By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

311 Feature Films Vie for 2005 Oscar®

Posted Wednesday, December 28th, 2005 - Comments Off on 311 Feature Films Vie for 2005 Oscar®
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Beverly Hills, CA — Three hundred eleven feature films will compete for the Academy Award® for Best Picture of 2005, it has been announced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Marking a 16.5% increase from 2004, the 2005 total of eligible features marks the first time in 32 years that as many as 300 motion pictures have contended for the Best Picture award.

Academy Credits Coordinator Howard Loberfeld attributed the sharp jump partly to an increase in the number of feature-length documentaries playing theatrically (35 versus 15 in 2004), and partly to some distributor reorganizations which led to the release of an unusual number of long-delayed projects.

Nomination ballots and the Reminder List of Eligible Releases – the list of 2005 motion pictures eligible for Oscar consideration – will be mailed tomorrow (December 29) to voting members of the Academy.

According to Academy rules, to qualify for consideration a feature-length motion picture must have a running time of more than 40 minutes and have been exhibited theatrically on 35mm or 70mm film, or a qualifying digital format. A film must open in a commercial theater, for paid admission, in Los Angeles County between January 1, 2005, and midnight December 31, 2005, and run for seven consecutive days. Films that receive their first public exhibition or distribution in any manner other than as a theatrical motion picture release are not eligible for Academy Awards® in any category. Official screen credits and copies of the main and end title credits must have been submitted to the Academy by December 1, 2005.

Entries in the Foreign Language, Animated Feature, Documentary and Short Film categories are subject to special rules and are viewed and selected by voting panels of Academy members. The entry deadlines in all of these categories have already passed.

Nominations for the 78th Academy Awards will be announced on Tuesday, January 31, 2006, at 5:30 a.m. PST, in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements for 2005 will be presented on March 5, 2006, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland, and televised live by the ABC Television Network beginning at 5 p.m. PST.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon