The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Awards Edition

Yesterday was something of a slow-dripping Christmas for awards season lovers like me.  Five groups announced their awards, and three of the most prominent - the Boston Film Critics Association, LA Film Critics, and New York Film Critics Online - all chose to do so by live-tweeting their voting schedule and results over the course of the afternoon.  Like a movie-obsessed fool, I sat their hitting the "refresh" button, awaiting the good news, which there was plenty of.

Instead of listing all of the results here (which can be found all over the web), I'm going to hone in on my favorite and least-favorite picks, and do some Oscar prognosticating along the way.

The Good
-There's actually a race for Best Picture this year.  In past years, there have often been movies that dominated throughout awards season, with Slumdog Millionaire being perhaps the best example.  Last year was something of a fluke, as The Social Network won just about every award possible until the guilds started announcing, at which point The King's Speech took over and proceeded to Oscar glory.  This year, things are more interesting.  The black-and-white, silent charmer The Artist is clearly the front-runner, winning top honors from New York, Washington D.C., Boston, Indiana, and The New York Film Critics Online, but love is being spread around to others movies too, with The Descendants getting LA's vote and The Tree of Life winning in San Francisco.  Plus, Hugo won with the NBR and continues to have strong showings, with Martin Scorsese emerging as one of the top contenders for Best Director, and rightfully so.  With The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and War Horse still on the way, the race could get even more interesting.

-The Tree of Life is in this.  Many thought Terrence Malick's thoughtful, spiritual epic would be too heady and contemplative to be a strong player, but it keeps showing up.  Aside from winning Best Picture in San Francisco, Malick also got Best Director awards from San Fran and LA.  It seems unstoppable in the cinematography race, and has also been garnering additional nominations from groups like Detroit and Houston.  With the kind of respect and wonder The Tree of Life demands, I'll be surprised if it doesn't make it into the Best Picture race at the Oscars.  Hopefully Malick can get nominated, too.

-Melissa McCarthy keeps getting recognized for her work in Bridesmaids.  The hilarious comedienne won Best Supporting Actress accolades from Boston and the New York Film Critics Online, and also nabbed a Breakthrough Performance nomination from Detroit (which has only announced its nominees).  Bridesmaids also made the American Film Institutes Top 10 and got Best Ensemble from the NYFCO, and will surely get a few Golden Globe nominations on Thursday.  Will all this attention be enough to carry McCarthy, and possibly the great screenplay by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, to the Oscars?  I surely hope so.

-A few other deserving wins: Sean Durkin winning Best New Filmmaker for Martha Marcy May Marlene from Boston, Joe Cornish getting Best Debut Director for Attack the Block from the NYFCO, LA awarding Best Music/Score to The Chemical Brothers for Hanna, and Indiana choosing The Skin I Live In for Best Foreign Film (if only it were an Oscar contender).

The Bad
-Albert Brooks is a sort of co-front-runner with Christopher Plummer (Beginners) for Best Supporting Actor for his work in Drive.  Brooks keeps raking in the awards, winning in San Francisco, Boston, and with the NYFCO.  Mind you, I love Drive, and I'm glad for any attention it gets, and Brooks' performance in the film was fine, but there are many worthier performances, including Plummer's.  Brooks has great momentum right now that will easily carry him to an Oscar nomination, but hopefully, someone else will win.

-It seems like groups have forgotten about Weekend.  The gay romance is one of the year's best films, but group after group announces without any sign of it.  Not even a nomination or special mention.  If nothing else, Tom Cullen and Chris New should be popping up in Best Breakthrough Performance type races, but with so many great breakthroughs this year, they keep getting sadly overlooked.  I know Weekend doesn't have a prayer at getting any Oscar love, so it would be nice if some of the critics would recognize it.  I'm holding out hope that Central Ohio will shower it with love - that group tends to always pleasantly surprise me.

-Rango keeps taking Best Animated Film honors, and while it's not unexpected, there are many better choices, such as Winnie the Pooh, Kung Fu Panda 2, and Arthur Christmas.  Rango's main competition at this point is The Adventures of Tintin, which looks great, so at least there's that.

The Ugly

-Actors getting awards for multiple performances.  If a group wants to recognize how many great films a given actor has appeared in this year, they should implement some sort of Best Body of Work award (as I do with my awards, to toot my own horn).  When an actor wins and has multiple movies listed after his/her name, it somehow cheapens the award, as though they only won because of the sheer breadth of their year.  If an actor has the most votes, but the votes are spread across multiple performances, maybe then the group should vote for which performance to recognize.  Culprits this year include Brad Pitt winning in New York for The Tree of Life and Moneyball; Jessica Chastain in a couple cases but most gluttonously with the NYFCO for The Help, Take Shelter, The Debt, Coriolanus, Texas Killing Fields, and The Tree of Life (SIX movies!); and Michael Fassbender winning Best Actor in LA for Shame (we all know he actually won for this performance), Jane Eyre, X-Men: First Class, and A Dangerous Method.

-Groups and critics announcing before they've seen everything.  This is especially frustrating when the main movie not getting seen is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a (likely) major Oscar contender. By this point, all the groups announcing should have had the chance to see Stephen Daldry's adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's wonderful book, but early groups like New York and the NBR's choices seem like they should have an asterisk by them, as they didn't get to truly evaluate the year as a whole.  Because awards season starts when it does, I wish studios would just have their movies ready to screen in time, but sometimes, that's not the case: it seems EL&IC wasn't screened because Alexandre Desplat's score wasn't finished.