A messy awards season became even messier with the results of today’s critics group awards. The big prize of the day was the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, which… tied.  Full results are here, but Best Picture went both to Gravity and Her, as different a pair of science-fiction stories as one can imagine.  […]

  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 […]

> Our thoughts on the movie Golden Globe nominations are here.  Meanwhile, in television: BREAKING BAD:  LOSER – Really, one should say Golden Globes Credibility:  Loser, because when you fail to even nominate the best season of one of the best shows of the decade, that’s what you lose.  And if not nominating the series […]

  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 […]

> 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 […]

  Nominations were announced this morning for the 65th Annual Emmy Awards, and as always there are a slew of them–a complete list is here.  Also as usual, the nominees are a mix of a lot of familiar names and titles with a few exciting new ones.  This year, though, the most revolutionary newcomer isn’t […]

  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 […]

> While you weren’t looking, the Oscar race began. One could make the argument, of course, that it’s been on for months–since, at least, Woody Allen’s MIDNIGHT IN PARIS energized the indie/art-film audience and propelled him into mass consciousness for the first time in years.  (On the other hand, one could also argue that this […]