“The King’s Speech” led the nominations with 12, followed by “True Grit” with 10, and just eight for “The Social Network” — still very much the front-runner in my opinion — and “Inception.” Though Anne Thompson sees the momentum shifting in a more royal direction, I think it’s a big mistake this time around to read too much into sheer quantity. For example, I would be surprised to see a huge number of non-“technical” awards for “True Grit” or “Inception.” (Roger Deakins’ “True Grit” cinematography and the amazing effects of Christopher Nolan’s team being very likely winners).

Considering where most of the awards have gone so far, the only thing really going for “The King’s Speech” and against the previously prohibitive favorite, “The Social Network,” is aforementioned traditional Oscar genre prejudices and the inevitable backlash most highly acclaimed and award winnings films get. However, outside of infantile attention-hog critic Armond White, I actually haven’t noticed a huge anti-“Network” backlash though there were some off-target feminist complaints. (A movie about an almost literal boys’ club is going to depict a boys’ club atmosphere.) In any case, the rather enormous and still ongoing on- and off-line backlashes against “American Beauty,” “Crash” and “Titanic” clearly didn’t hurt those films’ Oscar prospects one bit.

What we do see this year is a general tendency, Hailee Steinfeld’s terrific and hugely popular performance notwithstanding, not to give too many nominations to actors who are under-30 — unless they are leading men. And so James Franco and Jessie Eisenberg were both nominated for Best Actor while the quietly remarkable work of Andrew Garfield was ignored in the “supporting” category, though he was arguably almost as much a lead as Eisenberg. (I guess there was never much shot for a surprise nomination for the flashier work of either Justin Timberlake or Armie Hammer.)

Though I dislike the term “snubs” — as if any movie has any particular right to a nomination from any given body in this hugely subjective and inherently unfair game — there were some interesting omissions. “The Town” got a supporting actor nod for Jeremy Renner, taking the slot that might have gone to a “Social Network” actor. That was it.

Also, I’m wondering if there was a prejudice against over-50 and/or less glamorous characters and actors this year. I’m personally a bit disappointed that Lesley Manville wasn’t nominated for “Another Year,” though not really surprised. (Manville looks fantastic in person, but her character gets progressively more bedraggled in the course of the film.)

As per Anne Thompson, there was some silly arguing that Manville should have been in the supporting category. Considering Oscar’s history in this regards, it’s a massively silly argument and I won’t bore you examples but suffice it to say her character dominates the film, for better or worse. Also, as I’ve said repeatedly, it’s not unlikely that some people blamed her for playing someone who was as irritating as she is pitiable only too well. However, the Mike Leigh film generated yet another in a long list of screenplay Oscar nominations for the auteur (a very neat trick by Leigh, as his films are not “written” in the usual sense of the word).

“Blue Valentine” and “Winter’s Bone” seem to be this year’s two token indies. Speaking of unglamorous actors, Paul Giamatti was not nominated for his Golden Globe award-winning turn in “Barney’s Version.” On the other hand, Melissa Leo did get a well-deserved nod for her rather amazing (more amazing if you know her from elsewhere) work in “The Fighter,” a contender with six nominations.

The somewhat arty, hand-drawn, and more adult-oriented animated entry from Belgium, “The Illusionist,” was a wild-card nominee in the animation category over some very popular CGI animated comedies. However, if “Toy Story 3” doesn’t win, I’ll eat Woody’s hat.

Another non-surprise surprise was the exclusion of this year’s most popular and one of its most acclaimed documentaries from that category. Anne Thompson mentions that “Waiting for Superman” director Davis Guggenheim has been under some fire for over-simplifying certain aspects of his story — a charge that seems to be leveled against almost every documentary to achieve any level of success. This happens every year with documentaries, it seems.

All in all, this is looking like one interesting and fun Oscar race. Only now I really have to see “127 Hours” — along with all the Oscar pools, I should probably be running one myself on how little liquor bottles it’ll take me to get through the whole arm-sawing scene.

In case you haven’t seen them elsewhere, the complete list of nominations is below.

BEST PICTURE
127 HOURS (Fox Searchlight)
An Hours Production Christian Colson, Danny Boyle and John Smithson, Producers
BLACK SWAN (Fox Searchlight)
A Protozoa and Phoenix Pictures Production Mike Medavoy, Brian Oliver and Scott Franklin, Producers
INCEPTION (Warner Bros)
A Warner Bros. UK Services Production Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan, Producers
THE FIGHTER (Paramount)
A Relativity Media Production David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman and Mark Wahlberg, Producers
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (Focus Features)
An Antidote Films, Mandalay Vision and Gilbert Films Production Gary Gilbert, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte and Celine Rattray, Producers
THE KING’S SPEECH (The Weinstein Co)
A See-Saw Films and Bedlam Production Iain Canning, Emile Sherman and Gareth Unwin, Producers
THE SOCIAL NETWORK (Sony Pictures)
A Columbia Pictures Production Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti, Michael De Luca and Ceán Chaffin, Producers
TOY STORY 3 (Walt Disney)
A Pixar Production Darla K. Anderson, Producer
TRUE GRIT (Paramount)
A Paramount Pictures Production Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, Producers
WINTER’S BONE (Roadside Attractions)
A Winter’s Bone Production Anne Rosellini and Alix Madigan-Yorkin, Producers

