> This year’s Academy Awards have so far engendered the kind of enthusiasm and excitement usually associated with a suburban DMV office on a Tuesday afternoon.  People seem to be sullenly resigned to the inevitability of THE ARTIST‘s victory, even though it would be unlikely to get anything like a majority of the Academy’s estimated […]

  Nominations have just been announced for the 64th annual Emmy Awards.  The full list is here; below is a rundown of some of the major categories and early thoughts: BEST DRAMA Boardwalk Empire Breaking Bad Downton Abbey Game Of Thrones Homeland Mad Men This is the first time in memory that no Drama nominee […]

  Almost anyone could win Best Supporting Actor this year.  All of the nominees delivered acclaimed performances in highly-praised films, and all are previous winners, so none of them would necessarily take precedence as someone who’s “owed.”  It’s possible to construct plausible cases for and against each one: Tommy Lee Jones, LINCOLN Pros:  Jones is […]

  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 […]

  Over the weekend, this year’s Oscarland acquired its first helping of Conventional Wisdom, thanks to the initial release of 12 YEARS A SLAVE (Fox Searchlight) in theatres and the unveiling of SAVING MR. BANKS (Disney) at the London Film Festival and to selected critics.  That Wisdom may very well change a dozen times between […]

  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 […]

  There are 4 ways an Oscar night can be memorable: A Great Host:  Seth MacFarlane was bad–maybe not James Franco bad, but bad.  The ways he was bad, though, weren’t in any way unexpected.  Meta-gags and courting offensiveness are the things that have made him very, very rich.  When you hire Seth MacFarlane, you’re […]

  Two of the Guilds whose memberships overlap with the Motion Picture Academy issued their nominations yesterday.  The first and by far more important (and most eager–they accelerated their announcement by 24 hours, apparently in an effort to influence the tail-end of Oscar nomination voting) was the Producers Guild, whose award winner has coincided with […]