News: New York Gets Onboard "The Social Network" Bandwagon, Broadcast Film Critics Association Nominees, and Globes Nominations Tomorrow

     The most prestigious critics awards, the New York Film Critics Circle, announced their winners today, giving "The Social Network" their Best Film award and giving David Fincher its Best Director award. The Broadcast Film Critic Association also announced their nominees with nothing too unusual to report about their nominations. Tomorrow, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will announce the Golden Globe nominees which I will go over at some point. The Golden Globes have never been that good of a predictor for the Oscars (especially recently), but since they have their own television show on NBC in January, people usually make a big deal about them. The Golden Globes also have television categories, so I might make a few comments on those tomorrow too.

News: When the Awards Keep Rolling In

     A slew of nominees and awards were announced today, and the one thing to take away from it all is that "The Social Network" is without a doubt this year's critics' favorite. Every single major awards organization which has announced its winners have given the film Best Picture, and the film has also been included as a Best Picture nominee in all the organizations that have yet to announce their winners. Director David Fincher has either won or tied in all the awards that have been given out so far, and actor Jessie Eisenberg has fared pretty well too for his fantastic performance as Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, which should quell any doubts of an Oscar nomination for Eisenberg. If I had to pick one other film that has seemed to benefit the most from these critics awards, I would probably have go with "Black Swan", Darren Aronofsky's film which is a supernatural/psychological-thriller/ballet picture (not a combination that I would have thought of). There are also a few other actors who have benefitted from the critics awards, but I don't want to get in to it here, as I am saving this analysis for my next Oscar predictions column (which I will do my best to get up within the next few weeks). In the meantime, if your interesting in seeing some of the critics nominations and winners, click any or all of the following links:

Houston Film Critics Society

Boston Society of Film Critics

New York Film Critics Online

Los Angeles Film Critics Association

American Film Institute

News: Detroit Weighs In

     The almost totally inconsequential (in terms of its effect on the Oscars) Detroit Film Critics Society came out with the year-end nominations today. While they won't have any significant effect on any other awards, I do have to say they had some interesting nominations. In particular, I really liked the two nominations for "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" (Best Director for Edgar Wright and a Best Ensemble nomination), which I consider to be one of the most underrated films of the year, and a Best Supporting Actor nomination for John Hawkes in "Winter's Bone", who did a spectacular job as Jennifer Lawrence's gruff uncle in the drama about life in the Missouri Ozarks. If you want to see the full list of their nominees, click here.

Top 100: 70-61

      Amazingly, this is already the fourth week of my "Top 100 Movies" countdown. It's been going by fast, as we are now approaching the half-way point (if you missed the previous three weeks, catch up by clicking the following links: 100-91, 90-81, 80-71). Much like last week's ten, this week's list does not have any strong theme to it, other than there being a lot of Oscar contending films. Eight out of the ten films this week were nominees for Best Picture, including four movies that won Oscar's most prestigious prize, so this week will showcase some films where I am in total agreement with the Academy. In terms of genres, there isn't one that sticks out, although most of the films I guess would fall under the very generic "drama" category (which explains the correlation between the Oscar nominations and this week's list). There is no real dominant decade either, with the 1980's and 1960's tied for the most this week with 3 apiece. On the director front, there is no director that appears more than once, but there are some great auteurs on the list, including the first appearances of two of my all-time favorites. Well, I think that's enough for the tease, so now on to the countdown!

News: Academy Countdown to Oscars

     I thought I would pass along the news that the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences (the official name of for the organization that runs the Oscars), is starting a countdown to the Oscars tomorrow. This year will be the 83rd edition of the annual awards show, and tomorrow will mark 83 days until the show's premiers, so in honor of this year's show, the Academy is going to post some photos and interesting trivia about each year, from the beginning in 1927 until last year's 2009 show. If you don't know much about Oscar history, it sounds like a fun way to learn. I will definitely be checking it out myself, so maybe I will post an update giving you my opinion on it sometime. In the meantime, here is the official press release from the Academy.

    On December 7 (tomorrow!), we will be 83 days away from the 83rd Academy Awards. Beginning tomorrow, we will be counting down to the February 27 ceremony by revisiting all of the Academy Awards ceremonies that have come before. You’re invited to visit Oscars.org on December 7 – and every day thereafter – to experience highlights from throughout the history of one of the world’s most anticipated annual events. We’ll be showcasing photos, audio clips, video segments and interesting facts (from the year’s awards winners and ceremony, as well as around the world in general) and all of the content featured will be shareable.

    We hope you’ll spend a few minutes each day venturing back in time as we continue on our journey forward to the 83rd Oscars. You can sign up for our RSS feed of the Countdown, follow us on Facebook (Facebook.com/The Academy) or Twitter (twitter.com/TheAcademy), or just check oscars.org each day.

News: Washington D.C Critics Announce Their Favorites of 2010

     As part of the oncoming onslaught of awards announcements, the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association announced there yearly nominations and winners. Like the NBR Awards, the big winner was "The Social Network", winning Best Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay. Another successful film in the D.C. Critics awards was "The Fighter", which won both Best Supporting Actor (Christian Bale) and Best Supporting Actress (Melissa Leo). The other two big acting awards went to Colin Firth for "The King's Speech" and Jennifer Lawrence for "Winter's Bone". Like the NBR, "The Town" also won a Best Acting Ensemble award from the D.C. Critics, which is just another data point in the upward-swinging momentum of the Ben Affleck film. To check out a full list of the nominees and winners, click here.

News: NBR Announces 2010 Awards

     The National Board of Review (NBR) announced its annual film awards yesterday. If you're asking yourself, "Who is the NBR?", don't worry about it, nobody really knows who the NRB is exactly. There not film critics, there not really industry professionals, and they even include bankers, but regardless of this fact, there annual awards mark the unofficial start of the awards season. This year's big winner was "The Social Network", which won Best Film, Best Director (David Fincher), Best Actor (Jessie Eisenberg), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin). NBR also lists an additional Top Ten, which I was happy to see included one of my favorite films of the year, "Shutter Island". Historically, the NBR's awards haven't had much effect on the Oscars, but it's still part of the fun tracking the rising and falling hopes of different films along the awards season. This has also reminded me that I need to update my Oscar predictions some time in the next week or two. I have been waiting to see another one of the huge contenders before I updated my predictions, and now that "127 Hours" has finally come to my area, I'm hoping to see it before making the update, but I may just do the update anyway if I can't see the film soon. In the meantime, if you want to see all the NBR's awards, click here.