Category: Precursors

For being one of the youngest film critics groups acting as Oscar precursors, St. Louis does a fairly solid job making nomination predictions. Consider this: six categories have seen every winner also take an Oscar nomination (Picture, Animated Feature, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress). And while they aren’t as astute with Oscar winner…

Ever since Crash won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2005, extra attention can be placed on the Chicago Film Critics awards. It was the only group that selected the Oscar winner as Best Picture setting it up as a strange bellwether few saw coming. While this year’s choices aren’t likely to carry the same…

Historical data for the St. Louis Film Critics Association is hard to track down and since I had not realized they had given out their nominations a week ago, this set of data is significantly delayed. Without a firm view of how the group has nominated in the past, I can’t really say much about…

It had the best acting, best directing and best sound mix, but was not the best picture? These kinds of things always confused me, but hey, it’s their decision. This group’s winners don’t always match (rarely for most categories), but they have a fairly good track record for getting Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor,…

After announcing its nominees in the 11th, the Detroit Film Critics Society has named its winners for 2011. Carey Mulligan and Michael Fassbender haven’t gotten much attention this year, but here they are winning prizes. Those who receive the most traction with this group are Actor (Fassbender), Supporting Actor (Christopher Plummer) and Supporting Actress (Mulligan).…

I received a press release moments ago from the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association who have chosen the best of 2011. They aren’t the most predictive group out there, only Supporting Actor (Christopher Plummer) and Screenplay (The Descendants) have had four of five comparable results with the Academy. On the nominations side, their winners have…

Always good to inject some interest into the Original Score category, the Chicago critics are strong are a frequently strong prognosticating body, though they have their own strange quirks that make them interesting. This eyar, most of those oddities appear in Best Actress where Anna Paquin who’s gotten no attention for most of the year…

The steamroll that is The Artist has been temporarily halted by the Houston critics who gave the film only one award for Original Score. The Descendants received three trophies including Best Picture and Drive received two. Another award for Michael Fassbender and Shailene Woodley give them added support when neither appeared on the SAG list…

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has announced its nominees for their annual Oscar precursor called the Golden Globes. There were no hugely embarrassing selections this year (a la The Tourist), though many notable names were missing. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is HFPA bait if anything is, but it wasn’t included. Was it screened too…

Another series of big wins for The Artist, which has become the de facto front runner this awards season. Nothing really unexpected here, though Refn’s win as best director is something of a surprise. In the seven major categories, this group has done amazingly well at pushing through nominations getting five for five in each…

Although it didn’t even get nominated for Best Picture, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 is the big winner here. No other film got two or more nominations save Harry. And apart from the wins by The Artist, Moneyball and Hugo, most of the rest of the choices were fairly eclectic covering a…

The 18th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards have been announced and the nominees are mostly names we’ve heard before with the exception of Demian Bichir for A Better Life and Jonah Hill for Moneyball. There are few major surprises here, though it’s worth noting that The Artist is not only secured an Oscar nomination, but…

The Toronto critics have proclaimed their best of the year without a single film really emerging as a surprise. This group is not good at predicting with Animated Feature and Supporting Actor each earning three prizes in the last five years. Though, they are better at getting nominees with Animated Feature (The Adventures of Tintin),…

The Broadcast Film Critics Association, who call themselves the “Critics’ Choice” despite only representing a fraction of working critics, have announced their annual Oscar predictions…I mean award nominations. As expected, The Artist, Hugo and The Help were among the most nominated with Drive doing much better than I would have expected from this group. Each…

Although the San Diego critics have been giving out awards for sixteen years now, their first nomination set was revealed only in 2010, which means we have no way of knowing their impact. The Artist continues its dominance and Drive is showing surprising resilience. In addition to the nominees and/or winners listed below, this year,…