BEST ACTOR
JEFF BRIDGES – TRUE GRIT (Paramount)
JAVIER BARDEM – BIUTIFUL (Roadside Attractions)
JESSE EISENBERG – THE SOCIAL NETWORK (Sony Pictures)
COLIN FIRTH – THE KING’S SPEECH (The Weinstein Company)
JAMES FRANCO – 127 HOURS (Fox Searchlight)

BEST ACTRESS
ANNETTE BENING – THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (Focus Features)
NICOLE KIDMAN – RABBIT HOLE (Lionsgate)
JENNIFER LAWRENCE – WINTER’S BONE (Roadside Attractions)
NATALIE PORTMAN – BLACK SWAN (Fox Searchlight)
MICHELLE WILLIAMS – BLUE VALENTINE (The Weinstein Co)

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
CHRISTIAN BALE – THE FIGHTER (Paramount)
JOHN HAWKES – WINTER’S BONE (Roadside Attractions)
JEREMY RENNER – THE TOWN (Warner Bros)
MARK RUFFALO – THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (Focus Features)
GEOFFREY RUSH – THE KING’S SPEECH (The Weinstein Company)

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
AMY ADAMS – THE FIGHTER (Paramount)
HELENA BONHAM CARTER – THE KING’S SPEECH (The Weinstein Company)
MELISSA LEO – THE FIGHTER (Paramount)
HAILEE STEINFELD – TRUE GRIT (Paramount)
JACKI WEAVER – ANIMAL KINGDOM (Sony Pictures Classics)

BEST ANIMATED PICTURE
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (DreamWorks Animation)
TOY STORY 3 (Walt Disney)
THE ILLUSIONIST (Sony Pictures Classics)

BEST DIRECTOR
DARREN ARONOFSKY – BLACK SWAN (Fox Searchlight)
DAVID FINCHER – THE SOCIAL NETWORK (Sony Pictures)
TOM HOOPER – THE KING’S SPEECH (The Weinstein Co.)
JOEL AND ETHAN COEN – TRUE GRIT (Paramount)
DAVID O. RUSSELL – THE FIGHTER (Paramount)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
ANOTHER YEAR, Mike Leigh (Sony Pictures Classics)
THE FIGHTER, Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson, Story by Keith Dorrington & Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson (Paramount)
INCEPTION, Christopher Nolan (Warner Bros)
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT, Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg (Focus Features)
THE KING’S SPEECH, David Seidler (The Weinstein Co)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
127 HOURS, Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy (Fox Searchlight)
TOY STORY 3, Michael Arndt, Story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich (Walt Disney)
THE SOCIAL NETWORK, Aaron Sorkin (Sony Pictures)
WINTER’S BONE, Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini (Roadside Attractions)
TRUE GRIT, Joel Coen & Ethan Coen (Paramount)

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Algeria, Hors la Loi (Outside the Law) (Cohen Media Group) – A Tassili Films Production
Canada, Incendies (Sony Pictures Classics) – A Micro-Scope Production
Denmark, In a Better World (Sony Pictures Classics) – A Zentropa Production
Greece, Dogtooth (Kino International) – A Boo Production
Mexico, Biutiful (Roadside Attractions) – A Menage Atroz, Mod Producciones and Ikiru Films Production

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATOGRAPHY
Black Swan (Fox Searchlight) – Matthew Libatique
Inception (Warner Bros.) – Wally Pfister
The King’s Speech (The Weinstein Company) – Danny Cohen
The Social Network (Sony Pictures Releasing) – Jeff Cronenweth
True Grit (Paramount) – Roger Deakins

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Exit Through The Gift Shop (Producers Distribution Agency) A Paranoid Pictures Production Banksy and Jaimie D’Cruz
Gasland – A Gasland Production Josh Fox and Trish Adlesic
Inside Job (Sony Pictures Classics) – A Representational Pictures Production Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs
Restrepo (National Geographic Entertainment) – An Outpost Films Production Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger
Waste Land (Arthouse Films) – An Almega Projects Production Lucy Walker and Angus Aynsley

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
Killing In The Name – A Moxie Firecracker Films Production Nominees to be determined
Poster Girl – A Portrayal Films Production Nominees to be determined
Strangers No More – A Simon & Goodman Picture Company Production Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon
Sun Come Up – A Sun Come Up Production Jennifer Redfearn and Tim Metzger
The Warriors Of Qiugang – A Thomas Lennon Films Production Ruby Yang and Thomas Lennon

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN FILM EDITING
Black Swan (Fox Searchlight) Andrew Weisblum
The Fighter (Paramount) Pamela Martin
The King’s Speech (The Weinstein Company) Tariq Anwar
127 Hours (Fox Searchlight) Jon Harris
The Social Network (Sony Pictures Releasing) Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter

ACHIEVEMENT IN VISUAL EFFECTS
Alice in Wonderland (Walt Disney) – Ken Ralston, David Schaub, Carey Villegas and Sean Phillips
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1 (Warner Bros.) – Tim Burke, John Richardson, Christian Manz and Nicolas Aithadi
Hereafter (Warner Bros) – Michael Owens, Bryan Grill, Stephan Trojanski and Joe Farrell
Inception (Warner Bros) – Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley and Peter Bebb
Iron Man 2 (Paramount and Marvel Entertainment, Distributed by Paramount) – Janek Sirrs, Ben Snow, Ged Wright and Daniel Sudick

