Completing the roll-out of performance announcements for the upcoming 87th Academy Awards, it has been revealed that The Lonely Island (Akiva Schaffer, Andy Samberg, and Jorma Taccone) will join Canadian indie rock group Tegan and Sara to perform the Oscar-nominated song “Everything is Awesome” from “The LEGO Movie” on the show.

Songwriter Shawn Patterson was the only credited nominee on the track, by the way, so Samberg didn't get a chance to join the exclusive “Saturday Night Live” cast members-turned-Oscar nominees. (Check out the gallery before for that who's who.) But he'll bring some of that flavor to the show right in the thick of “SNL's” 40th anniversary celebration.

Ya'll get ready!! @TheAcademy invited us to perform on the #Oscars w/ @teganandsara! #EverythingIsAwesome #ClassyGuyz pic.twitter.com/wJ2iEz12H0

– The Lonely Island (@thelonelyisland) February 6, 2015

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Other performances confirmed for the show are Adam Levine (“Lost Stars” from “Begin Again”), John Legend and Common (“Glory” from “Selma”), Rita Ora (“Grateful” from “Beyond the Lights”) and Tim McGraw (“I'm Not Gonna Miss You” from “Glen Campbell…I'll Be Me”).

Also announced today were a string of presenters for the show, including Marion Cotillard, Benedict Cumberbatch, Meryl Streep, Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon.

Oh, and yesterday the Academy revealed that Jack Black would be on hand for…something. No details. I thought maybe he'd be on hand to perform “Everything is Awesome” a la Robin Williams/”Blame Canada,” but no dice. Maybe he's part of the musical number being put together for host Neil Patrick Harris by the “Let It Go” songwriters?

The 87th annual Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, Feb. 22.

Let's jump back in time to a little over 16 years ago. It's the summer of 1998 and if you hit a gay bar or club in the continental United States, you could not miss Stars on 54's dance remake of Gordon Lightfoot's “If You Could Read My Mind.” It was simply everywhere. The track was the promotional single for “54,” a movie that promised a sexy look at the infamous New York City nightclub Studio 54 but couldn't ultimately live up to the marketing hype surrounding its release.

The Miramax production was generating a ton of publicity because of its subject matter (one of the most legendary clubs of all-time), young up-and-coming stars such as Ryan Phillippe and Salma Hayek, the participation of Neve Campbell, who was coming off four straight hits (the first two “Screams,” “The Craft” and “Wild Things”). Most buzzworthy of all, it was the first dramatic role for former “Saturday Night Live” star Mike Myers, whose last film just happened to be the iconic “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.” When the studio moved the release date from July to a “dump” date of August 28, many in the industry and the media became suspicious that something had gone terribly wrong.

“54” was the directorial debut of Mark Christopher, an openly gay filmmaker who had made two acclaimed short films including “Alkali, Iowa,” which won the Teddy at the 1996 Berlin International Film Festival. Christopher had spent years researching “54” and felt he had fashioned a film that reflected the notorious nature of the club and the elite Manhattan scene that fueled it. Unfortunately, the studio discovered that Long Island test screening audiences weren't ready for some of the film's many gay moments (somewhat ridiculous since Paramount's “In & Out” was a smash hit a year earlier) and took control of the production and the film's final edit, an example of the kind of tinkering that led to Harvey Weinstein's “Harvey Scissorhands” moniker.

Watching “54” in a local LA theater, I remember being profoundly disappointed. The film had a blown-out look that made the club scenes appear like they were shot on a sound stage and therefore felt incredibly fake. There was very little gay content, which seemed strange considering the director, subject matter and distributor; while Studio 54 was a mixed club, it had a large gay clientele, while Miramax was after all the studio that released the gay-friendly “Muriel's Wedding,” “The House of Yes,” “Chasing Amy” and edgy fare such as Larry Clark's “Kids” and “Trainspotting.” The storyline also made very little narrative sense and the whole endeavor felt like a Hollywood executive imagining what Studio 54 was like and dumbing it down for the masses.

Why had Christopher put on a brave face for the press after he was forced to do reshoots? Why had he even gone through with any of the changes at all? (Of his thinking at the time, Christopher now says “I was a tad dazed.”)

Critics eviscerated the studio's cut, which ended up with a 13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and they barely praised Myers' performance as the club's real life owner Steve Rubell. At the box office, the results were grimmer with the $13 million movie taking in just $16 million domestically. In the long run, of course, Miramax no doubt broke even on “54.” It hit the home entertainment market just as DVD sales and rentals were booming, but it was also a something of a sore point for the actors involved and for Miramax's overall legacy. Even more so because of the pre-release hype.  

Now, in 2015, Mark Christopher and the cast of “54” are about to experience some long-awaited redemption. Miramax is no longer owned by the Weinsteins or the Walt Disney Company and after some prodding from one of the film's original producers, Jonathan King, the company's current management agreed to fund a restoration of Christopher's original directors cut. Thirty minutes of reshoots were removed and 40 minutes of original footage were added back. For a film that runs one hour and 46 minutes, that's incredibly significant.

Watching the new version with some initial skepticism, I can tell you Christopher wasn't exaggerating when he voiced his displeasure with the changes over the years. It really is — for the most part — a different movie.  More importantly, it's a good movie, with fine performances from Phillippe as a young man who has no problems using his bisexuality to his advantage, and Breckin Meyer, whose character was never a villain, but a husband trying to support his wife's dreams of being a pop star. The club scenes feel much, much more like a real dance club thanks to the editing, the properly color timed footage and a sound mix that actually brings added depth to the picture. There is much less Campbell (she was never intended to be a major character) and the film's original tone proves Myers' performance was much more subtle than it appeared in the studio cut (more on that later).  Does the ending still have some problems? Absolutely, but overall it's a much better movie.

This new director's cut of “54” is so different that it was chosen to screen at the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival Tuesday, Feb. 10. Audiences in the U.S. will eventually be able to catch it on DVD and digitally later this year. Still, watching this restored version only prompted more questions, which Christopher was finally and happily willing to answer when we jumped on the phone earlier this week.

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HitFix: I saw it “54” in theaters and I remember catching it on cable probably a couple years later and I remember it vividly for a number of reasons. However, I wasn't able to watch the original cut again before I watched your restored version. For someone who may be in my position, what would be the first thing you think they would notice is different?

Mark Christopher: Well, that it is the original story. That's very simply the story of the coat check girl (Hayek), the busboy (Meyer) and the bartender (Phillippe) and their love triangle. That had been completely cut out of the studio cut and then it was replaced with the reshoots with a Neve Campbell/Ryan Phillippe love story. So in the studio cut, it sort of veers off suddenly in that direction, but when you see the director's cut, it is a consistent movie. It tells one story, which is the original one that I mentioned.

Tell me if I'm wrong, but I remember the original cut being very studio-esque. It looked like a Hollywood movie studio making a movie about 54. When I saw your cut it came across, and this is meant as a huge compliment, as much more of an indie film, especially in the first hour or so and in how you were depicting what was going on inside the club. Did you feel like a lot of that was removed in the studio cut?

Yes, and thank you. The three major changes in the studio cut was that the story was cut out, which is a huge one. That the gay material was cut out — most of it — and then also [when it] was transferred they pumped all this light into it so it became this big, bright television-looking thing. The DP and I had tried very hard to take you into the '70s and into this dark, flashy nightclub. One of the greatest things about doing the director's cut for me and doing the restoration was to restore it back to its dark beauty, do you know what I'm saying? It's very hard to shoot darkness on negative film. It's much easier now on video, but on negative it's very hard to shoot and I'm really happy with how that came out and we were able to restore that. You have darkness literally when you look at it and it's also very much in line with the story of these flawed characters.* And my lead being sort of an opportunistic bisexual [was] far ahead of its time in '98 for a big studio movie, but right up the alley of HBO and Showtime these days.

*For a sample of the restored look check out this clip on the film's Berlin Film Festival page.

Maybe being a gay guy who is from New York and spent most of my time working in the entertainment industry in LA, I wouldn't have thought that was that ahead of its time, especially for a Miramax movie. It felt like dance music was jumping, “Will & Grace” would debut the following month and all these sort of gay-themed stories were in the media. Clearly the studio knew what you were shooting. They knew what the movie was going to be. When did you realize that what you created was not going to be acceptable for release?

So here's what happened. We had a small budget for such a big movie. It was $8 million, right? Then my cast started getting huge [i.e., more famous] when we were shooting and then the studio saw the dailies and loved them. So, already they started planning this as a bigger movie than it was ever meant to be. I think they actually loved my first cut, but then they tested it out in Long Island at malls. What you get are people like you that loved it and would score it 100, but all of these other people from the suburbs in 1998 who really gave incredibly homophobic feedback. And I think that was scary to the studio.

Had the budget increased past $8 million or was it just based on their projections that they could make a lot of money off it?

Well, the reshoots cost another $5 million, so that's the irony of the whole thing. So it ended up being $13 million once it was reshot because again, 40 minutes of the movie was cut out. This is very important, too. It's not just the director's cut, it is a different movie.

It is. It felt very different.

Forty minutes of the movie was cut out. You were wondering what I might tell an audience, it's that. That it's not just a director's cut; it is really a different movie. So after they cut those 40 minutes out then we reshot 30 minutes, which was this new love story that was put in there* — they're very different movies. In fact, my producer Dolly Hall liked to say that the movie that we made originally was called “54” and that the reshot version was called “55.” So that's how we refer to that.

*Note: In a follow-up conversation, Christopher reveals that he had no hand in writing the new storyline. “Ryan, Breckin, Neve and I met one day and polished up the pages that we were given as much as they'd let us, but some polishing was rejected.”

You did direct the reshoot, however. What were your feelings at the time? Were you feeling like “this is my break I've got to do what I've got to do?”

Well, I was under contract.

So you felt like you didn't have a choice?

All of us, yeah. And, plus, I wanted to finish the job. There are a lot of fans of that movie of “54” and I don't want to disrespect them. One of the reasons I think I'm in this position right now is because that movie stayed alive, because it has a lot of fans, even if it wasn't my original vision and what a lot of critics and gay men and other people want it to be.

I did not realize that that new voice over at the beginning is a recent recording of Ryan. Has he had a chance to see the new cut of the film? Has anyone else who was in the film been able to see it and do you have any feedback from them? 

