18th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Award Nominations

After a slew of critics groups naming their best of the year earlier last week (AFI, Boston, New York, Los Angeles), it announced the late arrival of Kathryn Bigelow's every-other-award-contendor-killer, her true life military drama "Zero Dark Thirty." It is in full steam ahead as the late front-runner for Best Picture after "Argo" seemed impossible to top earlier in the fall.

Now with the arrival of this morning's 18th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards from the Broadcast Film Critics Association, it's a nice reminder that a reputable comedy category is on its way with the Globes. With "Bernie," "Silver Linings Playbook," "Ted," "This Is 40" and "21 Jump Street" all nominated for Best Picture from the BFCA, it's a robust category and will make the Golden Globe nominations more interesting; however, they have the pesky inclusion of musical which "Les Miserables" can easily dominate.

Also a breath of fresh air is the association's inclusion of a separate action movie category where the likes of "The Dark Knight Rises," "Looper" and, most importantly, "Skyfall" can get some recognition.  The three all received nods for Best Action Movie next to superhero big-show "The Avengers." This also allowed Daniel Craig a nomination for Best Actor in an Action Movie next to co-star Judi Dench for a double-nomination in both Best Actress in an Action Movie and in the major category of Best Supporting Actress, which is a welcomed surprise along with Javier Bardem in the major Best Supporting Actor category. This is likely the most awards love "Skyfall" will receive this year.

Back to the main grind, "Lincoln" led the pack with a whopping 13 nominations, which beat out previous record-holder of "Black Swan" with 12 nominations. Yet the BFCA passed the love all around with several nominations for each major contendor. Joining "Lincoln" with a Best Picture nomination were "Argo," "Beasts of the Southern Wild," "Django Unchained," "Les Miserables," "Life of Pi," "The Master," "Moonrise Kingdom," "Silver Linings Playbook" and "Zero Dark Thirty." There are eight locked with "Django" and "Moonrise" slots up for grabs with the potential of "The Sessions" or "Amour" sneaking in.

Narrowing down the ten, Best Director nominations went to six: Ben Affleck for "Argo," Kathryn Bigelow for "Zero Dark Thirty," Tom Hooper for "Les Miserables," Ang Lee for "Life of Pi," David O. Russell for "Silver Linings Playbook" and Steven Spielberg for "Lincoln."

Joining front-runner Daniel Day-Lewis for "Lincoln" in the Best Actor category were Bradley Cooper for "Silver Linings Playbook," Denzel Washington for "Flight," John Hawkes for "The Sessions," Hugh Jackman for "Les Miserables" and Joaquin Phoenix for "The Master." Since this is six total, it'll likely be between Hawkes and Phoenix for the fifth spot at the Oscars.

The Best Actress category included Jessica Chastain for "Zero Dark Thirty," Marion Cotillard for "Rust and Bone," Jennifer Lawrence for "Silver Linings Playbook," Emmanuelle Riva for "Amour," Quvenzhane Wallis for "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and Naomi Watts for "The Impossible." Take out Watts, and you're looking at the Best Actress nominees at the Oscars.

Even "The Hunger Games" nabbed some love in the form of Lawrence getting another acting nomination for Best Actress in an Action Movie. Lawrence got double-nominated for "Silver Linings" in both Best Actress and Actress in a Comedy for three acting nods total.

Best Supporting Actor is a little more interesting, especially with Javier Bardem for "Skyfall" sneaking in alongside Matthew McConaughey for "Magic Mike," Tommy Lee Jones for "Lincoln," Alan Arkin for "Argo," Robert De Niro for "Silver Linings Playbook" and Philip Seymour Hoffman for "The Master." While it's still pretty fluid who might get in (Leonardo DiCaprio for "Django" is decidedly missing), Tommy Lee Jones is the front-runner here.

Judi Dench surprised with her aforementioned Best Supporting Actress nomination for her work in "Skyfall," and joining her in the category was Helen Hunt for "The Sessions," Anne Hathaway for "Les Miserables," Amy Adams for "The Master," Sally Field for "Lincoln" and Ann Dowd for "Compliance." Again, take out Dench, and you're likely looking at this field for the Oscars.

The biggest question is whether the acting categories are locked down and prepped to snub "Skyfall" or if the mentions here will translate into Oscar love later on.

Check out the full list of nominations, and tune in to find out the winners of the 18th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards on Thursday, Jan. 10 at 8 p.m. on the CW.

17th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Award Nominations

It looks like we have arrived at our award front-runners. With the announcement of the 17th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Award nominations, it appears "Hugo" and "The Artist" will be continually gaining momentum as further nominations come along. They led the pack of nominees with 11 each.

