Naked Gold Man: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Competitive Season

I wish there were festive holiday songs for Oscar junkies. "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Steamroll", "All I Want for Oscars is You", "Let it Snub, Let it Snub, Let it Snub", "God Rest Ye Merry Shortlisters", "Do You Vote How I Vote" etcetera.... The mood is definitely upon us!

This weekend while LA, NY online, and Boston were handing out their prizes and BFCA voters were mailing in their ballots a certain movie that few had yet seen was screening for Oscar voters and it's likely to be a big deal (though whether it will make the BFCA due to the voting deadline today, remains to be seen). Let's just say that I heard sniffling and whispered "wows" during the credits at the guild screening here in NYC.

The AFI's TOP TEN LIST was also released this weekend. It went like so...

• Bridesmaids
• The Descendants
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
• The Help
• Hugo
• J. Edgar
• Midnight in Paris
• Moneyball
• The Tree of Life
• War Horse

It reads like an odd experiment in Oscar predicting from two months back before people had seen all the films (plus Bridesmaids. The AFI always includes at least one populist hit to represent the film year).

But bringing us back to the now, it's time for a chart update to reflect all of this madness.

These past couple of weeks have definitely proven to us that The Tree of Life has not been forgotten, that The Help is in a good place (The actors branch is large and we suspect they like it) that Thanksgiving is a very smart holiday to start your heavy Oscar campaigning (See: Hugo, The Descendants, My Week With Marilyn and The Artist). We're not aloud to talk about the three last films to arrive (War Horse, Dragon Tattoo, Extremely Loud) but let's just say when it comes to Oscar, I'm bearish on the first two and bullish on the last having now seen all three. I'm also pleased to note that Moneyball is well liked. At an Oscar dinner I attended for Rango recently, it was the consensus favorite of my table. 

Strangely the film that hasn't been coming up in conversation that much is Midnight in Paris but I blame this on the emergence of so many new films all at once. Moneyball doesn't always come up organically in conversation but when it does it's, in my experience, usually "oh, I love that." It's the job of the new films arriving to wow voters and erase memories of early favorites. It's the job of the early arrivals to remind voters how much they loved them in the first place; that's the push forward and the pull back.

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Golden Release Dates

Anyone who has read the Film Experience for very long knows that one of Nathaniel's pet issues is the weirdly blocked distribution/awards calendars. Counterprogramming seems like anathema to Hollywood. Most pundits ignore this, either because they're fine with the system the way it is or they have their own pet issues to attend to. But year after year it makes me crazy. So as a sanity measure, I do charts!

If I were only a little more organized the charts would mean a lot more in terms of comparisons sake.

Common consensus has it that the best time to release an Oscar contender is in December. That's true. But as with most "truths" it's not the whole story and thus misleading. It distorts the perception of other truths like the fact that summer is not a bad time to release a big Oscar contender, particular those with commercial appeal. Like many other common consensus beliefs, the December is everything belief is self-reinforcing so one never knows if it is actually true or if it's true because studios think it is and therefore hold their mainstream prestige pictures. The new traditions are so established now that it would certainly be a shock if there were another year like 1972 where the two big dogs (Cabaret and The Godfather) were both released before the previous year's Oscars were even held! Could you imagine if you saw 2011's biggest Oscar contenders in theaters before Oscar night on the 27th?!

On the chart below you can see that the 83rd Oscars are very November/December heavy. Last year's race was less weighted toward the holidays with only 4 of the nominees arriving in the last two months (Blind Side, Precious, Avatar and Up in the Air) earning 23 nominations between them. This year there were five (127, King's, Swan, Fighter, Grit) hogging 40 nominations. And that was just the Best Pictures.

For this chart I used all categories but the shorts. As you can see, my biggest pet peeve (one week qualifiers or the lack of any regular release required) is not the disadvantage I always pray it will be. Why do I pray for this? Because I believe that movies are for audiences first and foremost. If the audience is not allowed to see a movie, should Oscar voters so readily accept its existence? (I always wonder why this isn't part of the whole "Oscar's are irrelevant because they don't choose hits" argument. Perhaps it's too nuanced. It's not as catchy as "they ignored blockbusters!" to say "they have nominated movies the public wasn't allowed to see!) This year's Oscar roster contains as many nominations for barely qualifying films as it does from films released from January through May combined. Sad.

Though Winter's Bone, Animal Kingdom and The Kids Are All Right started Oscar buzz at Sundance in January 2010 and kept it going for a year (all received acting nominations), the first actual theatrical release to wrap up the annum with a nomination was the poorly reviewed remake The Wolfman (Best Makeup). Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland was the first multiple nominee released (March) and holds the distinction of being the most-nominated film outside of the Best Picture contenders with three (all in visual categories). This particular distinction used to be an exciting/interesting one but with 10 Picture nominees one doubts it will be that interesting going forward. Last year Nine (2009) held the honor with four nominations.

If you had an Oscar contender to push would you start early to get your nominee track firmly dug or would you risk the glut of the holidays hoping for a good sprint toward the gold in the thick of it. It's a tortoise or hare situation. Here are the months the last 10 winners chose.

2009 The Hurt Locker (June) *the year we started getting ten nominees
2008 Slumdog Millionaire (November)
2007 No Country For Old Men (November)
2006 The Departed (October)
2005 Crash (May)
2004 Million Dollar Baby (Dec)
2003 Return of the King (Dec) *the year the Oscars moved from March to February
2002 Chicago (Dec)
2001 A Beautiful Mind (Dec)
2000 Gladiator (May)

This year we're looking at an October (TSN) or a November winner (TKS) unless The Fighter has more underdog spirit in it that anyone is anticipating.