I make this the lead story here only because it’s Friday and I’m a huge fan of the gaming series. Not awards related in the slightest, but I really hope they don’t screw it up. It looks like Sony has acquired the film rights to Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed.” Ubisoft has been really careful about who these rights went to and I hope that means they are being delicate with the story, because I happen to think the story of “Assassin’s Creed” — even if portions amount to little more than boiled down ancient alien theory — has a lot of potential. Of course, we’ll likely get some kind of bottled up distillation that loses what’s great about the narrative, but a guy can hope, right? [Variety]

Jude Law, who plays a smarmy investigative journalist in “Contagion,” defends investigative journalists. [TheTelegraph ]

Emily Watson talks “Oranges and Sunshine” and a little bit on “War Horse.” [Collider]

River Phoenix’s family wants nothing to do with the release of his final, unseen film “Dark Blood.” [Deadline]

Lynne Ramsay talks “We Need to Talk About Kevin” across the pond. [The Guardian]

“Martha Marcy May Marlene” actress Elizabeth Olsen on nudity, photo shoots and emulating Emma Stone. [Vulture]

The film’s director, meanwhile, talks researching cults. [24 Frames]

With “The Rum Diary” on the way, a curated guide to Hunter S. Thompson’s contributions to the bunny pages. [Playboy]

Anne Thompson offers her analysis of the Gotham Award nominations. (More on those later today in the podcast.) [Thompson on Hollywood]

Jeff Wells apologizes to Roland Emmerich for epic-film-bashing, really responds to “Anonymous.” [Hollywood Elsewhere]

LONDON – Having forgotten much of the Spanish I only sketchily learned in my first year of university, I”m afraid I was one of those dim critics who, at first glance, puzzled over the title of Gerardo Naranjo”s coolly crazed new film “Miss Bala”: a long-night”s-journey-into-day drug-cartel thriller, at once taut and elastic, revolving around the unlikely political center of the Miss Baja California beauty pageant.

Of course, it turns out that “bala” is the Spanish word for “bullet”; if this initially seems a clunkily direct pun for a rattling action film with no shortage of literal bullets in its arsenal, it turns out to be a coldly ironic joke on a female protagonist Naranjo”s restlessly prowling narrative methodically denudes of all defences.

Played with a tightly reined kind of anti-magnetism by promising big-screen newcomer (and, aptly, former model) Stephanie Sigman, our protagonist Laura Guerrero is less a bullet than she is a blank: a silkily gorgeous 23-year-old from a motherless household in working-class Tijuana, she pins her dreams on winning a chintzy cattle-parade pageant seemingly without any clear sense of what those dreams might be. Naranjo”s script stringently parcels out details of her background, livelihood and even personality: we know little about the woman but her meek yearning for definition.

Laura is a sufficiently reflective surface that the film itself, since its deservedly buzz-heavy Cannes debut, has become a mirror for whatever political, cultural and, in particular, gender preoccupations critics and commentators choose to see in it. Debate simmers over whether the hard-to-read human question mark at the film”s center marks “Miss Bala” out as a feminist statement-one that protests the disenfranchisement of women by authorities Mexican and otherwise-or one that”s complicit in that very prejudice, a velvet rope that divides not only social arenas but cinematic ones. I don”t think I am copping out by suggesting the film is neither: disenfranchised and relentlessly put-upon Laura may be, but her passivity makes her a clear-eyed if not especially comprehending guide through dense thickets of opposing corruption in state and street alike.

Unlike, say, Steven Soderbergh”s 2000 ensemble piece “Traffic,” “Miss Bala” is a drug-war study keen to jump to the bigger social picture, ahead of the synecdochic individuals shouldering its concerns. Naranjo”s patient, sun-blasted camera revels in luxuriant wide shots of white limousines cruising past knobbly shanty developments: the people inside scarcely merit further scrutiny.

Laura, for her part, stumbles artlessly from one ordeal to another, beginning with a classical wrong-place-wrong-time set-up when the nightclub she”s reluctantly partying at with a deadbeat friend is raided by armed members of The Star, a ruthless gang violently fighting the government”s drug laws. Delivered to them by a corrupt police officer after initially escaping, she”s not so much taken hostage as put unceremoniously to work: as The Star set about using her to bait a key state bigwig, the pristine pageant looks on which Laura had hoped to build a bright future cruelly become her ticket into the underworld.

As both the aims and the consequences of the plot in which she is enmeshed escalate with head-spinning rapidity, Laura”s complete loss of control over the situation is shared by the audience: for all its flavorful urban authenticity, the film”s latter-half developments are so numbingly, rivetingly out of time with reality that we begin to feel we may as well be watching “The Manchurian Candidate.” Rarely has a film made such a virtue of imposing inordinate suffering upon a character while inviting little in the way of profound empathy from the viewer: feeling sorry for a character is not quite the same as feeling for a character, and Naranjo devises brilliant formal strategies to keep us just outside Laura”s head throughout.

More exactingly (not to mention expansively) shot and constructed than any infinitely bigger-budgeted Hollywood thriller in recent memory, “Miss Bala” measures its thrills sequence for sequence, rather than cut for cut: Naranjo (serving commendably as his own editor) and Hungarian DP Mátyás Erdély (working in far balmier conditions here than in his striking calling-card collaborations with auteur Kornél Mundruczó) are content to stand at a comfortable distance from the action – letting the chips, not to mention the bullets, fall where they may. Several breathtaking single-shot setups observe frantic exchanges of gunfire with the calm fluency of Michaels (take your pick) Mann or Haneke, counteracted by agitated sound design.

