Word: oscarization
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...members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences choose the Oscar candidates by going to the Academy theaters for pre-release screenings throughout the year. They may even pay to see a few with real people at real movie houses. Then they catch up with the ones they've missed by going to other private showings or seeing some on DVD screeners the studios send them. It's practically a full-time job, if you take it seriously. Why, the valet-parking costs alone could mount into the low four figures...
...Anybody else could see most of the Oscar nominees by spending 10 days in Toronto...
...launching pad for films that have eyes on the Academy Awards. So do the movies' largest luminaries. Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton will be there in aid of Burn After Reading, a quirky spy caper from Joel and Ethan Coen, who nabbed the top Oscar with No Country for Old Men. George Clooney, another of the film's stars, may not be in Toronto, but he was all over the place last year with Michael Clayton. Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Colin Farrell, Scarlett Johansson, Edward Norton, Renee Zellweger, Natalie Portman and dozens, hundreds more are expected...
...note that while beautiful, riveting and poignant might be applied to many TIFF graduates that went on to Oscar renown, the word blockbuster would not. As action films, guy-to-guy comedies and digitally animated features increasingly pull in the giant grosses, the high-to-middle-brow drama - TIFF's specialty - has become if not an endangered species, then certainly a niche item in Hollywood. None of the aforementioned pictures earned as much as $100 million at the North American box office. A megahit like The Dark Knight can grab that in a weekend. Only Brokeback Mountain took in more...
...audiences know him from those films, and from the 2004 Howl's Moving Castle, whose characters (and their dwellings and vehicles) seemed to spring from the mind of Joel Hodgson's Gizmonics Institute. People who hadn't seen Miyazaki's pictures might have heard his name mentioned on Oscar night: Spirited Away won an Academy Award for best animated feature, and Howl's was nominated in that category...