“I’d Like to Thank the Academy …”

Actually, I would like to kick the Academy in the buttocks, and keep kicking until they make a rule that every Oscar-nominated film is automatically released on DVD. Every movie geek should have a chance to see everything nominated before the telecast.

As it stands, I’ve seen just a handful of the movies on the list of nominees announced today:

* Little Miss Sunshine (Best Picture, plus several others; it inspired this post last month);

* An Inconvenient Truth (Best Documentary and Best Song, believe it or not; I can’t even remember it having a song);

* Cars and Monster House (Best Animated Feature);

* The Illusionist (Best Cinematography).

My wife and I should be able to get a few more from Netflix before the hardware is distributed February 25, but we still won’t get to see most of the major-award nominees.

I have to think that’s just bad marketing on the part of the movie business. Most categories have five nominees. That means people like me would try to see all five nominated pictures in each of the main categories before February 25. If we can’t see them in theaters and they aren’t available on DVD, we’re SOL.

But after February 25, we’ll only be interested in the winners. So we’ll only see a fraction of the movies we would’ve been willing to rent before the envelopes are opened.

I understand that the Academy is an organization of movie people, and movie people want you and me to see their product in theaters. Realistically, though, that isn’t going to happen, which is why they make more money from DVDs than they do from ticket sales.

So why do they leave so much money on the table by holding back the DVD release of most of their best movies until after the winners are announced? Isn’t that just a bad business decision?

Gratuitous side note: I’ve waited on Sherry Lansing, winner of this year’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. And let me say this, for the record: She’s perfectly nice to waiters, which should be the first criterion for any award with the word “humanitarian” in the title.

Tags: Tags: entertainment