The Sun-Herald

The Tribal Mind: How do we love Oscar? Count the ways

by David Dale
THE OSCARS exist for one purpose: to boost audiences -- at the cinema, on TV and for DVDs. They achieve that goal pretty effectively in America, but what happens 12,000 kilometres away from LA's Kodak Theatre? Are Australians moved by the Hollywood hype?

On television, yes we are. Between noon and 4pm last Monday, 527,000 people in the mainland capitals sat through the live presentations from the Kodak, and later that same night, another 701,000 sat through three hours of edited highlights. In this year of sagging TV numbers, that makes the awards ceremony a huge hit. Mind you, last year Hugh Jackman attracted 1.2 million to the late night version alone, and another 545,000 to the daytime version. But he's always exceptional. It was still worth Channel Nine buying the rights this year.

In cinemas, the Oscar effect is powerful. These were the nominated movies showing in Australian cinemas last week (followed by their total earnings so far and the percentage change in ticket sales since the previous week): The Blind Side ($6.5 million, down 25 per cent during peak Oscar publicity); Avatar ($110m, down 36 per cent); The Hurt Locker ($2.2m, up 12 per cent); A Single Man ($745,000, down 13 per cent); Up in The Air ($8m, down 25 per cent); Precious ($1.1m, down 6 per cent); Invictus ($7m, down 49 per cent). The biggest earner was Alice in Wonderland, which stunned everyone by taking $14 million in its first week, needing no nominations because it has The Depp Factor.

On average, any movie's takings decline about 30 per cent from one week to the next. So a drop of less than 30 (as with The Blind Side, The Hurt Locker, A Single Man, Up in the Air and Precious) means Oscar buzz made a difference, and the punters were apparently saying "I wasn't going to see that, but since it was nominated for awards, I'd better rush off to the flicks and give it a go".

The biggest winner, The Hurt Locker, will go on to even bigger growth in coming weeks. Precious probably won't be much assisted by its wins for Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay. A low budget tale of squalor and child abuse sounds too much like a typical Australian film to attract Australian audiences.

Of course, the cinema industry doesn't need as much help from the Oscars as does the DVD industry. The multiplexes are holding up brilliantly against the onslaught of alternative media. Last year Australians bought $1.09 billion worth of movie tickets -- 15 per cent more than the record figure in 2008. Last year, we spent $1.58 billion buying 83.02 million DVDs - an impressive score until you discover that in 2008 we spent $1.56 billion buying 85.28 million DVDs. So the sales of the silver disc have started a slow decline.

DVD distributors would love to be able to attach to their boxes a sticker saying "Winner of three Academy Awards", or even just "Oscar-nominated", which is no doubt why the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences this year increased the number of best picture nominees from five to ten.

Last year's top selling DVDs included Australia, Twilight, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen -- none of which had won Oscars. The main Oscar winner of 2009, Slumdog Millionaire, didn't make the sales top 30.

This year's DVD chart will doubtless be topped by Avatar, which has already proved it needs no peer approval to saturate the market. But if The Hurt Locker should gather even a couple of thousand extra sales when its disc comes out next month, then all the embarrassment of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin last Monday will not have been in vain.

Go to Comments to discuss how Oscar buzz affects your entertainment choices.

David Dale is the author of The Little Book of Australia -- A snapshot of who we are (Allen and Unwin). For daily updates on Australian attitudes, bookmark blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.