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN ART DIRECTION
Alice in Wonderland (Walt Disney) – Production Design: Robert Stromberg, Set Decoration: Karen O’Hara
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1 (Warner Bros.) – Production Design: Stuart Craig, Set Decoration: Stephenie McMillan
Inception (Warner Bros) – Production Design: Guy Hendrix Dyas, Set Decoration: Larry Dias and Doug Mowat
The King’s Speech (The Weinstein Company) – Production Design: Eve Stewart, Set Decoration: Judy Farr
True Grit (Paramount) – Production Design: Jess Gonchor, Set Decoration: Nancy Haigh

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN COSTUME DESIGN
Alice in Wonderland (Walt Disney) – Colleen Atwood
I Am Love (Magnolia Pictures) – Antonella Cannarozzi
The King’s Speech (The Weinstein Company) – Jenny Beavan
The Tempest (Miramax) – Sandy Powell
True Grit (Paramount) – Mary Zophres

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN MAKEUP
Barney’s Version (Sony Pictures Classics) Adrien Morot
The Way Back (Newmarket Films/Wrekin Hill Entertainment/Image Entertainment) Edouard F. Henriques, Gregory Funk and Yolanda Toussieng
The Wolfman (Universal) Rick Baker and Dave Elsey

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES (ORIGINAL SCORE)
How to Train Your Dragon (Paramount) – John Powell
Inception (Warner Bros.) – Hans Zimmer
The King’s Speech (The Weinstein Company) – Alexandre Desplat
127 Hours (Fox Searchlight) – A.R. Rahman
The Social Network (Sony Pictures Releasing) – Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES (ORIGINAL SONG)
“Coming Home” from Country Strong (Sony Pictures/Screen Gems) – Music and Lyric by Tom Douglas, Troy Verges and Hillary Lindsey
“I See the Light” from Tangled (Walt Disney) – Music by Alan Menken, Lyric by Glenn Slater
“If I Rise” from 127 Hours (Fox Searchlight) – Music by A.R. Rahman, Lyric by Dido and Rollo Armstrong
“We Belong Together” from Toy Story 3 (Walt Disney) – Music and Lyric by Randy Newman

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM
Day & Night (Walt Disney) – A Pixar Animation Studios Production Teddy Newton
The Gruffalo – A Magic Light Pictures Production Jakob Schuh and Max Lang
Let’s Pollute – A Geefwee Boedoe Production Geefwee Boedoe
The Lost Thing (Nick Batzias for Madman Entertainment) – A Passion Pictures Australia Production Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann
Madagascar, carnet de voyage (Madagascar, a Journey Diary) – A Sacrebleu Production Bastien Dubois

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM
The Confession (National Film and Television School) – A National Film and Television School Production – Tanel Toom
The Crush (Network Ireland Television) – A Purdy Pictures Production – Michael Creagh
God Of Love – A Luke Matheny Production – Luke Matheny
Na Wewe (Premium Films) – A CUT! Production Ivan Goldschmidt
Wish 143 – A Swing and Shift Films/Union Pictures Production Ian Barnes and Samantha Waite

ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND EDITING
Inception (Warner Bros) – Richard King
Toy Story 3 (Walt Disney) – Tom Myers and Michael Silvers
Tron: Legacy (Walt Disney) – Gwendolyn Yates Whittle and Addison Teague
True Grit (Paramount) – Skip Lievsay and Craig Berkey
Unstoppable (20th Century Fox) – Mark P. Stoeckinger

ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND MIXING
Inception (Warner Bros) – Lora Hirschberg, Gary A. Rizzo and Ed Novick
The King’s Speech (The Weinstein Company) – Paul Hamblin, Martin Jensen and John Midgley
Salt (Sony Pictures Releasing) – Jeffrey J. Haboush, Greg P. Russell, Scott Millan and William Sarokin
The Social Network (Sony Pictures Releasing) – Ren Klyce, David Parker, Michael Semanick and Mark Weingarten
True Grit (Paramount) – Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff and Peter F. Kurland

As Anne Thompson reminds us, this is a weekend when, unlike the usual rather steep decline of ongoing films, we’ll see very small drops or, especially for family films, significant increases. The Box Office Mojo weekend chart, bears that out.

With no major new releases, “Little Fockers” suffered a 14.7% decline, which would be fantastic almost any other weekend, netting an estimated $26.3 million for Universal. That would be somewhat more impressive had the film not cost a ridiculous $100 million. On the other hand, after two weeks, it’s earned back that amount plus some change. Not bad for a movie that probably has the worst reviews of any recent major hit. (Among “top critics,” only funny guy Glenn Kenny failed to drub the movie with a review that double-damns with the faintest possible praise.)

