Alright, you know the drill. Rifle off your need-to-knows and Anne and I will address as many as we can in Friday’s podcast. Make ’em good!

Yesterday’s news that Michael Fassbender will be hooking up with Steve McQueen for a third shot on goal (after “Hunger” and “Shame”) has me excited at the beginnings of a beautiful partnership. Fassbender as Pitt or De Niro to McQueen’s Fincher or Scorsese? I think we all respond to successful collaborations and these two are already off to a brilliant start. There’s no doubt in my mind they have a lot of magic left in them and perhaps haven’t even begun to show us anything. The new film is called “Twelve Years a Slave” and little is known about it as of now, but I’m already pumped. [Variety]

Let’s see what else is going on in the Oscarweb today…

Nathaniel Rogers, meanwhile, reports from the NYFF “Shame” after party, held at the location where Carey Mulligan croons “New York, New York” in the film. [The Film Experience]

Peter Knegt writes up 13 underdog actresses who deserve Oscar attention this season. [indieWIRE]

Devin Faraci argues that “Footloose” director Craig Brewer should set his sights on a proper musical. [Badass Digest]

John Campea chats with yours truly about the impact Steve Jobs has had on the film business. [Movie Reviews To Go]

Sasha Stone tries to discern how nominees under the current 5% system might have panned out, but I don’t think it’s as scientific as that: the branches aren’t making Best Picture selections with their nominations. [Awards Daily]

Hadley Freeman states the obvious in nailing that sad, litigious Detroit woman over her “Drive” lawsuit. [The Guardian]

“The Ides of March” pays homage to street artist Shepard Fairey. [Culture Monster]

Stuart Elliot reports from a Popular Mechanics awards celebration, where James Cameron accepted an award and declared the spirit of innovation alive and well. [Media Decoder]

Tomorrow marks the beginning of my final date in the 2012 festival calendar — and for a change, I don’t have to spend the night before hunting for my passport. As both my hometown festival and the first one to grant me press accreditation, the BFI London Film Festival is obviously close to my heart. For several years before I gained the absurd privilege of access to Cannes, Venice and Berlin, the LFF was where, for two happy weeks, I’d annually gorge on the arthouse fare I’d frustratedly only read about for months.

Combining thorough cherry-picking of previous festival hits with less exposed pockets of world and British cinema into a broad programme of over 300 shorts and features, with a handful of world premieres and archive gems to make up the balance, it’s as comprehensively curated a public-oriented festival as exists on the circuit — even critics who have already seen many of the programme highlights at other festivals have ample room to make fresh discoveries.

This, I suspect, will prove the case this year for me: between my other European festival jaunts this year and two weeks of advance LFF screenings, my tally of already-seen titles hit a nice round 60 this afternoon — and yet there’s plenty I’m still keen to see for the first time over the next two weeks. These range from big-league fall festival hits like “The Descendants” to smaller international curios like the French animation “A Cat in Paris” to the high-profile question mark of this year’s Surprise Film. (As I wrote before, my money’s on “The Adventures of Tintin.”)

I’ll be getting up bright and early tomorrow for the press screening of the festival’s curtain-raiser, Fernando Meirelles’s “La Ronde” reworking, “360,” and reviewing it shortly afterwards. The film arrives somewhat dampened by cool Toronto reviews; should it live down to the hype, however, the swanky opening party (a black-tie function at Chelsea’s Saatchi Gallery) should make up for it. (Happily, I’ve already seen the closing film, Terrence Davies’s “The Deep Blue Sea,” so no risk of disappointment there.) 

From tomorrow until the 27th, then, expect frequent LFF updates, including reviews of freshly seen films (plus a few I never got around to writing about at other fests) and an interview or two. To warm up, however, I thought I’d begin with a quick roundup of the top 15 of the 60 titles I’ve already seen — a quarter, for no other reason than that it sounds so mathematically tidy.

Some I saw as long ago as February; one I only saw this afternoon. Some I’ve already reviewed (links where applicable); others I’ll write about in due course. For now, however, I’ll stick to my initial tweet-length reactions:

“Alps” (Giorgos Lanthimos, Greece) – Dazzling formal freakout on nervy theme of ‘substitution’ expands on the absurdist comedy and compositional elegance of “Dogtooth.” (review)

“The Artist” (Michel Hazanavicius, France) – A joy: lush, infectiously affectionate tribute to lost art, avoids exercise status with Dujardin’s quicksilver performance. (review)

“Beauty” (Oliver Hermanus, South Africa) – Terrors of living closeted in Afrikaner society, inscribed with exemplary compassion and control; Deon Lotz is breathtaking.

“Corpo Celeste” (Alice Rohrwacher, Italy) – Not quite “Love Like Poison,” but warmly assured child-versus-church study gets more focused and penetrating as it goes.

“Elena” (Andrei Zyvagintsev, Russia) – A mordant dinner-party anecdote becomes an exacting study of the Russian class ladder. Immaculate control, chablis-dry wit.

“Martha Marcy May Marlene” (Sean Durkin, US) – Forces rethink of what we call horror: searching, driftwood-shaped film settles upon you like a slow strangle. (review)

“Miss Bala” (Gerardo Naranjo, Mexico) – Blistering dry-mouth thriller has photojournalist’s eye for environmental detail; makes most ‘kinetic’ cinema look choppy.

“Oslo, August 31st” (Joachim Trier, Norway) – Re-entering real life and seeking the exit: nimbly constructed lyricism, a shade too clean, but burns where it counts.

“Shame” (Steve McQueen, UK) – Script a mite tidy for all the mess it deals with, but McQueen’s breathtaking discipline gives it beef and sway. Cast immaculate. (review)

“Sleeping Sickness” (Ulrich Kohler, Germany) – Okay, my tweet for this one seems to have evaporated, but my review will fill you in. (review)

“Snowtown” (Justin Kurzel, Australia) – Staggering waking nightmare under low grey skies. True-crime history a mere front for vicious essay on mishandled masculinity.

