The Best Picture category isn't the only thing that bulked up.

What is it about the Academy Awards? Intellectually, it's hard to muster up that much enthusiasm about who "wore it best" (Ang Lee) or how modest Katniss will be in her acceptance speech, hopefully avoiding a First Wives' Club reference that sounded like she was hating on Meryl Streep this time. And yet ... we still feel compelled to watch. Maybe it's because secretly, deep down, we still find it fascinating that the guy who does the voice of Stewie looks like the host of a reality game show about finding true love by having a dance-off on a stripper pole.

Or maybe it's because we're just suckers, who deep down believe that Beasts of the Southern Wild might still possibly have a chance against Argo or Lincoln.

Come join us, will you, on this the most magical of evenings for producers, people who are married to movie stars, and dress designers? We'll be hosting a live chat below. Just click the big countdown button and you're all set. Got it?

Great.

This year we're making our predictions in order of the film and/or celebrity, not the award. That's because this time ... it's personal. No, seriously: between Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Affleck being iced out of Best Director, the Weinstein Bros. not having a snowball's chance in hell of scoring a big win and the fact that we're practically giving an award to Anne Hathaway just to make her stop sing-crying, there's going to be a lot of sore losers tonight. But don't worry; we're using a time-tested formula for predicting the bitter ceremonies, including taking all of the guesses on Twitter and averaging them against Nate Silver's predictions. Then we throw those out the window and  get ourselves angry over Lincoln’s inevitable windfall of awards that should be going to that movie that had all those great New Yorker articles written about it and stars a 9-year-old who wasn't even an actress when she started the film, which is about 50 percent more method than Daniel Day-Lewis's decision to become an Italian cobbler every time he's taking a hiatus from Hollywood.

So enjoy, and don't forget to tune into our live chat on the Oscars, starting at 7 p.m.!

Quvenzhané Wallis gives her director Behn Zeitlin a big hug.

The red carpet was aglow with the incandescent twinkle of Hollywood’s stars on Monday night at the 22nd annual Independent Film Project Gotham Awards. With Oscar winners Matt Damon and Marion Cotillard amongst the evening’s honorees and the likes of Jack Black, Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, John Krasinski and so many more blazing a trail through the double doors of Wall St.’s Cipriani’s, it was no wonder that the less glamorous side of the velvet rope was a veritable press feeding frenzy. Lucky for us, then, that we had sharpened our claws.

As the guests took their seats for the ceremony, The Observer was whisked upstairs to a private viewing room, lest we cavort too rambunctiously with the delicate A-List crowd. There we watched over the evening’s events like demi-gods looking down from the heavens upon the cherubs pecking away at their meals, with eight year old nominee Quvenzhané Williams and 13 year old Jared Gilman leading the underage coterie.

The awards soon got underway, much to the delight of the recipients. Honoring their intentions as champions of independent cinema, the jury not only rewarded the biggest Hollywood names but the industry’s up-and-comers for their contribution to film. Beasts of the Southern Wild writer and director Benh Zeitlin was undoubtedly the big winner of the night, scooping statuettes – well, glass cuboids - for Breakthrough Director alongside the Bingham Ray Award, dedicated to the late film executive.

Mr. Zeitlin was so swept up with his first victory, however, that he scarcely noticed he had procured a second, pausing in his role as the obliging interviewee only to dash back downstairs to claim his newest prize.

“The fact that the film has gotten out into the world has been overwhelming,” he told The Observer, “And I never imagined this many people would not only see it but champion it, and make it their business to help the film get out there. It has completely changed my life.” A spate of critical successes at Cannes, Sundance, the LA Film Festival and the International Film Festival has seen Louisiana-based Mr. Zeitlin’s awards cabinet go from empty to engorged in a matter of months.

Another director honored for his work during the event was David O. Russell, whose work on the likes of The Fighter and new release Silver Linings Playbook secured his status as a deserving IFP Gotham Award recipient. "With an independent film you are with your little family and you work together all day every day, and that’s the real difference," he explained. "You’re all there for the passion, and I prefer that because projects have to come from the heart. You have to dig deep."

