“Every year at the Academy Awards they give out a lifetime achievement award,” actor Bruce Dern says in the new documentary “Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel.” “How they can not have gotten to Roger Corman by now is disgusting. And I don’t know that they ever will because they say, ‘Well, what are the great movies that he made?'”

That, of course, was an interview from a few years ago. Since then, the Academy has indeed toasted the life and times of Roger Corman, tapping him in 2009 for an Honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards, a designation many in the industry would agree was a long time coming.

Corman has produced nearly 400 films since 1954. Indeed, they might not register on the objective scale of “great movies,” as Dern notes, but his legacy is undeniable. Corman has had a definitive hand in shaping the modern Hollywood landscape. He gave breaks to Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard among countless others. He broke the greats of today into the business, and yet he has remained on the fringe, borderline obscure.

He might actually wear that as a badge of honor, though. The veteran filmmaker has made a living defining that fringe and remaining true to his independent, rebel perspective. But he was of course delighted to get that Academy recognition last year.

“I knew they were considering me and I said, ‘I have no chance,'” Corman recalls. “‘I make low-budget pictures; they will never give an Oscar to somebody who makes low-budget pictures.’ And when Tom Sherak called me after a Board of Governors meeting one evening and said, ‘Congratulations, you’ve won,’  I was really speechless for a little while. I couldn’t believe it had happened.”

Regarding the ceremony itself, Corman says, “I was particularly touched by the number of friends and people I had worked with over the years who came to the ceremony and sort of and talked and gave little speeches about me.” Those faces included the aforementioned Howard and Nicholson, etc. And again, Corman’s impact on their lives can’t be discounted. At one point in the new film, Nicholson (who rarely participates in interviews like this) breaks into tears recollecting his love and appreciation for the man.

And yet, Corman, the gentlemanly, reserved, soft-spoken sort you wouldn’t expect to crank out films like “Dinoshark” and “Bloodfist 2050” (to name a few recent examples), takes that kind of praise with a healthy dose of modesty.

“My influence may be slightly overrated,” he says. “There were a number of us who influenced independent filmmaking and made independent production more important.”

Over the years he has maintained the same attitude toward his work, though his perspective has certainly shifted. The role of the independent film, he says, has been diminished.

A portion of the film details the rise of the blockbuster, first with “Jaws” in 1975 and then with “Star Wars” in 1977. The film school generation had taken hold. And there is a current of bitterness toward that in the film. Says Nicholson at one point, “What has the wonderful revolution done for independents of filmmaking? Well, we make 12 circuses a year. Very few movies.”

Meanwhile, an excerpt from an old Tom Snyder interview with Corman has the filmmaker noting of the then astronomical $35 million average price tag for a movie, “The artist should be able to express himself for less money than that and the businessman should be able to invest his money better. I think both from an artistic and a commercial stand-point, it’s wrong to spend that much money. In addition, I think there are better things to do with the money in our society.”

But Corman is invigorated by the prospect of DIY distribution via the internet and streaming, like any true rebel against the status quo would. He recently spoke on the issue to a group of producers. “I acknowledged the fact, which they all knew, that these are poor times for the independents,” he says. “But I said good times are coming.  What did they say in the Depression?  ‘Prosperity is just around the corner.’ Good times are just around the corner and it’s going to be the internet.”

With that in mind, he says there are plans to transfer his massive catalogue of films to the web for instant access. It’s a wise move to tap that revenue stream, particularly seeing as theatrical is no longer a viable option for his works. Much of them have seen success in the home video market, but Corman says, somewhat paradoxically (given his feelings on web distribution), that one unmet goal of his vast career is to reconnect with those roots.

“I would like to make some films that get back into theatrical distribution,” he says. “I recognize that it’s difficult, but I miss the satisfaction of having the film shown in theaters and frankly the money to be made from theatrical distribution. So if I have any particular goal it’s probably to make slightly bigger films, which are required today to get back into theatrical.”

Corman may think his influence on today’s industry is overrated, but he’s in the minority there. And there is a lesson in his perspective on spending, on independence, on eschewing the binds of conglomerated Hollywood: Creativity is dead without risk. It’s really all there in his Honorary Oscar acceptance speech from the Governors Awards two years:

“I think to succeed in this world, you have to take chances. I believe the finest films being done today are done by the original, innovative filmmakers who have the courage to take a chance and to gamble. So I say to you, keep gambling, keep taking chances.”

“Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel” will be screening tonight at LACMA with Corman in attendance for a Q&A. The film is set for release by Anchor Bay Films on December 16.

When dialogue was originally introduced into films, Charlie Chaplin considered it a fad that wouldn”t last. Alas, we now know how wrong that was. But sound can not only enrich a film by its addition of dialogue. The use of sound can build mood and tell the story in ways that would not be possible if our films remained silent.

Formerly called simply “Best Sound,” the category of Best Sound Mixing awards the individuals who: 1) mix together dialogue, music, sound effects and everything else we hear in the soundscape of a film (up to three re-recording mixers) and 2) capture the sound as it is being filmed (the production sound mixer). This distinguishes the category from Best Sound Editing, which awards the creation and integration of artificially created sounds.

The category has an affinity for blockbusters and war films. That said, musicals frequently show up here, too. Moreover, Best Picture contenders can surprisingly get caught up in a sweep (“The King”s Speech””s nomination last year is a good example).

Names like Kevin O”Connell, Greg P. Russell, Michael Minkler, Bob Beemer, Christopher Boyes, Anna Behlmer, Randy Thom and many others frequent this category every year. It”s a fairly insular group. While new members are welcomed every year (especially if they”re on a Best Picture contender), it tends to be the exception rather than the rule.

With those reflections, I”d have a difficult time not leading off this week”s discussion with Steven Spielberg”s “War Horse.” A war film, with an added components of horse sounds, sweeping score and intimate drama, it already has all the makings of a Best Picture contender and has a crew anchored by Andy Nelson and Tom Johnson, both favorites (with Gary Rydstrom on the team to boot). A nomination seems highly probable.

Spielberg has two films in the hunt this year with “The Adventures of Tintin” also unveiling itself in December. While animated films do not do as well here as in Best Sound Editing, this is not a typical animated film and will combine action and a John Williams score in a very likely December blockbuster. Also with an experienced crew of Christopher Boyes, Michael Hedges and Andy Nelson, this seems like a frontrunner.

In the realm of animated titles, I”d also say it would be worth watching “Rango,” where the sounds of the Wild West were highlighted. This helped “True Grit” and “3:10 to Yuma” earn nominations in recent years. Branch favorite Paul Massey anchors the crew. Adding up his name, the work and the respect given to the film, a nomination may be in the cards.

The only other animated film that bears consideration here is “Cars 2.” But in addition to the fact that it feels like much more a sound editor”s film than a mixer”s (due to its reliance on artificially created sounds), its underwhelming reception, in addition to the fact that its predecessor failed to score in this category, makes me highly doubtful it will end up among the final five.

It”s always necessary to remember the summer blockbusters. And leading the way in that regard would appear to be “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.” Michael Bay”s films have an extraordinary record in this category and this was the only place where “Revenge of the Fallen” managed to be cited two years ago. The crew of Jeffrey Haboush and especially Greg Russell and Gary Summers have an extraordinary history of success in this category. When one also considers that this film was considered an improvement upon its immediate predecessor in this series, all the stars that seem necessary for a nomination seem to align.