“Weekend” (Andrew Haigh, UK) – Shimmery head-and-heart romance moving on any terms, but a humble landmark in the delineation of everyday homosexuality.

“We Need to Talk About Kevin” (Lynne Ramsay, UK) – An epistolary novel ingeniously hollowed out into spiny memory collage; I want to throw up, in a good way. (review)

“Without” (Mark Jackson, US) – Twitchily riveting solitude study seems exercise-y before expert wrongfooting reveals scale of protag’s emotional rupture.

“Wuthering Heights” (Andrea Arnold, UK) – Thrillingly terse deconstruction, Robbie Ryan’s lensing is witchcraft. I only question its depth of feeling. (review)

Should you be in London for the festival, I’d encourage you to stick those on your viewing list. With any luck, my list of festival highlights will look a little different in two weeks’ time. Enjoy the coverage.

The work of Douglas Trumbull on the legacy of visual effects in film is unmistakable, going all the way back to his work on “2001: A Space Odyssey.” He had a hand in such groundbreaking films as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Blade Runner” and also bridged the gap, becoming a director in his own right with films like “Silent Running” and “Brainstorm.”

This year Trumbull’s work is on full display in Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” which features a 20-odd minute analog effects sequence depicting the beginnings of the universe. He could well be recognized by his peers in the visual effects branch of the Academy for his work, and a tip of the hat by the Visual Effects Society is a good start.

The organization has tapped Trumbull as the recipient of this year’s Georges Méliès Award, which honors individuals who have “pioneered a significant and lasting contribution to the art and/or science of the visual effects industry by way of artistry, innovation and groundbreaking work,” according to the press release.

It is worth noting Méliès — the legendary French filmmaker — in a broader sense this year. A colorized print of the director’s classic film “A Trip to the Moon” has been making the festival rounds, being the most in-depth and expensive film preservation project of all time. Meanwhile, that restoration makes an appearance — as does Méliès (as a character) — in Martin Scorsese’s ode to film preservation, “Hugo.”

The award will be presented at the 10th annual VES Awards on February 7, 2012. Meanwhile, “The Tree of Life” is on DVD and Blu-ray as of today. Go out and get it!

If I haven’t said anything here (or anywhere else, for that matter) about the passing of Steve Jobs, it’s because it seems redundant to add thoughts when others are doing so with much more personal specificity — about the only thing to be gained from this sad loss has been the outpouring of personal testaments to his culture-changing work, both from those who knew him and those who didn’t.

Or those who fall somewhere in between, as in this oddly touching tribute in Newsweek from star screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, a longtime Mac evangelist who cultivated a semi-friendship with Jobs purely by phone — initiated by the Apple CEO himself. It’s not difficult to see how these two quick-witted, hardworking peddlers of American ideals might have found common ground; neither is it surprising to hear that Jobs was a fan of Sorkin’s snappy, contemporary writing.

Still,Sorkin’s chief memory of Jobs is in a considerably lighter vein, concerning a creative proposal made to him that, again, isn’t too hard to imagine as a reality — Jobs, it seems, wanted a reluctant Sorkin to write a Pixar movie. From the Newsweek piece, here’s Sorkin’s recollection of their phone conversation:

ME: I just-I don”t think I can make inanimate objects talk.

STEVE: Once you make them talk they won”t be inanimate.

ME: The truth is I don”t know how to tell those stories. I have a young kid who loves Pixar movies and she”ll turn cartwheels if I tell her I”m writing one and I don”t want to disappoint her by writing the only bad movie in the history of Pixar.

STEVE: Jeez … write about THAT.

I don’t know about you, but Sorkin’s hypothetical Pixar film kind of writes itself in my head: I can hear precisely how the slick, flip rhythms of his trademark dialogue would fit in the heightened Pixar universe. Jobs, in case it hasn’t been stated often enough, was no fool. Who knows, perhaps someday Sorkin will see his point. Read the rest of the piece here.

It’s been a little over a year since Peter Mullan, that marvelously granitic Scottish actor and filmmaker, hit the festival circuit with “Neds,” a vivid, punishing and sadly underseen semi-memoir of working-class adolescence arrested, in which he plays a version of his own brutal, alcoholic father.

It’s a film containing what for most artists would count as several years’ worth of channelled psychic pain, so it’s rather distressing to contemplate the brevity of the breather Mullan must have taken between that project and his role in “Tyrannosaur,” a moving, comfort-free study of personal abuse in its manifold forms.

Certain actors’ faces are designed for suffering; Mullan’s, it seems, more so than most. It’s scarcely surprising that it’d be selected to front the feature directing debut of an actor whose hangdog mug has weathered its own share of troubles on camera: Paddy Considine, a frayed English everyman whose unassuming screen persona has nonetheless done little to prepare us for the crimson assault course of physical and verbal violence in “Tyrannosaur.”

Guided by a less empathetic hand, there’d be something ostentatious about the misery on display in this cleanly structured tale of two lonely Leeds natives finding in each other vast craters of emotional damage; as it stands, Considine only occasionally overeggs his technique in order to underline his concern.

Certainly, the film wastes no time establishing the no-exit cruelty of its characters” world: we meet Mullan”s character Joseph, an unemployed widower crippled by rage, kicking his own dog to death after a minor misfortune at the betting shop. (It”s not the last instance of graphic canine abuse the film will depict across its brisk 92-minute running time: fainthearted friends of Fido, consider yourselves warned.) It”s an unsubtle but effective shorthand introduction to a man who emotionally self-sabotages at every given opportunity; even the film”s cryptic title (an unkind nickname for his late wife) is a bitter reminder of Joseph”s involuntary mistreatment of the things he loves most.

