Just a note to new readers (and old ones, in case you haven’t jumped on board), you can follow me at Twitter at @kristapley and Guy can be found at @guylodge. We try to keep the masses entertained there. Operative word: try.

In Friday’s Oscar Talk podcast I told Anne I thought “Moneyball” would struggle to beat out “The Lion King 3D” at the box office this weekend. I thought it would pull it out, but I just expected it to be a struggle. Well, turns out it was a struggle indeed, as Disney’s re-release took the top spot ($22.1 million) for a second weekend in a row, inching past Bennett Miller’s debuting Oscar hopeful ($20.6 million) in the process.

“Moneyball” was tops on Friday, but kid-friendly movies tend to get a big bump on Saturdays, so that’s what happened for “The Lion King 3D.” It’ll be interesting to see if Brad Pitt — who always does well overseas — can make baseball play in foreign markets.

Also opening this weekend were “Dolphin Tale” ($20.2 million) and “Abduction.” ($11.2 million) The former actually almost dropped “Moneyball” to third place. I haven’t seen either (and likely won’t), so, I won’t comment.

Other bits worth noting: “The Help” ($4.4 million) breezed past the $150 million mark, maintain yet another strong hold. “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” is closing in on $175 million for the year, while “Midnight in Paris” is doing the same for $55 million. And if you haven’t noticed, outside of his bang-up year in 2000 (“Erin Brockovich” and “Traffic”) and the “Ocean’s” franchise, “Contagion” is Steven Soderbergh’s highest grossing film to date.

Here is HitFix’s Gregory Ellwood on this week’s box office.

(Courtesy: Exhibitor Relations)

Well, that’s one week in the books here at HitFix. I wanted to take a second to thank everyone for coming along with us on this huge change and for sticking with us through the growing pains. It’s been a crazy week for all of this, with Guy on leave for much of it, a screening every day (including two on Friday plus an interview), four hours of sleep a night, etc. But I think we’re roaring loud and strong here at the new digs.

And with that, I’m taking the rest of the day off! But I thought I’d get the weekend Cinejabber posts going first. This Saturday feature — for the uninitiated — is simply a chance for you to discuss whatever is on your mind that hasn’t really had a place elsewhere. Caught a movie that was released some time back and want to comment? Let us know here. Playing some awesome video game and you’re dying to share? Let us know — well, maybe don’t let us know. The last thing I need is an excuse to go buy something else to eat up my time! Basically, it’s an open thread and the floor is yours.

Usually I try to get things moving by offering up something that’s on my mind as of late. Today, that would be last night’s American Cinemateque double feature screening of Tim Burton’s “Batman” and “Batman Returns” at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica.

Most who have read me for any length of time know my admiration for the former. I wrote about it at length on the film’s 20th anniversary two years ago. I couldn’t pass up the chance to see it projected one more time (I caught it on the big screen once in film school some years back). The latter I hadn’t seen in a theater since the summer of 1992, like most, I imagine.

Michael Uslan was in attendance, ostensibly to promote his new book, “The Boy Who Loved Batman.” During a pre-screening Q&A with Hero Complex‘s Geoff Boucher, Uslan mentioned something I had never heard before. But first, some quick background.

One of the coolest Oscar wins ever, to me, is Anton Furst’s victory for his brilliant designs on “Batman.” They stemmed from one line in Sam Hamm’s script, which read something like, “Gotham City: As if hell had erupted through the sidewalk and kept growing.” It was up to Furst and Burton to translate that, and the hard work paid off in the form of an Oscar win.

So Benjamin Melinker was walking with Uslan around the massive five square-block set built at London’s Pinewood Studios one day, and he was in awe. Here was a guy who cut his teeth on lavish MGM productions like “Dr. Zhivago,” “Gigi” and “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but he turned to Uslan that day and said, “I never thought I’d see sets more impressive than the ones on ‘Ben-Hur.'”

It was a grand time at the movies. So anyway, like I said, open thread. The floor is yours.

We talk about name appeal being a factor in the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar race, but no country this year can boast it to quite the same extent as China: not only is their submission, just announced today, directed by three-time Oscar nominee Zhang Yimou, but it stars reigning Best Supporting Actor champ Christian Bale. If nothing else, the lure of the familiar should be worth a few votes. 

The film in question is “The Flowers of War,” Zhang’s much-anticipated epic set during the Japanese invasion of Nanking in 1937, in which Bale stars as an American priest trapped in a cathedral with a group of schoolchildren and courtesans. As the most expensive production in Chinese film history, the film has a lot riding on it; no one’s seen the finished product yet, but 20 minutes of footage were previewed at the Toronto Film Festival to a strong reception. (The film opens in China in December, which would normally rule it ineligible for consideration, but will have a week-long qualifying run beginning tomorrow.)

If you’re having trouble imagining Bale flaunt his Mandarin skills on screen, don’t trouble yourself: the film’s dialogue is reportedly 60% Mandarin and 40% English, meeting the Academy’s required foreign-language quota, though it’s a slightly cheeky approach. If the film itself delivers, the combination of that accessibility with Bale’s celebrity and Zhang’s track record could give it a serious leg up in the race for a nomination; it’s worth noting that no Chinese film has scored a nomination here since Zhang’s own “Hero” in 2002.

It’ll be interesting to see if a US distributor steps forward to release it this year, thus making it eligible in the general Oscar race. (Remember, if it’s released in 2012 but nominated in the foreign-language category, it won’t be eligible in other categories next year.)