Nipping at its heels, and perhaps very likely to be the more profitable film over time, was the Coen Brothers’ typically excellent first true-western, “True Grit.” Nikki Finke points out that Friday, New Year’s Eve, “Grit” actually earned a bit more than “Fockers.” I guess we can attribute that to the superior movie-going taste of the nation’s wallflowers. (What night did we see this again?) Still, the total estimated take was $24.5 million for Paramount. On the other hand, the price tag was a mere $38 million.Add to all of that a probable slate of Oscar nominations (though I doubt more than one or two wins) good word of mouth — the second week drop was a beyond miniscule 1.7% — and the proven ability of the Coens’ to make films that people continue watching decades later, and you’ve got one case of a studio being amply rewarded for taking a chance on an old school western. Westerns are, of course, deader than a doornail. The exception is when somebody makes a good one.

UPDATE: I failed to mention previously that, at over $86 million already generated by “True Grit,” this is also apparently by far the most successful Coen Brothers films so far by quite a lot. For comparison, “No Country for Old Men” made $76 million and change for its entire run, including a “Best Picture” Oscar win. Better yet, “True Grit” has an ending that won’t leave a significant portion of the audience angry or dissatisfied, so this film should have really significant legs. I doubt they’ll make another western any time soon, but if the Coens want to make “Truly Grittier,” no studio head would stop them.

Another Jeff Bridges showpiece, “Tron: Legacy,” held on fairly well in week 3 with a small 4.4% drop and a weekend estimated total of $18.3 million for Disney. It’s still about $30 million shy of making back its $170 budget, though I’m sure that’s just a week or two away. Still, this is no unalloyed coup. Guess I’m not the only person who wonders why the original “Tron” is even discussed today as anything other than a technological advance.

The New Year’s weekend was an overall bummer. It was down 26% compared to New Year’s 20010, and the year as a whole saw movie receipts declining very slightly. Anne Thompson says it went from $10.6 million to $10.5 million. She added that the real issue is not that seemingly tiny increase. It’s obscured by increasing ticket prices for 3D and other films, but that overall attendance declined by a “whopping” 5%, according to Thompson. I think we can attribute that to a stagnant economy, improving home entertainment options, and the inability of the industry to bring back the long-lost ability to turn movies into events worth getting out of the house for. Call me a complete and utter lunatic, but avoiding the insanely obviously cookie-cutter storylines and characterizations of most movies today might also help slightly.

Still, there was good news this week for a number of family films and Oscar hopefuls too numerous to mention. It also wasn’t bad for the two limited releases which came out last Wednesday. Both were rather downbeat films dealing with relationships unhappy, happy, and non-existent. “Blue Valentine,” with Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams as a married couple on their way to a break-up, emerged victorious from it’s battle to avoid a bookings-killing NC-17 with an R-rating and scored the best per-screen average of the holiday weekend, $45,000 in four theaters for a weekend estimated total of $180,000.

Meanwhile, “Another Year,” which I’ve been covering, started the New Year in, I’m guessing, reasonably OK fashion with $20,000 in six theaters for a total of $120,000. A film about a happy couple and they’re incredibly miserable friends and family members, a likely and definitely well-deserved Oscar nomination for Lesley Manville is the very low budget’s film’s hope for real profitability.

Lesley Manville began her career on the stage and British television, making her film debut with a minor role in Mike Newell’s 1985 melodrama, “Dance With a Stranger.” In 1988, she appeared in Mike Leigh’s worldwide breakthrough comedy, “High Hopes,” the first of six films so far with the director known for his uniquely collaborative approach. Notable roles in Leigh’s historically-based “Vera Drake” and “Topsy-Turvy” followed, along with numerous less well known films and television shows. It’s possible that she’s best known to the mass U.S. audience as Mrs. Cratchit from Robert Zemickis’ motion-capture “A Christmas Carol.”

In “Another Year,” Manville portrays Mary, a lonely and progressively more depressed alcoholic whose visits to the home of a contented therapist coworker (Ruth Sheen) and her husband (Jim Broadbent), become increasingly painful. It’s a powerful and all too real-seeming portrayal that has hit Manville’s career with enormous force.

Even without a huge number of awards, I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot of Manville from now on. During the post roundtable chatter, I half jokingly suggested that she should work on her American accent, and she reminded me that she had just recently finished doing the very American play by John Guare, “Six Degrees of Separation.”

Things got a bit interesting late in this group interview, when one of the other writers present asked a question which Manville, perhaps stung by some past public discussion of her short-lived late 1980s marriage to Gary Oldman, deemed overly personal. With a little luck, Lesley Manville will have to deal with more prying from less from the press in years ahead.

The first question was framed as a very well deserved compliment for Ms. Manville, her character could easily have been played as a sort of caricature. How did she avoid that?

The answer was that, under Mike Leigh rubric, without Manville, there really would have been no character to overplay. “I’m sure you’re all a bit familiar with how Mike works,” Manville said. “We don’t have a script. We start from absolutely nothing, and so the first thing we do is work one to one and create the characters with him. We had 18 weeks to do that before we started filming. I think by the time you get to the point where you’re improvising and then you’re starting to structure the scenes, Mike’s starting to think about what narrative [the film] is going to have and what it’s going to go, you’re so solid in the character. Any situation he puts you in, you know how the character’s going to react. It takes care of itself, which is a strange, roundabout way of answering your question. I suppose what I’m saying in essence is that you’re not considering things like [overplaying or underplaying], you’re just kind of being the character. Any situation that they’re in, they behave how they behave.”

Her character can really talk a blue streak. Did she come up with all of that?

