Category: Precursors

Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the film I most expect to take home the Oscar for Best Visual Effects made an expected strong showing here topping all others with seven nominations. Typically, the film with the highest nominations tally will also be the Oscar winner, but as certain Bets Picture nominees of the past can…

The big news is that The Big Short director Adam McKay is among the final five for Best Director from the DGA. The man who gave us Talladega Nights and The Other Guys finally turned out a film that earned genuine critical plaudits and has become a major force in this year’s Oscar competition. Tom…

A mix of Best Picture contenders and technical marvels were among this year’s nominations. What’s most notable is that of the five nominees in Live Action, only two of them are action films, which has been the increasing normality of the category in recent years. The Nominations Best Sound Mixing – Live Action Bridge of…

The Golden Globe Awards have been announced and apart from the early shock of Kate Winslet winning Best Supporting Actress, most of the categories when as expected. The Revenant was a modest surprise winning both Best Picture and Best Director apart from the expected win for Leonardo DiCaprio. While this might not change nominations predictions,…

Spotlight comes out on top of the Houston Film Critics awards losing another Best Director award, this time to Alejandro G. Inarritu for The Revenant. Revenant took three total awards, including prizes for Best Supporting Actor and Best Cinematography. Hardy’s win notwithstanding, there’s nothing particularly revelatory about these selections. There was announced a Best Poster…

On January 7, the Vancouver critics gave out their awards for the best in Canadian filmmaking. Separate from their annual awards for general film excellence, these are only for films made by Canadians. That means it’s not very surprising that major Oscar contender Room managed to win the most awards with four, including Best Canadian…

Although it didn’t get key nominations at BAFTA this week, the Road Warrior continues its dominance of the critics awards picking up four prizes from the Georgia film critics, who also happen to be the only group to recognize Ant-Man, but there are reasons for that. Nothing new or exciting here, though, as many of…

Several notions were put to rest today by the British Academy of Film & Television Arts, the United Kingdom equivalent of the Academy Awards. First is that Carol was having a bad year. Tying Bridge of Spies for most nominations with 9, Carol is the year’s most nominated film. Unfortunately, they went for the category…

There aren’t many precursors for costume design, as such the Costume Designers Guild (CDG) is one of the best ways to see what the trade thinks of the potential nominees. Of the precursors that have gone out so far, The Assassin, Far from the Madding Crowd, Macbeth and The Throne are the only nominees that…

Of the six adapted screenplays that have, so far, won accolades for being the best from various precursors, Carol and Anomalisa are the only ones missing from this list. It’s not surprising that Anomalisa is absent, because it’s based on a screenplay, not on a literary piece. The USC Scripters reward the original author of…

Bridge of Spies takes a temporary lead in the guild derbies securing citations from six of six guilds. Mad Max: Fury Road and The Revenant were never going to be players here because they are light on dialogue, as such they move into second with five-for-six along with The Big Short, Spotlight and Sicario. [NOTE:…

All four of the films that have so far won precursors for their cinematography make an appearance here with Bridge of Spies rounding out the list. After two days of snubs, Carol makes a merited appearance on the list while Roger Deakins and Janusz Kaminski continue their almost-always-nominated trends. Emmanuel Lubeszki seems to be following…

We have yet another award for Spotlight, this time from the critics out of Oklahoma. They largely recognized names we’ve been seeing throughout the season, except for one. Michael Keaton had light traction early in precursor season, but then disappeared. Here, he comes roaring back in the most minute way possible, in a tie with…

An incredibly strong performance by Mad Max: Fury Road among this year’s nominations put it atop the field for most nominations. The Best Picture nominee was also slotted in Best Ensemble, a result that has to be somewhat surprising considering few have discussed the film’s performances in these terms before. Carol‘s Rooney Mara mention comes…