The New York Critics’ Circle has moved the date of their annual awards forward to 28th November. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like an awfully early date for a festival designed to celebrate the best of the year that has been – especially when you consider that the logistics of posting and counting votes. It’s a full month before the end of the year! How many films are yet to be screened at this point? It got me thinking about the “best of…” polls that we inevitably see as the year draws to a close? When do people start compiling those lists?
Well, I guess we can all cut this one out of our NYCC pools...
Ideally, it makes sense to wait until after the year is finished before casting votes on the quality of the year that has been. After all, that’s why the Oscars take place two months into the following year, so that the members of the Academy at least have a chance to catch up with all the films released in a given year before casting their vote. Of course, the Oscars are the biggest and most widely covered film awards on the planet, so they serve as the full stop at the end of an increasingly protracted awards season.
Being entirely honest, it’s easy to see the politics behind the decision of the New York Critics’ Circle. They want to be first in the annual awards ceremonies, knowing that they get the honour of setting the front-runners, generating more headlines than those that come later, when even the most avid film fanatics are starting to feel a bit jaded by the relentless award-conferring. It goes without saying that this has nothing to do with the business of awarding the films themselves – the Critics’ Circle shouldn’t give two hoots about the Academy Awards, and should just get on with the business of giving awards to films that they deem worthwhile.
Awards season continues to dragon far too long...
Being brutally honest, I don’t see the point of moving your dates forward purely so your awards can be discussed in the context of another ceremony. I’d like the people to care what the New York Critics’ Circle recommended because they are films chosen by critics that I trust – films I might have missed – and that they are deemed worthwhile. Not because they’re another statistic to be added to a pool for guessing the winners at another competition nearly half-a-year away. But such is life, I can understand the reason that the group wants the publicity and the attention from being in the coveted position of “the first.”
It’s just distracting, because it cuts off one-twelfth of the year from consideration. Sure, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows might be an unconventional choice, but there are quite a few movies that do deserve the chance to be judged “in competition.” The most obvious is David Fincher’s upcoming The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, among others. These are films that won’t be eligible for the next cycle of votes, and cutting them off seems rather mean-spirited. More than that, though, it seems overly cynical to even assume we can predict “deserving”films based on hype or publicity. What if a really great film comes out of nowhere in December?
Some muppets might just about make it...
I will confess that I have caught myself thinking about my own annual “best of” list in the past week or so, and I feel immensely guilty for doing so. I wonder how other people do it. Do you keep track of the films as you see them, sort of charting them as an internal leader board, with a new entry when see a particular worthy film? Do you reappraise at random intervals (the end of a month or a week)? Do you leave it until the last-minute, and sort through your mental index of films to nominate the best? Hell, are you above this arguably pointless system of “ranking”, and construct your lists on-demand, when asked? Is “the best of 2011” something constructed internally at some point in the future, with the benefit of hindsight, or is it a constant work in process, or is it something that you’ll never really think about at all?
I’ll concede that I think most lists and rankings are just a little bit silly, but they’re also good fun. They’re interesting to talk about and discuss, to argue of and to break down. Come December, around Christmas time, I am as liable to enter “list mode” as everybody else, and I have great fun doing it – just as I have great fun reacting to various other people’s lists. However, I think it’s the type of feel-good nostalgia that’s best reserved for the Christmas period, as one year fades into the next, fitting as something of a genuinely more reflective attitude.
Maybe he should chance his name to Arthur Thanksgiving if he's serious about this awards thing...
It’s funny, because it betrays just how much of a movie nerd I am, but this decision by the New York Critics’ Circle feels like another of those attempts to extend the Christmas holiday season, to the point where I’m already watching Christmas advertisements on television. I know it’s not the express purpose of moving the dates forward (that’s to cash in on kicking off a season that’s already far too long), but it’s the kind of thing that I think of when I see it. I associate the sort of reflective list-making as a custom reserved for the time when news digests are doing the same thing, or when radio stations are charting the year’s greatest hits.
And yes, sadly, I think this is the first post this year to actually seriously talk about Christmas.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Academy Award, christmas, Come December, david fincher, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, new york, New York Critics Circle, oscar, steven spielberg |
the m0vie blog 
Last year I just compiled one at the end of the year by just going through the movies I had seen. Of course there were loads of movies I had not seen yet, but to me I just pick my personal favorites, which don’t have to be that year’s best movies. This year I have been keeping track of the movies I’ve seen and written down the ones I consider for my personal top 10.
Interesting. This year I’ve tried compiling a running list, but I found there was too much movement. Not just in new films, but in old films as well. I think I like Black Swan more now than when I first saw it, for example.
The NYCC’s decision, I imagine, puts a lot of potential candidates for “best of” lists– Shame, Melancholia, Tin Tin,FIncher and the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and others– out of contention. Suffice it to say, that makes no damn sense in the slightest, to the point where I cannot begin to fathom the logic behind the move at all.
On paper this reads like the Circle creating an opportunity to pat themselves on the back for “calling it” when the Academy releases their picks. That’s just selfish.
Not only selfish, but useless. No one gives a good goddamn if the NYFCC picked the winners in advance or not. The only thing this does is take Dark Horse candidates like John Hawkes and Jacki Weaver last year out of the race.
Yep. It’s just about the ink, I suspect.
And to get the most ink. Nobody can get tired of your pointless Oscar indicators if you’re the first pointless Oscar indicator.