Thank you hearthesilence for writing such an insightful response to my post on the last page. I don't have too much to add to your thoughts, which are strongly informed by your personal experience, except that they helped me see the aspect of the film I was grappling with from a wholly different perspective and makes the film even richer for me in hindsight.
I'm also stumped by this film's distribution. Like others here, it also played in my city for just one week and only at the local art house. I almost missed it. I'm curious if Amazon lost faith in it as an awards contender once the reviews came out, so they decided to repackage it as an art film. Not that
Wonderstruck has been poorly reviewed, but most reviews are middling to mildly positive, and perhaps Amazon was counting on more. It's hard to tell at this point how many horses this may have in the Oscar race, but I think Ed Lachman is a certainty and Millicent Simmonds is a possibility. But there is so much excellent work here - production design, costumes, score, editing, and of course Haynes' direction - that I have to imagine Amazon has something more up their sleeve for this, but who knows? Maybe they really are just letting it fade away.
I'm curious if Amazon has plans to do something similar with
Wonder Wheel, which they initially positioned as a major Oscar contender but it's getting such bad reviews that I doubt it will make it to as many theaters as
Wonderstruck did.
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I wonder (har har) if this film hasn’t been confused by audiences with Wonder, a family film about a kid with facial deformities that’s playing absolutely everywhere right now. Seems like unfortunate timing for the release of a smaller film with a very similar title.
Yes, it's certainly possible
Wonderstruck got lost in the 'wonder' shuffle - it's actually been quite a year for titles with 'wonder' in them:
Wonder Woman,
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women,
Wonderstruck,
Wonder, and
Wonder Wheel. If only
To the Wonder had been the Malick film this year!
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For whatever reason, the full soundtrack is available to stream from Amazon's FYC page for the film.
Lots of studios will put a film's score online for streaming during Oscar season so it can be accessed easily by Academy voters. It also avoids the extra cost of manufacturing and mailing out FYC promo CDs. These streaming versions are often longer than commercially available releases, in some cases containing every single cue composed in the order they appear in the film, as opposed to an official album where a composer might leave cues out and/or dramatically re-arrange the order of cues for a better listening experience. Also, in some cases the score never got an official release so these streaming versions are the only way for people to hear the music away from the film.