As far as critical respect and the 2011 summer blockbusters were concerned, it was hard to trump “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” The sound was undeniably important. But while Doug Hemphill is a past winner, I cannot shake the feeling that this film will be more remembered for its visual effects. But this is no more than a hunch, as respected summer blockbusters must always be considered here, especially when they have a very effective and important mix.

J.J. Abrams” “Super 8” also has a very vocal fan group and received significant critical respect, if admittedly not adoration. More importantly, it featured numerous opportunities for its sound mixers to display the full range of their talents, not only in cool alien noises but also in a very loud train crash. Anna Behlmer and Tom Johnson, the film”s re-recording mixers, are both branch favorites and production sound mixer Mark Ulano has two nominations including a win to his credit as well. This list of factors leads me to believe this is a top-tier contender.

There are other blockbuster titles that would probably be unwise to completely rule out, such as “Real Steel,” “Captain America: The First Avenger,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” and “Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” but “Super 8,” “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” seem to have the best combo of respected crew, big box office, reasonable critical respect and notable opportunities for the sound crews to prove themselves. At least in my eyes.

Martin Scorsese”s upcoming “Hugo” is worth mentioning. I frankly do not know how much opportunity there will be for sound artists to display their talents [EDITOR’S NOTE: There are some unique opportunities with contraptions and trains and whatnot.]  but I could see this film as a crafts category sweeper. Scorsese regular and four-time nominee Tom Fleischman is responsible for this mixing job, so that doesn”t hurt matters.

Another family film that will shortly be released is “The Muppets,” an attempt to revive a franchise that was once beloved but has been damaged by continual poor quality efforts in recent years. The attempt to go back to basics apparently is resulting in it being quite the musical showcase. Now none of this seems a recipe for a nomination yet so why I am mentioning it? Because 20-time nominee Kevin O”Connell is responsible for the mix. Now I don”t think these pieces will add up to a nomination but if any film this year could bring O”Connell back into the running after a four year absence, this would appear to be it.

Stieg Larsson”s “Millennium” trilogy has undoubtedly earned a spot in literary history. David Fincher”s adaptation of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” offers the combination of potential major hit status, much suspense and some action, which could easily result in a nomination here. The sound crew on this film still has not been credited on IMDb (not unusual — assume the usual suspects), but Fincher”s last two titles, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” and “The Social Network,” both found homes here, if they were also admittedly both Best Picture frontrunners.

With “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” Stephen Daldry is going to try to continue his rather amazing Oscar run. While the film may not seem on paper to be a natural contender for a sound mixing nomination, many of the film”s flashback scenes may prove otherwise. Moreover, the film could sweep. Not saying it will but it might. We shall see.

I”ll end by citing a film that may seem bizarre to consider here but probably should not be ruled out: Michel Hazanavicius”s “The Artist.”  I began this column by noting how sound revolutionized film 84 years ago, and this film tries to recreate the feel of the bygone era from before that time. Even so, restraint in sound is still sound and required very creative work from this crew. [EDITOR’S NOTE: And one particular scene is a sound showcase.] While they have no Oscar history, that tends not to matter when the film is a nominations sweeper, which I am increasingly confident this title will be. I”m not banking on a nomination. But I”d say it”s still very very possible, despite seeming absurd on the surface.

Those are the top-tier contenders as I see them. Feel free to opine on these musings, including what I may have overlooked, below!
 

This has been the week from hell. But at least we’re on the down-slope of it. And yesterday’s quickly developing flurry of news has left plenty of pieces across the web in its wake. And to think, I was considering skipping Oscar Talk this week due to travel plans. Today’s round-up is packed with stuff about that news, so strap in. And to kick things off, Nathaniel Rogers was actually at a lunch for “Martha Marcy May Marlene” in New York when the news hit. (There was a similar one here in Los Angeles but I had to skip it when the news started flying.) Rogers was seated with a trio of Academy members, so, naturally, he asked their thoughts on the situation. [Film Experience]

Greg Ellwood thinks Eddie Murphy walking away from the hosting gig was a bad move. [Awards Campaign]

Robins Williams certainly isn’t going to be his replacement. [Moviefone]

Claude Brodesser-Akner, meanwhile, has the scoop on how Brett Ratner’s resignation went down. [Vulture]

Howard Stern defends Brett Ratner, slams Hollywood as “loony.” [Hollywood Reporter]

Charlie Poekel, mastermind behind the @MuppetOscars movement, is already hitting the interview circuit. [Village Voice]

George Clooney says he’ll be “shocked” if “The Descendants” doesn’t earn a Best Picture nominations. Indeed. [Rolling Stone]

Hollywood plans big binge for Christmas. [New York Times]

Steve Pond chats with “The Skin I Live In” director Pedro Almodóvar. [The Odds]

Anne Thompson tries to keep that “Jane Eyre” fire lit, talks to star Mia Wasikowska (about “Albert Nobbs,” too). [Thompson on Hollywood]

Alright, so we all had our fun. With the news that Brian Grazer is coming on board to “save” the Oscars, one gets the feeling that the Academy is ready to just move along, swiftly. So I’m not betting on the most creative Oscarcast. Do your best and get the hell out of this year. That kind of thing.

So, no room to pay for and mobilize The Muppets to have a key role in things, no matter if all you really need is a chair with a hole in it. But earlier today, the @MuppetOscars Twitter account shot up by 6,000 followers (going from 700+ in the morning to over 6,700 as of 9pm PT), with “Muppets” trending at one point. The Facebook page blew up with “likes” and messages; 10,000 followers there. Members of the international audience even chimed in: “I’d actually watch it… at 4am!” Fan art. Etc.

So, you know, do what you want, Mr. Grazer and the Academy. Whatever you think is best. Really. Tough spot to be in. But, you know, consider…

And hey, if it’s no dice, then it’s no dice. But Miss Piggy over there looks mighty serious. At least given the @MuppetOscars campaign some air time? “We’re sorry, The Muppets weren’t available to host, so you get me, Ben Stiller.” That kind of thing?

In the meantime, here’s how the magic worked once before:

Alright, I’m done. Good luck, Mr. Grazer.

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

Carey Mulligan found herself propelled onto the world stage after she was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of the sharp, witty and painfully young Jenny Mellor in 2009s “An Education.” Though doors began to open for the actress, she was disappointed to discover that most of them led to rooms of similar shapes and sizes. “A lot of people just wanted me to sort of do what I had already done,” she recalls. “Films that reminded me of that part weren’t films that I was interested in.”

If there is such a thing as a safe and secure course in the development of an ingénue’s career anymore, then Mulligan has chosen not to follow that trajectory. The actress took one leading, and several supporting roles (the most high-profile of which was in Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”) after “An Education” and then stopped working for a year.

When she returned it was in pursuit of projects that would move her beyond the limited scope of the classical leading lady and/or give her the opportunity to work with filmmakers that she found compelling. She began with director Nicolas Winding Refn’s urban fable/meditation on violence, “Drive.”

One of the most fascinating aspects of Mulligan’s character in “Drive” is that she is essentially a very traditional ingénue (beautiful, gentle, sweet, in emotional and physical danger) in a distinctly atypical setting. Mulligan herself, however, never envisioned Irene in quite that manner. “She was originally intended for a slightly older Latina, so I never sort of saw her as the girl, or the love interest in the film, even though she was,” she says. “That situation was a point where I hadn’t worked for awhile and I wanted to be in one of his films because I thought he made really cool films. He welcomed me into his house, and I lived with his wife and his kids, Ryan (Gosling) came round a lot and it just sort of felt like this strange commune.”