Academy Award-winners and Gotham honorees Mr. Damon and Ms. Cotillard are certainly no strangers to widespread acclaim, but both seemed similarly touched by their newest prestigious accolade. Ms. Cotillard was every inch the elegant belle of the ball, dazzling in an array of Chopard jewelry and a stunning Christian Dior couture gown.

Clearly her nationality influences not only her wardrobe but her passion for various projects, telling The Observer: “I really cherish the fact that I’m able to share my French movies worldwide, because we have amazing creativity in France.” The softly spoken actress, who stars in the recently released Rust and Bone, seemed quite overcome with emotion, before continuing: “With this film I had one of the greatest journeys ever, and to share this very unconventional love story outside of my country is something that I enjoy more than anything. I never choose a movie because of whether it’s independent or not, it’s just a story that’s got to take me. But independent movies have the freedom of telling stories that nobody except a special director would tell.”

Mr. Damon echoed the Parisian sweetheart’s sentiments, divulging, “I’ve never set goals for my career. Each movie is just story-telling, and I never wanted to not do a bunch of good movies because I was waiting to make a great one.”

The evening was particularly poignant for the actor, who recalled his first attendance at the Gotham Awards some 15 years earlier in the year Good Will Hunting was released. The best-buddy-Ben-Affleck spot was filled not by his usual partner in crime, but by Mr. Krasinski, who became fast friends with the honoree after meeting on the set of The Adjustment Bureau, in which Mr. Damon and Mr. Krasinski’s wife Ms. Blunt, starred. The Observer did contemplate asking whether Mr. Damon’s onscreen dalliance with his friend’s spouse ever induced some awkward glances around the dinner table, but we opted to forgo stirring the salacious pot on this occasion.

Back to the matter at hand, Mr. Damon said he enjoyed the ubiquitous montage of his roles over the years, but revealed, “It’s always a little cringe inducing – if you have a bad or mediocre day at work, it’s alive forever, so that part [of working in film] is always a little weird.”

But Mr. Damon, who plays the lead in upcoming indie flick Promised Land, needn’t worry about bad days at the office, given that his most recent prize was for Lifetime Achievement – at the grand old age of 42. “I hope this is like a buoy marker – a half time thing,” he laughed. “I want to do this for another 50 years!”

And with that, our time with Mr. Damon was up, and he was briskly shepherded to the after party with the rest of his showbiz pals. Alas, we did not get the opportunity to put on our dancing shoes and join in the film festivities, but the evening was quite the show itself.

Adams and Eastwood in Trouble with the Curve.

In the often illustrious career oeuvre of Clint Eastwood, Trouble with the Curve is a minor entry, a cinematic footnote. Worse yet, the screenplay and first-time direction, by Mr. Eastwood’s friend and long-time producing partner Robert Lorenz, seems like a loyalty benefit, a lazy afterthought. After such post-Dirty Harry triumphs as Unforgiven, Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby, color it disappointing. 

Eastwood plays Gus Lobel, a miserable old codger whose sharp-tongued snarl and cracked Gravel Gertie grumble makes him sound like the same sourball he played in his previous also-ran, Grand Torino. Gus is a grizzled talent scout with the Atlanta Braves with more wrinkles in his face than the gray hairs on his balding head. He’s sick, and he’s seen better days, but even if the apple won’t bite, he’s not giving up and he’s not giving in. Gus may breakfast on tinned Spam, trip over chairs and other simple household obstacles and harrumph his way through the Medicare years, but he can still spot a future baseball star from an airplane. Time is passing him by (he doesn’t even use a computer, which makes him a T. Rex after my own heart), but Gus can still hear the mark of a great pitcher by the crack of a bat. The problem is, his eyesight is failing so fast that he can’t always see what he’s doing, even when he hears it. One of his greatest discoveries was a batter who has lost his stride. Now the Braves are questioning his judgment. They want to draft a hot young rookie batter using new technology (shades of Moneyball), and with only three months to go before his contract expires, Gus wants one last chance to prove his value. If he can’t see what he’s supposed to be appraising, he could be fired. He needs help, and the only person he can call on is his resentful daughter Mickey (Amy Adam). Gus has always been a self-absorbed absentee father with poor parenting skills, and Mickey is now a successful Atlanta lawyer—on the verge of becoming a partner in her firm—who doesn’t want anything to do with him. But in the kind of plot contrivance you find only in the movies, Mickey knows more about baseball than her father. Go figure. Reluctantly, she takes her first weekend off in seven years, showing up on Gus’ scouting trip to North Carolina and straining her credibility with the competitive sharks in line for her promotion in order to save her dad’s reputation. When the hotshot pitcher the Braves want to hire fails to impress him, Gus has to find a way to buck authority that could alter the future of baseball.

