Grantland award-season columnist Mark Harris, who seems to file every three weeks or so, has embraced the popular view that Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity is a Best Picture lock as well as the admittedly popular but curious view that Sandra Bullock is all but guaranteed a Best Actress nomination. I accept the latter scenario but can’t understand what everyone is so excited about. Unless everyone is secretly embracing the Sasha Stone view that it’s a very significant thing for a 49 year-old actress to carry a huge film like Gravity and lend a certain emotional quality and obviously contribute to its success, and that a vote for Bullock is a vote for better, stronger roles for 45-and-older women, which I agree with. I just don’t get what’s so great about her performance. Because all I get from it are needles.

In a recently posted Rotten Tomatoes q & a interview, Nebraska‘s Alexander Payne discusses Gravity in a way that I found…well, amusing. RT’s Luke Goodsell tells Payne that “one of the things that’s constant in your career is that you seem attracted to stories about characters in transition, if not outright life crisis. Is there a particular appeal to that kind of scenario?” And Payne says, “Am I really alone in that? Aren’t all great stories about characters in transition? Isn’t it always about character revealed through times of major or minor life crisis?”

Goodsell: “A lot of great movies, yes, but not all of them. You’re right in that you’re not alone in that, it just seems like a very defining trait across your films.

Payne: “I don’t know what to say about it. I’ll think about it. [Laughs] I appreciate the observation but yeah, I don’t know. What’s a movie that doesn’t have that? Even…you know, I just saw Gravity — I’m just pulling this out of a hat because I saw it the other day — and it’s Sandra Bullock in the haunted house, right, but in space?

I saw the slightly shortened cut of Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska (Paramount, 11.15) last night, and this morning I tapped out a letter to Payne. About halfway through I figured I might as well share it. We’re all talking to each other in the open these days so what the hell. I began by saying that Mark Orton‘s theme music “really sunk in last night. I heard and felt it in Cannes, of course, but last night was different. It got to me on some deeper, more vulnerable level. I tried to buy the Nebraska soundtrack online but it’s not available until mid November. I really want to share that theme (the main-title music heard in the beginning) in the column so people can get into a bit before the film opens.

“Secondly I’m wondering what happened to Will Forte‘s indoor chat (in a gift shop or a post office) with that older pretty woman in that home town (i.e., the one that Bruce Dern came from and which Stacy Keach lives in) at the very end. This woman knew Dern way back when and has a thing or two that she remembered about him, but in the new cut that scene is gone — she’s just standing on the sidewalk and looking at Dern and Forte as they pass by in the truck. That was a poignant moment she had with Forte, I thought, in the Cannes version. It worked. Tell me if I’m wrong but I wasn’t dozing off and I didn’t hit the bathroom at all during last night’s screening. Update: For some mysterious reason I didn’t process this scene even though it’s included in the new cut.

I’ve been slacking on Oscar Poker podcasts so long they look like up to me. This morning Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone and I discussed the leading Best Picture contenders and all the attendant issues. Principal topics: 12 Years A Slave (including the “Steve McQueen problem” and the coming pushback), American Hustle, Saving Mr. Banks, the probable (if not yet confirmed) postponement of Martin Scorsese‘s Wolf of Wall Street, Nebraska, Captain Phillips (which is having its big L.A. premiere tonight), Spike Jonze‘s Her, Ben Stiller‘s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the possibility that George Clooney may be punking everyone with current Monuments Men assessments, and ongoing concerns about Bruce Dern possibly not making it as a Best Actor nominee for Nebraska. We’re pulling for you, Bruce! Again, here’s the mp3.

Every year a Hollywood Foreign Press Association committee decides that this or that award-quality film should be categorized as a comedy or musical. Their calls are sometimes bizarre, to put it mildly. A story by Hollywood Reporter award-season columnist Scott Feinberg says that Blue Jasmine, for example, will end up in a Musical/Comedy slot because it costars “funnymen” Alec Baldwin, Louis C.K. and Andrew Dice Clay. This for a film that is clearly modelled upon and in many ways resembles A Streetcar Named Desire, one of the great dramatic tragedies of the 20th Century.

