Last year the Broadcast Film Critics Organization initiated a new award, the Music + Film Award, which went to Quentin Tarantino. The honor is meant to recognize filmmakers who have heightened the impact of films through the use of source or original music. Tarantino was a decent enough inaugural winner, but when you think of this kind of thing, how can you think of anyone other than Scorsese? The list of iconic scenes he has set to popular music is endless, and the synthesis of the two has been a hallmark of his work since day one. So good on the BFCA for going there this year. It’s an obvious pick, but a brilliant one, nevertheless. Humble suggestion for next year’s recipient: Cameron Crowe. [The Odds]

Anne Thompson sits down with “Young Adult” director Jason Reitman. [Thompson on Hollywood]

David Poland sits down with “Pina” director Wim Wenders. [Hot Blog]

Trent Reznor makes a 35 minute sampler of his and Atticus Ross’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” score available for download. [NIN]

Emma Stone and Octavia Spencer on “The Help,” its impact and its critics. [Entertainment Weekly]

Donna Freydkin sits down with “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” stars Gary Oldman and Colin Firth. [USA Today]

Sending up the Rudin/Denby thing for the 20 people who get the joke. [Oscar Speak Podcast]

Accusing “The Muppets” of being “aimed at planting the seeds of class warfare among our precious children.” Yikes. [The Wrap]

Gregory Ellwood reports from the New York premiere of “War Horse.” [Awards Campaign]

Rounding up the year’s award-worthy actors, from George Clooney to Christopher Plummer. [Hollywood Reporter]

Poor punnery aside, some may say that this weekend”s box office returns indicate that “Shame” has overcome the stigma of its NC-17 rating, but it feels far more likely that Fox Searchlight made the right decision by rolling into the wave rather than fighting it. The studio embraced the rating, using it as a distinguisher, something to pull the film out from the pack. Journalists have utilized it as a talking point in interviews and editorial pieces about the film and the structure of the ratings system. I raised a question about the validity of the NC-17 rating in a piece last month and spoke with actress Carey Mulligan about her take on the decision during our interview.

Despite indications that the rating may damage “Shame,” NC-17 in all likelihood has worked as a spotlight on a film that otherwise may have needed to fight for the attention of a viewership inundated with the end-of-the-year rush of weightier, adult-themed films.

“Shame” opened on 10 screens in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco this weekend, earning $361,181. Those certainly aren”t blockbuster numbers but they do represent one of the strongest openings for an NC-17 rated film. Fox is continuing to capitalize on the attention of any perceived controversy as well as “Shame””s ability to surmount said controversy.

“In a dismal down weekend at the box office, ‘Shame” delivered the highest per-screen average of any film in this post holiday period,” said Fox Searchlight’s executive vice president of distribution Sheila DeLoach in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. DeLoach”s language also makes it clear that the studio is (not surprisingly) pushing Fassbender rather than the film itself for awards contention. “More and more people will jump on the bandwagon of Fassbender’s performance,” she said.

With two grand scale films by acclaimed directors in the race, several that pull at the tender mercies of our collective heartstrings and two that appeal directly to the sensibilities of cinephiles, it is looking less likely (though not out of the realm of possibility) that a film about an emotionally remote sex addict by a relatively new director will secure the five percent of the vote needed in order to receive a nomination. But Fassbender”s increased notoriety and wins at the British Independent Film Awards and earlier at the Venice Film Festival are keeping his performance in the conversation.

The studio is clearly wise to keep the focus on the film”s star, and its secondary unintentional draw, its (potentially) restrictive rating. Of course “Shame” still has a road ahead of it in terms of building an audience outside of the larger cities, but an awards push may be one of the better marketing tools Fox has at its disposal at this time.

For year-round entertainment news and commentary follow @JRothC on Twitter.

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Fifteen minutes really isn’t enough time with a guy like Gary Oldman. I’m sorry, not for me. Only a douche bag would complain about ANY time with Gary Oldman, of course. I’m aware of the navel-gazing. But someone that good, that many times out, and in that many different ways just kind of demands a laundry list of queries per film.

I didn’t get to do that. Fine, okay. The task at hand is discussing Oldman’s nuanced, awards-flirting performance in Tomas Alfredson’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” but I had to give myself some excuse to venture out. So I tried to tie it in.

The thing about Oldman — which I’ll get in to more in depth in my full interview later in the week — is how much he has stood out despite being a part of so many esteemed ensembles. The roll call of actors he’s worked with is massive, but just consider the casts of “State of Grace,” “JFK,” “True Romance,” “Basquiat,” “The Contender,” “Hannibal,” select entries in the “Harry Potter” franchise and Christopher Nolan’s successful Batman triolgy. And yet he’s always more of a cog in the wheel, whereas in “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” he’s fronting such an ensemble.

One of those films mentioned above, “JFK,” is one of my absolute favorite movies of all time. Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, the film features perhaps some of the best film editing of all time and is a bewitching soak in the usually unexciting realm of the courtroom drama. It’s command over imagery is staggering, and its ensemble is historic.

Of COURSE Oldman was a part of it.

Oldman played Lee Harvey Oswald in the film, featured in flashback frequently and having a chunk of the film — a gem of a sequence that likely solidified a lot of the film editing accolades “JFK” received in late-1991 — dedicated to his character. So I thought it would make a nice sidebar:

Here’s what Oldman had to say about working on Oliver Stone’s film:

“It was unusual, memorable, working on that movie. I certainly think it’s one of Oliver’s best films. What he was doing with the medium, the way he was inter-cutting black and white and color and 35 and eight millimeter. We’d never really seen anything like that, to take all those formats and play with them so successfully. And he was really on his game. He was on fire when he was doing it.

“But there was very little of Oswald on the page. He basically gave me airline tickets, some per diem and a few contacts and said, ‘Go to New Orleans, go to Dallas, and find out who Oswald was.’ You became a detective. An investigator. And that was a great experience, just sucking up the history and the world.

“You’d meet someone who knew Oswald, and then you’d meet someone else who knew Oswald and he’d have another sort of side that he would tell you. And there were people that believed he was a patsy, they had never seen anything like that. They’d say, ‘That’s not the Oswald I knew.’ And then other people would say, ‘Oh, yeah, I believe he did it.’ I mean there were probably people I spoke to who said they knew him and didn’t, because they come out of the woodwork, you know? Suddenly he’s everybody’s fucking friend. But I thought it was a great way of working.”

