Oscars and Blu-ray help promote each other

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Staff Writer

This coming Sunday, Feb. 27, is the night of the 83rd annual Academy Award presentations. Despite frequent critical deconstruction of their procedure and choices, the Oscars remain one of the last traditions of the classic Hollywood “dream factory” system that still survive with glamour and prestige reasonably intact. An Oscar win or nomination still guarantees additional ticket sales and video rentals, and the publicity surrounding the awards is a reminder of the studios’ publicity machines that used to generate similar mass-media awareness about their films and stars year-round. In any case, it’s always fun for movie fans to try to predict the winners, usually acknowledging personal preferences by coming up with separate “should win” and “will probably win” lists.

This year, there are 56 films competing for awards in 24 categories. It’s still difficult for film fans in markets outside of Los Angeles or New York to see many of the nominees, but home video release schedules have helped compensate for lack of theatrical distribution. So far, 15 of the 41 Oscar-nominated features and one of the 15 shorts (Pixar’s delightful “Day & Night,” on the same disc as “Toy Story 3”) are now available on Blu-ray. There are 11 more nominated features coming to Blu-ray in March and April and five others with release dates to be announced (but some already available for pre-order). Of the 10 Best Picture nominees, half are currently on Blu-ray and most of the others are still in theatres (three set to hit Blu-ray in the next one to eight weeks).

I’ve only gotten around to watching 12 of the 56 nominees by press time, including over a quarter of the feature-length contenders (6 of those in the Best Picture category). Less than half of those I saw were in commercial theaters with the rest on Blu-ray in my basement theater. I’ll still predict what I expect will win and typically get about 40 to 60 percent correct overall and about 80 to 90 percent of the major categories, despite seeing only a small fraction of the nominees. I’d say “The Social Network” was easily the Best Picture of those nominees I’ve seen, but I expect that “The King’s Speech” is most likely to win because it is the type of film the Academy traditionally likes to honor. Of course “Toy Story 3” will win Best Animated Feature rather than Best Picture.

I do think there’s a strong possibility, however, that the Academy will break its usual habit of giving Best Director to the same film that wins Best Picture for a change, and may well honor David Fincher for “The Social Network.” That would be partly in guilt for not giving it Best Picture, partly in belated recognition for some of his previous films, and partly because however entertaining and uplifting “The King’s Speech” was, it simply wasn’t particularly well-directed (the same goes for “Black Swan”). Screenplay winners are very tough to guess this year, and I was disappointed “The Town” wasn’t up for screenplay, or anything besides its Supporting Actor nomination.

“The King’s Speech” will probably win a Best Actor for Colin Firth (although Jeff Bridges may have an outside chance of two Oscars in a row for his “True Grit” performance) and if Geoffrey Rush doesn’t win Best Supporting Actor for “The King’s Speech” it will probably go to Christian Bale for “The Fighter.” Best Actress is almost certainly going to Natalie Portman this year for “The Black Swan,” and if Academy voters are thinking straight they’ll give little Hailee Steinfeld Best Supporting Actress for carrying “True Grit” to both popular and critical acclaim.

The single category for which I’ve actually seen all five nominees is Best Cinematography, and it is hard to predict, as one or more of them may either ride the coattails of a sweep (all are nominated in five or more categories) or accumulate guilt-votes for not giving them Best Picture or Director. I’d probably award it to Roger Deakins for “True Grit” or possibly to Jeff Cronenweth for “The Social Network,” although Academy voters might be swayed by the flashiness of “Inception” or the edginess of “Black Swan.” (“The King’s Speech” really needs a sweep to win this.)

A year ago I wrote about how many (or few) Best Picture Oscar nominees and winners were currently available or announced for upcoming release on Blu-ray. The situation has improved somewhat since then, increasing from 26% of all nominees to 34%, and from 40% of the winners to 48% of the winners now or soon to be on Blu-ray. Those numbers include 11 titles available only outside the United States.
Every Best Picture winner back through 1998 can now be seen on Blu-ray (one available only in England), although over that same period there are eight nominees not yet issued and two available only in Canada.
By contrast, only five winners from before 1950 are even out on Blu-ray at all, and two of those are only available in England. There are actually only eight years from the entire 83-year history of the Academy Awards for which every Best Picture nominee is available on Blu-ray (1990, 2003-04, and 2006-10). There are still 18 years for which not a single Best Picture nominee is on Blu-ray (1983, 1968, 1960, 1954-55, 1952, 1949, 1944-45, 1942, 1936-37, and 1928/29-34).

The decade by decade statistics predictably show that fewer older and more recent nominees are available. While 100 percent of this year’s nominees either are on Blu-ray or will be soon, the decade of the 2000s has 50 titles out of 55 for 91%, the 1990s have 29 titles out of 50 for 58%, but the 1980s have only 17 titles for 34%. The 1970s jump back up to 46% with 23 titles, but numbers again drop sharply to 24% for the 1960s with 12 titles, 18% for the 1950s with 9 titles, 16% for the 1940s with 11 titles out of 70, and 6% for the 1930s with only 5 titles out of 87. The 1920s have 2 titles out of 16 nominees for 12%, but both of them (“Sunrise” and “Seventh Heaven”) are available only from Europe.

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