Half domestic family drama, half gentle sports saga with the saga part missing, Trouble with the Curve is less riveting than it ought to be. Amy Adams more than makes up for her ill-fated appearance in the abominable The Master,and I must admit I laughed at the sight of macho Marlboro Man Eastwood busting up a chair, kicking it into a corner and calling it “feng shui.” But the hearty moments are rare, and Randy Brown’s screenplay fails to resist sentimentality. (In one scene, Gus visits his wife’s grave and speaks the lyrics to “You Are My Sunshine,” bordering on embarrassment.) A star of this caliber has earned the right to an off-day at the movies, but I guess I have come to expect a whole lot more. Meanwhile, Mickey falls for a former Red Sox pitcher named Johnny “The Flame” Flanagan (a miscast Justin Timberlake), who scouts for a rival team. This is called conflict. The estranged father-daughter relationship, however, just plods along between innings. Against Gus’ objections, the Braves overrule him and pick the pitcher he considered flawed. Now it’s up to Mickey to prove to John Goodman, Robert Patrick, Matthew Lillard and other accomplished cast members playing friends, enemies and assorted cynics on the Braves management staff that their prize catch cannot hit a curve ball. She also presents her own discovery as a replacement, just in time for a corny ending I did not find entirely convincing. If you believe an accomplished, self-made woman gives up a law partnership to manage the career of an unknown, then there’s this lifetime championship trophy with your name on it in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, that I can sell you cheap.

rreed@observer.com

TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE

Running Time 111 minutes

Written by Randy Brown

Directed by Robert Lorenz

Starring Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams and John Goodman

2/4

Creative Director Francisco Costa alongside Diane Kruger, Emma Stone and Amy Adams.

We love the clean lines and abstract nature of Francisco Costa’s designs for Calvin Klein Collection. Of Brazilian descent, he has an unmatchable talent for creating wearable art that is minimal and wearable—perhaps the only one who provides a Parisian level of artistic thrills in New York.

We had some time to spare before the show began—a departure from our general habit of sprinting four blocks and arriving sweaty and out of breath at the last minute. We left our seat-mates Bianca Jagger, Julie Macklowe and Kelly Klein, to name a few, to explore the front rows.

Amy Adams, Diane Kruger, Emma Stone and photographer Patrick Demarchelier were all present, but our vigilant eyes sought out someone less obvious: W Magazine’s Fashion and Style Director, Edward Enninful.

“What are some of the highlights for you?” The Observer asked.

"September is the January of fashion," said Edward Enniful, who was flanked by Hollywood's hottest.

“Oh my goodness, there have been a couple of really great shows. I really enjoyed Proenza [Schouler]. I really enjoyed Rodarte, Marc Jacobs,” he replied, browsing the endless catalog of styles he had presumably witnessed in the past week; an unbearable fashion overload, it seems.

“How have you enjoyed W and growing there?” we carried on.

“With a great team, there is so much freedom ... It kinda of encourages you to do the best you can. We’re having a ball!” Mr. Enninful told The Observer.

Indeed, but is the ball worthwhile, we wanted to know. “Why is fashion week so important for stylists?”