Another country cutting it fine on the language front is South Africa. Today’s news that they’ve submitted young sophomore filmmaker Oliver Hermanus’s “Beauty” (also known by its Afrikaans title “Skoonheid”) greatly pleased me — not only because it’s an excellent film, but because I was concerned it might have too much English dialogue to qualify. Hermanus’s film makes a virtue of the South African characteristic of hopping between languages (English and Afrikaans, in this case) in the space of a single sentence, which makes it tricky to calculate in Academy-friendly percentages.

The film, a substantial formal advance from Hermanus’s highly promising debut “Shirley Adams,” is something a little different from the more issue-based, black-focused films the country has submitted in recent years: a frank, graceful study of repressed sexuality in middle-class Afrikaner society, it stars Deon Lotz in a startling performance as a middle-aged family man consumed by desire for his nephew. It was well-received in the Un Certain Regard strand at this year’s Cannes festival, where it wound up winning the Queer Palme for the festival’s best gay-themed film.

I meant to review this impressive piece of work but got swallowed up in the festival chaos; along with some other submissions, I plan to write it up in more detail soon. As it stands, its explicit sexual content and defiantly downbeat stance could make it a hard sell to many Academy types, but here’s hoping it benefits from the exposure. 

Meanwhile, the Czech Republic (whose “Alois Nebel” is the only animated film in contention so far), Denmark and India also announced their submissions today; 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”

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”

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”

Sweden – “Beyond”

Taiwan – “Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale”

Venezuela – “The Rumble of the Stones”

Vietnam – “Thang Long Aspiration”

I’m just now getting around to yesterday’s press release concerning this year’s Gotham Awards tributes, which will go to actress Charlize Theron, actor Gary Oldman and director David Cronenberg. Announced previously was a similar tribute for Fox Chairman and CEP Tom Rothman.

Now is the time of year when publicists jockey for their clients’ positions at tributes throughout the various awards season events. Whether it’s recognition at the Independent Film Project’s (IFP) Gotham Awards ceremony, the Hollywood Film Festival’s Hollywood Awards, the Palm Springs Film Festival’s gala of honors or the Santa Barbara Film Festival’s week-and-a-half of fetes, these notices can do a lot to further fuel an Oscar campaign, and these three will likely be in the thick of it.

Okay, maybe David Cronenberg is a stretch for Best Director recognition (for his work on “A Dangerous Method”) at this point, but that doesn’t mean the occasion of the film isn’t a good excuse to recognize a career of singular work. But Charlize Theron and Gary Oldman will be very much in the conversation for Best Actress and Best Actor respectively.

I haven’t seen Jason Reitman’s “Young Adult” yet, but by all accounts of those who have, Theron is likely to be a cinch for a nod. I have seen “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” however, and can say Oldman’s reserved, coiled spring of a portrayal is sure to be well-respected by his fellow actors this season. Both are in the midst of major studio productions that will hit theaters in 2012 — Theron in Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” and Oldman in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises” — so expect their awards run this season to really feed the publicity air around those films next year

“We are truly honored to pay tribute to four cinematic film luminaries, all of whom have greatly contributed to independent film, and have steadfastly supported the film community in their own individual and unique ways,”Joana Vicente, Executive Director of the IFP said in the press release.

Seven other awards — Best Feature, Best Documentary, Breakthrough Director, Breakthrough Actor, Best Ensemble Performance, Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You and the Audience Award — will also be handed out at the 21st annual Gotham Awards, which will be held on Monday, November 28th at Cipriani Wall Street, in New York.

When George Clooney's “The Ides of March” screened for press at Venice, the reception was somewhat chilly. Bowing a film about political corruption to European audiences is always going to be a dicey play. And maybe it would have been wiser to choose a different venue for the reveal. I don't make these decisions.

But then the film played Toronto and similarly “meh” reactions were floating around. One critic went so far as to call it a “watered down version of 'Primary Colors.'” And so, at the time, I put up a post corralling some of these reviews and one-offs and titled it “Naiveté you can believe in,” because the issue simply seemed to be that treating political corruption as profound insight was just silly in this day and age.

Here's the thing, though. After seeing the film last night, I feel strongly that “The Ides of March” isn't acting as if its pulling back a veil. It's handling, quite matter-of-factly, political corruption and scandal and the back-bitery of the Washington game as simple and plain harsh truth. I didn't read any of this to be presented as epiphany in the slightest, and indeed, I find it to be one of the most refined films of the year.

What the film does is navigate these waters with a Shakespearean accent. It's obviously no coincidence the original play — “Farragut North” — was re-titled to fall in line with the date of Julius Caesar's betrayal, elevated to high drama in the Bard's play. (Or was it Edward de Vere's play? Wait, I'm mixing my Sony movies here.) And that's exactly what Clooney does with the film. He cooks it into a slim, lean piece of high drama in which every single actor — across the board — is firing on all cylinders.

And on that, I'm a little surprised Ryan Gosling isn't getting his proper due here. I was very impressed by what he was doing in the film, playing a young but weathered, smart-talking media strategist to Clooney's noble and apparently squeaky clean liberal presidential candidate. Combined with a completely different, but equally skilled performance in Nicolas Winding Refn's “Drive,” I'd say Gosling is having a stellar year and, truly, he deserves some awards recognition on both fronts.

Philip Seymour Hoffman has become so good at what he does we all just take it for granted. On a podcast from Telluride, Guy quipped, “We've seen him do this before.” Well, I kind of think that's his genius. I don't think he's failed to give a fully present and wholly embodied portrayal in his entire career. We've just come to expect excellence of him, and that's what he dishes out here.

