They are who we thought they were: BFCA recap

Thanks to anyone who put up with my dry run of the simultaneous LiveBlog/LiveTweet last night. I readily recognize there's simply not much to write about at the BFCA, much unlike the Globes, where something silly happens on a pretty constant basis.

But at the end of the night, we got to see pretty much the same batch of people who will show up at the Golden Globes on Sunday. The biggest question at this point is -- will those same people win?

At this point the race has centered on The Social Network, David Fincher, Aaron Sorkin, David Seidler, Colin Firth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, and Melissa Leo. These "Big 8" categories are going to be pretty much all we get to think about until the Guilds announce their winners and the Academy announces their nominations, when we can start bemoaning and engaging with the tech categories.

So indulge me as I set up a couple scenarios. After the jump.

16th Annual Critics Choice Awards LiveBlog

16th Annual Critics Choice Awards

Best Picture: The Social Network
Best Director: David Fincher for The Social Network
Best Actor: Colin Firth for The King's Speech
Best Actress: Natalie Portman for Black Swan
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale for The Fighter
Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo for The Fighter
Best Original Screenplay: David Seidler for The King's Speech
Best Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin for The Social Network
Best Cast Ensemble: The Fighter
Best Young Actor/Actress: Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit
Best Cinematography: Inception
Best Art Direction: Inception
Best Editing: Inception
Best Costume Deisgn: Alice in Wonderland
Best Makeup: Alice in Wonderland
Best Visual Effects: Inception
Best Sound: Inception
Best Animated Feature: Toy Story 3
Best Action Movie: Inception
Best Comedy: Easy A
Best Picture Made for Television: The Pacific
Best Foreign Language Film: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Best Documentary: Waiting for 'Superman'
Best Song: "If I Rise" from 127 Hours
Best Score: The Social Network

The BFCA in the digital age

I don't necessarily try to mask my overriding disdain of the Broadcast Film Critics Associations, whose organizational votes make up the Critics Choice Awards. There's not enough criteria to be a member, they favor "blurb criticism" over actual thoughtful digestion ("Top Notch Action!" "Incredibly Hilarious!" ... or, quotes from DVD covers). And their awards ceremony has, for the past 15 years, been kind of a pale imitator of the Golden Globes with a greater sense of "eh, who really cares?"

But Variety's Jaime Netzer has written a great feature on the pro's and con's of the organization -- why people hate them, but why their influence matters so much; why they have a populist bent and whether or not they're actively challenging that perception.

You can read the whole article here.

If members of the BFCA provide more widely palatable advice to consumers, their nominations for 2010 don't necessarily reveal a more populist bent than their print peers, or voters within the Hollywood guilds for that matter. "The Social Network," which has topped more domestic critics' lists than any film thus far -- including those of the willfully erudite Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. and the New York Film Critics Circle -- is among the BFCA's five most nominated films, with nine nods, including best picture.

Nor does box office seem to come into play, with specialty releases "The Black Swan" (approaching $50 million in domestic b.o.) and "The King's Speech" ($24 million), leading the pack with 12 and 11 nominations, respectively ("True Grit" also touts 11 noms), going head to head with blockbusters like "Inception" ($292.6; 10 noms) and "Toy Story 3" ($415; five noms) in the top categories. "Winter's Bone," a micro-budgeted indie that has grossed just more than $6 million to date, is also in the running for best picture.

Critics Choice Award Predictions

It's the first televised ceremony of the year, meaning it's our first chance to really see people and hear what they have to say. This ceremony is also usually pretty stupid, so it's kind of fun in that way. I will be Live-Blogging from this website tonight starting at 8 p.m. Please tune in and follow! It's going to be sort of a test run on the Golden Globes to make sure the technology is going to cooperate. And that's how we should view the Critics Choice as a whole - a test run.
 

Best Picture: The Social Network
Best Actor: Colin Firth, The King's Speech
Best Actress: Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter
Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, The Fighter

Read on after the jump...

A.C.E. Eddie Nominations

The American Cinema Editors are, perhaps obviously, the Editors Guild. For those of you new to the Oscar game, the "Best Editing" Oscar is inexplicably the most important Oscar in terms of winning Best Picture. No movie that has NOT been nominated for Best Editing at the Oscars has gone on to win Best Picture since 1989. That being said, the ACE Eddies are NOT the Oscars and that rule doesn't apply, but they still give us a since of where this race is headed.