Well, so here's the timing of the whole thing. We just got the screener link. You just got it yesterday, right?

Right. Yeah.

So you're one of the first people to get the new link. I just sent it to Neve today. I'll send it to Ryan and Breckin and Salma right away. So they haven't even seen it yet. But Ryan had seen the cut even when it was long and chunky and, obviously, he loved it. It's an entirely different performance and character, etc. Ryan had seen that. I don't know if Salma saw that way back when. And I reckon that Breckin saw it way back when. So I'm very excited for them to see it and they're really excited that it's coming out, all of them. We've been in touch quite a bit, it's just that we just got the link done.

It also felt like Mike Myers' work feels like a much different performance than what I remember in the original film. Is that correct?

I love that. You know why? It's exactly the same performance almost down to the very last frame except it's a different movie. And so since it's a different movie, you think it's a different performance. I think there's maybe five seconds more in this cut than there is in the studio cut of Mike.

So there's not less cut out or there's not new scenes of him put in?

I'm going to have to talk to Mike because here's the funny thing, and I'm not being disingenuous, I honestly don't remember if the studio cut that much [of his performance] and [the movie] kept getting cut so much that I'd lose track of exactly what it was. I don't know what's on Netflix. I saw it maybe 10 years ago or so. Now, having been through the restoration, I'm much more familiar with what this cut is, but I do know that they didn't really cut Mike's performance. I know what it is. We reshot the scene where he comes back from jail. So that's [not in the director's cut]. By having that sort of sentimental ending of Mike's performance gone, what you're left with is him saying, where Shane runs up at the end and says, “Steve, you got to get out of here. Ain't you going to get out of here?” And Stevie says, “Where would I go?” And that's what you're left with.  And that's very important. Like that's a powerful moment as opposed to coming back for some sentimental party in 1982 or whatever the studio cut was.

It's remarkable that one scene can leave such a bad impression on a performance. I remember seeing the movie and thinking that Myers' performance was sort of over the top and in this cut it's much subtler than I remember.

I'll say one more thing, as I'm thinking about it because this is why you would have that impression also. The ending of the [studio cut] also had this big explosive moment of throwing Mike out of the club and him kicking and screaming. It was almost comedic and I cut all that down in this cut to him just being pulled out of the club and put in the car. So you would have been left with a much bigger what you think was “over-the-top” performance that has been trimmed down to something more real. And that's one of my goals in the movie is to take you into 1979 and into that club and pare way the sort of bigger things that were happening in that studio cut.

I had a thought that I don't remember thinking the first time, which is that Myers' character is doing that as a show for the press. When he's getting kicked out he really isn't like that upset about it because you've given that “where would he go” moment. I also thought the scenes where he's sort of flirting with the guys, it felt more real than some dirty guy at the club. Maybe it's just time, but it's a unique perspective.

Well, it could be time, but I'll tell you I think it's also Breckin's character and story are completely different. Not only was the film so recut and Ryan's performance completely reshaped and Neve's, but Breckin's was as well. As you might have noticed, Breckin is sort of the heart of this movie. If Shane or Ryan is the vision and the soul of the movie then Breckin's really the heart. The studio cut turned that all around and kind of made him this sort of criminal and we were aghast. He's going to be thrilled that this is back and since he's a full-fledged complex character, then Mike isn't [playing] some predatory weirdo, do you know what I'm saying? I think that has an effect. The same things with Ryan. Ryan's character is much more complex and layered.

Absolutely. One of the other things that popped while I was watching it was, and this could be completely wrong, are there more songs of the era in this cut than were in the original?

Such a good question because that was really hard. No, I tried really hard to buy this one song by Thelma Houston called “Saturday Night, Sunday Morning,” but we had such a tiny budget to do the restoration that to buy one new song would have basically cost us a third of the entire budget. What you have is every single song that's in the original is in the movie. Although there were a couple of them that would have been so squished down as background music that I've pulled them up so you can actually hear them. I don't know if you're a fan of “Saturday Night Fever,” but I'm a huge fan and “Saturday Night Fever” is sort of a musical without being a musical. The songs kind of inform the characters and inform the story without [a character] breaking into song or being too on the nose. I've worked very carefully with where those songs go and sort of who they relate to and how they relate to the story.

Well, you have a great example here for a future sound mixing class because I think that compared to the studio mix it helped shape the club scenes tremendously. For example, Ryan's character is entering 54 for the first time, the experience of it felt, especially in the first hour, more like a club and the music is a big part of it. 

That's part of it and it's also just the length of the music and letting these themes really play out and what's happening visually. Also, I must say we did the original mix at Skywalker and they were great, of course. We did this mix at Deluxe here in Hollywood and had the best time. I think it's the best time I've had since I actually shot that movie in the entertainment industry. We had to do it really fast, too, man. We did it in five days, I think, or four days. And when we were done it was very late at night and we put on that loud song “If You Could Read My Mind” and we were like dancing on the ping-pong table. It was crazy. It was amazing. It's also now Dolby 7.1, so that gives it a richer sound. I mean once you see this in a theater you'll really feel it. That was one of the important things about the movie for me, was to take you inside that nightclub, not just visually in that sort of dark, flashing way, but also with the sound all around you. How we experience it as we walk through the lobby and then toward the dance floor and what it would sound like on the dance floor as opposed to being up in the balcony, etc.

I was going to ask about “If You Could Read My Mind.” One of the things that I remember is that you could not go to any gay club without hearing the Ultra Naté and Amber version. It was everywhere. And it's funny, I can't believe that song only went to number three on the dance charts, because I swear I heard it for six straight months. What were your feelings about all that at the time? Was it hard not to just get sucked into the excitement of it all? Did you feel like it was becoming something you hadn't hoped it would be? 

You know, I've got to tell you I'm really thrilled with this soundtrack in the studio cut. And I think, to be very honest, [it's the one thing they] just completely left me alone with and I'm one of the producers on the CD along with Sue Jacobs and Coati Mundi, who are fantastic music supervisors. So the three of us produced all those songs and created that double CD set. The blue one is better than the orange one, I don't know how you feel. [Laughs.] So we're producers on that. I can't remember who was our main producer on “If You Can Read My Mind” but that was brought to me actually by the studio or by Sue, [wondering], “Would I be interested in making it with these singers?” I remember the Viola Wills remake in 1980 and I said, “Yes, absolutely.” Not to diss Viola Wills, but I love our remake. And it's funny, it was everywhere. In fact after the film came out I decided I definitely needed a break and so I flew to Barcelona with some friends and I have to tell you, we were thousands and thousands of miles away and that song was playing constantly in every club we walked into. You could not escape it. It was really funny.  But I love that song and I love that soundtrack. Hopefully it would be great if Miramax re-releases it. I don't know how you do it on  iTunes or whatever, now…

I'm sure someone in the music business will jump on any opportunity for uncatalogued releases to make money. I don't mean to dwell on it, but what were your thought at the time when all this was going on? You talk about how you were under contract and you needed to do this. Was there any regret? Was there “I'm making the best case out of a tough situation” or “I knew what I was getting into with Harvey Weinstein?”

Well, I was raised on a farm and you always finish the job you begin no matter what happens, even if a tornado goes through. That's sort of my work ethic. It was painful, but what are you going to do? I mean what is painful is for the critics to blame you. That's painful. But what are you going to do?

Well, let's talk about how this restoration came about then.

Oh, it was a dream come true. I have to give super props to Jonathan King, my producer, who is just the most tenacious, loyal person in the world. He's the head of production at Participant Media now, but he has stuck by this movie for years trying to get it out there. Every time the library would change hands, [he would try]. First it was with Weinstein and then it was with Disney and now it's with the new owners. At every opportunity Jonathan would be in there trying to convince them. And then finally Zanne Devine at the new Miramax said “yes.” They're my heroes. It's amazing.

How did you reference the original cut? Had you kept any sort of notes on what the original cut was or did you guys literally have to try to put it back together from memory?

What existed was this thing we call a bootleg, which was a cobbled together, VHS, grungy-looking thing that had no time code and no EDL, which is an edit division list. Basically we had to find the dailies and then put those dailies over the 40 minutes of the missing movie. My editor, David Kittredge, had to do that very painstakingly. Now finding the dailies was difficult because it's a 17-year-old movie and the library has changed hands three times. So, my post production supervisor, Nancy Valley, who we've nicknamed “The Goddess,” at one point was actually crawling [to find it]. Nancy found the VHS dailies marked to be destroyed because there's no reason to keep VHS dailies. They're old. They degrade. If she had been there a day later there would have been no director's cut.

Oh wow. That's lucky.

So finding those made the whole thing possible because from then you could slide them into place, you could find the dailies, you could find the time code, you can make the movie.

You've got the Berlin premiere and I know it's coming out on digitally, but are there any other plans to screen it publicly? Is there any chance it will be at the New Beverly Cinema or at Cinefamily in LA? 

Well, we have the Latin American premiere in Guadalajara in March, we have the UK premiere at the BFI at the end of March. Then we'll have a big LA screening and a San Francisco screening. It's going to have a big festival life, which is great.

Last but not least, I know it must have been tough because of the critical reaction at the time and it must have felt out of your control, but did you feel like that experience hurt your career or did you feel like it helped in any way? 

Well, so I sort of went back to my indie roots after that because that movie sort of pulled me out of the indie world and I went back to my indie roots. I did a thing for IFC inDigEnt. I went back to short films, which is my first love, and also writing pilots for television. I've done several of those, which is another love of mine. I think I now feel like I've grown up and I would love to do another studio movie, but at the time I didn't feel like it.

[Check out images from “54” in the photo gallery below]

“54: The Director's Cut” will be available digitally sometime this year.

[Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly noted the Berlin premiere date as Feb. 7.  Additionally, Miramax has clarified they only plan on releasing a digital version at this time.]

There is a strange, altogether idiotic subset of people who actually believe Eddie Murphy lost the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for “Dreamgirls” because the raunchy, critically reviled “Norbit” hit theaters right in the thick of Academy voting. Nevermind that eventual Oscar winner Alan Arkin won the BAFTA prize for his “Little Miss Sunshine” performance, indicating industry support at the right time (surprisingly few of us picked him to win the Academy Award), or that “Dreamgirls” was obviously not held in the expected esteem by AMPAS, witnessed by a lack of major category presence in fields like Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing. They couldn't understand Murphy's apparent fall from grace, and so they falsely contextualized it and a nonsensical myth was born.