Evan Rachel Wood is dynamite in a role that could be fodder for a supporting actress push, and Marisa Tomei — man, I wish she had more scenes because she nailed the role of a sweet-talking evil wench journalist brilliantly. And Clooney, also having a stand-out year, really squeezes every moment he's on screen for all it's worth.

But it's Clooney's work as director that was particularly impressive. He has a shrewd directorial mind, really unsung in some ways. He has a keen eye for visually telling his story (Phedon Papamichael's cinematography finds so many brilliant images) and he has an impeccable sense of pace.

On that, Stephen Mirrione's film editing is graceful but crisp, particularly stand-out in an opening sequence that really settles you into the tone. And I think, of all the scores he has in play this year, Alexandre Desplat has his best shot at Oscar recognition for his jazzy, smooth and at times operatic work here.

Quite simply put, “The Ides of March” is one of the year's best films. It's not watered-down anything. It's distilled everything. And it gets in and out without stooping to grandiose preaching. Tight as a drum, I'd call this the best film in Sony's impressive fall stable.

And we haven't even gotten to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” yet.

Thursday afternoon — thanks to the miracle of Twitter — I got “Drive” star Albert Brooks on the phone for a half hour to talk about his work in Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive.” The performance is really stirring the circuit up as Brooks lights up the campaign trail with his trademark humor and charm.

That interview will land in a few days, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to discuss a few other, extraneous things with Brooks about his work on other features and his wonderful presence on the social networking site that hooked us up. So over the next couple of days, I thought I’d drop in a few of those nuggets on the way to the big piece itself next week.

Today, it’s all about “Finding Nemo” and Brooks’s place in the Pixar family. The film is still my favorite Pixar effort, and for a long time it was the studio’s most financially successful film. Indeed, it was the highest-grossing animated feature of all time until “Shrek 2” knocked it off its perch a year later. (This year, due to re-release, “The Lion King” has also leap-frogged it, while “Toy Story 3” became Pixar’s all time box office champ last year.) “Finding Nemo” is also one of the Pixar films that hasn’t been sullied (no pun intended — if you caught that, that is) by a sequel. But Brooks has some choice thoughts on that in today’s pull quote.

“It’s interesting because it gets you an audience of little children. That’s really what’s interesting. I just finished working in Judd Apatow’s movie and in the movie, my character, through in vitro, has these young triplets that are just like, ‘Where did they come from?’ So these little kids who played the triplets would not know me from Adam except when their mother says, ‘That’s Marlin.’ Their eyes open.

“It’s sort of like being a toy to a little child. And that just wouldn’t exist if not that. But listen, they’re an amazing company. I don’t know, I guess they’ll never make another ‘Nemo.’ I see they’re making another ‘Monsters, Inc.’ I had a wonderful idea for them. I swear to God I think there could be a great sequel to ‘Nemo’ where the fish never will leave home. He just won’t leave. ‘Getting Rid of Nemo.’ Right, ‘You’re 30 years old! Get out of here!'”

“Drive” (the polar opposite of “Finding Nemo”) is currently playing in theaters nationwide.

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 the year’s 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.

Today marks our first podcast at the new HitFix digs (see, I promised we’d push forward without a hitch). And there’s a lot to discuss. It’s been a busy week of screenings and interviews and more. “Moneyball” kind of announces the start of the season’s major Oscar hopefuls by releasing today and the Academy has made a change to its rules and regulations that deserves addressing, to say nothing of the various films that have screened that are worth chewing on. So with all that in mind, let’s see what’s on the docket today…

• We both saw Tomas Alfredson’s hotly anticipated “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” this week after the film bowed in Venice a few weeks back. And we have a lot to say on that.

• With “Moneyball” opening today, to very strong reviews, we come back around to the Oscar question on the film. We’re both still somewhat reserved but we recognize the film is landing just right with the critical set. Now the question is box office and, most especially, Academy reaction.

• The Academy implemented a rule change on campaign regulations this week. Most are calling it a “cracking down” thing but it actually opens the flood gates to a big extent. We discuss.

• The trailer for Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar” dropped this week, putting Leonardo DiCaprio in the thick of the Best Actor discussion. With little to chew on yet, we consider.

• I happened to see “The Ides of March” this week. (Anne will see it at the premiere on Tuesday.) And I’m a huge fan, so I go on briefly about that.

• I also caught Cameron Crowe’s rock doc “Pearl Jam Twenty” this week, which I liked very much. I dig in on that a little bit.

• Back to things we can both comment on, I finally caught up with Lars Von Trier’s “Melancholia,” which Anne saw in Cannes. I’m not nearly as over the moon for it as she is, though.

• And, don’t hate me, but no questions this week. I never got around to putting up a solicitation post, and even though I asked for some questions on Twitter, I never even got around to looking at them. I know, I’m sorry. Next week we’ll be on all cylinders. Promise!

Have a listen to the new podcast below, with a little Pearl Jam 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.

Fresh off a Toronto bow and with a huge headwind of press behind it, Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball” is definitely the big opening of the weekend. But will it have the fiscal muscle to oust “The Lion King 3D” from the top spot? And, more importantly, will it make a significant enough case at the box office over the next few weeks to keep it in the Best Picture conversation? Time will tell.