Best Edited Feature Film (Drama)

Black Swan, Andrew Weisblum
The Fighter, Pamela Martin
Inception, Lee Smith
The King's Speech, Tariq Anwar
The Social Network, Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter

Best Edited Feature Film (Comedy/Musical)

 Alice in Wonderland, Chris Lebenzon
Easy A, Susan Littenberg
The Kids Are All Right, Jeffrey M. Werner
Made In Dagenham, Michael Parker
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Jonathan Amos and Paul Machliss

Best Edited Animated Feature Film

Despicable Me, Gregory Perler and Pam Ziegenhagen
How to Train Your Dragon, Maryann Brandon and Darren T. Holmes
Toy Story 3, Ken Schretzmann and Lee Unkrich

Best Edited Documentary

Exit Through the Gift Shop, Tom Fulford and Chris King
Inside Job, Chad Beck and Adam Bolt
Waiting for 'Superman', Jay Cassidy, Greg Finton and Kim Roberts

Golden Globes: Shortlist predictions

I'll have a little bit of a lengthier preview on the Globes after we get through the Critics Choice Awards, but I wanted to go ahead and link my article from the Daily Gamecock.

Here's a snippet, and read the whole article here.

Best Motion Picture - Drama: “The King’s Speech”

Why? If you’ve been following the awards, you’ve undoubtedly seen “The Social Network” tearing up everything in its path. But “Speech” is the nominations leader, and its brand of refined historical drama is right up the Globes’ alley.

Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical: “The Kids Are All Right”

Best Director: David Fincher, “The Social Network”

Best Actor - Drama: Colin Firth, “The King’s Speech”
Best Actress - Drama: Natalie Portman, “Black Swan”

The calm before the storm...

This weekend is going to be an awards frenzy, constituting the effective completion of "Phase II." The Critics Choice are on Friday and the Golden Globe are on Sunday. After they're over, we plunge solely into the Guilds, the British Academy and, finally, the Oscars.

But before start agonizing over the potentially pedestrian ceremonies this weekend, which I'll be LiveBlogging from here starting at 8 p.m. on Friday and Sunday, let's get a couple things straight:

This weekend is not the end of the awards season.

American Society of Cinematographers Nominees

Matthew Libatique for Black Swan
Wally Pfister for Inception
Danny Cohen for The King's Speech
Jeff Cronenweth for The Social Network
Roger Deakins for True Grit

Comeback Kid

David O. Russell has a pretty sour reputation. Since at least 1999's "Three Kings," he's been called a perfectionist in the bad sense of the word; prone to rage, impossible to work with, far too demanding, and unable to listen.

This has something to do with his pretty infamous on-set blow-up at actress Lily Tomlin while shooting 2004's "I Heart Huckabees."

But everybody loves a good comeback story, and O. Russell could do the unthinkable -- pull off a coup at the Oscars.

Directors Guild Nominees

Statistically speaking, the DGA matches up the strongest to the Academy. The only real surprise here is David O. Russell over Joel and Ethan Coen.

The nominees are...

Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan
David Fincher for The Social Network
Tom Hooper for The King's Speech
Christopher Nolan for Inception
David O. Russell for The Fighter

Top 20 Films of 2010

To coincide with the 2010: Year in Review edition of The Daily Gamecock, here are my choices for the 20 best movies of 2010.

The best films of 2010 encouraged us to see the world through our dreams and our mythologies, to escape inside our minds, to think about the power of ideas and the changing shape of geo-political and cultural landscapes.

In watching over 50 films from 2010, I was continually struck by how much honesty, how much inventiveness, how much our filmmakers are willing to make us think about the medium itself and how technology matters for our society. But more than that, this is really a year for the new vanguard. As much as seasoned filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Roman Polanski succeeded in producing provocative, ethereal works, this is really a moment for people like David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky, and David O. Russell – filmmakers who bring their obsessions and quirks to the screen. With an exotic blend of new voices, veterans, and our next great generation of American directors reaching what feels like a brand new echelon in nuance, control and vision, 2010 was nothing but rewarding.

We went there to escape, but we discovered stimulation in so much projected at us.

The Mix's Top 10 films of 2010

Property The Daily Gamecock

This year, the Mix staff voted on their best films of the year, compiling multiple opinions into one list. Read the full article on The Daily Gamecock's brand new website, here.

