Needless expirations

I'm sure this isn't the sort of publicity the nice publicist wanted for the French film The Party's Over!, which I will be reviewing in the coming weeks. Then again, the idea that my little blog qualifies as any sort of actual "publicity" is somewhat humorous. 

The thing I'm writing about today doesn't have anything to do with this movie in particular or even, likely, with this publicist. It's a funny methodology baked into their way of getting screeners to critics, and even then it is not a big deal, as you will see -- just one of those minor inefficiencies that I liked to talk about on my blog.

Namely: They're expiring the screeners a lot earlier than they need to.

Back on July 31st, I agreed to review The Party's Over! for its eventual August 27th release. That seemed like ages away, so I thought I'd just get something in my back pocket to tackle as I saw fit over the next month.

When I went to casually check on it yesterday, I noticed the screener was set to expire that very day. So, I immediately had my evening's viewing plans sorted.

When I went to watch it starting at just after 10 -- not an ideal time to start a movie, but that's my reality these days -- the password would not work on it. It didn't tell me the screener was expired, just that the password was wrong.

I determined that they must be one in the same when I went to my email and saw a new email from the publicist, from just two hours earlier, telling me that the screener had expired and did I want him to send me a new one, and then also to let him know when and if I post a review. ("If"? I didn't know "if" was an option.)

A bunch of things going on here:

1) The screener shouldn't have expired. If you say something is expiring on August 10th, that should mean August 10th at 11:59 p.m. That should mean you can watch it at any time on August 10th.

2) Why expire a screener for a movie that's not set to come out for another 17 days? Aren't most people not going to watch and review the film until much closer to its release date?

3) If he's already asking after the review, does that mean he wishes I'd already posted it? Wouldn't you rather have someone read a review when they are within just a couple days of actually being able to buy a ticket? Out of sight, out of mind, right?

When I get my next screener, I'll be curious to see how quickly they expire it. And I'll be sure not to let that happen. Regardless of whether it should even be happening or not.