The Writers Guild of America, it should quickly be noted, operates under very strict eligibility rules, only allowing awards to go to films produced under WGA or WGA-affiliated contracts.  That disqualified a number of very prominent Oscar contenders this year, including Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Amour and Beasts of the Southern Wild, and left […]

  The Screen Actors Guild Awards are important, because the Actors branch is the largest single constituency of Oscar voters, but they’re also very different from the Oscars.  Their major award isn’t a “Best Picture” prize, per se, but one for Best Cast–this hurts intimate dramas like Gravity and All is Lost, while helping starry […]

> Even though the Oscar race has had clear favorites in THE DESCENDANTS, THE ARTIST and THE HELP since last fall, the first 2 haven’t sparked any huge enthusiasm among the general public, where after almost 2 months, Descendants has yet to gross $50M, and Artist, which Harvey Weinstein hasn’t dared put into general release, […]

Projected weekly network ratings in prime time (based on four days of official nationals and three days of fast nationals).   The return of the NFL regular season pushed NBC to the top of the heap (with not one but two prime time games, on Thursday and Sunday).  NBC matched the same week last year with […]

  We’re live-blogging the Oscars tonight, for what may be a historic night for La La Land–or not  The red carpet arrivals were notable for their lack of political commentary, and we’ll see how long that lasts during the telecast as well.  Stay with us all evening.  All times are PT. 5:30:  The answer to […]

  We noted yesterday that one of the useful things a pre-Oscars awards group can accomplish is mixing new titles and talent in with the conventional wisdom pool of front-runners, and the National Board of Review did that today.  A full list of its winners is here, but the headline is that the group (which […]

> With the help of some online bookmaking sites, we have the latest “official” odds for tonight’s Emmy Awards.  Let’s take a look about what they say about the conventional wisdom, and make some adjustmentswhere they don’t make sense. BEST COMEDY SERIES Bookie Odds: Modern Family – 1:7 The Office – 8:1 30 Rock – […]

> 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 […]