In Contention

Tag: BFCA

  • A night at the CCMAs

    It was a good time.  The evening started off with a bit of a surprise as “The Fighter” took in the award for Best Ensemble.  I happened to be seated with Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo, David O. Russell and, a real treat, Jack McGee, so it was an exciting pop to start things off.  No one at that table expected to win that award so they were quite exhilarated.

    Speaking of Bale, I thought he gave the night’s best speech, a touching, loose monologue that is certain to be repeated throughout the season.  And watching Hailee Steinfeld accept for Best Young Actor/Actress, I couldn’t help but picture her with an Oscar in her hand.  Despite Melissa Leo’s strong showing so far, the Best Supporting Actress category is still somewhat up in the air, I think (which Anne and I discussed in yesterday’s podcast).

    I bounced around here and there during the commercial breaks.  Naturally the first thing Darren Aronofsky said when he saw me was, “I finally made your list!  Next time you’ll listen to me.”  Maybe there’s a future in Oscar prognostication for him.  I also exchanged words with Colin Firth for the first time since our lengthy sit-down in Telluride.  Charming as ever.  But most exciting for me?  Honestly?  Meeting Ice Cube.  No, seriously.

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  • ‘Social Network’ rules BFCA Critics’ Choice Awards

    I’m sure Kris is having entirely too good a time at the post-awards party to huddle over a computer screen — perhaps he’ll have some insider perspective to add later — so let’s run through a couple of the most salient points for now.

    If you need to be told “The Social Network” triumphed in the top categories, well, welcome back from your spiritual retreat in the far reaches of Nepal. I hope you’re well rested. Interesting to see the film’s sway extending to the Best Original Score category, where Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross very coolly upset Hans Zimmer — though “Inception” fans will be pleased to note the film’s impressive haul elsewhere in the techs.

    No surprises whatsoever in the acting races, though I’m pleased to see Melissa Leo holding on to her early-season momentum in the supporting actress race; Hailee Steinfeld had to settle for the Best Young Actor prize.

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  • “Just kidding. It’s an inception machine.”

    The “Jackass” crew have produced a number of send-ups of the year’s awards hopefuls for tomorrow’s Critics’ Choice Movie Awards (which I will be attending once again).  Courtesy of /Film, here’s the “Inception” bit:

  • 1/6 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Roberts stumps for Bardem, ‘Valentine’ as class commentary, Affleck’s ‘Town’ inspirations

    • Julia Roberts’s Oscar plea for”Biutiful” star Javier Bardem. [Inside Movies]

    • Patrick Goldstein on “Blue Valentine” as a meditation on the class divide. [The Big Picture]

    • Ben Affleck on “The Friends of Eddie Coyle,” “Amores Perros,” “Breaking Away” and “Heat” as inspirations for “The Town.” [The Envelope]

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  • ‘Black Swan’ leads BFCA field with a record 12 nominations

    The most striking thing about this year’s slate of BFCA nominations is that, to go by the films listed in the various categories, apparently there were only 30 or so movies released this year. And most categories were dominated by the same five films, which is disappointing, if a bit predictable.

    When the organization added below-the-line categories last year, though, it was probably asking for this kind of distillation. I’m not sure a great many of the membership knows from quality sound in a motion picture, but this is their (our — I am a member) platform. You’ll see my ballot Wednesday, but it’s considerably different than this.

    Anyway, “Black Swan” led the field with a record 12 nominations. “The King’s Speech” and “True Grit” weren’t far behind with 11 each. “Inception” netted 10, “The Social Network” landed nine and “127 Hours” nailed down eight. Those are clearly the favorites throughout.

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  • ‘Hurt Locker’ takes top honors at Critics’ Choice Awards

    Best Actress winners Meryl Streep and Sandra Bullock at the Critics' Choice AwardsThe BFCA are rarely ones to take an individual stand on the awards trail, and such was the case last night, as they mostly stuck with Oscar frontrunners down the line. In the numbers stakes,  “Avatar” (with six awards) and “Inglourious Basterds” (with three) came out on top.