As Laura”s panic increases, however, the camera corners her ever more mercilessly, until she”s imprisoned in tight close-up-half-naked, hiding under a bed-while a climactic gun battle plays out mostly unseen around us. That adroit manipulation of space represents the extent of Naranjo”s interest in penetrating his rat-trapped protagonist”s psyche; in this dazzling attack of a movie, it”s the manifold blind spots that hold all the answers.  

Sorry for the delay in getting our unique Contenders section off the ground here at the new HitFix digs. The hard-working team here has a number of other projects that obviously aren’t In Contention-related, so you can empathize with the heavy workload.

But the wait is over! We’ve got the new section up and running. You’ll note a link above, under the blog logo, as well as in the sidebar with our predictions, as usual. We still have things tiered. “Good Bets” is a section reserved for contenders in each category that seem good to go for a nomination. “Other Possibilities” are just that, contenders in the thick of the hunt. “Dark Horses” are outside chances that deserve to be plucked from “The Rest of the Field,” which lays out most of the other hopefuls aiming for room in the race.

Where things are different is in my decision to rank the bottom tier along with the top three sections. Call it a tip of the hat to the old days of Zuesefer (those who have been following the Oscar race online for a decade will remember). I’ve spread the fields out to a list of 30 contenders in each category and ranked them all the way down.

It should go without saying not to take things too seriously when it comes to the ranking of those lower portions. But it’ll be worth keeping an eye on things as they move across the chart. Those changes, up or down, will be noted each week (starting with the next wave of updates), which is a feature we abandoned once upon a time.

We haven’t yet filled out the original song, foreign film and documentary feature sections, but we will in due time. For now, though, I’m happy to finally have this off the ground, so check out our new rankings at The Contenders and keep an eye out each Monday for the shifting and sliding of the field.

Oh, one more thing. I’m sure many of you will be happy to see the full line-up of categories back in the right sidebar. This was part of the transition, too, as it was dependent on things we were building into the contenders feature. There is a shortcut to each category’s contender page by clicking on the accompanying image in the sidebar.

So there we have it! Enjoy the latest updates. More as the season progresses.

So the news just dropped that “Anonymous” screenwriter John Orloff has been tapped to write Bryan Singer’s reboot of “Battlestar Galactica” for the big screen. I was aware of this imminent announcement when I sat down with Orloff last week to discuss his work on “Anonymous” (that interview will pop up in this space in the coming days), so I wanted to get his perspective on transitioning to a project of that scale.

Orloff got the gig because Singer happened to see “Anonymous” and really liked it. Singer had talked to the writer about “Battlestar Galactica” being a sort of Shakespearean story, fathers and sons painted against a big interstellar canvas. After that, it was all about Orloff’s take on the material, which he calls “pretty ballsy.”

Naturally he was reticent to go into too many details. But it sounded to me like a project he wants to fit inside the pre-existing framework that came before. I was reminded of how the filmmakers behind 2009’s “Star Trek” were careful about that kind of thing, not to draw any real definitive parallel here.

Here is the bulk of what Orloff told me:

“I’m a huge fan of the original series and of the second show, too. But I always thought the first show was a little too heavily reliant on ‘Star Wars,’ you know? Whereas I think the second show was really original and really cool. And I think I’ve come up with a way to write this movie that won’t fuck any of that up. I’m not sure how much they want me to talk about it. Let’s just say it’s not what you expect. It will all work in the universe that exists. It will not conflict with anything Ron Moore has done. I don’t think you can compete with what he’s done.

“I’m actually a science fiction geek more than anything. I just sort of got type cast as sort of a non-fiction screenwriter. That’s because the first thing I ever wrote was ‘Anonymous’ and then my first job was ‘Band of Brothers,’ and that led to ‘A Mighty Heart.’ But I’m a total ‘Star Wars’ geek. I was a huge ‘Star Trek’ nut. ‘2001’ is probably my favorite film. Stanley Kubrick is my favorite director; every movie is like a novel in the sense of the metaphoric depths of his thinking. And so my whole life I’ve always wanted to write a space epic. So to finally get a chance to write in the genre that I wanted to write basically forever is really cool.”

I have to come clean and admit that I’ve never really dug in on either series, though I did see the new mini-series when it came along. Regardless, I think Orloff is careful to maintain a lot of what built a new fanbase for the material, and clearly he’s excited about diving into a world he’s dreamed about writing for years.

The 21st annual Gotham Independent Film Award nominations were announced this morning, effectively kicking off the precursor season. Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants” and Sean Durkin’s “Martha Marcy May Marlene” were the big winners with three nominations apiece.

Considering that and given that Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” also showed up in the Best Feature category (the film’s only nomination), I’m sure Fox Searchlight is smiling big today. The studio racked up an impressive eight nominations total (the other being a Breakthrough Director tip of the hat for “Another Earth” helmer Mike Cahill).

Most surprising is the absence of “it” girl of the year Jessica Chastain in the Breakthrough Actress category, which predictably includes the two ladies who’ll surely duke it out for similar awards all year long: Elizabeth Olsen and Felicity Jones.

A few films were surprisingly left off the list, including Searchlight’s other title, “Win Win,” the Jonathan Levine dramedy “50/50” and Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive” (which may not have been eligible). Woody Allen’s Oscar hopeful “Midnight in Paris” was not eligible due to foreign financing. I’m mostly happy for “The Tree of Life,” as well as “Take Shelter,” which managed a nod for Best Feature and Best Ensemble.

Previously announced were career achievement honors for Tom Rothman, Gary Oldman, David Cronenberg and Charlize Theron.

Check out the full list of nominees below. The Gotham Awards will be held on November 28 in New York.

