Can’t find an embeddable version, so you’ll need to click the Australia logo Click above to be carried off to very pretty Luhrmannland. Looking more and more like Out of Africa meets The African Queen — not that there’s anything wrong with that. But not sure how easy it will be to top Meryl, Robert, Kate and Humphrey. Not to mention Pollack and Huston. And Africa.

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1fZSemg3iM[/youtube]

Official sales pitch: “The emotional story of a man who will change the lives of seven strangers.” [None of them in the audience, however.]

The zig-zag path from Fitzgerald short story to Fincher epic is outlined in the NYTimes, following The Curious Case of Benjamin Button across a minefield of interpretations (a comedy starring Martin Short!), as the property was passed many hands over the past two decades (Speilberg and Spike Jonz among the directors once attached.) It’s a rewrite history that began in the early ’90s with producer Ray Stark; stalled when the artisic demands could not be fulfilled until technology caught up; and re-ignited when Forrest Gump author Eric Roth’s script landed at Paramount — with particuar focus on Brad Grey and his desire to occasionally “serve art and commerce in the same picture.”

Under Mr. Grey, who took charge of Paramount in 2005, the studio has been an aggressive player in the Oscar game. But usually it has sought awards through its Paramount Vantage division, which is now cutting staff and looking for crowd-pleasers as much as award contenders. “Babel,” a best-picture nominee in 2007, and “There Will Be Blood,” nominated as best picture this year, both came from that unit.

The article has ‘Oscar’ in the headline, offers a year-end rundown of the same titles we’ve been discussing for Best Picture for months, and poses a December showdown based on early impressions from industry insiders:

Some publicists who specialize in Oscar campaigns are privately predicting a year-end shootout between “Button” and “Frost/Nixon,” a planned December release from Universal Pictures, directed by Ron Howard and with Michael Sheen and Frank Langella in the title roles. The films have been seen by few, but the campaign machinery is already lining up behind them.

Though the time-span of Fitzgerald’s story extends from the 1860’s to World War I, Fincher’s adaptation shifts the action forward so that it now begins in the Twenties and bridges more than 80 years of New Orleans history all the way through Katrina.

Roger Ebert, reviewing Cool Hand Luke in 1967, a 1400-word history lesson on the evolution of our attitudes about heroes and how Paul Newman became the ultimate personification of the anti-hero:

“He’s been in movies where he is a fairly ordinary guy in a fairly ordinary situation. He’s more or less like the people he hangs around with, except he won’t be pushed. He knows his own mind.

The bad guys in his movies don’t like that, and so they try to break him. And he fights back, no matter how much it hurts. If the characters he has played stopped there, they would be more or less conventional heroes. But they don’t. Although they exhibit heroic stubbornness and integrity, they’re not very likable.

For on thing, they’re loners. For another, they don’t seem to have basic human feelings. They do rotten things and don’t fell bad. They’re cold and aloof, and their enemies are usually fairly average people, with a sense of humor. People just like us. We’d break a guy like Paul Newman if we had the chance, because he’s a troublemaker, a malcontent, a loner. Won’t have a drink with the boys. Doesn’t give to the United Fund. That’s the kind of guy he played in all those movies, beginning with H (”The Hustler,” “Hud,” “Harper,” “Hombre”). He smiled at the idiots who were crossing him. He didn’t care what people thought. And a subtle change took place: The hero stopped wanting to be a hero.

There’s much more. It’s Ebert at his best describing Paul Newman at his peak. Not to be missed. Check out one of the most-watched Newman tributes after the cut, and another clip to help remind us that what we’ve lost can be rediscovered every time we click “play.”

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Epic in the purest sense of the word. Apple HD trailers here.

I think now we’ve seen enough so that this qualifies as more than a guess: Best Cinematography nomination for Claudio Miranda, and I’m all in for another 7-8 nominations in categories across the board.

[UPDATE: Much sharper version to replace the previous youtube clip. A movie that depends on the strength of its graphic impact to deliver the full force of its style deserves the best presentation possible.]

Hope nobody’s getting tired of trailers. Try to enjoy the surplus; we’ll be crying when the steady stream dries up. Watch it in hi-def at moviefone, and I’ll post an HD version here as soon I can find one embeddable. Newish poster after the cut.

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Thanks to Alex Billington at Firstshowing.net for the reminder about Cannes Camera d’Or winner, Hunger, the story of IRA martyr Bobby Sands’ last days during his 1981 hunger strike. Though a difficult movie to watch, Alex thinks Hunger deserves recognition for its cinematography and says, “the film has enough cinematic value to be called a work of art.”

