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Entries in precursor awards (424)

Tuesday
Dec112012

"Critics Choice" Nominations Full List

My last minute super-campaigning for Perks of a Wallflower's Logan Lerman in Young Actor (at least) appears to have paid off though my other pleas did not. Nicole Kidman's remarkable transformation in The Paperboy continues to be ignored in the rush to give all prizes to the same 12 movies so this is hardly a surprise though still disappointing. But the most gob-smacking, head-scratching utterly-embarrassing ommission has to be Michael Fassbender missing out on a nomination for  Prometheus as Actor in an Action Movie. It's the laziest star-fuckingest balloting ever by BFCA members -- none of whom should ever say a bad word about the Globes' tendency to do this in their columns ever again. They chose Bale as Batman and Downey Jr as Iron Man reheated do-overs of performance that were only great once or twice seven-ish years ago and they chose them while F***ing Fassbender was just off to the left mercilessly/scientifically wreaking havoc on humans while obsessing over Lawrence of Arabia. My fellow voters, I am sad to say, seem utterly without taste or at least are lost without the barometer of Oscar buzz to guide them; I don't know if you know this but The Academy Awards has no correlative Best Actor in an Action Movie category.

To cheer up myself up I'll just think about Annie and the 11 nominations for Les Miz.

She wore leg-bondage gear to the Les Miz premiere here in NYC! Speaking of Annie... I'd type up reactions to each Critics Choice race but for the fact that I'm due at a luncheon with the cast of Les Misérables right now. Obviously Anne & Hugh win the war of 'how should i spend my next couple of hours?' but more later today...

BFCA "CRITICS CHOICE" NOMINATIONS

Best Picture 
Argo  (7 nominations)
Beasts of the Southern Wild (3 nominations)
Django Unchained (2 nominations)
Life of Pi (9 nominations)
Lincoln (13 nominations)
The Master (7 nominations)
Les Miserables (11 nominations)
Moonrise Kingdom (5 nominations)
Silver Linings Playbook (10 nominations)
Zero Dark Thirty (5 nominations)

FULL LIST OF NOMINEES AFTER THE JUMP

Click to read more ...

Sunday
Dec092012

LAFCA Names "Amour" The Best of the Year. (Plus Boston & NYFCO)

Warning this post will contain no photos of Zero Dark Thirty in protest. It's a film I thoroughly enjoyed but critical sweeps do great injustice to the art of cinema each year. No film or performance has ever been so great as to be the only achievement worth rewarding in its calendar year. The modern age of hive-mindedness also does great injustice to awards season which needs drama as fuel. This is not to say that one shouldn't vote one's mind if a certain sweeper is also your personal favorite but if everyone's personal favorites are always the same we automatically a) need fewer groups trumpeting the collective opinion or b) we need more critics who have idiosyncratic taste to keep the art of the discussion of cinema at its liveliest.

LOS ANGELES
We've already heard from NYC's top critics who gave three awards each to Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln and today the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the LA wing of critical-consensus makers get their say. Given that this particular group is something like the Home Team for the bulk of AMPAS members, their votes matter. Stay tuned as voting commences!

FILM Amour (ru: The Master)
DIRECTOR Paul Thomas Anderson for The Master (ru: Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty)
ACTRESS (tie) Jennifer Lawrence Silver Linings Playbook and Emmanuelle Riva Amour 
ACTOR  Joaquin Phoenix The Master (ru: Denis Lavant, Holy Motors)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS  Amy AdamsThe Master (ru: Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables & The Dark Knight Rises)
SUPPORTING ACTOR  Dwight Henry Beasts of the Southern Wild (ru: Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained)
ANIMATED FILM  Frankenweenie (ru: It's Such a Beautiful Day)
DOCUMENTARY The Gatekeepers (ru: Searching for Sugar Man)
FOREIGN FILM  tba tba
NEW GENERATION  tba tba
SCREENPLAY Argo (ru: Silver Linings Playbook)
CINEMATOGRAPHY  Roger Deakins Skyfall (ru: Mihai Malaiare, Jr. The Master)
PRODUCTION DESIGN  David Crank & Jack Fisk The Master (ru: Adam Stockhausen, Moonrise Kingdom)
EDITING Zero Dark Thirty
INDEPENDENT/EXPERIMENTAL Leviathan 
MUSIC SCORE  Dan Romer & Benh Zeitlin Beasts of the Southern Wild (ru: Jonny Greenwood, The Master)

Last Year's LAFCA Winners if you'd like to compare them...