“It’s like the Oscars of fashion. It’s like a get-together on one hand, and you decide how the whole year is going to be, how the whole season is going to be mapped out. September is the January of fashion.”

Well put. We bid adieu to Mr. Enniful, who was off to London in a few hours for more style and mayhem.

There was a sense of powerful austerity and dark romance for spring 2013, and it delivered a bold, physical (read: sexualized) reaction. There is a curiosity to the clothing, one that our fashion eyes could not decipher. Chiaroscuro, cinched waists and overemphasized busts, and innovative fabrics captured the fashion frenzy’s weary attention. The looks featured interesting moiré appearances, glossy leathers layered over tranquil matte crepes and cotton voiles in muted black, reed and cream colors. It highlighted a richness that was not opulently crass.

Looks from the spring 2013 collection.

A novice would have likened the proportions of several dresses to rolls of toilet paper under silk or waxed netting over a cage, but such individuals shouldn’t even be permitted to grace a Calvin Klein Collection boutique.

To end with a bang is no small feat after innumerable ready-to-wear collections of relatively unmoving, routinely practical and safe proportions. American’s sportswear isn’t in a rut; it just is what it is. How lucky we are to have Calvin Klein’s Mr. Costa. We don’t have any callous commentary, just rare bliss, which sadly ended the moment we exited onto ghastly, repulsive 39th Street.

Amy Adams (Getty Images)

The stars of The Master, the new movie that is not about Scientology but may actually be about Scientology, were not very forthcoming about the film’s possible religious inspiration.

Amy Adams, when asked if she researched the religion for her role in the film, said, “No, I actually read Dianetics a long time ago because my mother had the book lying around the house” before saying, “I am not talking anymore about Scientology.”

Ms. Adams talked to the Observer Tuesday night at the Ziegfeld Theatre screening of The Master, which Paul Thomas Anderson wrote and directed. Mr. Anderson was originally scheduled to be at the New York premiere organized by the Weinstein Company but was absent on the red carpet.

The film, which focuses on the relationship between a returning World War II sailor (Joaquin Phoenix) and a charming cult leader (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), swept the Venice Film Festival awards and has generated extra buzz due to its similarities with the beginnings of Scientology.

Madisen Beaty, who plays Mr. Phoenix’s love interest in the film, was mum on all topics alternative religion, though not shy in her appreciation for Fashion Week.

At least one red carpet walker who was not involved with the film shared his thoughts on film’s storyline analogy. Thomas Matthews, the Kennedy-dating son of MSNBC host Chris Matthews and actor on HBO’s The Newsroom had read the L. Ron Hubbard’s introduction to the religion and said “I think there was a lot of really good stuff about positive attitude, about presenting yourself to other people.” When asked about Scientologists in Hollywood Mr. Matthews said, “… I don’t know who is and isn’t. I love Elizabeth Moss though. I think she’s great in Mad Men.”

So, which party had the best-dressed attendees?

In this dysfunctional Lowell, Mass., family full of children with different last names, Mark Wahlberg is Micky, whose hardscrabble life is filled with missed opportunities as he tries to please his trashy, peroxided, chain-smoking motormouth mother, Alice, who acts as his manager (another scenery-chewing, scene-stealing performance by Melissa Leo in high-heel white boots and big hair the size of a hornet nest); and his borderline-retarded crackhead half-brother, Dickie (Christian Bale), who acts as his trainer. There is also a girlfriend named Charlene (Amy Adams)--a tough, sexy, no-nonsense bartender who battles his relatives to stand by her man and save him from his family of demented lowlifes.