This year, “The Theory of Everything” star Eddie Redmayne is bearing the brunt of this stupidity. It has even spilled onto the pages of The Washington Post, of all places, where Stephanie Merry penned a piece headlined “Eddie Redmayne is ridiculous in 'Jupiter Ascending.' Can he still win an Oscar?” I don't know if that was Merry's headline or an editor's, but whoever wrote it, I hope they didn't do it with a straight face. Merry then goes on to lay out the same tired argument that a critically-panned, over-the-top film opening just as ballots are arriving could spell doom for the presumed Oscar frontrunner.

Yes, Redmayne is pretty bad in “Jupiter Ascending.” Some strange choices were made, to say the least. But there should be an understanding that a film set is a place where wild risks are often taken. In the end, there's a level of trust in how one's work will be represented in the final mixture. I'm not offering excuses; it's a bad, empty performance. Nevertheless, there are a million ways to get to that place and not all of it rests on the actor's shoulders. But who's looking for nuance when it's so much fun to take broad swipes at the work and ask thoughtless questions?

“So what will the Academy do with this information,” Merry ponders. “Is 'Jupiter Ascending' doomed to be Redmayne”s 'Norbit?' … It depends: Do the voters think of themselves as jurors – the courtroom ideal, anyway – agreeing only to take into account the pertinent data presented by the nominated performance?” Julianne Moore is also perceived as on thin ice here because of the doozy that is “The Seventh Son.”

Merry goes on to make the case, finally, that no, the Academy isn't necessarily so petty as this. And she lays out examples of past Razzie winners that went on to win Oscars, as if the idea that people contain multitudes is an epiphany. But then she closes with a facile Harvey Weinstein joke and it becomes all too apparent that this is just media theater, and the damage is already done by so breathlessly asking the question in the first place.

Over at The Daily Beast, Kevin Fallon jumped into the muck as well. “As Eddie Murphy taught us, one bad movie can ruin an actor”s shot at Oscar,” he writes. No, that's not what Eddie Murphy taught us, Kevin. See above.

What's worse about Fallon's piece is a staggering misattribution of a quote that sort of makes my point about how these myths takes hold. “Every time I pass that billboard [for 'Norbit'], it makes me sick,” an Oscar consultant says in a Los Angeles Times piece from 2007. Fallon, however, misreports it as an Oscar voter's quote. So there's a nice window into what I'm talking about, folks. A consultant – noted as not part of a rival campaign, but whatever – offers up a saucy line and it takes hold. Then eight years later, someone looking for a juicy angle chalks that opinion up as an Academy one. In fact, the only Academy member actually quoted in the Times piece states outright that his ballot was not at all impacted by the presence of “Norbit.” The whole thing was a media fabrication then and continues to be to this day.

This seems to happen every year. An Oscar-contending actor or actress has a dubious broad comedy or genre movie out around the time of final voting and people wonder aloud, “Could this be their 'Norbit?'” Fallon, for his part, makes the point that Natalie Portman's “Black Swan” run was unblemished by the release of “No Strings Attached” in the final analysis. But again, the damage of a headline like “The Oscar Curse of the 'Norbit' Effect: Are Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne at Risk?” is done.

The worst part of all of this is, if Redmayne does manage to lose the Oscar, people will point to “Jupiter Ascending” and these ridiculous pieces and say, “See?” Which will be even more hilarious when Moore eventually steamrolls to her victory. They'll fail to realize that this is a very competitive Best Actor race, objectively the most competitive of all the year's acting races. They'll also fail to recognize that Bradley Cooper is coming on strong for his “American Sniper” work (not nominated at either the SAG Awards or the Golden Globes, where Redmayne won the two prizes that make him the frontrunner in many observers' eyes).

If you want something of substance to chew on, ponder whether Cooper, in a prestigious drama, is siphoning votes off of someone like Redmayne, Ralph Nader to the “Theory” star's Al Gore or John Kerry. That's a very real circumstance, potentially allowing for someone like “Birdman's” Michael Keaton to slide up the middle, not the idea that professionals (who can certainly empathize with their colleagues more than the media) can't distinguish between a quality Oscar-nominated performance and a performance in a risky genre movie that simply didn't work.

There is no “Oscar Curse of the 'Norbit' Effect.” Stop. Just…stop.

So the Grammy Awards are right around the corner. Sunday, in fact. And the annual crossover with the film world yielded the usual year-straddling assortment of last season's offerings and those currently on the circuit.

In the Best Song Written for Visual Media category in particular, “Everything is Awesome” (“The LEGO Movie”) and “I'm Not Gonna Miss You” (“Glen Campbell…I'll Be Me”) went on to land Oscar nominations as well. They were joined by 2013 Oscar players “Let It Go” (“Frozen”) and “The Moon Song” (“Her”). “I See Fire” from “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” was the only non-Oscar nominee of the bunch this time around.

On that point, over the years the Grammys have shown up for a number of great movie tracks that the film Academy's Music Branch passed on for whatever reason (sometimes due to stricter eligibility requirements, but generally reflecting a very different taste). I thought I'd go through the list and pull out a few choice examples.

Check them out in the story gallery below, and if we're missing anything you would definitely include, speak up in the comments!

Since establishing The Weinstein Company from the ashes of his Miramax brand in 2005, Harvey Weinstein has continued to use the awards season to the benefit of his film releases. It was bumpy going at first with failed attempts like “Bobby” and “The Great Debaters,” but with 2008's “The Reader,” things finally started to pick back up. Eight Best Picture nominations and two back-to-back wins later, he's out in front with another project right in his wheelhouse: “The Imitation Game.”

The Alan Turing biopic, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, landed eight Oscar nominations in January and has grossed $134 million worldwide. And it's adding theaters still, using the fuel of the circuit to stoke the fire at the box office. Meanwhile, Weinstein has turned up the heat on the campaign surrounding the film, calling for recognition of issues inherent in the material, as he's done with everything from “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Philomena” to “My Left Foot” and “The Thin Blue Line” in the past.

It's paying off for audience awareness, but will it pay off at the Academy Awards, too? He sure seems confident that it will. Read through the back and forth below for his thoughts on sticking up for films like “American Sniper” and “Selma,” observing the boom of an awards season cottage industry and a couple of Oscar predictions of his own.

“The Imitation Game” is now playing in theaters.

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HitFix: First off, congratulations on positioning this film as another hit. I remember reading the script back when it topped The Blacklist and the buzz around it. Your interest in the project started very early, correct?

Harvey Weinstein: Yes. One of the executives in my London office, Negeen Yazdi, was really passionate about it and lit all our fires, and mine, too. It was a great subject matter and it's devastating that you find a piece of history that quite honestly, until I started reading about it, I had no idea that this story even existed. I knew about Enigma, I just didn't know the details of Turing.

Is that something that lights your fire in general, educating audiences on history through films?

I think that for me that fascination with true life characters in movies probably started when I did “My Left Foot” with Daniel Day-Lewis and Jim Sheridan almost 25 years ago. I had no idea. I did not know the story of Christie Brown until I read it and was amazed at where you could take a true story. I always say that my fascinations in movies are these incredible true life stories, and then again they're also creative process stories. And then I love, like, Quentin's movies, so I get to do a variety of things and I like that.

You showed a lot of faith dropping $7 million on this at the European Film Market, considering there wasn't a complete film yet and, on these shores anyway, some unproven talent at the helm. Why is that?

I think first of all I loved [Morten Tyldum's last film] “Headhunters,” so that was faith. And then number two, I got to watch a few minutes of footage of Benedict and Keira and I just thought they had the right tone. I think you could read this script, as we had, and if you just didn't have an actor who skirted the line between being incredibly unsympathetic and sympathetic at the same time, the movie is a disaster. The great thing about Benedict is he can thread the needle and put that through the movie in ways that other actors can't. And I watched Keira's performance and I think it's one of her most exceptional, if not the most exceptional, how she's playing nobody's fool. I mean it was a truly modern woman dealing with the reality of a different time period. So it really was watching them that convinced me that, the scenes I saw, they could probably do the whole thing brilliantly and that Morten had it well under hand, which he did.

I've seen a couple of interviews lately where you've been sticking up for “American Sniper” and it seems like this year the issue of historical accuracy in films is really blowing up. Has it felt like it's jumped the shark for you at all, that there's too much discussion about historical accuracy in films?

Every once in a while I wish somebody would stick up for me, but it doesn't seem to be the case! They let me go unrewarded in this situation. Like, I don't hear, “Wow, the people from 'Selma' stood up for Harvey,” or the people from “American Sniper” say, “Wow, 'The Imitation Game' is pretty amazing, too.” So anyhow, my love of movies trumps all. My mom told me a long time ago, don't look for rewards when you say something nice, just do it because you like it. But I do think it's ironic sometimes. But nonetheless, look, I think “American Sniper” has taken a bunch of unfair shots and so has “Selma.” And I think so has “The Imitation Game.” Just do the research. It's just so sexy to just attack and I think that me going out there and saying, “Hey, it's sexy to attack,” hopefully Clint [Eastwood] will say the same thing about three other movies and Ava [DuVernay] will say something, too. And I mean, you talk about diversity, there's no question that you have to put “The Imitation Game” in that category, too.

Look, it's back and forth; it's how the pendulum works and what can we say? I mean it's just part of what we do. In the case of “The Imitation Game,” the criticism was based on the New York Review of Books article. And then when we did the research on that article, it was so unresearched. It was like, “Let's throw a bomb in the room,” and then you cannot believe the people who buy into it, like, respected columnists – people who are first class at what they do. Because it's in the New York Review of Books it's like, “Oh my God, it must be gospel.” Then we find out that the reporter didn't know about an interview that took place in 1930 where Alan Turing talks about his fascination with the Snow White syndrome, which was the suicide, the apple, the razor, the whole thing. Wow. Talk about leaving – I used to have guys who were in high school who used to say, “I'm going to prove my point and leave stuff like that out on a paper,” and the teacher would catch us, whatever, and we'd be sitting with a dunce cap on our head all day. So here's the New York Review of Books. It shook my faith in the system to discover that big, gaping hole.

What about the umbrage taken, particularly in the UK, with the idea of dramatically positioning Turing as someone whose actions – not turning in a spy – make him a traitor? Do they have a point?

