"Shutter Island" and the New Academy

I've just finished reading Dennis Lehane's "Shutter Island." What an exquisite piece of work. Hopefully screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis has created an adaptation worthy of her source material. I don't have any doubts about that seeing as Martin Scorsese wanted to helm the project.

I do question the Oscar-potential of the film as the novel's narrative doesn't scream Academy Award. But it seems lately - the past 10 years actually - that the Academy has made a decided swing in what can be considered "Oscar- bait." After almost a decade of honoring sweeping epics throughout the 90's there has been a greater variety of Best Picture winners this decade: an old fashioned swords and sandals flick, a movie musical, a fantasy film, a gangster movie, a cat and mouse thriller, a film with a third of its dialogue in Hindi... Not to mention the fact that the past 10 years have had seven contemporary-set films (this varies as to how one wishes to define contemporary).

It used to be you'd pick the longest, most costumed movie of the year and have a safe bet at the Best Picture winner. There has been a change of the tide, but it's probably impossible to predict which way it will go. If anything, it seems the critics are the ones to look to. If they like a film it'll probably get nominated if not win - see "No Country for Old Men," "The Departed," "Slumdog Millionaire," "Million Dollar Baby"...

Perhaps though, the truncated Oscar season has influenced that pattern more than anything. If you now have four weeks less to watch X-amount of movies before filling out your nomination ballot which ones will you watch: those you know nothing about or the ones that got good reviews? 2009 marks the 7th year of February Oscars. From 2003 to 2008, "Crash" is the only Best Picture winner not to score more than 90% on Rotten Tomatoes (75%) and also ranks the lowest on IMdB's top 250 (#209) and Metacritic (69) among the winners from those six years. (I won't go into any reason why "Crash" won over "Brokeback Mountain," but perhaps another time...)

I, for one, am not a fan of the short Oscar season. I liked having until mid-February to see possible nominees and then until the end of March to see the true contenders. But if a short season is the price to pay for having an eclectic list of Best Picture winners it might not be too bad after all.