(MENAFN- Arab Times) LOS ANGELES Sept 13 (Agencies): Hollywood's annual awards season may be months away yet but for many the race for Oscars gold has already started with strong contenders emerging from key film festivals this month. While it is too early to talk of frontrunners unlike last year when '12 Years a Slave' established itself early in awards season several movies and actors are already generating buzz in Tinseltown. Steve Carell Benedict Cumberbatch and Reese Witherspoon are among the performances already tipped while unique coming-of-age drama 'Boyhood' is among films being talked about as possible nominees. 'Summer is over ... it's back to school and it's become so for the Academy' of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences which hosts the annual Oscars show in February said Glenn Williamson of UCLA's School of Theater Film and Television. Three key festivals Venice Telluride and Toronto have this year overlapped with the industry descending on Italy from Aug 27-Sept 6 Telluride from Sept 4-7 and Canada from Sept 4-14. Last year harrowing historical drama '12 Years a Slave' by British director Steve McQueen which went onto win the best picture Oscar in March this year made a huge splash at Telluride. It was then presented in Toronto where it took the People's Choice Award before sweeping a string of awards season prizes on its way to Hollywood's highest accolade the Academy Award. Telluride has become increasingly important in gaining awards momentum over the last decade notably because lots of the Academy's 6000 or so voting members go there said Williamson. He recalled that the buzz around 'The King's Speech' which went on to win the best picture Oscar in 2011 had begun in the small Colorado village. 'Very good movies go to Toronto too' and secure crucial media coverage at a festival known as a serious venue for negotiations for financing and distribution. 'It's a bit more towards business' he said adding: 'Venice is also a big splashy opportunity to get publicity about films.' Generating awards buzz and nabbing awards themselves is notoriously difficult and unpredictable. Some think that launching early in the year is a mistake preferring a late release nearer to Academy voting time. But Abigail Severance professor at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) School of Film disagrees. 'I don't think that a performance is forgotten by the time' award voters cast their ballots she said. In any case no one film has yet emerged from the pack even if a few are jostling for position. 'Boyhood' by Richard Linklater is one of those. The unprecedented film made with the same group of actors over 12 years is a moving tale of a boy's transformation into a young man. 'Birdman' by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu impressed in both Venice and Toronto with former 'Batman' star Michael Keaton as a former comic book hero struggling with getting old and seeking to rekindle his career. Repeat In Toronto 'Black and White' had Costner fighting with Octavia Spencer (best actress Oscar for 2011's 'The Help') for custody of his mixed-race granddaughter. The role has some claiming he could repeat his Oscars glory from 1990's 'Dances with Wolves.' Comic Carell is also tipped to be in the best actor race with 'Foxcatcher' based on a true story in which he plays a member of the moneyed Du Pont family implicated in an Olympic scandal. The sober performance is in stark contrast to his usual comic roles a feat the Academy has been known to reward. Benedict Cumberbatch has impressed in 'The Imitation Game' as Alan Turing the British scientist who cracked Nazi codes in World War II while another performance as a British egghead Eddie Redmayne playing Stephen Hawking 'The Theory of Everything' is also seen as an early contender. On the actress front Witherspoon could be in the running for a second Oscar after 2006's 'Walk The Line' with several remarked-upon performances including 'Wild' 'The Good Lie' and 'Inherent Vice' in which a detective probes the disappearance of an ex-girlfriend. Finally Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal is tipped as a possible nominee as a journalist jailed in Iran in 'Rosewater' the directorial debut of satirical 'The Daily Show' host Jon Stewart. The 87th Academy Awards will be held on Feb 22 2015. The scourge of homelessness has emerged as a major theme at this year's Toronto film festival driven by performances from an unlikely trio: an Oscar-winning actress a well-known male sex symbol and a recently recovered heroin addict. 'Time Out of Mind' and 'Shelter' which had their world premieres at the 11-day movie showcase and 'Knows What' which came to Toronto after a debut at the Venice festival all focus on characters who struggle with homelessness and addiction on the streets of New York. The films reflect just how pronounced the homelessness problem is in the city said 'Time Out of Mind' director Oren Moverman. 'The first thing you do when you're trying to fix something is to call attention to it. So I think these three films are trying to call attention to something and I think that they should be commended for it' Moverman told Reuters ahead of the film's premiere this week. 'Time Out of Mind' features 'Pretty Woman' star Richard Gere an actor better known for roles as a corporate raider hedge fund manager and smooth-talking lawyer. Variety has already called it one of his more remarkable performances. The actor once described as the sexiest man alive by People magazine is almost unrecognizable as George a vagrant who shuffles between abandoned houses park benches and overcrowded men's shelters with frequent trips to a liquor store when he gets enough money. While part of the film is about his attempts to reconcile with an estranged daughter much of the story is simply uninterrupted takes of Gere begging for change scrounging for food or struggling to navigate the bureaucracy for something as common as an identity document. Jennifer Connelly who won a best supporting Oscar in 2002 for 'A Beautiful Mind' has received positive reviews for her performance in 'Shelter' written and director by her actor husband Paul Bettany. She plays Hannah who spirals from an affluent existence into depression and addiction after the death of her husband. The plot centers on an unlikely romance with an illegal immigrant named Tahir also traumatized by the loss of his family. But like 'Time Out of Mind' much of the film focuses on the daily indignities of struggling for money and a place to sleep on the street. In the third film 'Knows What' Arielle Holmes 20 has won praise for her performance which Variety's chief film critic called 'electrifying.' The story behind the movie is just as compelling. The movie's directors brothers Joshua and Ben Safdie met Holmes while researching another film not initially realizing she was both homeless and addicted to heroin. They urged her to write her story which became the basis of the film: the life of a homeless drug-addicted teen. Holmes who is now off drugs and off the street told Reuters after the film was shown in Toronto she hoped her work gets viewers to pay closer attention to a part of society many simply walk past. 'It's a world that is unseen by most of the world. And I feel like (the film) is a way of helping people understand other people. It's a way of connecting' she said.
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