"Roma" is the not so surprising superstar of the 1st annual LEJA Awards

We told you back in December about a new critics organization LEJA (Latino Entertainment Journalists Association) and they've announced their first year's worth of awards winners. Roma leads with TEN wins (nine proper plus a special award for Yalitza Aparacio as "Breakout," despite the fact that she also won Best Actress). The only other multiple winners were Black Panther (3), If Beale Street Could Talk (3), A Star is Born (2), and Into the Spider-Verse (2). They've mostly they avoided category fraud except in the messy Best Supporting Actor category where they rubberstamped Mahershala Ali. But we'll forgive that since they honored Bradley Cooper as Best Actor and he's been weirdly denied wins all season despite his multiple threat sucess with A Star is Born. The full list of LEJA winners is after the jump.

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It's time for final Best Picture predictions!

For the next week we'll be sharing final predictions for each Oscar category. We're starting with the big kahuna, Best Picture because it's the most crucial. It's a domino effect essentially since each year shows us that once voters favor your movie, they just favor it whether or not it's particularly worthy from one category to the next. We'll start with the not so obvious (if you ask me) question:

What would be nominated in a five film year?

Past statistics will tell you that that would be the DGA lineup (BlacKkKlansman, Green Book, Roma, A Star is Born, and Vice) because prior to 2010 when the Best Picture category expanded, the DGA lineup was slightly more predictive of Best Picture than of Best Director, as curious as that might seen. But it wasn't infallible, of course. And we don't think those would be the five this year. 

So let's take them in the order of strength after the jump...

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Guild Nominations En Masse!

by Nathaniel R

Today is a big day. It's Globe fallout day but also the day when  the guilds start announcing en masse. Today we heard from the writers, the editors, and the art directors guilds to give us more clues as to which films the industry is gaga for. The only films that scored at all three guilds were A Star is Born and Roma, which NOT COINCIDENTALLY feel like the two most likely films to win Best Picture on Oscar night, give or take Black Panther.

The nominations are all after the jump...

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Fresh Globe-to-Oscar Stats

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

A collection of quick interesting stats for you given that the 76th annual Golden Globe ceremony is now part of history.

• This is only the second time in documented Globes history that the winner of Best Motion Picture –Drama (Bohemian Rhapsody) didn't have a corresponding Best Director (Bryan Singer) nomination. In 1992, Scent of a Woman took the top award at the Globes, but Martin Brest wasn't nominated in Director (though he did go on to an Oscar nomination!). Clint Eastwood collected the Best Director prize at the Globes instead for Unforgiven before that film went on to win both Director and Picture at the Oscars. If history literally repeated itself here, Bryan Singer would be nominated for an Oscar (!!!) and Roma would be our eventual Oscar winner for Best Picture and Director.

More after the jump...

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National Society of Film Critics Chooses "The Rider"

by Nathaniel R

The televised awards shows are about to take over but before they do, the NSFC has had their say. They're always the last major critics group to chime in, and unlike the other two members of the critical trinity (LAFCA & NYFCC) they have not chosen Roma. Instead that honor went to Chloe Zhao's rodeo injuries drama The Rider. I recently caught up with this arthouse sleeper hit and though I found it gorgeous and moving, it struck me as a bit modest in its artistic goals, or at least a touch repetitive about achieving them. So to each their own as far as "very best" goes but it's the kind of film that deserves to find ardent fans so it's wonderful that critics have gone to bat for it here and there. It's had such a long run; the film was actually an Indie Spirit nominee in 2017 due to its festival premieres so it's been kicking around with awards for an entire year now!

The full list of NSFC winners and a few more comments after the jump...

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