I know what you mean. I keep going back and forth between year of release in either New York or Los Angeles or both and year of release in just New York or just Los Angeles as a point of reference.Precious Doll wrote:I choose not to go by US release, or even country of origin release, due to the number of co-productions. Also, some films are never released in the US or far too many years later. I still need to update some of my 'best of releases' lists because they don't align with my criteria. An example is Atlantic City, which I have on my 1981 list but it was in fact released in some international markets in 1980 (I hate doing that because it means Burt & Susan loose they winning status for 1981) but I feel I need to be consistent.
I try to base my lists on what I thought at the time or would have thought at the time if I were alive or old enough to make a fair assessment. I don't like using first date shown anywhere in the world because no one could possibly have seen every film released anywhere in the world at the time of their initial releases. It is possible, however, for someone to have seen all the films released in either New York or Los Angeles at the time of their release or to have at least been aware of those releases and chosen to see some, but not all.
In the end, though, I think the fairest assessment when critiquing Oscar nominations is to go by the same release criteria as the Oscars themselves discounting whatever flaky subsidiary rules they had at the time that made it OK to ignore the likes of Scenes from a Marriage and Yi Yi which should have been allowed to compete due to their release dates.
Of course, the Academy has broken its own rules of eligibility on occasion, starting with the first Oscars when it included Street Angel among the films cited for Janet Gaynor's win. That film opened after the 1927/28 cut-off date of July 31, 1928 and, in fact, was properly cited for its cinematography in 1928/29.