Hollywood Reporter award-season columnist Scott Feinberg is reporting that A24 will be campaigning James Franco for Best Supporting Actor in Harmony Korine‘s Spring Breakers. The campaign “will pay homage to Franco’s character Alien and his extended boastful rant in the film about his cool property by using the slogan ‘CONSIDER THIS SH*T’ as he holds an Oscar statuette in each hand,” Feinberg writes.

On 8.13 I riffed on a relatively new fall-festival phenomenon — “the Oscar-contending, Telluride-only, Toronto-blowoff movie.” This referred to three Telluride Film Festival headliners — J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost, Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis and Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska — having bailed on Toronto, possibly because their producers felt that the Toronto clusterfuck factor (i.e., so many films, so little time) meant that their films might get overlooked in the shuffle. I wondered if this indicated a significant shift in thinking among award-season strategists. Is Toronto losing some of its lustre to the Venice, Telluride and New York Film Festivals, which happen right before and after Toronto?

Today Variety reviewer and Motion Picture Blog editor/essayist Joe Leydon, a longtime Toronto Film Festival veteran, shared some thoughts along these lines:

“Considering how many Toronto-bound films are premiering this year at Venice and Telluride, I wonder how long it will be before someone suggests that TIFF go back to calling itself the ‘Festival of Festivals,'” Leydon wrote. “Not that there would be anything wrong with that, you understand.

For some reason I love these photos of Blue Is The Warmest Color costar Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos speaking with director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Biutiful, the forthcoming Birdman) following a Saturday screening of Abdellatif Kechiche‘s landmark film at Telluride’s Werner Herzog cinema. (Not taken by me — as soon as I remember who shot these I’ll give due credit.)

I sometimes dance a bit when I feel good. A subtle kind of slow-roll thing. Low-key, hip-shakey, bop-shoo-woppy. Never on a dance floor, of course, but at a party, in a parking lot, in a checkout line…anywhere but in a fucking club. Why am I mentioning this? Because this is what Michael Fassbender was doing Saturday night at the 12 Years A Slave party in Telluride.

Or he did, at least, during…oh, the first 20 or 30 minutes when he was talking to his friends and colleagues. He seemed to be saying to himself (and to any perceptive person who was watching), “This is good, this party. I feel nice…uhm-hmm. I’m just gonna cut loose a little bit.” He was talking and listening and being the debonair adult, of course, but he was doin’ it besides. Like he was dancing to “All Shook Up.” And I was saying to myself, “This guy is cool because he dances whenever and wherever. Like me, he’s a free man in Paris. He doesn’t need a fucking dance floor.”

I was so in awe that I devolved into a fan mentality when I spoke to Fassbender 10 or 15 minutes later. For some reason I asked him where his character’s plantation was located and…fucking Christ, did I just ask Fassbender a question I could answer in 10 or 12 seconds by going on the IMDB? Stunned by my faux pas, I quickly said, “I mean, I know…kind of a dipshit question, right? I could get this info by going online.” And then Fassbender, to his immense and lasting credit, looked me in the eye and said without a smirk or the slightest tone of condescension, “Then why don’t you go online to get it?”

And he was right! Honesty blast! When I’ve said something asinine I know it right away and MF was straight enough to say, “Yeah, I agree with you!” I laughed (well, chortled) and recovered by sharing my feelings about 12 Years A Slave when I caught it the previous night at the Palm. And then we talked about the feelings everyone seemed to be having after it ended. And that was all right.

And then my dp friend Svetlana Cvetko (Inequality For All, Inside Job) stepped in and started speaking with him, and then maybe ten minutes later I sauntered over and said, “Michael, could I get a photo for my column?” And Fassbender said, “You know what, man? I’d rather not.” But not in a snide or dismissive way. It was almost a pleading thing. His eyes seemed to say, “Do you get this? It’s not you…I just don’t feel like it.” And I said, “That’s cool, man…no worries.” And we gave each other a little upper-arm, top-of the-shoulder reassurance pat and that was that.

I have to leave (and I really wish it weren’t so) by 9:15 or thereabouts in order to make a 12:30 flight from Durango to LAX. I’m missing the 9 am Salinger screening. There’s a huge aesthetic gulf between your film-festival journo-distributor-buyer elites (endless merriment for Glenn Kenny) and regular Joes & Janes with mainstream sensibilities. People like Nebraska and Labor Day, which I’m not so high on. And they seem to be cool or mezzo mezzo toward the films I love/worship — Inside Llewyn Davis, All Is Lost, 12 Years A Slave, etc. Everyone likes Gravity. I never saw Tim’s Vermeer although not for lack of trying. I meant to share a brief chat I had with Michael Fassbender at the 12 Years A Slave party — I’ll do that this afternoon. I finally uploaded the mp3 of my chat with Alfonso Cuaron — here it is.

Boxoffice.com‘s Phil Contrino has begun a petition to try and influence Warner Bros. to arrange special-event bookings of Gravity and 2001: A Space Odyssey as a double-bill. On IMAX screens, for instance. “2001 is a film that was meant to be viewed on a big screen,” he writes. “If Gravity really deserves to be compared to 2001, then Warner Bros.– the studio behind both films–and exhibitors around the globe should treat movie fans to a double feature.”

Around 2:30 pm today Gravity director Alfonso Cuaron and I did a sit-down in the rear of the Sheridan chophouse. We talked for 45 minutes; could have gone two or three hours. We spoke about Gravity, of course, but steered clear of too much technical talk. Cuaron supposed what Stanley Kubrick would have to say about Gravity in regards to 2001: A Space Odyssey. He also spoke about decreasing movie-sophistication levels among today’s general audiences. And declared himself a general advocate of HFR cinematography. He said that he added grain to the final look of Gravity because, being “an old fart,” he loves a little texture (although his ten-year-old daughter doesn’t). Cuaron also said he’s more of a High Noon than a Rio Bravo fan, which earns him a gold star in my book. Not a bad discussion if I do say so myself.

Gravity director and co-writer Alfonso Cuaron — Sunday, 9.1, 2:55 pm.

During a Telluride-spnosored outdoor chat at the Abel Gance cinema (l to r.) Alfonso Cuaron, Jonas Cuaron, Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy.