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 Best Sci-Fi/Horror Movie (a potential prize for The Cabin In the Woods!). Among other things, this year the multiplicity of categories allowed Jennifer Lawrence to personally earn herself 4 nominations from only 2 films: Best Actress, Best Actress In a Comedy and as a member of Best Ensemble for Silver Linings Playbook, and Best Actress In an Action Movie for The Hunger Games. A full list of all the nominees can be found here.
Despite all the nonsense, the Critics’ Choice awards have had a surprising amount of overlap with the ultimate Oscar nominees for Best Picture–last year, all 9 of the Oscar choices had been previously nominated by the BFCA. So it’s worth taking a moment to take a look at the Critics’ Choice list of nominees:
ARGO
BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD
DJANGO UNCHAINED
LES MISERABLES
LIFE OF PI
LINCOLN
THE MASTER
MOONRISE KINGDOM
SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
ZERO DARK THIRTY
The feat of anticipating Oscar glory could well recur, as there are no major shocks there, although bad news for The Sessions, Flight, Amour, The Impossible, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Hitchcock, Anna Karenina and any of the blockbusters (The Hobbit, Skyfall, The Dark Knight Rises) hoping to sneak in.
The Critics’ Choice awards are given out the night of January 10, by which time they will already have become irrelevant, because that same morning brings the announcement of the real Academy Award nominees.
The nominations keep coming: tomorrow we’ll get the SAG lists, which are genuinely meaningful because actors form the single largest voting bloc in the Motion Picture Academy, and Thursday features the Golden Globes,which may be the model for the Critics’ Choices as an obscure, somewhat comical set of prizes that somehow made its way to respectability.
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