Best Feature
“Beginners
“The Descendants”
“Meek’s Cutoff”
“Take Shelter”
“The Tree of Life”

Best Documentary
“Better This World
“Bill Cunningham New York”
“Hell and Back Again”
“The Interrupters”
“The Woodmans”

Best Ensemble Performance
“Beginners”
“The Descendants”
“Margin Call”
“Martha Marcy May Marlene”
“Take Shelter”

Breakthrough Director
Mike Cahill, “Another Earth”
Sean Durkin, “Martha Marcy May Marlene”
Vera Farmiga, “Higher Ground”
Evan Glodell, “Bellflower”
Dee Rees, “Pariah”

Breakthrough Actor
Felicity Jones, “Like Crazy”
Elizabeth Olsen, “Martha Marcy May Marlene”
Harmony Santana, “Gun HIll”
Shailene Woodley, “The Descendants”
Jacon Wysocki, “Terri”

Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You
“Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same”
“Green”
“The Redemption of General Butt Naked”
“Scenes of a Crime”
“Without”

Alright, you know the drill. Rifle off your need-to-knows and Anne and I will address as many as possible. Make ’em good!

Every Oscar evening, the fashion police are out in full force grilling the (usually female) stars on their choice of attire as they march across the red carpet. Seldom, though, is so much attention paid to the individuals who designed the clothes that made the stars look so good on screen. However, excellent costume design can immeasurably impact the quality of a film.

It is worth noting, though, that good costume design does not necessarily equate to making the star “look good.” Indeed, clothes are able to express a character in numerous ways, many of them extremely subtle, building the character through how he or she dresses, including possibly making the actor look run-down or impoverished.

That said, the Oscar for Best Costume Design does tend to award showy, extravagant work. Period pieces account for the overwhelming majority of nominees, with fantasy efforts comprising almost all of the rest. Rarely is a contemporary film nominated.

The branch makes room for at least one first-time nominee every year (2002 being a notable exception), though certain names show up very regularly indeed. Sandy Powell and Colleen Atwood are the most rewarded designers in recent years.

One thing that does make the costumers fairly unique among the Academy”s branches is a willingness to look beyond the perceived “quality” of a film in general. While being a Best Picture contender obviously doesn’t hurt a film’s chances, there is usually at least one nominee in this category every year, and often more, who is the sole representative of his or her film. Many of these films are very divisive and/or of questionable quality – “The Tempest,” “Australia” and “Marie Antoinette” are but a few examples from recent years. Other “cool” choices (“I am Love,” for example) can pop up and surprise from time to time.

Even though I sometimes strongly disagree with this category”s nominees, I salute the branch for doing what few of the other branches are willing to do: look beyond how much the film is liked overall and assess the quality of the work they are supposed to reward.

With all of that said, the best bet this year seems to have the combination of period plus fantasy plus prestigious director plus prestigious costume designer. I am talking, of course, about Sandy Powell”s threads on Martin Scorsese”s upcoming “Hugo.”  The nine-time nominee/three-time winner won this category for Scorsese”s “The Aviator” and I suspect she”ll have a field day with this effort. If it even scores in only two categories, I expect this to be one (Best Art Direction being the other).

The other candidate I feel quite confident about is Sharen Davis for “The Help.”  Davis, nominated for both “Ray” and “Dreamgirls,” contrasted all elements and classes of Mississippi life in the early 1960s in this big summer hit. I fully expect at least two acting nominations for the film, with Best Picture being quite likely to follow. In these circumstances, I”d be surprised if Davis also wasn”t nominated.

The other Best Picture contender I feel will find a home here is “The Artist,” which brings us back to Old Hollywood and required classy work from Mark Bridges. Bridges has an eclectic resume, having done interesting work for both David O. Russell and Paul Thomas Anderson over the years. This will likely be his best chance to date to earn a nomination and, if the film catches on and its crafts are respected (as I suspect will be the case), I think he”ll find himself among the final five.

In the realm of titles still to be seen is Clint Eastwood”s “J. Edgar,” with Deborah Hopper doing duty once again for the director. Hopper likely just missed out on a nomination in this category for “Changeling” three years ago, and this film gives her the opportunity to create the upper echelons of American society across decades. It seems her best chance to date, at least on paper.

Steven Spielberg”s “War Horse” will also feature period costume, mostly military outfits in a World War I setting. This film has huge potential across the crafts categories, and this is no exception. It is true that Joanna Johnston hasn”t had a lot of luck with AMPAS to date, and costume design is not the favored category of war films. Even so, if the film is a Best Picture contender, I would expect to see nominations in various places and Johnston has been doing good work, usually for Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, for a long time.

Jacqueline Durran managed to earn two very deserved nominations in the last decade for Joe Wright”s “Pride & Prejudice” and “Atonement.”  On “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” she will be crafting the world of George Smiley, very period but not quite as showy. I think that lack of showiness will pose problems. However, the film seems very respected. So if the Academy goes for it in a big way (which I wouldn”t count on but it is certainly possible), Durran could end up with a third trip to the Kodak.

Denise Cronenberg has lived in the shadow of her famous brother for many years. Despite her lack of fame, she has always been a very reliable costume designer. Her work on “A Dangerous Method” is likely her best shot for AMPAS love to date. I remain unsure of how well this film will do with the Academy – I could easily see it being shut out. That said, if they”re ever going to cite her, I”m not sure they”ll have a better opportunity than this recreation of early 20th Century garb donned by German-speaking psychologists (and their troubled patients).

In the realm of “cool,” Anna B. Sheppard and Jeffrey Kurland did top-notch work on “Captain America: The First Avenger” this summer. I”m practically certain they”ll receive a guild nomination in the fantasy department. Despite their (limited) past history as Oscar nominees, however, I still don”t really see this title sailing through to the finish line. I”d love to be proven wrong, however, and am mentioning them as a result.

