“What do we know about the Best Actor race right now?,” Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone wrote this morning. “We know that George Clooney is, to my mind, in the frontrunner’s spot for The Descendants. Right behind him, I figure, is Michael Fassbender in Shame.”

Due respect but I have to say no on Fassbender. His performance is too malignant and frosty, and you don’t get a Best Actor nomination for a performance that includes walking around your New York apartment with your elephant-sized appendage hanging out and bouncing against your upper thigh. Portraying a sexual pervo in a clinically accurate way is not what stirs hearts and minds. Fassbender is an iceman in this thing.

Stone doesn’t mention in her piece that she hasn’t seen Moneyball yet, so take her assessments with a grain.

“And in the major upset category,” adds Stone, “is Christopher Plummer for Barrymore, already called for the win by Jeff Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere and mentioned in this story by Tom O’Neil. But if we’re talking frontrunners, the snake in the grass in the Best Actor race is The Artist‘s Jean Dujardin, who will charm the pants off of anyone who sees the film.”

In a GQ interview with Mark Harris, Clint Eastwood and Leonardo DiCaprio have issued non-denial denials that J. Edgar is focused in any significant way on a gayish subcurrent inside the decades-long relationship between J. Edgar Hoover (DiCaprio) and partner/ally/confidante Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer).

On one hand, Eastwood says “it’s not a movie about two gay guys [but] a movie about how this guy manipulated everybody around him and managed to stay on through nine presidents. I mean, I don’t give a crap if he was gay or not.”

But he also says that Hoover and Tolson “were inseparable pals. Now, whether he was gay or not is gonna be for the audience to interpret. It could have been just a great love story between two guys. Or it could have been a great love story that was also a sexual story.”

DiCaprio elaborates: “What we’re saying is that [Hoover] definitely had a relationship with Tolson that lasted for nearly fifty years. Neither of them married. They lived close to one another. They worked together every day. They vacationed together. And there was rumored to be more. There are definite insinuations of…well, I’m not going to get into where it goes, but…”

I wrote the following about six weeks ago: “Knowing Clint as I do, the Gay Edgar Hoover angle will be ‘there,’ but in a vaguely suppressed, played-down way, which of course would be appropriate for the rigidly homophobic era during which the saga of J. Edgar and Clyde took place.

In April 2010 I reported about Dustin Lance Black‘s script, to wit:

“The scenes between Hoover and FBI ally/colleague/friendo Clyde Tolson (whose last name Black spells as ‘Toulson’) are fairly pronounced in terms of sexual intrigue and emotional ties between the two. Theirs is absolutely and without any qualification a gay relationship, Tolson being the loyalty-demanding, bullshit-deflating ‘woman’ and Hoover being the gruff, vaguely asexual ‘man’ whose interest in Tolson is obviously there and yet at the same time suppressed.

“The script flips back and forth in time from decade to decade, from the 1920s (dealing with the commie-radical threat posed by people like Emma Goldman) to the early ’30s (the focus being on the Charles Lindbergh baby kidnapping case) to Hoover’s young childhood to the early ’60s (dealing with the Kennedy brothers), the mid to late ’60s (Martin Luther King‘s randy time-outs) and early ’70s (dealing with Nixon‘s henchmen). Old Hoover, young Hoover, etc. Major pounds of makeup for Leo, I’m guessing.”

That’s all she wrote for an independent, stand-alone, buckaroo-style version of Kris Tapley‘s In Contention…say adios. The highly respected awards-focused site is folding itself into Hitfix.com and will eventually migrate its archives. Tapley will maintain ownership and all In Contention content. Yes, Guy Lodge is along for the ride. “We’re simply plugging into a wider audience and higher traffic margin with all the infrastructure and tools that HitFix brings to the table,” he says. “And indeed, they will be selling all advertising.”

A rather silly political statement written by Harvey Weinstein was read last night by Olivia Wilde at the TIFF premiere screening of Butter (Weinstein Co., 10.21) . It spoke of a linkage between Jennifer Garner ‘s uptight racist harridan and Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann. Just a mild goof, but one that might up the interest factor in Jim Field Smith‘s cultural comedy, which premiered at Telluride to somewhat mixed reviews.

“I would like to take this moment to formally invite Republican Congresswoman from Minnesota and Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann to co-host with me the big premiere of Butter in Iowa in a few [weeks] from now,” Weinstein wrote. “I know Michele will already be in Iowa for the caucus, so we can save some money on airfare and travel.

“I would of course be more than happy to fly in the other leading members of the Tea Party movement to make an entire day of it. We could take some math classes in the morning to help balance the budget, brush up on the Constitution in the afternoon, play some ping-pong and then maybe some verbal ping-pong on gay rights and women’s rights. Especially the right to choose.

“But at night we can all go hand-in-hand to the premiere of Butter, a fun and important film where we’ll share some popcorn and laughs. These are the kind of bipartisan effort that makes America great. I look forward to hearing from Michele and I’m particularly looking forward to those classes on the Constitution.”

