This year’s GOLDEN GLOBES AWARDS should be even more interesting than usual.  On the Film side, although there are favorites in most major categories (Boyhood, Birdman, Eddie Redmayne, Michael Keaton, Julianne Moore, Patricia Arquette, J.K. Simmons), none of them seems invulnerable, and while a win tonight won’t affect the Oscar nominations–those votes are already cast–it […]

> And the hits keep on coming for the Academy:  following Brett Ratner’s hurried exit yesterday, Eddie Murphy has packed his host bag and left the building as well.  This isn’t a huge surprise, as Murphy was brought in by his Tower Heist director in the first place (and Heist isn’t proving to be the […]

  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 […]

  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 […]

  Today’s shipment of critical praise comes courtesy of the National Society of Film Critics, a small (60-member) but prestigious group, which today gave Michael Haneke’s AMOUR one of its biggest boosts of the season, with awards for Picture, Director and Actress (Emmanuelle Riva).  Oscar nomination voting is now closed, so these prizes will only […]

  Here’s a factoid:  during the 1970s, that halcyon decade when the rebel filmmaker inmates finally, if briefly. took over the Hollywood studio asylum, viewed by movie history ever since with wistful nostalgia, every single winner of the Best Picture Oscar was one of the Top 10 box-office grossers of its year.  This includes big-budget productions like […]

  If it had happened, losing the Best Drama award at last night’s Golden Globes might have been the best thing that could have happened to 12 YEARS A SLAVE–while winning the award in the way that it actually did helped the film very little, if at all. Bear with me here. Remember last year, […]

  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 […]