screeners Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The 2007 Oscars were held on Feb. 25, which means the studios started thinking about the 2008 Oscars right around Feb. 26. But all that thinking -- the strategizing, the planning, the conniving -- didn't go public until this week. Now the Los Angeles Times reports that Fox Searchlight has fired the first shot in the upcoming Academy Awards battle by sending screeners of three of its biggest contenders to the people who vote for the Oscars and Golden Globes.

Once, Waitress, and The Namesake are the titles, and DVD copies of them arrived today on the desks of everyone in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (that's the Oscars) and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (that's the Golden Globes).

In case you didn't notice, it's barely September. Studios usually don't start sending screeners out until November. So why the hurry? Well, Fox Searchlight struck gold last year with Little Miss Sunshine, which opened in July (not typically an Oscar-friendly month) and went on to earn four Academy Award nominations and one Golden Globe nod. The studio credits that at least partially to its early screeners -- the film went out to voters in early October -- and figured what they heck, let's try it again.

It might work, too. Once and Waitress both had their U.S. premieres at Sundance in January, earning ecstatic reviews from critics and festival-goers alike. More acclaim followed when they were released theatrically in May. I haven't talked to anyone who's seen either film who didn't at least like them, if not love them. Personally, I adore Waitress more than anything I've seen all year, and I liked Once quite a bit.

The Namesake, on the other hand, hasn't exactly been setting the world on fire since its bow at Telluride a year ago. You don't hear people talking about it nearly as much as they do the other two. Yet it's quietly built up credibility, currently scoring an impressive 85 percent at Rotten Tomatoes. (Waitress is at 88 and Once has a whopping 97!)

But that raises a question: If the movies are so good, does Fox Searchlight really need to send out screeners this early? The answer is probably yes. Releasing Oscar-friendly movies in November and December, when voters are more likely to remember them, is commonly understood as being a wise, even necessary strategy. These three films all came out in the first half of the year, and none of them were financial blockbusters. There's a good chance that voters haven't seen them. So it makes sense to give them the opportunity now, before they get inundated with dozens of other contenders. In Hollywood, the cream doesn't necessarily rise to the top. Sometimes it needs a little push.

For the second time in as many years, the Director's Guild of America, which represents not only directors but unit production managers and assistant directors, has said no to the Hollywood studio's policy of for-consideration screeners being mailed to its members for the 60th annual Director's Guild Awards. This decision finally puts to rest the question left form last year when the Guild said it would not allow screeners for the 59th annual awards but might consider them for the 60th -- which take place on January 26th.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, for the 59th Awards, the Guild initially indicated that it would allow screeners to be made available to its members. But then, almost immediately afterward, reversed the decision. At the time, it did allow for the possibility of screeners being sent out to members for this year's awards but now that's obviously not going to happen. "The DGA recognizes that this decision is different from what was stated last year," the Guild said in the article, "However, closer examination of the issue revealed concern among members that films sent out on DVD might have an unfair advantage over films that were not able to be sent out due to limited marketing budgets or other financial considerations."

Ok, I guess those reasons make sense. Still, as a member of the Director's Guild, I always felt it was an unusual policy to not allow screening copies as virtually every other union or guild does allow it. In addition to the reasons stated above, maybe the ban is meant to help stem the tide of pirated DVDs being sold all over the world? Or, perhaps the Guild actually expects its members to go see films under consideration in a movie theater instead of on DVD? Or maybe it's because the DGA just likes to be different? I don't know, but whatever the reason, even if we don't get screeners mailed to us, at least we still get to see screenings of films at DGA HQ, which is nice. So I guess I shouldn't complain too much.

Despite the controversy over Spielberg's political leanings (not to mention the wishy-washy press "embargo"), Munich has thus far failed to make as much of an impact on the awards scene as many earlier predicted. That situation was not helped by yesterday's news that voters for the BAFTAs (Britain's version of the Oscars) were sent DVD screeners that most members could not watch.

It all ties into piracy paranoia. Remember months ago when the studios started signing up with Cinea to encode their DVD screeners? The idea was that voters would be sent special DVDs that could only play on Cinea-specific players, which would also be provided. This seems to have gone off without a hitch in most cases, but a customs snafu kept the screeners out of the hands of voters past the January 3 deadline for early voting. Universal issued an apology, promising that voters would get their screeners in time for the final deadline, and issuing a vaguely threatening warning: "Do not vote without seeing this extraordinary film." Numbers are not yet in in regards to how many voters actually obeyed this command, but those that did probably did not vote at all – when the screeners did arrive, they were encoded as Region One, which only works in the US and Canada, presumably Cinea-player be damned. As the film is not yet in British theaters, those who have not recently gone cinemagoing in the US will be unable to vote for it (if they choose to disobey Universal's orders and vote at all).

I think Eric Bangeman at Ars Technica sums this up best: "Region encoding is stupid, and like many of the other steps taken by the content-creation industry to protect its interests, it hurts consumers, he writes. "I'm wondering what the fallout from the situation withMunich and BAFTA will be. Spielberg is a major player in Hollywood, and I can't imagine he's pleased that his masterpiece will be ineligible for consideration for the British awards." "Masterpiece" might be stretching it, but what good are piracy regulations if keep the films in question from getting awards recognition, which is in itself primarily useful for its ability to jack up box office?