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The Opposite of "Above Me"
by Joe Swanberg
I guess the idea of releasing good films when they are finished is crazy, because everybody and their brother now waits until the end of the year to put out their halfway decent films, all because they think they might win one of these stupid awards. Does anyone even care about The Oscars anymore? I still watch them, but it's not because I'm excited about the best of the best being recognized. If anything, I just keep hoping J-Lo will wear another see-through top on the red carpet.
I'm not gonna waste anyone's time with another "the Oscars don't really reward the most deserving films" rant. Who cares. What bothers me is that I have to sit through 11 months of horse-shit films while I wait for the studios to release everything they are proud of during the last few days of the year. What a ridiculous strategy. People scratch their heads when a piece of shit like Scary Movie 3 cleans up at the box office, but there probably wasn't anything else playing. Honestly. If people have to choose between 2 shitty films, they are gonna end up seeing shit. If someone is in the mood for a movie, they are going to see a movie, whether it's awards season or not. Why can't a film that comes out in January or February still win an Oscar the next year? Will the Academy totally forget that a film moved them and touched them just because they saw it 10 months ago?
I really wish this crap would end. 2003 was one of the most disappointing years for films I can remember. I saw 3 or 4 films that I really loved, and the rest were average or worse. The thing is, I'm probably going to see some great films in the next month of two that the studios have been holding on to, waiting until December 26 to release in New York and LA. Films that have just been sitting there. Films that could have been playing in September, when I wanted to stab my eyes out.
Something like Lost In Translation, which I don't consider a very strong film, is still playing in the theatres. As far as I can tell, the only reason it's still there is because there was nothing else released between mid-September and now that was worthy of replacing it. The film is cute, and funny, and nice, but I can't fathom why it ought to stay in the theatre for 4 months. The sad thing is, if I ran a theatre, I would have kept it around too.
I used to at least have the independent and foreign films to keep me company during the "off-season" (pretty much the entire year other than July 4 weekend and Christmas week), but the studios own all of them now too, and fully realize that foreign and indie films can bring as many crummy awards as their A-list epics.
So now I wait, like a chump, for the end of the year. Only, by the time it rolls around, I'm totally bitter and I hate most of the films anyway because I have to scramble to see them all in 2 weeks. The only way for this to be fixed is for all the Oscars to go to films that were released during the off times of the year. As long as the holiday season films keep winning the pointless awards, we will keep waiting until the end of the year to see the decent films. If any Academy members have accidentally stumbled across this page, I beg you to give all the Oscars to Spring and Fall films so the A-holes at the studios get confused and just start releasing everything when it's finished.
respond to joe@filmbrats.com
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