Using Awards Season 2013 as a Film Guide
However, award season can serve two purposes. First, for film lovers it serves as a way to root for and celebrate your favorite films of the last year. Second, and perhaps most importantly, it can serve as a viewing guide. The endless choices of studio, independent and foreign films can be overwhelming. Awards season winners and nominees can guide you when you are skimming through those films you have never heard of at your local video chain or streaming online services. This will enable you to discover the "Gems" that you have been missing.
There are a number of different ways to use the Awards as a guide for film "treasure hunting". First it is important to review what "Award Season" entails.
Award season typically begins around the time of the Gotham Award Nominations in mid-October and culminates with the Academy Awards in late February. The list includes but is not limited to:
Gotham
New York Film Critics Circle
National Board of Review
Los Angeles Film Critics
British Independent Awards (BIFA)
American Film Institute (AFI)
Satellite
Critics Choice
Hollywood Foreign Press Association (Golden Globes)
Producers Guild
Screen Actors Guild (SAG)
Directors Guild
British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA)
Writers Guild
Independent Spirit
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Oscars)
You can look at awards season like the PGA Tour of films where a film may compete in some events and not in others, or may compete in all. The "Majors" would arguably be considered to be the Golden Globes, SAG, BAFTA and Oscars.
Film Guide 1: See winners after the Academy Awards.
In 2010: I decided to see the Oscar Award winning films for every category. This involved around 24 films including the short film categories. This is a reactive film guide that was dependent on the results of the awards. This can easily be done at two films a month and if you have a Netflix membership, be sure to check there before you head to the video store or I-Tunes. Netflix has become a great place to see last years Oscar nominees and winners.
Film Guide 2: See all Oscar nominees before the Academy Awards
In 2011 after attending the AFI Film Fest I took a proactive approach. I used the films I had already seen and attempted to see all of the Oscar nominees before the awards. The festival was in October and the nominations would be announced in late January, I had to utilize websites such as IndieWire and Ropes of Silicon as well as word of mouth to make sure I saw any films that might be nominated. By the time I was finished I had seen over 80 films with possible Oscar implications and still came up four short. (Two foreign animated features and two in the foreign category itself which had qualifying runs earlier in year).
Film Guide 3: See as many awarded films as possible. See all of the Golden Globe, SAG, BAFTA and Oscar nominee's before the shows.
This is my current task and has been a huge undertaking. Tomorrow brings the Golden Globes and I will have seen every nominee except Nicole Kidman's performance in The Paperboy and the documentary The Gatekeepers. I will have seen all of the SAG nominees. I will be two to four short for the BAFTA awards and most likely, unless I can find a screening, be one short for the Oscars (The Canadian film War Witch which opens in early March).
Guides 2 and 3 are nearly impossible to do before the awards regardless, but especially without living near New York or Los Angeles where film festivals, art houses and Oscar qualifying runs make many films available months before they are actually due in theaters. Many of the documentaries, foreign films and shorts will never show in a cinema outside the top 5 or 6 major American or International markets. However, they will become available eventually through video outlets or streaming.
Living in Los Angeles has its perks and constant free screenings are one (although parking and eating out suck up that saved expense). If on average I payed $10 per movie (That's a little low for NY and LA and a little high for the Midwest) I would have spent $1400 on movie tickets alone from awards season 2012 to awards season 2013. I will have see over 140 films, dozens of them foreign and nearly half of them labeled "Independent" by Hollywood standards. I will still have 20 or so films to see to complete the BIFA, Satellite and Indie Spirit nominees.
Guide 4: See all of the winners of the four major awards.
This is the best option for those who like film but aren't quite as OCD as yours truly. There will be a lot of overlap between winners. There will most likely be 35 to 50 winning films for all four awards shows. A good well rounded list. If you see one film a week (have a movie night) you will easily accomplish this in a year.
I will always encourage you to see the films in the theatres when they open if at all possible. The cinema experience is much preferable to sitting at home on the couch and a packed theatre is a fun theatre. Use the buzz surrounding the pictures to guide you to the quality pics.
Happy Screening!!!
C.D.R.
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