It”s to Mullan”s considerable credit that we feel anything for Joseph at all; he”s certainly a more compromised candidate for our sympathies than the film”s second lead Hannah (Olivia Colman), a God-fearing, bourgeois Samaritan who finds her selfless kindness repaid only with grotesque levels of domestic abuse at the hand of her seemingly milquetoast husband James (an appropriately wince-worthy Eddie Marsan). Hannah and Joseph meet when he stumbles into the goodwill shop where she works as a volunteer; initially assuming her charity a gesture of middle-class vanity, he comes to realize her victimhood is the magnetic inverse of his self-destructive impulses. Considine isn”t so idealistic or therapy-bent as to suggest these two abject souls can heal other, but there is comfort in their mutual recognition; in the sincerest way possible, this designed but intelligent character study might have been titled “Misery Loves Company.”

That such convenient sentiment is avoided is thanks in no small part to the astonishing performance of Colman, a smart, collaborative comic actress most recognized by British audiences for her dry, calibrated work as dim manipulator Sophie in cult sitcom “Peep Show”: that character”s dull cheeriness is carried over to the surface of Hannah, only for artful flashes of flinty reserve and ugly pain to gradually chip the façade. Colman is the rare, uncondescending actress who understands that to be inherently good and profoundly fucked-up are not mutually exclusive states; even before its wrenching climax, unlikely to be topped by any single scene of screen acting this year, her performance is achingly fragile in resolving the two.

Unsurprisingly, Considine is a sufficiently delicacy director of actors to coax these truths out of his superb leads without letting them fall into bombast. As a director, he”s less fallible, as this precisely edited and assuredly shot film occasionally trades in pointed symbolism and arch tonal cues that belie the candor elsewhere: still, they”re minor fillips in a keen-eyed debut, and stray casualties of a laudable effort to bring heightened poetry to material that could be effectively, if less provocatively, served by a cautious kitchen-sink approach. Through to an ending that steers pleasingly shy of the patly redemptive, “Tyrannosaur” – thoughtful, exquisitely performanced, with concealed jabs of wit and class commentary – hits hardest when it shows its bones.

[NOTE: Regular In Contention readers will note that, in line with HitFix standards, we no longer use the four-star grading system for reviews; rather, we have adopted letter grades. My Twitter followers will already be familiar with the way I apply the letter scale; others, I’m sure, will catch on quickly. In this case, a B+ grade is approximately equal to a 3.5-star rating on the old site.]

The release of Mateo Gil’s “Blackthorn” last week gave me reason enough to write up a piece I’ve been meaning to get around to for a while now, and one a number of readers have asked about for a good long while: my list of the best westerns ever made.

Once upon a time I was considering cranking out a list of 50, right around the release of last year’s “True Grit,” but that quickly became a fool’s errand and I abandoned it. If you want something that dense (and a list quite singular and worth debating, I must say), I’d suggest you dig into Time Out London’s massive collective published on the occasion of Kelly Reichardt’s “Meek’s Cutoff” hitting theaters earlier this year.

As I set out to chart the list, I knew a couple of things. I knew what would have a firm grip on the top spot. I knew a few contenders that were likely to situate themselves throughout, but I wasn’t all that sure how my perspective on this or that entry would have changed over the years. So I sat down and re-watched a great many.

Interestingly, two of my favorite stewards of the genre, Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher, didn’t register an entry on the list. I find that their portfolios in general stick out more than specific installments. I was surprised to see one favored John Ford entry (“Stagecoach”) slide out, while another that has never clocked as high for me as it does with most (“The Searchers”) found a foothold. And I must say I was somewhat surprised to let undeniable but ultimately frothier efforts like “Rio Bravo” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” slip away.

In any case, it’s fair to say I’m an enthusiast of the form. I’m consistently hopeful it can maintain some kind of stay and no longer scare financiers away, as I am that it can find a relevance in a very different socio-political climate than its long-gone heyday. But in listing my favorites of the genre, I’m reminded, as ever, how truly potent an arena of filmmaking it has been and can be.

Take a look at my list in our new gallery, and feel free to offer up your favorites in the comments section below.

UPDATE: I’ve actually just been reminded that last year Fox Searchlight and Focus Features launched a digital sceener program via iTunes. Those were downloads, not streaming, though. Split hairs if you must, but now that the air is clear…

It’s a brave new world. And with online streaming capabilities has come the question of reaching voters with those tools. It seems inevitable that this will eventually become standardized, but then again, I always think of guys like Peter Bart, who literally has people print out his emails for him (or at least he did as of a few years ago). Naturally I think this is the way to go. There should be further testing of the waters with critics groups, however.

For now, a step in the right direction. Paramount Pictures sent out a press release today announcing a program for digitally streaming some of its awards contenders. The first awards-giving body to have access will be the Visual Effects Society, and the first films out of the gate will be “Rango,” “Super 8” and “Like Crazy.” (That amazing CGI in “Like Crazy” will stand out for the VES, just you wait. #sarcasm)

The studio is teaming up with Deluxe Entertainment Services Group to launch the program, and screeners will go out October 14. Check out the full press release below.

RANGO, SUPER 8 AND LIKE CRAZY LAUNCH FIRST EVER DIGITAL STREAMING PROGRAM FOR AWARDS CONTENDERS
Paramount Teams with Deluxe to Debut Pilot Program Providing “For Your Consideration” Online Screeners to the Visual Effects Society

HOLLYWOOD, CA (October 11, 2011) – Paramount Pictures announced today that it has teamed with Deluxe Entertainment Services Group to provide “For Your Consideration” online screeners for the 2011-2012 awards season, making it the first major studio to stream its awards films online. The studio will present its awards contenders, including RANGO, SUPER 8 and LIKE CRAZY, and potentially additional titles later this season, via Deluxe”s proprietary platform. The Visual Effects Society (VES) will be the first recipient of the online screeners, receiving them as early as October 14th.

The Deluxe solution allows Paramount to securely stream films backed by unique watermarking of the content tied to the individual recipients with DVD quality picture and a controlled window of availability. Content can beplayed back on a variety of PC and Mac devices, including the iPad and iPad2, as well as home entertainment systems with compatible HDMI cable connection.

