Critics Choice Nominations: "Fury Road" Leads and Category Fraud Refuses to Die.
Monday, December 14, 2015 at 10:12AM 
Furiosa is coming to devour your Critics Choice AwardsThough I am a member of the BFCA, the organization behind the Critics Choice Awards, I can't say I'm often too pleased with their choices. Their penchant for attempting to predict the Oscars rather than voting based on earlier reviews continues to be the source of endless frustration. For example: everyone thought the SAG nominations were insane when they were announced but just a week later, the BFCA is repeating them despite lukewarm reviews (at best) for films like Trumbo. And though the reviews for Joy have been anything but great they gave it two major nominations, surely based on a year of Oscar expectations for it. Their difficulty in looking past mainstream pictures even in categories ripe for invasion from indies is also truly unfortunate (Tangerine and What We Do in the Shadows for example have 96% and 97% approval ratings from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and NONE of the BFCA's nominees for Best Comedy come anywhere close to those scores. Hell, Joy is currently at only 56% which is not good. And BFCA members are part of the Tomatometer so what does that tell you?
Unfortunately the members also embraced all the Category Fraud contenders in their studio preferred categories despite the BFCA endorsing a lead vote for Rooney Mara before voting began and somewhat suggesting that maybe Alicia Vikander didn't belong in supporting either. I understand from voting members of the OFCS that this exact situation preceded their vote. It's tough to root out Category Fraud when people have been so conditioned by the studios to believe that anything goes.
The complete list of nominees for film and television (with commentary is after the jump)
