If you didn’t catch it, not too long ago a movement was started to get Sam Rockwell an Oscar nomination for his work in one of this year’s most popular independent films, Duncan Jones‘ Moon (Read: Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It: Get Sam Rockwell An Oscar Nomination For ‘Moon’!).
Where the movie was exalted by many, it wasn’t even seen by many more, and because of this, it appears that Sony Pictures Classics isn’t willing to shell out the monetary backing required to campaign for a movie. They’ve selected the films that they want considered, they’ve sent out all of the screeners, and Moon is just not part of the party. This doesn’t mean that the film still won’t get the nominations many think it deserves, but without the right people seeing it, the challenge becomes all the more difficult. The reason for this decision seems to balance on the cost of screeners: Moon isn’t out here in the United States yet, so Sony doesn’t want to have to spend the cash to watermark a bunch of screeners to send out.
Duncan Jones himself let everyone know what Sony was doing and how disappointed he is about it via Twitter:
We’ve knocked heads. They have chosen the films they are backing & we are not in their plans.
They say it costs too much for our little film as they would need to be water-marked copies as our DVD isn’t out yet in the US.
I haven’t personally seen the film yet, so it is difficult for me to jump on a box and scream about this. On the other hand, judging by feedback and what we’ve seen in clips and trailers, you can just tell that Rockwell at least deserves to be seen by those who decide the nominees. It’s actually pretty depressing that the Oscars are so far in the hole these days that it’s not about who deserves the nominations and who actually gave the best performances, but it’s all about which studio actually puts the money into pushing their product. If someone like Sandra Bullock actually gets an Oscar nomination for The Blind Side and Rockwell doesn’t even get considered, I may just have to stop watching these things all together.
If you haven’t already, you can still go to the petition that was created for this. Even celebrities like Neil Gaiman and Jon Favreau have gotten behind it, so hopefully the right eyes are reached before it’s too late.
Oh, and even though Moon isn’t in the States on DVD yet, it is on Blu-ray in the U.K., and that doesn’t have those stupid restrictive regions. So if you’re dying to see the film and have a Blu player, go check it out.
[Source: Film School Rejects]