Will Oldman’s performance as Lee Harvey Oswald make the cut in tomorrow’s installment of the lists: The Top 10 Gary Oldman performances? We’ll see.

Check back for that and be on the lookout for the full Batman-free Oldman interview later this week.

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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The Camerimage festival, to my knowledge the only international film festival dedicated specifically to honoring the art of cinematography, rarely gets much attention on the awards beat, but it’s always an interesting event to follow. Based in Poland, the festival annually programs a selection of the year’s most remarkably photographed films, ranging from mainstream awards fare to exotic obscurities, with an international jury judging the DP’s work in each case. 

Naturally, awards follow. “The Piano” won the festival’s inaugural Golden Frog award in 1993, while subsequent winners include “Elizabeth,” “Road to Perdition,” “City of God,” “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” and “Slumdog Millionaire.”

But if all those were high-profile lensing showcases than went on to receive Oscar recognition in the same category, the awards can just as often go in unexpected directions.

Such was the case this year, when a jury that included cinematographers Dante Spinotti and Dick Pope, among others, had a strong slate of striking work to choose from, including Emmanuel Lubezki’s Oscar-tipped work on “The Tree of Life,” Manuel Alberto Claro for “Melancholia” (winner of the European Film Award this weekend), Sean Bobbitt for “Shame,” Seamus McGarvey for “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and Hoyte van Hoytema for “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” That’d make a pretty dreamy cinematography lineup in any awards context, and yet not one of those films came away with one of the jury’s three prizes.

Instead, it was (as coincidence would have it) the two supposed frontrunners for the foreign-language Oscar that came out in front, with Poland’s own “In Darkness,” photographed by Jolanta Dylewska, winning the gold. I haven’t seen Agnieszka Holland’s Holocaust drama yet, so can’t comment on its visual merits, but I’m rather pleased to see “A Separation,” and its DP Mahmoud Kalari, taking the runner-up spot: it’s easy to overlook how intelligently shot this technically modest character drama is, but the way the camera negotiates space between its players is subtly brilliant.

The bronze award, meanwhile, went to my own personal winner in the category this year: Robbie Ryan’s breathtaking, nature-wed lensing of Andrea Arnold’s “Wuthering Heights,” which counter-intuitively boxes the soaring Yorkshire landscape into the Academy ratio, was also awarded at the Venice Film Festival, and deserves every accolade it gets. (US audiences will see what I’m talking about next year.)

The full list of winners and competition entries:

Golden Frog: “In Darkness” (Jolanta Dylewska)

Silver Frog: “A Separation” (Mahmoud Kalari)

Bronze Frog: “Wuthering Heights” (Robbie Ryan)

“Coriolanus” (Barry Ackroyd)

“Le Havre” (Timo Salminen)

“Melancholia” (Manuel Alberto Claro)

“The Mill and the Cross” (Lech J. Majewski and Adam Sikora)

“Nothing’s All Bad” (Eric Kress)

“The Prize” (Wojciech Staron)

“Rose” (Piotr Sobocinski Jr.)

“Shame” (Sean Bobbitt)

“Three” (Frank Griebe)

“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” (Hoyte van Hoytema)

“The Tree of Life” (Emmanuel Lubezki)

“We Need to Talk About Kevin” (Seamus McGarvey)

For more views on movies, awards season and other pursuits, follow @GuyLodge on Twitter.

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Andy Serkis is in the middle of nowhere. Quite literally. He’s at the base of Mt. Cook in New Zealand’s Southern Alps filming second unit material on Peter Jackson’s heavily anticipated film “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” and cell service is a luxury.

Last Thursday, in fact, the actor accepted the Tech Pioneer Award from the Whistler Film Festival via Skype. But it wasn’t so easy. He was in a helicopter, landed in a field in a remote farming community, found the house of someone who knew someone who knew someone on the crew and set up a laptop in the living room to call in.

This morning — amid a number of dropped calls, natch — I talked to him ostensibly for an upcoming Tech Support interview regarding the visual effects of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and “The Adventures of Tintin” (each of which feature Serkis in performance capture roles). But it seemed like a good opportunity to get his thoughts on the technology’s place in the awards season while I was at it.

We’ve mentioned the concentrated push on behalf of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and Serkis’s performance in particular a couple of times. It’s highly unlikely the move registers for the Academy, but it’s a noble effort on behalf of the process that could make it bubble up in a few areas this season, as it did over the weekend when Serkis received a Best Supporting Actor nomination from the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association.

This is what the actor had to say about whether performance capture portrayals should be considered alongside live action portrayals:

“I absolutely believe it should be a part of the acting category. At the end of the day, performance capture is a technology. It’s not anything other than that. It’s a way of recording an actor’s performance, and so if the performance is emotionally engaging and means something to an audience, then that is generated initially by the work of the actor. The enhancement of it in a film where the ownership, the authorship of the character originates from the actor, that’s significantly different than an animated movie, where the authorship of the character really belongs to a much bigger group of people.

“It has been frustrating, I suppose, in the past. The way people have referred to my work in the past has been very elliptical, I suppose because there has been a lot of mystery around performance capture. What’s happening more and more is it’s explained a lot more clearly; it’s easier to show stuff. You can see direct correlations between an actor’s performance and the final digital manifestation. And actually the whole new generation of filmmakers and performers totally get it. It’s incredibly gratifying to see that it’s being received now and not looked at as something mystical and strange.”

Be on the lookout for that Tech Support interview with Serkis and Weta Digital visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri in the coming weeks.

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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Apologies for being a little slow this weekend in getting to the European Film Award results — which Gregory Ellwood listed over on his blog. It was a busy day, and by the time I remembered them, the British Independent Film Awards swallowed up my evening.

Still, it seems we were not the only people with other things on our mind: apparently, most of the major winners couldn’t be bothered to turn up to what this first-hand report suggests was a pretty shoddy ceremony. In the case of Lars von Trier — whose film “Melancholia,” as expected, won the Best European Film award — that was to be expected. Having publicly taken a vow of silence a few months ago in the wake of further official admonishment for his controversial Nazi-related comments at Cannes in May, he proved as good as his word, sending his wife to collect the award on his behalf. Lucky woman.

