Film Misery

Brief reviews of ‘American Movie,’ ‘Win Win,’ and ‘The Hurt Locker’…

Two major critics groups announce their winners early next week. Will the outcomes affect the Oscar race in any major way? Here are my predictions…

Read of the Day: The New York Times piece gathers real soldiers’ reactions from The Hurt Locker. They run the gamut from major praise to complete offense. [The New York Times] News of the Day: Up in the Air wins the USC Scripter Award. Does this cement its Best Adapted Screenplay win? I thought it [...]

The Hurt Locker continues its push towards a 2010 Best Picture win with another major precursor award. Kathryn Bigelow has become the first female director ever to win the Best Director of a Feature Film Award from the Directors Guild of America. Bigelow beats out her ex-husband, James Cameron for Avatar, Lee Daniels for Precious, [...]

The Producers Guild of America has given The Hurt Locker more momentum towards a Best Picture win at this year’s Oscars. The guild has awarded their top prize to Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq war film, increasing its momentum after it won the Critics Choice Award last weekend and wracked up a massive amount of precursors. This [...]

Unsurprisingly, the British Academy Film Awards have shown a lot of love to some of their countrymen. An Education, which is directed by Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig, but produced in England, lead the 2010 BAFTA nominations, which were announced early this morning. An Education received 7 nominations including for its previous Awards hopefuls Carey Mulligan [...]

One of my observations from the weekend’s Critics Choice and Golden Globe nominations is that Nine no longer stands a chance in many of the major Oscar categories, but what about the tech categories? Musicals have long been an Academy favorite for their cinematography and art direction. However, one category has been unfairly skewed in [...]

Two of the biggest precursor awards have already announced their winners and we’re still a few weeks away from the Academy even announcing their nominees. If you ask me, the Awards season schedule needs a change that doesn’t keep us waiting forever for the big awards to come along. By the time the March Oscar [...]

Several hours from now the stars will be seated for one of the biggest Awards ceremonies of the night and Ricky Gervais will be ready to insult them. I’m really hoping that Gervais pulls no punches tonight and remains as hilarious as he’s been in his brief Awards show appearances of the past. The Globes [...]

Time for one last post about the Critics Choice Awards. I’ve divided my observations in “yays” – things I approve of, “boos” – things I dislike, and “considers” – things to consider about the awards race going forward. 1) YAY – Michael Giacchino wins Best Score. It wasn’t presented during the broadcast, but brilliant composer [...]

The Critics Choice Awards have come and gone without too much of a fuss. It feels great to be back in Awards telecast mode even though the CC Awards are about as low-key as awards shows get. I missed most of the ceremony, but I caught up with the list of winners so I can [...]

The Broadcast Film Critics Association reveals their winners tonight in the first major awards ceremony of the season. Personally I’m looking forward to the Critics Choice Awards a lot more than I am the Golden Globes. The Critics’ Choice Awards tends less about starpower and more about honoring the best films of the year. Shocking [...]

For as much as I love the Golden Globes, I hate the Golden Globes. The notorious starf***ers of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association often overlook talent in favor of star power and fill their ceremony with “what’s hip” rather than “what’s great.” For this year’s ceremony they aim to increase their ratings by 10 percent, [...]

One of my favorite annual items during this awards season is Movie City News‘ massive compilation of critics top ten lists. Their list was updated last week and currently over 130 critics have weighed in with their top 10 films of the year. Unsurprisingly the list reflects most of the critics award groups with The [...]

Film Misery Awards 2009 Best Picture: WINNER: A Serious Man Other Nominees: (500) Days of Summer Away We Go Avatar Bright Star Coraline The Cove Gomorrah The Hurt Locker Up

Reflecting the opinions of the critics groups as a whole, the Online Film Critics Society has given their awards to Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Each film received 4 awards in complete dominance of the OFCS’s 14 awards. Check out the rest of the winners below: Online Film Critics Society [...]

Creating an annual top ten list is really a high pressure endeavor. Many of the films listed below I have only seen once and although they made a great initial impression on me, it’s hard to know if they have lasting power. Usually I re-assess my top ten list in June/July of the following year [...]

This is just getting exhausting. The Hurt Locker and Up in the Air are fighting it out for the lead in the precursor charts and each day seems to provide a different critics group throwing their weight behind one or the other. The Kansas City Critics play it safe by giving Up in the Air [...]

The precursor buzz has been quiet as of late, but this week they are going to get loud once again. The major guilds announce their nominees this week and some bodies that had only previously announced nominees will announce their winners. Not to mention there are only two weeks until the Golden Globe awards, less [...]

The Oscar nominations will be announced February 2, 2010, which gives us just over a month to make our final predictions. By now every major contender has received a theatrical release. Reviews are in, precursors are being handed out, and the Oscar speculation is about to peak. The Oscar predictions for Best Picture have been [...]