Mulligan’s next film, “Shame” (which will screen this evening as a part of the Los Angeles AFI Fest), offered the actress an opportunity to “lose herself” in a way she hadn’t done since her stage performance as Nina in Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull.” The comparison between director Steve McQueen’s film and Checkhov’s play feels apropos in that both deal with the loss of (and aching longing for) innocence, and the characters’ fundamental inability to connect. Where “Drive” was a (metaphorical) step into a warm creative bath for the actress, “Shame” was akin to being tossed into an icy, murky, bottomless ocean. “When I read ‘Shame,’ it felt like Sissy was a character with no safety net,” Mulligan says. “And she was so far removed from anything that I had played before especially being on screen.”

For Mulligan, “Shame” was really difficult if ultimately rewarding, where “Drive” was “sort of just fun,” she says. “When I get a script, I can pick out the scenes that are going to be a hard day of work and I freak out, and I overanalyze them, and I worry about them for weeks and more often than not I’m sort of disappointed with what I do. With ‘Drive’ we were playing the fairytale side of the story. It was knight in shining armor, and girl stuck in a tower, and we had a pleasant experience. It wasn’t challenging in the way that ‘Shame’ was. It wasn’t pushing out of my boundaries; it was something that I was really comfortable in. And when I talked to Steve [about ‘Shame’], I talked a lot about how I felt passionately that I wanted to not do what I’d been doing.”

In McQueen’s film, Mulligan plays Sissy, sister to Michael Fassbender’s sexually addicted and emotionally calcified Brandon. Sissy makes an unannounced (and unwelcome) visit to her brother, which acts as a catalyst for a self-reckoning that he is neither willing nor prepared for. The siblings’ psychological development atrophied in their youth as a result of a trauma that is hinted at in the film but (rightfully) never fully explored. The purpose of the film is not to offer easily digestible answers but rather to pose textured and nuanced questions to an audience that likely has far more in common with the pair than they are comfortable confronting.

While Sissy and Brandon engage in behaviors that may seem to exist far outside the barriers of the “norm,” their motivations are all too relatable. Their individual responses to the abuse they experienced as children are almost archetypically male and female respectively.

“I think he’s decided to put himself in a very particular place” Mulligan says of Brandon. “He’s stuck in it, and he’s introverted, and he can’t become intimate with people. When he becomes intimate with people he shuts down. And I think she’s exactly the opposite. She just wants someone to save her. I think it’s not conscious, but I think that she’ll always be swept up in this dramatic cycle because she will give into any kind of experience and any kind of person she thinks might be the key to making her feel better. And it doesn’t work.”

As the title indicates, “Shame” deals with the most insidious of emotions. The shame that Sissy and Brandon experience is not born of a healthy conscious. It is a sickly residue of their youth. This shame, inherited from a poisonous family, acts as a malignant infestation. It creates addictions, compulsions, and desperate, unconscious pleas for release. Often, in women, it develops into a near constant need to apologize.

“My idea was that things were coming into her mind, constant reminders of what had gone on, images or ideas or words,” Mulligan says of her character. “And she finds ways to block them out. She’s loud, or she swears, and she provokes, and she keeps talking or she plays around with stepping forward on the subway track or she cuts herself. But definitely, she’s apologizing. She knows that her attempts to reconnect with her brother are misfiring and she can’t figure out why. She wants more than anything to find some peace with him.”

Though a shattered childhood will often bond siblings, it can also act as a wedge. The knowledge that the other is the only person who can truly comprehend the scale and manner of their internal damage attracts Sissy to the same degree that it repels Brandon. They are simultaneously each other’s dark mirror and magnet. “There is a disconnect between them,” Mulligan says. “Their shared history has put a distance between them, because they’re both so aware of what happened. And being called out on those things is very painful because when I attack him for the way he is sexually, or he attacks me for being promiscuous, we know where those things ultimately came from. And it’s so much more painful because it’s completely not discussed.”

Far from the light, communal experience that she enjoyed both on and off-set while filming “Drive,” Mulligan’s “Shame” co-star chose to maintain a divide that he believed would feed their work. “Michael and I kept quite separate from each other,” she says. “And we didn’t hang out outside of work. We didn’t talk that much apart from about the mechanics of the scenes. We just came in and did the work.”

Though she did participate in some cursory conversations with both Fassbender and McQueen about Brandon and Sissy’s background, none of the three felt that the particulars were key to the story they were telling.

Mulligan was drawn to the elements of McQueen’s approach when she saw “Hunger,” the film that brought both the director and his star Fassbender to the world’s attention. “There was honesty there,” she says. “Visually it was stunning but there was also a truth in the performances, a realness. I loved the way he filmed the actors. He seemed to give the actors a lot of space. I just loved the way he shot bodies, and faces, and eyes. There was purity to what he was doing.”

There is a common assumption that playing a character as raw and ravaged as Sissy would leave the actress damaged and depleted. For Mulligan, however, inhabiting Sissy meant a welcome opportunity to purge some universally relatable emotions.

“It’s strangely cathartic and I think that’s the thing I was kind of looking for that was similar to Nina,” she says, recalling Chekhov once more. “Because when it had gone well when I was working on ‘The Seagull,’ I would go home and feel really elated. The scenes I did with Michael were exhilarating and then we both felt kind of good afterwards. It’s great sometimes to get out that aggression.”

“Shame” was set in New York rather than London as McQueen and his writing partner Abi Morgan were unable to find anyone in Britain willing to openly discuss sexual addiction. It would appear that the citizens of the United States (and New York in particular) are far more forthcoming on the subject. The tales the scribes collected during the course of their research were so wrapped up in the culture of the city that they felt it necessary to locate the film there. As such, one might imagine that there is a more open dialogue on the nature of sex and intimacy in the U.S., and yet the irony is that our MPAA gave the film a restrictive NC-17 rating. Mulligan, like many, finds the rating both unsurprising and indicative of a bizarre moral ethos.

“I knew that Steve would never cut anything,” she says. “He was always uncompromising about what he wanted. So he was never going to cave in to a rating to make it more commercial. I do think it’s sort of an absurd contradiction with the amount of — I mean it’s such an obvious point — but the violence that we see in slasher films and horror films. That’s perfectly acceptable and then the naked body and sex is such a big deal. And the sex is not what it’s really about ultimately.”

Nor is the film truly about sexual addiction, which is merely a symptom of the true affliction: icy, unrelenting, unendurable alienation. Perhaps it is the subject matter that has frightened the MPAA. For “Shame” reveals no more or less (physically) than audiences were shown in the R rated “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.”

“Nudity was so prevalent in the 70s,” Mulligan says. “You know, so many of the teen movies will have so much sex and so many people walking around in bikinis and bare-breasted and that all seems to be okay. And then the minute you show it and its not funny, and it’s not sexy, and it’s actually unattractive, then it becomes a problem, which seems so odd.”

Far from a pretty picture, “Shame” paints a gruesome portrait of two human beings who are unwilling or unable to free themselves from the clinging shadows of internally and externally driven rage. Mulligan’s resolve to explore and expose a fractured inner life and to embrace a character that is both metaphorically and physiologically flawed is indicative of the path she has chosen for herself as an actress.

“In ‘An Education,’ I was just meant to be a 16-year-old girl,” she says. “I wasn’t meant to look in any kind of way. I just looked how I looked and I enjoy that. I feel a freedom in that. And I felt a great freedom in playing Sissy. I didn’t have to worry about what I ate, or how much I drank, and I didn’t have to work out. She was an alcoholic mess. She didn’t have any money to dye her hair. I mean I didn’t become an alcoholic, but I didn’t have to watch myself.