That wasn’t the only way in which the EFA ceremony recalled the von Trier Cannes fracas. In a bit of irony so delicious it’s tempting to suspect someone of rigging the vote, the difficult Dane lost the Best Director award to his compatriot Susanne Bier — the very woman he so pointedly dissed in that fateful press conference. (If your memory has faded, I quote: “I was happy to be a Jew, then I met Susanne Bier and I wasn’t so happy.”) Bier won, of course, for her Oscar-winning film “In a Better World” — not a fraction as well-directed a film as “Melancholia,” for my money, but I can’t help but smile at this particular bit of karmic revenge.

The European Film Awards frequently opt for dull sweeps, so it was interesting to see that “Melancholia” only added two deserved technical trophies (for cinematography and production design) to its big win. Any hopes Kirsten Dunst might have had of becoming the first American performer to win at the EFAs were dashed by the very actress she beat in Cannes: the absent Tilda Swinton, who took her second big award of the week (after the National Board of Review win) for “We Need to Talk About Kevin.” 

Colin Firth (also not present) made it an all-British affair in the acting races, tardily adding yet another trophy to his groaning mantelpiece for “The King’s Speech”; the Oscar-winning film, which opened too late to compete in last year’s ceremony, also took the People’s Choice Award and, rather randomly, the editing prize. As major Oscar players go, it did better than this year’s Best Picture hopeful, “The Artist,” which lost all its bids save for Best Composer — perhaps the Hollywood-set comedy didn’t feel quite European enough for the voters. I imagine Michel Hazanavicius and Jean Dujardin have their eyes on other prizes.

Finally, for those looking for further links to the American awards race, Wim Wenders took Best Documentary honors for “Pina” — a choice would have been something of a no-brainer even if Wenders weren’t head of the EFA. Meanwhile, “Chico & Rita,” a film I’m starting to think could well pop up as a surprise inclusion on Oscar nomination morning, won the animation prize. More on these at Awards Campaign.

For more views on movies, awards season and other pursuits, follow @GuyLodge on Twitter.

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We’re closing in on the holiday season, so what better time to start up our contest circuit? The swag is coming fast and furious and I need to unload it before it takes over my dining room table like a fungus. #humblebrag

Paramount Pictures has been giving it the old college try on bringing “Super 8” back around and situating it in or near the awards conversation. The film — which you’ll recall wasn’t exactly a high mark for me this year — was beloved by many and I imagine a number of readers would like a crack at some free goodies. So let’s give this a whirl.

I have two DVD copies of “Super 8” to give away. So if you want one, help Paramount make its case for the film in the awards season. In 100 words or less, explain why the film is, to you, one of the year’s finest and why it deserves serious Oscar consideration. The two answers that come closest to making me consider the implications of the argument (since, alas, no argument is likely to outright convince me) get the spoils.

Deadline is Wednesday at noon, PT, and I’ll note the winners in the comments section here. Now… Go!

Tying Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball” to the times has been a bit of a dubious game of connect the dots to me all season long. Much as I love the film (which walked away with two key prizes at last week’s New York Film Critics Circle awards vote). I respect that there are universal truths therein, but I think thrusting the faux gravitas of zeitgeist onto it is a stretch.

Nevertheless, I think the film does speak to a more specific and, for our purposes, applicable idea: awards season campaign spending.

Reading through Patrick Goldstein’s recent column at the Los Angeles Times calling for a luxury tax on studios that spend over a pre-determined cap (good idea), it got me thinking of what it takes to stand out in an Oscar season, the creativity involved, and indeed, the creative spending. Not everyone can be the New York Yankees this time of year, but with the right brain trust, anyone can be the Oakland Athletics.

The thing about Oscar season is that it’s not about getting people to like your movie. It’s about getting people to watch your movie. Anne and I are always talking on Oscar Talk about the intimidating pile of screeners that accumulates on voters’ shelves every year. Everyone is going to watch “War Horse,” “The Artist,” “The Help” — movies everyone is talking about. The trick is getting people to put your movie into the player, too.

So you get creative.

J.C. Chandor’s “Margin Call,” for instance, landed at Sundance way back in January. An October 21 limited release was set but it was in danger of losing ground to the more visible awards heavies of the fall. A video-on-demand release strategy has kept it not only relevant, but caused it to appear unique amid the fray. Sitting there on television for an affordable eight bucks, it has not only reached a significant audience but has become a story as a result.

Another example of standing out — not that a film from a recently Oscar-nominated director and a movie star billing necessarily needs to — is Jason Reitman’s “Young Adult.” This was more an example of a movie that needed to wade into the season rather than make a festival splash. The pop-up screening strategy did that and it made the film a talking point and a unique element of the usual business of things.

Some films have inherent qualities that are merely embossed as a marketing ploy. The NC-17 rating for “Shame” is probably the most effective tool in its arsenal right now, because people are talking about it. The curiosity factor triggers and suddenly you’ve hooked a member who’s watching the film. Maybe he or she will loathe it, but you’ve at least got their consideration, and that’s more than half the battle.

“We Bought a Zoo” sneaked over the Thanksgiving weekend to build buzz. “Midnight in Paris” stayed in theaters until it became Woody Allen’s highest-grossing film and delayed its DVD release until the Christmas holiday. Everyone is looking to stand out in some small way.

There’s also the oldest trick in the book: the re-release. The Weinstein Company gave that a shot this year with “Sarah’s Key.” But while there may have been a slim chance of getting Kristin Scott Thomas into the Best Actress conversation for the film, the goal might have been adding more box office dollars by creating the aura of “awards contender” around it (a classic Weinstein strategy that is pretty much standard for any number of smaller contenders these days).

Which brings up an interesting point. The Oscars were created as a marketing ploy from day one. It was about getting people to come see more films. The appreciation of art and business have always gone hand-in-hand. And often, in the modern climate, the seal of Oscar recognition is merely a tool for generating cash flow.

But even after all that, getting there can ultimately be too pricey. Eventually it boils down to the simple question: Is it worth it? “The Wackness” and “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” producer Keith Calder put it rather succinctly on Twitter last week:

“I believe in campaign finance reform, lobbying reform and award season campaign reform. Low grossing quality films have to choose between losing money because of the cost of campaigning or not being a viable contender. I say this as a producer with no film in the race, just observing the race is rigged. The cost of the campaign drastically outweighs the benefits of being nominated, and often the benefits of winning.”

Sometimes the smartest business play is just hoping you get on base on — gasp! — merit alone.

Guy and I have run a comb through the Contenders section once again. The sidebar predictions reflect thouse changes.