Maybe not as dreamlike and tantalizing as the teaser poster, but a beautiful Metropolis-under-glass terrarium all the same. Probably best that promotional teasers for Synecdoche, New York stay away from trying a literal explanation of the puzzle-box complexity of the film, but this poster works for me because it manages to convey the unlikely juxtapositions of familiar cityscapes. Urban organisms like New York are pretty friggen surreal in everyday experience, so it doesn’t take a huge leap of mental gymnastics to ramp that reality up to the next valence of mind-bending 4-D origami narrative structure.

(Handy trailer accessibility after the cut, for anyone who missed Sasha’s links last week)

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Poster after the cut.
[UPDATE: Featurette we've seen before, but higher quality than the one posted months ago.]

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Remember the Matt Damon interview that we all enjoyed and admired 100%, when everybody joined hands, sang Kumbyah, made s’mores, and told ghost stories before we paired off in unlikely couples and slipped off to zippered tents to make out? Oh, happy hopeful topic! Here’s another video sure to bring us all together in a totally non-partisan spirit of mutual respect, clumsy fondling, and national unity. From collegehumor.com:

After hearing Matt Damon’s brilliant comparison of a Sarah Palin presidency to a bad Disney movie, I called up Sam Reich (our Director) and said “Let’s make a trailer for what that movie would look like.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1lOiy3j-K0[/youtube]

Looks beautiful — and probably too subdued for Oscar. But let’s never loose sight of the fact that awards coverage involves more than the Oscars. We have the Spirit Awards and various critics groups to consider, too, and their choices are often more in line with individual personal taste than the Oscars. Andrew O’Hehir, Salon, says it’s “a profoundly American film that’s nonetheless rooted in the European tradition of improvised, lo-fi naturalism”:

There’s plenty of dramatic incident in “Ballast,” including a couple of shootings and Marlee’s attempt to resurrect the defunct family store, and the acting of Hammer’s nonprofessional cast is impressive. But audiences primarily in search of plot will be frustrated, because the central experience of the film is visual and emotional. Violence and tenderness alike are dwarfed by cinematographer Lol Crawley’s wintry wide-screen landscapes, and the film’s adults will have to join forces to prevent James from disappearing into them.

Sounds exquisite. Poster after the cut.

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SWM seeking short-term no-strings thrill-seeking partner.
Me: Supernaturally attractive, killer blue eyes. You: Exotic sex kitten, some sort of accent. Must enjoy eating out, spontaneous car chases, long walks through the desert, international intrigue and ’splosions. Mutual interest in ridding world of evil a plus. No druggies, game players or double agents please.

We’ve mentioned Man on Wire several times as an almost certain nominee for Best Documentary. Swept up in the general consensus that it’s one of the very best films of the year, apparently we’ve taken it for granted by never featuring the trailer. Correcting that oversight now. Our good friend Craig Kennedy at Living in Cinema has been raving about Man on Wire since he saw it at LAFF in July. Craig bestows 5-star reviews only a little less frequently than he hands out bailouts to crooked bankers, so when a movie receives the LiC 5-star rating, you can bank on this: it’s really something special. (extended trailer after the cut)

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Just a reminder that the Gurus’ Top 10 is not that different from the AD readers Top 10, based on our poll — more than a month ago. The significant difference being the sudden emergence of Slumdog Millionaire at TIFF (Slumdog wasn’t on our August Poll at all.)

Does this mean AD Readers are as smart as the Gurus of Gold? I’d say smarter. Because you guys had your list lined up weeks ago, and you’re not giving up on The Dark Knight.

Sure, I’m biased, but except for the absence of Slumdog Millionaire (which nobody was talking about in August) the AD Readers Poll looks to me like a more solid ranking of top contenders than the predictable predictions the Gurus are giving us. Of course, we have our secret weapon, don’t we? Founding Guru and Awards Daily Fearless Leader, Sasha Stone, who’s taught us everything we know about Oscar forecasting.

When we retake the poll in a week or two in the light of fresh developments, no doubt Slumdog Millionaire will jump to frontrunner status. I’d encourage everyone to hold tight to your devotion to The Dark Knight for now (It’s the only title in the top 5 any of us has actually seen, after all). As if you need my encouragement to pledge allegiance to the film that’s generated more passionate feelings than any other movie this year. Also, can anyone say with certainty that Australia still won’t dazzle its way into the final five? We’re all guessing at this point, but I’m guessing no matter what Baz Luhrman gives us for Christmas it’ll more exciting than the pair of socks I usually expect from Ron Howard.

Breakdown of the chart comparisons and details of our August 20 Poll after the cut.

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I’ll say this: The trailers and posters for W. are getting progressively more sophisticated and interesting.  The more it veers into surreal absurdity the more I like it, slouching into a crude groove of Mad Hatter sociopathic slapstick that sure feels a helluva lot more slick and subversive than its ideological nemesis this month — the rancid-smelling farce-blossom, An American Carol.   Is it just me, or does this edit of the material begin to scoot W. closer in style to Stone’s Natural Born Killers than anything else in his filmography?