1. “The Social Network”
Taken at surface value, “The Social Network” is really quite a mundane film. A boat race is the closest thing it has to an action scene, and a room full of lawyers is the closest thing it has to a dramatic set piece.

And yet, thanks in large part to the depth of Aaron Sorkin’s script, Trent Reznor’s dark score and David Fincher’s vision, it’s truly profound.
Mark Zuckerberg — no matter how accurate his portrayal in the film is — is one of the most complex and fascinating characters ever put to screen. He is a tragic figure, a genius struggling to prove himself to the world. It’s a story of tragedy and betrayal, and yet it is also a story of emerging trends in business, wealth and power.
As Sean Parker says in the film, things have changed “for better and for always.” The Internet, its effect on society and social media are here to stay. It is the “better” aspect of that statement that the film takes an uncomfortably close look at. There is an ominous sense of inevitability to “The Social Network,” and because of that, the end may seem anticlimactic. But it is the lack of any definitive answers — or even any real redemption for Zuckerberg — that provide so much impact.

NYT breaks down Hollywood's new strategy

I ran across this feature in the New York Times a couple days ago and, reading it again, they make so many phenomenal points I could try to write in my own words, but would probably fail miserably. In thinking about how studios are trying to take more risks, fund more traditionally independent films, and encourage the indie filmmakers of the 90s and early 00s to cross the bridge into mainstream, Brooks Barnes has written an absolutely wonderful account.

Here's an excerpt, but I encourage you to give the full article a read here:

As Hollywood plowed into 2010, there was plenty of clinging to the tried and true: humdrum remakes like “The Wolfman” and “The A-Team”; star vehicles like “Killers” with Ashton Kutcher and “The Tourist” with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp; and shoddy sequels like “Sex and the City 2.” All arrived at theaters with marketing thunder intended to fill multiplexes on opening weekend, no matter the quality of the film. “Sex and the City 2,” for example, had marketed “girls’ night out” premieres and bottomless stacks of merchandise like thong underwear.
But the audience pushed back. One by one, these expensive yet middle-of-the-road pictures delivered disappointing results or flat-out flopped. Meanwhile, gambles on original concepts paid off. “Inception,” a complicated thriller about dream invaders, racked up more than $825 million in global ticket sales; “The Social Network” has so far delivered $192 million, a stellar result for a highbrow drama.

"True Grit" wins box office

"True Grit" has become the Coen brothers' first $100 million hit. In a pretty dismal second weekend of the 2011, the Oscar hopeful grapped $15 million, pushed it to $110 in domestic gross. "Little Fockers" was close behind with $13.8 million. Both films are in their third weekend. New release "Season of the Witch" grossed only $10.7 million, while Golden Globe nominees "Black Swan," "The Fighter," and "The King's Speech" all ended up in the Top 10 grossers for the weekend.

It's a season for small films to do big business.

1. True Grit - $15 mil, $110 mil (gross)
2. Little Fockers - $13.8 mil, $124 mil (gross)
3. Season of the Witch - $10.7 mil, $10.7 mil (gross)
4. TRON: Legacy - $9.8 mil, $148 mil (gross)
5. Black Swan - $8.35 mil, $61.5 mil (gross)
6. Country Strong - $7.3 mil, $7.44 mil (gross)
7. The Fighter - $7 mil, $57.8 mil (gross)
8. The King's Speech - $6.81 mil, $33.3 mil (gross)
9. Yogi Bear - $6.81 mil, $75.6 (gross)
10.Tangled - $5.2 mil, $176 mil (gross)

"Social Network" dominates National Society of Film Critics

I think this is the last major group before the Critics Choice Awards kick us into a different gear on Friday. These awards took place yesterday afternoon; apologies for not getting them up sooner, but yesterday was a travel day for me.


Best Picture: The Social Network
Best Director: David Fincher for The Social Network
Best Actor: Jesse Eisenberg for The Social Network
Best Actress: Giovanna Mezzogiorno for Vincere
Best Supporting Actor: Geoffrey Rush for The King's Speech
Best Supporting Actress: Olivia Williams for The Ghost Writer
Best Nonfiction: Inside Job
Best Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin for The Social Network
Best Foreign Language Film: Carlos
Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins for True Grit