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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The 39th annual Annie Award nominees have been announced this morning, and as usual, DreamWorks Animation had a really strong showing. The studio’s one-two punch of “Kung Fu Panda 2” and “Puss in Boots” led the field with 11 and nine nominations respectively.

DreamWorks has been mobilizing as of late behind the scenes, bringing on awards publicists outside of the in-house Paramount team. The thinking is that the studio has a big slate, what with home-grown productions like “The Adventures of Tintin” and “Rango” to work with as it is, and no one wants the focus split too much. That’s doubly important considering that, even in a five-nominee year, it’ll be tough for DreamWorks to get both of its films in.

“The Adventures of Tintin” managed to be nominated for Best Animated Feature, but as I’ve been mentioning all season, I anticipated the film would be qualified as animation for the Oscars to avoid a stink, but I don’t expect the animation branch to nominate it in the final analysis. We’ll see if that happens.

“Winnie the Pooh” managed to nail down 8 nominations (including for writing and directing), but somehow missed out on the “let’s nominate everything” Best Animated Feature category. What gives there?

Meanwhile, Pixar joined the party again this year after protesting via exclusion last year. The studio had beef with the rules and judging procedures of the organization and didn’t submit “Toy Story 3” for consideration last year. I guess it’s water under the bridge now as “Cars 2” was submitted this year and received seven nominations.

Fox’s “Rio” and the aforementioned “Rango” scored 8 nominations apiece. Curiously, Aardman’s “Arthur Christmas” only managed 6.

Of the short subject category, “I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat,” “La Luna” “Paths of Hate,” “Sunday” and “Wild Life” are the films cited that were advanced by the Academy

The full list of nominations:

Best Animated Feature
“The Adventures of Tintin”
“A Cat in Paris”
“Arrugas (Wrinkles)”
“Arthur Christmas”
“Cars 2”
“Chico & Rita”
“Kung Fu Panda 2”
“Puss in Boots”
“Rango”
“Rio”

Best Animated Special Production
“Adventure Time: Thank You”
“Batman: Year One”
“Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas”
“Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Masters”
“Prey 2”
“Star Tours”

Best Animated Short Subject
“Adam and Dog”
“I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat”
“La Luna”
“(Notes on) Biology”
“Paths of Hate”
“Sunday”
“The Ballad of Nessie”
“The Girl and the Fox”
“Wild Life”

Animated Effects in an Animated Production
“The Adventures of Tintin”
“Cars 2”
“Cars 2”
“Kung Fu Panda 2”
“Puss in Boots”
“Rango”
“Star Wars: The Clone Wars”
“Winnie the Pooh”

Animated Effects in a Live Action Production
“Cowboys & Aliens”
“Cowboys & Aliens”
“Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides”
“Transformers: Dark of the Moon”

Character Animation in a Feature Production
“Kung Fu Panda 2”
“Kung Fu Panda 2”
“Puss in Boots”
“Rio”
“Rio”
“Winnie the Pooh”
“Winnie the Pooh”

Character Animation in a Live Action Production
“HOP”
“Paul”
“Paul”
“Rise of the Planet of the Apes”

Character Design in a Feature Production
“Arthur Christmas”
“Cars 2”
“Puss in Boots”
“Rango”
“Rio”

Directing in a Feature Production
“Gnomeo & Juliet”
“Kung Fu Panda 2”
“Puss in Boots”
“Rango”
“Rio”
“Winnie the Pooh”

Music in a Feature Production
“The Adventures of Tintin”
“Puss in Boots”
“Rio”
“Winnie the Pooh”

Production Design in a Feature Production
“Cars 2”
“Kung Fu Panda 2”
“Rio”
“Winnie the Pooh”

Storyboarding in a Feature Production
“Arthur Christmas”
“Cars 2”
“Gnomeo & Juliet”
“Kung Fu Panda 2”
“Kung Fu Panda 2”
“Puss in Boots”
“Rango”
“Rango”
“Winnie the Pooh”

Voice Acting in a Feature Production
Ashley Jensen, “Arthur Christmas”
Bill Nighy, “Arthur Christmas”
Jim Cummings, “Gnomeo & Juliet”
Gary Oldman, “Kung Fu Panda 2”
James Hong, “Kung Fu Panda 2”
Zach Galifianakis, “Puss in Boots”
Jemaine Clement, “Rio”

Writing in a Feature Production
“The Adventures of Tintin”
“Arthur Christmas”
“Gnomeo & Juliet”
“Rango”
“Winnie the Pooh”

Editing in a Feature Production
“The Adventures of Tintin”
“Cars 2”
“Kung Fu Panda 2”
“Puss in Boots”
“Rango”

JURIED AWARDS

Winsor McCay Award: Walt Peregoy, Borge Ring, Robert Searle

June Foray Award: Art Leonardi

Special Achievement: Depth Analysis

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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A few weeks ago, in a piece concerning Technicolor’s restoration of a colorized print of Georges Méliès’s “A Trip to the Moon” featured in Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo,” I mentioned that one of the projects the company was working on was a restoration of the first-ever Best Picture winner, William A. Wellman’s “Wings.”

The Academy announced this week that the film will screen as part of a celebration of Paramount Pictures’ 100th anniversary (though pity the release says nothing about Technicolor). The screening will happen on Wednesday, January 18 at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills and will feature live musical accompaniment from organist Clark Wilson.

The live music aspect is nice and all, but the restoration also came with a full-on orchestral re-recording of the score for the film. I’m told that will be featured on the upcoming home video release.

“Wings” won the Best Picture Oscar for “Outstanding Production” at the inaugural Academy Awards in 1929. However, that first ceremony was the only one to feature two different “Best Picture” categories, as F.W. Murnau’s brilliant “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” won for “Unique and Artistic Production.” “Wings” also won for Best Engineering Effects, a progenitor of the Best Visual Effects category.

“Sunrise” and “7th Heaven,” however, were the big winners of the evening, taking home three trophies each. Janet Gaynor won Best Actress in a circumstance that mirrors many critics’ award decisions today, her work in three films — “7th Heaven,” “Street Angel” and “Sunrise” — all being cited. “7th Heaven” also won the Best Director prize for Frank Borzage, though for dramatic pictures (as the category was then split between comedic and dramatic endeavors), and Best Adapted Screenplay. “Sunrise” won Best Cinematography.