Eventually he admitted what was going on and realized that they knew what was going on and they set up that guy. So he came to terms with it [in the film]. It wasn't like he spent the entire war not saying it. It was a matter of months and he came clean. He was in a situation where he was being blackmailed. And the greater good is Turing cracking the code. Let's face it, the Russians were our allies. So it wasn't like he was harboring a German spy. He was harboring a Russian spy who was on our side. I mean, looking back through the eyes of Communism and whatever that meant, whatever that's supposed to mean, whatever that still means and was he harboring an ally or was he harboring the enemy – were the Russians the enemy? They were allies. It seemed to be at the time that this happened about a million Russians lost their lives in Stalingrad and they were fighting, I believe, the Germans. So I think it's a thin ice argument.

What I find interesting is this movement by Stephen Fry and Benedict in London. I think there's over 100,000 petitions now [calling for the pardon of 49,000 British men persecuted for homosexuality in the 1950s]. I don't know when they're going to turn them in, but everybody who signs that petition is major. There's no delineation. I think there's people who want diversity, who are rallying to “The Imitation Game.” And I love when people say that we're playing “the gay card.” The gay card has been in the movie from day one. No one's been hiding from anything.

In fact the film has been accused of skirting the issue of homosexuality, too.

Whatever. I guess we can't please everybody! But we went from “Bully” to “Paris is Burning” to “The Crying Game,” you know? We won every award there is in the area of diversity, filmmakers from Miramax to The Weinstein Company. What are they saying, we're Johnny-come-new to this issue? Or is it just the story of the moment that “he's playing the gay card?” It's ridiculous. I mean we've been playing the truth card and never hidden what this movie is about because it's got so many different levels to it. But I think that in a way the argument that these guys have put forth, and Benedict has been saying this for a year and Stephen Fry and some of the others in England – that's what movies do sometimes. That's what movies have done since “Gentleman's Agreement.” So many movies. I mean that's kind of, like, one of the great benefits about making great movies about important subject matter. It can change the world. “Bully,” that documentary that we did, changed so many schools. So many things happened. I watched “Fed Up,” that the guys from RADiUS did about sugar and people's diets and I see kids at school and my own kids reacting to that in such a positive way.

I've always known when we were going to win for Best Picture and I feel the same way with “The Imitation Game.” You can ask anybody in my company. They told me I was crazy, right after we lost the Golden Globe to “The Social Network,” I said, “We're going to win the Oscar [for “The King's Speech”]. And I felt that way with “The Artist. The guys at Wild Bunch, Vincent Maraval, will tell you, from the minute I saw the movie before Cannes I said, “This will win.” I feel now that “The Imitation Game” all of a sudden has the momentum. I think people are starting to say, “Well wait a second. What is the best achievement in motion pictures? What is a movie that has all of it? Yes, “Birdman” has got some great things and “Boyhood” has got great things and “Theory” has got great things and all these movies have great things. But I start to hear people saying “The Imitation Game” has a great issue, an important movie, great acting, you know, great achievement, a $15 million budget that looks like a $50 million movie. Maybe it's not the best in any category but it's the accumulative best. I've been hearing that loud and clear and it's starting to get louder and louder and louder and I'm going to go off and predict that I think the movie is going to win.

It absolutely still seems like a possibility in a race that isn't decided. I've felt for a while that this is a film particularly helped by the preferential ballot as well. It's the kind of movie that stays near the top of a lot of ballots.

That, of course, is the other thing. That's why I felt we would win with “The Artist,” because I felt the preferential ballot really favors a movie like that. The people who want this are fervent and I think that's absolutely, Kris, where the preferred ballot does help. And maybe if we didn't have a preferential ballot it wouldn't win, but I think because we do it will.

Circling back to some points you were making earlier, you know, you do this a lot, where you take on a movie that has a cause and an issue and the campaign becomes as much about that issue as the work itself. We're seeing ads calling for voters to “honor the man,” Alan Turing, for instance. With something like awards, with a 7,000-person vote and inherent politics, maybe expecting a meritocracy is naive. But is that what it should be instead, honoring subject matter above artistic merit?

No. In order to win Best Picture it's got to have all the ingredients to win. I think artistic merit is first and foremost because we're in an art form. But if something's got something important to say, if something can be a game changer for people, if something can be a crusade, as long as it meets the artistic merit, then that's not going to hurt it, that's going to help it. That's going to be something that makes even more of an impact. Not that Hollywood gets to pat itself on the back, it's just that when people feel good about what they do – last year I think everybody felt good that “12 Years a Slave” won. And also that [Alfonso] Cuarón won for “Gravity.” I think Richard [Linklater] is definitely – I know I'm saying it against my own guy – but I think Linklater looks like a lock for director as a reward for “Boyhood.” It's an amazing achievement, what he did as a director. I don't think anybody questions that. I've always thought of the best movie of the year as “the best achievement in motion pictures.” So I don't know, I just think sometimes when somebody has it all, that's what happens. What changed was independent films. It used to be these giant epics would win, mostly because they had more people who were Academy members, either in the cast or behind the camera. And that's now what makes the Academy Awards so exciting, too, is the fact that you can be transcendent.

Speaking of awards, obviously you've built a lot of your success on being able to use the Oscar season as part of your business model and after all these years, it has become a bit of a cottage industry. I'm curious about your thoughts on that and how that part of the industry has grown to what it is. Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Is it a mixed bag?

What could be wrong with an industry that honors merit? Do you know what I'm saying? I'm so pleased because normally we're about our lowest common denominator. We make movies for the four quadrants, so to speak, and we have to dumb stuff down. For what reason, I have no idea, because when you look at an Academy season, you watch “The Imitation Game” gross $100 million, whatever, you just say, “You've got to be kidding me.” Or you watch “The King's Speech” do $140 million. It's harder to do quality films than it is to do those other movies. This I assure you. It's the hardest thing you can do in this industry and there are many people who do it well. My so-called competition – I don't even feel that way about them. I'm proud of them. I'm proud of those companies, the Fox Searchlights, the Sony Classics. We have the occasional dust-up over buying a movie at Sundance, but these people are super committed to great, quality filmmaking. But most of the time, honestly, in Hollywood, in the movie industry, we're not committed to that.

It's like there's a season called the Oscar season where all of a sudden we take a pause and all of a sudden it's about honoring something. People feel good about their work and people who are actors pour their heart and soul in, sometimes for very little financial reward. What's wrong with that? Why can it not only be in February and January? Why can't it be in April and August and September? But it's not. It's just not. And at least every time this happens it just makes an engine that could, or shouldn't, by rules, war. And I am for empowering that and it's been an economic model that's fed the people who work in my company. I am proud of that. I am proud of the economics, that we can take these movies and make them work. And we've made our share of commercial movies, too. It is easier to make those movies work. So easy. It's TV spots. It's not that much publicity. It's blasting a high concept and being as entertaining as possible, but even if they're not that good, you can still make a lot of money with them. Here it has to be good. It makes me work harder, it makes the audience work harder, it makes you guys who cover this stuff work harder, and that's a good thing.

And by the way, you mentioned Sundance. I think we all noticed that you didn't pick anything up this year. Why was that?

Well, I mean, we have a lot of great movies that we've produced this year. We have Jake Gyllenhaal and Antoine Fuqua's “Southpaw.” We have Bradley Cooper in “Adam Jones,” that John Wells directed. We have “Tulip Fever” that Justin Chadwick directed. We have “Carol” that Todd Haynes directed. We have Quentin Tarantino's “Hateful Eight.” We just said, “OK, we have a great slate and unless – let's try to be disciplined and really work on the movies we made and spread time.” It's a knock on the company and there's some justification for it, so I think we want to deal with it. We want to just be able to say the movies we made and acquire we just give full-time to those and take a page out of what people say about us sometimes and say, “You know what, we have a long ways to go to improve, too.”

Well good luck with the rest of the “Imitation Game” roll-out, and good luck at the Oscars, too. You're on the record!

Thank you, Kris. It's a pleasure.

The International Film Music Critics Association has revealed nominations for best in movie music from 2014, and prolific composers James Newton Howard (“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1,” “Maleficent”) and Alexandre Desplat (“Godzilla,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “The Imitation Game,” “The Monuments Men”) led the way with seven and six nominations respectively.

Film score of the year contenders include just two Best Original Score Oscar nominees: “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and Hans Zimmer's “Interstellar.” “The Imitation Game” and Jóhann Jóhannsson's “Theory of Everything,” however, were both nominated in the drama category.

“Maleficent” landed the most nominations for a film with four, while DreamWorks Animation's “How to Train Your Dragon 2” picked up three (each of them another if you count composer of the year honors for Howard and John Powell respectively).

Check out the full list of nominees below. Winners will be revealed on Feb. 19. And be sure to see how the rest of the season is turning out at The Circuit.

