Film Misery

‘Young Adult’ is daring and unconventional, and likely won’t sit well with mass audiences. But it sat well with me. It hit the nail right on the head, without missing many beats.

‘The Social Network’ wins another big batch of Awards. Will David Fincher’s film be able to sustain its success throughout the entire precursor season or will it peak too early?

Here is a truly romantic film that tries a little too hard to score its laughs. It is a good romantic comedy, but it is no masterpiece.

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 [...]

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 [...]

Ok, Iowa has a film critics association, but Minnesota still doesn’t? I need to talk to Colin Covert about that. This may not be a significant precursor, but here are the awards from the Midwest’s only critics group. I promise I’ll update the big precursor chart…someday. Iowa Film Critics Association Awards 2010 Best Picture Up [...]

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 [...]

The Central Ohio Film Critics Association add their opinion late in the percursors season and it doesn’t change a thing. They reflect the majority opinion of critics in almost every category and further the exhaustiveness of the Awards season. This repetitiveness has got me praying for a shakeup at the Oscars or the Globes or [...]

First “Of the Day” of the New Year! Read of the Day: Tired of all the “Best of 2009″ pieces? Here’s a worst of 2009 piece in Haiku format! [Cinematical] News of the Day: There was some speculation around the web that Jason Reitman had originally planned for Up in the Air to end with [...]

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 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 [...]

More precursor love comes in for Up in the Air today. This is the kind of precursor season that I really enjoy – one in which there is no frontrunner. It’s been pretty much a dead heat between Up in the Air and The Hurt Locker with Inglourious Basterds throwing the occasional kink in the [...]

Falling slightly short of domestic expectations, but erupting to an explosive worldwide Box Office, James Cameron’s Avatar opened to a good first weekend. Avatar brought in $73 million in the United States, which gave it the third highest opening weekend of 2009. However, the film earned about half of Twilight: New Moon‘s $143 million opening [...]

Detroit Film Critics are listed below. Utah after the jump. Detroit Film Critics Awards 2009 Best Film Up Best Director Pete Docter, Up Best Actor Colin Firth, A Single Man Best Actress Gabourey Sidibe, Precious Best Supporting Actor Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds Best Supporting Actress Mo’Nique, Precious Best Ensemble The Hangover Best Breakthrough Performance Gabourey [...]

The Screen Actors Guild Nominations will be announced in a few hours, so it’s time to make some predictions. The SAGs are known to throw some kinks in the acting races and their Best Ensemble Acting category has always been one of the best precursors for the Best Picture Oscar. View my full predictions after [...]

The other Texans prefer Up in the Air. The 16th Annual Dallas/Fort Worth Film Critics Association awards were released today and they pretty much followed the pack. I’m waiting for the Awards group to go really balls to the wall and pick something totally different (Indiana came close). View the Awards after the jump…

I meant to have this up a lot earlier, but alas…technology. Anyway, the Globes did not shake too much up with their announcement. If anything it tightened the race between Up in the Air and The Hurt Locker. Check out the results with my analysis. Golden Globe Nominations 2009 BEST MOTION PICTURE (DRAMA) Avatar The [...]

Sheesh, it never ends. Glad to see some thinking outside the box, however. Special thanks to Awards Daily for keeping us updated with all of these precursors. Indiana Film Critics Association Awards 2009 Best Film of the Year Up in the Air Runner-up: Fantastic Mr. Fox Best Director Spike Jonze, Where the Wild Things Are [...]

I promise I will post something that is NOT precursor related soon. Until then… Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards 2009 Best Picture Up in the Air Best Director Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker Best Actor George Clooney, Up in the Air Best Actress Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia

In its first weekend in wide release, The Princess and the Frog, Disney’s much anticipated return to hand drawn animation, tops the Box Office. The film brought in approximately $25 million on 3,434 screens. The Blind Side continued its impressive Holiday season run by earning another $15 million this weekend and bringing its total to [...]