There weren’t a lot of surprises at tonight’s EMMY AWARDS, and the truth is that where television is right now, there didn’t need to be.  (A full list of winners is here.)  Game of Thrones and Veep were arguably coming off their best seasons ever, and it would be hard to begrudge them their […]

After its Golden Globes win for Best Drama, the odds of winning Best Picture for Argo improved a bit (moving from a $7.50 payout on a $1 wager to $5.25 and moving past Les Miserables into second place).  But the favorite remains Lincoln, which also actually tightened to a $1.29 payout (from $1.40 last week), as Les Miz and especially Zero […]

> Until its final 45 minutes, the one thing that could be said about this year’s Oscar telecast was that it was at least brisk.  Merely 2 hours and 15 minutes into the show, there were amazingly only 3 awards and the In Memorium segment still to go.  But for ABC, running under the appointed […]

  And the winners were… 12 Years A Slave, Matthew McConaughey, Cate Blanchett, Jared Leto, Lupita Nyong’o… Hey, wait a minute.  Aren’t the Oscars tomorrow night? There was a time when the Independent Spirit Awards were genuinely, you know… independent.  Films like Leaving Las Vegas, The Apostle, Gods and Monsters, Election and Memento won Best […]

This is already an Oscars like no other, thanks to the Academy’s decision–at the behest of ABC and its concern over ratings–to give out 8 awards before the telecast begins, with brief taped excerpts to air throughout the show.  (Spoiler alert:  Dune took Original Score, Production Design, Editing and Sound, with Eyes of Tammy Faye […]

  Although it’s always worth remembering that the Golden Globes are awarded by the few dozen foreign journalists of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (and in many cases that should be phrased as “journalists:”) whose opinions would mean absolutely nothing if they didn’t have a nationally televised TV show to present their picks, the fact is that the Globes have become […]

  We’re less than 24 hours away from that exciting moment when the first negative tweet about Seth McFarlane’s performance as this year’s Oscar host appears, so it’s time to go all-in and make some final choices.  Here, then, with no more knowledge or record of success than anyone else, are our Academy Award predictions […]

  Putting aside the question of whether the Golden Globes actually deserve to be considered important (hardly anyone not actively campaigning for their votes would know a Hollywood Foreign Press Association voter if they fell over one), the fact is that we collectively act as if they are, and that makes them so.  And to […]