The story begins in 1993, when Micky is already over the hill and Dickie is still clinging to his one moment of glory in the ring--the night he scored a knockdown in a losing fight against Sugar Ray Leonard. Micky is loyal to Dickie, but every time he has a bout, they have to drag the trainer out of a crack den. Dickie is so deluded he thinks HBO is following him around making a movie about his own "comeback," but they're really only filming a cautionary documentary about what drug addiction can do to American youth. Factored into the equation are at least five or six sisters (in one scene, I'm sure I counted seven!) who come and go like comic caricatures, resembling a Carol Burnett skit about the Macbeth witches entering show business. (A real David O. Russell example of uncontrolled excess that is fortunately missing from the rest of the film.) With Charlene guiding and supporting him and Dickie behind bars, Micky finally dumps his mother, reshapes his career and starts to focus. After a win at Caesar's Palace, when sports commentators were writing his obit, Micky finally gets a chance for a title bout in London. What happens after Dickie gets out of prison with new teeth and new plans provides fireworks.

The genealogy is baffling. It is never clear why they're all called Eklund except Micky, who is a Ward, even though some of the siblings who are younger than he are called Eklund, too. That bimbo mother apparently really got around. With serrated voices, ratty hair and a passion for beer and processed junk food, they're a perfect illustration of the stuff blue-collar white folks in the Boston suburbs crave--but not the upscale kind. These walking nightmares have never seen a Billy Wilder movie, tasted sushi, listened to National Public Radio or had a flu shot. They are easily satirized and obvious fodder for actors with tattoos.

And still, the cast is never less than hypnotic. Mark Wahlberg is both dopey and endearing as the Muscle McGurk with a good heart trying to run away from a crazy, sadistic family of control freaks and a dead-end future. Christian Bale returns to the way he looked as the emaciated, sleep-deprived zombie he played in The Mechanic, like the ghoulish, skeletal Dachau survivors when the Allies liberated the death camps in 1945. Once again, he gives his all for his art in a memorable but repellent performance that reminded me of the painful, grimaced faces in the paintings of George Grosz. All of the actors' voices disappear into boiled-cabbage Boston accents that are astoundingly accurate (especially Amy Adams, eras removed from the nice cookbook author-housewife in Julie and Julia). These are characters so repulsive that it's hard to care what happens to them, but it's to the credit of a superb cast that you do end up caring. At the end, The Fighter shows a clip of the real Micky and Dickie, and all bets are off. As close to a circus sideshow as it sometimes seems, this art not only imitates life, but mirrors it creepily.

rreed@observer.com

THE FIGHTER
Running time 115 minutes
Written by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, and Eric Johnson
Directed by David O. Russell
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Melissa Leo, Amy Adams

3/4

Leap Year

What's the story: Normally, we're of the mind-set that Amy Adams can make anything better—witness Julie & Julia, where the "Julie" story line would have been completely worthless had it not been for her total investment—but even we have to draw the line with Leap Year. Ms. Adams stars as a woman who travels to Ireland so that she can propose to her boyfriend on Leap Day, because Irish tradition says he's not allowed to say no. Naturally, trouble occurs when she encounters a handsome pub owner (Matthew Goode, a long way from A Single Man), who may or may not be her one true love. Bored yet? The reviews for Leap Year have been so bad, even Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel has a higher rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Avert ye eyes, folks!

Who should see it: Manhola Dargis.

Daybreakers

What's the story: The year is 2019 and a viral outbreak has turned everyone on earth into a vampire. Fun, right? Except without any humans, there isn't any blood. Enter Ethan Hawke as a vampire hematologist (we swear), who must create a synthetic blood to save the vampire race. Or something. Think I Am Legend meets Twilight, except without any of the financial success.

Who should see it: Edward Cullen.

Youth in Revolt

What's the story: For those of you wondering when Michael Cera would play something other than "Michael Cera," we present Youth in Revolt. In Miguel Arteta's long-awaited adaptation of C.D. Payne's coming of age novel (seriously, this was supposed to come out in the fall), everybody's favorite hoodie-wearer plays not only the same lovelorn teen we're used to seeing, but also his alter-ego—a foul-mouthed, ne'er-do-well Frenchman (with a mustache!) named Francois Dillinger. The reviews have been solid and the trailers look fun, even if they can't be bothered with actually saying co-star Zack Galifianakis' name. At the very least, Youth in Revolt has to be better than Leap Year.

Who should see it: Snooki.