Open Thread: The Problem of Proliferation & Consensus

I'd love to find some beautiful extensive if not completist way to cover the annual tradition of film critics awards but I've yet to discover a feasible option. There are now 40+ critics organizations in English language countries (United States, Canada and UK/Ireland) giving out film prizes (to the same 3 films and 6 actors. sigh) and many of those 40+ groups have expanded their annual prizes to include public nomination rounds. If you wanted to cover it all this would mean roughly 60+ articles or so each year on just this one minor aspect of awardage and awardage is just one aspect of movie culture. Frankly, it's too much for The Film Experience to handle, I don't mind saying.

Lots more after the jump including the critical societies we haven't yet discussed!

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Prediction Updates: Picture, Director, Costumes & Visuals

Time for major chart fixes now that all the major precursors have announced their nominations. We've started with Best Picture, Best Director, Animation & Documentary, and the Visual Categories... all updated to reflect recent changes (still working on the rest!).

It's The Film Experience, calling about your Oscar nominations...

The visual categories needed the most fine-tuning though they're much harder to predict prior to the guild nominations. Still, I'm feeling pretty bullish on the my predicted costuming lineup -- not that that branch isn't capable of major surprise inclusions and snubs come nomination morning. 

Disco fashions could be hot hot hot with Oscar this year if THE BUTLER & AMERICAN HUSTLE are both nominatedThough the BFCA "Critics Choice" Nominations named the exact ten films most pundits believe are heading towards Best Picture nods, the category is still quite volatile thanks mostly to the precursor underperformance of Saving Mr Banks, the weird resurgence of Rush (of all things), the late breaking Wolf of Wall Street (which underperformed at virtually all the precursors despite a very vocal legion of freshly baptized disciples) and the Weinstein Co's stable of four. It's never wise to count Harvey Weinstein out and the major SAG response to The Butler and August: Osage County combined with the Globe embrace of Philomena and the sweep of "first film" prizes for Fruitvale Station suggest that there's life in that quartet yet.

I'm guessing we have five fairly secure pictures: Hustle, Gravity, 12 Years, Capt Phillips, and Nebraska... which have all shown up everywhere they could have hoped to. But beyond that for the possible 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and/or 10th slots? It still feels like any number and permutation of the remaining eight or so pictures with the buzz could happen. Though, as per usual, I'd love to see a year with just five nominees again if only to watch the internet's collective head explode from the shock of it.

Current Oscar rules do allow for that, you know. We will have anywhere between 5 and 10 Best Picture nominees depending on how the voting goes down (Oscar's own statistical analysis of the past 20 years suggests that 10 is a virtual impossibility). 

So have a look at the refurbished charts and report back. More categories to come.

Online Film Critics Society chooses 12 Years a Slave

Tim here - I won't keep you very long, since it's just another damn critics' award, but the OFCS has announced its winners this morning, with 12 Years a Slave winning five times, including only the second award that Michael Fassbender has received from any group to date. The asterisk here is that Her wasn't made widely available to the membership at large before the conclusion of voting, and it's the kind of film that tends to do well with OFCS.

The full list:

Best Picture: 12 Years a Slave
Best Animated Feature: The Wind Rises
Best Film Not in the English Language: Blue Is the Warmest Color
Best Documentary: The Act of Killing
Best Director: Alfonso Cuaron – Gravity
Best Actor: Chiwetel Ejiofor – 12 Years a Slave
Best Actress: Cate Blanchett – Blue Jasmine
Best Supporting Actor: Michael Fassbender – 12 Years a Slave
Best Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong’o – 12 Years a Slave
Best Original Screenplay: Her
Best Adapted Screenplay: 12 Years a Slave
Best Editing: Gravity
Best Cinematography: Gravity

Special Awards:
Best Sound Design and Best Visual Effects to Gravity
To Roger Ebert, for inspiring so many of our members

Top Ten films Without a U.S. Release:

Closed Curtain
Gloria
Like Father, Like Son
Our Sunhi
R100
The Rocket
Stranger By the Lake
We Are the Best!
Le Week-End
Why Don’t You Play in Hell?

"Critics Choice" Nominees - 19 Years of American Hustling

If they made a biopic of the BFCA it would be called 12 Years a Pundit... er, excuse me. 19 Years a Pundit. The BFCA (of which, full disclosure, I am a member) is in its 19th year of Oscar prognostication movie awardage and this year we've fallen hard for 12 Years a Slave and American Hustle both of which won three acting nominations and 10 additional nominations each. The "Critics Choice" list is the last big set we'll get before Oscar sounds off in one month's time.

So what have we got here?

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Podcast: Awards Week Blowout Special

Nathaniel is back from his Iceland trip and going regional with Joe, Nick, and Katey for a one hour discussion of the barrage of film critics prizes from New York, Detroit, Boston and San Diego. And another thing: are LA's "ties" okay with this panel? 

Afterwards we pick on the Screen Actors Guild and their bizarre All is Lost joke (no Redford in actor but a stunt ensemble nomination when there's only one character and Redford did his own stunts?!)  and the team splits on the quality of Rush, recently resurgent thanks to SAG. Then we're on to the  Golden Globes for a discussion of the troublesome Comedy/Drama divide (read Joe's article for context) and we pick the best and worst of their nominees.

Also discussed: Jennifer Lawrence's backlash, Greta Gerwig's surprise, Forest Whitaker's acting, Leonardo DiCaprio's elusiveness, 12 Years a Slave's power, Philomena's luck, Dallas Buyers Club's ensemble, Wolf of Wall Street's editing, and Fruitvale Station's potential.

You can listen here or download the conversation on iTunes. 

Awards Week Blowout