Screener update

Daily Variety reports today (link requires registration) that the major studios and the MPAA will reverse their ban on screeners, but only for Academy members. There will still be a ban on sending tapes and discs to critics and members of the various guilds. Daily Variety says that “an announcement is expected this week.”

The continuing ban on critics screeners is only likely to further anger professional critics, fueling their argument that this is really an effort to cut them out of the “Oscar buzz” game. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association announced at the weekend that it would cancel its year-end awards in protest. The group customarily gives out its awards in mid-December, and last year was the second major critics group to announce its winners, after the National Board of Review. (They later reversed themselves.)

I don’t think this was a wise move — canceling outright rather than announcing in January, though I understand the emotional satisfaction that kicking the studios in the teeth might give. For one thing, canceling tends to suggest that the group’s real agenda is not to honor the best films, but affect the Oscar race. Now, the latter is not a bad thing in itself, and most years I prefer the LA critics circle winners to those of the Academy — so they’re pushing the Academy in a direction I generally approve. But to cancel the awards outright rather than giving them in January is throwing the baby (honoring the best films) out with the bathwater (influencing the Academy).

Further, I’m not so sure that, for pro critics, screeners affect their ability to see the December Oscar bait *that much.* I know pro critics who avoid looking at tapes or discs as much as they can, and still see every film at a critics screening by early or mid-December. Screeners are certainly convenient, especially for repeat viewings and making up a missed screening, but hardly necessary.