The gold rush

A bevy of Oscar contenders flood Hong Kong cinemas. Elizabeth Kerr reports.

We've all said it a million times. We leave a "critically acclaimed" film and look at our viewing partners and say, "What's the big deal?" Of course there are other possible reactions, including "I can't believe that got an Oscar nomination," and "Why did this not get an Oscar nomination?" It's a familiar refrain uttered every year and regardless of how often we vow never again to heed awards notices, somehow we do.

Oscar nominations (or wins) are a combination of advertising and branding. The Academy Award is a logo as easily identified as the Michelin Man, Coca-Cola's bendy stripe, and Mac's bitten apple and we tend to "trust" brands. So when a film gets a boatload of nominations, it's splashed all over posters and billboards. Despite the stink of politicking and the campaigns distributors unabashedly run for awards consideration, Oscars are still the apex of artistic achievement and a mark of quality assurance.

And with that artistic achievement comes cash bonuses. There's never been any hard math done, but the effect of Oscar nominations on box office receipts is considerable, if intangible. American Beauty earned over $50 million after it was re-released on the heels of its nominations. Its absence from theaters for a stretch of time before the announcement makes it an easy example, but market researchers IBISWorld conducted a study that suggested best picture winners were blessed with a 20 percent bump in ticket sales after simply being nominated and 15 percent after winning. IBISWorld also noted, "Movies that were nominated for the 2010 Best Picture Oscar and earned over 200 percent of their budget back in box office sales included The Blind Side (782.6 percent); Precious (374 percent); District 9 (285 percent); Up in the Air (235.3 percent) and Avatar (220.9 percent)."

So with a box office to be mined and the big show set to go on February 27, Hong Kong distributors did the wise thing: dumped large scale, family-friendly spectaculars on the lunar new year weekends and held the prestige pictures for the quiet month leading up to Oscar night. First out of the gate is Danny Boyle's best picture contender 127 Hours (opened February 10), starring best actor contender James Franco as Aron Ralston, a vaguely reckless adventure junkie that gets stuck in a Utah canyon and has to hack off his own arm to get out. 127 Hours is a short, sharp shock and an amazing bit of claustrophobic filmmaking. Taking place almost entirely between two rocks and focused on Franco for almost the entire running time, it would be too easy to get boring, maudlin, self-indulgent or overly uplifting.