Like it or not, Zack Snyder‘s Batman vs. Superman (Warner Bros., 7.15) will star Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Henry Cavill as Superman. But lost in the Batfleck hubbub is a question of basic plot dynamics. The title indicates the superheroes at cross purposes, but what kind of misunderstanding could result in these Dudley Do-Rights going up against each other? (The Superman-Batman comic book series, launched in ’03, “explored the camaraderie, antagonism, and friendship between its titular characters,” says one description.) And what kind of mano e mano tension can result from a mortal crimefighter duking it out with an extra-terrestrial with super-powers? One presumes that David S. Goyer‘s script will divest Superman of his spectacularness.

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In years past a good percentage of that gang of smoothies known as the Movie City News’ Gurus of Gold have voiced mainstream Oscar sentiments. Many seem to have a liking for those stodgy, politically-correct, right-down-the-middle, conventional-sentiment choices of your average 63-year-old Academy member. And so it’s significant, I think, that when recently asked to pick the top 15 most likely Best Picture contenders, the groovy Gurus put Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave (Fox Searchlight, 10.18) right at the top — i.e., tied for first place with David O. Russell‘s American Hustle and Lee Daniels’ The Butler.

So this is it, fellas — the Gurus are making room for the McQueen because it’s the “right” movie, the politically noble film to get behind this year…c’mon. That’s the early sentiment, at least. There’s a readiness to accept that, to let it in. The upcoming Toronto Film festival showings will provide a significant reading, needless to say.

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The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg has posted a piece that supports my 8.21 view that Bruce Dern‘s “Woody” role in Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska screams “snarly eccentricity for its own sake”, and that the smartest strategy on Paramount’s part would be to campaign Dern not as Best Actor but as a Best Supporting Actor contender. I laid out my case in a piece called “Can Dern’s Woody Get Traction As Best Actor?”. Hitfix/In Contention’s Kris Tapley and Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone disagreed and sent along their arguments, which I posted with their permission.

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As I’ve said for many, many years, the inspiration, tenacity and toil that go into winning any Oscar will always warrant honor and admiration, but it’s not the win-or-lose aspects of the Oscar race but the award-season arguments that provide the real pleasure and uplift. Community-wise, I mean. Because these arguments serve as a kind of communal therapy session or Socratic dialogue about who and what we are — as individuals, as a culture — and why. It was certainly a form of self-expression to say that you were a fan of The King’s Speech or even to predict in a wink-winking Dave Karger sort of way that it would win the Best Picture Oscar. If you went for The Kings Speech you were with the Soviets in an August 1968 kind of way, and if you stood with The Social Network guys you were more of a Prague Spring kind of guy.

So with award season about to commence with the start of the Telluride Film Festival six days hence, what will this year’s arguments be about?

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I spent an hour this morning putting up a metal hanging bar between a living-room doorframe. Some call it a chinning bar, but it’s for my lower back. The idea is to hang from it for 45 or 60 seconds with no support from my legs. It’s a horizontal black cylinder thing encased in a rubber pad and held up by two round, hard-plastic anchor cups. The first thing was to make sure that I screwed in the cups in precisely the same spot on the opposite sides of the frame, and just getting that part right was a bitch, let me tell you. I drove nails into the spots where the Phillips-head screws would go to pave the way, but three of these little guys refused to screw all the way in. I tried and tried and started quietly swearing after a while. I finally took a chisel and tried to just hammer them in, which I sorta kinda succeeded at. I’m not too bad at carpentry but I’m impatient. I get mad at things. But it’s up now, thank God, and it really does make my lower back feel pretty great after hanging from it.

In my 8.21 riff about James DiEugenio‘s “Reclaiming Parkland,” I asked for “some decisive piece of smoking-gun evidence” that disproves the Warren Report. This morning Joe McBride, the longtime film writer and author of the recently released “Into The Nightmare,” sent me an image of an 11.22.63 internal FBI memo sent by Alan H. Belmont to Clyde Tolson, special assistant to J. Edgar Hoover.