I was particularly impressed by the density of the writing in the film, arguing that it is “a tightly constructed piece of work, thematically layered, rich in substance, hard work from two of the best writers in the business clearly evident.” The film’s director, Bennett Miller, may have called the production a “beautiful nightmare,” but it nevertheless turned out to be one of the year’s best films in my opinion. Now it’s your turn to weigh in, though. If you get around to it this weekend, tell us what you thought in the comments section below.

Linked in today’s round-up is a story from The Guardian newspaper in London in which Ryan Gibey bemoans the loss of microbudget American independent cinema. Of course, there isn’t really a loss there, as shoe-string budgets are alive and well, namely in movements like Mumblecore (dirty word, I know) cinema, where filmmakers like Joe Swanberg and Aaron Katz have made a name for themselves. But I feel his pain. I often think back to the independent burst of the early-1990s and how that fury just hasn’t been matched. In particular Gibey singles out Richard Linklater’s “Slacker,” which I confess I never saw until recently, and I was rather blown away by it. The film, which pre-dated indie titan filmmaking from the likes of Quentin Tarantino and David O. Russell (who are well-covered in Sharon Waxman’s book “Rebels on the Backlot”), is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year if you can believe it. It was recently remade by a troupe of filmmakers for the occasion and premiered at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, where the film is set (and where Fantastic Fest rages on currently). Now, let’s see what’s going on in the Oscarweb today…

Ryan Gibey longs for the microbudget cinema of the early 1990s. [The Guardian]

Allison Loring talks to composer Cliff Martinez about the synth pulse he gave to Nicholas Winding Refn’s “Drive.” [Film School Rejects]

Patrick Goldstein finds “Moneyball” to be about “how being an outsider encourages innovation.” [The Big Picture]

David Poland catches up with the film’s director, Bennett Miller. [The Hot Blog]

Anne Thompson talks “50/50” with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen. [Thompson on Hollywood]

After already having picked up its first English-language film in “The Deep Blue Sea,” Music Box grabs the rights to Canada’s Oscar entry “Monsieur Lazhar.” [Deadline]

Thelma Adams, Sasha Stone and Susan Wloszczyna talk about the Best Actor race. I’ll be digging into that field in Monday’s Off the Carpet column. [ThelmaAdams.com]

Speaking of which, for whatever reason, Jeff Wells wants to put the brakes on Leonardo DiCaprio getting a nomination in the category for “J. Edgar” despite all systems looking go. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

Also, Liam Neeson could pop up as a contender too, because Open Road Pictures has been toying with the idea of a qualifying run for Joe Carnahan’s “The Grey.” Greg Ellwood has the trailer. [Awards Campaign]

Drew McWeeny kicks off his Fantastic Fest coverage with a review of “Michael.” No, not that adorable John Travolta angel movie. [Motion/Captured]

I had barely finished typing up yesterday’s foreign-language Oscar submissions update when news landed of a further three high-profile candidates: with the deadline a mere eight days away, the list is virtually growing by the hour. I could have added the newcomers as a postscript, but given that I’ve seen all three — and that one of them is among my favorite films of the year — I thought I’d wait until the morning.

I’ve seen only 11 of the 39 films submitted so far, and while I’m delighted thus far with the presence of entries like “A Separation,” “Pina,” “The Turin Horse” and “Attenberg,” no announcement has pleased me quite as much as the news that Mexico has opted for Gerardo Naranjo’s “Miss Bala,” a blinding drug-trade thriller that was one of the clear hits of this year’s Un Certain Regard crop at Cannes.

The selection is hardly a surprise: aside from the film’s festival sensation status, the studio backing of 20th Century Fox always ensured a high US profile for Naranjo’s film, which hits theaters next month after a final festival stopover in New York. It’s on that basis that I’ve been predicting a nomination for it since June, even if its tough, socially-conscious genre trappings hardly represent a soft lob to general voters in this Academy branch.

Still, it might not even need the executive committee’s assistance: the combination of critical hype and propulsive on-screen energy led voters to nominate Mexico’s comparably rough-and-tumble “Amores Perros” ten years ago. 

I’ll finally review “Miss Bala” in more detail next week (I missed it, much to my consternation, at Cannes and caught up with it a few weeks ago), so I’ll save further discussion of the film’s virtues until then. For now, I’ll just say that the Mexican committee, whose selective instincts have been repaid with four nominations this century, has done itself proud here.

Speaking of Latin American drug-trade thrillers — smooth segue there, if I do say so myself — it hardly seems seven years since American director Joshua Marston made an auspicious debut with “Maria Full of Grace,” an ace little US-Colombian co-production that fired up critics and landed an against-the-odds Best Actress Oscar nod for breakout star Catalina Sandino Moreno. If you’re wondering why it wasn’t accompanied by a Best Foreign Language Film nomination, you can blame an arcane, now-defunct Academy rule: Colombia submitted the film as its entry, but was disqualified due to Marston’s US nationality.

Happily, that rule has since been dropped, which means that Marston now enters the Oscar race with his long-awaited follow-up feature, “The Forgiveness of Blood” — though his adopted country this time is Albania, where the director set and shot this languid domestic study of the country’s seemingly archaic but still-prevalent blood-feud culture. The film premiered at the Berlinale in February, where it earned Marston the Best Screenplay prize. (Note how that wintry festival, to which scarcely anybody paid attention from the outside, keeps cropping up in this year’s foreign Oscar conversation.)

The less happy news, I’m afraid, is that “The Forgiveness of Blood” isn’t a patch on Marston’s debut: measured, intelligent and finely acted by its youthful leads (whose faces raise the question of whether or not Andrew Garfield and Mia Wasikowska have abandoned twin siblings in the Balkans), it’s nonetheless a somewhat dry and over-earnest exercise.

