George Clooney is the rare kind of star whose magnetism is such that people might actually care what his favorite films are — I rather like the idea of devout fans frantically updating their Netflix queues in response to this list he’s shared with Parade magazine. (Their infomercial-like instructions: “See the films George Clooney loves!”

He’s certainly been generous with his advice. Rather than reeling a couple of titles off the top of his head, he’s recommended 100; before you go assuming these are his 100 all-time favorites, however, bear in mind that he’s limited to focus to films made between 1964 and 1976, the period he believes to be the most exciting in film history.

His taste, rather like his filmmaking, is admirably classical if not terribly radical: most of the expected canon titles are present and correct, while guiltier pleaures seem largely to have been filtered out. Somewhat annoyingly, Parade have presented the list as a 100-panel slideshow; if you have the time to wade through it all, knock yourself out here.

For everyone else, Clooney has instead singled out his more-than-respectable top five: “All the President’s Men,” “Carnal Knowledge,” “Dr. Strangelove,” “Harold and Maude” and “Network.” (For the sake of contrast, Taylor Lautner recently shared his all-time top five with Rotten Tomatoes. They include “Man on Fire” and “The Notebook.” I don’t think I’m on Team Jacob here.)

The selection of “All the President’s Men,” in particular, doesn’t surprise me: it feels like the film the nobly politically-minded Clooney has been dying to make his entire career, and with good reason. His describes it thus:

“All the President’s Men really is a perfect film. And the reason it’s a perfect film is you start the movie knowing how it ends. We know that Woodward and Bernstein get the scoop and Nixon gets got and you’re chewing your fingernails off through the whole movie. There are those moments when Robert Redford goes to meet Deep Throat and we know he’s not going to get killed ’cause we know the characters don’t die. But you’re nervous for him the whole time. Alan J. Pakula was a great director. It’s a really well made film.”

Anyway, this feels as apt a moment as any to plug the list we’re planning for next week: to tie in with Clooney’s upcoming “The Ides of March,” I’ll be counting down the Top 10 political films ever made. Given my review, it’s no spoiler to say Clooney’s own film won’t be on it, but maybe some of his favorites will.

Ever since Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s play “God of Carnage” announced its cast, I admit I’ve been a bit wary. The play, which I saw on Broadway in 2009, was rousing and wonderful, specifically because it was handled by a pitch-perfect cast — Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden —  that served the medium well. And I think that group would have served the film just as well, properly drilling things down to the more intimate medium of cinema.

Oddly, though, the quartet assembled for Polanski’s stab — Christoph Waltz, Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly and Jodie Foster — by and large swings for the fences and plays to the non-existent rafters far too often for the story to settle in on celluloid. Obviously that’s plenty owed to the direction of the material, which is a bit cumbersome elsewhere, too, book-ending the tightened quarrel at the center of the story with a superfluous depiction of the inciting incident. Meanwhile, while the tactic of closing things in and embracing the staginess of the tale actually works for material like this, having the actors perform it in such broad gestures really begins to eat away at and borderline lampoon what made the original work so cutting.

With that in mind, Foster is meant to be the significant awards hopeful for this film, but I found her handling of the material grating. I’m trying to be kind here. If I were in the balcony or in the mezzanine, it may have sung. But here, with the intimacy of Pawel Edelman’s camera, I just cringed. She blows past eleven and it doesn’t even feel all that motivated half the time.

Similarly, Reilly is doing his best Gandolfini impression here, and he’s not exactly wearing it like a glove. Like most of the actors, the quality of dialogue gets him through, but I found him very difficult to buy in a role that Gandolfini seemed born to play.

Waltz is a high mark, for sure. And he does a nice job of owning the role rather than depicting it in the same general strokes as those who came before. His eerie calm adds quite a lot, but nevertheless, he still finds himself in that two-dimensional theatrical rhythm a bit too often.

Winslet, strangely enough — the person I was most concerned about (overexposure) and the element Guy was least enthused about in Venice — was the best part of the experience for me. Maybe it’s the role, I don’t know. After all, I did all but write Hope Davis a fan letter after I saw her tackle it on stage. But there was something about Winslet’s grounded performance, much more suited to the medium, that made it work better for me.

But “Carnage” (neutered from its original title) is basically a mess. It’s a mad dash that feels less like a fully realized confrontation than it does a bloated set-up for another movie. And I find myself wondering what the great Mike Nichols might have done with the it after proving again and again that no one understands this kind of terrain better.

I’m still not exactly sure how much I should be looking forward to David Fincher’s remake of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” Having effortfully avoided all trailers so far, I have only the on-paper facts to go on — and as much as the names involved push the film comfortably into must-see-and-soon status, I still wonder whether a truly great film can be made from a novel as limited in scope and bitter in aftertaste as Stieg Larsson’s admittedly propulsive bestseller.

The lumbering Swedish original certainly didn’t come close for me, and I at least feel secure in expecting a more cinematically stimulating interpretation of the material from Fincher. What I’m really hoping for, however, is a performance from the hitherto promising Rooney Mara that makes good on the reams of rhetoric we’ve been fed since the book’s publication about Lisbeth Salander being a definitively conflicted 21st-century heroine. Noomi Rapace’s widely praised performance in the Swedish films sold me on Salander’s athleticism and severity, but for me, overegged the character’s self-repression to the point of mere posing.

However, in an interview with Empire magazine, Fincher drops some intriguing hints about his vision for the character that suggests Salander’s inner life has been amply thought through in the new film. Click through to read what he has to say.

From a longer Fincher interview in a forthcoming issue of Empire:

“There were discussions early on where people were like, ‘She’s a superhero!’ And you go, ‘No, she’s not. Superheroes live in a world of good and evil, and she’s far more complex than a superhero. She’s been compromised. She’s been subjugated. She’s been marginalised. She’s been swept into the gutter and she’s had a part in it. She dresses like trash because she’s someone who has been betrayed and hurt so badly, by forces beyond her control, that she’s just decided to be refuse. She can sit anywhere she wants on the bus, because nobody wants to deal with her.”

