February 24th, 2019
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It’s Oscar night and we will be live blogging the show. We will announce the winners and have our reactions as they happen, while keeping track of how our readers did in predicting the outcomes.
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February 24th, 2019
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It’s Oscar Day, and we will be live blogging the show. Before that, let’s take a last look at the nominations with a few annotations. in Italics are those that have received the most votes from our readers so far in our Oscar contest (which is open to new entries until noon, Pacific, today—enter now!). Bold films are those films I think will win. Meanwhile, those that are Underlined are those I want to win. Not all categories have underlined nominees, because not all categories have someone I’m cheering for, or because there are two nominees I couldn’t pick between. For example, I would be happy with half of the Best Picture nominees winning.
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February 19th, 2019
With our annual Oscar Prediction contest underway, now is the best time to look at the nominees and try and figure out who the favorites are and which films should just feel honored to be nominated. Today we look at the two Screenwriting Categories, ending with with Best Original Screenplay. This category is actually competitive with three films I can see winning.
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January 23rd, 2019
The Oscar nominations were announced yesterday starting at just after 5 am Pacific time. They do this every year for reasons no one has been able to adequately explain to me. Because it was the day after a long weekend, it took a bit of time to get all the normal work done and digest the results. And there were some interesting results to digest. No one film led the way with total nominations, as two films, The Favourite and Roma tied with 10 nominations each.
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January 12th, 2019
The BAFTA nominations were announced and The Favorite led the way with 12 nominations. Sometimes the BAFTAs are a really good indicator for who will do well on Oscar night. Other times their bias to British films is too much. I think this year will be an example of the latter and I don't think The Favourite is suddenly an Oscar favorite. That said, there’s still some things you can learn here.
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January 10th, 2019
The Writers Guild of America has a lot of categories, as they hand out nearly 30 awards. However, only three of them are for theatrical releases. The list of nominees include several major Awards Season players and not a lot of surprises. There are some clear patterns emerging, but also some surprising results.
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January 7th, 2019
The Golden Globes were the first major Awards Season ceremony this year handing out the hardware on Sunday night. Are last night’s events a strong indicator for the Oscars? I hope not! Certainly not in all categories, as there were some puzzling results last night.
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December 6th, 2018
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The Golden Globes nominations are the second major Awards Season set to come out. It is still very early in the year and the predictive value of the Golden Globes is a little suspect, but there are still some things to learn here. For example Vice led the way with six nominations, so its Oscar chances have gone up, but don’t expect it to lead the way when the Oscars nominations are announced.
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November 1st, 2018
October continued 2018’s phenomenal box office run, for the most part. There were a couple of films that missed expectations by $10 million or more, but on the other hand, Vemon and Halloween were smash hits and are now the first and second biggest October debuts of all time. Furthermore, 2018’s lead over 2017 is, as I’m writing this, just shy of $1 billion and if 2018 can maintain this lead, it will be one of the biggest year-over-year increases of all time. It won’t. The fun times end now. Why is that? Last November was amazing. There were only eight wide releases, but six of them earned more than $100 million. Three of those hit $200 million, including Thor: Ragnarok, which earned over $300 million. This year, there are a lot more movies opening in November, but it is a case of quantity over quality. No movie is expected to come close to $300 million and it would take a bit of luck just to have five $100 million hits. The film I’m looking forward to the most is Ralph Breaks the Internet, while it, Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch, and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald are all aiming for $200 million this month. Fortunately, even if 2018 is behind 2017’s pace by around $300 million, 2018 has built up such a large lead that it should still go into December with an insurmountable lead at the box office.
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