This is somewhat analagous to Orson Welles or RKO publicity inviting Marion Davies to the premiere of Citizen Kane.

Another Blake Lively-type iPhone photo thing is going on today. The work of a phone hacker, apparently, possibly stemming back to last March. These shots always seem to hit the web one way or the other. Why, then, do actresses take them in the first place? To what end except a likelihood of eventual annoyance and embarassment?

Hollywood Reporter award-season tracker Scott Feinberg saw Moneyball yesterday and is now calling Bennett Miller‘s film the TIFF premiere that “got the biggest awards boost by far,” particularly concerning Brad Pitt‘s shot at a Best Actor Oscar. The Pitt thing is unquestionable, as far as I can see. I’m betting this will become accepted doctrine when Moneyball opens on 9.23.

Believe it or not a fellow columnist was declaring a couple of days ago that Pitt will be Best Actor nominated for his performance in The Tree of Life with Moneyball acting as backup. Nope. People vote for the character as well as the performance, and as good and forceful as he is in Terrence Malick‘s film, nobody is going to vote for Pitt’s unhappy and frustrated child-swatting dad with the Marine haircut. Not against the lovable, driven, occasionally pissed-off Billy Beane who can’t stop worshipping his daughter.

Feinberg believes, in fact, that the race might boil down to Pitt vs. Leonardo DiCaprio as Gay Edgar Hoover in Clint Eastwood‘s film. Non-vested “people” who’ve seen J. Edgar have told Feinberg, he says, that Leo’s performance “will be very hard to beat.” Maybe so, but right now I see the Best Actor race as a three-way between Pitt, Leo and George Clooney in The Descendants…with the edge, I feel, belonging to Clooney because of the affecting father-daughter current in Alexander Payne ‘s film.

At the end of the day, in fact, the double dose of father-daughter connections in The Descendants and Moneyball will, I believe, make it difficult for DiCaprio to win. Leo is playing, after all, a bulldog hardass with a pinched spirit — a man who lived only for his FBI fiefdom and who never had kids or any real love in his life, and who wasn’t especially acknowledging of the bond between himself and his loyal lifelong friend-and-partner Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer).

Again — people vote for the characters and not just the craft that went into making them come alive. Yeah, I know — how does that explain malevolent Mo’Nique winning for Precious?

Last night I attended an Italian-themed gathering, organized by Frank Public Relations, that was about announcing the debut of the Perugia Film Festival, which will happen in late March 2012. Naturally I’d like to cover because it’ll mean hanging out in a beautiful hilltop city in Umbria for four days. Who wouldn’t, right? The festival is being run by Hamptons Film Festival director Karen Arikian with festival president Emanuele Rossi, and is being produced by Stratus Media Group’s Paul Feller and Paul Seull.

Stratus Media’s Paul Feller, Karen Arikian, SM’s Paul Seull at last night’s event.

The festival’s focus will be on “craftsmanship” as well as “aesthetic and technological innovation,” according to a release. A celebration of the finest below-the-line contributors, in other words. One aspect will be to highlight production designers and costumers. The festival will be non-competitive and run from 3.22 through 3.25. A preview event will happen in Perugia on October 1st and 2nd, or a little more than two weeks hence.

The about-to-pop Blurays of the original Star Wars trilogy “are, in a word, amazing,” writes Bluray.com’s Casey Broadwater. “If you grew up watching these films on VHS you’re going to be blown away. And I don’t say that lightly. When I popped in A New Hope and saw that first great close-up of R2 in all his worn-in glory — the scuff marks finely resolved in high definition — I knew I was in good hands. And I kept having moments like this.

“Seeing the weft of the fabric of Obi-Wan’s cloak as he tells the stormtroopers ‘these are not the droids you’re looking for. ‘ The level of detail inside the Millennium Falcon. The mottled facial texture of the Yoda puppet in Empire. The almost palpable ripples of Jabba’s skin in Jedi. You’ll notice background details you’ve never noticed before. Imperfections in the model work. Aspects of the costumes that previously escaped your attention.

“[And the] lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 6.1 surround tracks are perfect. Not perfect like, ‘Yeah, they seem generally true-to-source and, no, there’s no muffling or anything,’ but perfect like, ‘Yes…hell, yes…this is what sci-fi should sound like.’ Perfect as in completely exemplary in all the ways you’d hope they’d be. Superlative. Grade-A. Certified Gold.

“If you’ve yet to experience John Williams‘ Star Wars theme in glorious 6.1 channel lossless audio, you’ve got quite a treat coming. Williams’ cues are some of the most recognizable and hummable in the known universe, and they sound spectacular here, from the lilting and quiet heartswelling of Leia’s theme to the balls-out, brash militancy of Vader’s unstoppable death march, which feels like the brass section of the orchestra is clubbing you in the face with their instruments. In the best way imaginable.