“I did come up with a lot. All of the dialogue, all of the words, actually come from the actors as well. Mike does reduce it and tailor it and make it economical because, obviously, you can’t have dialogue that goes on and on and on forever and scenes that ramble on with great pauses. He has to give it a dramatic shape, but the actual words that are said come from the actor.”

Does Mike Leigh even give his actors a rough idea of the character he’d like them to play?

“No, he doesn’t do that at all. I’ll start to talk about people, different people I know, maybe somebody that I’ve just fleetingly met that morning — aspects of different people. He’ll start to steer it in a direction that he knows he wants it to go. When we’ve got a very rough shape of a person, very rough, we’ll go back to the beginning of their life and fill the life in. He doesn’t ever come and say, ‘Right, this is the kind of person I want you to play.’ He doesn’t lay it out like that. It happens in a much more sort of organic way.”

The next writer started to compare the Mike Leigh technique to psychiatry, which Manville readily agreed with. Does she find it harder or easier than conventional acting?

“I find it easier because I like working in this way. I often find it hard when you have a script and you’re desperately looking to find stuff in it that you can make something of, trying to work out where moments can happen. Also, a lot of the time you get the script in pieces. You might not get much help with it. You have to turn up and get your performance together and it’ll be a bit of a DIY job. I like working with Mike because I know it’s going to ask a lot of me. I know it’s going to be very collaborative and I’m going to have to come up with a lot of stuff. I find it incredibly liberating. I like improvising. I hasten to add that when we shoot we’re not improvising. Once we’re filming it, the dialogue is absolutely set…I just enjoy [the Leigh process], I really like it. You have to give yourself up to it, though. Leave your ego at home and not worry about ‘How big is my part going to be? Is she going to look good?’ You can’t have any of that stuff going on.”

Does the process get easier every time?

“I know that he’s going to take me somewhere different. That’s the great thing about it. He’s never got me to play the same character twice. That’s part of the deal. You go in and you’re going to play someone A, absolutely different to you and, B, different to anything else you’ve done with him before. So, it’s not going to be repetitive in that way…It’s a fantastic journey to go on, if you’re up for it. Not every actor would like him, I suspect. You really do have to give yourself up to it. Some considerations that might be important to actors like ‘How big is my part?’ and “Am I going to be playing a character who the audience is going to like?’ You have to put all of those things aside. I think those are lesser issues in England, anyway.”

What about the costumes, which play an interesting role in the development of the character of Mary? Did Manville discuss them a great deal with Leigh?

“Yes, with Mike, but also the costume designers and the set designers and make-up and hair. They’re all on board very early on. They’re working with us, helping to formulate the whole thing. They’re not just brought in at the end. So, the costume designer [Jacqueline Durran] came in with lots of clothes. She talked to me a lot. She talked to Mike. Then she came in and we just started trying things on and seeing what works. Mary is somebody who is trying to look young all the time. She’s dressing in bright colors and wanting to look sexy and all of that. She’s really trying hard. So, it was important that the costumes reflected that.”

Manville went on to describe the contrast between that straining-to-be-young look and how Mary appears in the final scene, which reflects the heartrending crisis she is going through. “All of that kind of glamorous side of her has been stripped away. We had a look for that last scene and it wasn’t quite right. It looked too nice, still. We really wanted her to look nothing like how you’d seen her in the rest of the film. So it got worse and worse,” Manville said with a laugh.

Some of the writers, myself slightly included, were having a bit of a hard time grasping just how little in terms of anything concrete the actors are given to work with at the very beginning of a Mike Leigh project. Though it should have been clear by this point in the interview, someone asked whether was there was a story at the beginning.

“No. I mean I think Mike has notions and themes. He has to cast it so he’s probably thinking, ‘I’ll have a couple’ but what kind of couple they’re going to be, until he starts working with Jim and Ruth on the characters [is not established]. I know it’s staggering for a lot of people to come to terms with, especially when you see the detail in the piece in the end. We started with nothing. I think in a way that’s why it is so rich, because the time has been taken up creating the characters. At the end of the day that’s what drives a film. That’s what captures an audience. That’s what you become interested in it. It isn’t a film with a kind of narrative that’s about cops and robbers. It’s not like that — which is why I think it travels so well — it’s a film about hearts and minds and heads and souls. The stuff of life. It means something to everybody the world over because all of those things touch all of our lives wherever you live. We all need love, crave love…”

Speaking of Mary’s need to appear young, did they set the age of the character?

“We did, but you never find out Mary’s age in the film. I think that was probably deliberate on Mike’s part. You see that she’s not as old as [Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent’s characters] Gerri and Tom. It’s kind of left vague. I suppose the important thing is that you see this woman hanging on to some kind of youth and not embracing what she’s becoming. She’s scared of the future. Mostly because she sees this dark hole of loneliness.”

What of the somewhat unlikely nature of the friendship between the very stable and mostly quite content, and definitely more intelligent, Gerri and the flighty and emotionally driven Mary?

“Their relationship was formed through work…I think that it’s that Gerri is a woman who embraces many aspects in her world. She’s not just one of those women who goes straight home to her husband. She nurtures a life for herself outside of home…When [Mike] struck on the idea of making it over year, he was very happy because one of the problems was how did he get Mary ’round to the house often enough because, sort of in answer to your question, clearly, Mary isn’t there every week, or every month even. It’s kind of stretching it that she was there four times in a year.”

