Dont people in the academy have a huge list of every movie or something, and they debate over each one?
Sadly, no.
The Oscars are a popularity contest. Winners are chosen in the same way a homecoming queen is chosen. There's no serious discussion about the merits of each film. Academy members simply vote independently for the movies they like. But there's no way to ensure that members see all of the nominated films -- much less most of the eligible movies from any given period.
(In fact, there's no way to prove the nominees and ultimate winners are actually chosen by Academy members. It's an open secret that some members leave the voting up to their family or personal assistants because they're too busy to watch movies.)
But, to get back to your original question, studios like to time the release of their most prestigious movies so they're hitting theaters at about the same time the award shows start mailing out their ballots, towards the end of each year. If a movie is released too early in the year, it's likely to be forgotten by the time the ballots are mailed out.
Crash. It was one of the best reviewed films of the year so far ...
The operative words here are "so far." Other movies were released later on in the year that got better reviews and generated more buzz than Crash. The Crash producers had to mount a multi-million dollar ad campaign to remind Academy voters to vote for Crash.
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