I’ve read Salander described as an era-defining character to some extent, not merely for her contemporary external affectations, but for her Generation Y independence and avoidance of conventional social interaction. As the hype machine builds, I’m beginning to wonder how many critics and cultural commentators will draw or force a parallel between Salander and Mark Zuckerberg, the anti-hero of Fincher’s last film: both are gifted, introverted social outcasts more conversant with technology than society.

Many critics overstated the symbolic value of Jesse Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg in “The Social Network,” crediting him and the film with encapsulating an entire generation, rather than successfully delineating one of said generation’s most successful misfits.

It was such talk, however, that drove the film far into the awards season; “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” may be a far less weighty prospect, but if Mara’s Salander gets similarly elevated to symbolic status by the media, the actress could feasibly overcome the awards-season obstacle of her vehicle’s grim genre trappings.  

Ever since I caught “Take Shelter” in advance of the fall festival season, I can’t really stop thinking about it. It’s easily one of the most powerful, lingering works of the year for me, across the board. Michael Shannon’s performance — it’s no secret — gets top marks from me so far. I spoke to him earlier this week about his work on the film. His co-star, Jessica Chastain, is also quite wonderful in the film and this could actually be her best bet for a nomination. And, of course, Jeff Nichols’ vision is so drilled down and vibrantly realized. Okay, enough from me. The film hits theaters today, so I’d love to hear your thoughts. Cut loose with them in the comments section here if/when you get around to seeing the film.

One of the cooler Oscar nominations of recent memory was the Best Original Song recognition Trey Parker and Marc Shaiman received for the ditty “Blame Canada” from 1999’s “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.” And one of the more eye-popping moments of an Oscar telecast was when Parker and Matt Stone showed up to the ceremony in March of 2000 decked out in dresses similar to those worn by Jennifer Lopez and Gwyneth Paltrow at previous Oscar ceremonies.

While visiting David Letterman back in March, the duo copped to “Sheening” at the Oscars that year, in reference to bad boy Charlie Sheen, who was very much in the news for his shenanigans at the time of their Late Night appearance. “We were just Sheening our heads off,” Parker said at the time. No explanation of the drug of choice, though given the association, many thought they were coked out of their minds. Well, they wanted to set the record straight when they appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” last night.

Settle down, everyone. They weren’t using cocaine that night. They were just flying high on a little acid, okay? Click through to see the section of the interview where they discuss the trippy night.

Welcome to Oscar Talk.

In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

With the early fall tests behind us, we stand on the precipice of October. The New York film fest is just around the corner with London fest not far behind. We’re very much off to the races, but also very much in our bubble right now, seeing a number of films that Academy members and even industry sorts haven’t gotten around to yet. So that’s the echo chamber for you. A few more weeks of that and finally the few voices will turn into a more rousing chorus. Now, let’s see what’s on the docket today…

Opening today are “50/50” and “Take Shelter,” two films we heartily endorse and have talked about at length before. We give both another once over before urging you to go check them out this weekend.

It’s about time we start diving into some Oscar categories on the podcast. So we start today by first chewing on the Best Supporting Actor category…

…before moving on to the supporting ladies.

We touch on the box office performance of films like “Drive,” “Warrior” and “Moneyball.”

Finally, reader questions, which we’ve been skimping on a bit lately. We address a few of them through the podcast and a few more at the end.

Have a listen to the new podcast below with a little of Chris Cornell’s “The Keeper,” from “Machine Gun Preacher” (expanding wider this weekend) leading the way. If the file cuts off for you at any time, try the back-up download link at the bottom of this post. And as always, remember to subscribe to Oscar Talk via iTunes here.

Today sees an interesting pair of releases, both of the highest quality, both indie productions with integrity, both well worth your money. Let’s start by gauging reaction to “50/50,” Jonathan Levine’s follow-up to “The Wackness” starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen, based on the true story of young screenwriter Will Reiser’s struggle with a sudden cancer diagnosis. I’ve been singing the film’s praises for about a month now. Yesterday you heard from Gordon-Levitt about the attempt to draw out the honesty of the piece. But now it’s your turn to tell us what you thought. So if you happen to make it out to the theater this weekend to see it, rifle off your thoughts in the comments section here.

Linked in today’s round-up is LA Times critic Kenneth Turan’s DVD/Blu-ray pick of “Citizen Kane,” which received the 70th anniversary treatment from Warner Home Video earlier this month. It got me thinking that I should finally put it in and give it a look, since the monolithic box set has just sat there on my shelf since I bought it a few days back. I haven’t dug all the way in yet, but I put it in last night to give it a gander and boy is it gorgeous. Gregg Toland’s photography here has long deserved the HD treatment. While the structure of the film always gets the lion’s share of the “groundbreaking” praise, what he did behind the camera was certainly no less revolutionary. I tend to watch it around this time of year, Halloween or into the fall. There’s something about the crisp bite of the air outside as those “News on the March” notes strike up that is just, I don’t know, settling. Anyway, let’s see what’s going on in the Oscarweb today…

Kenneth Turan DVD/Blu-ray picks Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane.” [24 Frames]

Anne Thompson reports from the premiere of and comments on George Clooney’s “The Ides of March.” [Thompson on Hollywood]

Drew McWeeny talks to “50/50” screenwriter Will Reiser. [Motion/Captured]

Thelma Adams, Susan Wlosczcyna and Sasha Stone discuss the supporting actress category. [ThelmaAdams.com]

S.T. Van Airsdale talks to someone else who saw Sunday night’s screening of “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” and conveys those thoughts. [Movieline]

Jonah Hill ponders Hollywood’s greatest onscreen stoners. [MTV Movies Blog]

Jeff Wells passes along video of a pre-NYFF Q&A with “A Separation” director Asghar Farhadi. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

Distant relatives: “Psycho” and “Contagion.” [The Film Experience]

Marc Forster talks “Machine Gun Preacher.” [Making Of]

Scott Feinberg chats with “Take Shelter” star Michael Shannon. [The Race]

Fresh off nabbing “Rampart,” Millennium Films acquires Richard Linklater’s “Bernie.” [Variety]

You can’t really peg Joseph Gordon-Levitt down. Hollywood can’t, I should say. One minute he’s blasting onto the scene in indies like “Mysterious Skin” and “Brick,” the next he’s tackling blockbuster films such as “Inception” and “The Dark Knight Rises.” Perhaps it’s owed to his self-confessed “eclectic” taste in movies, but the 30-year-old actor seeks out that balance.