Finally getting a word in to the conversation, I couldn’t help taking a slightly political tack. Manville was very interested to hear that there had been some back in forth among writers at the UK’s The Guardian newspaper about Mary, and whether or not there was a misogynist aspect to her character as a sort of walking nightmare for middle-aged and single woman. To me it seemed obvious that the reason the character was generating some pretty hearty reaction was that she’s frighteningly true to life, but not so much in a way tied to gender or age. I wondered if people had come up to Manville and say they knew somebody just like that.

“Oh God, yes. That’s the thing people say to me the most. People will say, ‘Well, everyone knows a Mary.’ Some people come up and say ‘I know somebody that’s a bit like Mary.’ I have had people, journalists as well, come up to me and say, ‘I’ve been a bit like Mary in my life.’ Mary’s a bad case of it. She’s had a series of terrible relationships. Her loneliness is profound. I know a lot of women who are in their forties and fifties and their on their own and childless, and their very happy with that. They’ve done it out of choice. Conversely, there are a lot of women — and men, like Ken [a seriously slovenly old school friend of Tom’s played by Peter Wight] — who are on their own and lonely and don’t want to be.”

“They are looking for something seemingly simple. It’s not a lot to ask to have some companionship in your life. She wants what Geri and Tom have, which is not complicated what they have, but it just eludes her. She’s not a bad person then, either. She does behave badly at times. She’s misguided and some of her behavior is slightly inappropriate, but she’s not bad, and there’s no reason why she shouldn’t have found love. For me, that’s one of the things the film says — how random that can be. Kind of to do with luck, a lot of it. You can be one of those people, like Gerri and Tom, who have found a soul mate, found somebody to go through life with, or you can be like the Marys and the Kens who just don’t.”

Was Mary based on any specific person to any degree?

“Not any one person, no. But it is a sort of cocktail of quite a lot of people. By the time you’ve created it, it becomes it’s own thing. ‘Person X’ until you give her a name. It’s a cocktail of all sorts of things. I remembered seeing somebody drunk one day and certain things that they did. I remembered that when I was playing Mary. So that went into the mix of what became what Mary was.”

With all the detailed effort that went into creating Mary, was she hard to cast off at the end of a day’s work?

“I don’t have any problem with that, but I think people do sometimes have problems with that. I think people think that, with a Mike Leigh film, [there must be more some difficulty] since you are working so extensively, and certainly with this film it does go to some considerable depth, particularly for Mary. But, no, I’m not that kind of person, really. I brush it all off at the end of the day and don’t take it home with me. In the case of Mary that’s a good thing because, boy, you wouldn’t want to be stuck with that,” Manville said with a chuckle. “I think it’s also part of the discipline of Mike that you go in and out of character and you get used to that.”

Like a lot of good directors, Mike Leigh has a group of actors he works with repeatedly. How does Manville feel about returning to work with the same actors?

“It’s the same people a lot of the time, but not all of the time. David Bradley, who plays Ron, the brother of Jim [Broadbent’s] character, he never worked with Mike before, so that was new, though I had worked with him on stage. There’s a shorthand, obviously. I think when you’re working very specifically like this, it’s quite good to have that shorthand. You know that you all know the score, you know the territory and you understand it. Mike always does work with people he’s never worked with before, but maybe with this he was influenced by the fact that, A, he had his lowest budget for many decades, which is terrible considering the attention that his films get. B, he was making a film, unlike “Happy-Go-Lucky,” dealt with people getting older. So, there was quite a big pool of his people to call on. Maybe he felt that, because of the size of the budget and the speed with which he needed [to make the film] — I know it sounds a long time, 18 weeks rehearsal, but, when you start with nothing, it’s not as long as it seems — we needed to be getting on with it.”

So, is the current economic malaise and the end of lottery-supported English Film Council causing a lot of bad effects on anyone trying to make films in England?

“There is a bit. Mostly, people feel that the film council axing is bad news. We’re just not making that many films there. We make some remarkable films with some extremely talented directors, but Christ knows where the money is going to keep coming from. If Mike, who’s had Oscar attention since ‘Secrets & Lies’ is finding it hard to get a budget, then you worry about the other people that don’t have his credentials.”

What about some of the better known English directors who’ve left England for Hollywood? Does Manville lament the departure of such genre-loving luminaries as Christopher Nolan and Edgar Wright for the vastly bigger budgets of Hollywood.

“The kind of films Chris wants to make, he could probably only make here. I think that’s a fair comment. So, I can understand him wanting to come here. But Mike doesn’t want to make blockbustery-type films. He wants to make films that deal with the human condition. There’s no way he would come here and make films.”

It really does seem, the questioner went on, that it’s getting more difficult for individualist directors like Mike Leigh to get their films made unless the have a strong desire to “blow shit up.”

“Yeah. Well, Mike is making the films that he wants to make. He’s just often making them in slightly restricted circumstances. For example, ‘Topsy-Turvy,’ which is a period film. I don’t know if you ever really noticed it, you probably wouldn’t, but there are no exteriors in it. There just wasn’t the money. As soon as you go outside and it’s the 19th century, it costs a shed-load of money…I don’t think it’s that you miss them. I don’t think you say, ‘Well, “Topsy-Turvy” had no exteriors.’ He made the film so beautifully and it told the story and all of that. But there are always corners being cut in these films because there isn’t the money. I got the same money on this film that I got on ‘All or Nothing’ in 2002. I had no pay rise from 2002 to 2010.”