    But it was “The Hurt Locker” that emerged as the night’s real winner, maintaining its tight season-long grip on the Best Picture and Best Director prizes, even with this more mainstream-oriented group. (It should be stressed that, despite the name, this is not a critics’ award.)

    Is this another “Sideways” — which also managed to parlay critical momentum into a top win here — or is something bigger afoot for the film? I’m starting to suspect the latter.

    Kris can obviously offer more first-hand perspective at a later stage. Still, the sense I get from this is that, for all the claims of it being a level three-horse race, “Up in the Air” is actually trailing “The Hurt Locker” and “Avatar” — if any major precursor was going to swing the way of Jason Reitman’s film, I’d have expected it to be the sometimes safe-playing BFCA.

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  • BFCA/HFPA on the way

    Golden Globe AwardsThis weekend the first two major televised awards shows will hit and the race will begin to take a certain shape.  Though to be quite honest, I’m beginning to get the sense that each of these major precursors will go different ways.  At the end of the day, I think we could be looking at a three-horse race all the way up until the Best Film Editing award on Oscar night (which will either go to “Avatar” or “The Hurt Locker”).  Then it’ll be a two-horse race between that film and “Up in the Air” right up until the final envelope is opened.

    This is what we wanted, though.  Right?

    Pete Hammond does a nice job of previewing the BFCA’s Critics’ Choice Movie Awards at The Envelope.  Pete and I did a little dog and pony Q&A intro to a free showing of “Up in the Air” at the Landmark theater in West L.A. last night to a packed house.  Some 60 attendees were turned away at the door.  Mainly it was raising awareness, discussing the nominees, offering up who we voted for, etc.

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  • Kevin Bacon to receive BFCA’s Joel Siegel Award

    Kevin BaconThe press release, in part:

    The Broadcast Film Critics Associa tion (BFCA) announced today that renowned actor and philanthropist Kevin Bacon will be presented with the third annual Joel Siegel Award by Meryl Streep at the 15th Annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards. The ceremony, hosted by Kristin Chenoweth, will air live on VH1 Friday, January 15, 2010 at 9:00 PM ET/PT

    Given annually, this special award pays homage to beloved “Good Morning America” film critic and BFCA member Joel Siegel, who lost his long struggle with cancer in June, 2007.

    Kevin Bacon is one of the foremost actors of his generation and has starred in over 50 films. His talent for balancing starring roles with powerful supporting characters on both film and stage has allowed him to build a varied and critically acclaimed body of work. Kevin has proven his talents in a wide range of film genres from action thrillers to romantic comedies to heavy dramas, and even the occasional musical. Kevin most recently starred in “Taking Chance” for which he received Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG Award nominations.

  • 12/15 Oscarweb Round-up

    (from left) Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana in Avatar• Karina Longworth holds her nose and writes about Oscar, but makes a compelling case for “Avatar” as the “timeliest” film of the season. [Little Gold Men]

    • The film’s star, Zoe Saldana, on the state of women in Hollywood. [Speakeasy]

    • Charting the best music documentaries of the decade. [The Playlist]

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  • 12/14 Oscarweb Round-up

    George Clooney in Up in the Air• In case you missed this morning’s announcement, “Inglourious Basterds” and “Nine” led the field of BFCA nominees. [In Contention]

    • Frank Rich op-eds a love letter to “Up in the Air.” [New York Times]

    • Steve Pond painstakingly assembles a primer on how many votes a contender needs for an Oscar nomination per category. [The Odds]

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  • ‘Basterds,’ ‘Nine’ lead the pack with BFCA

    Eli Roth in Inglourious BasterdsFor better or worse, the Broadcast Film Critics Association has, of late, been frequently cited for its Oscar prognosticative prowess. Of course, it’s a pointless tidbit in the grand scheme and no one should be looking at organizations like this to see how accurate they might be on that front (even if this one in particular, of which I am a member, makes it a point every year to remind you).

