Movie promotion, no box office required

Wherein I think it's about time to test out this Netflix thingy


From the Slate Movie Club, Roger Ebert:

[Tilda Swinton]'s taken difficult or impossible roles. She's worked with free spirits like Sally Potter, Jim Jarmusch, Derek Jarman, Tim Roth, and Spike Jonze. She personally helped haul a "cinema wagon" across Scotland by rope to bring good movies to the outlands, and when she finally makes a flat-out terrific thriller, what happens? It grosses $64,000 in U.S. theatrical release. How is that possible?

Magnolia gave it a shabby release. No promotion. I saw it on a screener before it opened at Facets Cinematheque here in Chicago. Dana, you thought Tilda was the year's best actress. I thought she was the year's best actress. The voters in IndieWIRE's annual poll thought she was the year's best actress. She won the Evening Standard best actress award. New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis wrote, "Ms. Swinton demands to be seen even when her character is on a self-annihilating bender so real that you can almost smell the stink rising off her. So I sat in my seat, cursed the screen and was grateful to watch an actress at the height of her expressive power claw toward greatness." When Manohla gets like that I almost want to move over a seat.

But-who in America saw the film? Most critics didn't. Certainly not enough to win her any big-city critics' awards. Is there an Oscar campaign? Don't make me laugh. What do we do, pals? Roll over and accept it?

I put Julia on my best of 2009 list and was startled by the unanimous agreement among the readers posting on my blog. Where and how had they seen it? Now we're getting to the intriguing part. Turns out it's an Instant Streamer on Netflix, included at no extra charge as part of every one of its 14 million subscriptions. What Magnolia did right was allowing this to happen. Just this year, streaming on Netflix has finally penetrated the moviegoing population. If you have good net service, they deliver an HD- or Blu-ray-quality picture-no glitches-and you can stream as many movies as you can see. So all of these people in Arkansas, Alaska, Vermont, and East Jesus have seen Julia, and they love it. Word of mouth.

Remember back in the 1970s? (No, come to think of it, you don't.) Annie Hall became the lowest-grossing movie in history to win the Oscar for best picture; four Oscars in all. Trade experts called it "the first Oscar cable campaign." Cable TV was in its infancy, but most of the Academy visitors in Los Angeles subscribed to a plucky start-up called the X Channel, which screened the hell out of it.

Flash-forward. Netflix has greater penetration than X Channel ever did. All voters have to do is click on the remote. They don't have to go out to a screening. They don't even have to sort through their Oscar screeners and put one in the DVD. If they watch Julia, they will see the year's best actress, and they may vote for her.

Here's my crazy notion. With so many popular and critical voices behind it, maybe the Academy will arise from its slumber and vote outside the box for change. These could be the first Netflix Oscars.