Feinberg also foresees the HFPA labelling Before Midnight, Frances Ha, Inside Llewyn Davis, Nebraska and Philomena as comedies — the standard apparently being that if characters in the above films say anything snippy or snarky or sardonic or smartly allusive (which they do on occasion)…anything that results in a slight chortle or guffaw during a screening…they’re comedic. June Squibb briefly flashes her privates in Nebraska? It’s a comedy. The snooty Steve Coogan makes a few smart cracks at Judy Dench‘s expense in Philomena? It’s a laugh riot. I’ve at least agreed with the HFPA in one respect — Joel and Ethan Coen‘s A Serious Man (’09) is definitely a comedy.

“It also seems [as if] Bruce Dern‘s position in the Oscar race is questionable,” Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet wrote yesterday. “Many have issues with him being pushed in the lead actor category, feeling his role is secondary to that of [Nebraska costar] Will Forte‘s, which means both he and Robert Redford are skating on thin ice with some strong contenders at their heels.”

Just to be clear, I’m no Dern disser. I want this legendary actor to have his Day In The Sun. I’m just saying I’m concerned and all-but-convinced that the poor guy will be nudged out of contention if he and Paramount stick to their Best Actor campaign. If he makes it, great…but I worry for him.

Leonardo DiCaprio‘s The Wolf of Wall Street performance “looms large, though the dark comedy nature of the film’s marketing has me doubting its overall chances,” Brevet continues. “Ditto Foxcatcher‘s Steve Carell, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty‘s Ben Stiller, American Hustle‘s Christian Bale and Her‘s Joaquin Phoenix are still unknowns at this point and could quickly climb into the race, leaving Dern and Redford in the dust, and perhaps even Forrest Whitaker.”

Sayeth a friend of All Is Lost: “I’m not sure I follow Brevet’s reasoning about Redford being on thin ice…to use the quote of the week, ‘It’s September, for God’s sake!'”

The just-released poster for Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska (Paramount, 11.22) tells you it’s a serious award-season film about the stark realities of aging. (Obviously similar to the 2002 one-sheet for Payne’s About Schmidt.) My white hair is so sparse that I might as well be bald plus I have a neck wattle plus I’ve won a million bucks from Publisher’s Clearing House plus I’ve been an abusive drunk for most of my life plus my old friends and relatives sit around their living rooms and watch TV like immobile zombies. No sedatives, no soothing bromides to speak of, no emotional comforts of the usual sort.

In order for Nebraska‘s Bruce Dern to elbow his way into one of the five nominee slots for the Best Actor Oscar he’ll have to…look, I’m in no way rooting against the guy. Dern is one of the great fellows of our time. I’m just saying he’s making it hard on himself by not going for Best Supporting Actor. As far as I can see 12 Years a Slave‘s Chiwetel Ejiofor, Dallas Buyers Club‘s Matthew McConaughey and All Is Lost‘s Robert Redford (also the most likely recipient of a Gold Watch career tribute nomination) are locked and loaded. That leaves two slots and that means standing up to Wolf of Wall Street‘s Leonardo DiCaprio, American Hustle‘s Christian Bale, Captain Phillips‘ Tom Hanks and The Butler‘s Forrest Whitaker. Does anyone honestly think Dern’s got the horses to push aside three of these four guys? Man up, eat humble pie and go for supporting. The blogoscenti will stand up and cheer.

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”?

In a 9.10 piece called “Should There Be (Gasp!) 20 Best Picture Nominees This Year?”, Variety‘s Timothy Gray has written that the 2013 Best Picture race could include 12 Years a Slave, August: Osage County, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Fruitvale Station, Gravity, Inside Llewyn Davis, Lee Daniels’ The Butler, Philomena, Prisoners and Rush. Not to mention…wait, he’s calling the drop-dead brilliant All Is Lost a “dark horse”? He’s lumping All Is Lost in with no-chance-in-hell 42, The Fifth Estate, Invisible Woman and Kill Your Darlings? What does Gray have against J.C. Chandor and Robert Redford?

Other dark horses, Gray says, are Labor Day, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom and Nebraska. And then you need to add the unreleased American Hustle, The Counselor, Foxcatcher, Her, Lone Survivor, The Monuments Men, Out of the Furnace, Saving Mr. Banks, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and The Wolf of Wall Street.

I don’t know anything but the Best Picture nominees will most likely be the following: 12 Years A Slave, American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street, All Is Lost, Foxcatcher, Saving Mr. Banks, Inside Llewyn Davis, Dallas Buyer’s Club and (I find this absurd but everyone keeps telling me it’ll happen) Lee Daniels’ The Butler. In a fair and just world Fruitvale Station — a much, much better film that The Butler — would also be a nominee.

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.

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.