“We are excited to present these films for online streaming and are hopeful that this will be a quality experience allowing us to offer more opportunities for our filmmaker partners to reachappreciative viewers,” said Paramount”s President of Domestic Marketing & Distribution Megan Colligan.

“We are delighted Paramount chose Deluxe”s digital screener platform. By continually expanding and customizing our services we are able to best support the rapidly changing needs of our entertainment industry clients,” said Michael Alvarez, President Deluxe Media Management.

“As the leading technology artists in the entertainment industry, we at VES are pleased that Paramount thought to come to us first to inaugurate this process,” said VES Executive Director Eric Roth.

Both Paramount and VES highly encourage films to be seen in the best possible environment – a theatre.  Understanding this is not always possible; using Deluxe”s service provides members with an additional method to screen films in a secure and timely manner.
 

So, Paramount took a risk and dropped an incomplete “Hugo” On the NYFF audience last night. Linked in today’s round-up is my colleague Greg Ellwood’s aggregation of responses. Even though press attendees were asked not to review the film, naturally, thoughts and comments trickled out throughout the night. And I have to say, I caught a big whiff of politeness from most. The general takeaway seems to be that the film starts out rather stiff and uninspired and eventually becomes an interesting if messy ode to film preservation.

Those of us who didn’t attend the fest will have to wait another three weeks or so before Paramount has a complete print to screen. But for now, the film has its 15 minutes. Was it worth it? Probably. After all, no one talking about your film is worse than a few talking about it for a fleeting moment. But the line of the film seems to be set. Not to take too much away from the smallest of reactions, but I’m not sensing a strong Best Picture contender in there. Anyway, let’s see what’s going on in the Oscarweb today…

Greg Ellwood aggregates reactions to last night’s secret screening of “Hugo” at NYFF. [Awards Campaign]

Steven Zeitchik wonders whether Hollywood should cut back on Hollywood dramas. [24 Frames]

Woman sues FilmDistrict because “Drive” isn’t “The Fast and the Furious” with Ryan Gosling. [Click on Detroit]

David Poland will be mad if I don’t note that that story began with his casually conveying an emailed image that landed in his inbox. [The Hot Blog]

Check out an exclusive deleted scene from “Beautiful Boy.” [Awards Daily]

Yet another viral website that threatens to drown “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” in “cool.” [Comes Forth in the Thaw]

The Academy tackles the state of nonfiction. [Oscars.org]

Spare us another conventional take on Dickens. [The Independent]

Alexandra Cheney reports from a NYFF screening of “A Dangerous Method” with Q&A. [Speakeasy]

Tom O’Neil explains how his new user-interfaced Gold Derby works (video in bottom right). [Gold Derby]

By now it’s pretty obvious to everyone that tonight’s not-so-secret New York Film Festival work-in-progress screening is Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo.” Even though Scorsese has done something like this in the past (bringing 20 minutes of “Gangs of New York” to Cannes back in 2002), it’s nevertheless a curious move on the part of the master filmmaker and Paramount Pictures. The question everyone seems to be asking is, “Why?”

One can only assume the studio thinks it has something special on its hands and wants to muscle into the fall festival frame before all the other films cannibalize the conversation. Well, one can only hope, I should say. Because if “Hugo” doesn’t really have the goods (I’ve heard iffy things here and there), then bringing it to a heavily scrutinized festival setting with incomplete effects shots and whatnot could really damage the film.

“I’ve always wanted to make a film in 3D,” Scorsese says in a recently posted behind the scenes clip. “The story is something very emotional. Funny at times. It was like a celebration.” I hope it’s a celebration indeed after tonight’s big reveal. Have a look at that behind the scenes clip below.

After barreling through the gentlemen looking like Oscar possibilities the last two weeks, today we move on to the ladies. And immediately, I have to take note of Mark Harris’s latest column at Grantland, dedicated to the supposed insanity of considering Meryl Streep the frontrunner for her still unseen performance in “The Iron Lady.” And it reminds me that there is some clarification needed for those who eagerly scout prediction collectives like those at Gold Derby and Movie City News.

Here’s the thing. Not everyone who places a contender at the top of a list of predictions this early is saying, “This is the person to beat.” How do I know that? Because that’s not how I play it. In pointing to the Gold Derby crew (which includes our own Guy Lodge), Harris offers up a smart nugget concerning the prospect of Streep winning the Oscar this year that Anne and I just mentioned on Friday’s Oscar Talk podcast: “It’s bad guesswork…[Streep] has lost more Academy Awards than any actor in history.”

No doubt. But if you ask me to rank things in the early stages, I look at it as “most likely to be nominated,” not “frontrunner to win,” and I believe a number of others do as well. So, with that in mind, Streep has been in a position to win more Academy Awards than any actor in history. That, I think it’s fair to say, is good guesswork.

Anyway, looking out over the rest of the field of leading ladies, I see a number of interesting performances and a vibrant cross-section, if not an especially “Oscar” cross-section. At the top is Viola Davis, who is pretty much agreed-upon across the board for her work in “The Help.” It’s fair to say, at the end of the day, it could be her Oscar to lose.

Not far behind is Michelle Williams, who I wrote about at length this morning. This kind of role is an Oscar showcase to say the least, but it’s a refreshingly dialed down performance that I wouldn’t call a sure thing in the field, but I think she’ll get there.

Still to come is Charlize Theron in Jason Reitman’s “Young Adult,” which will be a bit of dark comedy to go against the otherwise sincere grain of the category. That will go a long way for her chances, but she’s in an area of the field that is kind of elastic at the moment.

Glenn Close in “Albert Nobbs” offers a rich and understated portrayal that, make no question, is in danger of flying too low. The film needs to be seen by a considerable amount of people, but I think actors who do see it will respect the work.

Threatening to leap into this fray is Rooney Mara, who really stands out in the recently released four-minute trailer for “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” One wonders if she can succeed when Noomi Rapace, who took on the role in the 2009 original, came so close but ultimately failed to secure a spot.

