I’m gathering/presuming that Hurt Locker screeners for Academy members will be mailed out before December 1st. If this doesn’t happen PDQ and if (God forbid) somehow The Hurt Locker somehow doesn’t get Best Picture nominated (which is unthinkable), the fault will be entirely Summit’s. This great war film has to be seen to kick in. A Crash-like screener mailing to everyone on the planet is the only way to go.

“At the start of the awards season, I had The Hurt Locker at the top of my top ten picks list,” writes columnist Anne Thompson. “But right now quite a few other movies are getting more noise. That doesn’t matter in the end. Finally, the Academy voters will dig back to all the films they saw this year, especially when they don’t have time to see all the marginal indies in their DVD stack. It’s more likely that they will remember the movies that the critics pick for their top ten lists at the end of the year, or that other awards groups like the Gothams, Critics Choice or Golden Globes anoint as must-sees.

“Finally, though, screeners are the best reminder. So where are those The Hurt Locker DVDs?

“At the New Moon party I asked [this of] Summit’s Rob Friedman, who denied that director Kathryn Bigelow was refusing to send out screeners because she wanted people to see the film on the big screen. (Ideally, that’s where it should be seen; it’s still playing in NY and LA.) Summit will send Academy screeners soon; they’ve already gone to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.”