    Having said that, I don’t think anyone would be shocked in the slightest if the BFCA’s list of 10 Best Picture nominees (see below) matches the Academy’s 10-for-10 this year. There is just one film on the list that ever felt truly questionable to me at some point along the way, and even that seems more and more locked in as latter-year hopefuls fail to catch expected fire.

    “Inglourious Basterds” and “Nine” led the way with 10 nominations each, a new record.  However, given the addition of below the line categories this year, it’s worth noting that their tallies wouldn’t have been so robust in the past. Quentin Tarantino’s film would have landed five nominations if it was business as usual. “Nine” would have landed three.  And “Up in the Air” would have led the field.

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  • Kristin Chenoweth to host Critics’ Choice Awards

    Kristin ChenowethThe press release, in part:

    The Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA) has announced that Emmy and Tony Award winning actress Kristin Chenoweth will be taking the stage as host for the 15th Annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards gala on Friday, January 15, 2010 at the Hollywood Palladium…

    “We are delighted to have a triple threat such as Kristin Chenoweth, a multiple award-wining star of the stage, film and television as host for our show,” said Tom Calderone, President of VH1. “Kristin is hugely talented with broad appeal and will bring a tremendous energy to the live ceremony.”

    The 15th Annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards gala will air live for the third straight year on VH1 on Friday, January 15, 2010 at 9:00 PM*. The awards are bestowed annually by the BFCA to honor the finest in cinematic achievement. Since its inception in 1995, the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards has been a star-studded bellwether event of the awards season and historically, the most accurate predictor of the Academy Award nominations.

    Our ballots are due Saturday, by the way. Nominees will be announce December 14.

  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Lovely Bones’ bows, ‘New Moon’ reigns

    Mark Wahlberg in The Lovely Bones• “The Lovely Bones” finally landed this week, to decidedly mixed reviews.

    • Kris and Anne offered their thoughts on the film (among others) in this week’s Oscar Talk.

    • In Off the Carpet, we combed through the Best Adapted Screenplay contenders (which now include “District 9”).

    • “New Moon” surprised nobody with a record-breaking box-office haul last weekend, and its dominance is set to continue.

    • This week’s Long Shot column surveyed the growing buzz around populist contenders in this year’s Oscar race.

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  • BFCA adds categories

    Sean Penn at the 2009 Critics Choice AwardsHot off the presses:

    The Board of Directors of the Broadcast Film Critics Association has voted unanimously to expand the categories we will be voting on for this year’s 15th annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards. More fun for everybody!

    We believe it is appropriate and wise for the BFCA to model its categories more closely after those of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This means adding several “technical” categories, dividing Best Screenplay into Original and Adapted, and tweaking a music category from Best Composer to Best Score. We will not be voting on shorts and we will only be voting one Best Sound category. (And we most likely will not present any of the new categories on our live telecast as we still have only two hours on VH1.) We will still be voting in our unique categories, including Best Comedy, Best Action Movie, Best Young Actor and Best Acting Ensemble.

    Full list of categories after the jump.

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  • THE LONG SHOT: What are precursors for, anyway?

    Anne Hathaway at the 2009 Critics Choice AwardsI didn’t time my holiday to coincide with the sleepiest week of awards season, but that’s how it panned out anyway. While I spent 10 days drinking my way along the canals of France’s Burgundy region, divorced from my computer screen and, I admit, any thoughts of Oscar whatsoever, the industry, too, took a collective siesta.

    As people assimilated the minimal revelations of this year’s festival run (Gosh, people like “Precious?” Who knew?) and steeled themselves for the annual madness ahead, the Producers Guild of America clearly aimed to take advantage of the lull by announcing the expansion of its feature film nominees to 10. The blogosphere stirred briefly, dutifully posted the press release, and went back to sleep.

    The PGA was probably hoping for more of a reaction than it got, but that’s what happens when you ape a larger organization’s move three months after the fact…as everyone suspected you would, anyway.