“Okay, so Belmont is reporting that they found two bullets,” I replied to McBride. “The pristine magic bullet, presumably, and another lodged in Kennedy’s head ‘behind his ear,’ right? No conspiracy whacko or official agency has ever asserted or even denied to my knowledge that a bullet was found lodged in JFK’s head so this was…what? An indication of a conspiracy to keep the truth from coming out? Or a wrongo due to the heat of the moment and the human capacity to misread or mishear or otherwise screw up, right? Or am I missing something?”

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“Inside Llewyn Davis is a sardonically funny American art film about frustration and wintry despair and the Sisyphusian struggle of a folk singer who’s talented and cares about his art but isn’t good or lucky enough to make it to the next level, and the week-long journey he goes through that takes him from a kind of semi-resigned ‘fuck me’ slumber mentality to an ‘oh, to hell with it…this shit is infuriating…I hate folk music!’ feeling. Bob Dylan, trust me, is going to love this thing. He’s going to effing swear by it.” — posted from Cannes on Sunday, 5.19.

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I can only surmise that Ben Affleck has reportedly agreed to be the new Batman because (a) it’ll be a huge payday, (b) he’s figuring this might be his last shot at the Really Big Money as an actor, and (c) he’s thinking about taking care of his kids down the road. I can think of no other reason. On its own merits it’s a very, very odd career move. It’s like he’s reverted to the guy he was before be became a reputable director.

It’s not that big of a deal but last night a change.org petition protesting Afleck-as-Batman gathered 3,000 signatures.

Gotta love that Llewyn Davis, man. I’m going to buy this movie on Bluray early next year and watch it another half-dozen times, at least. I know that. I’ve thought it over and decided that it’s probably better at this stage (three and a half months from the 12.5 commercial opening) not to show too much in these trailers and just…you know, supply little hors d’oeuvres. A taste here, a taste there.

I’ve just sent the following to a few of my award-season columnist colleagues, to wit: “We all know that Oprah Winfrey‘s performance in The Butler (i.e., as Forrest Whitaker‘s loyal if occasionally frustrated wife) is on almost everyone’s preliminary short list for Best Supporting Actress right now. Two days ago The Daily Beast‘s Kevin Fallon wrote that “the media mogul is an early Oscar frontrunner…not only could she win, she really should.” Now, be honest. If Winfrey’s performance had been given by, say, Queen Latifah or Octavia Spencer — and I mean exactly the same performance with the same finessing, same quality, same dramatic impact — what are the odds that you guys would be jumping up and down and calling either performance an automatic Best Supporting Actress contender?

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Last Monday I tapped out a piece called “Brand Name Preferences,” and the next day I wrote some of my journalist pallies looking for responses. The two best responses came from Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson and Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil. But first a portion of my letter to these guys:

“What I wrote on Monday is a description of the essence of what’s wrong if not malignant concerning the Hollywood awards-following community — when faced with a choice between STANDING UP FOR THE REALLY WOWSER EXCEPTIONAL PERFORMANCE THAT DESERVES AWARDS ATTENTION (at least in the early stages between now and, say, late November or better yet December) and hanging back and going “YEAH, OKAY, BUT IT WON’T WIN OR EVEN GET NOMINATED BECAUSE A FEW BRAND-NAME ACTRESSES HAVE A BETTER SHOT”, too many of you guys almost ALWAYS choose the latter. You’re birds sitting on the fence going “caw! caw! caw!”

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So if the U.S. Army had adopted a more sympathetic or supportive attitude toward PFC Bradley Manning’s gender identity disorder he wouldn’t have passed along 700,000 secret files, videos and diplomatic cable to Wikileaks? This morning on the Today show Manning’s attorney announced that his client, recently sentenced to 35 years in Fort Leavenworth prison for the biggest breach of classified documents in U.S. history, said on Thursday he is “female” and wants to live as a woman named Chelsea. Before passing along the material did Manning tell Julian Assange, “Look, I need to be straight with you…I’m really not happy over being a man and I want to be a woman, and to be honest if this issue were resolved I probably wouldn’t be giving you this material.” And did Assange say, “I support you, Bradley, in your plan to eventually switch genders, but in all honesty…what the fuck does this have to do with you feeding me classified material? Actually, don’t answer that. Doesn’t matter. I just want the materials…whatever.”

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