THE FEST QUESTS

he period drama “12 Years a Slave” took the audience prize in Toronto. “Fruitvale Station” and “Blue Is the Warmest Color” won in competition at Sundance and Cannes, respectively, with Bruce Dern ("Nebraska") and Berenice Bejo ("The Past") taking acting prizes at Cannes. ¶ That’s it for the festival trophies, unless there’s a prize for the movie that has played at the most events this year. That award would have to be shared by “Blue,” “The Past,” Joel and Ethan Coen’s "Inside Llewyn Davis", Alexander Payne's "Nebraska" and Hayao Miyazaki’s animated swan song, “The Wind Rises,” all of which played at four high-profile festivals. Why the overload? These days, consultants say, when it comes to mapping out an award season film festival strategy for would-be Oscar contenders, the operating principle is the more, the merrier. ¶ “It was once considered too expensive and too much work to take big-scale films to festivals," one awards consultant says, asking for anonymity because of sensitive client relationships. "Studios relied on the advertising budgets to propel the conversation. But once the Oscars moved to February, studios and, particularly, filmmakers began to view these events more and more as Oscar launching pads. Now everyone is demanding their movies be included." ¶ That’s good news for festival-goers and airlines, but not necessarily for the studios footing the travel costs. (One consultant put CBS Films’ Cannes tab for “Llewyn Davis” at more than $3 million, a sizable chunk of change for a period character study set in the early ’60s folk scene.) The only perceived Oscar contenders that didn’t make the festival scene this year were two late-arrivers: David O. Russell's "American Hus-tle and Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street." How busy has it been? Follow the curve in the accompanying chart while thanking your maker you weren't the one

booking the hotel rooms.

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