“I like a variety of movies,” he says. “’50/50′ is obviously very different than ‘Inception,’ but I loved them both. Variety is one of the things that makes it fun.”

In “50/50,” Gordon-Levitt stars as Adam, a young urban professional in the Pacific Northwest suddenly diagnosed with cancer. Gobsmacked by this, as anyone in his position would be, he rambles to the doctor bearing the bad news. “That’s impossible. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I recycle.” And so begins the marriage of comedy and drama that plays to the heart of what Gordon-Levitt calls the honesty of the film.

“The truth is even in the most horrible circumstances, funny shit happens,” he says. “And that’s okay to acknowledge that and it’s okay to laugh at it. In general, we as a culture sort of shy around that sort of humor. We don’t know if it’s okay. We don’t know if it’s proper to find something funny in the middle of something so serious.”

And indeed, the mood on the set was full of jovial spirit and laughter. Seth Rogen also stars, and the film is really his and screenwriter Will Reiser’s story. While working together as writers on HBO’s “Da Ali G Show,” Reiser was hit with a similar bucket of cold water to the face when he was diagnosed, out of the blue, with cancer. But he and his friend got through it with healthy doses of humor along the way.

One might think that, with such a responsibility to Rogen and Reiser’s story, especially with them right there on the set every day, Gordon-Levitt would feel a tremendous amount of pressure. But in reality it was just the opposite.

“It didn’t so much add pressure as alleviate pressure,” he says, “because I knew I wasn’t going to be doing anything false or dishonest with them there. That would be my main worry. If I were doing this movie without Will and Seth, if it wasn’t inspired by a true story, the whole time I’d be like, ‘I don’t know. Does this feel honest? Does this feel real? Is this over-sentimental? Should we be allowed to be making jokes?’ But because Seth and Will were there the whole time, I just felt free to take those risks or try things or underplay things and just be honest.”

Still, the actor wasn’t so much trying to replicate Reiser as a person. It’s not as if this is a biopic or anything, but he was very much interested in trying to translate the profound nature of Reiser’s journey through his performance, who he was before the ordeal and who he became afterward.

“The truth is, based on what Will has told me, he was sort of an uptight and neurotic guy before,” Gordon-Levitt says. “Now the Will I know is such an open-hearted and gentle and sweet dude. Clearly he’s really come a long way, and that was the story that I wanted to tell in ’50/50.’ Not just that I wanted, that IS the story of ’50/50.'”

The film was shot in Rogen and producer Evan Goldberg’s hometown of Vancouver and was the first film they had filmed there, which Gordon-Levitt says felt special. But the actor was particularly receptive to their on-set manner of working.

“They’re really collaborative and improvisational,” he says. “They’ll always shoot the scene as written, but they’ll always start trying other stuff, too. They have a bit of a posse of comedy writers that are producers on the movie and there’s just always lots of spontaneous creativity going on. It’s not just like a recital of what’s written. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I think it’s a big part of why the movie feels so real. Often times we were talking off the top of our head and it feels like a real conversation.”

And he’s quick to extend some appreciation to director Jonathan Levine on that, as well.

“That kind of collaborative tone, not every director would be able to handle that,” he says. “[Levine] was, on the one hand, really strong in getting what needed to get done, shot the movie specifically, cut it specifically and he’s great at picking music. He’s a great technical filmmaker. But he also was able to foster that sort of collaborative looseness on the set that I think accounts for a lot of the movie’s honest tone.”

Again, that word, “honest.” You begin to notice while talking to Gordon-Levitt it’s a word that just keeps popping up, the soul of his process. It was clearly a goal for him here — as it is for any number of actors — to get to the root of truth with this particular performance. But for a film like “50/50,” he finds that it’s all the more crucial to find that pulse. Any false note would inherently strip the material of its essence.

It is one of the actor’s finest performances, no question. And he may well pop up consistently along the awards circuit this year. He’s already been tapped for a (rather late) Breakthrough Actor honor by the Hollywood Film Awards. Perhaps that will be the start of a rewarding road for him this season.

“50/50” opens in theaters nationwide Friday, September 30.

Gerard will be diving into the contenders for Best Sound Mixing in a future Tech Support column, but for now, it’s safe to say that, as always, the latest “Transformers” installment will figure in heavily. We spotlighted the sound work on the film back in June.

Greg P. Russell is at the mixing station once again on “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” handling the implementation of sound effects. In a recent interview with Michael Coleman of the SoundWorks Collection, specifically detailing the unique 7.1 surround sound mix of the effort, he lays out how special the platform really is.

“I knew from the first early days that this was going to be special,” Greg says in the piece. “This was going to be uniquely different than what we’ve done before and there was going to be a lot of surround information in the movie. It’s wonderful to have that kind of discreet feel, to have distinct information. And it’s clean. You’re hearing that separation. So the definition of what you’re creating I find to be superior to the standard 5.1 experience.”

For some more background, here is the Soundworks Collection’s coverage of a recent 7.1 symposium held at Dolby up in Northern California.

Reviews of the DVD/Blu-ray for “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” have already called the home theatre mix “reference quality.” It was my favorite of a franchise I haven’t really liked all that much, but the below-the-line stuff on this series has been impeccable. So I’ll pick it up on Blu-ray when it drops tomorrow, if just to give my surround system a hearty workout and hear Russell and the rest of the team’s hard work once more.

Here’s the interview in full:

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/29745810 w=640&h=360]

And by the way, I just noticed the SoundWorks Collection recently profiled the popular “Angry Birds” video game. That is certainly worth a look (and listen). What a great idea.

