Category: Precursors

There are a couple of things that can be definitively said about the National Board of Review. They love Clint Eastwood and their winners seldom take home Oscars without a critic award sweep. That first statement bears out in their recognition of Kathy Bates in Supporting Actress, Paul Walter Hauser in Breakthrough Performance, and their…

Coming as a surprise to no one, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story easily took the award for Best Feature along with awards for Best Actor and Best Screenplay. This should give a boost to all of the winners going into the Oscar nominations with Adam Driver, Awkwafina, Marriage Story, and American Factory all solid contenders at…

While hardly a notable precursor, Spain’s Academy Awards, the Goya Awards, recognize the best that nation has to offer with few nominations for releases from other countries. Storming the nominations were three films that earned double-digit citations with all the rest receiving five or fewer nominees. While at War topped them all with seventeen while…

The International Press Academy is a most bizarre organization. They regularly change some dates, refuse to announce others, and generally feel like an utterly disorganized mess. A strange parallel to the far more organized Golden Globes, it’s surprising that the group is still giving out awards. When asked to provide a date for their awards,…

How the Atlanta film critics have become the first of the minor critics to announce is anyone’s guess, but here they are hot on the heels of the other early newbies the Hollywood Critics Association. Unlike the HCA, Atlanta seems to have an eye on influencing the Oscars with a lot of daring choices. Parasite…

Not exactly known for their Oscar forecasting, the AARP Movies for Grownups nominations nevertheless feature all of the major players, at least the ones eligible for their AARP card. Matter of fact, most of the older contenders are here with the exception of Ian McKellen, Willem Dafoe, and maybe a few others. There’s not a…

A couple of noteworthy/surprising things happened in this year’s Annie Awards nominations and a couple of the surprises aren’t a good sign. Let’s start with what we expected. Frozen II was sure to clean up here and Toy Story 4 was also supposed to do well and they did. How to Train Your Dragon: The…

The Hollywood Critics Association got out of the gate first among critics organizations, but their newness isn’t something that speaks to credibility. They seemed to love Quentin Tarantino’s film more than others while several titles earned strong nomination sets in spite of earlier letdowns (Waves and The Farewell for example). Still, Bombshell, which earned 9…

For years now, the Spirit Awards have almost looked like a preliminary ballot for the Academy Awards with a large swath of Oscar contenders in tow. This year, however, the list seems to be more in line with the lists of old where some categories have nary an Oscar contender in them and some with…

As expected, Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite dominated the awards taking five awards. While it was up for several more and it didn’t win in expected places like Cinematography, Editing, and Screenplay, there’s no question the film was a huge success. Award Tallies (5) Parasite (2) E.X.I.T, Swing Kids The Awards

There isn’t much to say about these selections except that they don’t seem like the kinds of choice the Academy would make, but stranger things have happened. Award Tallies (2) The Biggest Little Farm The Awards