons shouldn’t be hard to find, but it requires some care and imagination at the writing stage. (Perhaps Moritz and his chosen collaborators would be best off forgetting “Prison Break” and checking out some box-sets of “Oz,” which always struck me as a cultural cousin of sorts to Audiard’s film.)    

For his part, Moritz has stated: “This is an epic crime saga with compelling characters and original storytelling. I”m thrilled to have the opportunity to make an English language version of the film and I am grateful to have the trust of Jacques Audiard and his producers, as well as the writers Thomas Bidegain, Nicolas Peufaillit, and Abdel Raouf Dafri.”

He may have Audiard’s trust, but you wouldn’t blame fans of the film for feeling a little more cagey. What do you say? Is this a remake you’re keen to see, or are you feeling a little nervous? Have at it in the comments.