Last week, I introduced Tech Support for the sixth year at In Contention, though the first here at HitFix. And I find the Best Visual Effects category to be an appropriate place to begin my field-by-field analysis.

Unlike many other crafts categories, which award talents that immeasurably improve a film’s quality but seldom attract a movie-goer for that reason alone, audiences will talk about films’ visual effects after seeing them, analyzing them, comparing them and talking about what could have been done better. Indeed, it is not uncommon for advertisements and trailers to use a film’s effects as its central selling point, over its stars, director and story.

The Academy Award for visual effects honors up to four supervisors of the dozens (at least) members of a film’s effects team. Blockbusters tend to do quite well in this category, better than any other. Big box office also helps, as do the effects being prominent in the film. Being a Best Picture contender and a well-reviewed film is also certainly of assistance, but perhaps not as much as in other areas. The category, like most, does tend to reward some favorites but multiple new nominees are welcomed to the club every year.

Visual effects is also not a bad category to start with because most of the leading contenders have already been released. The fact of the matter is that most “visual effects films” are released in the summer, where box office returns tend to be strongest. It is the rare year where more than half of the nominated films do not come from the year’s first eight months.

While this category expanded to five titles last year (it had previously only acknowledged three), it still retained a unique feature: before the nominations are announced, the Academy will announce a shortlist of 15 contenders, which will later be whittled down to seven. This will obviously make analyzing the category easier later in the year. B

The frontrunner this year seems to be the WETA team for their creation of the title characters on “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.”  The apes looked incredibly realistic to the point that virtually everyone who has seen the film has gone “wow.”  Add an incredibly loud fanbase, very good reviews, a surprise revitalization of the series, and I think we have a favorite. Senior supervisor Joe Letteri is a four-time Oscar winner (“Avatar,” “King Kong,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”), and that doesn”t hurt matters.

Another extremely likely nominee, and probably the apes’ biggest challenger for the win, is “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.”  It is true that only two of this film”s seven predecessors managed nominations in this category. I haven”t found the effects of the series to be that extraordinary, but this film had better than average effects by the standards of the series, in my opinion. Plus, there are now five nominees and this is the last chance to award the effects crew. That sentimental factor leads me to believe that it is not impossible for Tim Burke and company to win this.

Beyond those two titles, things get murkier, but I”d wager that “Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon” is a reasonably safe bet. While its immediate predecessor in the series was not nominated here, this film has much better reviews and the category has since expanded in size. Its money-making status, and its crew boasting the likes of John Frazier, result in a fairly comfortable position in the race.

“Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” is the fourth installment in a series where all its predecessors made the cut (“Dead Man”s Chest” won the award). I nevertheless feel it”s in trouble. The reviews were the poorest in the series, the effects added nothing to what had come before (there certainly is no Davy Jones) and everything feels stale. That having been said, it”s easy to vote for familiarity, and this film has it, spearheaded by former winners John Frazier and Neil Corbould.

“Captain America: The First Avenger” got far better reviews than I expected and also displayed some top-notch visual effects. Craig Barron won this category three years ago for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and this film also seems to have the package this category likes. The real question in my mind is whether it is liked enough on the whole and if it will be pushed and remembered in December.

I really enjoyed Kenneth Branagh”s often silly “Thor” – and I was not alone. While it did look a tad over-the-top in the effects department at times, I still feel the fun of the film, and the prominence of the effects, could help. Daniel Sudick is a four-time Oscar nominee. So I”d say this is in the running. Any awards traction that Branagh can gain for his turn as Laurence Olivier in “My Week With Marilyn” couldn”t hurt.

Before the film opened, J.J. Abrams”s “Super 8” looked highly likely in this category. However, while it performed reasonably well, I cannot shake the feeling that the Academy’s effects branch may find the effects somewhat underwhelming. That said, they certainly fit in with Abrams”s vision. Six-time Oscar winner Dennis Muren is the supervisor of this team, and Russell Earl, Stephen Trojansky and Kim Libreri have also been nominated in recent years. So while I have inclinations leading me to doubt, on paper this seems a good bet.

Other summer blockbusters, such as “Green Lantern” and “Cowboys & Aliens” shouldn”t be completely ruled out, but I don”t think the films were well-respected enough to sustain them. Of the films still on the horizon, I see only two as having strong potential in this category.

“Hugo” is the upcoming Martin Scorsese film that I feel will either be a major hit or a major miss. I”m torn. Robert Legato is the only Oscar winner on board (“Titanic”) but the crew will have the opportunity to show their stuff. If the film catches on, I”m confident it will show up here. But if it”s not reasonably successful with both critics and audiences, I”m doubtful. It”s worth noting that no Scorsese movie has ever been nominated in this category (not that he’s ever gone there).

The other big title coming up from an Oscar-winning director is Steven Spielberg”s “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.”  Now, 3D performance capture films have yet to really catch on in this category. As such, I am doubtful. But the WETA team (including Oscar winners Richard Taylor, Joe Letteri and Scott Anderson) is on board. And there”s a first time for everything, no?

I”ll end by discussing a film that certainly should find a home here, though I”m torn on its chances. Terrence Malick”s  “The Tree of Life” had some of the most effective visual effects of the year, bringing us truly in tune with the director”s vision (even if what that is remains open for debate). However, the effects are very subtle compared to this category”s typical contenders. The presence of Douglas Trumbull could be enough in and of itself to get it there. The movie”s fans are vocal so if this manages to make it to the bakeoff stage, watch out.

We”ll see how the rest of the year goes. The bakeoff will obviously be immensely helpful in reading the tea leaves. In the meantime, however, nine more categories need to be analyzed. Next week, we turn to Best Cinematography.

