"The Oscar bounce is a big thud this year"

Patrick Goldstein of the LA Times chimed in with this analysis yesterday:

The movie business is in the midst of a phenomenal roll, with the astounding box-office success of "Friday the 13th" helping propel Hollywood to its biggest three-day Presidents Day weekend of all time. But it was another lackluster weekend for the other movies that are supposed to be in the spotlight at this time of year -- the best picture Oscar nominees. In fact, the whispers you hear everywhere around town are asking the same hushed question: What happened to the fabled Oscar bounce?

The Academy Awards' best picture nominees were announced Jan. 22, an event quickly commemorated by a blitzkrieg of expensive full-page ads in the trades, the New York Times and my newspaper, designed to use the cachet of a best picture nomination to nudge reluctant moviegoers into the theaters. But at a time when the rest of the movie business is booming, the best picture nominees -- with the obvious exception of the crowd-pleasing "Slumdog Millionaire" -- are doing a slow fade. Only one of the five, "The Reader," has made more of its overall box-office take after it earned a best picture nod.

Is it a case that Oscar noms don't carry the same weight with consumers that they used to. Or is there another possible explanation:

One big factor in the Oscar bounce's evaporation has less to do with the Oscars and more to do with the marketplace. January and early February used to be a dumping ground for mainstream movies. But in the first six weeks of this year, the theaters have been full of box-office dynamos. Most observers believe that moviegoing has been spurred by all the depressing economic news; but if so, moviegoers have clearly preferred escapist fare to Oscar pictures, which have found themselves on the margins, for the most part losing theaters every week to higher-performing pictures.

My opinion? The biggest factor is the competition. The slate of movies in 2009 thus far has included titles that would have debuted in the spring or summer a decade ago -- He's Just Not Into You, Taken, Coraline, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Bride Wars, Marley & Me, Valkyrie. Each of those has either a strong high concept, well-established talent, or both, which makes for easy marketing. Plus none of them is a flat-out awful movie, more typical of Jan - Feb releases in years past.; in fact these movies range from decent to good in terms of the critical response.

What do you think? Is the quality of the Oscar films down this year and that's the leading culprit behind their depressed box office results? Has an Oscar nomination lost some of its sheen with the moviegoing public? Is it the competition? Gloomy people looking for escapist fare? Bad biorhythms?