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 […]

  The success of TED having made Seth MacFarlane a legitimate name in the movie universe, the Academy and ABC have decided to make him an unexpected choice to host nest year’s Academy Awards telecast.  This isn’t a crazy idea, although MacFarlane has never done anything like it.  He’s obviously funny, he reaches that elusive […]

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 […]

  Provocative, almost existential questions have circled this year’s Oscars since seconds after the nominations were announced.  Should the awards, and the Motion Picture Academy’s voting membership, mirror the actual state of the film industry, which is overwhelmingly dominated by older white men, or a Platonic ideal embodying a more diverse vision of what the […]

> Possibly because the Golden Globes take place in much less proximity to the Emmys than they do to the Oscars, and thus aren’t the crucial part of network gamesplaying that they are for the movie studios, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s TV awards have always tended to be more adventurous and genuine than the […]

  Over the past 10 days or so, a multitude of groups have presented awards for 2013’s best, with prizes given to screenwriters, editors, cinematographers, animators, and production designers.  FROZEN solidified its commanding lead for the Best Animated Film Oscar, but that’s about the only conclusion to be found, as the other honors were spread […]

  The Broadcast Film Critics Association is one of those organizations that wants everyone to be happy, including the television network (CW) that carries its yearly telecast, so it gives out a number of MTV-like silly awards, like Best Actor/Actress In an Action Movie (a chance to award Robert Downey, Jr for The Avengers!) and […]

  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 […]