Linked in today’s round-up is a piece from Pete Hammond spotlighting the animated feature field. It appears, according to Pete, and assuming all titles qualify for eligibility, that there are 15 entries currently in the mix. That’s one short of the number needed for a full slate of five nominees. The GKIDS acquisition of “Chico & Rita” (which I saw and liked at last year’s Telluride fest) was what brought things up to 15, but there are some extraneous possibilities Pete doesn’t mention, like “The Rabbi’s Cat” and “Tales of the Night.” (UPDATE: The latter, I’m told, is not eligible.) In any case, he notes that the feature animation branch has been deliberating, still, something that could have a big impact on this race: the eligibility of films that use motion/performance capture. They’ve gone so far as to send a letter to the filmmakers behind “Mars Needs Moms,” “Happy Feet 2” and “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn” inquiring about their “intent” in using the technology. Point being, this isn’t settled yet, but as Pete notes and I can confirm, those at Paramount certainly aren’t concerned about the “Tintin”‘s eligibility. For now. Let’s see what’s in the Oscarweb today…

Pete Hammond reports that the Academy’s feature animation branch is still deciding on the eligibility of motion capture titles in the toon race this year. [Deadline]

Melissa McCarthy is moving from “Bridesmaids” and an Emmy to a dark comedy from “The Help” director Tate Taylor. [Hollywood Reporter]

Kate Ward has clips of Elizabeth Olsen in “Martha Marcy May Marlene.” [Entertainment Weekly]

Amy Kaufman grabs interviews with George Clooney, Ryan Gosling and Evan Rachel Wood from Tuesday night’s Los Angeles premiere of “The Ides of March.” [Ministry of Gossip]

Brian Tallerico talks “50/50” with Seth Rogen and Will Reiser. [Hollywood Chicago]

“Black Swan” interns sue for unpaid wages. [New York Times]

Sasha Stone on the many shades of hero this season. [Awards Daily]

David Poland comments on Manohla Dargis’s recent piece about separating the art (“Melancholia” and “Carnage”) from the artist (Lars Von Trier and Roman Polanski). [The Hot Blog]

Anthony D’Alessandro considers what may have gone wrong at the box office for “Drive” and “Warrior.” [Thompson on Hollywood]

Steve Pond writes up the contenders still waiting in the wings. [The Odds]

While she’s never quite descended to “whatever happened to…” levels of invisibility, it’s certainly been a quiet couple of years for Emily Watson. The London-born actress’s film career started relatively late, but with a bang all the same: in 1997, aged 30, she landed an Oscar nod for her stunning big-screen debut in Lars von Trier’s “Breaking the Waves” (still one of the Best Actress category’s prouder moments), and swiftly followed it up with a second for “Hilary and Jackie.”

While never regaining that level of individual attention, she kept the momentum going through the early 2000s with high-profile roles in “Gosford Park” and “Punch-Drunk Love,” but things dried up considerably from there — tasty appearances in the ensembles of “The Proposition” and “Synecdoche, New York” were only partial compensation for the indignity of having to simper through the likes of “Miss Potter” and “The Water Horse.” (An apparently weighty lead role in Marleen Gorris’s admittedly iffy-looking “Within the Whirlwind,” meanwhile, got lost in a distribution vortex of its own.)

Now in her mid-forties, with the mixed blessing of an unconventional movie star’s face, Watson seemed to have joined the large club of middle-aged actresses with brighter futures on stage and the small screen. Or perhaps not, as this year marks something of a revival in her big-screen fortunes. It remains to be seen how much she’s been given to do in Steven Spielberg’s “War Horse,” but it’ll certainly be more widely seen than “The Water Horse” — or anything else she’s done in her career, for that matter. Next year, meanwhile, she’ll be seen in Joe Wright’s starry new adaptation of “Anna Karenina.”

None of this is as heartening for the fans, however, as her first lead role in several years — as heroic social worker Margaret Humphreys in Jim Loach’s true-life drama “Oranges and Sunshine.” I saw the film on its UK release way back in March and suggested then that Watson’s sincerely committed performance could benefit from an Oscar campaign by an enterprising US distributor. 

The film was duly picked up by new indie outfit Cohen Media Group — now, with the film’s US release a month away, and the Best Actress race still highly malleable, the buzz is indeed beginning to build. CMG scored one Oscar nod in their first year of business (Best Foreign Language Film for “Outside the Law”), and they seem bullish about cracking one of the larger categories this year. At Toronto, they picked up Luc Besson’s “The Lady,” which some pundits seem to think could be a Best Actress play for star Michelle Yeoh. Given that film’s so-so responses, however, they might be better off concentrating their efforts on a third nomination for Watson.

It’s been too long since I saw “Oranges and Sunshine” to attempt writing a formal review, but the film is a solid, impassioned, only slightly stodgy bit of truth-pursuit drama in which the first-time director makes no secret of the fact that he’s Ken Loach’s son — he cut his teeth on assorted British TV soaps, but shares his dad’s stylistic pragmatism and earnest foregrounding of the social issues at hand.

It’s an approach that serves his moving narrative well: the British-Australian co-production tells the shocking, little-covered story of the “home children” scheme initiated by the British government in the 1950s, whereby many UK children from poverty-stricken families were deported to Australia. Promised bright new lives (the “oranges and sunshine” of the title), the hapless kids were instead institutionalized or put to work in labor camps — with their original families kept wholly uninformed as to their whereabouts.

Watson plays Humphreys, the woman who worked doggedly to uncover the scandal and bring it to public attention, reuniting many a scattered family along the way. It’s a role that perhaps sounds more epically awards-baiting on paper than it does in practice, partly because Rona Munro’s slightly pat script is content to define the woman more by her noble actions than her inner passions — and partly because Watson approaches it with her customary intelligent dignity rather than any sense of shrill movie-of-the-week self-regard.

There’s an innate honesty about Watson as an actress that the role flatters, even as it denies her the emotional complexities of her early-career highlights — truth be told, an excellent Hugo Weaving has richer dramatic material to work with as one of the “home child” victims whose life and family Humphreys helps rebuild. But UK reviews focused principally on Watson’s thoughtful work in a welcome comeback role of sorts, and I expect US ones will follow their lead.

