1:15 pm Update: “Things change,” Variety‘s Kris Tapley has just reported. “Paramount is now planning to screen Martin Scorsese‘s Silence for members of the National Board of Review on 11.19 and members of the New York Film Critics Circle on 11.30.” What about the Broadcast Film Critics Association then? If the NBR gets to see Silence on 11.19, the film could surely be shown to the BFCA before the balloting deadline of 11.28. I know that BFCA honcho Joey Berlin was talking to Paramount earlier today.

Andrew Garfield in Martin Scorsese’s Silence.

Earlier: When Variety‘s Kris Tapley reported yesterday morning that Martin Scorsese‘s Silence wouldn’t be screening for critics until sometime in December, the assumption was that Scorsese needed more time to fine-tune his period epic. Because to screen it in time for the NYFCC, LAFCA, National Board of Review and the Broadcast Film Critics Association voting deadlines, Silence would have had to be finished and screenable by around Thanksgiving, but Scorsese, one assumed after reading Tapley’s story, needed an extra week or two.

Then I reported this morning that NYFCC members were invited on 10.31 to an 11.30 screening of Silence, which would have at least fit within the NYFCC voting schedule. I assumed after reading Paramount’s invitation that Scorsese had recently changed his mind about the film’s post-production schedule and that the 11.30 screening would no longer be possible.

But an hour ago an Indiewire piece said that that Silence will be screened to 400 Jesuit priests in Rome sometime in late November. So it’ll obviously be finished and screenable later this month. Why, then, are Paramount and Scorsese declining to screen it for critics until sometime in December? It’s apparently not a logistical decision but one based on….you tell me. This is an odd way to play their hand.