The Academy event will be presented in conjunction with “Paramount’s Movie Milestones: A Centennial Celebration,” an exhibition of photographs, posters, design sketches and personal correspondence highlighting some of Paramount’s most celebrated films and filmmakers over the past 100 years, according to the press release. The exhibition will be open to the public from Friday, January 6 through Sunday, February 5 in the Academy’s Grand Lobby Gallery.

Tickets for the screening are $5 for the general public and $3 for Academy members and students. They are available for purchase now at www.oscars.org.

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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God bless the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association, which has the quickest turnaround time on nods-to-winners of the circuit. They announce and get out of your hair really fast, and sometimes, they shine a light in interesting areas.

When “The Artist” swept through with a field-leading eight nominations Saturday, the writing was on the wall. Indeed, the film won the Best Picture and Best Score prizes from the organization, but curiously, nothing else. The wealth was spread as Martin Scorsese nailed down Best Director for “Hugo” (his second prize of the season), George Clooney won Best Actor for his work on “The Descendants” and Michelle Williams took Best Actress for “My Week with Marilyn.”

Albert Brooks also claimed his second trophy of the year, winning Best Supporting Actor for “Drive,” while Octavia Spencer claimed her first Best Supporting Actress win of the year for “The Help.”

You can read the full list of winners below, but the most interesting win, I think, is “50/50” claiming another Best Original Screenplay award after winning with the National Board of Review. It’s a sure-fire WGA nominee with all the ineligibilities, but could it be on the way to an Oscar slot, too? Perhaps.

Check out the full slate of WAFCA nominees here. The full list of winners:

Best Picture: “The Artist”

Best Director: Martin Scorsese, “Hugo”

Best Actor: George Clooney, “The Descendants”

Best Actress: Michelle Williams, “My Week with Marilyn”

Best Supporting Actor: Albert Brooks, “Drive”

Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, “The Help”

Best Adapted Screenplay: “The Descendants”

Best Original Screenplay: “50/50”

Best Art Direction: “Hugo”

Best Cinematography: “The Tree of Life”

Best Score: “The Artist”

Best Animated Feature: “Rango”

Best Documentary Feature: “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”

Best Foreign Language Film: “The Skin I Live In”

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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Todd McCarthy has written up the best films scores of the year. So I guess I’ll offer up some favorites. I love traditional stuff from John Williams (“The Adventures of Tintin”) and Howard Shore (“Hugo”) this year. I also delighted in the jazzy change of pace Alberto Iglesias gave “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” as well as the subtle grandeur Mychael Danna brought to “Moneyball.” Alexandre Desplat’s shifting gears in the midst of his work on “The Ides of March” was fantastic. Hans Zimmer’s “Rango” work was memorable and I actually dug what Patrick Doyle did on “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” but I’d love to see Steven James get some recognition for what he did on “Attack the Block” some time this year. (As if.) [Hollywood Reporter]

A curiously nihilistic Tim Gray on Oscar campaigning: “Selling is…the Hollywood way.” And it always has been. [Variety]

The Raymond Chandler essay he quotes in his piece, which was a different year and a different outlet. [Atlantic]

Matt Zoller Seitz on Martin Scorsese’s greatest films. [Salon]

Owen Gleiberman asks when film critics suddenly got to be on a first-name basis with actors. [Entertainment Weekly]

“Lady Thatcher’s closest confidante has expressed concern at the way the former prime minister is portrayed in a new film about her life.” [Telegraph]

“Young Adult” gets prime real estate in the local paper. [Los Angeles Times]

Adam Chitwood on the Oscars “The Muppets” could win, though FYI, “Me Party” and “Let’s Talk About Me” were not submitted for Best Original Song consideration, so they are not eligible. [Collider]

Lou Lumenick writes up the non-news David Denby embargo break of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” a film not worth a fraction of the drama surrounding it this week. [New York Post]

Jeff Wells bends Robert Downey Jr. over his knee and spanks him for being a conservative. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

It may be deemed the British film most likely to register at the Oscars and BAFTAs, but UK box-office sleeper “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” had to take a back seat to the little guys at tonight’s British Independent Film Awards in London. Instead, it was Paddy Considine’s hard-hitting directorial debut “Tyrannosaur” that surprisingly emerged as the night’s big winner, taking three awards including Best British Independent Film.

Considine’s debut is a vastly impressive and assured one, striking its emotional notes hard and serving as a vehicle for some startling performances — the most haunting of which, Olivia Colman’s grievously abused middle-class samaritan, was a richly deserving winner of the Best Actress award. (Tilda Swinton’s run of luck this week, which saw her triumph at the National Board of Review and the European Film Awards, came to an end here.)

I’m not convinced that “Tyrannosaur” quite merits the top prize ahead of more formally ambitious works like “Shame” and “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” but I commend the BIFA jury for placing their chips on a film so brutal and uncompromisingly bleak, and the least commercially successful of the nominees. Last year, “The King’s Speech” swept the board here, prompting many to accuse the BIFAs of selling out on their independent principles; one wonders if that factored into their decision this year.

Still, “Tyrannosaur” was far from a sweeper, as the BIFA jury found a way to recognize most of the major players on the nominee list. Though Swinton missed, “We Need to Talk About Kevin” was rewarded with the Best Director prize for an absent (on honeymoon) Lynne Ramsay — a nice bookend to the Best Debut Director award the Scot won 12 years ago for “Ratcatcher.” (This year, that prize went, logically enough, to Considine too.)  

Michael Fassbender’s Best Actor award for “Shame” was as inevitable as it was deserved; more surprising was the Best Supporting Actor honor for Irish character actor Michael Smiley for the gutsy quasi-horror film “Kill List.” Perhaps he benefited from the difficulty inherent in choosing between “Tinker, Tailor” stars Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch, though it was also an apt way to reward a significant critical hit whose violence could possibly have polarized the jury.

Over in Best Supporting Actress, Oscar frontrunner Vanessa Redgrave scooped her first trophy of the season for her towering performance as Volumnia in Ralph Fiennes’s revisionist Shakespeare adaptation “Coriolanus”; it will surely not be her last. The only other such race-leader to snag a prize tonight was “A Separation,” which predictably took Best Foreign Film. (Nothing wrong with predictability in this case.) One would like to say the same about “Senna,” a no-brainer winner for Best Documentary (not least since it was also nominated for Best Film), but we all know how that turned out.