“It was so much more exciting to play that character that didn’t worry about her appearance in any way. I knew that when I stood up in that bath naked it wasn’t about whether I looked good naked or not. It was about who she was. And I knew that I was going to grow my hair out and have crazy roots and she wasn’t going to look good in any kind of way. I’m playing Daisy right now in the ‘The Great Gatsby’ and that’s very visual. She’s meant to look very well put together and pretty, but I would always like to lean towards character roles that aren’t based on appearance.”

“Shame” opens in select theatres on Friday, December 2.

Well, that was quick. Though when you’re starting from scratch to mount a major television event in a little over three months, with host and star producer both off the project, taking your time isn’t really an option.

So it is that hedgehog-haired mega-producer Brian Grazer — an Academy Award winner himself for “A Beautiful Mind” a decade ago — is joining Don Mischer to steer the 2011 Oscar show, taking over from the disgraced Brett Ratner.

It’s always hard to predict what sensibility film folk will bring to live events like this, but Grazer seems a safe, if not particularly inventive, pair of hands for the job: probably a more sensible choice than Ratner ever was, though not someone you necessarily expect to give the show the radical overhaul it needs after two disastrous years.

Because I’m petty that way, I should admit that the first thought that popped into my head when Grazer’s name was (as many had been expecting since yesterday) announced was: well, this sure means the powers that be at the Academy aren’t expecting a Best Picture nominee for “J. Edgar.” (Grazer produced the film, and while AMPAS didn’t object to having a nominee host earlier this year, having the whole show overseen by a potential prizewinner would represent an unworkable conflict of interest.) Ditto “Restless,” ditto “The Dilemma.” A nation mourns.

Meanwhile, if you were still holding out any hopes of an Oscar sweep for “Tower Heist,” best let them go — though it’s a little ironic that the Academy has replaced Ratner as producer with… Ratner’s own producer. It’s a veritable Russian-doll routine.

With the first fix in place, the replacement-host guessing games continue apace. Steve Martin, Ben Stiller and Jim Carrey are just some of the frequently bandied-about names that have long been in Grazer’s Rolodex: I expect him to go with someone not too off-the-wall, someone experienced who won’t mind being known publicly as plan B. With any luck, of course, he’s active on Twitter and has taken note of @MuppetOscars campaign. We can but dream.

At this point, I don’t really mind who hosts, as long as it’s someone reliable, professional and excited to be there. (Step back, Anne Hathaway, you had your turn. Okay, maybe I do mind.) The to-and-fro of the last few days have been both frenetic and dispiriting: here’s hoping Grazer and Mischer can quickly regain control over the situation and put on a good show with little time to spare. Whatever Brett Ratner thinks, some rehearsal may be required.

Last week, approximately one eon behind every other film writer on the beat, I finally saw “The Help.” As I”m sure many of you will agree, it”s not always easy seeing a film months after its supposed plus and minus points have long since been concretized by the critical majority, but I was pleased to find myself agreeing with everything that”s been said, even by the film”s detractors, about Viola Davis”s performance: graceful, intuitive, material-elevating, all that. If she has the Best Actress Oscar wrapped up (and even with the Streep Express still unseen, I”d wager that she has), I take no issue with that.

But over in the film”s Best Supporting Actress camp, things start coming a little unstuck. Octavia Spencer is a set-in-stone nominee-and in some pundits” minds, the notional frontrunner-for her grandly sassy turn as the mouthy maid who redefines the term ‘just desserts.” And to apply a favourite South Africanism: jawellnofine. Spencer”s a good time in the film, but she”s working several rungs below the astonishing Jessica Chastain, who may even outdo Davis in terms of enlivening and complicating a waxily written character: her guilelessly empathetic bubblehead is the film”s most interesting characterization, and the sharpest of Chastain”s 47-odd performances this year. She may well find her way to a nomination, particularly given the category”s predilection for dual nominees from a single film, but Spencer remains the sure thing – and there you have one of my first beefs of the awards season.

Chastain (who has enough conflict to deal with in her own campaign) isn”t the only worthy contender this year seeking to wrestle attention from a more heavily hyped co-star. Indeed, it”s an annual issue on the Oscar trail, as films with more than one commendable performance-particularly within a single category-are routinely forced into compromised (or even fraudulent) campaigns, tokenly supporting one actor while pinning all their hopes on another. (Even if they’re both nominated, that hardly puts them on an equal footing: just ask Amy Adams.)

The distribution of weight can be arbitrary: in retrospect, it”s hard to ascertain how Annette Bening emerged from last year”s Sundance fest with so much more awards heat than her no-less-featured, no-less-deserving co-lead Julianne Moore, but the narrative was set for the year ahead. And while Focus gamely pushed for both actresses to the bitter end (laudably refusing to disingenuously demote Moore to a supporting campaign), there”s no doubt they knew which side their bread was buttered, even as more generous institutions like BAFTA and the Golden Globes gave the illusion of parity by nominating both. On Oscar nomination morning, one actress breezed in; the other was stopped by the bouncer.

Still, at least the studio made a show of sharing the love on that occasion. I was somewhat horrified to notice, earlier this week, that Universal has sent out its For Your Consideration materials for hit summer comedy “Bridesmaids”-the female ensemble phenomenon of the year-with only a single name listed for Best Supporting Actress. That”d be Melissa McCarthy, the bolshy character comedienne whose Oscar chances were briefly fancied by certain pundits after a surprise Emmy win raised her profile.

McCarthy may represent the film”s best shot at an acting bid, but for the studio to campaign her alone, however strategic, seems less than respectful to her co-stars – notably Rose Byrne, whose more sleekly hilarious supporting turn tickled me considerably more than McCarthy”s zappy schtick. (This is to say nothing of the fact that they aren”t even putting in a token Best Supporting Actor bid for Chris O”Dowd. I understand the urge to streamline the campaign, but why hide your light under a bushel?)

Speaking of Best Supporting Actor, there are split loyalties to be found in that field too. In May, I was one of the early critics calling for a nomination for Albert Brooks”s deliciously skeezy villain in “Drive.” The meme stuck-partly because of the performance”s relishable against-type qualities, partly because of Brooks”s own irresistible celebrity-but on rewatching the film last month, I found myself wishing more of us had saved some of the cheers for Bryan Cranston, whose coolly crumpled work is no less worthy of consideration in the category than Brooks. The media sometimes gets the lead the way in these matters, but they aren”t always any fairer than studio strategists.

Meanwhile, no productive campaign in that category even seems possible for “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” saddled with such an embarrassment of riches in the supporting actor stakes that even the critics can”t give the Academy coherent instructions: some single out Tom Hardy, others fancy Benedict Cumberbatch, still others are more on the side of Mark Strong and/or Colin Firth. Last week, the British Independent Film Awards hedged their bets by nominating both Hardy and Cumberbatch; still, the film seems headed towards an “LA Confidential”-style outcome where too many strong men wind up punching each other out in the Oscar race. (While we”re on the subject of Tom Hardy, only the box office failure of “Warrior” seems to have prevented an injustice in Best Actor, with the volatile Brit briefly surging ahead of the equally deserving Joel Edgerton in the buzz stakes.)

