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Originally Posted by Holadem
I go by AA qualification. In that regard, it was obviously an '06 release.
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That's what I use, but I wasn't sure how that was breaking down with Lives of Others due to what Adam just explained. Since it was a 2006 winner/nom I just frame it with other films discussed at the end of 2006, though technically it fits the 2007 AA rules otherwise.
To me it's not a "US centric" thing, it's giving a film a fair chance to be equally compared and recognized with other films. If a film has some people listing it as the #1 of 2006 and then others with it #1 2007 and maybe more with it as #1 2008 a potentially awesome film ends up as only being slightly noticed 3 years in a row rather than being #1 for any given year.
The AA version is just probably the most popular choice IF YOU MUST PICK ONLY ONE STANDARD. That's what gets lost in this. If you go by when you saw it, or when it was released period, and so on then you have many films with multi-year listings and you lose all real sense of how the HTF (or whatever group) felt about it when you start tallying things up.
One other reason for the AA standard is to make sure it's possible for most of the HTF membership to see it in time for discussion/voting, which typically goes about 3-4 months into the next year. Heck, here we are 9 months into it and still discussing.
People have debated the methodology for some time, but it's always from some personal assault viewpoint, like we are trying to exclude them or make it about the US or something. Nothing could be further from the truth. If the Parisian release date was when just about everyone got to see a film then we'd use that. If we could all see it as a workprint 2 years before wide release that would be fine too.
It's just that those options aren't very practical and we want to give a film every chance to be truly recognized rather than having it's vote split or less recognition simply because no one has seen it yet.