Film Score of the Year
“The Grand Budapest Hotel” (Alexandre Desplat)
“How to Train Your Dragon 2” (John Powell)
“Interstellar” (Hans Zimmer)
“Maleficent” (James Newton Howard)
“The Monkey King (Xi You Ji: Da Nao Tian Gong)” (Christopher Young)

Composer of the Year
Marco Beltrami
Alexandre Desplat
James Newton Howard
John Powell
Hans Zimmer

Breakthrough Composer of the Year
Alexander Cimini
Gustavo Dudamel
Mica Levi
Matthew Llewellyn
John Paesano

Best Original Score for a Drama
“The Homesman” (Marco Beltrami)
“The Imitation Game” (Alexandre Desplat)
“The Liberator [Libertador]” (Gustavo Dudamel)
“The Monuments Men” (Alexandre Desplat)
“The Theory of Everything” (Jóhann Jóhannsson)

Best Original Score for a Comedy
“Cantinflas” (Roque Baños)
“The Grand Budapest Hotel” (Alexandre Desplat)
“A Million Ways to Die in the West” (Joel McNeely)
“Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb” (Alan Silvestri)
“Wishin” and Hopin”” (Matthew Llewellyn)

Best Original Score for an Action/Adventure/Thriller Film
“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1” (James Newton Howard)
“Inherent Vice” (Jonny Greenwood)
“The Maze Runner” (John Paesano)
“The Monkey King [Xi You Ji: Da Nao Tian Gong]” (Christopher Young)
“No God No Master” (Nuno Malo)

Best Original Score for a Fantasy/Science Fiction/Horror Film
“Autómata” (Zacarías M. de la Riva)
“Godzilla” (Alexandre Desplat)
“The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” (Howard Shore)
“Interstellar” (Hans Zimmer)
“Maleficent” (James Newton Howard)

Best Original Score for an Animated Feature
“Asterix: The Land of the Gods [Astérix: Le Domaine des Dieux]” (Philippe Rombi)
“The Boxtrolls” (Dario Marianelli)
“How to Train Your Dragon 2” (John Powell)
“Son of Batman” (Frederik Wiedmann)
“Tarzan” (David Newman)

Best Original Score for a Documentary
“Ballet Boys” (Henrik Skram)
“Bears” (George Fenton)
“Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” (Alan Silvestri)
“Hidden Kingdoms” (Ben Foster)
“The Unknown Known” (Danny Elfman)

Best Original Score for a Television Series
“Fargo” (Jeff Russo)
“Gunshi Kanbei” (Y?go Kanno)
“Isabel” (Federico Jusid)
“The Leftovers” (Max Richter)
“Penny Dreadful” (Abel Korzeniowski)

Best Original Score for a Video Game or Interactive Media
“Assassin”s Creed: Unity” (Chris Tilton and Sarah Schachner)
“The Banner Saga” (Austin Wintory)
“Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2” (Óscar Araujo)
“Sid Meier”s Civilization: Beyond Earth” (Geoff Knorr, Griffin Cohen, Michael Curran and Grant Kirkhope)
“World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor” (Russell Brower, Neal Acree, Clint Bajakian, Sam Cardon, Craig Stuart Garfinkle, Edo Guidotti and Eímear Noone)

Best Archival Release of an Existing Score – Re-Release or Re-Recording
“The Abyss” – Varèse Sarabande
“Empire of the Sun” – La-La Land
“Lair” – La-La Land
“The Lion King” – Disney
“On the Waterfront” – Intrada

Best Archival Release of an Existing Score – Compilation
“The Ava Collection” – Intrada
“Batman: The Animated Series Volume 3” – La-La Land
“Elmer Bernstein: The Wild Side” – Varèse Sarabande
“Henry Mancini: The Classic Soundtrack Collection” – Legacy/Sony
“The Naked Gun Trilogy” – La-La Land

Film Music Record Label of the Year
Intrada Records, Douglass Fake and Roger Feigelson
La-La Land Records, MV Gerhard and Matt Verboys
Moviescore Media, Mikael Carlsson
Quartet Records, Jose M. Benitez
Varèse Sarabande, Robert Townson

Film Music Composition of the Year
“Flying With Mother” from “How to Train Your Dragon 2” (John Powell)
“The Hanging Tree” from “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1” (Jeremiah Fraites, Wesley Schultz and James Newton Howard, lyrics by Suzanne Collins)
“Maleficent Flies” from “Maleficent” (James Newton Howard)
“Maleficent Suite” from “Maleficent” (James Newton Howard)
“Tsunami” from “Exodus: Gods and Kings” (Harry Gregson-Williams)

The news that Amy Pascal will step down as chairwoman of Sony Pictures is not shocking. In fact, it was expected.* This is how Hollywood works. You spend years running a studio or acting as president of production and then something goes wrong and you segue to a “producing” deal. That”s the way it”s been for almost 30 years and that”s the way it will be for the foreseeable future. Surviving any controversy, even one outside of your own control, is simply impossible.

*Although forgive our surprise this wasn”t left to a late Friday afternoon announcement to quell reaction from the cable news talking heads.

Pascal”s fate was sealed when numerous E-mail conversations she was a part of were leaked after a massive security breach credited to North Korean hackers took place on Nov. 24. Her E-mail exchange with producer Scott Rudin about the President of the United States' film tastes created a media firestorm nationally, but the revelations about current and past projects arguably were more damaging. Private E-mails that ripped upcoming films such as Cameron Crowe”s “Aloha” and the creative fights over “Jobs” (now at Universal) and a “Cleopatra” remake with Angelina Jolie (now likely dead) made many top creatives hesitant to continue working with the studio or Pascal”s team. It didn”t help that her efforts to make up for the leaks, which included a conversation with Al Sharpton and a now iconic moment with Jolie at a Hollywood event, came across as PR blunders both inside and outside of the industry.

Things got worse when Sony mishandled the release of “The Interview” in theaters last month.  After receiving threats from the hackers not to release the film, the studio and theater owners became involved in a he said/she said, which found the Seth Rogen and James Franco comedy pulled from theaters just days before its scheduled opening. This led to a rare moment of bipartisanship in Washington with President Obama saying the studio “made a mistake” and Republican lawmakers joining in pushing the industry to put the movie back in theaters. Sony changed their tune and found 581 mostly independent theaters to play the film on Christmas Day. Pascal”s co-chairman, Michael Lynton, took the brunt of this particular debacle, making appearances on news shows, standing by the studio”s original decision, but it was just another example of how the overall leadership of the Culver City powerhouse was failing. Now, Pascal, the more public face of the studio, is taking the fall for it all.*

*Why Lynton is not suffering the same fate is an excellent question.

The 56-year-old industry veteran had worked continuously for Sony since 1996, when she was named the studio”s President. In 2006, she was named co-chairman of the studio alongside Lynton. She had tremendous success helping shepherd the reboot of James Bond in “Casino Royale” and “Skyfall.” There was a breakthrough run of Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow comedies including “Superbad” and “Pineapple Express.” Will Ferrell became an established star with smashes such as “Step Brothers” and “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.” Will Smith delivered hits such as “Hancock” and “The Pursuit of Happyness” and produced “The Karate Kid” remake staring his son, Jaden. And, for better or worse, there was a consistent run of “mostly” hit comedies from Adam Sandler.

Under Pascal's watch Clint Culpepper”s Screen Gems division knocked one profitable genre picture out of the park after another. And to balance out the less creative works, Pascal had refocused the studio on prestige pics, bringing Sony back into the awards season game. Before 2010″s nomination for “District 9,” the studio hadn”t landed a Best Picture nomination since the company”s art house division Sony Classics released “Capote” in 2005. The last time the big studio had a player in the Best Picture race was when “Jerry Maguire” was nominated in 1997. Since “District 9,” the studio has impressed with nominees such as “The Social Network,” “Moneyball,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” “American Hustle” and “Captain Phillips.”  

It”s the creative failures along with the hack, however, that likely sealed Pascal”s fate. The studio”s “Spider-Man” reboot has turned into a creative disaster potentially damaging a superhero franchise that was once king of the box office of all superhero franchises. The modern day version of “Annie” earned worse reviews than the original 1982 movie adaptation (a cult classic now that wasn”t well liked at the time) and is nowhere near profitable. Outside of smaller franchises at Screen Gems such as “Underworld” and “Resident Evil,” big Sony hasn”t been able to generate the tentpole players their competitors thrive on outside of Bond (a partnership with MGM) and the aforementioned, sinking “Spider-Man.” Those are results that make stockholders nervous.

If 2014's mixed bag is one of the key reasons for her departure, it must be a tough pill for Pascal to swallow. The upcoming year features potential new blockbuster franchises in “Pixels” and “Goosebumps,” the return of 007 in “Spectre” and potential Oscar players in Robert Zemeckis” “The Walk” and Will Smith”s “Concussion.” A new Robert Langdon thriller, “Inferno,” is set for 2016 and Paul Feig”s new “Ghostbusters” looks like it could be a monster. And yet, like other studio heads that have fallen before her, Pascal won”t get any real credit for their success.  

There will be a lot of speculation as to who will replace Pascal in the coming days. Former 20th Century Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman is already running a reinvigorated Tri-Star Pictures at Sony and former New Line and DreamWorks president of production Michael De Luca seems like a strong candidate as well. Forgive us if we”re disheartened by the lack of female candidates to succeed her.

In an age where the diversity microscope is pointed at Hollywood more than ever, Pascal”s departure nearly finds every one of the world”s movie studios being run by men for the first time this century (Donna Langley at Universal saves it). Fifteen years ago, Stacey Snider was the chairman of Universal Pictures, Sherry Lansing was the co-chairman of Paramount Pictures,* Nina Jacobson was president of Walt Disney Pictures and Pascal was then president of Sony Pictures. Today, only Snider survives as co-chairman of 20th Century Fox, a position significantly junior to longstanding Chairman and CEO Jim Gianopulos.

*Full disclosure, I worked for Paramount during Lansing”s reign.

In a world where FOX is now co-run by Dana Walden and Nina Tassler is now the chairman of CBS, Jennifer Salke is NBC Entertainment president and Bonnie Hammer is chairman of NBCUniversal Cable, something”s not quite right in the movie industry, is it? But, hey, let”s ignore the obvious, right? At least Pascal”s departure means they”ll finally figure out what to do with Spidey, because for too many people on the inside and outside of the industry, that”s all that matters.

The Oscar race for Best Visual Effects is sort of interesting this year. Many would call it a done deal for “Interstellar,” the most “prestigious” film of the nominees, more represented in other categories than the rest, etc. But there are others still who contend that “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is due a little love for amazing strides made in the realm of performance capture. And then there's “Guardians of the Galaxy,” lurking as a possibility both here and potentially in Best Makeup and Hairstyling for those looking to venture out.

It will be up to the full membership of the Academy to decide, but Wednesday night, the visual effects artists themselves had their say at the 13th annual Visual Effects Society Awards. And it was “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” coming out on top in the group's top category. The film actually picked up three awards on the evening, while “Big Hero 6” was a significant favorite in the animated realm, impressively sweeping all of its categories. That support makes you wonder if it can make any moves in the animated feature race; it proves there's love for it outside the animation branch, certainly.

Oh, and speaking of support in other branches, it's worth noting that “Birdman” won in the supporting effects field.

Check out the nominees here, the full list of winners below and, as ever, the rest of the season's offerings at The Circuit.