The quality doesn’t suffer, anyhow.

“I gave a cheap performance,” Manville joked to some chuckling. “I though there’s no way this man is going to get my diamond-cut performance until he pays me a bit more.”

The next question went to a writer who tends to ask the same general question at every interview, which is how a given role might reflect on the actor’s personal life in some way. This time around, it was asking whether Manville was a more sort of independent person or requiring companionship. Other actors might have chosen to deflect a question like that with a general answer or a joke, but it’s clear that Manville has more of a zero-tolerance policy towards overtly personal questions, even non-specific ones. Her firm but calm response prompted a bit of nervous laughter, though, really, Manville’s point is fair enough.

“I think it’s an irrelevant question. What I am is neither here nor there and I’m certainly not going to discuss my private life.”

Was there any sort of comparison between her and Mary, though?

“There isn’t a comparison because that’s not relevant. I don’t need to be lonely and an alcoholic to play Mary, who is lonely and alcoholic. That’s the great thing about Mike. I didn’t need to be like Kitty Gilbert in ‘Topsy-Turvy’ to play her. The great thing about him is that he doesn’t care what you are. All he’s interested in is what you can be in the performance. So, with respect, what I am is irrelevant.”

So, without getting too personal, with all the Oscar buzz that was going around about the film even as this interview was being conducted, what would a nomination or a win mean to Lesley Manville?

“It would be very exciting. I’ve lived and worked in England all my life and we don’t have that kind of buzz about things the way you do here. So, it obviously makes you excited because that is out of the ordinary. I don’t really sit at home thinking about it too much, but it would be jolly nice. It would give me a bit more power — which is a horrible word, I don’t really like to use it — but it would give me a bit more status and therefore open up some doors that would be nice to opened because I’d love to work in America. You’ve got some amazing directors here; why wouldn’t I? My career is about as good as it can in England. I do amazing theater work; I’ve worked with all the best directors including Mike Leigh. So, if America opened up, well, I’ve got a grown-up son. He doesn’t need me to cook his dinner every night. He’s 21, he can take care of himself and I can come here and make films.”

At 27, if Eisenberg does wins for his thoroughly on-target performance, he’ll be the youngest winner in that category yet, beating 29 year-old Adrien Brody for “The Pianist.” Still, he’ll likely be facing stiff competition from 50 year-old Colin Firth (“The King’s Speech”), 70 something Robert Duvall (“Get Low“), 30 something co-host James Franco (“127 Hours“) and, perhaps, 60 something Jeff Bridges (“True Grit,” a bit less stiff since he won last year and Oscar likes to spread the love around).

The Best Actress prize was equally interesting. Lesley Manville won for her extraordinary work in the upcoming “Another Year.” I’ve seen (and will be reviewing here), the latest from Mike Leigh. There’s no doubt that Manville did an absolutely remarkable job but her supremely needy, depressed, alcoholic character is often irritating to the point of distraction, on purpose. It hits closer to home because I think most of have known or have actually been (hopefully temporarily) people very much like her. Still, sometimes people tend to blame actors for playing characters they dislike or are made uncomfortable by. Regardless, she’s been noticed. At the press day, I half-jokingly suggested to Ms. Manville that she should work on her American accent.

Another heretofore far from world-famed actress who might consider studying up on U.S. dialects is Australian veteran performer Jacki Weaver. She was nominated for her magnetically squirm-inducing crime grandma in the effective thriller, “Animal Kingdom.” It’s the first time she’s been in a film to make a splash stateside since Peter Weir’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock” back before Jesse Eisenberg and James Franco were yet born.

Christian Bale is definitely looking like an Oscar contender with his Best Supporting Actor win for “The Fighter.” “Toy Story 3” won a very predictable Best Animated Feature prize and writer Chris Sparling won a far less predictable Best Original Screenplay award for the ultra-claustrophobic Ryan Reynolds showpiece, “Buried”

Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for Superman,” which seems to be spearheading a campaign to make education a hotter political issue than it’s been recently, took the Best Documentary prize. Could Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”) be on his way to another Best Documentary Oscar? Very possibly, though the documentary category is historically weird and iffy. In his favor: this is a traditional documentary and not, essentially, a “concert” film.

The Best Foreign Film winner is the French Cannes award winner, “Of Gods and Men.” It’s another winner with a certain amount of topical appeal as it deals with the issue of fundamentalism from the point of view of Christian monks.

Several films are notable by their almost complete absence, including “The King’s Speech,” “127 Hours” and possible dark horse, “True Grit.” (All three were in the group’s annual Top 10, however.) “The Black Swan,” which has been getting huge word of mouth where I live, anyhow, failed to even make that list. A complete list of the awards is below.