I could have sworn I reviewed it in Berlin, but it seems I didn’t; “polished and porridgey where Marston’s predecessor was frayed and propulsive,” I tweeted, anyway. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised to see Academy voters take to this dutifully commendable work, but if they do, the ghost of “Maria Full of Grace” should feel entitled to sulk a little.

Finally, Israel, whose hot Oscar streak of three consecutive nominations in the category was interrupted this year, is hoping to get back on track with Joseph Cedar’s “Footnote” — which, as is their usual custom, was named the country’s submission after winning the top prize at the country’s own national film awards. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them do it, not least since Cedar’s previous film, “Beaufort,” started the aforementioned hat-trick in 2007.

“Footnote,” a rather solemn comedy about a father and son, both literary professors, who find themselves in competition for the same academic award, found a number of admirers at Cannes, where it played in competition and landed the Best Screenplay award. I was not among them: “‘Footnote’ is regrettably the word for Joseph Cedar”s busy, shrill but strangely dour comedy of letters,” I wrote in my review. “The central conflict inevitably recalls the old adage of academic politics being so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.” Still, I can see its fussy dramatics finding fans in the Academy. 

The current list of submissions:

Albania
“The Forgiveness of Blood”

Austria
“Breathing”

Belgium
“Bullhead”

Bosnia and Herzegovina
“Belvedere”

Brazil
“Elite Squad 2″

Bulgaria
“Tilt”

Canada
“Monsieur Lazhar”

Chile
“Violeta”

Colombia
“The Colors of the Mountain”

Finland
“Le Havre”

France
“Declaration of War”

Germany
“Pina”

Greece
“Attenberg”

Hong Kong
“A Simple Life”

Hungary
“The Turin Horse”

Iceland
“Volcano”

Iran
“A Separation”

Ireland
“As If I Am Not There”

Israel
“Footnote”

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 Korea
“The Front Line”

Sweden
“Beyond”

Taiwan
“Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale”

Venezuela
“The Rumble of the Stones”

Vietnam
“Thang Long Aspiration”

Part of The Weinstein Company’s stable of awards contenders this year is Phyllida Lloyd’s “The Iron Lady.” Meryl Streep stars in the biopic about former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and conventional wisdom says she’s on track for her 17th Oscar nomination. Some even wonder if she’ll be in a position to win her third statue (as the usual argument is it has been too long since her last win, which came for 1982’s “Sophie’s Choice”). But it’s interesting that the two sight-unseen frontrunners for the lead acting Oscars are such conservative figures of political history (the other being Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover in “J. Edgar”). And indeed that conservative spirit is embossed by the tagline for the film — “Never Compromise” — positioned at the top of the first (handsome) official poster for the film. Check out the full image after the jump.

Having been on holiday in Greece for the past week, I”ve rather lost track of the submissions for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar – and as you”d expect with the entry deadline a little over a week away, there”s been a lot of activity since I last updated you, including a submission from the most-nominated country in the category”s history, and the first to prompt critical outrage over the selection process.

The former, of course, is France, a near-perennial player with 36 nominations under its belt – though the country hasn”t managed a win since 1992″s “Indochine.” In recent year, their submissions have had an air of inevitability to them: for four years running, they”ve simply picked the biggest homegrown winner from the Cannes competition, a strategy that paid off with nominations for “The Class” and “A Prophet,” but came undone last year when “Of Gods and Men” didn”t even make the pre-nomination shortlist.

If French selectors weren”t already thinking about a switch in tack, this year”s Cannes crop kind of forced their hand. It wasn”t short of Gallic-flavored hits, but Aki Kaurismaki’s “Le Havre” is a Finnish co-production that was rightly submitted by the director”s homeland, while Michel Hazanavicius”s “The Artist” is in English. Short of submitting Maïwenn”s divisive Jury Prize winner “Polisse,” perhaps too procedural-based for many voters, they”d have to look elsewhere.

And so they have. This year”s French submission, Valerie Donzelli’s “Declaration of War” did play the Croisette, but in the far lower-profile Critics” Week strand, where it went mostly unheralded by international critics. That”s no reason to underestimate its chances, however. As the recent list of winners in the category proves, voters care little for major festival or critical plaudits; they like what moves them. And Donzelli”s film, an autobiographical drama about a young couple dealing with their infant son”s brain tumor, sounds very much like it could have the requisite emotional pull.

Sundance Selects picked up “Declaration of War” shortly after Cannes — the first time since 2006 that category wizards Sony Pictures Classics haven’t backed the French pony — which could give some indication of its potential audience appeal. Reviews from English-speaking critics have been warm, while the French critical reception upon its release last month was closer to ecstatic; not that one ever takes one’s eye off the French, but this could be one to watch all the same.

One submission with higher name-recognition factor comes from Russia, but that’s not to say it’s met with approval. In picking Nikita Mikhalkov’s “Burnt by the Sun 2: Citadel,” the second part of a sequel to his excellent 1994 political drama that itself scooped an Oscar in this category, the Russian selection panel has been deplored not only by critics, but by the panel’s own chairman, Vladimir Menshov. Declaring the film — the highest-budgeted in Russian cinema history, which tanked with critics and audiences alike earlier this year — an “inappropriate” choice, Menshov has called on Mikhalkov to withdraw it from consideration.

I haven’t seen the film, though I did see its predecessor “Burnt by the Sun 2: Exodus” (are you still with me?) at its premiere in competition at Cannes last year, where it met with uniformly dismal reviews and similarly flunked with Russian audiences. “Lumbering, cacophonous and frequently hilarious,” I wrote in my review then; I’ve been given little reason to hope that things improve in the next chapter.

It’s an embarrassing state of affairs, and a hard slap in the face of filmmakers like Andrei Zyvagintsev, whose stunning moral study “Elena” was lauded by critics at Cannes, where it won an Un Certain Regard award (and remains a contender for my own year-end Top Ten). If you’re wondering how such a roundly disliked film got the nod against the will of even the man charged with managing its selection, one need only look to Mikhalkov’s strong political alliances, plus his presidency of the Russian Cinematographers’ Union, to suspect the decision may not have been entirely an artistic one.

As it stands, it’s only the latest in a long line of examples pointing up the flaws in the Academy’s system of allowing countries to select their contenders, rather than applying their own filtering process. (Italy’s “I Am Love” was a widely mourned casualty of the system last year.) I very much doubt Mikhalkov will step down, but even factoring in the veteran filmmaker’s strong Oscar record (he has two nominations bracketing his 1994 win), I doubt we’ll hear much more of “Citadel” in the coming season.

Another country to raise eyebrows, albeit to a lesser degree, with their submission is Belgium: while many assumed they’d pick the Dardenne brothers’ Cannes Grand Prix winner “The Kid With a Bike,” the country has plumped instead for “Bullhead,” an offbeat thriller about illegal hormone growth in the cattle industry that found fans at the Berlinale and has been a hit at home. The Belgians have submitted the Dardennes’ films on three previous occasions, but have missed the shortlist each time; they might have stood a better chance with the brothers’ latest, and arguably most accessible, work, but one can hardly blame them for trying a different route.

Russia, meanwhile, isn’t the only country trying its luck with a sequel: Brazil’s submission is the highest-grossing film in the country’s history, Jose Padilha’s police actioner “Elite Squad 2.” The selection is midly surprising since they didn’t submit its 2007 predecessor, which won the Berlinale Golden Bear. Critical consensus, however, is that the new film represents a substantial improvement on the first, so perhaps they’re hoping the Academy will take the bait; still, it’s difficult to see them going for a sequel when they have no evident relationship with the first.

Rounding up some other titles recently added to the mix, we have Bosnia and Herzegovina’s “Belvedere,” Bulgaria’s “Tilt,” Canada’s “Monsieur Lazar,” Colombia’s “The Colors of the Mountain,” Hong Kong’s “A Simple Life” (recent winner of the Best Actress award at Venice), Iceland’s “Volcano,” Ireland’s “As If I Am Not There,” Lithuania’s “Back To Your Arms,” Peru’s “October,” Philippines’ attractively titled “The Woman in the Septic Tank,” Slovakia’s “Gypsy” and Vietnam’s “Thang Long Aspiration.”

Of those, I’ve seen only the Peruvian entry, which won a special mention in Un Certain Regard at Cannes last year and — well, to level with you, I can’t remember a thing about it, though I think it was amiable enough. If you have a better memory, or just better information, on any of the films in the running, do share your thoughts in the comments.

The current list of submissions:

Albania
“The Forgiveness of Blood”

Austria
“Breathing”

Belgium
“Bullhead”

Bosnia and Herzegovina
“Belvedere”

Brazil
“Elite Squad 2″

Bulgaria
“Tilt”

Canada
“Monsieur Lazhar”

Colombia
“The Colors of the Mountain”

Finland
“Le Havre”

France
“Declaration of War”

Germany
“Pina”

Greece
“Attenberg”

Hong Kong
“A Simple Life”

Hungary
“The Turin Horse”

Iceland
“Volcano”

Iran
“A Separation”

Ireland
“As If I Am Not There”

Israel
“Footnote”

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 Korea
“The Front Line”

Sweden
“Beyond”

Taiwan
“Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale”

Venezuela
“The Rumble of the Stones”

Vietnam
“Thang Long Aspiration”

Welcome back. Today marks the beginning of the sixth year of Tech Support here at In Contention. I am delighted about the new collaboration with HitFix, which will doubtless result in even more comprehensive awards coverage.

Over the next 10 weeks, we will analyze each of the “technical” category races in this space: Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Makeup, Original Score, Original Song, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Visual Effects. The ways in which the artists behind these crafts can improve a film are innumerable. While excellent crafts artistry certainly can wow the audience, it can, more importantly, bring us into a world being crafted by the director, writers and stars, building mood, character and period, among other things.

Despite all the ways in which the crafts artists improve a film, and are an indispensable part of making one, they are almost always ignored by the press. Indeed, there are gripes almost every year that including these categories in the ceremony takes too long and it would be better if they were taken out of the show. While it is true that people do tend to see films for the story, direction and acting, there nonetheless seems a profound unfairness in this respect given the importance of crafts artistry to filmmaking, not to mention the fact that that first, key draw — story — is told via every element of the process.

Here at Tech Support, we try to correct that, shedding light on the particular disciplines that are awarded by the Academy every year. For the next 10 weeks, each category will be profiled separately. I will explain what it rewards, how the work affects a film and how the corresponding branch of the Academy tends to vote. Then, I will take a look at what I consider to be the year”s biggest contenders.

After that, it”s our tradition to have interviews with many of the contenders on the major films, before delving into a final analysis of the contenders come January.