Returning to Old Hollywood for a moment, we also have Jill Taylor”s work on “My Week with Marilyn.”  The film seems to be divisive. However, as I said at the beginning, that doesn”t always matter. Taylor has done some interesting contemporary work (“Match Point,” for instance) and there”s no doubting that this film will showcase some fashionable attire.

“Jane Eyre” is a classic story, the most recent retelling of which received very positive reviews earlier in the year. Nonetheless, categories in which I would expect it to survive to the end of the year are not plentiful. Best Costume Design would appear to be one, as this is the sort of film favored by this branch. If it scores anywhere, expect it to be here. Designer Michael O”Connor won this award three years ago for “The Duchess,” set in roughly the same time period.

If we”re looking for films that could be sole representatives of their films, I wouldn”t rule out Eiko Ishioka (Oscar winner for “Dracula”) and Simoneta Mariano for “Immortals.”  Tarsem Singh”s two previous films (“The Fall” and “The Cell”) had very original costumes and I expect this effort to be no different. That said, despite the costume branch”s tendency to be more original than many other branches, this film may be a bust and/or not taken seriously by anyone.

Finally, I should mention a film that I dare you not to laugh about: Madonna”s “W.E.”  While the film is, by most counts, dreadful (though I should note that I have not seen it), I”ve been reminding you that that doesn”t always matter in this category. Arianne Phillips is an Oscar nominee for “Walk the Line” and this sort of costuming (high society, low society, 1930s) is regularly recognized by this branch. I”m not betting on a nomination but I wouldn”t write one off yet. (I notice Kris and Guy are both predicting a nod!)

That ends my look at Best Costume Design. Next week, we turn to a very different branch: The film editors.

Feel free to chime in with your thoughts on the costume design category below. It”s certainly possible a nominee (or two) isn”t even mentioned above! 

Four years ago it was a shrewd move on the part of Warner Bros. to attach the opening five or six minutes of “The Dark Knight” to IMAX versions of the studio’s “I Am Legend.” It brought more people to that film (and to the higher price point of IMAX) and it was a great way of drumming up interest in the summer 2008 film as far back as December of 2007. It was also the only footage Heath Ledger ever saw of his work in a slick presentation. This year, the studio is apparently looking to turn the same trick, though rather than go with WB’s own December opener “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” they reportedly will be attaching eight minutes of footage to Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.” [/Film]

River Phoenix’s final film to be finally be released 18 years later. [Hollywood Reporter]

Excerpting Roger Ebert’s memoir “Life Itself,” on Martin Scorsese. [indieWIRE]

Sasha Stone thinks the NYFCC’s decision yesterday has to do with “self respect” and “creating distance” from the “orgy” of awards season. She’s wrong. It’s about being ahead of LAFCA and, most certainly, asserting itself FIRST! [Awards Daily]

David Poland, I think, has the right perspective. [The Hot Blog]

And here’s Greg Ellwood’s take. [Awards Campaign]

Tracing Michelle Williams’s lack of luck with Oscar to her good friend and plus one. [Ministry of Gossip]

Steve Pond on a year for makeup Oscar consideration with Glenn Close, Nick Nolte and Christopher Plummer in mind. [The Odds]

Hollywood revs up partisan films a year ahead of election. [New York Times]

With Halloween in mind, the scariest deaths you’ve seen on screen, and how they would really happen. [io9]

Anyone else excited about the return of “Beavis and Butt-Head?” Mike Judge offers up a medley of voices on camera (rare for him). [Speakeasy]

FIRST!

In a very surprising twist, the New York Film Critics Circle has announced today that it will be revealing its list of superlatives on November 28, a full two days before the National Board of Review’s announcement (the group which traditionally signals the beginning of the precursor season).

A number of awards-giving bodies, from the Gotham Awards (announcing nominees tomorrow) to the Hollywood Film Awards like to consider themselves the starting gun of the precursor season, but it’s really always been the National Board of Review, going on 100 years now. It’s the first gauge of where things might start going, with a few quirky things thrown in here and there. We all know it’s just a bunch of New York film enthusiasts and not a critics group, but nevertheless, that’s just been the lay of the land.

No more. In the NYFCC announcement, chairman John Anderson says, “As the nation”s preeminent critics” group, we are excited about kicking off the annual end-of-year discussion with our new early voting date. On the basis of the films we have seen thus far, we are looking forward to another passionate debate amongst our members.”

The real question, of course, concerns films like “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “War Horse” that might not even be ready for the NYFCC’s screening deadline. “The Iron Lady” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” are both still in the editing bay. The NBR has even run into this before with their early December announcement, some films missing the cut or just barely making the deadline.

The rest of the release is the usual nauseating self-propelling mumbo-jumbo. “The Circle”s awards are often viewed as harbingers of the Oscar nominations. The Circle”s awards are also viewed-perhaps more accurately-as a principled alternative to the Oscars, honoring aesthetic merit in a forum that is immune to commercial and political pressures.” Etc.

The sad thing is, with language like that, it’s painfully obvious the NYFCC is just looking to be a substantial part of the awards season and not just one of a number of critics groups handing out awards. It’s entirely self-serving. Let’s not pretend it’s about honoring the highest in film accomplishment more than it is puffing yourself up in an already stuffy and crowded time of year. Alrighty? You’re basically telling studios, “Finish your film now or else.” It’s nonsense. And with the number of confessed “film lovers” in the NYFCC’s ranks, you’d have expected more.

Recent winners of the NYFCC’s award for Best Picture include “The Social Network,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Milk,” “No COuntry for Old Men” and “United 93.”

The path for “Martha Marcy May Marlene” began way back at the Sundance Film Festival in January. In the cold chill of Park City, Utah, a dark yarn bewitched audiences and a breakout actress was announced to the world.