A pair of Sundance portrayals could build up some steam and cash in on hot-new-thing goodwill in the form of Felicity Jones (“Like Crazy”) and Elizabeth Olsen (“Martha Marcy May Marlene”). The former will have a loving push from Paramount, but the latter is undeniably the more textured and accomplished portrayal. They’ll be trading off breakthrough performance awards all season long.

Going back to Cannes, Tilda Swinton in “We Need to Talk About Kevin” was the talk of the festival, until Kirsten Dunst came in and nabbed the best Actress prize for her work in Lars Von Trier’s “Melancholia.” Both are still in the hunt but they lurk on the fringe hoping for some passion bases to get them there.

Things start to fade a bit after that. Michelle Yeoh in “The Lady” makes so much sense on paper, but it’s left to be seen what kind of a campaign can be mustered on her behalf. It will take a robust one, as it always does. Similarly, Olivia Colman in “Tyrannosaur” may have her champions in the press arena, but it’ll take some doing to make sure voters see the film rather than lazily default to more visible contenders.

Jodie Foster flies off the rails in Roman Polanski’s “Carnage,” but if there are enough voters who appreciated how committed she clearly was, she could be someone to watch. Similarly committed though on the other spectrum of comedy is Kristin Wiig in “Bridesmaids,” who is rallying supporters in the wake of all that post-Emmy Best Supporting Actress talk for co-star Melissa McCarthy. But we all know how that’s going to turn out.

Emily Watson has her best shot in a while in “Oranges and Sunshine,” while Kristin Scott Thomas is part of Harvey Weinstein’s already lead actress-heavy stable in “Sarah’s Key.” And Focus has two slim chances in Adepero Oduye (“Pariah”) and Mia Wasikowska (“Jane Eyre”).

And that’s pretty much (liberally) the field. I think it’s a race between six or seven contenders at this stage, and indeed, I’d put Meryl Streep at the top of the list of likely nominees. Why? Because I’ll take the odds on 16 nominations all day every day.

(NOTE: The Contenders section is coming. I promise! Really close.)

How do you expect the nominations for Best Actress to turn out? Have your say in the comments section below!

Over lunch some 10 years ago, producer and financier Bill Pohlad witnessed something few of us will ever have the luxury of witnessing: a Terrence Malick pitch. At the time, Pohlad and Malick were moving forward on a Che Guevera project that never came to fruition, and over the course of three hours, Malick laid out the plan for his epic tale of of micro/macrocosmic meditation, “The Tree of Life.”

“It was refined but wasn’t so smooth that you didn’t realize how big and how bold it was,” Pohlad says of the pitch. “It was pretty memorable, but also I can’t say that it wasn’t daunting.”

Something like this naturally evolves considerably over the course of a decade, but going all the way back to that lunch, Malick always wanted to tell a tale of the universal juxtaposed with a small family in Texas. And of course, Pohlad needed to go over a few things again after having it first waft over him. And who can blame him? When you have a master filmmaker telling you he wants to tell the story of the creation of the universe and then shift to a family in the 1950s, it’s difficult to wrap your head around the abstract.

“It was really impressive,” Pohlad says, “but it wasn’t until I actually read the script, whenever it was, four, five years later, that it really kind of hit me emotionally.”

The film saw a long march to audiences to say the least. Pohlad eventually partnered up with Hollywood honcho Bob Berney to form Apparition, a new distribution company aimed at bringing quality art to a commercial audience. The first title announced: “The Tree of Life.” But Apparition was a short-lived dream. After a handful of releases, Berney abruptly left the company and it soon after dissolved entirely, with “The Tree of Life” left hung out to dry.

Then, in September of 2010, Pohlad brought the film to the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. Though, other than the whispers of Brad Pitt sightings that year, you wouldn’t have known it, seeing as it wasn’t part of the festival’s program. It was specifically there to be screened privately for Fox Searchlight Pictures, which had expressed an interest in the film.

“We had been living with the movie for many, many years and hadn”t shown it to that many people,” Pohlad says. “So you”re not sure how people are going to react. And so to have the Searchlight people really kind of be so passionate about it right out of the box, it was fantastic.”

An agreement was made with the paperwork left to be filed back in Los Angeles and soon, the announcement came. Fox Searchlight was in the Terrence Malick business, and a Cannes 2011 reveal was scheduled. By this time, anticipation for the film was at a fever pitch in the cineaste community. So an artist-friendly haven like Cannes made a lot of sense.

“I think, again, having lived with the film for that long and being in our cocoon, and then we go to Cannes and have that kind of reception, it was magical, for sure,” Pohlad says. “Even the boos or whatever that were so much reported, that wasn”t that frightening or anything. We always knew that it was not going to be a movie for everybody. But there was such a great buzz about it before and after the screening. And then certainly getting the Palm d’Or was just a complete dream.”

Pohlad couldn’t be happier with the handling of the film from Searchlight so far this year. The enthusiasm behind the project has been unmistakable all the way through theatrical and building even to tomorrow’s home video release. But more than that, “The Tree of Life” holds an interesting place in the studio’s unique slate of films this year.

Searchlight has built a brand out of “indie but accessible” over the years. But with “The Tree of Life,” Sean Durkin’s “Martha Marcy May Marlene” and Steve McQueen’s “Shame,” the studio finds itself in business with a crop of innovative, promising auteurs. It’s a very un-Searchlight slate in many ways.

“I can”t speak to what their mission is or what their group is thinking in going after each of the movies that they”ve gone after,” Pohlad says, “but I think it”s great. They did such a great job with ‘Tree of Life.’ That passion that I felt from them at Telluride that first day, you know, sustains itself even to this day. And I would like to believe that they”re kind of pushing ahead or leading the resurgence of people I guess being more open again to seeing challenging material.”

Around the time of the Cannes bow, and the inevitable press blitz that came with it, Pohlad wasn’t able to distance himself from things enough to offer a clear perspective. Now with some time in between, with the film’s imminent DVD and Blu-ray release, he takes some time to consider the long road of the film.

