Clock ticks for buffs to binge nominated films
NEW YORK >> A film buff from Oklahoma City, Elyssa Mann has scant time to waste, needing to cross just four more movies off her Oscars list before Sunday’s Academy Awards broadcast: Two animated films, one for cinematography and another for costume design.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, Steve Tornello has just one left — the latest “Avatar” — before he can fairly judge all 10 of the best picture nominees.
In the perfect multiverse, time would bend to allow movie fans to watch anything anywhere, all at once.
But in the real world, not the googly eyed one, time keeps ticking and that makes things difficult for diehard film enthusiasts hoping to fill every bracket in their personal Oscars scoresheets.
“I have four Oscars movies left in my quest to watch all the ones nominated for picture/acting/craft etc,” Mann wrote in a tweet, “and this somehow feels insurmountable.”
As it is, Sunday morning’s time change (don’t forget to spring forward) will mean an hour less to binge.
“I am a person who thrives under pressure, like I need the deadline. So it’s good that it’s here,” Mann, a 31-year-old marketer, said during a phone call. “Now I have to watch them.”
She’ll watch two or three Saturday, and save whatever’s left for Sunday before the ceremony.
Since the New Year, she’s watched nearly 30 of the nominated films, escalating her project when the nominations were announced in late January.
She acknowledged there isn’t enough time to view nominees in a handful of categories, including documentaries.
It would take days without sleep to watch every one of the more than 50 movies that received at least one nomination in any of the roughly two dozen categories being awarded.
Theoretically, academy voters are supposed to watch every film. But even for the pros, that apparently doesn’t happen. After all, does anyone really have the time?
Tornello, a fledgling screenwriter and creative director for a tech company, is trying to make time this weekend to finally trudge out to the movie theater to watch “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the final movie on his list.
“I have a lot on my plate right now,” he said. “That’s a movie I know I need to see in the theater to get the full experience.”