Even far away from the Academy Award race, these accidental politics are all too often felt. Tom Cullen and Chris New, the young, equally weighted British stars of breakout UK indie “Weekend,” should both by rights be competing for every Best Actor award going on either side of the Atlantic, yet even in the small pond of the local awards racket, Cullen”s the one creeping ahead: BIFA chose him and not New for their Best Newcomer shortlist, a small but pointed slight for a performance that works wholly in tandem with the other. “It”s like breaking up twins,” the nominated actor told me disappointedly at a reception for the film last week, which is true of so many of the co-star throwdowns thrown up by this irrational race: when it comes to the Oscars, every man is an island.

This week’s updated Oscar predictions here.

So I put the question out to you, both here and on Twitter: Who should host the Oscars now that Eddie Murphy has bowed out?

The replies include the usual wish-list picks (Neil Patrick Harris, Ricky Gervais, Tina Fey) to preferred returning emcees (Hugh Jackman, Steve Martin, Jon Stewart) to interesting original picks (Albert Brooks, Amy Poehler, Craig Ferguson). And while those are all nice and make sense for various reasons, I think the best option is staring us right in the face.

I have to come clean. I was not aware of the online campaign to get The Muppets to host the Oscars (which obviously lost steam once Eddie Murphy was tapped) until this morning. You can read all about it @MuppetOscars and at Facebook. And here’s the thing: BRILLIANT.

Let’s start broadly. The Academy is stepping out of one of its most unfortunate controversial episodes. It’s going to be hard to get anyone’s mind off of all of this no matter which direction you go, but what better way to divert all that attention than to line up Jim Henson’s fabulous contribution to comedy history for a good ole’ variety showcase?

It’s not arbitrary, obviously. A new film featuring the characters, “The Muppets,” is set to hit theaters just before Thanksgiving. The Oscars are on ABC, which is owned by Disney. Disney is distributing “The Muppets.” Synergy! And after last year, certainly there isn’t any reticence to have contenders from the season featured in that capacity.

Imagine the segues. Imagine the interlude when Kermit gets to sing Best Original Song nominee “Pictures in My Head” or when Jason Segel and Jim Parsons take the stage to join in the singing of “Man or Muppet.” Not to mention the rousing “Life’s a Happy Song,” which would get Amy Adams and more into the fold.

Then there’s the opportunity to have Fozzie up there offering up a few bad jokes before introducing this or that presenter. Cutaways to Statler and Waldorf in the balcony lamenting any number of things (thanks to reader Stefan for reminding me of that.) And hey, The Muppets have already successfully tried their hand at parodying one of this year’s potential contenders. This stuff is in their blood!

It’s a great way to just put this whole mess behind us. These are variety show vets! And I imagine it would broaden the audience for the show. That has been an obvious goal for the last couple of years.

I reached out to “The Muppets” screenwriter Nick Stoller (who I interviewed at length earlier this week — check back for that in the coming days) to get his thoughts on this admittedly outside-the-box potential scenario. And the more we talked, the more he got energized by the idea.

“I’d totally be on board,” he said. “You could have The Electric Mayhem as the house band!”

He says he thinks it would be best to have a real person host in addition, but I don’t personally think that’s necessary. The Muppets can carry the show handily. The thing is, logistically, is three or four months enough time to get something like this off the ground? Stoller seems to think so.

“As long as you’re not doing crazy, high production stuff,” he said. “The Muppets are a guy under a chair. You need a chair with a hole in it. If you try to do a big musical number, that’s where things start to get tricky. And the puppeteers are really good at improvising things if they need to do that.”

There you have it. Stoller said in our interview earlier in the week that every comedian owes a debt to The Muppets. With that in mind, he says he thinks the job of an Oscar telecast host is to “lightly rib Hollywood and just kind of expedite the proceedings,” and he mentioned Steve Martin and Billy Crystal as personal favorite emcees as of late. He was a big fan of what Ricky Gervais did on the Golden Globes, but he admits the Oscars are not necessarily the place for anything that harsh. Regardless, I don’t think anyone is going to get bent out of shape for being sent up by a Muppet.

There is a report out there that Tom Sherak has asked film producer Brian Grazer to step in and save the show. And much as I respect Grazer and think he’d be a handsome choice to produce, I say “boo” to that. Unless, of course, he likes this idea for a host. In which case, come on down.

The bottom line is this: I was kind of bowled over by “The Muppets.” I didn’t expect to be, but I was. I went into the film thinking, you know, whatever, The Muppets. But once the lights went down and the curtain drew open, I was shot right back to childhood. The memories took over and a big smile grew on my face and stayed there the rest of the movie.

The film is all about saving things for posterity. It’s about remembering something special, cherishing that and never forgetting. It’s also about finding your inner talent and having the courage to share that talent with the world.

Isn’t that the kind of thing you want for an Oscar telecast?

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

Well. This is a mess.

I honestly hadn’t expected Eddie Murphy to take his leave as Oscarcast host following the Brett Ratner dust-up, mainly because I imagined the Academy would have made sure he was still on board so as not to have two big stories to deal with. But it seems Murphy has indeed followed Ratner out the door after Ratner’s controversial media appearances put him in a position with the Academy that left no choice but resignation.

“First and foremost I want to say that I completely understand and support each party’s decision with regard to a change of producers for this year’s Academy Awards ceremony,” Murphy said via AMPAS press release. “I was truly looking forward to being a part of the show that our production team and writers were just starting to develop, but I’m sure that the new production team and host will do an equally great job.”

I’m really bummed out about this. I was looking forward to Murphy’s stab at things and had my fingers crossed for a return to the stage for him. His roots are in stand-up and this could have been a nice circling back to those beginnings.

Alas, he’s out. And maybe it’s for the better, really. The traces of Ratner’s controversy would have been left all over this show with Murphy still on board. Unfortunate but true. “I appreciate how Eddie feels about losing his creative partner, Brett Ratner, and we all wish him well,” Academy president Tom Sherak said in the release.

The question now is, what next? We’re back to square one and the Academy has a shortened window. Mark Harris (who really got the train rolling on the “Fire Ratner” talk) has a few suggestions. But I think his final remarks, which square with things I’ve been saying for a while now, are key:

“Stop worrying so much about protecting and defending; you”re not under attack. You did the right thing (and so did Ratner). Now shake it off and try not to make the same mistake twice. Don”t go looking for someone with the common touch who”ll save what you”ve decided is your flailing enterprise. Stop trying to get yahoos to love your show. Instead, stand up straight, square your shoulders, own your values, and hire a producer who will live up to them.”

Since we all know the Academy will be on the hunt for replacements, here’s your chance to offer up your thoughts. Who would make a good host? As always, I humbly suggest Kevin Spacey. But there are other possibilities. Someone on Twitter mentioned Albert Brooks. That would be brilliant. And there’s always the possibility of a @MuppetOscars. I’d probably get behind that more than anything.

Meanwhile, I really hope this nasty mess fades away as quickly as possible. And if these steps were going to be taken, I’m glad they happened almost immediately rather than being dragged out over a few news cycles.

Now…onward.

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

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has tapped actor Morgan Freeman as the recipient of this year’s Cecil B. DeMille Award, the organization’s lifetime achievement prize. Recent honorees have included Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg and Warren Beatty.

Actress Amy Adams and filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar were on hand at a press conference this morning to make the announcement. No, they have no connection to Freeman. But you know the HFPA and their celebrity fixation.