In an evening full of well-earned victories, the most heartening for me personally was the brace of awards won by Andrew Haigh’s exquisitely low-key gay romance “Weekend.” Sadly under-nominated in the first place, the surprise arthouse hit won both awards it was up for: Most Promising Newcomer for co-lead actor Tom Cullen, and Best Achievement in Production. (I’m not sure how one blindly judges production, but given that Haigh’s film was made on an astonishing budget of £120,000, I have no doubt it’s a worthy winner.)

Indeed, the only film that likely comes away tonight feeling a little miffed is, well, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”: from seven nominations, the film took only the Technical Achievement Award for Maria Djurkovic’s extraordinary production design. (Please take note, Academy.) It’ll have its day, quite possibly, at the BAFTAs; I suspect that might have been the jury’s reasoning too.

All in all, a fine set of winners representing a pretty remarkable year for British cinema. The ceremony itself, meanwhile, was an entertainingly scrappy affair — thanks mostly to host Chris O’Dowd, newly of “Bridesmaids” fame, who spent the evening getting so paralytically drunk as to make the Golden Globes look positively funereal. Staggering about on stage, calling Vanessa Redgrave a “sexy owl,” and doggedly maintaining an off-the-wall running joke about presenter Ron Howard sexually harrassing Carey Mulligan, he’s unlikely to threaten Billy Crystal’s position any time soon, but he sure was fun to watch.

Full list of winners: 

Best Film: “Tyrannosaur”

Best Director: Lynne Ramsay, “We Need to Talk About Kevin”

Best Actress: Olivia Colman, “Tyrannosaur”

Best Actor: Michael Fassbender, “Shame”

Best Supporting Actress: Vanessa Redgrave, “Coriolanus”

Best Supporting Actor: Michael Smiley, “Kill List”

Best Screenplay: Richard Ayoade, “Submarine”

Best Foreign Film: “A Separation” 

Best Documentary: “Senna”

Best Debut Director: Paddy Considine, “Tyrannosaur”

Most Promising Newcomer: Tom Cullen, “Weekend”

Best Achievement in Production: “Weekend”

Technical Prize: Maria Djurkovic (production design), “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” 

Richard Harris Award: Ralph Fiennes

Best Short Film: “Chalk”

Raindance Award: “Leaving Baghdad”

Not far behind the New York film critics’ vote is the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association, which today made a firm declaration for Michel Hazanavicius’s “The Artist.” The film (which won the NYFCC prize) led the field with eight nominations.

There wasn’t much wealth-spreading or unique thinking going on. The group tried to shake things up by tipping its hat to Tom McCarthy’s “Win Win” in the Best Film category, but they couldn’t be bothered to chalk it up anywhere else other than the Best Original Screenplay category.

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” screened just in time for the vote, but like with the other early birds this year, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” was not shown. The former did get a score nomination; the double CD soundtrack was also mailed out to voting bodies earlier this week.

“Drive” had a good showing across the field and has me hopeful a few other groups will take that lead, though. The group gets brownie points for planting a flag on behalf of Andy Serkis in the Best Supporting Actor category at a key point in time for that campaign (as long as it’s not a stunt, that is), but mostly, the whole list reads like a collective of Oscar frontrunners with an ever-so-slight critical bend.

These early guys will surely set the pace, and this being a year that could go a couple of different ways (and therefore really could do without the burden of group think), allow me to get a few FYCs out there before we’re too far gone.

Think outside the box. Someone be brave enough to spring for a foreign film outside of the ghetto of its own separate category. “A Separation” has a script and performances worth the consideration. Someone take “Rampart,” “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and “Shame” a little more seriously than merely recognizing the brilliant lead portrayals. Don’t be afraid of heaping Best Picture kudos onto popular/blockbuster fare you loved — “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” for instance, or “The Adventures of Tintin.”

Anyway, this year’s list of WAFCA nominees are below. And remember, as always, a quick turnaround on these. The winners will be announced Monday, December 5.

Best Film
“The Artist”
“The Descendants”
“Drive”
“Hugo”
“Win Win”

Best Director
Woody Allen, “Midnight in Paris”
Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”
Alexander Payne, The Descendants”
Nicolas Winding Refn, “Drive”
Martin Scorsese, “Hugo”

Best Actor
George Clooney, “The Descendants”
Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”
Michael Fassbender, Shame”
Brad Pitt, “Moneyball”
Michael Shannon, “Take Shelter”

Best Actress
Viola Davis, “The Help”
Elizabeth Olsen, “Martha Marcy May Marlene”
Meryl Streep, “The Iron Lady”
Tilda Swinton, “We Need to Talk About Kevin”
Michelle Williams, “My Week with Marilyn”

Best Supporting Actor
Kenneth Branagh, “My Week with Marilyn”
Albert Brooks, “Drive”
John Hawkes, “Martha Marcy May Marlene”
Christopher Plummer, “Beginners”
Andy Serkis, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”

Best Supporting Actress
Bérénice Bejo, “The Artist”
Melissa McCarthy, “Bridesmaids”
Carey Mulligan, “Shame”
Octavia Spencer, “The Help”
Shailene Woodley, “The Descendants”

Best Acting Ensemble
“Bridesmaids”
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2”
“The Help”
“Hugo”
“Margin Call”

Best Adapted Screenplay
“The Descendants”
“The Help”
“Hugo”
“Moneyball”
“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”

Best Original Screenplay
“The Artist”
“Bridesmaids”
“50/50”
“Midnight in Paris”
“Win Win”

Best Animated Feature
“The Adventures of Tintin”
“Arthur Christmas”
“Puss in Boots”
“Rango”
“Winnie the Pooh”

Best Documentary
“Being Elmo: A Puppeteer”s Journey”
“Buck”
“Cave of Forgotten Dreams”
“Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life”
“Project Nim”

Best Foreign Language Film
“13 Assassins”
“Certified Copy”
“I Saw the Devil”
“Pina”
“The Skin I Live In”

Best Art Direction
“The Artist”
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2”
“Hugo”
“The Tree of Life”
“War Horse”

Best Cinematography
“The Artist”
“Hugo”
“Melancholia”
“The Tree of Life”
“War Horse”

Best Score
“The Artist”
“Drive”
“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”
“Hugo”
“War Horse”

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Two weeks after the Academy advanced 15 films in the race for Best Documentary Feature, the non-fiction awards circuit is showing further signs of life.

