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OSCAR STRATEGIES: What the Nominees Are Doing–and Should Be

Posted January 10, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  OK, so you’ve got your Best Picture nomination.  You’re one of the chosen 9 films with a chance to reap the glory (and success) that follows an Academy Award win.  You’ve got 46 days until the awards are given out, and 41 days until the polls close.  What do you do now?  Here, title […]

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OSCARLAND: Writers Guild Nominations

Posted January 3, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  The Writers Guild is unusual among awards-giving groups in that it strictly enforces the rule that only screenplays written for films produced under Guild agreements are eligible.  That tends to exclude some of the major indie movies of the year and many foreign imports, which are produced non-Guild for budgetary and other reasons.  The […]

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SBD AWARDSWATCH: “Argo” Springs a Small Leak

Posted October 15, 2012 by Mitch Salem

  Mitch Metcalf will have more to say about this weekend’s actual boxoffice numbers versus Sunday’s studio estimates later today, but one point is worth noting for its Oscar implications.  It was important to Warner Bros that ARGO, the studio’s big awards season hope and the fruit of its golden-boy director Ben Affleck (and also […]

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OSCAR ODDS for Major Categories

Posted February 9, 2012 by Mitch Salem

>Courtesy of the London oddsmakers (averaging a variety of books at easyodds.com), there appears to be little suspense ahead for the Best Picture and Best Director races at this year’s Academy Awards and almost no races at all for Best Supporting Actor and Actress.  Currently, The Artist is heavily favored to win Best Picture, with […]

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OSCARLAND: The BAFTAs

Posted February 16, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  Although there were some new faces due to release patterns and category differences, in the big picture, the BAFTAs–Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars–turned out to be very much like the Golden Globes.  The full list of winners is here, but the headline is that 12 YEARS A SLAVE managed once again to win Best […]

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STATUETTE STAKES: The Oscar Race That Wasn’t

Posted February 10, 2012 by Mitch Salem

> This year’s Academy Awards have so far engendered the kind of enthusiasm and excitement usually associated with a suburban DMV office on a Tuesday afternoon.  People seem to be sullenly resigned to the inevitability of THE ARTIST‘s victory, even though it would be unlikely to get anything like a majority of the Academy’s estimated […]

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OSCARLAND: The National Society of Film Critics Dances To Its Own Beat

Posted January 4, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  The National Society of Film Critics is the only major group that withholds its honors until after year-end, and for the most part its choices today were as idiosyncratic as its scheduling.  With the exception of Best Actress to Cate Blanchett and Foreign Film to Blue Is The Warmest Color, the awards were off […]

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STATUETTE STAKES: National Board of Review Has Its Day

Posted December 1, 2011 by Mitch Salem

> The National Board of Review is an organization with a virtually unknown membership that exists in public consciousness for precisely one day per year, and this is their day:  the announcement of their film awards.  Their claim to fame, such as it was, came from being the first ones out of the awards gate–but […]

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