Critics Choice. Nominations for Everything Everywhere and for Everyone!

by Nathaniel R

The Critics Choice Award Nominations have been announced for the 2022 film and television year with Everything Everywhere All At Once (14 nods), The Fabelmans (11 nods), and Babylon (10 nods) leading the pack. (They said "long movies only!"). I have yet to meet any critics who were totally wild for Babylon though I do know one industry person that is. The CCA have not heard our moans and groans that if you nominate everything, nominations aren't that special or exciting. They've taken their mode of choosing one more than the Oscars or SAG or Guilds do in their categories (to help them with their predictions... sigh) and applied it even to the now ten wide field of Oscar's Best Picture race by choosing 11 titles. (double sigh).

Here are the nominations...

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'Fire of Love' and 'Good Night, Oppy' lead the Critics Choice Documentary Nominations

by Nathaniel R

Seven years ago documentaries got their own division of Critics Choice Awards with multiple categories and thus departed the main show where they were restricted to just one. For the seventh anniversary edition the box office hit Fire of Love (read Glenn's review) about married volcanologists and the space exploration doc Good Night Oppy (for which we just led a Q&A at Middleburg) lead the nominations in 17 categories. The ceremony will be held on November 13th at the Edison Ballroom in Manhattan.

UPDATED 11/14/22 What follows is the full list of nominees AND WINNERS with links going to reviews if we've done them. Thanks to Glenn's expert "Doc Corner" column and various festival peeks, we've reviewed quite a few of them...

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Best of the Critics Choice Awards: Will Smith, Melanie Lynskey and more...

by Nathaniel R 

Lady Gaga literally watching the CCAs from London. Did you watch and if so where from?

Just hours after BAFTA had wrapped last night, the Critics Choice Awards were held. That means we've reached the end of the televised precursor awards; there are still a couple of non-televised precursors next weekend (the Producers and Writers Guild) but we're now in the home stretch. So let's discuss the highs of the CCA ceremony as well as what it all means (and doesn't) for Oscar, category by category...

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Critics Choice Awards will now be held on... the same day as BAFTA

After attempting to steal what little Golden Globes thunder remained by scheduling themselves on the exact same date, the Critics Choice Awards were delayed (understandably) by Omicron variant fears. A new date has been announced: March 13th, 2022. That's well timed in terms of Oscar (two weeks prior) but poorly timed in terms of celebrity strategy as it's the exact same day as the BAFTA ceremony!

Now it's possible things will work out for both shows as some celebrities will not want to cross the ocean (in either direction) due to COVID but it's still a worrisome choice; Celebrity presence is crucial to the success of live awards ceremonies. On the other hand, the calendar was filling up so the show had to go somewhere. If Sunday was the only day of the week to do it (why is that the only day of the week? the Oscar were on Mondays for decades!)  there were very few options remaining. February 20th was the Olympics closing ceremony. February 27th was already claimed for SAG Awards. March 6th belongs to the Film Independent Spirit Awards. But what was wrong with, say, March 20th, the week before the Oscars? What do you make of the move? 

"Belfast" and "West Side Story" lead the 27th annual Critics Choice nominations

by Nathaniel R

It's not a spread the wealth year (sigh). Belfast and West Side Story led the 27th annual Critics Choice nominations with a potent 11 nominations each. Dune and The Power of the Dog were close behind with 10 nods each. With four films in the double-digits, chances are we're not heading into a spread-the-wealth kind of year as all roads lead in to the Oscar nominations (still a month and a half way on February 8th). That's sad for us given the wealth of options out there but it is what it is.

Full list of nominees with commentary after the jump...

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