HOW MANY TIMES CAN YOU COUNT THE PHRASE 'OSCAR BUZZ' IN THE BELOW INTERVIEWS?

This week has been spent--by me and Andy Garcia anyway--in New York promoting "City Island" for awards season. Three screenings in a row followed by q&a's--the Writers Guild (last night), Screen Actors Guild (night before) and the Variety Screening Series (tonight, natch). Julianna Margulies joined us for the SAG screening. Swinging chick, that JM.

But Andy has been busy independently of me, appearing on at least three talk shows, two of which are posted below (I believe Martha Stewart is running tomorrow--Friday). What's of particular interest here is the story that's being pitched: "City Island" is now a movie that attracts the phrase "oscar buzz" to it. You can't get people to say that. It has to be something in the air that somehow transmits itself to the way people frame the interviews they're about to conduct. Both of the below interviews are awash with the use of the phrase. Needless to say I'm delighted, whether anything comes of it or not. Though if you look back a couple of posts, you'll see that I went on record with my belief that we will be nominated for one major award.

So: click here to see Andy interviewed on Fox and Friends.

And click here to see him interviewed on Today on NBC.

And click below to watch something that has nothing to do with ":City Island" but which I find so funny that I now listen to it first thing every morning to start my day. It's audiotape of William Shatner recording a voiceover and gently ripping a meddlesome producer a new a-hole.

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CITY ISLAND GETS LA TIMES OSCAR MENTION...

Hollywood's hometown paper, the Los Angeles TImes, published a "Word Of Mouth" column by John Horn yesterday that spells it out in black and white: "CIty Island" is an Oscar contender. Click here to read the entire article, which is actually about our releasing company Anchor Bay Entertainment and how they have unexpectedly emerged from the pack of players (Searchlight, Sony Classics, Focus) to have two awards contenders on there hands this season. (The other one is "Solitary Man").

More from New York, where I (and Andy Garcia) will be going next week for more screenings, lunches, award stumpings...

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FOR THE RECORD...

Let me go on record right now and say that exhausting as I find the whole concept of "awards season", and hopeless though it is to even think about your own chances of being nominated for any award, I predict "City Island" will get ONE nomination.

I don't know which awards show it will be and I don't know which category. But I hearby go on record. We will receive one major award nomination.

Now this will look pretty silly sitting out their in cyberspace if I'm wrong. But screw it. Isn't the internet all about misinformation? And it's not like I'll be disappointed if I'm incorrect. This isn't me grasping desperately for recognition. This is simply an intuition I have that our movie has one final lap to run in its race through the zeitgeist.

What's making me feel this way? Well for one thing Anchor Bay got our DVD out to voters early--and that's always a good thing as the general feeling is the glut of end-of-the-year awards contenders tends to put voters off due to the pile up of movies to see. And I keep getting incredibly nice e-mails from people I don't know who have just seen the movie on DVD--which means that most of them are voters. Finally, there's this article on Dealine Hollywood by Pete Hammond. He lists all the actors who are contenders and one of them is Andy Garcia for "City Island". He doesn't exactly give us the best odds--I believe the exact words are "longest of long shots"...but so was that horse in the Kentucky Derby last year, right?

Is even saying this putting a jinx on things? The hell with that. I hate superstition. In fact I have a superstition about superstition. If allowed I would always live on the thirteenth floor.

So I'm going on record right here, right now. We're getting one nomination. I don't know who, where or what. But we're getting one.

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