I almost missed this piece from the bossman, Peter Bart, about the record number of screeners studios rushed to voters' doorsteps this year.  Bart ruminates on a few second-viewing questions that arised for him, and it might give you a little peek into the brain of an Academy member.  He dings a couple of titles, like "Inot the Wild," "No Country for Old Men" and "Juno," but still makes it a point of expressing fondness for them.

He kicks it off like so:

Movie studios seem to enjoy putting out mixed messages.

Every year they complain about the evils of screeners, yet keep dispatching them in ever greater quantity. If those nasty discs truly provide grist for piracy and inadequately represent the aesthetic quality of their films, why was there a record deluge this year (I personally received roughly 100)? And why were some screeners sent out even before the theatrical release of the films?

To be sure, the legalistic admonitions at the front of every screener are longer this year (and multilingual), as though the lawyers think anyone reads their dire warnings. At least the Academy has given up on those clunky vidplayers dispatched to voters two years ago that supposedly were going to solve the piracy issue.

And in closing...

Most of our "serious" filmmakers this year seemed to reside in a very dark place. Blood was gushing in "Sweeney Todd" like oil in "There Will Be Blood" and there were moments in this year's crop of war films that could have blended into the "torture porn" genre of "Hostel, Part II." On one level, I understand all this anger, but wonder whether these filmmakers are trapped in tortuous times or trapped within their own tortured egos.