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-Driven Photoreal/Live Action Feature Motion Picture
“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”

Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal/Live Action Feature Motion Picture
“Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)”

Outstanding Animation in an Animated Feature Motion Picture
“Big Hero 6”

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-Driven Photoreal/Live Action Broadcast Program
“Game of Thrones” – “The Children”

Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-Driven Photoreal/Live Action Broadcast Program
“American Horror Story: Freak Show” – “Edward Mordrake, Part 2”

Outstanding Real-Time Visuals in a Video Game
“Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare”

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Commercial
SSE – “Maya”

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project
“Ratatouille: L”Aventure Totalement Torquee de Remy”

Outstanding Performance of an Animated Character in a Photoreal/Live Action Feature Motion Picture
“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” – Caesar

Outstanding Performance of an Animated Character in an Animated Feature Motion Picture
“Big Hero 6” – Baymax

Outstanding Performance of an Animated Character in a Commercial, Broadcast Program, or Video Game
SSE – Maya

Outstanding Created Environment in a Photoreal/Live Action Feature Motion Picture
“Interstellar” – Tesseract

Outstanding Created Environment in an Animated Feature Motion Picture
“Big Hero 6” – Into the Portal

Outstanding Created Environment in a Commercial, Broadcast Program, or Video Game
“Game of Thrones” – Braavos Establisher

Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a Photoreal/Live Action Motion Media Project
“X-Men: Days of Future Past” – Kitchen Scene

Outstanding Models in any Motion Media Project
“Big Hero 6” – City of San Fransokyo

Outstanding Effects Simulations in a Photoreal/Live Action Feature Motion Picture
“X-Men: Days of Future Past” – Quicksilver Pentagon Kitchen

Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Animated Feature Motion Picture
“Big Hero 6”

Outstanding Effects Simulations in a Commercial, Broadcast Program, or Video Game
“Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey”

Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal/Live Action Feature Motion Picture
“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”

Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal/Live Action Broadcast Program
“Game of Thrones” – “The Watchers on the Wall”

Outstanding Compositing in a in a Photoreal/Live Action Commercial
SSE

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Student Project
“Wrapped”

Visionary Award
J.J. Abrams

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4910104183001

Surprisingly or not so surprisingly, there are a number of intriguing films screening at the Berlin Film Festival this year. Terrence Malick's “Knight of Cups” with Christian Bale, Natalie Portman and Cate Blanchett will drop there along with Wim Wenders' “Everything Will Be Fine” (James Franco), Werner Herzog's “Queen of the Desert” (Nicole Kidman and James Franco again), Anton Corbijn's “Life” (Dane DeHaan, Robert Pattinson), Simon Curtis' “Woman in Gold” (Ryan Reynolds, Helen Mirren), Andrew Haigh's “45 Years,” Isabel Coixet's “Nobody Wants The Night” and even, yes, Kenneth Branagh's “Cinderella” are on most cinephiles' radars.

(Well, maybe not the latter, but, hey! A Disney movie willing to be in competition! That's no small feat!)

One other film that is getting an unexpected early debut is Bill Condon's “Mr. Holmes,” a drama which reunites the Oscar winner with his “Gods and Monsters” star Ian McKellen. Based on the 2005 novel “A Slight Trick of the Mind,” “Mr. Holmes” finds a 93-year-old Sherlock Holmes living in the English countryside with his housekeeper (Laura Linney) and her son (Milo Parker). As he deals with the deterioration of his once great mind, the famed detective is preoccupied by one unsolved murder. Can he finally make peace with his life if he is unable to solve it?

Independently financed, Roadside Attractions is releasing “Mr. Holmes” in the U.S. and it will likely get a fall release (still technically TBD). Why, you might ask? Just watching the first clip from the movie, which is embedded at the top of this post, tells you why. At 75, McKellen might not get many more chances at the big awards season dance and his old friend may have given the two-time Academy Award nominee his best shot at a nod in years. We'll know more after the first reviews hit, but everyone's favorite Gandalf deserves one more chance at Oscar gold, doesn't he?

“Mr. Holmes” premieres on Sun. Feb. 8.

Stumbling across that list of best-edited films yesterday had me assuming that there might be other nuggets like that out there, and sure enough, there is American Cinematographer's poll of the American Society of Cinematographers membership for the best-shot films ever, which I do recall hearing about at the time. But they did things a little differently.

Basically, in 1998, cinematographers were asked for their top picks in two eras: films from 1894-1949 (or the dawn of cinema through the classic era), and then 1950-1997, for a top 50 in each case. Then they followed up 10 years later with another poll focused on the films between 1998 and 2008.

Unlike the editors' list, though, ties run absolutely rampant here and allow for way more than 50 films in each era to be cited.

I'd love to see what these lists would look like combined, however. I imagine “Citizen Kane,” which was on top of the 1894-1949 list, would handily take the cake. Gregg Toland's innovations on that film are part of the very fabric of modern filmmaking. I loved seeing “Metropolis” on there, and just on the outside, “Napoléon,” “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “The Adventures of Robin Hood” and “L'Atalante” were deservedly in the mix.

1894-1949

1. “Citizen Kane” (Gregg Toland, 1941)
2. “Gone with the Wind” (Ernest Haller, Ray Rennahan, 1939)
3. “Sunrise” (Charles Rosher, Karl Struss, 1927)
4. “Metropolis” (Karl Freund, Günther Rittau, 1927)
5. “The Wizard of Oz” (Harold Rosson, 1939)
6. “The Magnificent Ambersons” (Stanley Cortez, 1942)
7. “Casablanca” (Arthur Edeson, 1942)
8. “Battleship Potemkin” (Eduard Tisse, 1926)
9. “The Third Man” (Robert Krasker, 1950)
10. “The Birth of a Nation” (G.W. Bitzer, 1915)
(Check out the rest of the list here.)

With the modern era collective, it was Freddie Young's epic lensing of “Lawrence of Arabia” leading the way, and again, how can you argue? Gordon Willis featured prominently for his rich work on “The Godfather” and Vittorio Storaro popped up twice in the top 10 with “Apocalypse Now” and “The Conformist.” Others in the mix that I was happy to see included “JFK,” “Psycho,” “Barry Lyndon,” “Persona,” “Do the Right Thing,” “Brazil” and “Alien.”

1950-1997

1. “Lawrence of Arabia” (Freddie Young, 1962)
2. “The Godfather” (Gordon Willis, 1971)
3. “2001: A Space Odyssey” (Geoffrey Unworth, 1969)
4. “Days of Heaven” (Néstor Almendros, 1978)
5. “Schindler's List” (Janusz Kaminski, 1993)
6. “Apocalypse Now” (Vittorio Storaro, 1979)
7. “The Conformist” (Vittorio Storaro, 1970)
8. “Raging Bull” (Michael Chapman, 1980)
9. “Blade Runner” (Jordan Cronenweth, 1982)
10. “Touch of Evil” (Russell Metty, 1958)
(Check out the rest of the list here.)

Moving into the aughts, it was Bruno Delbonnel's lush and colorful “Amélie” that came out on top, with inarguable entries like “Children of Men,” “There Will Be Blood” and “The Dark Knight” scattered throughout. On the outside, my personal pick for the best in that range – “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” – was in the mix alongside great stuff like “In the Mood for Love,” the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “The Matrix,” “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” “Black Hawk Down,” “Munich” and “The Fountain.”

1998-2008

1. “Amélie” (Bruno Delbonnel, 2001)
2. “Children of Men” (Emmanuel Lubezki, 2006)
3. “Saving Private Ryan” (Janusz Kaminski, 1998)
4. “There Will Be Blood” (Robert Elswit, 2007)
5. “No Country for Old Men” (Roger Deakins, 2007)
6. “Fight Club” (Jeff Cronenweth, 1999)
7. “The Dark Knight” (Wally Pfister, 2008)
8. “Road to Perdition” (Conrad L. Hall, 2002)
9. “City of God (Cidade de Deus)” (César Charlone, 2003)
10. “American Beauty” (Conrad L. Hall, 1999)
(Check out the rest of the list here.)

That leaves six years unaccounted for, and I imagine there will be another poll in due time. For now, what are some of your highlights from 2009-2014 behind the camera? I have to admit, I find it hard not to just populate the list with Emmanuel Lubezki. Between “The Tree of Life,” “Gravity” and “Birdman,” he is, simply, in a class unto himself.

So I gave it a go. Here's what my list would more or less look like:

1. “Gravity” (Emmanuel Lubezki, 2013)
2. “Enter the Void” (Benoît Debie, 2010)
3. “Birdman” (Emmanuel Lubezki, 2014)
4. “Antichrist” (Anthony Dod Mantle, 2009)
5. “Inside Llewyn Davis” (Bruno Delbonel, 2013)
6. “Inherent Vice” (Robert Elswit, 2014)
7. “Out of the Furnace” (Masanobu Takayanagi, 2013)
8. “The Tree of Life” (Emmanuel Lubezki, 2011)
9. “Bronson” (Larry Smith, 2009)
10. “Skyfall” (Roger Deakins, 2012)

But holy crap was that hard (and just in six years, not even a full decade). I'd want to find room for so many more: “Mr. Turner,” “Spring Breakers,” “Rush,” “The Master,” “Rampart,” “Shame,” “127 Hours,” etc.

What about you?

One can only wonder if an Oscar nomination for Meryl Streep is more or less automatic these days. She has the all-time record with 19 tips of the Academy's hat to date, and she has an intriguing role coming up in Jonathan Demme's “Ricki and the Flash” that will surely bring her at least into the conversation yet again.

Then again, maybe it's not so automatic. Streep crushed it in Demme's own remake of “The Manchurian Candidate” a little over a decade ago, but where Angela Lansbury was able to make it to the dance for originating the role, Streep didn't make the cut. I'm sure fellow supporting actress players like Laura Linney (“Kinsey”) and Sophie Okondeo (“Hotel Rwanda”) were happy to have the wiggle room.

Anyway, the first image from “Ricki and the Flash” has been revealed (see above), courtesy of People. In the movie, which was written by Diablo Cody (“Juno,” “Young Adult”), Streep stars as an aging rock star who abandoned her family to become a famous musician. She gets a last chance to put things right when her ex-husband asks her to visit Chicago and helpt their estranged, divorced daughter through a difficult time.

The last time Demme's work found some love in the season was 2008's “Rachel Getting Married,” which netted Anne Hathaway a Best Actress nod and probably should have netted a supporting one for Rosemarie DeWitt as well.

The only thing a little odd about this project, though, is the release date. Sometimes early August releases work out for awards season, sometimes not. But if it's not a film that needs the festivals to build momentum and it can make a splash at the end of the summer, so be it.

