20 Weeks to Oscar By David Polandpoland@moviecitynews.com
20W2O: Choking On The Tea Leaves
In the last week, there have been a series of attacks on the box office potential of 12 Years A Slave, which is “dirty tricks”-speak for “there is something less than great about this movie about the black people you have no responsibility for to which They are trying to force you to give a Best Picture Oscar.” These two stories ran, by the way, on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, the day before the film’s first expansion to 123 screens, and then in the New York Times, two days after the film’s first expansion.
Read the full article »20W2O: LA Times A1 Piece On 12 Years A Slave Could Be A Hit Job By An Awards Rival
This story is a textbook example of how to give a hard backhand slap to a movie that someone sees as having vulnerabilities. None of the Oscar Whisperers out there could have asked for anything better, short of a series of stories that people had actually gotten ill or had to run out of the theater to avoid the horrors of this film. It’s a marketing story! Why would that be bad?
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: Late October And Still No True Frontrunner
Truth is, We have usually set the field pretty effectively by mid-November. 80%-plus of nominees are pretty well guessed at by then. So then it gets even weirder, as We fight over the last 20% and attempt to “win” by guessing the winners before anyone else. Every minor shift gets overemphasized because it – how dare it! – surprises Us. What started as somewhat rational prognostication turns personal… and sometimes ugly. And the people who have jobs trying to convince Us of this or that get sharper edged, which is often misconstrued as “dirty tricks,” but outside of the bubble is just called “publicity.”
Read the full article »22 Weeks To Oscar: How It’s Looking… OR And Then There Were Five
There are pieces to the puzzle we have pieces that have yet to appear, and mostly, pieces that we have in our hands, but whose fit it is really impossible to know at this time. What will Gravity and Captain Phillips gross? Will The Fifth Estate stir debate or will everyone be too distracted by the government shutdown? Will Ridley Scott’s The Counselor present as an awards movie to everyone’s shock?
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