Many of those contenders have already passed before us and been released in theaters. Early-year releases becoming nominees tends to be more commonplace in the crafts categories than in the major fields, largely because the summer blockbuster season is a playground for these disciplines. For instance, at this point last year, eight of the 10 winners of the “tech” categories had already been released.

While I don”t expect that to be the case this year, I am confident we have already seen many of the nominees in these fields: I fully expect films such as “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” “The Tree of Life” and, most likely of all, “The Help,” to show up in at least some categories. Films such as “Jane Eyre,” “Rango,” “Pirates and Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” “Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon,” “Super 8,” “Captain America: The First Avenger” and even “Green Lantern” (in Best Makeup) could also follow suit.

Given that crafts work tends to be most noticeable when it is showy, it is unsurprising that many fantasy features and especially period pieces tend to be awarded across the board in these categories, and most of the films I just mentioned fall into that category. Being a well-reviewed Best Picture contender certainly helps but is hardly determinative, especially in categories such as Best Makeup and Best Costume Design, where a blind eye is often turned to poor filmmaking if the craft element is nevertheless quality.

The Venice and Toronto film festivals shed light on some potential Best Picture contenders, though not as many as is often the case. In any event, many of these contenders, such as “The Descendants” and “The Ides of March,” are, for reasons I will explain in weeks to come, not films I expect to show up in a plethora of categories. I similarly expect “Drive” and “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” to be contenders in only one or two tech categories.

Titles such as “The Artist,” and even “A Dangerous Method” could be the sort, however, that have more across-the-board appeal in the crafts categories. I expect the former to do quite well and while I doubt the latter would be a tech category sweeper, it could end up in contention in multiple places.

And then there are the completely unknown commodities that could flop but could also garner up to a half-dozen crafts category nominations – some prospective Best Picture contenders such as “War Horse, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” and “J. Edgar” could be major players in many a crafts category. Other titles such as “Hugo,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn” will likely be more commercial efforts, but that”s not to rule out their potential in many tech categories.

As I go through my analysis in weeks to come, more and more titles will reveal themselves, first to the critics and then to the public. This will make forecasting easier but before that happens, considerable guesswork is involved. And once precursor season starts, momentum becomes a major factor in many categories. As I will explain as we go forward, some crafts branches are more amenable to sways in the overall awards market than others.

These variables make forecasting these categories a tricky business. I have no doubts the films I haven”t mentioned in this column will become nominees, and I may also miss eventual nominees as I go through the individual categories. Nonetheless, the process is a fun one. And from the perspective of the men and women who will find themselves nominees in these categories in the new year, the process is undoubtedly exciting and rewarding.

I”m glad to be back and look forward to going through these fields over the next 10 weeks. So with those musings out of the way, next week we”ll begin our analysis of the crafts categories. First on the docket: Best Visual Effects!

I find myself thinking about Werner Herzog’s death row documentary “Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, a Tale of Life” a lot lately. You’ll recall it was my favorite film out of this year’s Telluride Film Festival, and striking, it was, for the uncharacteristic Herzog it brought with it. Here was a film ultimately about the beauty of life, and for a man who has made a career of dark depictions that have at times approached near-nihilism, it was a bit unexpected for that.

“Whatever your position on capital punishment, the film is necessary, plain and simple,” I wrote from the fest. “[The film is] crucial viewing for anyone who thinks he or she has an opinion on the matter. It simply isn”t right to have that opinion safely, from a distance. The stakes are too high.”

I was reminded of the film once again when I stumbled across Christopher Hitchens’s recent dissection of America’s insistence on clinging to the death penalty over at Lapham’s Quarterly. It’s a subject the author and journalist has touched upon frequently in his time, particularly around the hanging of Saddam Hussein in December of 2006.

“To be in the company of Iran and China and Sudan as a leader among states conducting execution-and to have pioneered the medicalized or euthanized form of it that is now added to the panoply of gassing, hanging, shooting, and electrocution and known as ‘lethal injection’-is to have invited the question why,” he writes, before getting around to his thesis, and a very Chris Hitchens thesis at that: “The reason why the United States is alone among comparable countries in its commitment to doing this is that it is the most religious of those countries.”

The capital punishment debate is particularly punctuated this year. Last month, Damien Echols entered an Alford plea along with the rest of the West Memphis Three (convicted on dubious evidence for the 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas), finally taking him off of death row. Joe Berliner and Bruce Sinofsky’s “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory,” part of a 15-year on-going documentary analysis of the case, played the Toronto Film Festival last week.

Last night, Troy Davis was finally executed in Georgia after being found guilty of the August 19, 1991 murder of a police officer in Savannah. He maintained his innocence until the end and drew support from the public, celebrities and human rights groups.

Davis’s ability to appeal his conviction after key witnesses changed or recanted testimony that put him on death row was limited in part due to Bill Clinton’s post-Oklahoma City bombing Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, and particular piece of legislation is just one of number of things Hitchens takes aim at in his piece.

Read the rest at Lapham’s Quarterly. “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory” moves on to the New York Film Festival next month, while “Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, a Tale of Life” is set for release by Sundance Selects on November 11 and could potentially figure into this year’s Best Documentary Feature race.

Below is Herzog — who also has a death row series coming to the Investigation Discovery channel — giving his ultimate reasoning for not believing in capital punishment. It’s is his “I don’t have an argument, I have a story” take, which he also conveyed to me when we spoke in Telluride. He’ll be the keynote speaker at LA’s Film Independent Forum next month.

