A couple of friends were kicking around the Best Actor field yesterday, and they came up with 17 feasible Best Actor contenders. My revised list goes to 19. But after you boil it down, there are closer to eight or nine performances that will probably make the grade in most people’s minds and therefore go the distance. Obviously nobody knows very much at this stage (i.e., the ass wind is our trade wind) but the discussion right now boils down to “we’ve heard things about this and that Venice/Telluride/Toronto film, and it seems as if these names and performances in these apparent award-season films might possibly connect and combust and lift off the ground, especially if favoring moods and winds of the Movie Godz prevail.” But come down to earth: To really break through a performance has to deliver something strong and different and curiously penetrating, and this kind of performance doesn’t grow on trees or happen that often.

Looking More Favorable Than Most: 1. Michael Keaton, Birdman — an allegedly crackling presence + career redemption + the former Batman star who kind of blackballed himself and then finally came in from the cold with a dark satire about same; 2. Eddie Redmayne, Theory of Everything — depends on the film (duhhh) but something about this being Redmayne’s time plus the standard Oscar-bait lure of struggling with a disability plus a Beautiful Mind-ization of Stephen Hawking seems somehow right and fated to ignite IF there’s a mesmerizing musical score; 3. Steve Carell, Foxcatcher — it is written in a subsection of the Dead Sea Scrolls that he who ups his indie-actor cred in a first-rate melodrama by adopting a spazzy vocal style and making himself grotesque by wearing a prosthetic nose will be Oscar-nominated; 4. Kevin Costner, Black and White — easily among the best Costner performances ever (the flip side of Field of Dreams) and arguably his best ever in this child-custody film, which advance-peekers are calling the most honest, intelligent and revelatory drama about racial relations in this country since Do The Right Thing, and directed and written by a white man at that (i.e., Mike Binder); 5. Bill Murray as himself in Theodore Melfi‘s St. Vincent — a role that reportedly fits him like a glove; 6. Mark Wahlberg, The Gambler — a good role (i.e., self-destructive, well-born college professor), possibly a breakthrough for Wahlberg; 7. David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King in Selma — who knows but if it’s a half-decent film with three great scenes Oyelowo could hit it out of the park (remember he’s also in A Most Violent Year); 8. Chadwick Boseman, Get On Up — a much more authentic, indeed transformative performance than the trailer indicates; Boseman clearly immersed himself thoroughly to become the Godfather of Soul; 9. Timothy Spall, Mr. Turner — the only problem being that I found it difficult to understand what Spall was saying half the time, a possible remedy being subtitles on Academy screeners; 10. Ben Affleck, Gone Girl — Rosamund Pike is said to be the big knockout but Affleck, too, is said to be standing on very firm melodramatic ground (although he may be punished down the road for putting on the Warner Bros. cowl); 11. Miles Teller, Whiplash — you need a token Millenial among Best Actor nominees to persuade under-35s to watch the Oscar telecast, on top of which Teller is manic and sweaty and flat-out electrifying as an aspiring world-class drummer.

“The Twee Revolution,” a month-old Atlantic piece by Jonathan Parker, was sent to me this morning by Sasha Stone. She said that the tone of Parker’s writing reminded her of my stuff on some level. Parker has some fun with his own feelings of twee repulsion but he’s essentially reviewing Mark Spitz‘s “Twee: The Gentle Revolution in Music, Books, Television, Fashion, and Film.” My favorite Parker passage:

“Is Twee the right word for it, for the strangely persistent modern sensibility that fructifies in the props departments of Wes Anderson movies, tapers into the waxed mustache-ends of young Brooklynites on bicycles, and detonates in a yeasty whiff every time someone pops open a microbrewed beer? Well, it is now. If [Spitz’s] book is a little all over the place—well, so is Twee. Spitz hails it as ‘the most powerful youth movement since Punk and Hip-Hop.’ He doesn’t even put an arguably in there, bless him.

“You’re Twee if you like artisanal hot sauce. You’re Twee if you hate bullies. Indeed, it’s Spitz’s contention that we’re all a bit Twee: the culture has turned. Twee’s core values include ‘a healthy suspicion of adulthood’; ‘a steadfast focus on our essential goodness’; ‘the cultivation of a passion project’ (T-shirt company, organic food truck); and ‘the utter dispensing with of cool as it’s conventionally known, often in favor of a kind of fetishization of the nerd, the geek, the dork, the virgin.”

Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson, Bob Dylan…what happened? I’ll tell you what happened. Harrelson had met Dylan once, and figured that on the strength of that plus Harrelson’s fame and reputation as a cool guy and a cannabis-appreciating alt.culture type that Dylan would automatically open his doors on the spur of the moment….”amigo!” This is the myopia of celebrity. They don’t all assume that their fame will open pretty much any door, but 95% of them do.

In a 7.14 posting, GQ‘s Lauren Bans has written about having asked Apple tech support if it’s possible to shoot a private sex tape on your iPad and then have it accidentally upload into the Cloud with many, many people suddenly able to watch it. Apple’s answer: “Impossible.” The sex-tape creator “would have to make special settings for anyone to be able to see the sex tape [on some kind of] shared stream.”

The premise of Jake Kasdan‘s Sex Tape (Columbia, 7.18), which I’m seeing tonight at an all-media in Century City, is that an accidentally shared sex tape is a distinct possibility. I had always presumed this was a bogus concept, but it’s nice to hear that Apple tech support agrees. 10 pm Update: I’ve just come back from the screening, and I can at least say that Kasdan lays the blame for the accidental uploading on a synching software that Segel’s character has created called “Franken-synch.”

