It’s interesting watching things shake out so relatively late in the season. First Sony Classics decided that, rather than push “Foxcatcher” out there at the end of the season, it would wait and allow further considerations time to breathe in the editing room. Now that company’s parent, Sony Pictures, has shuffled George Clooney’s “The Monuments Men,” which has been test screening and had a scoring session booked in London yesterday, out of what is already a crazily crowded year.

The move to an unspecified date in 2014 (though Clooney indicates it will be February) is interesting because there have been no indications that the film is in any sort of trouble. The official line on it at the moment is that it needs more time for visual effects elements (“we just didn’t have enough time,” Clooney said), but it’s also a conscious decision on Clooney and Sony’s part to steer clear of what promises to be a bloodbath in numerous categories, to say nothing of the box office. Now Sony can focus down even more on it’s two other awards hopefuls: “American Hustle” and “Captain Phillips.”

But Clooney himself remains in the Best Picture Oscar race. He and partner Grant Heslov are the producers of John Wells’ “August: Osage County,” distributed by The Weinstein Company.

Meanwhile, Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” — which was never set for 2014 despite jump-the-gun reports that embellished what we first told you a month ago — is…doing what we told you it would likely do a month ago: setting its sights on a Christmas release. So if you were fretting that it would be bumped, too, well, don’t do that.

This season never fails to surprise. It should all make for a bumpy ride.