It might have been a bit of déjà vu for actor John Hawkes. Just 12 months prior, the same narrative was being spun out of the festival.

“I was thinking, ‘Wow, this is so odd,'” he says. “‘In less than two years I’m working with two young women who are extremely talented and dedicated and smart and have a very healthy approach to their work, and an effective one.”

The two actresses in question are Jennifer Lawrence, who starred alongside Hawkes in 2010’s “Winter’s Bone,” and Elizabeth Olsen, who shares the screen this year in “Martha Marcy May Marlene.” It’s probably a bit unfair that one film is so often compared to the other, but the outward parallels of the two are difficult to ignore.

“They’re very different actresses, but both, I guess, surprisingly beyond their years,” Hawkes says of Lawrence and Olsen. “Lizzy was, as Jennifer was, game for the difficulties in difficult scenes that we shot and she was tireless. She’s in nearly every frame of the film. And like Jennifer, she’s able to kind of let that darkness go when the camera stops rolling. She has a great gift. I was just hugely impressed.”

The Sundance experience has meant a lot to Hawkes over the years. In addition to these two films, he’s had the pleasure of working at the festival’s film lab as an actor a few times, helping out first-time writer/directors, and he always enjoys himself. But while the experience of working on a film and seeing it through the PR experience might be a bit of old hat for Hawkes, it’s all very new for Olsen.

The younger sister of actresses Mary-Kate and Ashley (of “Full House” fame), Olsen took a different approach to her career. She’s reticent to discuss how the journey of her sisters through the surely difficult rigors of a child actor’s lifestyle might have influenced her decision, but she went to school at NYU and took her time before taking the plunge. And in so doing she’s offered up one of the most impressive debut performances of all time.

“I knew in high school I probably wouldn’t be able to handle that type of pressure,” she says. “So I just decided to continue studying and just focused on being as confident as possible in what I do before ever working professionally.”

She took on some understudy parts in theater, found her way to an agent and really just sought out an organic approach to wading into these waters, she says. Within the first seven months of auditioning for film roles, “Martha Marcy May Marlene” came along, and she saw it as an opportunity, though she wasn’t sure what would come of that opportunity.

“I just knew that it was a great part to grow from and learn from and try to explore and it would be my first time playing a lead,” she says. “And all that was just a great learning experience.”

In the film, Olsen plays an impressionable young lady who finds herself drawn into a cult in the Catskill Mountains. Though both Olsen and Hawkes prefer not to call it a “cult” so much as a community, but the fact is, it’s a scary, foreboding community. Writer/director Sean Durkin has said his intention was to make a cult film that wasn’t over the top but rather in a way that was modern and naturalistic, that felt like it could actually happen.

Obviously Hawkes and Olsen didn’t run off to join a cult in order to prepare for their roles, but for Hawkes, a self-confessed “over-preparer,” he says it was more a process of subtraction.

“I knew that I wasn’t interested in an over-the-top portrayal as this cult leader,” he says. “And the word ‘cult’ is not even in the script. It just conjures up so many images that lead straight to a kind of shorthand that I think the film really avoids and tells a much different story than what we normally see around cults. So I guess you’d say I work by subtraction. I always, as an actor, consider what is the story and then how can the character I’m playing help best tell that story.”

The instant Hawkes’s character appears on the screen, he says it would have been a mistake for him to appear as the personification of evil or the devil incarnate. It would take away from the character, he says, so a more shaded and nuanced approach was preferable, if for no other reason than it gives Olsen’s character credibility.

“If the character, Patrick, is someone that isn’t so obviously troubled,” he says, “if it’s a guy who, as an audience member, you can say, ‘Well I can see how she would want to follow him or how she fell in with those people,'” that makes for a better story.”

Having a weathered character actor like Hawkes on the set, who Olsen calls a “giving” and “selfless” actor, was a huge bonus for the actress. She was already in the middle of shooting another film, “Peace, Love & Misunderstanding,” and she was driving back and forth from one set to the other each day due a week’s overlap in filming. So any chance to keep things grounded was naturally a welcome commodity.

“I appreciated the fact that he’s not an actor who tries to play games or get inside your head and all those things,” she says. “And what I learned from him and from Sarah [Paulson] was how much you can give to an actor when you’re not on camera, because he would find moments where he would just be delivering me lines off camera.

“Obviously you always just try and stay present and as giving as possible to another actor when it’s their coverage, but I didn’t realize that you could do something more, because you can change the sound, you know? And I didn’t really realize how much can happen in post. So he would throw me off when we were doing my coverage and he’d think of great things to say to get a reaction out of me and I was so thankful to him at those moments.”

Hawkes is coming off his first Oscar nomination (for “Winter’s Bone”), and that was a moment he wasn’t expecting. “I don’t think I was really thought of as one of the five, necessarily, on a lot of people’s radar,” he says humbly. “I think I live by pretty low expectation in general, so I wasn’t really going to be too upset if it didn’t happen. But I was quite surprised that it did and I know that my family members and friends were all really excited and proud. It was great.”

This year, he’s certainly in the running again, given the presence he has in “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” but it’s Olsen who is really the breakout of the film and could be the one surprised to find herself in the line-up on Oscar morning.

And wouldn’t that be serendipitous? After all, as always, the nominations will be announced while the Sundance Film Festival is right in the thick of things, on January 24.

“Martha Marcy May Marlene” opens in limited release Friday, October 21.

Director James Cameron is working on two sequels for his 2009 blockbuster “Avatar” at the moment, writing them back-to-back and gearing up to dive back into the world of Pandora and the Na’vi soon enough. He recently stopped by ABC’s Nightline and dropped a few nuggets on what we can expect out of the next film.

“We will see the oceans of Pandora, which we haven’t seen at all,” he said. “That’s an ecosystem that I’m dying to start designing because it’s going to look spectacular. But also, again, now it narrows the spotlight instead of just nature in general or the rainforest. It focuses it a little more on ocean issues.

“Because we’ve got a planet that’s a blue planet. From a distance, you look at it, Earth is a lot more blue than it is brown (the landmass). We’re making the oceans unsurvivable for a lot of the species right now.”

He was quick, however, to note that he won’t be as “on the nose” with the environmental approach as he was with the first film. He admits he got away with some things there and that it would be a mistake to focus too heavily on that again. It has to be an entertainment first, he said.

Cameron also mentioned “there will be other planets as well. It’ll be a cornucopia. A treat for the eyes.” So it looks like the world of “Avatar” will spread out a bit from Pandora.

Say what you will about the original film, which took its knocks then and still does. The argument against the originality of its (obviously archetypal) screenplay never washed for me because the film was so much more than its simple (by necessity) structure and framework. It was a burst of imagination and I think a lot of people were just gunning for it, especially many in the hardcore sci-fi set who can be as pompous as the guys who beat them up in middle school. But I was swept away by the film and I very much look forward to further adventures in that world.

Check out the video interview with Cameron at ABC News.

Stan Lee’s imagination has certainly given way to a fair share of blockbuster entertainments on the screen. And the comic movie feeding frenzy that started with “X-Men” in 2000 and dominated the last decade owes plenty to him.

So, I guess it makes sense for the Visual Effects Society (VES) to tap Lee for the group’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The honor comes on the heels of the announcement that Douglas Trumbull will receive the Georges Méliès Award.

“As a writer there is nothing more rewarding than to see your creations brought to life on the screen,” Lee said via press release. “I am indebted to all of the incredibly talented artists who have contributed to my projects.”

Those artists, by the way, include Bryan Singer, Sam Raimi, Ang Lee, Louis Leterrier, Joe Johnston, Jon Favreau, Kenneth Branagh and, shortly, Joss Whedon, among others. Quite the roll call. Alright, I guess I’ll mention Mark Steven Johnson, Rob Bowman, Brett Ratner and Albert Pyun, too.

Said VES chairman Jeffrey A. Okun, “Stan Lee’s imagination has created a completely original and profitable niche in the entertainment world and has allowed visual effects to flex its muscle in service to it! Thanks to Mr. Lee’s fantastic creations and amazing stories he not only created a future filled with gadgets and inventions that we aspire to create for real — but all while inspiring the minds and imaginations of storytellers, visual effects artists and computer wizards everywhere.”

Recent recipients of the award have included George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron. The 9th annual VES Awards will take place on February 1, 2011.

Cameron Crowe had a pregnant idea yesterday. How about a top 10 list of music moments in film? His list is full of unique and sometimes surprising picks, though I guess I’ll forgive him for being modest enough to opt out of including “In Your Eyes” from his own “Say Anything.” And judging by comments Chris Cornell made in our recent interview, I imagine the Soundgarden front man would be delighted by the “We Bought a Zoo” director’s #1 choice. Lots of great picks, though. And a nice change of pace on the interwebs. [The Uncool]

Greg Ellwood sets the field of Best Actor contenders. [Awards Campaign]

Ten years later, why does the sweet smell of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “Amelie” linger on? [The Guardian]

David Hudson remembers Klaus Kinski in brief. The Werner Herzog collaborator would be 85 this year. [MUBI Notebook]

A history of “War Horse,” from page to stage to screen. [The Telegraph]

Christopher Nolan might film some of “The Dark Knight Rises” on the scene at Occupy Wall Street in Lower Manhattan. [24 Frames]

The Academy announces winners of 2011 Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowships. [Oscars.org]

Jeff Wells, God love him, is asking for folks to pitch in to help raise money to screen “Tyrannosaur” for press in Los Angeles. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

Nathaniel Rogers kicks off a new series — Oscar Horrors — by spotlighting the Oscar-nominated 1953 short film “The Tell-Tale Heart.” [The Film Experience]

LONDON – The Lebanese feminist anti-sectarian musical comedy has hitherto been a surprisingly under-explored niche in the rich spectrum of world cinema, so it”s to the considerable credit of writer-director-actress Nadine Labaki that she spotted this yawning gap and filled it so studiously. In the wake of her chaotic if pure-hearted sophomore feature “Where Do We Go Now?,” however, it”s probably safe to consider the door on this particular sub-genre swiftly closed. The trouble with Lebanese feminist anti-sectarian musical comedies, as it turns out, is a certain inconsistency of tone, and a hard-working Labaki hasn”t quite found a way around it.

Or perhaps she has. Following a mildly received springtime debut at Cannes, “Where Do We Go Now?” has emerged as the uninvited but ultimately ingratiating party guest of the autumn festival circuit – catching everyone off-guard by taking the Audience Award at the Toronto Film Festival, recently reserved for big-league awards bait of “King”s Speech” proportions, before being adopted by Sony Pictures Classics with a steely eye to the foreign-language Oscar. (Lebanon announced it as their official submission to the Academy shortly after its Toronto triumph.) It”s an unexpected turnaround under any circumstances, made only more surprising by a viewing of the film itself.