Maggie Lange over at Thompson on Hollywood alerts us to some late night shenanigans worth passing along today. It seems Ryan Gosling stopped by “Conan” Tuesday night to talk up his latest film, “Drive,” and he came bearing gifts — namely, a signature scorpion jacket similar to the one he wears in the film.

At this rate, with so much attention being placed on that one element of the wardrobe, I’m wondering if a Costume Designers Guild nod for contemporary design be might be in the cards later in the season. “I always wanted to make a character that people would go out for on Halloween,” Gosling tells O’Brien in the following clip. “So I’m really crossing my fingers on this one.”

Could the “Drive” jacket become the new black for all the cool kids who sported “Vote for Pedro” shirts and Borat garb for Halloween over the last few years? Just make sure you complete the get-up by sporting some sweet driving gloves and don’t be afraid to toss a little fake blood on the white satin.

Click on through to see the whole interview. It was actually a great segment. Gosling was very charming, recounting the oft-told horror story of his first meeting with director Nicolas Winding Refn (fit with REO Speedwagon soundtrack) and a humorous theory on what goes on at Disneyland when the park shuts down at night. And I love that he calls the Refn’s film “a violent John Hughes movie.”

I’m finally going to catch Lars Von Trier’s “Melancholia” this afternoon, and I can’t wait. I’ve been a huge fan of the director’s recent work, particularly “Dogville” and “Antichrist,” the former coming in rather high on my personal list of the 10 best films of the last decade. But I’ve been bracing myself for an old story to rear its ugly head again, namely Von Trier’s controversial Nazi comments made at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Von Trier is partly to blame for their resurgence, as he recently retracted the apology he gave after the fest declared him persona non grata, but lost in all of this obsession on provocative statements made during a press conference is the work itself, and linked in today’s round-up is Manohla Dargis’s voice of reason on the matter. Who knows how far “Melancholia” — which is receiving some of the most favorable reviews Von Trier has seen in his career — might have gone had the controversy not overshadowed the work? But at least the Cannes jury saw fit to take its own council and give the film an award (for Kirsten Dunst’s performance), and at least there are people like Dargis arguing strongly in favor of considering the art rather than the artist.

Manohla Dargis on taking filmmakers like Roman Polanski and Lars Von Trier at their work, not their words or actions. [New York Times]

Charting Best Picture predictions, Brad Brevet has “Moneyball” and “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” on the move. [Rope of Silicon]

There’s Albert Brooks again, this time talking “Drive” with Susan Wloszczyna from the Toronto Film Festival. [USA Today]

Speaking of which, costume designer Erin Benach answers all your questions about the shiny satin jacket Ryan Gosling wears in the film. [Grantland]

Anne Thompson offers up a big, fat, massive Toronto fest wrap-up for anyone looking for a thorough recap. [Thompson on Hollywood]

Steve Martin humbly offers some Oscar hosting advice for his “Bowfinger” co-star Eddie Murphy. [SteveMartin.com]

The Weinstein Company picks up Sean Penn-starrer “This Must Be the Place.” [Deadline]

And they’re off! Movieline launches it’s annual Oscar Index. [Movieline]

Steven Zeitchik on the well-covered “will there be minority representation at the Oscars” talking point. [24 Frames]

Russia’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film race is met with considerable controversy. [The Guardian]

Last week, Sony Pictures shrewdly amped up the pre-release conversation around David Fincher’s re-adaptation of Steig Larsson’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by revealing a six-minute extended trailer in front of a press screening of Rod Lurie’s “Straw Dogs.” Fincher was there. Trent Reznor was there. Everyone felt stoked to be treated with the footage. And, on cue, everyone wrote about it.

Well, tonight, the studio dropped what I imagine is a whittled-down version of that assemblage, though it still clocks in at nearly four minutes long, laying out the basic establishing beats of the relationship between Daniel Craig’s Mikael Blomkvist character and Lisbeth Salander, played by Rooney Mara. And I have to be honest. I kind of nodded off watching it. The teaser trailer that hit back during the summer, with Reznor and Karen O’s cover of “Immigrant Song?” I was totally on board for that. Here they’re slowing things down and building a different identity for the film and, well, if this is representative of what got everyone jazzed last week, I’m just not feeling that level of excitement. But then, Mr. Fincher isn’t sitting two rows in front of me.

Having said all that, I think the takeaway here is the light shed on Mara’s performance. I’ve been down on the film’s Oscar potential all year, but I’m coming around to it here and there. I get the sense that it represents the Fincher of old (my favorite Fincher, I should add), and films like “Se7en” and “Fight Club” certainly weren’t Academy fodder. But they did find room in the crafts fields, and below the line, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” looks like a dazzler, with some gorgeous cinematography from 2010 nominee Jeff Cronenweth. And Mara looks to give a dynamite performance. (Most of that reaction is in keeping with what HitFix’s Chris Eggertsen wrote when he saw the sizzle reel last week.)

I never saw the original films, so I don’t know how much of a riff on Noomi Rapace this might be. I never read the books, either. I want to go in fresh here. But even if this is an awkwardly paced piece of marketing for the film, it is still my #1 most anticipated (feel bad) movie of Christmas. So bring it on.

Also worth noting, by the way, is the presence of Christopher Plummer, who could be particularly ubiquitous this season if “Barrymore” is picked up. He’s already popped up in Mike Mills’s “Beginners,” and really, all of his work this year seems to be fuel for that supporting actor campaign’s fire. Unless, of course, his performance here is considerable enough to become “the one.”

What are your thoughts on the trailer? Cut loose in the comments section below.