These nominations could resemble the Best Picture nominees at this year's Oscars granted if there are still 10 slots. The slots could be dwindled down to as little as five, and if that happens it'll be interesting to guess which films make the cut. The films the Broadcast Film Critics Assocation included for Best Picture were "The Artist," "The Descendants," "Drive," "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close," "The Help," "Hugo," "Midnight in Paris," "Moneyball," "The Tree of Life" and "War Horse."

In my opinion this looks about right -- if ten are to be included. Stephen Daldry's "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" hasn't been getting any acknowledgement until now. David Fincher's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," however, got left off aside from Best Score and Best Editing.

Daldry also received a Best Director nod alongside Michel Hazanavicius for "The Artist," Nicolas Winding Refn for "Drive," Martin Scorsese for "Hugo" and Steven Spielberg for "War Horse."

In terms of the acting categories, we're beginning to see some usual suspects show up.

George Clooney for "The Descendants" and Jean Dujardin for "The Artist" are now locks for Best Actor nominees. Joining them were Leonardo DiCaprio for "J. Edgar" who actually hasn't been getting as much attention, Michael Fassbender for "Shame," Ryan Gosling for "Drive" and Brad Pitt's performance in "Moneyball" won out over "The Tree of Life."

Viola Davis for "The Help," Michelle Williams for "My Week with Marilyn" and Meryl Streep for "The Iron Lady" could be considered locks for the Best Actress category as they're both nominated here and have been getting much acknowledgement within critic circles. With them are Elizabeth Olsen for "Martha Marcy May Marlene," Tilda Swinton for "We Need to Talk About Kevin" and Charlize Theron for "Young Adult."

Albert Brooks is full steam ahead as the front-runner and likely winner for Best Supporting Actor for his maniacal turn in "Drive." Nominated with him are Christopher Plummer for "Beginners," another nomination lock, Kenneth Branagh for "My Week with Marilyn," Nick Nolte for "The Warrior," Patton Oswalt for "Young Adult" and, yes, it has happened -- Andy Serkis for "Rise of the Planet of the Apes." It'll be interesting to see if the pull for his nomination will be enough to carry him to the Academy.

In the category of Best Supporting Actress, Shailene Woodley is a lock for "The Descendants" in future nominations along with Octavia Spencer for "The Help" and Berenice Bejo for "The Artist." With them here are nominations for Carey Mulligan in "Shame" and, as a pleasant surprise, Melissa McCarthy for "Bridesmaids."

Other notable nominations include a very worthy three Best Song nominations for "The Muppets." Among the Best Animated Feature nominees, "Rango" is the only one in 2D and -- much to my enjoyment -- is the likely candidate to win in the category. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" got mostly snubbed with nominations in only Best Visual Effects, Sound, Makeup and Art Direction.

It's also funny to note that "The Ides of March" got completely left out except for a completely out of left field Best Ensemble nomination.

Another question: how is "Drive" considered a nominee for Best Action Movie -- a worthy film, yes, but it already received a spot in the Best Picture nominees -- but "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" is not?

Check out the full list of nominations, and tune in to the 17th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards on Thursday, January 12 at 8 p.m. on VH1.

16th Annual Critics' Choice Award Nominations

After yestserday's onslaught of picks for best of the year from critic circles and associations across the nation, all of which mostly praised David Fincher's "The Social Network" as the best of 2010, today we get a list of important nominations for the 16th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards which is organized by the Broadcast Film Critics Association. These awards have become a better predictor for what we're going to see for the Oscar nominations than even the Golden Globes.

And so, here's a run-down of the nominations for the 2011 Critics' Choice Movie Awards, which were led by Darren Aronofsky's "Black Swan" with a record-breaking total of 12 nominations. Close behind with 11 each were "True Grit" and "The King's Speech" followed by "Inception" with 10 and "The Social Network" with nine.

The nominees for Best Picture were "127 Hours," "Black Swan," "The Fighter," "Inception," "The King's Speech," "The Social Network," "The Town," "Toy Story 3," "True Grit" and "Winter's Bone." This list mirrors the 10 Best Picture nominees we'll see at this year's Oscars except for one glaring error: "The Kids Are All Right." How could a snub this large happen for such a deserving film? This is truly discomforting for the film's Best Picture chances at the Oscars.

This category got narrowed down by the Best Director nods which were Darren Aronofsky for "Black Swan," Danny Boyle for "127 Hours," Joel and Ethan Coen for "True Grit," David Fincher for "The Social Network" and Christopher Nolan for "Inception." Again, Lisa Cholodenko for "The Kids Are All Right" is absent.

