Writer-director-star Maïwenn in "Polisse."

Credit: Sundance Selects

It may be the first French frontrunner in the history of the Academy Awards, but on home turf, "The Artist" had to settle for third place in the César Award nominations. Michel Hazanavicius's awards-guzzler landed a robust 10 nominations in the so-called French Oscars, but the top tally went to another Cannes prizewinner, actress-turned-filmmaker Maïwenn's sprawling law-enforcement drama "Polisse," with 13. "The Minister," a complex political drama that won acclaim in Un Certain Regard at Cannes but doesn't seem to have much travel potential, took 11 nods.

Of course, it's not an entirely fair fight. With its vast ensemble cast, Maïwenn's film was always going to have a numerical advantage: seven of its nominations are in the acting categories. Still, I wouldn't be surprised to see "Polisse" trip up the "Artist" juggernaut at home: more envious César voters may feel inclined to take the international phenomenon down a peg or two, and they'd in turn feel noble rewarding the tough topicality of "Polisse," a study of personal and professional tensions in the Paris police department's Child Protection Unit. 

Diane Keaton in "Darling Companion"

Credit: Sony Pictures Classics

SANTA BARBARA - The 27th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival kicked off tonight with the world premiere of Lawrence Kasdan's "Darling Companion," starring Diane Keaton and Kevin Kline. Unfortunately I couldn't make it down in time to catch it, but I'm here now and ready for a few days of awards season awareness.

The Santa Barbara fest smartly positioned itself a number of years back as a destination for Oscar contenders. Being the biggest phase two exposure of that sort, the festival's profile has sky-rocketed since Roger Durling took over executive director duties some time ago, adding lengthy tributes scattered throughout the fest as well as the Kirk Douglas Award (which is handed out every October at a private dinner -- this year's recipient was Michael Douglas). This year, a number of Oscar nominees will be appearing at the fest to have a little love thrown their way.

Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer in "The Help."

Credit: Walt Disney Pictures

Positioned almost a month away from the Academy Awards ceremony, the Screen Actors' Guild Awards are frequently something of a buzzkill in the Oscar race -- not because they don't make for a perfectly entertaining evening in themselves, but because they have a nasty habit of sealing up the competition in a number of categories, making life rather dull for attentive awards-watchers.

A certain degree of overlap with the Academy membership makes their routine foreshadowing of the acting Oscar winners -- in the 17-year history of the awards, nearly 70% of the performances honored by SAG went on to take the big prize -- inevitable, though since the awards calendar was reshuffled a few years ago, they tend to answer some questions in the race a bit too early. With this year's acting races already showing little wiggle room, don't count on the Guild to open things up.

Jeff Cronenweth received a second consecutive Oscar nomination for David Fincher's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."

Credit: Columbia Pictures

(The Oscar Guide will be your chaperone through the Academy's 24 categories awarding excellence in film. A new installment will hit every weekday in the run-up to the Oscars on February 26, with the Best Picture finale on Saturday, February 25.)

As is often the case, the cinematographers' branch didn't exactly search far and wide for contenders in this category, settling instead on a quartet of high-profile Best Picture nominees, plus one major December release (and guild nomination hog) that surely came close to cracking the top race. Four of the men selected, moreover, are previous nominees, in keeping with this year's unofficial theme of sticking with the familiar.

The scramble for the fifth slot on the ballot was, presumably, a tight one: moodily lensed by Hoyte van Hoytema, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" was a surprise ASC nominee that seemed to be building late momentum in the final stages of voting, but wound up ceding its spot to more postcard-pretty work from a two-time Oscar champ who had been frozen out of the guild list. Oh, well. 

The nominees are...

A scene from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"

Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

On Tuesday, Stuart Craig and Stephanie McMillan respectively earned the ninth and fifth Oscar nominations of their careers for serving as the production designer and set decorator of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.” They shared a win for "The English Patient" in 1996 and this year's mention is the fourth they have earned for the Harry Potter series, making the Best Art Direction category the place where the franchise (which wrapped itself up in 2011) has seen its greatest Oscar success.

The world of the boy wizard has been the duo's driving professional task for quite a while. Indeed, Craig (who also won Oscars for “Gandhi” and “Dangerous Liaisons”) is one of the few consistent department heads on the series going back to 2001. He interviewed with "The Sorcerer's Stone" and "The Chamber of Secrets" director Chris Columbus about the first movie over a decade ago. When he was offered the job, he says he jumped at it and never looked back. McMillan was shortly thereafter called by Craig and agreed to hop on board.

