As of this second, we are 122 days away from the 2015 Academy Awards, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris as Billy Crystal growls angrily in the corner and everyone tries real hard not to make a Renee Zellweger joke. That's a ludicrously long time from now, but there won't be a single moment between now and then in the world of movies that's not specifically focused on that date. In fact, you can make a strong argument it's been going on for a couple of months now. Almost every release, every interview, every TV appearance—it's all about that silly date 122 days from now.
The Academy Awards are dumb, of course, but they're the right kind of dumb: Stabs at quality work in the name of personal prestige and ego sometimes, as it turns out, end up actually creati…