Equal parts patly righteous we-are-the-world cinema and eccentric stylistic gallimaufry, Labaki”s latest panders to western festival audiences with liberal issues so simplified as to be rendered incontestable. (Religious intolerance is bad! And so is violence against children!) So far, so money, but it”s harder to gauge what the viewers for whom these messages come as sobering epiphanies make of the film”s broad, lengthy comic interludes involving Ukrainian burlesque dancers and hash cookies (the latter accompanied by a rousing theme song containing the lyric: “This hashish comes straight from my heart/Yellow or brown, he”ll still be stoned”). Clearly, it”s working for some; for this writer, however, Labaki”s shrill, scattershot comic approach to high-stakes subject matter comes as a disappointment after the warm assurance of her popular 2007 debut, “Caramel.”

Like that film, “Where Do We Go Now?” employs a close-knit group of working-class women to carry its socio-political concerns, with Labaki herself, as feisty young widow and café owner Amale, its kohl-eyed center. (Not content with playing the only glamorous character in the mostly dowdy ensemble, Labaki also modestly burdens herself with the script”s lone romantic storyline. Female solidarity rules.) This time, however, the director has ambitiously enlarged the circle of characters and removed any specific social context: both location and period go unnamed in an allegorical fable revolving around bitterly warring Christian and Muslim menfolk in a remote Middle Eastern village, and the increasingly loopy measures the women take to pacify them.

These contrived schemes – including the aforementioned drugged sweetmeats and the hiring of some busty Eastern European eye candy as decoys – provide the chief comic set pieces, directed with more enthusiasm than flair by Labaki. Several of them amuse, but sit oddly with the film”s sharp swerves in and out of tragic territory: one minute we”re chuckling at goats being let loose in a chapel, the next a young boy on crutches is getting beaten up by grown men. Between these poles, any emotional throughline is increasingly tricky to determine.

A handful of song-and-dance numbers – staged with gusto, though too infrequent to grant the film fully-fledged musical status – are a more welcome tonal aberration, if only because they sometimes tap into a bridging sense of melancholy absurdism: the eerily beautiful funeral-march dance that opens proceedings, with its hive of black-clad, multi-denominational mourners moving in graceful harmony before departing to their separate cemeteries, is a symbolic and aesthetic peak the rest of the film never matches. It’s an inadvertently telling opening gambit: the women of “Where Do We Go Now?” are an effective force as a unit, but too ill-drawn and indistinctly performed as individuals (though more generously served than their boorishly one-note male counterparts) to illuminate any more personal themes within Labaki”s narrative. As the titular question is pointedly voiced aloud at the film”s close, the characters aren”t only ones stymied by indecision.

With “The Tree of Life” on DVD and Blu-ray and “Martha Marcy May Marlene” opening in limited release on Friday, it seemed a good time to take stock of the best debut performances the cinema has to offer. Hunter McCracken in the former and Elizabeth Olsen in the latter offer up award-worthy work, stunning in their capacity to inhabit their characters and seek out the truth therein.

The research on this one was taxing, and I don’t mind telling you, this list might be different on another day. It’s tough to settle on 10 when there are so many sterling debuts to choose from. And believe me, if your favorite isn’t on here, I’m sure I considered him or her.

It was heartbreaking to leave off the likes of Eva Marie Saint, Kate Winslet, William Hurt and Melanie Lynskey, as it was to ultimately eschew more recent stunners like Keisha Castle-Hughes, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Anna Paquin and the duo who sparked the idea to assemble the list.

Alas, tough choices have to be made when you do something like this. I wanted a good balance of eras as well, as I quickly discovered a great many outstanding debut performances came within the last two decades.

I tried to be strict here, too. If, say, James Dean showed up as a kid drinking from a water fountain in a film prior to “East of Eden,” no can do. If Q’orianka Kilcher had a quick part as a choir member in Ron Howard’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” before Terrence Malick truly discovered her for “The New World,” I couldn’t go there. This space I tried to reserve for that first moment we saw a talented actor on the big screen and the excitement such a thing brings.

So there we have it. Take a look at my list in our new gallery, and feel free to offer up your choices in the comments section below. (And, it goes without saying, don’t take it so personal if these don’t line up with your preferences. There’s a little thing called subjectivity.)

LONDON – Running a close second to “Dogtooth” for the title of Unlikeliest Oscar Nominee Of 2010 was “Animal Kingdom,” a modest, star-challenged Australian crime saga with Greek-tragedy overtones that an enterprising Sony Picture Classics, prioritizing strong reviews over invisible box office, rode all the way to an acting nod for late-blooming breakout Jacki Weaver. Pithy, bleak and shot through with nasty wit, it no doubt flummoxed many a pastel-hearted Academy voter checking it out post-nominations.

Alas, one can only imagine what they”d make of “Snowtown,” a blinding debut feature from Justin Kurzel that similarly negotiates the criminal exploits of a bungalow-dwelling family Down Under – only to make “Animal Kingdom” look positively “Neighbours”-like in comparison. That they”re unlikely to cross paths is probably better for all concerned: Kurzel”s film, tellingly and adventurously adopted in the US by IFC”s Midnight arm, is ingeniously passive-aggressive cinema that places great stock in its own thorniness without ever resorting to idle shock-broking. Less keen on being liked than being felt, it unsparingly lays out the ugly details of its true-crime story for the audience to assimilate themselves; some have found its approach heartless, but I was struck by its subject-countering grace.

If the name “Snowtown” sounds familiar to you, chances are you grazed the world news headlines 12 years ago, when eight bodies were discovered in acid barrels in an abandoned bank vault – gifting tabloids with the alliterative “Bodies in Barrels Murders” tag. Kurzel”s film, calmly and methodically detailing the domestic events that built to this sensationally grisly outcome, certainly makes it clear that there is no other reason to remember this expanse of South Australia: as shot in coldly metallic horizontals by DP Adam Arkapaw (himself an “Animal Kingdom” alumnus), it”s squat clapboard no-man”s-suburbia, pressed down by low gray skies, in which everything appears to be in some stage of dying.