“All of the music is grand, filling every channel, with distinct placement of the instruments in the soundspace. Rich, dynamic, full — you name it, that’s what these scores are.

“And that’s before we even get into the good stuff — the sound effects. Sound design has been a part of the movies since the late 1920s, but the Star Wars series emphasized it in a way that few films had previously done. The audio really is integral to the storytelling. Think ‘Star Wars sounds’ and what do you hear? The electric hum of swinging lightsabers. The crisp pew-pew of laser blasters. The low ambient, oscillating rumble inside the Death Star. The high-pitched language of the Jawas. Darth Vader’s heavy, respirator-assisted breathing. You could go on and on. How many films can claim to have made noises iconic?”

There are no prequels The prequels doen’t exist. I never saw the prequels.

I so love Neil Young‘s voice and phrasings and those great ballsy rocker chords and deeply stirring chord changes that I was willing to sit through Jonathan Demme‘s Neil Young Life. Even though it’s a fairly undisciplined, loose-shoe doc made up of (a) Young singing several of his songs in a May 2011 Toronto concert at Massey Hall and (b) footage of Young cruising through northern Ontario in a 50 year-old gas guzzler.

It’s a nice way to kill time, but 20 or 25 people bailed during the first 45 minutes, and then I bailed to write this.

The most visually distinctive thing about the doc is the way Demme stays super close on Young’s face, pushing his unshaven-old-bulldog features into our consciousness. I was sitting there muttering, “Do you have to keep showing me Neil Young’s white-whiskered waddle?” The truth is that Young, now 66, looks like Orson Welles‘ Quinlan in Touch of Evil. Then again Welles was only 42 when he made that classic noir in 1957 or early ’58.

John Calley, one of the most sophisticated and filmmaker-friendly studio chiefs of all time whose golden years were at Warner Bros. from 1968 to 1981 (and then later at Sony from 1996 to 2003), has left the earth. He was 81 years old, or close to that. I love the fact that when Calley was handed the Academy’s Thalberg award in 2009, he voiced an uncommonly frank remark about the life of a studio executive: “You’re very unhappy for a long period of time. And you don’t experience joy. At the end you experience relief, if you’re lucky.”

My first screening yesterday was Marc Forster‘s Machine Gun Preacher. It’s a unexceptional boilerplate thing about a criminally-inclined druggie (Gerard Butler) who finds Jesus and then goes off to the Sudan to build houses and wipe out the evil warlords, etc. It’s not a dreadful film but one completely untouched by any kind of vision or inspiration. “What’s happened to Marc Forster?,” I asked a couple of friends yesterday. “He used to be the artful Monster’s Ball guy, and now he’s made a so-so film in the style of an anonymous hack.”

Then came William Friedkin‘s Killer Joe, which is based on a Tracy Letts play. It’s technically adept and Matthew McConaughey is okay as a chillly psychopath type, but it’s primarily about a demimonde of intellectually challenged low-lifes ( Emile Hirsch, Thomas Haden Church, Gina Gershon, Juno Temple). After 40 minutes or so I was asking myself, “Why am I watching a movie about low-rent trailer-trash scuzballs nosing around like pigs in the gutter?” A friend says that Letts’ stagey dialogue is part of the problem, and that so far his films (this and Friedkin’s Bug) haven’t been satisfactorily translated to film.

Then I caught a 2 pm showing of Juan Carlos Fresnadillo‘s Intruders, which is basically another spooky-monster-in-a-child’s-bedroom movie in the tradition of Guillermo del Toro‘s Pan’s Labrynth. I felt I was seeing nothing original wbatsover. I’ve been feeling more and more fatigued and irritated by CG monsters who make that same deep digital-gurgly sound. Please…stop it!

Ralph Fiennes‘ Coriolanus was the last film of the day, and the only one with intelligent, commendable high-end chops. And yes, Vanessa Redgrave is a Best Supporting Actress contender, no question. Fiennes is a fine performer and a first-rate director who can handle action scenes with the best of them. Cheers to costars Gerard Butler, Brian Cox, Jessica Chastain, James Nesbitt and Paul Jesson.

One problem: I was able to understand maybe 20% of the dialogue. Maybe it was the sound system or the echoes in the Elgin theatre but at most I was able to decipher an occasional phrase or word or what-have-you. I’ve absorbed and enjoyed Shakespeare all my life, on stage and in films, and we all know that Shakespeare takes a little while to get used to and “hear.” But I couldn’t find the groove last night. And I’m in the older and educated Shakespeare movie demographic.

Think about the millions of under-40s moviegoers who wouldn’t watch this film with a gun at their head. How will they react, if they somehow find themselves watching it in a theatre? Solution: American colloquial subtitles that would offer Tobacco Road rephrasings of Shakespeare’s dialogue. I know — a dreadful idea. A metaphor for the end of civilization, etc. But we’re living in a debased and under-educated culture, and we might as well deal with it as practically we can.