"Blue Valentine," now happily R-rated, got some love with a Best Actor nomination for Ryan Gosling. Joining him were Jeff Bridges for "True Grit," Robert Duvall for "Get Low," Jesse Eisenberg for "The Social Network," Colin Firth for "The King's Speech" and James Franco for "127 Hours." The win could either go to Firth or Eisenberg as both have been getting considerable attention all season.

More love for "Blue Valentine" as Michelle Williams got nominated for Best Actress along with Annette Bening for "The Kids Are All Right," Nicole Kidman for "The Rabbit Hole," Jennifer Lawrence for "Winter's Bone," Natalie Portman for "Black Swan," and as an amazingly pleasant surprise, Noomi Rapace for "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." Finally that astounding actress gets some recognition for her amazing work. Considering the exuding love for "Black Swan" with the nominations, I predict a rightful win for Portman here.

The category of Best Supporting Actor tossed in a few twists with the frontrunner Christian Bale for "The Fighter" predicted to win. With him were my personal favorite, Andrew Garfield for "The Social Network," Jeremy Renner for "The Town," Sam Rockwell for "Conviction," Mark Ruffalo for "The Kids Are All Right" and Geoffrey Rush for "The King's Speech." The fact that Rockwell, Garfield and Ruffalo all slipped in there gives them great hope for the Oscars, which will be an excellent addition to the proceedings.

Mila Kunis got nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her sultry work in "Black Swan." Interesting to note, however, that she got nominated over both Vincent Cassel and Barbara Hershey. Nonetheless, a worthy nomination. Joining her were Amy Adams for "The Fighter," Helena Bonham Carter for "The King's Speech," Melissa Leo for "The Fighter," the newcomer Hailee Steinfeld for "True Grit," which gives her some Oscar momentum, and the actress who has been getting the most attention in this category so far, Jacki Weaver for the Australian drama "Animal Kingdom."

These awards also have the odd categories of Best Comedy and Best Action Movie.

The Best Comedy nominees were "Cyrus," "Date Night," "Easy A," "Get Him to the Greek," "I Love You Phillip Morris" and "The Other Guys."

The Best Action Movie nominees were "Inception," "Kick-Ass," "Red," "The Town" and "Unstoppable."

My question: where is "The Kids Are All Right" at least for comedy? Another huge snub for the film.

Best Foreign Language Film nominees were "Biutiful," "I Am Love" and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." It's disappointing to note that all three of these will more than likely be absent from the Oscar's nominees for this category.

It's refreshing to see that something other than "The Social Network," although entirely worthy, got some recognition. These awards have also introduced new faces to the list of possible nominees for the Oscars including Andrew Garfield, Mila Kunis, Noomi Rapace, Mark Ruffalo and Hailee Steinfeld. But geez, let's get "The Kids Are All Right" back in the picture please.

Go here for the entire list of nominees for the 2011 Critics' Choice Movie Awards and find out the winners on Friday, January 14, 2011 at 9:00 p.m. on VH1.

And stay tuned tomorrow for the announcement of the 68th Annual Golden Globe Award nominations!

Colossal Disappointment

Peter Jackson's "The Lovely Bones" has been getting lackluster reviews so far after having people think it could've been the big awards candidate for the year. Not anymore, as it turns out.

"Jackson undermines solid work from a good cast with show-offy celestial evocations that severely disrupt the emotional connections with the characters."
-Todd McCarthy, Variety

"Some books are not meant to be adapted to the big screen. Alice Sebold's best-selling The Lovely Bones falls into that category."
-Claudia Puig, USA Today

"The filmmakers’ evident affection for the book expresses itself as a desperate scramble to include as much of it as possible, which leaves the movie feeling both overcrowded and thin."
-A.O. Scott, The New York Times

And Who Could've Predicted This?

Roland Emmerich's "2012" has been getting better-than-average reviews with critics claiming it to be over-the-top, ridiculous fun and falling into the "so bad it's good" category.

Roger Ebert gave it 3 1/2 stars.

"The mother of all disaster movies (and the father, and the extended family) spends half an hour on ominous set-up scenes (scientists warn, strange events occur, prophets rant and of course a family is introduced) and then unleashes two hours of cataclysmic special events hammering the Earth relentlessly."

Lisa Schwarzbaum labels it a guilty pleasure.

"God forgive me, but I enjoyed the nerve-racking silliness of this newest, loudest exercise in destruction."

Well, there's no denying that Emmerich is offering up exactly the reason audiences are going to see this movie, and that is to watch Earth get destroyed in incomprehensibly catastrophic ways. Looks like this one may be a surprise success.

But, one still must wonder, will December 21, 2012 itself will be this much fun?