Art Director's Guild Nods: Mank, Mulan, Palm Springs, and more...

by Nathaniel R

Mank (in color on the actual set)

The Art Director's Guild have announced their nominations for the 2020 film year and 2021 ceremony which will be virtual on April 10th this year. As per usual the guild awards usually do a better job of showing us what the industry is actually watching and what's leading for Best Picture rather than what's happening in their own fields. Like Chicago 7 as one of the five very best Production designed Period films? Er okay Hollywood, but have you seen... Emma? Personal History of David Copperfield? First Cow? Shirley? Ammonite? This is not a knock on the talented designer but there just isn't as much to work with when you're doing courtrooms and offices.

But enough griping. Here are the nominees in their four categories after the jump and if Daniel has written a piece on this particular achievement in his column "The Furniture" it's linked...

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Makeup and Hairstylists nominations - Quite different than Oscar finalists!

by Nathaniel R

Borat Subsequent MovieFilm

Apologies that we missed this announcement but the Makeup and Hairstylist Guild announced their nominees this past week. It's an interesting peek at what the makeup professionals in the industry think since it's not super reflective of what the Academy's smaller makeup branch thinks given that FOUR of Oscar's ten finalists (The Glorias, One Night in Miami, Emma, and The Little Things) are nowhere to be found. Other films that makeup and hair artists clearly did like such as Mulan, Bill & Ted Face the Music, The Prom, Promising Young Woman, and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm somehow all missed Oscar's finals.

The categories with six nominees in the list after the jump are due to ties in voting...

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More prizes: IFMCA, Nevada, Utah, Seattle, Dallas Ft Worth, and Washington DC

by Nathaniel R

The awards for 2020 cinema aren't done yet! First things first the British Independent Film Awards were held so we've updated that post to reflect their winners. Rocks was the big winner with five wins but The Father far behind it in nomination totals, won three.

Now here are five more new sets of critics groups from Nevada, Utah, Seattle, Dallas Ft Worth, DC. There are no new names or titles winning except for Nevada honoring Glenn Close for Hillbilly Elegy and The Father in Screenplay and Seattle's choice of Documentary (The History of the Seattle Mariners: Supercut Edition). Utah goes slightly off consensus preferring both Minari and One Night in Miami to Nomadland in the top Picture/Director categories. Utah also has two unusual choices in runners up positions like Lukasz Zal for cinematography and Cristin Milioti for Palm Springs for a genre performance category. We'd congratulate Utah on their good taste except that they also declare that Chicago 7 was better written and edited than Promising Young Woman and Sound of Metal/Tenet respectively so you win some you lose some.

But first let's start with the International Film Music Critics Association winners since by its nature, it's forced to be different from the other awards being passed out at the moment...

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Who Will Be The Oscar Acting Surprises & Snubs?

 by Christopher James

Does Golden Globe + SAG + Critics Choice automatically equal Oscar?It’s been a busy week of precursors. With the Golden Globes, SAG Awards and Critics Choice Awards all announced, we have a lot more clarity on the acting categories in the Oscar race. How accurate are these precursors when it comes to predicting Oscar nominees? Let’s dive into the stats and see if this can help us solve who will be our Oscar nominated actors.

For the purposes of analysis, we looked back from 2003 - 2019, as 2003 was the first year the Critics Choice awards had five nominees. Now they have expanded to eight nominees in some categories, but that’s another rant for another time...

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...and still more film prizes!

After the jump, as we're trying to catch up* - London Critics Circle, Toronto Film Critics Association, The Black Film Critics Circle, Kansas City Film Critics Circle, New York Film Critics Online, North Texas Film Critics Association, Atlanta Film Critics Circle,  and Hawaii Film Critics Society. But for a bit of a change of pace in that it's talking about scores and original songs, let's start things off with a non-critics award "Hollywood Music and Media"...

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