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Best Film: The Social Network

Best Director: David Fincher, The Social Network

Best Actor: Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network

Best Actress: Lesley Manville, Another Year

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter

Best Supporting Actress: Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom

Best Foreign Language Film: Of Gods and Men

Best Documentary: Waiting for “Superman”

Best Animated Feature: Toy Story 3

Best Ensemble Cast: The Town

Breakthrough Performance: Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone

Best Directorial Debut: Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, Restrepo

Spotlight Award: Sylvain Chomet and Jacques Tati, The Illusionist

Best Original Screenplay: Chris Sparling, Buried

Best Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network

Special Filmmaking Achievement Award: Sofia Coppola for writing, directing, and producing Somewhere

William K. Everson Film History Award: Leonard Maltin

NBR Freedom of Expression: Fair Game, Conviction, Howl

Production Design Award: Dante Ferretti, Shutter Island

Ten Best Films (in alphabetical order)
Another Year
The Fighter
Hereafter
Inception
The King’s Speech
Shutter Island
The Town
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter’s Bone

Five Best Foreign-Language Films (in alphabetical order)
I Am Love
Incendies
Life, Above All
Soul Kitchen
White Material

Five Best Documentaries (in alphabetical order)
A Film Unfinished
Inside Job
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
Restrepo
The Tillman Story

Top Ten Independent Films (in alphabetical order)
Animal Kingdom
Buried
Fish Tank
The Ghost Writer
Greenberg
Let Me In
Monsters
Please Give
Somewhere
Youth in Revolt

* Our top story tonight, however, is far away from anything likely to screen in, or even out of, competition at the world’s most famous film festival. Seems that Megan Fox, who you might remember compared director Michael Bay to Hitler some time ago, will not be returning in “Transformers 3.” Apparently Bay has finally realized there are lots and lots of unnaturally attractive young women in Hollywood and some of them can act a little.

In any case, Nikki Finke brings you a crash course on the apparent Fox/Bay hate affair, while AICN’s Merrick reminds you of some of those other unnaturally attractive women.

* I had a feeling that Paul Greengrass’s style of hand-held action mayhem might not be a fit in 3-D. Of course, I had no way of knowing if the director was going to maintain his “Bourne” style for the upcoming remake of “Fantastic Voyage,” but now I guess we’ll never know.

* Getting back to Cannes, Anne Thompson brings us up to date on some of what has been picked up by the studios for release, including Mike Leigh’s “Another Year,” which has been doing fairly well in terms of response.

* A.J. Schnack summarizes the hugely impressed reaction to what might be the important film to screen at Cannes in terms of real-world consequences. It’s “Inside Job” from Charles Ferguson, he of the outstanding Iraq war documentary, “No End in Sight.” This time the topic is Wall Street and last year’s worldwide economic debacle and near depression. Not at all surprisingly, it apparently contains some sharp words regarding some of President Obama’s economic appointees many of whom have deep Wall Street ties that are regularly flailed by progressives and populists.

As for Logan Hill‘s breathless query: “Is Matt Damon’s Narration of a Cannes Doc a Sign that Hollywood is Abandoning Obama?” there are so many wrong assumptions folded into those fifteen words, I don’t know where to begin.

* Speaking of Wall Street exposes, the new film about fallen Wall Street scourge and ex-New York governor Eliot Spitzer from Alex Gibney, who produced “No End in Sight,” has been picked up. I’m also amused by the description of the film as a “Downfall Doc.” Somehow, I expect to hear about ‘net denizens in Germany making hilarious videos in which ex-Gov. Spitzer rants via subtitles about bad video games and David Hasselhoff.

* Department of intra-critic controversy. First, in the interest of equal time, we have the brilliantly petulant Glenn Kenny‘s response to a review of Jean-Luc Godard’s latest and possibly last film from Todd McCarthy (which I linked to yesterday) and a Tweet, or something, by Roger Ebert, which I can’t seem to find. If you’re into this kind of thing, be sure to check out the really interesting colloquy in comments, which I would say even if if I hadn’t just left a comment there of my own. Really interesting thoughts from a bunch of smart people, not necessarily including me.

Speaking of really smart people, Dennis Cozzalio has his really interesting two cents on a controversy about the audience for classic film screenings sparked by his own piece on the TCM Fest. And then he talks about westerns. Yee-freaking-haw.

*And speaking of Todd McCarthy, his rave review of “Carlos,” about the legendary and utterly ruthless terrorist of seventies and eighties, has me way excited to see it. It sounds like it might pair nicely with “The Baader Meinhof Complex.”

* Nicholas Cage doesn’t like how pigs pork, so he won’t pig out on pork.

* Steven Soderbergh is even busier than Alex Gibney, I think. And he’s doing George Lucas one better by fixing an old movie of his that I thought was actually fairly broken, 1991’s “Kafka.” To me, it started out like a really strong homage to Franz Kafka — with the conceit that Kafka’s life was, you know, Kafka-esque. Then, it turned into an episode of “Wild Wild West” — or I guess “Wild Wild Central Bohemia” — and not in a good way. So, I’m curious to see how this new version will come out, even if we have to wait two more years for it.

* Hercules is right, I think. Jemaine Clement should make a nice alien-villain type guy.

* Some “Twilight” news for those who care.

* I saw “Get Him to the Greek” last week and am looking forward to a press day coming up this weekend. Anyhow, I don’t think it’s breaking any press embargoes to say there’s probably more than enough material for an “Infant Sorrow” EP, if not a full-on album. There’s certainly more than enough music, good and not so good, for a decent soundtrack.