Introducing The Oscar Calendar And Weekly Watchlist for April 1 to 7, 2012

I am proud to announce two new features for this blog. The first is the Oscar Calendar. It is a project that I have been working on behind the scenes for a while, and am happy to finally present publicly. The Oscar Calendar is a comprehensive guide where you can find all the dates that an Oscar prognosticator needs, from precursor awards and industry guilds to critics groups and film festivals. I have also included film release dates (both US and a few international), and information about when Academy press announcements and eligibility lists for the technical and genre categories are likely to be delivered. For those who follow the animated short and live action short categories, the Academy’s approved qualifying film festivals are marked with the notation “(Shorts Qualifier)”. You can find the full Oscar Calendar HERE.

The second feature is my Weekly Watchlist. This is where I will say a little bit about the events coming up in the week ahead. A preview, if you will, of news items to watch.

The biggest news item that is likely to land on your radar is the April Fool’s Day ceremony for the Razzie Awards. Their choices always seem a little too mainstream for me (aren’t there any bad documentaries or indie films?), but at least I managed to skip most of them. As I said in my review of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1, I think that the boys gang up on this series a bit too much. Look for Adam Sandler’s Jack And Jill to sweep a good many of the categories this year.

This week marks the start of the Istanbul International Film Festival and the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival. Meanwhile, several film festivals are wrapping up this week, including the Hong Kong International Film Festival, New Directors New Films, Cleveland International Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival and the Out In Africa South African Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.

Those who follow the Oscar shorts races will note that Cleveland and Atlanta are qualifying festivals for both their narrative and animated short awards, and Ann Arbor has four short awards that all qualify.

As I look at the new releases for the coming week, I am not sure that any of them have what it takes to beat The Hunger Games at the box office. Oddly, one film being released has already won 11 Oscars! That’s right, Titanic is being re-released in 3D. The week’s newer fare includes the wide and limited release of American Reunion, Damsels In Distress, The Hunter, Take Me Home, We Have A Pope, We The Party, Comic Con: Episode IV- A Fans Hope, ATM, Detention, Keyhole, Purification, Surviving Progress, This Binary Universe and Iron Sky (in Europe).

For more on what is coming up in the world of movies, be sure to check out the full Oscar Calendar.
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