Last night, the International Documentary Association held its annual awards gala. None of the nominees happened to be on the AMPAS shortlist, but “Nostalgia for Light” came out on top, besting “Better This Workd” (one of the surprise Academy omissions), “How to Die in Oregon,” “The Redemption of General Butt Naked” and “The Tiniest Place.” One of last year’s Best Documentary Short Oscar nominees, “Poster Girl” — a fantastic portrait of a female Iraq veteran grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder — managed to win the short film prize (beating out fellow Oscar nominee “The Warriors of Qiugang” in the process).

Meanwhile, the Producers Guild of America (PGA) was busy tapping its list of documentary nominees for the year. Those had a little more in common with the Academy shortlist, though not much.

Favorite in the category, “Project Nim,” was nominated along with fellow short-lister “Bill Cunningham New York.” The similarities stopped there, though, as “Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest,” “Senna” and “The Union” rounded out the nominees.

There doesn’t appear to be anything approaching a consensus forming from the documentary announcements we’ve had thus far. In addition to the IDA and PGA, the Cinema Eye Honors named nominees in October. “Nostalgia for Light” and “Senna” also popped up there, but neither made it as an Oscar finalist. The only shared entry among the three is “Project Nim,” which was also nominated by the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association today and looks more and more like the favorite. The New York Film Critics chose Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” which, you guessed it, isn’t on the Academy shortlist. (It was cited by the D.C. crowd as well.)

Precursors aren’t necessarily the biggest help with calling this race. The committee that screens each eventual nominee can react any number of ways, but for now, it really does seem like James Marsh could be on his way to a second Oscar. (He previously won in 2009 for “Man on Wire.”)

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A copy of this year’s WGA ballot made its way to my inbox today, so naturally the process of sussing out what screenplays did and didn’t make the cut was in order. There are 33 adapted screenplays on the ballot and 55 originals.

However, even with considerably more contenders, the original field was gutted the most. Contenders in the thick of the Oscar hunt that aren’t on the ballot (due typically to not being in accordance with paperwork guidelines or signatory stipulations) are: “The Artist,” “Beginners,” “The Iron Lady,” “The Lady,” “Like Crazy,” “Margin Call,” “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” “Melancholia,” “Rango,” “Shame” and “Take Shelter.” Ouch. What does that even leave? I’ll get to that in a moment.

In the adapted field, the notable absences are: “Albert Nobbs,” “Carnage,” “Drive,” “Jane Eyre,” “My Week with Marilyn,” “Sarah’s Key,” “The Skin I Live In” and “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” There are others, but each of those lists, I think, is being a bit liberal as it is with what’s considered in Oscar play this year.

So, I suppose it’s time maybe to make a few predictions. The guild will not announce the nominees until January 5, but let’s get it out of the way anyway.

In the adapted category, I would say “The Descendants,” “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” “The Help,” “Moneyball” and “War Horse” are all formidable. So those are my picks. Outside chances exist for “Hugo” and “The Ides of March,” while the gutting could pave the way for entertainment efforts (“The Lincoln Lawyer,” “The Muppets”) or things landing more in the critical darling framework (“We Need to Talk About Kevin”).

I should point out that “The Adventures of Tintin” is on there, the only animated film of the year present on the ballot (simply because typically animation companies are not guild signatories, but “Tintin” is in a different boat).

In the original field, boy, what a waste land. I’ll say “50/50,” “Bridesmaids,” “Midnight in Paris,” “Win Win” and “Young Adult,” making for a very comedy-heavy slate. “J. Edgar” could still score, and “Contagion” is actually a strong play here. I just wouldn’t know which one to toss out.

Indies from “Cedar Rapids” to “Pariah” to “Rampart” to “The Tree of Life” could score, as could summer blockbuster “Super 8” and early fall entry “Warrior.” So I guess it’s not much of a waste land, really. Just a smattering of possibilities that ought to be thankful for the added exposure.

As mentioned, the WGA announces its nominees on January 5, 2012. The guild’s awards show will be held on February 19. Feel free to offer up your own predictions in the comments section below.

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David Thewlis, like many of us, was only minimally familiar with the story of Aung San Suu Kyi when he was first presented with the script for director Luc Besson”s “The Lady.” The actor (who plays Suu Kyi”s husband Michael in the film) was aware of her as a Nobel laureate and political prisoner in Burma (known officially as the Republic of the Union of Myanmar), but did not know the story of her marriage, or that she had left her husband and two children behind in her fight. “I knew that there was a woman campaigning for democracy under a military regime,” he says.

I, too, possessed little more than iconic snapshot images of Suu Kyi and her work when I sat down to watch the film. I knew she was a leader of immeasurable courage. I knew of her now legendary walk past the raised guns of the Burmese military, a military that was prepared to kill without hesitation on behalf of an entrenched government that has ruled violently via repressive military dictatorship for decades. And yet they did not kill her. In my imagination, it was as though she was some unearthly figure, something so graceful that they could not bear to cut her down.

The truth, of course, is far more complex. Suu Kyi is all too human, a wife and a mother, an adept political thinker, and a unifying force for those who would seek democracy. The generals behind the repressive military rule understood that to kill Suu Kyi was to martyr her, thus immortalizing her political influence, as evidenced by the enduring power of her father”s image the man who negotiated freedom from the British Empire for Burma.

The distilled version of her life: Suu Kyi was born the daughter Aung San, commander of the Burma Independence Army. Her father was killed by his political rivals the very year he brought independence to Burma. Suu Kyi followed in her parents’ footsteps earning a B.A. from Oxford in Philosophy, Politics and Economics before working for the U.N. for three years. She married Dr. Michael Aris, a British scholar of Tibetan culture, in 1972. The couple had two children while she continued her political work in various forms from their home in England.

Suu Kyi flew to Rangoon (now named Yangon) in 1988 to care for her ailing mother, and stayed to lead a peaceful revolution. “The Lady” deals with the period between her return to Myanmar from England and her husband”s death in 1999. Drawing from her own Buddhist faith, as well as the lessons of Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent resistance, Suu became the leader of the National League for Democracy and, in so doing, resigned herself to two decades of house arrest. 

During the first years of her confinement, her husband and children were with her only five times. Phone service was limited, months, sometimes years of silence would fall between the couple. At the time of his passing, Michael had been denied access to Burma for five years. He died never having seen his wife again. Her children then went another near decade without the benefit of having either of their parents in their lives. “The Lady” focuses on the shape of her leadership as well as the couple’s struggle to maintain a marriage in the face of unending distance. 

