In any given year, there are perhaps 15 movies that can even be seriously entertained in a Best Picture conversation, so with the combination of a potential 10 Oscar nominees under the new rules and the weeks of preliminary awards, Top 10 Lists, predictions and speculations that occupy the weeks preceding the announcement, the […]

  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 […]

  So, is it over? It certainly feels over.  Voting for the Academy Awards ends tomorrow, and last night’s win at the Writers Guild for Best Adapted Screenplay cemented Argo’s astonishing streak of victories over the past 5+ weeks.  With the Oscars still almost a week away, it’s already at the heart of the Argo […]

Following up on Mitch Salem’s Best Picture overview, here’s an updated look at the odds for the major Oscar categories. After its winning streak at the various guild award ceremonies, Argo has traded places with Lincoln as the favorite for Best Picture.  London bookmakers would pay $1.15 on a $1 bet if Argo wins, a movement of +6 in […]

  It’s been a relatively quiet week in Oscarland:  12 YEARS A SLAVE expanded well if not phenomenally, ALL IS LOST continued to struggle at the box office despite superb reviews, DALLAS BUYERS CLUB had a moderately successful debut, while BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR showed little box office range.  Next week will be far more […]

  Year-end awards from critics groups have two purposes in the big-picture (which is to say the Oscar) context.  In the aggregate, if enough of the groups are in agreement to form a consensus, they can make an accolade seem like an established fact–sort of a “how could you dare to ignore this?” message.  (Although […]

  Picking five dramas as the best of television (or “television,” as it’s more properly referred to these days) is a tough task, and the Writers Guild just announced its nominees, all of them worthy and yet hardly the only possible choices:  BREAKING BAD, THE GOOD WIFE, HOMELAND, HOUSE OF CARDS and MAD MEN.  At […]

  The big news this week in Oscarland was the confirmation that Martin Scorsese’s WOLF OF WALL STREET (Paramount), starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew McConaughey, Jonah Hill and many more, which wasn’t finished in time for its scheduled November 15 opening, will arrive on Christmas Day, just in time for the potential Oscar equivalent of an election’s […]