“I couldn”t be prouder of it,” he says. “And I don”t kid myself in thinking that it”s a movie for everybody or anything like that. In the video experience, you hate to lose the kind of scope of seeing it in the theater and all that. On the other hand, it may open it up to a whole new group of people who might have been intimidated about going to the theater based on things they had heard about it. Likewise, for people who have seen it, I mean it sounds like a pitch or a sale and I”m not trying to be that way, but to see it again and be able to pick up so much more than when they ventured into the theaters for the first time.”

Meanwhile, Malick is more prolific than ever. He has three films in the works, and for a guy who made as many in 25 years, from “Badlands” to “The Thin Red Line,” that’s saying quite a lot. After “The Tree of Life,” he’ll put out an as-of-yet untitled Oklahoma drama starring Ben Affleck and Javier Bardem next year. He’s collaborating with “The New World” star Christian Bale once again and there is an IMAX documentary, “Voyage of Time,” which will expand on the “creation of the universe” sequence from “The Tree of Life.”

Pohlad, of course — a filmmaker himself who sparked to the medium in the Cinerama days of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Grand Prix” — is delighted to see an artist of such unmatched scope with a fire lit underneath him.

“I”ve always defended that as being the mark of a true artist,” he says, “to be able to just kind of follow his own pace and his own heart as the work called it, so to speak. But now, all of a sudden to see him kicking into gear in this way, I think it’s great. Because I do think it comes from an honest place as opposed to feeling like, ‘Oh, I”ve got to do this because it”s my career,’ or ‘I”ve got to do this because of expectations.’ He”s doing it now because he feels really kind of, whatever, fertile or really creative and so he”s going with it.”

“The Tree of Life” arrives on DVD and Blu-ray tomorrow.

Twelve hours later and the desire to write about “My Week with Marilyn” is barely there. I made the obvious joke via Twitter last night: “My (Movie of the) Week with Marilyn,” and that’s the thing. It’s a contained piece that never breaks out in a visually interesting way and is kind of a slog as a result. Director Simon Curtis tries to give it some personality, but he never shakes the whiff of television.

The takeaway, obviously, is Michelle Williams’s performance as Marilyn Monroe. And indeed, she’s quite the breathy thing of beauty in this film, though I’m not as taken with her work here as others seem to be. She portrays a pair of Marilyns, the simple public icon and the clearly more complex woman striving to be an artist underneath. And if you’re asking me (not that anyone is), that is the story, the intriguing dichotomy of star versus actor, not this limp tale of film set gopher Colin Clark’s (Eddie Redmayne) first love that goes nowhere and does nothing to illuminate her or, really, him.

But the film is what it is so I won’t waste time whining about what it should be. Williams does a great job of brushing that nuance into the performance. She’s a conflicted soul, confused by love, daunted by her professional goals, unable to handle the spotlight so bright. It gives the character dimension, and yet there’s an elusiveness to her still, which is actually one interesting by-product of the film’s perspective.

However, Monroe as a character is really burdened under this story of a young man’s one-week emotional love affair. She is frequently reduced to little more than love bunny and that puts the tale at odds with itself. A drugged Monroe pats the side of the bed or snuggles up next to the chap and yes, it’s indicative of a woman desperate for love and understanding, but it all just rubs wrong in a near icky sort of way. At one point I was half expecting it to be “My Date Rape with Marilyn.”

I wanted more of the meat the story inherently has and less of its fat, basically. The film could still have been told from Clark’s point of view, but less in the way of an immature boy’s not-at-all-profound coming of age would have given it a little more muscle.

Williams is likely to be nominated for the Best Actress Oscar. It’s a role and a performance that will spark plenty of nostalgia from voters and you really can’t deny that spark in your heart you get when the light catches the excited blue of her eyes. Will she win? I don’t know that this is the film that can get her there. (I’ll talk more on the lead actress category later today in this week’s Off the Carpet column.)

Kenneth Branagh is deliciously tyrannical as Sir Laurence Olivier, directing Monroe in “The Prince and the Showgirl” in the film. But he’s also representative of further missed opportunity, one the main character even spells out at one point. Olivier is an actor striving to be a movie star. Monroe is a movie star striving to be an actor. Their parallel internal struggles could have added a whole new thematic layer, especially given the conflict of approaches in Monroe’s method versus Olivier’s classically trained virtues. But it all just plays as background. Branagh stands a great shot at being nominated for Best Supporting Actor, though, as we’ve been hearing for months.

Oh, and as Olivier’s wife, Vivien Leigh — who in younger days portrayed the role on stage that Monroe is translating to film — Julia Ormond sure had an opportunity to shine, and a chance to give the story some more thematic heft. Pity the film didn’t provide it.

Also worth mentioning is Judi Dench, who isn’t likely to figure into the awards race for her work here, but who is nevertheless a warm and welcome presence in what little screen time she has as British actress Sybil Thorndike.

But the story of “My Week with Marilyn” is the story I kept craning my neck to see around this flimsy yarn about a boy and his hormones. I appreciate the dedication to Clark’s memoir, but I guess sometimes it’s what’s going on around us, not what’s going on within us, that makes for a truly good tale.

“My Week with Marilyn” opens nationwide Friday, November 4.

A little below-the-line love in the round-up today as one of the stories linked is a sound profile of this weekend’s box office champ “Real Steel” from the always impressive and dedicated SoundWorks Collection. The sound categories are always a bit of a question mark until later in the season, which the branch begins to get a listen to the various films in play. It’s a tight-knit group that responds to great work within the field rather than pitching support behind Best Picture contenders for the sake of it.