Liam Neeson in "The Grey."

Credit: Open Road

Director Joe Carnahan emerged as an up-and-comer with the release of 2002’s “Narc,” (the follow-up to his directorial debut “Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane”). The director began his career at the tail end of the “indie heyday” of the 1990s when driven artists really could carve a path to the studios out of the festival circuit with a no-budget film featuring actors with light resumes and zero notoriety.

After a notoriously rocky start in the world of big budget event films (having quit before being fired from “Mission: Impossible III”), Carnahan began to create a name for himself as a helmer of B-to-B+ level light-hearted actioners such as “Smokin’ Aces” and “The A-Team.” With tomorrow’s release of “The Grey,” however, the director will introduce audiences to a new dimension of both his psyche and work, one that might have made an impact on the current Oscar season had it hit theaters when originally anticipated.

A scene from "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy."

Credit: Focus Features

Judging from the reactions of readers and colleagues alike, it seems a lot of people have trouble untangling the proudly knotty, restlessly non-linear espionage narrative of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" -- "It's my favorite film of the year that I didn't understand at all," one friend quite sincerely admitted to me. Some have even speculated that the film might have done better in the Oscar race if voters had found it easier to follow. Being acquainted with both John Le Carré's novel and the previous TV adaptation thereof, it's with no great sense of superiority that I say I found the film clear enough, but I was still fascinated by the estimable David Bordwell's thorough breakdown of just what's going on in the film, decoding both its structure and imagery. [David Bordwell] 

Marion Cotillard, Alison Pill, Owen Wilson and Woody Allen on the set of "Midnight in Paris." 

Credit: Sony Pictures Classics

Amid the geeky cascade of trivia, facts and figures that always follows they unveiling of the Oscar nominations, one stat -- courtesy of our friend Chad Hartigan -- stood out to me: the average age of this year's Best Director nominees, at 61, is the highest it's been in the history of the awards. Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick and Alexander Payne -- a quartet of well-seasoned American auteurs who, by the time of the awards, will all be over the age of 50 -- have all been to this particular dance before. The lone foreigner and first-time nominee, Michel Hazanavicius, may be the upstart of the pack, but at 44, he's hardly wet behind the ears.

So, the movies the Academy liked most this year happened to be directed by a bunch of middle-to-three-quarter aged men. Big deal. That says more about industry hierarchy than the preferences of the Academy, right? In any case, last year saw a thirtysomething man win the prize; the year before, a woman. If "The King's Speech" had been successfully helmed by Selena Gomez, they'd probably have handed her the Oscar too. 

Eli Roth and Brad Pitt in cinematic remixing master Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds."

Credit: The Weinstein Company

One good sting deserves another. There has been a fair amount of discussion recently about “The Artist”’s score. Guy addressed the “controversy” surrounding the film in his piece on that full page Variety ad that Kim Novak took out accusing Michel Hazanavicius of “rape” (referring to the director's use of Bernard Herrmann's love theme from “Vertigo”). But a story on NPR’s “All Things Considered” about the art of the modern movie trailer reminded me of just how common, and in many cases effective, re-purposing is.

The reporter points to the use of a particular section of the score from the (not so widely seen) 2003 drama “The Life of David Gale” in trailers for “The Iron Lady,” “Munich,” “Milk” and, interestingly enough, “The Artist.”

“It works every time," John Long, co-founder of Buddha Jones, an LA-based trailer production house said in the interview. "Sometimes in the back of your mind you know, 'I'm not going to use that cue. That cue's been used to death,'" Lee Harry, Long's partner added. "But I want to evoke a feeling. And this piece does it perfectly."

Anne Seibel and Hélène Dubreuil were nominated for their work on Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris."

Credit: Sony Pictures Classics

(The Oscar Guide will be your chaperone through the Academy's 24 categories awarding excellence in film. A new installment will hit every weekday in the run-up to the Oscars on February 26, with the Best Picture finale on Saturday, February 25.)

The art directors ended up with a slate packed with Best Picture-contending films this year, the one outlier being the closing installment of a franchise that has been a perennial fixture of the category. Nostalgia rules the field, reflective of the thematic undercurrent at play throughout the season.

Lavish productions like "Anonymous" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" and more finely-tuned, thematically relevant work like that seen in "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and "Drive" were left off the final tally after scoring with the guild. What remains is an understandable quintet and a brawl between two films for the win that will be evident throughout a number of categories this season.

The nominees are…