January is finally here, which means two important things: A new semester is beginning, and the Oscar season has just about ended.
For those of you who haven’t yet noted the slight change from blockbusters with explosions and flying suits to subtle, dramatic and exquisitely acted bits of film that few have heard of and fewer have seen, the Oscar season represents the time when film studios put away their big money-making guns and whip together whatever poetic and moving stories they have been holding back for a chance at winning a golden statuette.
February will be the month of the 81st Academy Awards ceremony, which means November and December were the months featuring the releases of the first batch of Oscar movies. Production companies choose to release their films this late in the year for two reasons: because the date is closer to when Oscar voters cast their ballots on their film favorites and because movie goers will be more likely during these months to see the movies they typically wouldn’t have seen during the holiday season.
This year has been rough for Oscar-worthy films due to the continued aftershock from the writers’ strike when it began last November. Release dates for some of the movies that were sure to make a splash both in the coveted “Best Picture” and “Best Actor” categories, like “The Soloist” and “The Road,” have been pushed back into spring 2009 and past the Academy Awards cut-off date and thus are no longer eligible.
Sure bets for the “Best Picture” nod are the recently released “Milk,” starring Sean Penn and Josh Brolin; “Slumdog Millionaire,” starring Dev Patel and Freida Pinto; and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.
“Milk” is still in limited release and will probably remain in such a state for a while. For Boston residents this isn’t such a problem because theatres like Coolidge and the Brattle in Cambridge always have the fun little artsy films playing. But someone in the suburbs of Who-Knows-Where will have never heard of the already critically-acclaimed film about the first gay city supervisor to be nominated into office in California.
With “Milk” catching the public’s attention and continuing to sell out in Cambridge’s Kendall Square Cinema, the lesser known “Slumdog Millionaire” – which was partly filmed in Hindi – is still catching steam. One part “City of God” and one part “Cinderella,” “Slumdog Millionaire” is a fantastic film about a contestant on a potentially rigged game show in Mumbai, India that seems to never have planned to reach a mainstream audience.
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” did reach a wider audience due to its Christmas release date and its all-star leads, raking in more than $79 million so far. “Button” is, at its heart, an art film, but by making it a film the public would want to see as well, it sacrificed the credentials some critics deemed made it Oscar-worthy.
After the release of “The Dark Knight” in July, and the box office mayhem that ensued, Batman fan boys and movie critics alike were speculating that, in addition to the assured “Best Supporting Actor” nomination for the late Heath Ledger, “The Dark Knight” might receive a “Best Picture” nod as well. At the time, it felt like a nice sentiment but very unlikely. Now, with the “Best Picture” line-up looking a little empty, 2008’s summer blockbuster might actually have a chance.
But why shouldn’t it have a chance? In 1997, “Titanic” raked in the most money in the history of the US box office and still walked away with 11 Academy Awards. Again in 2004, “The Return of the King,” the third installment of a trilogy about hobbits and elves and box office success, won the Oscar for “Best Picture.”
It has become a trend that Oscars can only go to critical successes no one has seen. Though “The Dark Knight” may or may not be the best movie to be released in 2008, why can’t a man dressed like a bat have the same chance of winning as an assassinated city supervisor or a man who ages backward?
– Terri Schwartz can be reached at [email protected].