“Ricki and the Flash” hits theaters Aug. 6.

The Academy has begun rolling out presenter announcements for the upcoming 87th Oscars (which I suddenly can't believe are less than three weeks away). Kicking things off is the requisite note that last year's acting winners – Matthew McConaughey, Cate Blanchett, Jared Leto and Lupita Nyong'o – will be on hand to present to this year's crop of acting award recipients.

So Blanchett will present to Michael Keaton (unless “Birdman” has peaked), Eddie Redmayne (unless “Jupiter Ascending” sinks his ship) or Bradley Cooper (unless “American Sniper” becomes too sticky a proposition in the major categories). McConaughey will present to Julianne Moore (unless hell freezes over). Nyong'o will present to J.K. Simmons (ditto). And Leto will present to Arquette (ditto).

Stay tuned over the next couple of weeks as more presenters are revealed, and, I imagine, more of the plans for the show are divulged. We already have each of the Best Original Song nominees set for performances (save “Everything is Awesome,” but I'm sure that will be sorted soon). The rumor is there will be a 50th anniversary celebration of “The Sound of Music,” which, after similar tributes to “Chicago” and “The Wizard of Oz,” would begin to tip into absurdity. (We get it. The producers like musicals.) But I'm not sure if that's actually going to happen or not.

The 87th annual Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, Feb. 22.

What's in a name? Put Jean-Luc Godard on a 3D art film and you have “Goodbye to Language,” one of the most overrated films I've ever seen come out of a festival (seriously, don't get me started on that one). Throw Ryan Gosling on “Lost River” and you have critics calling it a disaster before the first frame. What would have happened if the credits of these two 2014 Cannes Film Festival selections had been flipped? Or, what if each movie had been made by unknown filmmakers? Let's be frank, shall we? The reaction would have been much, much different.

As someone who was sitting in the theater for the first screening of “Lost River,” I can tell you the international critics on hand had their knives ready even before the lights went down. You can imagine the mentality, can't you? “Gosling? Ryan Gosling is debuting his first film at Cannes of all places?” No, unless it was an unequivocal masterpiece, “Lost River” had little chance with the hoard of global critics on hand.  Sad, but, oh, so true.

Gosling collaborated with his actors and noted cinematographer Benoît Debie (“Enter the Void,” “Spring Breakers”) for what is, more than anything, clearly an experimental narrative. It's an art film first and an indie flick with a traditional storyline a distant second. The imagery and emotions it evokes are more important than the logic of the characters' actions or the plausibility of their predicaments. Inspired by the desolate, abandoned neighborhoods of Detroit, Gosling ended up painting a contemporary horror story (or ” dark fairy tale” as the official synopsis now reads) that is too strange to believe.  

Granted, that's not to say the film doesn't have its faults. Matt Smith's performance as Bully, the neighborhood criminal with an on-the-nose name is just too over-the-top to believe even in this context (it doesn't help that Smith doesn't give him any real range either). On the other hand, Christina Hendricks and Iain De Caestecker (“Agents of SHIELD”) are impressive as a mother and son trying to save their home from foreclosure by any means necessary.

It's the imagery of “Lost River,” however, that still sticks with you, however. The horribly perverted clear mummy coffin Ben Mendleson's character gets off on, the shocking live show Eva Mendes is a part of every night, De Caestecker's dive into a whole neighborhood that is literally submerged under water and so much more. These are moments that if, the was directed by an unknown, would cause critics to praise him or her as an up and coming talent.  That's not going happen at Cannes when the Goz is baring his creative soul for review. Maybe for his second film, but not his first. Mr. Gosling, no matter how amazing an actor you are, your celebrity just hurts your standing too much at a festival such as Cannes.

In hindsight, “Lost River” would have been better served premiering at Sundance, the New York Film Festival or, no joke, even Toronto. It's not that it wouldn't face criticism there as well, but the film would have found many more champions, or at least critics who appreciated what Gosling was attempting to pull off. In fact, look for more positive word of mouth to come from the film's North American premiere at SXSW next month.

The good news is you'll soon be able to weigh in on “Lost River” yourself. It will be released in a small number of theaters and digitally on April 10. In the meantime, you can check out the new official trailer embedded at the bottom of this post.

Just do Gosling and this pundit a favor, won't you? Don't judge it based on a throng of international journos wailing on Twitter. See it for yourself. It might just surprise you.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8ngDiG9V8w]

A random bit of researching on a Tuesday night led me to something I didn't know existed: The Motion Picture Editors Guild's list of the 75 best-edited films of all time. It was a feature in part celebrating the Guild's 75th anniversary in 2012. Is this news to anyone else? I confess to having missed it entirely. Naturally, I had to dig in.

What was immediately striking to me about the list – which was decided upon by the Guild membership and, per instruction, was considered in terms of picture and sound editorial as opposed to just the former – was the most popular decade ranking. Naturally, the 1970s led with 17 mentions, but right on its heels was the 1990s. I wouldn't have expected that but I happen to agree with the assessment.

Thelma Schoonmaker's work on “Raging Bull” came out on top, an objectively difficult choice to dispute, really. It was so transformative, what she and Martin Scorsese did with that film and how they just seemed to realign what juxtaposition can mean dramatically. Such a firework reunion after they were forced to spend professional time apart (due ironically enough to guild regulations).

For me, though – and knowing full well the inherent caveat of any “all-time” consideration – “JFK” adopted and in some instances shattered those conventions in its own time. Pietro Scalia and Joe Hutshing's assemblage feels like wizardry, and in an analog era it's all the more mind-boggling. Its precision finds ways to deliver emotion, atmosphere and narrative in inimitable ways. I was happy to see it place in the top 10, at a respectable #9.

Very little, I feel, has transcended in the form like that in quite a while, and the time feels right for something groundbreaking to catch hold in a medium-defining way again. Something like “Inception” might be a fair submission, and it placed rather high at #35. That's pretty interesting considering the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Editors Branch did not deem the 2010 film worthy of an Oscar nomination.

“Inception” isn't the most recent film on the list, however. That distinction goes to Terrence Malick's 2011 opus “The Tree of Life” (#65). There was an elegance to the Malick madness in that film that seems almost too attractive to resist, but I can only hope there was some consideration given to the gargantuan wrangling of “The Thin Red Line,” which, alas, didn't make the list at all.

By the way, the five credited editors on “The Tree of Life” and “Star Wars” (#16) aren't enough for them to claim honors as films with the most cutters on board. That designation goes to “The Fugitive” (#39) with a whopping six individuals.

Going through the line-up, I was particularly pleased to see shout-outs to “Apocalypse Now” (#3), “Memento” (#14), “The Matrix” (#25), “Fight Club” (#28), “8 1/2” (#41), “Apollo 13” (#48), “Out of Sight” (#52), “Black Hawk Down” (#55), “The Limey” (#57), “Speed” (#61) and “Midnight Cowboy” (#69). Some of those are ties, and I'm sure there are those of you who will be pleased to know that dead heats weren't used as a way of squeezing more films onto the list; there are 75 titles, period.

Interesting, though, that a director's hand still holds some sway over things, as the most-cited editor is George Tomasini with four, all of them Alfred Hitchcock films within a 6-year stretch: “Psycho” (#12), “Vertigo” (#47), “Rear Window” (#49) and “North by Northwest” (#75). Not only that, but a fifth Hitchcock film made the list, “Rope” (#36), edited by three-time Oscar nominee William H. Ziegler. Hitch is the most-cited filmmaker, while Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola aren't too far behind.

After Tomasini, Dede Allen, Michael Kahn and Schoonmaker had the most mentions, Kahn and Schoonmaker for their work with Spielberg and Martin Scorsese respectively, and Allen for collaborations with Warren Beatty and Sidney Lumet.

The only thing that was a little troubling to me was that, outside of the requisite spot for Dziga Vertov's “Man with a Movie Camera,” no consideration was apparently given to documentary work. I would make a strong case for something like “Hoop Dreams” myself (which was, incidentally, nominated by the Academy).

Check out the full list on the next page, and if something comes to mind, tell us what your pick would be for the best edited film of all time in the comments section.

The films nominated for the Best Film Editing this year are “American Sniper,” “Boyhood,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “The Imitation Game” and “Whiplash.”