    The truth, however, is that the news was as dispiriting as it was unsurprising. Because for all the organization’s feeble claims that the copycat move was made purely in the interests of artistic diversity, all it does is expose a serious identity crisis that afflicts many of the season’s precursors.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: From the horse’s mouth

    Kate Winslet at the 66th Annual Golden Globe AwardsThe last two weeks have been a leaf blower to the debris an awards season can accumulate.  Individuals with some real say in the ultimate Oscar picture have finally gone on the record, painting a rather clear picture of the industry’s favorite films of 2008.

    But before diving into the realities of the various guild announcements, it is probably worth touching upon the gleeful diversions of the Critics’ Choice Awards and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globe Awards.

    These are the two culminating critics soirees, capping off the annual critical kudos sprint through December and early January.  Both proudly declare themselves Oscar harbingers but only one seems to find itself decided from a critical mindset (even if that mindset is still warped by pegging a zeitgeist).  The other is, as always, a drunken time amongst industry friends that goes its own way.

    But dare I say it, this year the HFPA may have actually raised the bar for the Academy.  After years of embarrassing nominations announcements and sometimes bewildering winner choices, the group awarded a slate of contenders last night that stuck out as noble and, shockingly, novel.

    Can the Academy’s membership reach out to Mickey Rourke and meet him half way like he has clearly done this season to an industry that has shunned him for so many years?  Can they find a way to spread the kudos love while an inevitable “Slumdog” sweep pushes through the evening of February 22?

    Moreover, can AMPAS have the balls to follow in the HFPA’s footsteps with a double win for Kate Winslet, arguably deserving this year and a move that would be inarguable as a hell of an apology for years of Oscar losses?  The actress joined Sigourney Weaver last night as one of only two actresses to win a pair of Golden Globe awards for film performances in one evening.  Your move, Oscar.

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  • Agreed

    Because this was an embarrassing moment to many of us.

  • A night at the Critics’ Choice Awards

    Sean Penn at the 14th Annual Critics\' Choice AwardsIt’s an event that keeps on getting better and better, a little awards show that’s escalated into one of the hallmarks of the film awards season, whether the “we’re one of the best Oscar predictors” stuff is annoying or not (which it is).

    The night had a number of surprises, but in a sense, one of those surprises became a foregone conclusion half-way through the show.  The whole room could tell — “Slumdog Millionaire” was going to walk away with the first clean BFCA sweep since “A Beautiful Mind” in 2001.  Nothing for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”  Nothing for “Frost/Nixon.”  Nothing but the usual for the slowly-becoming-silver-medal-bound “The Dark Knight.”

    Two big wins for “Milk” were nice.  Sean Penn’s victory as Best Actor might have been inevitable, even though Mickey Rourke’s portrayal was probably the year’s most critically acclaimed of the year.  I couldn’t help keeping an eye trained on Mickey two tables over, one of the wandering cameras crammed in his face as Penn delivered his acceptance.  Clearly the “Wrestler” gang was a bit disheartened, nabbing only one win — for Bruce Springsteen’s title track.  But Fox Searchlight was beaming nonetheless with it’s five “Slumdog” trophies.

    I did as much mingling as the two minute commercial intervals would allow, but I did manage to finally meet the lovely Kate Beckinsale, nominated tonight for her criminally underseen performance in “Nothing But the Truth.”  She’s a real sweetheart, happy for the few pockets of support she’s been able to find for the film, which was essentially avalanched by the Yari bankruptcy last month.  There’s still Santa Barbara in a couple of weeks.

    I have to say, being in the middle of Heath Ledger’s standing ovation was somewhat emotional.  The win wasn’t surprising in hindsight, but as Laura Dern was opening the envelope, I couldn’t help but think the idea of major awards was suddenly a pipe dream for this performance.  But it all went away quickly and Christopher Nolan gave a touching, spot-on acceptance speech on behalf of the actor.

    (More, plus the full list of winners, after the jump.)

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