Category: Precursors

It doesn’t impact the Oscar race, but the Toronto Film Critics Association selected Sarah Polley’s documentary as its choice for Best Canadian Film. Polley is one of those filmmakers you love to see working, but whom seldom get the attention they deserve. The Award Best Canadian Film Stories We Tell Toronto Film Critics Association Data…

So much for all those pundits who said Les Misérables wasn’t going to do well with the directorial effort of Tom Hooper being criticized. Nabbing a critical precursor nomination, Hooper is joined by first-timer Ben Affleck and three other previous winners: Kathryn Bigelow, Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg. Notably missing is Paul Thomas Anderson, a…

The Sound Mixing nominations, a precursor to the Academy’s own category, have revealed that two action/adventure films, one costume drama, one musical and a war-zone film have received nominations for Best Sound Mixing. For the first time, they group has separated out Animated Films, giving them their own category. Nothing terribly surprising here, though the…

Zero Dark Thirty barely edged out two other films for most honored at this year’s Vancouver awards taking Best Picture, Director, Actress and Screenplay as its four. Tied for second place, The Master won all three acting awards it’s been picking up separately all season, and Rebelle was the most recognized film in the Canadian-only…

Peter Jackson’s four Middle Earth film was granted seven nominations, including a double nomination for animated character. The VES awards are often a strong harbinger for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, so looking closely at the nominees, we see the chief competition is between The Hobbit and second-most nominated films The Avengers and…

The Online Film Critics Society continues a recent trend in honoring Argo as Best Picture of the year. A film which many thought would lose steam in the face of strong competition from Lincoln, The Master and Zero Dark Thirty has quietly amassed a sizable trove of awards this season. All of the winners here…

Michael Haneke’s Amour got its biggest take yet, nabbing the Best Picture, Director and Actress prize from the NSFC. None of the selections below were particularly original, but it was clear that a handful of films were very well liked this year. Award Tallies (3) Amour (2) The Master The Awards Best Picture

The Writers Guild of America, one of the toughest groups to earn nominations with, has announced its nominees for the best of 2012. The reason it’s so tough to get in is that if your film wasn’t made under a WGA contract or under the contract provided by a sister organization from another country, you’re…

The Art Directors Guild has announced its traditional fifteen-film slate from which it’s likely all five Oscar-nominated films come. Argo seems like the odd-man out of the Period films, a film that in recent years might have even been nominated for Contemporary. The rest of the Period list seem like good bets with one film…

The Producers Guild of America announced their nominations a day earlier than scheduled giving us the general consensus list of films in competition for Best Picture. Other than Skyfall, which will very likely follow the Star Trek/Harry Potter path to the Oscars, the others seem like solid bets for nabbing slots. There isn’t one of…

The Canadian film critics of the Vancouver-based organization held American historical drama Lincoln as the most-nominated film of the year in standard categories. On the Canadian-only category front, David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis was the most nominated with five. Most of the selections here are largely seen as the top contenders for nominations, so I wouldn’t be…

Another prize to Ben Affleck’s Argo. As the minor groups are giving out their awards, it seems clear that Zero Dark Thirty wasn’t actively screened in these lesser known areas. Either that or the film’s performance outside of the big metropolis areas is more poorly constituted. It will be interesting to see how these late-breaking…

Another group hands its top prize to Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. And another group seems to set its sights mostly on those films that are primary Oscar contenders. Award Tallies (4) Lincoln (3) Zero Dark Thirty The Awards