1. “Raging Bull” (Thelma Schoonmaker, 1980)
2. “Citizen Kane” (Robert Wise, 1941)
3. “Apocalypse Now” (Lisa Fruchtman, Gerald B. Greenberg, Walter Murch, 1979)
4. “All That Jazz” (Alan Heim, 1979)
5. “Bonnie And Clyde” (Dede Allen, 1967)
6. “The Godfather” (William H. Reynolds, Peter Zinner, 1972)
7. “Lawrence of Arabia” (Anne V. Coates, 1962)
8. “Jaws” (Verna Fields, 1975)
9. “JFK” (Pietro Scalia, Joe Hutshing, 1991)
10. “The French Connection” (Gerald B. Greenberg, 1971)
11. “The Conversation” (Richard Chew, 1974)
12. “Psycho” (George Tomasini, 1960)
13. “Battleship Potemkin” (Grigori Aleksandrov, Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
14. “Memento” (Dody Dorn, 2000)
15. “Goodfellas” (James Y. Kewi, Thelma Schoonmaker, 1990)
16. “Star Wars” (Richard Chew, T.M. Christopher, Marcia Lucas, George Lucas, Paul Hirsch, 1977)
17. “City of God (Cidade de Deus)” (Daniel Rezende, 2002)
18. “Pulp Fiction” (Sally Menke, 1994)
19. “2001: A Space Odyssey” (Ray Lovejoy, 1968)
20. “Dog Day Afternoon” (Dede Allen, 1975)
21. “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (Michael Kahn, 1981)
22. “The Godfather Part II” (Barry Malkin, Richard Marks, Peter Zinner, 1974)
23. “The Wild Bunch” (Lou Lombardo, 1969)
24. “Saving Private Ryan” (Michael Kahn, 1998)
25. “The Matrix” (Zach Staenberg, 1999)
26. “The Silence of the Lambs” (Craig McKay, 1991)
27. “Breathless” (À Bout De Soufflé)” (Cécile Decugis, 1960)
28. “Fight Club” (James Haygood, 1999)
29. “Requiem for a Dream” (Jay Rabinowitz, 2000)
30. “Cabaret” (David Bretherton, 1972)
31. “Chinatown” (Sam O'Steen, 1974)
32. “Moulin Rouge!” (Jill Bilcock, 2001)
33. “Seven Samurai” (Koichi Iwashita, Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
34. “Casablanca” (Owen Marks, 1942)
35. “Inception” (Lee Smith, 2010)
36. “Rope” (William H. Zeigler, 1948)
37. “Schindler”s List” (Michael Kahn, 1993)
38. “West Side Story” (Thomas Stanford, 1961)
39. “The Fugitive” (Dan Brochu, David Finfer, Dean Goodhil, Dov Hoenig, Richard Nord, Dennis Virkler, 1993)
40. “A Clockwork Orange” (Bill Butler, 1971)
41. “8 ½” (Leo Cattozzo, 1963)
42. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo”s Nest” (Sheldon Kahn, Lynzee Klingman, 1975)
43. “Reds” (Dede Allen, Craig McKay1981)
44. “The Shining” (Ray Lovejoy, 1980)
45. “Days of Heaven” (Billy Weber, 1978)
46. “Ben-Hur” (Margaret Booth, John Dunning, Ralph E. Winters, 1959)
47. “Vertigo” (George Tomasini, 1958)
48. “Apollo 13” (Daniel P. Hanley, Mike Hill, 1995)
49. “Rear Window” (George Tomasini, 1954)
50. “Touch of Evil” (Edward Curtiss, Walter Murch, Aaron Stell, Virgil W. Vogel, 1958)
51. “Living Russia” (“Man with a Camera)” (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
=52. “The Graduate” (Sam O'Steen, 1967)
=52. “Out of Sight” (Anne V. Coates, 1998)
54. “High Noon” (Elmo Williams, 1952)
55. “Black Hawk Down” (Pietro Scalia, 2001)
56. “Titanic” (Conrad Buff IV, James Cameron, Richard A. Harris, 1997)
57. “The Limey” (Sarah Flack, 1999)
58. “The Exorcist” (Norman Gay, Jordan Leondopoulos, Bud S. Smith, Evan A. Lottman, 1973)
59. “Annie Hall” (Wendy Greene Bricmont, Ralph Rosemblum, 1977)
60. “Rashomon” (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
=61. “Sherlock, Jr.” (Buster Keaton, Roy B. Yokelson, 1924)
=61. “Speed” (John Wright, 1994)
63. “L.A. Confidential” (Peter Honess, 1997)
64. “The Sound of Music” (William H. Reynolds, 1965)
65. “The Tree of Life” (Hank Corwin, Jay Rabinowitz, Daniel Rezende, Billy Weber, Mark Yoshikawa, 2011)
66. “The Bourne Ultimatum” (Christopher Rouse, 2007)
67. “Z” (Françoise Bonnot, 1969)
=68. “A Hard Day”s Night” (John Jympson, 1964)
=69. “Hugo” (Thelma Schoonmaker, 2011)
=69. “Midnight Cowboy” (Hugh A. Robertson, 1969)
69. “Miller”s Crossing” (Michael R. Miller, 1990)
72. “Blade Runner” (Gillian L. Hutshing, Marsha Nakashima, Terry Rawlings, 1982)
73. “Mulholland Dr.” (Mary Sweeney, 2001)
74. “Rocky” (Scott Conrad, Richard Halsey, 1976)
75. “North by Northwest” (George Tomasini, 1959)

Just when you thought you couldn't handle another word of commentary about “Birdman,” “Boyhood,” or “Selma,” some adorable children come along and make the Oscar race fun again.

Watch as some kids reenact all eight Best Picture nominees, from “The Theory of Everything” to “Whiplash.” Good God, the “Whiplash” parody is fantastic. And even scary. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OuZXK-eelI]

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4910151389001

Patricia Arquette may have won a Lead Actress Emmy for her work on “Medium” in the mid 2000s, but that doesn't mean the thrill of an Oscar nomination for her role in “Boyhood” isn't an entirely new thrill for her.

At Monday's Oscar luncheon at the Beverly Hilton, Arquette opened up about the panic and jubilation of realizing — finally — that her nomination had really happened. Wonder if her (inevitable) win will be just as madness-inducing. 

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4910370141001

Terrence Malick is planning on releasing a 40-minute version of his upcoming film “Voyage of Time” for IMAX and our guess is the lines are already around the block in Colorado.

The critically acclaimed filmmaker behind such classics as “The Tree of Life,” “The Thin Red Line” and “Badlands” is partnering with the large screen theater chain and Broad Screen Pictures for this special edition of “Voyage.”  Brad Pitt is on board to narrate the film which, according to a press release, is described as “a celebration of the universe, displaying the whole of time, from its start to its final collapse. This film examines all that occurred to prepare the world that stands before us now: science and spirit, birth and death, the grand cosmos and the minute life systems of our planet.”

So, yes, pretty trippy stuff that will no doubt lead to some high times in IMAX Theaters (helps with concession sales!).  A full-length 35mm version will eventually be released in conventional theaters and will be narrated by Cate Blanchett.  The Oscar winner appears in Malick's upcoming drama, “Knight of Cups,” which premieres at the Berlin Film Festival on Thursday.

There is no release date for “Voyage” yet, but IMAX's Greg Foster is quite excited about the new deal noting, “Terrence Malick is one of the most innovative filmmakers in the world, and has literally been designing and making this movie with large-format cameras for over 30 years. o be able to launch our Film Fund portfolio with Malick and his imaginative style of filmmaking is capturing lightning in a bottle. We look forward to working with Terry and his producing partners on this groundbreaking film.”

Gabriel and Daniel Hammond of Broad Green Pictures' Gabriel and Daniel Hammond remarked, “Terrence Malick is an innovator of epic scope. We have long admired his work and could not be more excited to partner with him on this project.”

Besides “Voyage” and “Cups,” Malick also has an Untitled Project featuring Christian Bale, Michael Fassbender, Natalie Portman (also in “Cups”), Ryan Gosling and, again, Blanchett in the editing room.

One refreshing change of pace at the 30th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival is the first-ever Variety Artisans Award showcase, honoring below-the-line talent from some of the year's most celebrated films. It's a nice extension of the trade's recent long-time-coming crafts initiative and, like the reading of nominees for all 24 Oscar categories on the air last month, keeps these men and women in a well-deserved spotlight.

Being honored for cinematography will be “Into the Woods” DP Dion Beebe. It's a fair choice getting away from some of the more frequently recognized names of the year. I thought the work was handsome but couldn't be helped by sets that never seemed to transcend the proscenium.

For costume design, there's Steven Noble for “The Theory of Everything.” An interesting note on that work is the subtlety of it, as Noble has talked about outfitting actor Eddie Redmayne in such a way as to emboss the visual of Stephen Hawking's physical deterioration, moving from tight-fitting, short-legged garments in the early scenes to over-sized clothes later in the story. It's a nice pick but I might have wandered a little further within Focus Features' own stable and made a statement for work like that in “The Boxtrolls,” just as deserving in a conversation like this as any other film.

Sandra Adair will be toasted for the editing of “Boyhood,” and she's pretty much the Oscar frontrunner so what else can you say there? It was a herculean feat, drawing that footage together over such a long period of time and wrangling it into such a beautiful story.

For hair and makeup, Bill Corso and Katherine Gordon got the call for “Foxcatcher.” Gordon, unfortunately, couldn't share in the Oscar nod with Corso and Dennis Liddiard (who we talked to recently) because it was apparently felt the prosthetics work was more to the point than her hair designs. At least she gets this moment to soak it in.

Suzie Davies is being recognized for the production design of “Mr. Turner,” and you won't get a lot of complaints from me on that. The world of Mike Leigh's film was absolutely crucial to servicing his process; as star Timothy Spall told us some months back, the art department begins working at pretty much the same time as the actors in sprouting the story from the seed Turner brings to the table.

“Everything is Awesome” from “The LEGO Movie” will be honored in the song arena with Shawn Patterson getting the love. That's the only honoree in the bunch from a film released before July, by the way.

In the sound department, it's Richard King (editing) and Mark Weingarten (mixing) getting some more notice for their work on “Interstellar.” And what else can be said about the sound work on “Interstellar” at this point? It was a hot topic around release as Christopher Nolan's unique vision for aural elements caught a lot of criticism.

Finally, the great Joe Letteri will be honored for Weta Digital's work on “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” and “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.” The latter was surprisingly passed over by the Academy's visual effects branch, while the former could put up a fight against “Interstellar” for the Oscar win.

I'm happy this kind of thing is going on, as we've championed below the line work here at In Contention for nearly a decade and watched others catch on to the importance of showcasing that work in the media. However, I would humbly suggest to the choosers that some outside-the-box thinking take place. Every year, the Oscar race boils down to the same handful of films, despite those of us who try to champion efforts like “Beyond the Lights” or “The Grey” or what have you. That's often just a steamroller that gets away from you, a big machine that's difficult to shake up. But at the beginning of an initiative like Artisans, there has to be a sense of responsibility for not clamoring to celebrate the same films that are hot in the race.

Like I said, a costume design notice for “The Boxtrolls,” or even sound design recognition for the film (Ren Klyce was the lead so you can still squeeze in Fincher discussion if you must), would have been novel. The film editing of “Wild” was truly wonderful, as was the photography and design elements of “Inherent Vice.”

Go back further into the year. The sound work on “Godzilla,” like most of its elements, seemed to be ignored in the “for your consideration” arena by Warner Bros., maybe as a result of the WB/Legendary divorce (“That's like taking out an ad for your ex-wife,” as someone eloquently put it to me). But that doesn't mean it wasn't probably the best work of the year and deserving of a little love with something like this, despite the lacking circuit presence.

How about the visual effects of “Under the Skin?” The cinematography of “The Rover” or “Calvary?” The film editing of “Edge of Tomorrow?” The sound of “Fury?” The music of “The Homesman?” The production design of “Snowpiercer?” I've written about what an amazing year for the craft of filmmaking 2014 was. So I guess what I'm saying is I'm a little disappointed to see something like this merely mirror the Oscar race. You don't have to do that. That's all I'm saying.

Nevertheless, truly, congratulations to the honorees for getting this time to shine. The panel will be moderated by Variety's Tim Gray at the Lobero Theatre tonight at 8pm.