I suspect many in the Academy’s actors’ branch would respond warmly to the old-fashioned virtues of Loach’s straightforward, heart-driven film — the challenge for Cohen Media Group will be bringing it to their attention amid the glut of higher-profile autumn prestige work. (Happily for them, it’ll play very well on DVD.) The Best Actress category feels very much in flux at the moment: Harvey Weinstein’s two big guns (Michelle Williams’s Marilyn Monroe and Meryl Streep’s Maggie Thatcher) have yet to be seen, while sight-unseen frontrunner Glenn Close came a little unstuck with the mixed reviews for “Albert Nobbs.”

This, then, is a good time for the category’s many indie outliers to make their presence felt in the conversation. A number of them are British: Watson, Tilda Swinton (“We Need to Talk About Kevin”), Olivia Colman (“Tyrannosaur”) and Rachel Weisz (“The Deep Blue Sea”) make up a quartet of UK actresses relying on strong critical buzz to bring their tiny vehicles to awards voters’ attention.

At least one of them, I sense, will break through — and while Watson’s is arguably the least arresting of those performances, it comes packaged in the most broadly palatable film. (Furthermore, Spielberg’s upcoming epic will keep her face fresh in people’s minds.) Whatever the outcome, it’s nice to have her name back in the mix.

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

We’ll lead this foreign-language Oscar update with a promising bit of news on a previously announced submission. Lebanon’s entry, Nadine Labaki’s feminist comedy “Where Do We Go Now?” has just been picked up for US distribution by Sony Pictures Classics.

This is hardly surprising news at this point: buzz on Labaki’s film has soared since it surprised everyone by scooping the Audience Award at the Toronto Film Festival, and the folks at Sony, which has overwhelmingly dominated this Oscar category in recent years, know a prime contender when they see one. This seals the film’s status as one of the favorites for a nomination — a remarkably quick turnaround for a film that generated little chatter when it debuted at Cannes. 

Meanwhile, regular observers of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar race could have seen this next announcement coming. For the second time in a row, the latest film from Spain’s most celebrated auteur, Pedro Almodóvar, has not been selected as the country’s official submission for the award. His kinky, Cannes-endorsed thriller “The Skin I Live In” was one of three films shortlisted for the honor, but has been passed over in favor of Agustí Villaronga’s Franco-era child’s-eye saga “Black Bread.”

Almodóvar’s fanbase is such that the kneejerk media response to such news is that an injustice has been done, but my sense is that the Spanish selectors have chosen wisely. I haven’t seen “Black Bread,” which recently won an armload of Goya Awards (one year after taking Best Actress at the San Sebastian Film Festival) to rave reviews from local critics and mixed ones from the international crowd, but it sounds potentially right up the Academy’s alley: serious-minded period dramas about the effects of war on children have found a home in voters’ hearts on numerous previous occasions.

I don’t count Almodóvar’s enjoyable but emotionally hollow twistathon among his best films (check out my Cannes review here), but even if I did, its sexual and gender preoccupations probably wouldn’t appeal to the foreign-language branch’s more conservative voters; meanwhile, I suspect the executive committee prefers to reserve their “save” votes for fresher work from less amply rewarded directors. Whether the Spanish have chosen the better film I can’t say, but they’ve clearly chosen their stronger contender.

Much is made of the Spanish selection panel’s on-off relationship with the veteran director, but you can hardly blame them for wanting to give other filmmakers a turn: Almodóvar’s represented Spain on five previous occasions, cracking the nominee list twice, and winning once. There’s no denying that they screwed up by not submitting “Talk To Her” in 2002 — a truth the Academy underlined by handing Almodóvar a Best Original Screenplay Oscar that year — but there’s no reason why his lesser works should get automatic preference.

In other news, two European countries have entered films that premiered at the recent Venice Film Festival. Italy — the country that holds the record for most wins in the category — has opted for Emmanuel Crialese’s “Terraferma,” a contemporary illegal-immigrant drama that played to tepid reviews on the Lido, but nonetheless wound up winning the Special Jury Prize from Darren Aronofsky’s panel. I missed the film, but as a fan of Crialese’s “Golden Door,” I look forward to catching up with it at the upcoming London Film Festival and deciding for myself. On paper, it sounds like the film’s alleged blend of sentiment and hot-button social issues could find favor among voters, particularly given the country’s track record.

I have, on the other hand, seen Switzerland’s entry “Summer Games,” a tale of a broken, abuse-plagued family unravelling over the course of a summer camping vacation, viewed largely from the perspective of their oldest son. I’ll write about the film at greater length in a future round-up of Oscar-submission reviews, but it’s a modest, affecting, slightly overcooked piece that I don’t see gaining much traction among voters, even with the ever-popular kid-protagonist angle. 

Other countries that have submitted films since our last update include Cuba (“Habanastation”), Thailand (“Kon Kohn”) and Uruguay (“The Silent House”). As always, any thoughts or information you might have on these or other submissions are most welcome in the comments. Here’s the full list as it currently stands:

Albania – “The Forgiveness of Blood”

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”

Cuba – “Habanastation”

Czech Republic – “Alois Nebel”

Denmark – “SuperClasico”

Finland – “Le Havre”

France – “Declaration of War”

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”

Mexico – “Miss Bala”

Morocco – “Omar Killed Me”

Netherlands – “Sonny Boy”

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!”

Slovakia – “Gypsy”

South Africa – “Beauty”

South Korea – “The Front Line”

Spain – “Black Bread”

Sweden – “Beyond”

Taiwan – “Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale”

Thailand – “Kon Khon”

Uruguay – “The Silent House”

Venezuela – “The Rumble of the Stones”

Vietnam – “Thang Long Aspiration”

Well, on cue, Warner Bros. has dropped the first trailer for Stephen Daldry’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” Just a few moments ago I floated the idea, based on early word, that Max Von Sydow could be nominated (and, depending on a number of things, of course, maybe even win) for what looks to be an incredibly (no pun intended) emotional performance. In the new trailer we get a good idea of what actor Thomas Horn is bringing to the proceedings, a little of Sandra Bullock and a little of Tom Hanks. We get just a few scattered shots of Von Sydow and a little of Viola Davis (who has a really limited cameo in the film). So, start chewing. Check out the full trailer at Apple or watch an embed after the jump.