I was struck by three things in this Rose McGowan interview by HuffPost Live‘s Ricky Camilleri. One, I’ve always thought of her as Tallulah Bankhead without the alcohol, and now that she’s 41 McGowan really owns that attitude, I feel. Two, the semi-astonishing story (found near the 13-minute mark) about McGowan’s agent having told her to keep quiet during meetings because her assertive intelligent manner was “intimidating men” and spoiling the vibe. And three, the fact that McGowan looks different than she used to. Her lips aren’t Meg Ryan-ish but they’ve been worked on a bit. McGowan was in a 2007 car crash and had to do a little re-sculpturing to look hot again, or so I’m told.

About an hour ago Boxoffice.com‘s Phil Contrino reminded me that Stanley Kubrick‘s Eyes Wide Shut opened 15 years ago (on 7.16.99 to be precise), and asked if I had any look-back views I could share. I sent him a summary of a piece that I wrote in March 2000 that summed them up:

“I [once] referred to Eyes Wide Shut as a ‘perfectly white tablecloth.’ That implies purity of content and purpose, which it clearly has. But Eyes Wide Shut is also a tablecloth that feels stiff and unnatural from too much starch.

“Stanley Kubrick was one of the great cinematic geniuses of the 20th century, but on a personal level he wound up isolating himself, I feel, to the detriment of his art. The beloved, bearded hermit so admired by Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg (both of whom give great interviews on the Eyes Wide Shut DVD) had become, to a certain extent, a guy who didn’t really get the world anymore.

Israel Horovitz‘s My Old Lady (Cohen Media Group, 9.10) obviously costars Kevin Kline, Maggie Smith and Kristin Scott Thomas. This is one of those trailers that pretty much gives you the whole movie save for the last beat or two. It’s based on a Horovitz play that opened in 1996. Here’s a 2007 Denver Post review of a local production. Boilerplate: “Mathias (Kline), an all-but-destitute New Yorker, travels to Paris to sell a valuable left Bank apartment he’s inherited from his estranged father. Once there he discovers a refined old woman Mathilde (Smith) living in the apartment with her daughter Chloe (KST). Mathias quickly learns that he will not only not get possession of the apartment until Mathilde dies, but that he’s on the hook for monthly expenses of around $3K.” Terrific.

The 2015-2016 Oscar season will offer at least two high-prestige period flicks about outsiders going through all kinds of pain and anguish and prolonged suffering — Martin Scorsese‘s much-dreaded Silence, an adaptation of Shesako Endo‘s novel about Jesuit priests in 17th century facing violence and persecution, which Paramount will open in November 2015, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s The Revenant, a 19th Century revenge saga about a fur trapper who is mauled by a grizzly bear, left for dead, robbed. And then the fun really kicks in. Liam Neeson, Issei Ogata, Andrew Garfield, Ken Watanabe and Adam Driver will costar in the Scorsese. Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy and Will Poulter will costar in the Inarritu, which will shoot from October 2014 to March 2015 in British Columbia and Alberta.

David Gordon Green‘s Manglehorn, an Al Pacino flick about an aging ex-con living in Austin, will play Telluride and Toronto, I’m hearing. Holly Hunter, Harmony Korine and Chris Messina costar. Mangelhorn wasn’t on my radar until now. Mainly because I wasn’t sure if I wanted it on my radar. Partly because I don’t know who Green is any more. Well, I guess I know. He’s the guy who began as a young Terrence Malick and then gradually shifted into comedies only to shift back again into a kind of quirky indie mode — a guy who will make any kind of smallish movie about any kind of headstrong loser he can find.

That and he likes to shoot ’em fast and crank ’em out like sausage. Right before Manglehorn Green directed Prince Avalanche and Joe, and also produced Land Ho!

The lack of architectural intrigue…the banality, really…and the general feeling of a community of small-time, limited-vision merchants congregated on a sloping, smoggy thoroughfare. The only places I recognize are the Whisky a Go Go (“Welcome to the Party”) at Sunset and Horn, and Gil Turner’s, which appears at the very end. You can almost feel the atmosphere of oppressive ’50s mediocrity in the unexceptional sunlight. The “’60s” had only begun a few months earlier (the assassination of JFK was the kickoff) and were just starting to take shape. Lyndon Johnson in the White House, “Freedom Summer”, the first year of the Beatles, etc.

I happened upon Gravity on HBO this evening, somewhere around the 30-minute mark. George Clooney was already dead (right?) and the terrified Sandra Bullock was tumbling head over heels and going “aahh! aahh!” For some reason I watched the remaining two-thirds. The fact that this technically impressive thrill ride managed to get serious traction for the Best Picture Oscar is even more of a head-scratcher now than it was earlier this year. Now more than ever it’s clear this was essentially a high-tech perils-of-Pauline movie. It dazzled by virtue of the first-rate VFX, and that’s what classed it up and made it seem so special to the easily impressed. I will always respect the exacting, highly skilled efforts of director Alfonso Cuaron and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, both of whom won Oscars, but their real masterwork was Children of Men…c’mon.

Now that things have calmed down and we’re less than two months from the start of a new season we need to admit for the record that Gravity became a highly favored Best Picture nominee because it was expertly sold and hyped as something it really wasn’t at the end of the day — i.e., a movie that had a soul. I just watched it and I’m telling you that it’s just about gears and levers and buttons that were pushed exactly the right way. And a good portion of the Academy wanted to bypass (or more precisely had decided to ignore) 12 Years A Slave to give this thing a Best Picture Oscar because the tech stuff was so cool?

For whatever reason I’d never watched Woody Allen‘s Men of Crisis: The Harvey Wallinger Story until yesterday (’71). An anti-Nixon mockumentary. The short was produced as a television special for PBS and was scheduled to air in February 1972, but was pulled shortly before the airdate. PBS officials feared losing government support. Allen cited the experience as an example of why he should “stick to movies”. It has a Take The Money and Run after-vibe.