OSCAR COUNTDOWN

JUST THREE days to go before this year's Oscars are revealed.

Check out tomorrow's Birmingham Mail for my tips as to who I think (and hope) will win.

One man unlucky not to be represented this time is Clint Eastwood, who gives one of the finest performances of his career in his new, self-directed movie Gran Torino.

Perhaps the Academy thought he'd just had too many nonimations in the past few years, but the American Film Institute rated it one of its top ten films for 2008.

Gran Torino is being released in Brum next Wednesday.

I've seen it twice already and can't wait to review it in next Friday's paper.

It's out in London from tomorrow, but, when distributors keep trying new gimmicks by inventing strange release dates in a bid to create some sort of box office statistic, it's a difficult choice about when we should review something if we've already seen it.

Confessions of a Shopaholic, for example, was brought forward to this Wednesday and I'll be reviewing that in tomorrow's paper.

I could have reviewed this fun comedy last week having seen it back in January, but I don't really see the point of reviewing things too soon.

Another hassle is that distributors don't always want us to see stuff in advance.

Or they make it as difficult as possible in the hope that in the absence of any adverse criticism, a mixture of advertising / viral marketing / free puffs will bring punters in.

Now that's when I'd happily settle for a Wednesday advance screening for the public so that we could still run a review in the week of release and continue to provide an unrivalled service for our readers.

In my view, distributors should simply embrace the notion that well-informed reviews, whether good or bad, simply help to stimulate a wider interest in film at all levels.

I don't know a single film reviewer who doesn't love movies.