Yes, 'Frankie & Alice' does qualify for this year's Oscar derby
Even though "Frankie and Alice" appeared on the Oscars' reminder list of 2009, it is eligible for Academy Awards in 2010, according to a spokesperson for Freestyle Releasing.
On Monday, the distributor announced "Frankie and Alice" will receive a qualifying run in New York and Los Angeles starting Dec. 17 before it opens wide on Feb. 4, 2011. Soon thereafter, Guy Lodge (InContention) noted that "Frankie and Alice" appeared on last year's Oscar reminder list, which introduced doubt about its current eligibility. He warned that the reminder list is issued in early December and only reflects distributors' intent. It is not the official eligibility list.
An academy spokesperson tells Steve Pond at the Wrap, "Having been included in the list last year does not disqualify it, and in any given year there may be one or more movies in the reminder list that don't end up opening after all."
According to the Index to Motion Picture Credits on the academy's website, "Frankie and Alice" was released in Los Angeles on Dec. 25, 2009, so that means it didn't complete a full week's run in both L.A. and New York City.
UPDATE 2:45 p.m. -- The original draft of this article gave credit for this news to our forums poster seanflynn instead of Guy Lodge at InContention. The correction has been made.
Photo: Freestyle Releasing
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Hey Kris I actually wrote about this movie and performance about this time last year trying to spark some interest but to null. So I pretty much gave up on it. I originally thought it was mahor Oscar type bait....
Sunday, October 18, 2009
What's up with Halle Berry's Frankie and Alice ?
This was a project I was very much interested again as it was a Halle Berry film that looked like material that could give her a chance to chew scenery again with some real serious aspects to it by playing a woman battling multiple personality disorder and also with Stellen Skarsgard playing the doctor treating her. But the film has been complete for some time and I have heard no further word about it. Nothing. I hope it does get an actual theatrical release because the premise seemed very intriguing.
Posted by No Bad Movies at 10:30 PM
Posted by: Dan | October 26, 2010 at 04:11 PM
Thank you. It's just about credit where it's due, that's all.
Posted by: Tye-Grr | October 26, 2010 at 03:45 PM
Sorry to stiff poor Guy Lodge out of his due credit here. I've tweaked the article to fix.
Posted by: Tom O'Neil | October 26, 2010 at 02:53 PM
Not to discredit anyone, but the first person I saw who started investigating this was Guy Lodge over at incontention.com yesterday, and that was even before I started a thread about it here on the Goldderby forums.
Posted by: Tye-Grr | October 26, 2010 at 02:38 PM
Couple things -
If it indeed opened in LA on Dec. 25, it would have been just about unheard of for it not to have played for seven days.
I've never heard of a case where a film opened for less than one week and then came back the next year and then came back and was eligible.
Also the film was not reviewed in the LATimes (or anywhere else that I know of) - there was no Variety review either.
And of course whether it opened in NY has nothing to do with Academy eligibility.
Thanks for the shoutout on my post, but it was actually someone else who first repeated hearing from elsewhere that it was on the list - what I did was find the list and confirm is was listed there.
Posted by: seanflynn | October 26, 2010 at 02:36 PM
Just in the way of correction, seanflynn's post on your forums was in response to someone indicating Guy Lodge's comment on the matter here:
http://incontention.com/2010/10/25/did-halle-berry-just-enter-the-best-actress-race/#comment-82568
And subsequent post here:
http://incontention.com/2010/10/25/did-halle-berry-just-exit-the-best-actress-race/
So I wouldn't say it was news of seanflynn's post that "spread like wildfire" across the web but, more accurately, Mr. Lodge's catch.
Posted by: Kristopher Tapley | October 26, 2010 at 12:45 PM