Freeman has been nominated for a Golden Globe five times, for the same five performances that netted him Oscar attention, in fact: “Street Smart” in 1987, “Driving Miss Daisy” in 1989 (he won the Globe but lost the Oscar to Daniel Day-Lewis in “My Left Foot”), “The Shawshank Redemption” in 1994, “Million Dollar Baby” in 2004 (he lost the Globe to Clive Owen in “Closer” but won the Oscar) and “Invictus” in 2009.

Favorite Freeman performances? I’d have to add “Se7en” and “Unforgiven” to that list. And “Lean on Me,” which had me terrified about what the heck high school would have to offer when I was a wee lad. It’s a good call for the organization (which is in the midst of a lawsuit with Dick Clark Productions over the rights to produce the garish annual Golden Globe Awards, the particulars of which would bore you silly). Freeman is hitting that mark, where lifetime achievement recognition just makes sense.

This year Freeman can be seen in “Dolphin Tale” and was the narrator of the “Conan the Barbarian” remake. (Remember that?) He’ll be seen next year in the highly anticipated “The Dark Knight Rises.”

The 69th annual Golden Globe Awards will take place on Sunday, January 15.

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

With all the talk about the great “unknowns” this season, with “Young Adult” and “J. Edgar” having dropped over the last week and “War Horse,” “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” still to come, Cameron Crowe’s “We Bought a Zoo” has kind of fallen through the cracks of expectation. I haven’t heard much about it and most seemed to disavow it after that saccharine-loaded trailer, but I’m actually looking forward to it with fingers crossed.

Details of the Jónsi-led soundtrack were recently revealed and I noted in a Best Original Song finger-to-the-wind post that the track “Gathering Stories” will be in the mix for that category. But what else could register for the film? Is Matt Damon lurking as a Best Actor possibility? Is the adapted screenplay up to snuff? I just don’t know.

But I do know that the new poster for the film is a nice little marketing stroke. None of the one-sheets for the film so far have taken the bait of plastering Damon or Scarlett Johansson’s face on there, which is nice. Posters these days are always inevitable tragedies of art work. The latest “Carnage” example, for instance, just had me deleting the email, shaking my head this morning.

Check out the “We Bought a Zoo” poster below. The film opens nationwide on December 23.

It’s a good year for Stan Lee. “Thor” and “Captain America: The First Avenger” have laid the groundwork for “The Avengers” next year. He got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in January. The Visual Effects Society has tapped him for a lifetime achievement honor, and the awards just keep coming.

Today the Producers Guild of America (PGA) announced that the comic book legend will receive its Vanguard Award this year. The prize recognizes achievements in new media and technology. Previous recipients include George Lucas, John Lasster and YouTube founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Will Wright.

“I am extremely appreciative that the Producers Guild has chosen me for this distinguished award,” Lee says in the press release. “I am eager to continue to expand comic book storytelling into the digital space and am honored to be awarded alongside such amazing visionaries.”

The award comes at a time when comic books, just like most literature, have been making a transition to digital consumption. In August, DC Comics launched “The New 52,” a renumbering of 52 of the company’s titles that are available in brick and mortar stores and online on the same day. (Which reminds me, I need to grab the ole’ iPad and see what’s out today.) Lee was most influential in Marvel Comics, naturally, and though such a definitive step hasn’t been taken by that company toward digital yet, it eventually will.

The 23rd annual Producers Guild Awards will be held on Saturday, January 21, 2012.

With the Governors Awards right around the corner, this year’s recipients have been making the press rounds. When they were announced earlier this year, Oprah Winfrey’s planned Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award fete was criticized by many who felt like she was known more for her TV work than her film work and therefore it was a stretch to extend her an honor that has gone to the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman and Jerry Lewis over the years. Well, Winfrey says she gets it, and that she was surprised herself, but she also defends herself: “I don’t think there’s room for criticism in the do-good department.” Let’s get down to brass tacks. Do I win a car or what? [Associated Press]

Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo” chosen for Royal Film Performance 2011. [Hollywood Reporter]

Double take: Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher and other actors as world leaders. [Telegraph]

Pics from the set of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” [Vanity Fair]

The Gurus o’ Gold add Best Actor and Best Animated Feature Film pics to the mix. [Movie City News]

Rolling out a classy new site for Steve McQueen’s “Shame.” [Fox Searchlight]

Jason Reitman makes plans to follow-up his “Breakfast Club” screenplay table-read with a similar program featuring “The Apartment.” [Film Independent]

Dave Karger rounds up Academy member reactions to yesterday’s Brett Ratner bombshell (perhaps the only example of hit-hungry extraneous “reporting” on the issue worth a look). [Entertainment Weekly]

Will screening unfinished “Hugo” at Academy hurt Oscar hopes? [Gold Derby]

RIP Oscar-nominated costume designer Theadora Van Runkle. [Variety]

It”s been a momentous week for Chinese director Zhang Yimou. The Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) and FIAPF-International Federation of Film Producers Associations announced that the prolific (and often times controversial) director will be this year”s recipient of the FIAPF Award for Outstanding Achievement in Film in the Asia-Pacific region. The honor will be awarded at the fifth annual Asia Pacific Screen Awards ceremony on Australia’s Gold Coast on November 24.

The director”s previous achievements include the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, two BAFTA awards, Silver and Golden Lions at Venice and Berlin’s Silver and Golden Bear. Zhang”s “Ju Dou” became China’s first Academy Award-nominated film in the Best Foreign Film category in 1991 followed directly by his next film “Raise the Red Lantern.” The director”s latest offering, “The Flowers of War” has already been selected as China’s official foreign language entry for this year”s Academy Awards.

Yesterday”s announcement that Wrekin Hill Entertainment, in association with Row 1 Productions, picked up the North American rights for the war epic starring Christian Bale and Shigeo Kobayashi means that the film will be vying for a larger presence at the Academy Awards. It is set to open wide in China on December 16th followed by an Oscar-qualifying run in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco beginning in late December.

Set against the backdrop of the Rape of Nanking during the Sino-Japanese War, “The Flowers of War” follows the story of John Miller (Bale), an American who poses as a priest when he is trapped amidst the chaos of battle, and the ensuing occupation, a group of innocent school girls and 13 courtesans, “all equally determined to escape the horrors taking place outside the church walls,” as the press release puts it. The hope will likely be to position Bale for Best Actor consideration and/or Zhang for Best Director.

Known for his vivid use of color and his storied history with the Chinese government, Zhang is the most significant, lauded and contested member of China”s “Fifth Generation” of filmmakers. His films were once banned for their subtle and overt use of metaphor to criticize China”s Communist leadership. The filmmaker was prevented from attending the Cannes Film Festival in 1994 to accept the grand jury prize for “To Live,” which highlighted the cost to the individual in Mao”s campaign for power. Zhang, the dissenter, was said (by some) to betray those loyal to him with the release of 2002s “Hero,” which many felt celebrated the ideals of the Communist party with its emphasis on the importance of a unified China. But there are those that feel that 2004’s “House of Flying Daggers” reaffirmed Zhang’s politics and emphasis on the individual.

It should be noted that Zhang”s films have enjoyed both critical and box office success in China, that the government chose him to direct the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games opening and closing ceremonies and that “The Flowers of War” represents China”s most expensive film to date.

Zhang Yimou”s place in cinema history is already well established, but the release of “The Flowers of War” may provide the director long-awaited Oscar exposure outside the Best Foreign Language Film category.

Since I first read Jonathan Franzen’s National Book Award-winning novel nearly a full decade ago, “The Corrections” has been simultaneously my most anticipated and most dreaded of all mooted Hollywood prestige pics — a project that has wavered from inevitability to promise to mirage in the years since the film rights were first snapped up.

