Early yesterday Variety‘s Kris Tapley reported that Martin Scorsese‘s Silence won’t screen until sometime in December. (I popped in the word “early” in my reaction piece as I assumed they wouldn’t dare wait until mid or late December.) Tapley was no doubt handed legit information by a Paramount source before filing, but on 10.31 — 10 days ago — members of the New York Film Critics Circle received invites to see Silence on Wednesday, 11.30. Specifically a 10 am and 2 pm screening at Paramount’s screening room in Times Square. At the very least Tapley’s story represented an abrupt reversal in strategy because, as the screen-captured PDF invite makes clear, as of 10.31 Scorsese and Paramount were confident that the film would be satisfactorily completed and ready to screen for elite NYC-area critics by 11.30. This would have still gotten in the way of the Broadcast Film Critics Association initial nomination deadline (initial ballots have to filled out by 11.29), but an 11.30 screening date would have probably been finessable. [The below invite was forwarded to me this morning by a NYFCC member.]