Stephen Daldry’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is set for a December release and has all the trappings of an “Oscar film,” to say nothing of the director’s impressive streak as of late. In just three features he has been nominated for Best Director every time out, and his last two efforts were Best Picture nominees in a five-nominee system.

That’s before we get to the subject matter of the film — emotional 9/11 stuff in spades. The script, based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, comes from Oscar winner Eric Roth (who may have had another easy walk to the podium in 2008 for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” if “Slumdog Millionaire” hadn’t come out of nowhere). The film stars Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock as parents to young actor Thomas Horn, who is said to be heartbreakingly good and a discovery along the lines of Jamie Bell in Daldry’s “Billy Elliot” 11 years ago.

But one actor is getting short shrift from most prognosticators. And the way I hear it, he could be good enough to ultimately trample the Best Supporting Actor competition and win his first Oscar in what would be a glorious moment. I’m talking about the great Max Von Sydow.

I have been a bit down on the Oscar chances of “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” for a while now. No real reason. It has just smelled a little funny to me. But I’m coming around on it. After all, if we get another Clint Eastwood miss out of “J. Edgar” (okay, not everyone thinks his recent work has missed the mark, but I do), then Warner Bros. will have Daldry’s film alone for considerable Best Picture hopes. (I think it’s fair to say “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” and “Contagion” don’t have much ammunition.)

Plus, aggressive campaigner extraordinaire, producer Scott Rudin, will have this and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” to usher to Oscar’s stage (as they are more his babies than “Moneyball” is). And Daldry’s film certainly looks to have more “Academy appeal,” if you will (a vulgar term), than David Fincher’s.

But I digress. There was a test screening of “Extremely Loud” Sunday night in New York. I don’t usually dabble in these reactions, since you never really know what’s put on and what’s not, but I was sparked by a reader’s take on Von Sydow’s work, as I had been hearing murmurs elsewhere that it was something special. Von Sydow plays a mysterious older man in the film whose story is revealed throughout the course of the narrative.

So I pressed him for more. PLEASE NOTE: These could certainly be regarded as SPOILERS, though some have told me they are quite obvious in some ways. In any case, tread lightly:

“[Von Sydow’s character] lost his ability to speak in Germany during WW2. Apparently, there’s a whole parallel story about his surviving the war in the novel that is only talked about in the movie). He has the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’ tattooed on his palms and wears a notepad around his neck.  It’s a very expressive performance, lots of interesting shrugs and expressions. He accompanies the boy on his journeys around the city and plays an important role in his healing.

“I’m not spoiling anything here, but an important element in the film are the voice messages the father leaves on the family answering machine while trapped in the tower. The camera is on Von Sydow listening to [these] final messages. It’s a little master class in reacting.”

Also, apparently Rudin was “bouncing off the walls” after the screening, for what it’s worth, presumably excited by the reaction. But on Von Sydow, I don’t know. I’m getting that funny feeling. Could he be another actor (after Jean Dujardin) nominated for a silent performance this year? And if so, could he finally win the Oscar?

If you can believe it, Von Sydow has only been nominated once for an Oscar, for Best Actor in 1988’s “Pelle the Conqueror.” He had to have come dangerously close to another mention four years ago for his touching work in “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” another heartfelt father role. Since right now you’re wondering, “Wait, he wasn’t recognized for ‘The Excorcist?'” He wasn’t. “‘The Seventh Seal?'” Nope. “‘Three Days of the Condor?’ ‘Hamsun?’ ‘Flash Gordon???'” Nada.

So, as you can see, plenty to build on here. If he’s as good in “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” as our reader seems to suggest (he also thinks it’s the only performance that has a real shot at a nomination), then look out. It could be a great opportunity to finally honor one of the great screen actors of our time.

When most people hear that actor Albert Brooks, well known for his comedy work over a 35-year career, is playing a villainous mob figure in Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive,” the response tends to be one of surprise.

Here’s a guy who may have gotten his feet wet in Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” but has since come to be known for work in films like “Private Benjamin,” “Broadcast News,” “Finding Nemo” and a fair share of his own films, all of them hooked by that quintessential “Albert Brooks” leading man.

Well, Brooks himself fielded plenty of that skepticism, too. “Most people would say to me, ‘Oh, no one’s gonna buy that,'” he says candidly. “People would just laugh. They wouldn’t buy that. And I never believed that stuff. But it took a Danish guy to say, ‘I think this is a good idea.'”

Even on the breaks from his own films as director, when he would see what was in the ether as a possible role that would go against his usual grain (like, say, the villain in “Mission: Impossible III,” which ultimately went to Philip Seymour Hoffman), that skepticism is partly what kept him from stretching himself into the areas he trained in so long ago.

“Before comedy, before anything, I went to school just for acting,” he says. “I went to Carnegie. I did years of Summer stock. I sort of only wanted to be an actor. And then at 19, I was funny and I had some of these bits that I did for friends and I immediately could get on television.”

In particular he had a ventriloquist bit that would get him spots on The Tonight Show and the like. “The agent said, ‘Just do this and you’ll get every acting part you want,'” he says. “Six years later, I’m on the road, it’s St. Louis doing three shows a night and I’m knee deep in comedy and there’s no acting.”

A 1973 bit about running out of material, which is hilarious on the surface, probably speaks well to what was eating at him deep down inside. But Brooks had to make his own way out, he says. “I had to quit. I just stopped. I said, ‘I’m not doing this anymore.’ This was going a hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction.”

Nevertheless, Hollywood being what it is, he fell into the inevitable hole of type casting. Particularly with his own films, that are so often built on his usual disposition — kind of like Woody Allen does for himself — Brooks found himself somewhat locked in. “The more you play that, the more that’s what people think you can play,” he says. “And nobody really wants to take a chance.”

