The last four months of every year are dedicated mostly to the analysis of Oscar contenders and their chances at year-end awards, box office crossover appeal and the ultimate prize handed out the following February. There are always films contending for the holiday dollars, but many of those films, unless they are blockbusters, won’t be doing much in the way of dominating conversations during the season.

Other than a couple of small Oscar contenders from the likes of Paul Thomas Anderson, this September looks to be another dumping ground for poorly-testing films that were originally greenlighted as potential Oscar contenders and have subsequently faded from the radar. October has a few more bright spots, but as is typical, it is dominated by horror films trying to sucker in fright-hungry audiences. November, apart from the traditional Thanksgiving glut, seems to be a proving ground for many potential Oscar contenders. That leaves December, which again is chock full of big titles with big hopes for Oscar glory.

This year, unlike many recent years, seems to have a larger majority of late-year releases trying to find seats at Oscar’s table. Most of the early “contenders” this year have faltered and failed to recover. Even the likes of Pixar’s Brave and Warner Bros.’ The Dark Knight Rises didn’t earn nearly the acclaim as their predecessors did leaving the question: will the Academy still nominate them in Best Picture when Pixar’s WALL-E and The Dark Knight were the two keys reasons the Academy agreed to expand the Best Picture slate to include more than five entries. Both films missing will be rather ironic. However, those musings are best left for later in the year. Right now, we’re looking solely at what’s coming in the months of September, October, November and December, the months that make up prime Oscar Season.

To introduce you to the upcoming films, there will be two preview articles every month and this introduction every four months. The Season Preview article will focus on one of three seasons Spring Season (January through April), Tentpole Season (May through August) and Oscar Season (September through December). In these introductory articles, I will give you the current release schedule for the specified season, which may change as the release dates get closer.

SEPTEMBER 7, 2012

The Words (Wide)