Last year’s nod for “Salt” in the mixing field was largely unexpected and reminds that there is always the potential for spreading the wealth in these fields. This year I’ve been wondering about the work in “Real Steel,” where the rock ’em, sock ’em cling and clang of metal on metal could be showy and refined enough to draw a few ears from the branch. Perhaps. Anyway, let’s see what’s going on in the Oscarweb today…

On the sounds of “Real Steel” (which, by the way, could easily pop up in the Best Sound Editing category this year). [SoundWorks Collection]

Sasha Stone on likely Oscar nominees Meryl Streep and Glenn Close, queens of the 80s. [Awards Daily]

Actress Adepero Oduye talks “Pariah.” [Black Film]

Download seven minutes of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score for “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” [Fincher Fanatic]

Mekado Murphy talks “Shame” and a stellar 2011 with Michael Fassbender. [Arts Beat]

Jeff Wells casually plants a flag for the actor in “Jane Eyre,” but surmises his Oscar chances for a great year are slim. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

Pete Hammond “exclusively” reports what we told you well over two weeks ago, that Werner Herzog’s “Into the Abyss” will open on November 11. He does get the producer on the record as to why, though. [Deadline]

Melissa Silverstein talks to “In Darkness” director Agnieszka Holland. [Women and Hollywood]

Is Clint Eastwood intent on outing J. Edgar Hoover? [The Independent]

Oliver Gettell on the critics split on “The Ides of March.” [24 Frames]

You’ve got to feel a bit for Joshua Marston. Back in 2004, the American first-time director was looking like one of the frontrunners for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar as his buzzy Sundance hit “Maria Full of Grace” was entered as Colombia’s official submission for the award — until the Academy, deciding that the US co-production wasn’t sufficiently Colombian to compete, disqualified the film from Competition. It went on to land scads of honors, including a Best Actress Oscar nod for newcomer Catalina Sandino Moreno.

Fast-forward seven years, and it seems the guy still can’t catch a break from the Academy. For his second feature, the internationally-minded director travelled to Albania to make “The Forgiveness of Blood,” a somber study of the country’s blood feud culture that, if not as memorable as his debut, was well-received at the Berlinale, where it landed him the Best Screenplay prize. Filmed in Albania with a local cast and mostly local crew, it was entered as the country’s official Oscar submission; if not as heavily tipped for the award as Marston’s last effort, it seemed he’d at least get to play this time.

Not so. Following a written complaint from Bujar Alimani, the director of a rival Albanian film, that “The Forgiveness of Blood,” with its American director and producer and British DP, isn’t sufficiently homegrown to represent Albania, an Academy committee reviewed the decision and disqualified the film. Now representing Albania instead,  would you believe it, is Alimani’s film “Amnesty,” a marital drama that also happened to bow at Berlin in February.

I’m no great champion of “The Forgiveness of Blood”; for all I know, the better film is now in play, but that’s hardly the point. This particular Oscar category is so hampered with eligibility restrictions as to have become something of an annual farce, but with film production becoming an ever more collaborative and global affair, clinging to such rigid notions of national identity is antiquated. Particularly when, as Marston politely points out to Variety, one could equally question the nationality of certain other films in contention, including one of the notional favorites: 

“The [‘The Forgiveness of Blood”] is made by Albanians, in Albania, about Albania and in the Albanian language. And yet a great film like Kaurismaki”s ‘Le Havre,” which was shot in France with a French cast and a French story, qualifies as Finnish? And ‘As If I Am Not There,” which was shot in the Balkans and is in Serbo-Croat with a cast from that region, qualifies as Irish? It”s absurd. I think there”s a problem with the system when Hollywood claims to know better than the submitting country whether a film belongs to them.”

That last sentence is the crux. Within a system already riddled with inconsistencies, if a country is prepared to accept a mostly local film as their own, the Academy should be prepared to let it stand — and if it does decide to investigate, not do so simply when the competition protests.

Oh, well. Chalk it up as the latest in the long queue of charges against this seemingly unfixable category. Anyway, with that swap and the late addition of an entry from the Dominican Republic, “Love Child,” the list of submissions now sits at a round 60 — still down from recent years, though a few stragglers may yet bump up the number. Once more, the updated list:

Albania – “Amnesty”

Argentina – “Aballay”

Austria – “Breathing”

Belgium – “Bullhead”

Bosnia and Herzegovina – “Belvedere”

Brazil – “Elite Squad 2?

Bulgaria – “Tilt”

Canada – “Monsieur Lazhar”

Chile – “Violeta”

China – “The Flowers of War”

Colombia – “The Colors of the Mountain”

Croatia – “72 Days”

Cuba – “Habanastation”

Czech Republic – “Alois Nebel”

Denmark – “SuperClasico”

Dominican Republic – “Love Child”

Egypt – “Lust”

Finland – “Le Havre”

France – “Declaration of War”

Georgia – “Chantrapas”

Germany – “Pina”

Greece – “Attenberg”

Hong Kong – “A Simple Life”

Hungary – “The Turin Horse”

Iceland – “Volcano”

India – “Adaminte Makan Abu”

Iran – “A Separation”

Ireland – “As If I Am Not There”

Israel – “Footnote”

Italy – “Terraferma”

Japan – “Postcard”

Lebanon – “Where Do We Go Now?”

Lithuania – “Back in Your Arms”

Macedonia – “Punk’s Not Dead”

Mexico – “Miss Bala”

Morocco – “Omar Killed Me”

Netherlands – “Sonny Boy”

New Zealand – “The Orator”

Norway – “Happy, Happy”

Peru – “October”

Philippines – “The Woman in the Septic Tank”

Poland – “In Darkness”

Portugal – “José and Pilar”

Romania – “Morgen”

Russia – “Burnt by the Sun 2: Citadel”

Serbia – “Montevideo, God Bless You!”

Singapore – “Tatsumi”

Slovakia – “Gypsy”

Slovenia – “Silent Sonata”

South Africa – “Beauty”

South Korea – “The Front Line”

Spain – “Black Bread”

Sweden – “Beyond”

Switzerland – “Summer Games”

Taiwan – “Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale”

Thailand – “Kon Khon”

Turkey – “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia”

Uruguay – “The Silent House”

Venezuela – “The Rumble of the Stones”

Vietnam – “Thang Long Aspiration”

Welcome, again, to Cinejabber: our free ‘n’ easy open thread for you to air whatever cinematic matters are on your mind. With Kris wrapped up in wedding preparations today, I’m filling in for him, but it’s not all bad news — you get a break from Batman-related headlines, for starters. (I kid because I love.)

