03 February 2015

Skandies: Quick preamble

Apologies for the slight delay in getting things rolling this year. For the first time since 2007, I attended Sundance for more than three or four days, arriving back home right before the survey deadline; my own ballot, which in the past I've submitted two weeks or more in advance, wasn't complete until nearly the last minute, meaning I couldn't start spot-checking other ballots. (This year's results will clearly demonstrate that I don't tweak my ballot to alter the results, tempting though that is.) And then the revised software (following last year's crash of the Skandies site) had the usual bugs, which Mark Pittillo valiantly eradicated. And then I had a ton of post-Sundance work to deal with before I could put the whole thing together. But here we are, finally.

Turnout this year was the lowest in some time, for a variety of reasons. Of the 42 folks I invited, 36 returned a ballot. Abstaining, for those who want to know where to affix asterisks, are: Skander Halim (spent the year concentrating on his improv/comedy-writing gigs; saw 11 films total), Dan Sallitt (due to illness; wish him well), Andrew Wright (scheduling conflict of some kind), Fred Da (likewise, though his wife, Roxane Mesquida, shares his taste so closely that they might as well file jointly anyway), and Matthew Butcher (who generally abstains because he lives in Japan—permanently now, it seems). Also, a fond farewell to longtime AVB member Greg Murphy, who's decided that he just no longer sees enough new movies to vote.

#20 will be up first thing tomorrow, which may actually mean late tonight, depending on which time zone you're in. Predictions of shocking upsets should be made now. (Atli, I have your top 20 predix if the comments for the temp post I deleted are your only record.)

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