Holy Christmas Eve. It's More Critics Prizes

Argo is still soaring as precursors go...Tis the Season to Hear from Film Critics Circles and Orgs and Societies. The big news today – if you can call anything Off-Christmas news on Christmas Eve -- is that the Online Film Critics Society have announced their annual nominations with a parade of accordion accompanists on the streets of Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. Or at least that’s what I wish they’d done since they nominated Holy Motors for four prizes instead of the typical requisite runner up position here or there or nowhere. Instead of an accordion parade they just posted their nominations online…as societies are prone to do.

But they’re definitely worth mentioning this year as they seem to be sort-of-maybe a-little-bit-kind-of thinking for themselves beyond the standard pet-peevish traps -- there's plentiful category fraud (even though it doesn't really make sense for critics groups to do that unless they think of themselves as oscar pundits first in which case they might want to check their purpose and/ormission statements!) and the dismissals of Hugh Jackman and Matthew McConaughey, awardage impulses which tend to strike me as genre and gender-norms bias, respectively.

BEST PICTURE

• Argo
• Holy Motors
• The Master
• Moonrise Kingdom
• Zero Dark Thirty

lots more after the jump including weirdly formatted lists (i can't deal today. it's christmas eve) and three more regional critics prizes.

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Online Film Critics Need To Talk About Terrence

You may have heard that the Online Film Critics Society unleashed their press release on the world today. It rained Manna Malick from Heaven as The Tree of Life won 5 of their 13 gongs. Their winners...

Picture The Tree of Life
Director Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life
Actress Tilda Swinton, We Need To Talk About Kevin
Actor Michael Fassbender, Shame 

They go against the grain frequently with Best Actress. Aside from obvious sweepers like Natalie Portman or Helen Mirren in their years, winners have included Melanie Laurent from Basterds, Michelle Williams from Wendy & Lucy, Reese Witherspoon in Election and more. Like the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, who are even more adventurous in Best Actress citations, the OFCS is much more traditional / conservative when it comes to Best Actor almost always going with a major future Oscar nominee or frontrunner. The only exception in their entire history is Billy Bob Thornton who won for the Coen Bros picture The Man Who Wasn't There (2001). Funny how critics groups, even large ones, have such obvious personalities.

Actor Michael Fassbender, Shame
Supporting Actress Jessica Chastain, The Tree of Life
Supporting Actor Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Adapted Screenplay Bridget O'Connor, Peter Straughan for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Original Screenplay Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Editing Hank Corwin, Jay Rabinowitz, Daniel Rezende, Billy Weber, Mark Yoshikawa for The Tree of Life
Cinematography Emmanuel Lubezki for The Tree of Life
Animated Feature Gore Verbinksi's Rango
Film Not in the English Language Asgar Farhadi's A Separation
Documentary Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams

As previously noted the OFCS will also be handing special prizes to Jessica Chastain and Martin Scorsese in addition to these prizes. Jessica Chastain, very recently interviewed right here, was so busy this year they must have figured that one prize wasn't enough.

OFCS Nominations: The Drive of Life

The Online Film Critics Society is the latest group to chime in with their nominations for the best of 2011. They'll announce the winners on January 2nd but because they're a big group we deigned to feature their nominees this year. As in most years there are a couple of eyebrow raising choices (I really can't handle Editing and Screenplay nominations for We Need To Talk About Kevin! Shoot me now... with bow and arrow if you must.) but their Best Cinematography list is just... well, we should only pray we get an Oscar field that beautiful, that acclaimed, that challenging, that perfect, that War Horse evading.

The Tree of Life led their field of contenders with seven nominations including two for acting (Brad Pitt was honored there,  not for Moneyball) with Drive in hot pursuit with six. And for what seems like the first time in ages, Martha Marcy May Marlene was not left out in the cold, picking up three nominations including Original Screenplay for Sean Durkin (recently interviewed).

Full list of nominations with a few thoughts after the jump.

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