Boston & NYFCO after the jump

Click to read more ...

Sunday
Dec092012

FYC BFCA

'Critics Choice' Ballots are due today at 3 PM EST and I challenge my BFCA brethren and sisters to squeeze in one more screener / screening before sending off their ballots. I'll unfortunately have to send mine off without having screened Django Unchained (which I'm seeing as ballots are due) but I did not choose to have the flu this last weekend of voting when it finally started screening.

FYC #1 - Nicole Kidman in The Paperboy. Nicole Kidman is 5'11" and wears massive heels but even seated, squatting or horizontal this performance towers over most of the Supporting Actress Field
FYC#2 - Michael Fassbender in Prometheus. He's not being talked up in the Best Supporting Actor race because Oscar taste in acting doesn't ever stretch to androids but you can vote for him in the Best Actor in an Action Movie acting race. FWIW he's on both of those ballots for me because I won't be constrained by Oscar buzz; I'm voting "best" not "most likely to be nominated". 
FYC #3 - Remember that the Young Actor (Under 21) prize has more viable contenders than just Hushpuppy from Beasts of the Southern Wild. Also age-relevant and therefor eligible: Logan Lerman & Ezra Miller from The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Tom Holland from The Impossible, Elle & Alice from Ginger & Rosa and the kids from Moonrise Kingdom. This has the potential to be an amazing category if voters don't get lazy. 
FYC #4 -Weep that they don't televise half the categories because that makes them essentially useless as critical causes go (unless you count fine print on fyc ads) but vote strong anyway: Holy Motors, Les Misérables and Lincoln for Best Makeup! 

Wednesday
Dec052012

It's ZDT for the NBR

And things were looking so super extra competitive this year! Just a few days ago Les Miz, Argo, Lincoln, and Zero Dark Thirty all seemed to be on somewhat equal footing and to a lesser extent Beasts of the Southern Wild, Silver Linings Playbook, and Life of Pi had all received enough warmish embraces from critics, audiences and  Oscared corners of the showbiz culture that we could look forward to a real competition once the Oscar nominations were announced on January 10th. But with the one-two-zero-dark punch of the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review, the Oscar race suddenly looks a bit less like a clusterfuck and a ltitle more like a done deal. Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow's engrossing account of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, is suddenly apparently way out front.The NBR generally attempts to spread the wealth but not so this year since they gave ZDT three of their top prizes (Pic, Director, Actress)

Will enough critics groups and precursors disagree or is this just one of those years that seemed competitive and then suddenly wasn't... like, oh, so many years in the past!

Winners and discussion after the jump

Click to read more ...

Tuesday
Dec042012

Help Me With My "Critics Choice" Ballot

Voting has begun for the BFCA's 'Critics Choice' prize and I thought I'd ask for your input as a memory jog. Though I do keep track of my favorite achievements in film during the year I always forget about the categories that I don't have in my own FiLM BiTCH prizes so I definitely need help with those.

I already asked for help on Twitter but for those of you who don't follow me there (what's wrong with you?) Please sound off here about your suggestions in the following categories:

BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS (under 21)
BEST ACTION MOVIE  

and the following are *new* categories this year

BEST ACTOR in a COMEDY
BEST ACTRESS in a COMEDY
BEST ACTOR in a ACTION FILM
BEST ACTRESS in an ACTION FILM 
BEST SCI-FI/HORROR MOVIE

Make your FYC cases in the comment! Limit yourself to 3 choices in each category - that's all we get to put on the ballot (so difficult)