So when the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences needs to move its announcement of this year's Oscar nominations six days forward due to the ongoing fires in Los Angeles -- a more justified decision there never was -- it's hard, nay impossible, to shift forward with them.
Some people might say "Another six days of watching movies? Great! My 2024 list will now just be that much more complete."
Me? I'm saying "It's time to move on to something else."
And so after learning yesterday that the announcement of nominations was moved from the expected date of January 17th at 5:30 a.m. PST to the new date of January 23rd at 5:30 a.m. PST, I decided this did not change my own timeline, and I would still finish up tonight with my final movie of 2024, as first conceived when I learned of this year's nomination date several months ago. Tomorrow, I will post my list.
Look, I'm tired. And (spoiler alert) I will already be setting a record number of movies ranked this year, even without bonus time.
This was not the only 11th hour change related to my movie rankings.
I had expected to see A Complete Unknown tonight as my final film. In fact, I already had a post written called "My final screening is an advanced screening," which will now sit forever in my drafts folder, since I never delete my unpublished drafts, leaving them as sort of a record of unfinished thoughts.
See, A Complete Unknown does not come out in Australia until next Thursday, a fact I did not realize when I ignored the opportunity to see it in Los Angeles. I assumed it was one of the many high-profile Boxing Day releases in Australia, and that I'd have ample time to squeeze it in when my family returned from our trip to America. Then again, even if I had known about Unknown, there was very little chance I would have prioritized seeing a musician biopic over the movies I did see while I was there, The Brutalist and Nickel Boys.
So I expected the Bob Dylan biopic to go unseen by me prior to closing off my rankings, until I got invited to an advanced screening that was scheduled, lo and behold, for the 12-hour window before the Oscar nominations went live in a time zone 19 hours different from my own. I RSVP'd straight away.
Fortuitously, it would mean I finished my 2024 rankings in the same place I finished my 2015 rankings, at the glorious venue The Astor in St. Kilda, an old-fashioned movie house if ever there was one, complete with balcony. In 2016 (for the movies of 2015), that was where I saw the first of three movies that had only just been released on my final day of ranking, which was The Hateful Eight, intermission and all. I finished the epic day with Carol and The Big Short at venues increasingly closer to my house. Only Carol did not make my top 20 and The Hateful Eight made my top ten. I actually have not been back to The Astor since later that same year, when I saw a special screening of the beloved Australian film Malcolm, my wife having worked with its writer and director.
I loved the idea of finishing at The Astor, but there was something nagging and incomplete with this plan. Despite RSVPing within a day of the invitation being sent, I had not heard back from the publicist confirming my spot. I followed up with her about five days later to be sure I was on the list, and again did not hear back. Yesterday at work I went so far as to print out the emailed invitation as well as my response to it, should my legitimacy as an invitee be questioned.
Only after getting home from work yesterday did I notice I finally had a response from her, which was to tell me that alas, the screening was at capacity, but she would add me to the waitlist.
That's lame. When you respond within 24 hours, you should be on the list, especially at a venue as large as The Astor. I was surprised it could be at capacity regardless, and I wonder if she intentionally didn't respond because she had other higher priority attendees she wanted to accommodate. After all, my site is still not one of the big players in Australian film coverage. Nonetheless, it would be hard for me to imagine that there are, oh, 500 ahead of me, though obviously a lot of those seats would be reserved for other VIPs/ticket winners etc.
I don't expect my waitlist spot to materialize -- possibly especially after I responded stating (politely) my disappointment in the outcome -- so now I am pivoting, and it's actually to see a movie I am a lot more interested in than A Complete Unknown.
I had written off Sing Sing as a movie I had any chance of seeing before my deadline. In discussing it briefly with my friend who also ranks his movies, he told me he wouldn't be able to rank it because it had disappeared after a very brief Oscar-qualifying run. If it isn't generally available in the U.S., I figured it was one of those movies that wouldn't come out in Australia until March.
Lo and behold, it actually opened yesterday.
So I guess there is a net positive here. My wife still thinks I'm going to see A Complete Unknown tonight -- or at least to an advanced screening, since that's all I told her and she didn't ask for any clarifying details. So I'm going to use the preapproval for the time slot to go to Cinema Nova instead of The Astor, and if she asks what movie I saw, I'll just tell her the truth. After all, she didn't know this wasn't the movie I was seeing, and she does not keep track of release dates.
And by finishing with Sing Sing at Cinema Nova, I'm finishing at the real place I concluded my viewings nine years ago, as this was the venue where I saw my final film of 2015, The Big Short. I believe only a single final film of a year has been in the theater since then, which would be Darkest Hour in 2017.
I suppose there is still a chance the publicist comes back to me with apologies and an open-arms invitation to A Complete Unknown, and if that happens I would go, having been bent out of shape about it to her. Even though Sing Sing is now the center of my thoughts.
You'll know either way tomorrow, when I finally post my rankings of the films of 2024, all the way from best to worst.
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