Variety‘s Justin Chang: “I take it we’re in the same boat. I haven’t seen 12 years A Slave…” Grantland‘s Mark Harris: “And neither have I. Yeah, nothing’s changed since I wrote that Grantland column a few days ago.” Chang: “We’ll both be up to speed soon.” Harris: “It’s just that I just keep saying to myself…” Chang: “That…what, that it’s only September and we all need to calm down?” Harris: “Yeah, okay, I said that but my thinking has evolved. I mean, what are the people who went to Telluride and Toronto supposed to do? Forget that they saw 12 Years A Slave? Expunge it from their memories? These are the hot times, right now…the post-festival rumpus, the runaround, fingers to the wind. We can’t stick our heads in the sand, Justin. We have to get with the program.”

Is there anyone who’s seen Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave (i.e., not Mark Harris) who doesn’t feel that Lupita Nyong’o‘s performance is searing and breathtaking and yaddah-yaddah? Is there anyone who’s seen 12 Years A Slave and The Butler who believes that Oprah Winfrey‘s very good-but-not-quite-stupendous performance in the latter even approaches the calibre of Nyongo’s, much less competes with it? I’ve been contending all along that if Winfrey wasn’t a super-mogul billionaire she wouldn’t be in the conversation in the first place, but at least now she’s up against someone who’s hit a genuine grand slam. The other contenders in this category are, in this order, Sally Hawkins in Blue Jasmine, Margo Martindale in August: Osage County, June Squibb in Nebraska, Octavia Spencer in Fruitvale Station and (maybe) Carey Mulligan in Inside Llewyn Davis. What does Mark Harris think about all this other than “it’s September, for God’s sake”?

I’m watching this Grace of Monaco teaser without headphones in a noisy Coffee Bean cafe at the corner of 14th and Ninth Ave., but I’m guessing that the balding older guy reclining in the back seat of a Rolls Royce convertible as it rolls up to a scenic spot above Monaco is Alfred Hitchcock (who is played in the film by Roger Ashton-Griffiths)? Ditto the portly guy seen in distant silhouette in the next clip? Olivier Dahan‘s drama, which is curiously not about the 1955 and ’56 courtship and marriage between Grace Kelly and Prince Rainer nor about her death in 1982, will open on 11.27 via the Weinstein Co. No way in hell will I ever accept Tim Roth as Rainer…forget it. They should have cast Tom Hanks.

This morning I saw the alleged “Final Cut” of Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (’73). But the word “final” is deceptive because it’s not the fabled 99- or 100-minute version but a 94-minute “middle” version. For marketing purposes Rialto Pictures is calling it the end-all and be-all, but in the mind of any honest archivist it’s not. It’s certainly preferable to the butchered 87-minute cut that was released in 1973 but it’s an an “almost but no cigar” restoration. Hardy has said that the 94-minute cut has his “blessing” and that’s fine, but it doesn’t appear to be the version he initially cut together. To repeat, the 94-minute “middle version” lies in the foggy netherworld between the 87-minute theatrical cut and the 99- or 100-minute long version. Archivist Steve Phillips has catalogued much of the material contained in the version I saw this morning (which the printed press materials say is 94 minutes long but you never know). Here’s Phillips’ Wicker Man home page. The middle version reminded me what a superb actor Edward Woodward was and always will be in the minds of his fans. He never failed to deliver right on the mark. The man had balls, class, conviction, diction, passion.