‘Awards season’ is upon us, that three-month trek to the glory of the Academy Awards. It’s a trek we could probably do without.
The Gotham Awards, the New York Film Critic’s Circle and the National Board of Review have already handed out their trinkets; close behind are several other critics’ organisations and awards bodies, all clambering over each other to be the ones who get to say, “Look at us, dorks, we called this way back in DECEMBER.”
Is film X too controversial for awards glory? Did film Y make too much money?
It’s not a great time for film discussion – anything meaningful gets lost in the shrieking. Will the Screen Actors’ Guild accurately predict the Best Supporting Actress winner this year? Is film X too controversial for awards glory? Did film Y make too much money? Did film Z make too little? The weeping, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth.
But awards season is more than just an uncivilised three-month blogosphere buffet. It’s a bona fide block on Hollywood’s annual calendar of Things That Happen, slotted in between Blockbuster Summer (or winter here) and the Late January Dumping Ground. It's entrenched. As Jason Bailey says in a short and sweet piece over at Flavorwire, the tail wags the dog a little bit more every year.
But that doesn’t mean anything for us, right?
Bailey’s piece lists a number of consequences. The season gets more cluttered; there are fewer challenging Hollywood and indie films in the off-season (because why willingly forgo the marketing boost that is an Academy Award nomination, right?); anywhere that isn’t a main American centre has to weather the hype a little longer. These outcomes aren’t limited to the USA, though. We feel them too.
This is why we’re waiting until February for some of the season’s ‘hottest tickets’: 12 Years A Slave (US release: 8 November), All Is Lost (25 October), Dallas Buyers Club (22 November), Inside Llewyn Davis (20 December). It’s all well and good for local distributors to claim that the delay is negligible for films that gross over $1 million locally, and, in fairness, the schedule shows a small amount of parity with the US so far (We get Wolf of Wall Street the day after the US! August: Osage County is only a week late! American Hustle, only a month!).
The bigger picture, however, is one of creeping delays so distributors can make hay of the marketing opportunities posed by awards ceremonies. After all, New Zealand is a small market; received wisdom would say, a fickle market. The recent straight-to-DVD releases of Indie Spirit favourite Mud and zeitgeisty The Bling Ring – movies with names and cred that suggested solid cinema runs – are nothing if not proof of that.
In the US, it sucks. In a country like New Zealand, where lengthy delays are the norm for anything not forecast to break $1mil, it’s like pulling teeth without anaesthetic. You kind of wish local distributors would find a way to ease the pain.