That includes our sullen, gangly 16 year-old protagonist James (Lucas Pittaway, one of many first-time actors in the impressive ensemble), a fatherless idler equally prepared to accept destitution and grotesque sexual abuse. As such, he”s malleable clay in the hands of his mother”s ruddily charismatic new boyfriend John Bunting (Daniel Henshall), whose jocular, motivational relationship with the kid belies a dysfunctionally violent streak. Those familiar with the Snowtown story will work backwards to link this grimly plausible setup to its unconscionable fallout; for those who aren”t, this boldly linear film, scalpel-edited by Oscar-nominee Veronika Jenet (“The Piano”), offers few signposts. It”s a queasily riveting trip either way.

This is the kind of cool-headed approach to real-world horrors that is routinely praised for being courageous, even when certain films skimp on social or emotional detail (another of this year”s Cannes talking points, Markus Schleinzer”s smugly bloodless “Michael,” comes to mind), so it”s a relief that Kurzel is as interested in community, and the everyday corruption thereof, as he is in the bloodier facts of the case.

In constructing a wider network of social decay, Kurzel extracts precise, flavorful performances from his inexperienced cast, his leads chief among them: Pittaway is impassive but never emotionally vague, while the bearish Henshall (the lone pro in the cast, though making his first film appearance) switches track from chummy to volatile with unnerving fluency. Best of all, perhaps, is Louise Harris: reportedly plucked from a supermarket to play James”s indifferent yet leery mother, her reality-weathered face deftly keeps in play questions of how much the character knows, or wants to. A handful of variously induced miscreants committed the obscene crimes that give “Snowtown” its purpose; in this savagely accomplished and serenely gutting film, however, it takes a village.

Mark Harris cherry picks three areas of the Academy’s rulebook that really need some reconsideration. And one of them drives me absolutely nuts, too. The stipulation that an actor can’t be nominated for two different films in the same category. Not that I spend a lot of time trying to understand it, but really, I can’t figure out what the point of this nonsense is. Is it some kind of bizarre fairness thing? I don’t know. But Ryan Gosling gives two of the year’s best performances, and by golly, he should be nominated for each if voters see fit! #pissinginthewind [Grantland]

Among other things, David Fincher admits “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (the book) has its issues and Scarlett Johansson would have been too (hot and) distracting as Lisbeth Salander. [Vogue]

George Clooney tunes out Oscar buzz. [USA Today]

Anyone gotten a load of the (legit) Ellen Barkin Twitter insanity? [Twitter]

Peter Knegt writes up 13 underdog actors who deserve Oscar attention. [indieWIRE]

Sasha Stone takes an Oscar flashback to romance films that registered with the Academy. [Awards Daily]

Matt Brennan revisits Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” now that it’s on DVD and Blu-ray. [Thompson on Hollywood]

Random: Beck is remixing Philip Glass. [Pitchfork]

Amid question on any and everything he’s working on, William Monahan lays out his idea for a sequel to “The Departed.” [Collider]

John Lasseter gets a bit defensive on “Cars 2” and has a friend in Brooks Barnes to carry the message across strongly. [New York Times]

Sharon Waxman gossips that Mark Wahlberg has fallen out with friend and collaborator David O. Russell. [Waxword]

As you know from my review, Steven Spielberg’s “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn” delivered the goods at yesterday’s first international press screening — while one or two broadsheet critics have been sniffy about the mo-cap technology, it’s fair to say the outlook is bright for a film that Paramount was cautious about promoting. Though the film perhaps faces more cultural hurdles across the pond, I’m confident the US reception will be equally healthy ahead of its December opening.

All of which makes “Tintin” an intriguing wild card in terms of its awards potential. We don’t know yet where the Academy’s animation branch will land on the film, or how grudgingly they might treat it even if it is ruled eligible for the animated feature Oscar. And its proximity to Spielberg’s “War Horse” on the US release calendar raises interesting questions: previously positioned as the appetizer to the live-action epic, what if the animated film is better received? Will they find themselves duelling for a spot in certain technical categories, or could there be room for both? Could “Tintin” even be — gasp — the Best Picture nominee nobody saw coming?

Obviously, I’m getting ahead of myself — the Academy could just as easily view the film as a purely commercial play and sideline it altogether. So if there’s any one category where I feel somewhat comfortable predicting a nomination, it’s in Best Original Score. 45-time nominee John Williams is always a tough man to bet against, particularly for a well-liked film, and I’m sure the music branch would be glad to welcome him back after the longest Oscar hiatus of his career. (It’s been six years, though only one score, since his last brace of nominations — for “Munich” and “Memoirs of a Geisha.”)

Of course, 13 of Williams’s nominations in the score category have come for Spielberg films: their last collaboration, on “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” was a rare miss with the Academy, and the film’s moderate reception surely probably played into that. This is one category, moreover, where “Tintin” doesn’t have to worry too much about competing with “War Horse”: Williams has a long history of scoring twin nominations in one year.

But what of the score itself? Well, you can listen for yourself: German site Cinema Musica posted a large selection of “Tintin” score samples recently, all available here.

Even out of context, you can probably tell from the samples that this is, most unmistakably, a John Williams creation: he’s in typically boisterous high-adventure form, and while it’s far from his most distinctive work, he’s clearly having a good time with it. I particularly like the slinky jazz of the opening-credits theme, most reminiscent of my favorite latter-day Williams score, “Catch Me If You Can”; if the busier orchestrations are sometimes over-egged in the film, there’s still something comforting about their old-school roar.

Williams has been Oscar-nominated for some far less enjoyable boilerplate scores in his day; I don’t see much of a case for him to miss here. Take a listen, and tell us what you think.