As such, the film functions in part as what Thewlis describes as an unusual love story. “It’s not about two people falling in love,” he says. “It’s the story of a marriage that is 16 years underway at the very beginning of the film.” And it’s unusual in the sense that it is not about ending up together, it is about staying together in the midst of what are, for most of us, unimaginable circumstances.

“It was about deep, deep, deep commitment and being passionate,” Thewlis says of the film. Michael”s commitment to his marriage and Suu Kyi”s commitment to both her marriage and Burma speak to strength of will, and to a faith that very few of us are endowed with.

“In studying Michael — I had access to some footage of him — he almost appeared to be from another age,” Thewlis says. “His speaking voice was very anachronistic. He seemed not to be of this generation. He was very, very British, as I”m sure Europeans or Americans would consider British people to be. Very stiff upper lip, quite stoical and a very calm man. At least that’s how he presented himself in public. I”m sure there were times in his private life where he wasn’t so calm. We don’t know much about those times. Maybe that’s why they found each other, because they both had a resolute quality, of patience and steadfastness that attracted one to the other. They are enormously passionate people. But enormously patient people.”

The sense of serene composure that these two characters possess supports the depiction of a born leader, but it occasionally detracts from what we commonly (and perhaps immaturely) interpret as “passionate love.” One of the central questions the film raises (inadvertently or not) is whether Suu Kyi has made the right choice. She, at any time, could have returned to Britain and her family, but she most assuredly would never again have been allowed within Burma”s boarders once she left them.

“It depends if you look at it from the point of view of Burma or the point of view of her family,” Thewlis said of Suu Kyi”s choice. “Whether it was the right thing to do for her husband and her children is an open question that must be judged by anyone who knows about the story and not the least by her husband and children themselves. That”s a moral question, isn’t it? A very personal, existential question. Her fight is still going on now as we speak. She certainly did the right thing for her country, if what is happening now with the very slight reforms continue forward and if the democratic movement intensifies and brings less suffering to the people. 

“As she has always said, she has suffered and her family has suffered, but not nearly so much as many, many thousands of people have suffered in that country.”

The question becomes, could she have done this as the Dali Lama has done and been a leader in exile? Perhaps, but Thewlis calls that changing history.

“Maybe she could have done that,” he says. “Maybe she could still do that. I doubt that she’ll make any move now. Of course she could have left, but I don’t think that people would have held her in such high regard and I don’t think that the National League of Democracy would have won the election had she left at that time, because she brought focus. There were so many different parties at the time of the election. And the generals were determined to split the vote between so many people, so they allowed so many people to form parties. I think the NLD won because of her leadership and her presence in the country as opposed to any other party.”

The changes in Burma have come in fits and starts, which is one reason that the current shifts in policy are being eyed with cautious optimism. Yesterday, on the eve of the film”s release, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Aung San Suu Kyi vowing that, “One political prisoner is one too many in our view.” Her historic visit (it has been 50 years since a U.S. secretary of State has visited the nation) could denote changes to come, or it could be the government of Myanmar giving lip service for economic benefits. 

Michelle Yeoh, who plays Suu Kyi in the film, was deported from Burma while visiting with Suu Kyi. Thewlis was himself banned from China for his participation in the film “Seven Years In Tibet” and has experienced some of the frustrations that are necessarily a part of an effort toward social change. He has seen people become a part of the Free Tibet movement as a result of seeing that film, and he has seen China continue to restrict the autonomy of the Tibetan people.

“All one can do for now is raise the profile of the evil that is being visited on this nation,” the actor said of “The Lady,” Suu Kyi, and Burma. “And hopefully draw people”s attention to something that needs some light casting on it right now.”

“The Lady” opens in a limited release today.

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Mike Leigh, the seemingly mild-mannered master of contemporary British realism, is famously a man who takes no prisoners, and one imagines this extends to the jury table at film festivals. While serving as a Cannes juror in 1997, Leigh and jury president Isabelle Adjani are said to have butted heads repeatedly: “She’s simply not very bright,” he airily wrote years later.

So the jurors at next year’s Berlin Film Festival in February will have to be on their game, as Leigh will be presiding over events: the first time, to my knowledge, that the director has headed the jury at any of the three European majors. As it happens, the first of them to invite him is also the only one at which he’s never won: Leigh has a Palme d’Or and a Venice Golden Lion, but has only competed once at Berlin, with “Happy-Go-Lucky” in 2008. (He came away empty-handed; Sally Hawkins won Best Actress.)  

More eyes will be on the Berlinale in 2012 than in recent years: after several years of lackluster competition selections and winners that faded quickly from view, the festival struck gold this year by snagging the premieres of critics’ darlings “A Separation” and “The Turin Horse,” as well as Ralph Fiennes’s “Coriolanus.” Here’s hoping next year’s fest brings Leigh a similarly strong crop to work with.

Press release as follows:

British film director Mike Leigh will be the Jury President of the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival.

Over the course of his nearly 40-year film career, Mike Leigh has distinguished himself as one of the most outstanding filmmakers of auteur cinema and protagonists of New British Cinema. His approach includes giving actors much leeway to improvise in order to develop their characters. Leigh portrays British society in a bluntly realistic but humorous style. His films have received countless international awards and several Oscar nominations.

Leigh has directed more than 20 films, as well as having made a name for himself as theatre director, dramatist and screenwriter. He first studied dramatic arts and then set design. Afterwards he attended the London Film School, of which he is now Chairman.

In 1972 he made his directorial debut with Bleak Moments, which went on to win the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. In Cannes he won the Best Director Award in 1993 for Naked, and the Palme d”Or in 1996 for Secrets and Lies, which in itself received a total of five Oscar nominations. In 2004, Vera Drake, his highly regarded study of society whose characters display an extraordinary depth, was awarded the Golden Lion in Venice.

Over the years Mike Leigh has been invited to the Berlin International Film Festival to present Meantime (Forum 1984), the short film The Short and Curlies (Panorama 1988) and Life is Sweet (Panorama 1991). His latest contribution was to the Competition in 2008: his social comedy Happy-Go-Lucky featured Sally Hawkins, who won the Silver Bear for Best Actress. Another Year is Leigh”s most recent movie. It screened in competition at Cannes in 2010 and went on to be nominated for an Oscar.

Since the 1960s, Leigh has also worked as a theatre director and writer, having staged more than 20 plays. His current play Grief is being performed at theatres across Britain until the end of January 2012.