With nothing specific on my mind as I enjoy my last free weekend before the London Film Festival devours my life for the rest of October, this seems as good a time as any to pitch an early flag for a delightful film that hasn’t let go of my imagination since I saw it a couple of weeks ago — the latest Studio Ghibli animated wonder “Arrietty” (or “The Borrowers” in some quarters).

I say early, though here in the UK I was late catching up to it — the film opened here back in July, swiftly charming audiences and discerning family audiences alike. Based on the classic Mary Norton children’s novel — previously, and more gauchely, filmed as a live-action feature with John Goodman back in 1997 — it’s an adaptation that brilliantly fuses the gentle English classicism of the source with the Japanese studio’s more floridly eccentric storytelling sensibility. Hayao Miyazaki was one of the screenwriters, and dare I say the new film achieves the balances even more elegantly than the master’s own British kid-lit adaptation “Howl’s Moving Castle.”

I’ll have more to say about the film closer to its February 2012 release in the US. For now, however, I have to wonder why Disney hasn’t thought to qualify the film for 2011 Oscar consideration; in a year when the Best Animated Feature race is looking uncharacteristically thin (and we face the depressing possibility of seeing three sequels nominated), “Arrietty” couldn’t be a more viable and welcome contender for the near-annual higher-brow slot in the category. Here’s hoping busier competition next year doesn’t keep it out.

Anyway, just a taster for a conversation I’ll no doubt be picking up in later months. Random, but that’s precisely what Cinejabber is about. Meanwhile, what’s on your mind? Take the floor.

When Herbert Ross’s “Footloose” hit theaters 27 years ago, the film managed a brush with Oscar in the form of a pair of nominations for Best Original Song. Kenny Loggins’s titular track blew up radio request lines and haunts Kevin Bacon to this day: The actor actually pays bands NOT to play the song when he attends weddings. (My colleague, Melinda Newman, recently posted the video for Blake Shelton’s country re-do of the track.)

Deniece Williams’s “Let’s Hear It for the Boy,” meanwhile, was a staple of junior high school dances for years after the film hit. Both songs lost the Oscar to Stevie Wonder’s inarguable “I Just Called to Say I Love You” from Gene Wilder’s “The Woman in Red,” but Craig Brewer’s remake of Ross’s film could swing around for some retribution.

As it turns out, another pair of original songs were written this time around, though considerably different from the poppy jams of 1984. The first, “Fake I.D.,” is a twangy country track performed by Big & Rich featuring Gretchen Wilson. It’s used during a big dance sequence in the film. The second, Zac Brown’s “Where the River Goes,” is a soulful little tune from the country/southern rocker. It’s used early on to establish the main character’s journey to his new home in the south, before the story really begins to take off.

Since both songs are used within the context of the narrative, rather than as throwaway tracks over closing credits, they’ll have a leg up when the music branch votes for nominees later in the season. Remember, members attend a screening of clips featuring the eligible songs’ usage in their respective films, so if your tune has some visual storytelling built around it, you’re at least putting your best foot forward with voters.

“Fake I.D.” and “Where the River Goes” join a steadily growing list of contenders that already includes Alan Menken’s “Star Spangled Man” from “Captain America: The First Avenger” and Chris Cornell’s “The Keeper” from “Machine Gun Preacher,” among others. We’ll continue charting new contenders as they pop up before digging into the category to set the field in a Tech Support column later in the season.

Have a listen to both “Footloose” songs below. The film is set for release on Friday, October 14.

Last week, Sasha Stone held one of her Oscar Roundtable discussions at Awards Daily, where one of the issues raised was the Academy’s recent flurry of rule changes, particularly in the Best Picture category.

I responded as follows: “What concerns me is that the frantic adjustment and re-adjustment of the rules in the last two years alone indicates an organisation with no sense of consistency or confidence in itself. Solid, well-run, influential institutions don”t keep shifting the goalposts like this. This is supposedly the most senior, prestigious collective of film professionals in the world – they should be calling the shots, but instead they look desperately concerned about how they”re perceived.”

Mark Harris put it more tartly: “They”ve been throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, and all it”s gotten them is a shit-covered wall.”

I thought back to these words when reading this Variety piece about AMPAS president Tom Sherak’s latest statement on the future of the Academy, in which he pledges to “take this organization into the next decade,” by recruiting a younger and more culturally diverse membership, launching a new website and incorporating new media into their regular processes.

On the face of it, these all sound like worthy commitments. That they’re considering introducing electronic voting to the Oscar race should maximize the campaign period, perhaps allowing voters more time to catch up on their screeners. A younger, more representative (and perhaps more professionally active) membership could also have a positive effect on the awards, though if that means signing up more members in the Russell Brand vein, one might wish for more selectivity. (“It’s not easy to get into the Academy,” Sherak proudly insists.)

By the time, however, that he gets into the umpteenth rehash of the Academy’s we-need-younger-viewers routine — with Sherak citing “more aggressive” marketing to this end — I can’t help wishing they, and the Oscars in particular, would stop fretting over their secondary audiences and accept themselves for what they are. This open courting of a younger demographic reads more desperate than daring; it doesn’t seem the strategy of an institution in control. Kids didn’t flock around the Oscars in my day, even with far fewer entertainment options; it’s delusional to think any formatting adjustments would make them start now.

I am heartened, however, by Sherak’s emphatic assertion that the Academy “will never change” its practise of handing out all 24 competitive statuettes on the telecast — cutting them is a suggested fix I repeatedly hear from pundits and commenters who care little for the fact that ditching technical categories would not only break each ceremony’s competitive narrative, but undermine the Oscars’ celebration of their own industry. Sherak’s refusal suggests that deep down inside, for all the organization’s insecure talk of teen appeal, he knows they can ill afford to lose the geeks.