Enter serendipity. One Thursday in 2010, Brooks was preparing for a trip to San Francisco the next day. He got a phone call from his long-time producing partner Herb Nanas, who said there was a script that had made its way to him called “Drive” and the director waned him to read it and meet with him before he left on his trip. So he did just that, and knowing it was a part against his usual “type,” the kind of thing he’d been wanting to play for years, it was an easy decision. Then came the meeting.

“I went to [Refn’s] house and, you know, we played this sort of weird game, where he’s asking me, ‘Why do you think you should play this?,'” Brooks says. “It’s like a test, you know? So I said, ‘Well, you know, cast one of the six people that always play it and then you’ll have an ordinary movie. As soon as the guy comes on screen everybody will know what’ll happen.’ And so he liked that answer.”

And just to make his point firmer, Brooks decided he’d put a little more English on his personal pitch. On the way out, he and Refn were standing at the door and Brooks suddenly pinned the director up against the wall and very quietly said, “I don’t know how much physical strength you think I have but I could beat the crap out of you in a fight.”

He thinks back on it now and laughs. “You know, I don’t think Nicolas has ever been touched,” he says. “These Danes don’t get in a lot of fights!”

So with the role — and the chance to prove something — finally his, Brooks went to work. He dived deep into the backstory of Bernie Rose, the mob figure he plays in the film. Indeed, he says he subscribes heavily to backstory and often suggests it to the actors in his own films.

“It’s like a costume,” he says. “It just helps you when you’re sitting there and not saying anything. You just sit down and you have some idea of who you are.”

Not only inwardly, but outwardly, Brooks had a heavy hand in Bernie. He had a hair piece made up for the character, and he didn’t care whether it looked like a piece or not. “In real life, people go out on the street and they don’t want you to know but you know,” he says with a laugh. He wanted the character to talk a little bit differently, not with a strong New York accent, but a bit of that flavor. He developed a tick where the character blinks frequently and he even went so far as to remove his eyebrows because it was a scarier look.

“To me it’s just important,” he says. “It helps. All of that stuff I worked on, ran by Nicolas. I said, ‘I’m assuming Bernie is divorced. He’s got grown children. I would imagine he never sees them.’ It was great. I think once he gets on board with you, he’s very, very cooperative and very encouraging for you to do your end of it.”

During production, Brooks says Refn had this habit of walking up behind him and massaging his shoulders before uttering in a slow, deep voice, “Orson Welles.” That was literally the extent of the direction, and for Brooks, it seemed to mean the director wanted him to claim the part even more. “I think he meant, you know, ‘Own this more. Own it,'” he says.

In the film, Brooks shares a lot of screen time with Ron Perlman, who plays his partner in crime. He had known Perlman as an actor for years, of course, and when they met at Refn’s house, Brooks shared with him his perception of the relationship.

“We went to our cars together and I said to him, ‘You know what this is, don’t you? This is ‘Of Mice and Men,'” he says. “‘This is George and Lenny.’ And he looked at me, [pitch-perfect Perlman impression] ‘I’m Lenny?’ Yeah, you’re Lenny. Of course you’re Lenny.’ That’s the way I looked at it. You’ve got to pat him on the head. ‘Stop it. Stop it. You’re going to ruin it for everybody. Sit down. Stop acting like that.'”

But to Brooks, the characters knew each other for a very long time and there was affection there. In fact, Brooks says there is a beat that was unfortunately left out of the final cut when (SPOILERS) Perlman’s character frantically tries to dial on his phone just before he meets his end, to call Bernie, as if he wanted to express how sorry he was and his affection for his friend in that final moment. (END SPOILERS)

It’s interesting to note that one of the films often mentioned as a comparison piece for “Drive” is “Taxi Driver,” Brooks’s big screen debut. That film, though, cast an intriguing judgmental gaze on the scum and filth of New York City, while Refn’s film depicts Los Angeles in mostly loving strokes. Indeed, the director has said he thinks the city is one of the most beautiful burgs in the country, for a variety of reasons. But Brooks has his own take on things.

“Well, I’m born here,” he says. “I know this city. I know every place they shot. I know the Valley, unfortunately, too well. I’ve gone to that repair shop. I know those locations. One of the things that he did was he sort of found the Los Angeles that really has not changed for 20, 30 years. He didn’t go shoot the Disney Hall. He picked the part of Los Angeles that just seems to be stuck in the 1980s, in the 1970s. And I think that was done on purpose.

“One thing about Los Angeles is it feels like it’s not new. It feels like it’s already been built and it’s deteriorating, except for the places they’re trying to make nicer. But in general, you drive all through the city, and the city feels like it was new a long time ago. I liked that aspect of it. The malls, nothing was made of them. It was the pizza place and the auto repair place. It was just sort of, I guess, the non-glamorous Los Angeles. Unless you get that beautiful helicopter shot. So from the sky you get one thing, but on the ground you get another.”

Brooks is hopeful his work in the film will open a few more doors that have been closed to him throughout his career. He’ll show up in Judd Apatow’s next film, “This is Forty” (a comedy, naturally). But any attention he can get for shining a light onto other talents in “Drive” — and, of course, any awards recognition that may come of it — is added fuel for that fire.

“It makes it more interesting,” he says, “because the truth is, the villains in American movies are played by the same half a dozen people you know and I know. And they’re good actors. John Malkovich is a damn good actor. But when you see him enter a scene, you know something is going to happen, instinctively. And I think a lot of people who get in the villain area would love to get out of it, too. But that’s the most exciting thing when you’re watching a movie, that the actor, by their mere presence, won’t tell you the whole plot.

“Sometimes you can do both. Gene Hackman was a great example of someone who could do both. He could walk that line so brilliantly. Throughout the years he’s had such a range. He could play a dopey guy and he could play a marine captain. He’s just so ultra-natural and very real. And I think that happens without trying. You have to have that. It’s hard to act real.

“I know what I’m capable of. So it’s really just to show that you have the ability to look a little different, to act different, to convince people. So any recognition for pure acting, if it would help someone like Nicolas, who said, ‘Hey, this guy could do that,’ if it would help somebody go, ‘Hey, put him as the marine guy. Why not?’ Then it would be great. That’s what I think it can do.”