Anticipated, because I love the novel as much as legions of other people: its ubiquity has done little to dim the brilliance of its densely knotted construction, jagged comedy and profound capacity for pain and empathy in its deconstruction of what makes and breaks the modern American family. Dreaded, because — well, everything I just said. It’s such a vast, heaving, emotion-sodden work that the odds would be against even the most judicious film treatment matching its breadth and tonal range; a less judicious one, meanwhile, could veer into unholy realms of soggy highbrow soap-opera.

The names fleetingly attached during the novel’s long, unfulfilled cinematic courtship were never quite the ones you wanted to hear. Stephen Daldry and writer David Hare were linked to it after their successful 2002 adaptation of another structurally intricate American literary hit, “The Hours,” but their combined sensibility seemed entirely too placid, too vanilla for Franzen’s quicksilver writing: the rumors that they’d lined up the not-especially-suited Judi Dench to play bristly Midwestern matriarch Enid Lambert foretold a kind of over-polished, Academy-ready approach to material that required a spikier stylistic touch.

That certainly wasn’t what seemed on the cards when the project next fell into the hands of Robert Zemeckis, not the first name you’d associate with acrid, honest human drama: the material was so far removed from any of the fanciful narrative from his directorial oeuvre that it was hard to imagine what his film would feel like, but either way, a filmmaker whose keen interest in motion-capture technology has defined his career of late didn’t sound like anyone’s first choice for such a high-stakes film.

Between this sporadic updates, wary fans like myself were left to our imaginations: I considered filmmakers like Kenneth Lonergan, Ray Lawrence and even Paul Thomas Anderson, all the while hopelessly dreaming that it could be a final project for Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward; in the real world, casting possibilities like Brad Pitt, Naomi Watts, Tim Robbins and Cate Blanchett floated in and out of the frame.

This was all a few years back; of late, the project had slipped off the radar to such an extent that an adaptation of Franzen’s 2010 follow-novel “Freedom” (the film rights to which were snapped up by Scott Rudin) seemed likelier to start rolling first. That’s until HBO, that recent unlikely bastion of American high culture, came to the rescue of “The Corrections,” confirming that it’ll be coming to our screens in the format that arguably always made more sense: as a TV drama.

I’m no small-screen aficionado, but this news pleases me enormously. TV will provide the necessary breathing room for the diffuse strands of Franzen’s narrative (which will be extended and embellished for the medium, with Franzen himself on co-writing duty) to dance around each other before gradually connecting; HBO, meanwhile, has recent form in the pithy tragicomic tone that might be less permissively accommodated in a starry studio feature. (The standard of recent US TV drama, plus the migration of major film names like Todd Haynes, ensures the medium is no longer a weak sister, while the novel’s certainly a closer cousin to “Six Feet Under” or “The Sopranos” than anything directed by Zemeckis.)

The casting of Chris Cooper and Dianne Wiest in the central roles is classy but reassuringly character-serving; the appointment of sweet-and-sour indie prince Noah Baumbach as co-writer and pilot-director is also astutely judged, considerate of both the required tone and scale. (Rudin, once more, is on board as executive producers.) I’m not a great one for celebrating the non-occurrence of films, but suddenly, the screen adaptation of “The Corrections” is something I’m anticipating a lot more than I’m dreading; indeed, my most eagerly awaited film of the next year or two may not be a film at all.

I’m happy to have dedicated the least possible amount of column inches to this Brett Ratner situation. But the actual news of the thing is today’s announcement that he is, indeed, after many called for his head in the wake of his using a gay slur at a Q&A last week, out as producer of this year’s Oscar telecast. (Kudos to The Hollywood Reporter’s “The Race” blog for landing the initial scoop.)

It was the only play. I know it was a tough decision for all involved (not that it should have been, but relationships are tough to just gloss over). But it was the right one. It was a PR nightmare, a picket line on Hollywood Boulevard waiting to happen. It’s just not what you want overshadowing what is meant to be a celebration of the year’s finest filmmaking.

Alas, this will be Ratner’s legacy. This will be what he’s remembered for. The easy joke is, “Well, it wasn’t going to be his films.” Whatever. He’s a working filmmaker who gets the job done and keeps the suits happy. And some of his films are entertaining. I’ll never begrudge him that. And I was actually getting a little bit excited for the prospects of his Oscar stint, especially with the announcement of a fresh crop of comedy writers for the show.

Well, what a difference a few days makes.

But it’s not just the gay slur. It’s the way he’s handled himself in public while promoting “Tower Heist.” It’s the overly candid, frankly petty discussion of his sex life with Olivia Munn (first saying he “banged her a few times,” then saying he didn’t) and Lindsay Lohan (quipping that he made her take an STD test before sleeping with her). These gems popped up on G4’s “Attack of the Show” and Howard Stern’s Sirius radio show. And indeed, it was that Stern appearance (which was full of further raunchy conversation) that forced the Academy’s hand here. Stern is a wizard at pulling the most candid remarks out of an interview subject. Ratner strikes me as the sort who’d love to divulge. Talk about a perfect storm.

Three years removed from the classiest Oscar telecast in history (Bill Condon and Larry Mark’s run in February of 2009), the last thing you want is this blatant LACK of class being the face of your show. And maybe Ratner will learn a lesson or two about what happens outside his own bubble. Maybe he won’t.

I also want to say, though, that I think it’s a bit too much to bring the “It Gets Better” campaign against homosexual harassment into this. It is very much an issue in the news and so it’s easy to go there, and I get why one would want to bring it up. Language has consequences and this situation is an illustration of that. But I think it unfairly places tragic deaths at the feet of Ratner, who I do not believe is homophobic in any way. He’s just stupid. Many of the people who have demonized him for using “that word” likely laughed at Louis C.K.’s bit about it. And if indeed you fit into that camp (I do), consider that. That’s all I’m asking.

“He did the right thing for the Academy and for himself,” Academy president Tom Sherak said via AMPAS press release. “Words have meaning, and they have consequences. Brett is a good person, but his comments were unacceptable. We all hope this will be an opportunity to raise awareness about the harm that is caused by reckless and insensitive remarks, regardless of the intent.”

Meanwhile, Ratner has released the following statement:

“Over the last few days, I”ve gotten a well-deserved earful from many of the people I admire most in this industry expressing their outrage and disappointment over the hurtful and stupid things I said in a number of recent media appearances. To them, and to everyone I”ve hurt and offended, I”d like to apologize publicly and unreservedly.

“As difficult as the last few days have been for me, they cannot compare to the experience of any young man or woman who has been the target of offensive slurs or derogatory comments. And they pale in comparison to what any gay, lesbian, or transgender individual must deal with as they confront the many inequalities that continue to plague our world.

“So many artists and craftspeople in our business are members of the LGBT community, and it pains me deeply that I may have hurt them. I should have known this all along, but at least I know it now: words do matter. Having love in your heart doesn”t count for much if what comes out of your mouth is ugly and bigoted. With this in mind, and to all those who understandably feel that apologies are not enough, please know that I will be taking real action over the coming weeks and months in an effort to do everything I can both professionally and personally to help stamp out the kind of thoughtless bigotry I”ve so foolishly perpetuated.

“As a first step, I called Tom Sherak this morning and resigned as a producer of the 84th Academy Awards telecast. Being asked to help put on the Oscar show was the proudest moment of my career. But as painful as this may be for me, it would be worse if my association with the show were to be a distraction from the Academy and the high ideals it represents.

