The last film for 2010 is Peter Weir’s The Way Back? According to Deadline and the Academy of Motion Pictures, the Screener for Oscar contender was the last one mailed to the members of the Academy as well as the Guild and DGA.

The film portrays the harrowing journey set in the 1940 of a group of prisoners who escape a Soviet gulag to travel across five hostile countries in search of freedom.

If you want to see The Way Back in a movie theater this week, you will have to journey to West Covina, on the outer reaches of LA County.  Weir’s movie is playing there for the one-week Academy qualifying run.

It’s an interesting place, I am being kind, to unveil the filmmaker’s first movie in 7 years. With 6 Oscar nominations and a grand list of movies such as Witness, The Truman Show, Dead Poet’s Society, Mosquito Coast, The Year of Living Dangerously and Master and Commander among others, it compels me to highlight The Way Back and the Award making process.