There are a couple of stories up this week detailing the correlation between box office and film awards success, starting here at home base with Pamela McClintock's Thursday piece.  The story is a pure numbers crunch, no quoted sources, but it gives the clear indication that, this year specially, the golden guys matter.

Here's how she kicks things off:

There's been an unusually strong awards box office bump this year, with the five best picture contenders combining to gross $97 million domestically since Academy Award nominations were announced Jan. 22.

That's more than double the $44 million pulled in by last year's class during the same frame.

No one expected the uptick to come in at record levels, considering the five noms are specialty films that, outside of Fox Searchlight's runaway hit "Juno," offer gloom-and-doom storylines. Also, two of the films -- Warner Bros.' "Michael Clayton" and Miramax's "No Country for Old Men" -- were well into their runs.

Heading into Oscar weekend, the total combined domestic cume for five best picture noms, which all began as limited releases, through Tuesday was $314.4 million, according to Rentrak. That compares to a combined cume of $287.8 million last year.

Last year, the best picture contenders grossed an average of $8.8 million between the time of the Oscar announcements and the week before the ceremony. In each of the two years prior to that, the top noms grossed an average of $13 million during the same time period.

This year, the average is $19.4 million.

Check out the rest.


Meanwhile, over at USA Today, I spoke with Anthony Breznican for a story concerning the Oscars as a cog in the marketing scheme rather than the victory lap they used to be.  Also quoted are Lionsgate prexy Tom Ortenberg, Awards Daily's Sasha Stone and Box Office Mojo's Brandon Gray.

Here's a look:

Today, every major film studio has specialty departments designed to create offbeat, smart contenders for the awards. They typically are films with modest budgets (usually less than $50 million) and limited promotion — at least initially.

In essence, such films are orchestrated to start off as word-of-mouth favorites among devoted moviegoers. As a result, they can wind up as Academy Award nominees with relatively few people having seen them.

Three films that fit that model are among the five contenders for best picture at the Academy Awards, which air live on Sunday (ABC, 8 p.m. ET/5 PT). They involve a bloodthirsty pioneer oilman (There Will Be Blood), an air-gun-toting killer (No Country for Old Men) and a pregnant teenager (Juno).

The films — up against Michael Clayton and Atonement for best picture — have generated increasing buzz for months. But only Juno is a bona fide blockbuster so far, with a surprising $125.5 million in box-office receipts. The Oscar nominations are likely to spread the windfall.

The rest.

As I told Anthony when we spoke, I have never dug into these sorts of numbers to glean any real pattern or consistency.  It makes my brain hurt.  But it is, regardless, difficult to discredit the role award play in a film's profit.  However, I'm of the mind that Oscar success plays into the home market more fiercely than in the box office run.

A sticker that says "Academy Award Winner" is an enticing addition to a DVD case, and as I told Anthony, all one need do is take a look at, say, the netflix list of most rented movies in the weeks following the race to see films like "Mystic River" and "Crash" dominating the top 10 most rented titles.

In any case, it's a circular conversation and a part of the equation parties much better versed (and indeed, much more affected) will coninute to pick at until the end of days.