“I am grateful to GLAAD for engaging me in a dialogue about what we can do together to increase awareness of the important and troubling issues this episode has raised and I look forward to working with them. I am incredibly lucky to have a career in this business that I love with all of my heart and to be able to work alongside so many of my heroes. I deeply regret my actions and I am determined to learn from this experience.

“Sincerely,
Brett Ratner”

What say you? Did the Academy and Ratner make the right call? Offer your thoughts in the comments section below.

Quick, how many title sequence designers can you name? I’m willing to bet most of you got no further than Saul Bass, which says more about him than it does about us — the man responsible for some of the most ubiquitously reprinted poster and credit designs in film history may never have made a feature, but he’s acquired the kind of hushed, revered status most cinephiles reserve for auteurs. (He did, however, direct several shorts, nabbing an Oscar for one of them.)

Even those of you who don’t know his name know his work: the credit sequences of “Vertigo,” “Psycho,” “West Side Story” and several 1990s Martin Scorsese pictures; multiple iconic posters, ranging from “The Man With the Golden Arm” to “The Shining”; away from the movies, the corporate logos of AT&T and Kleenex. I have little choice but to think of Bass at least once a day: a poster storyboard of his opening titles for “Anatomy of a Murder” adorns my living room wall. As the son of a graphic designer, I was raised to be hyper-aware (not to mention hyper-critical) of movie credits: Bass, I was taught, was the gold standard. 16 years after his last film job (the title sequence of “Casino,” released one year before his death), he remains so.

Bass would have been an ideal candidate for an honorary Oscar in his time; it’s a shame the Academy never got around to it. They are, however, doing their bit now by hosting a tribute evening to Bass with New York’s Museum of Modern Art. “Saul Bass: A Life and Film and Design” will take place on Monday, and coincides with the publication of the book of the same title. From the Academy’s press release:

Beverly Hills, CA – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will present “Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design,” celebrating one of the 20th century’s most acclaimed designers, on Monday, November 14, at 7 p.m. at MoMA in New York City. The evening’s special guests will include design historian Pat Kirkham; designer and writer Chip Kidd; and graphic designer Kyle Cooper, who has created title sequences for “Seven” (1995), “X-Men: First Class” (2011), the “Spider-Man” trilogy and others. The event is part of To Save and Project: The Ninth MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, and will also feature the premiere of the Academy Film Archive’s new restoration of Bass’s Oscar®-winning short “Why Man Creates” (1968).

Bass, who created some of the most compelling images of postwar visual culture, often in collaboration with his wife Elaine, permanently transformed the worlds of corporate identity and graphic design. He is also widely known for his design work in film, particularly his iconic title sequences, and for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger and Martin Scorsese. Bass died in 1996.

This presentation also marks the publication of a new book, Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design, designed by Jennifer Bass (Saul’s daughter) and written by Kirkham, who knew Bass personally.

Tickets to “Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design” are available online at http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1210. Tickets are $12 each. MoMa is located at 11 West 53rd Street in New York City. For more information, visit www.oscars.org.

As someone who tracks the awards season for at least part of a living, it goes without saying that I’ve said some geeky things in my time. And few have been geekier than my involuntary exclamation, while discussing the Oscar prospects for “The Artist” with a colleague last week, along the lines of: “I just hope to God it gets a Best Costume Design nomination!” My colleague looked understandably flummoxed: even allowing for my keener-than-average interest in the technical categories, it seems a peculiarly specific wish. The 1920s threads in “The Artist” are top-notch, of course, as is every craft aspect of the handsome monochrome period piece. Why this category? 

The answer lies not in the clothes as much as the man behind them. Costume designer Mark Bridges is one of the very best in his field, a singular artist whose imagination is equally fired by contemporary and period settings, whose visual wit and personality shine through even in projects that aren’t obvious sartorial showcases. Over two decades in Hollywood, his designs have graced everything from austere Paul Thomas Anderson dramas to fluffy teen comedies to a Cirque du Soleil special, and he has precisely zero Oscar nominations to show for it.

On the surface, this seems surprising: Bridges has been previously nominated by the Costume Designers’ Guild, consistently works on high-profile titles (including two recent Best Picture nominees) and is adept with period garb, which is what the Academy seems to think counts for 90% of award-worthy costuming. The trouble, however, is that Bridges has excelled in the eras that voters in this category find least interesting: he’s a genius with the fashions of late 20th-century America, which feature rather too few corsets and ruffles for Oscar’s liking.

Bridges’s first nomination (and, arguably, win) should have come in 1997 for “Boogie Nights,” in which his swirling wardrobe of day-glo synthetics and lurid plaids not only pinned down the decay of the 1970s, but marked multiple characters’ wild emotional swings. He nailed this trash-fab era again in the so-so cocaine-biz biopic “Blow,” in which Penelope Cruz’s flammable, candy-colored shellsuits were virtual characters in themselves — the Guild paid appropriate respect with a nomination in their period category, but the Academy hadn’t the sense of humor to go there.

For several consecutive features, he channelled his talents into contemporary work, subtly in “8 Mile,” playfully in “Punch-Drunk Love” and nomination-calibre hilariously in “I Heart Huckabees,” until dipping again into oddball period waters with “Fur” and “There Will Be Blood.” The latter, extending a happy career-long collaboration with Anderson, seemed a good potential vehicle for a first Oscar nomination, but his costumes for the turn-of-the-century oilfields epic were too appropriately drab and dust-dredged to spark imaginations in that spectacle-dominated category.

I over-optimistically thought his day might have come earlier this year, when the Guild once again stood up for his inspired work in a modern-period piece: his delicious, point-on evocation of early-90s strip-mall wardrobes in “The Fighter,” ranging from Christian Bale’s tatty Hammer pants to Melissa Leo’s sequinned, one-shade-too-small boob tubes to Mark Wahlberg’s overstarched dress shirt, made for the strongest costume design candidate of 2010, but naturally the Academy couldn’t find room: Sandy Powell’s curious assemblage of zips, tinsel and fish scales for “The Tempest” couldn’t go unsung.

This year, however, I’m letting myself get my hopes up once more. Bridges has never been attached to an Oscar frontrunner quite as well-engineered as “The Artist,” and this time he’s working in a period groove the branch is all too happy to recognize: the undiluted glamor and sparkle of 1920s Hollywood, with its plethora of jewel-dripped gowns and immaculately tailored suits. It’s perhaps not the most definitive work of his career, but it’s consummately detailed and infused with quirk, while working with black-and-white serves up some exciting design challenges that shouldn’t go ignored.

The LA Times recently profiled Bridges’s work in the film; there he reveals his own longstanding passion for silent cinema, explains some of the difficulties he faced in recreating the precise silhouettes of the era:

“George [Jean Dujardin] is a composite of Douglas Fairbanks and John Gilbert – the small mustache and the dark hair… And for Peppy [Bérénice Bejo], we relied on a young Joan Crawford and a little bit of Clara Bow. I looked at their films to see how young and fresh they were – they were the epitome of flapper. You could see how easy the clothes really were, with hardly any foundations… Still, it was difficult – from a practical standpoint – to re-create this time period with so many of the materials not available anymore. With the advance of central heating, wools have become so much lighter. The biggest challenge was finding things that would really feel authentic to the ’20s.”

With The Weinstein Company angling for a wide spread of nods for the French-made silent wonder, one can hardly call his nomination a sure thing — the power of Harvey somehow failed to net “Inglourious Basterds” a mention in this category two years ago — but he’s never had more going for him.