The polls close for Oscar nomination votes at 5PM today LA time, amid anecdotal reports of many last-minute ballots being cast in a season crowded with contenders.  There is much last-minute maneuvering going on, from the movie ads unusually swelling the LA Times’s Calendar section this midweek, to an insta-controversy about Meryl Streep’s speech […]

  A unique year in the history of movies (not to mention the history of the world) will culminate in a unique ACADEMY AWARDS tonight.  Only a small fraction of audiences will have seen any of the nominees on a big screen, relying instead on their televisions for VOD presentations and as part of the […]

  The EMMY AWARDS may never have the sheer glamor of the Oscars, but as the amount of excellent TV keeps rising as new viewing platforms and content providers constantly emerge, it’s now a lot harder to get a nomination for an Emmy than an Oscar.  Lots of deserving candidates were named today, while others […]

> The New York Film Critics Circle famously (notoriously?), having decided that they simply couldn’t wait to announce their 2011 awards until, y’know, they had actually seen all the movies (when Warners couldn’t rush them a copy of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close–which doesn’t open until December 25–the Circle simply ignored it), has made its […]

  Let’s face it:  anyone with an interest in the matter has been circling the same basic list of titles and names for weeks now, if not months, and the truth is that as much fun as it would be for some shocking surprise to find its way into tomorrow’s Oscar nominations–Mud or Brie Larson, […]

  Two of the Guilds whose memberships overlap with the Motion Picture Academy issued their nominations yesterday.  The first and by far more important (and most eager–they accelerated their announcement by 24 hours, apparently in an effort to influence the tail-end of Oscar nomination voting) was the Producers Guild, whose award winner has coincided with […]

> The Academy limits the number of movie ads that can be aired on the Oscar telecast (until recent years, they didn’t allow any), so as not to make the night look like the awards are shilling for the studios.  (God forbid!)  It’s not clear whether that’s the reason only 2 movie promos made it […]

In case you are staring at an Oscar ballot this afternoon or this evening and have no idea what to select, especially in the “down ballot” categories such as documentaries, foreign language film, or the technical awards, never fear.  Lean on the professional oddsmakers to help to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Instead of […]