On the Eve of Awards Season

This is my favorite time of year.  Holidays bring friends and family together, school is out for a brief while, and, most importantly, awards season begins.

Right now, on the eve of awards season properly beginning, it's easy to be optimistic.  This year, even more than usual.  Though this feeling will surely fade in the coming weeks, now, it feels like the Oscar race is wide open.  The parade of critics' choices hasn't yet helped to whittle down the field of potential Best Picture winners, and save for a couple choice categories (Lincoln's inevitable wins for Best Actor and Adapted Screenplay), there are some hot races that yet lack a clear-cut front-runner.

It's important to enjoy this feeling while we can, because within a few weeks, we'll probably know who most of the trophies are going to, and we'll be getting sick of seeing the same results pour out of city after city.  Of course, if it's the "right" movie winning (a la The Social Network a couple years ago, which own nearly every critics' award before losing at the Oscars), there won't be too much complaining.  If, however, the "wrong" movie starts sweeping (a la The Artist last year), get ready for another long slog to the Academy Awards.

From this side of things, it seems like Lincoln, Les Miserables, Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, and Silver Linings Playbook are the movies to watch; between the five of them, most Best Picture prizes will be claimed, with a few outliers for Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Master (which already took home the top prize from Sight & Sound, and will do better with the critics than with the Academy), and Life of Pi.  It seems like this year, maybe the "right" movie (Lincoln, in this case) could win with critics and the Academy, but as of yet, it's too early to tell.

What makes a movie the "right" one?  It's an interesting mix of prestige, critical acclaim, box office supremacy, and blogosphere acceptance.  Most years, it's somehow obvious which movie deserves the elusive title of being the year's very best movie (think Brokeback Mountain, The Hurt Locker, The Social Network), the one that will go down in history as being the defining movie of that year, in some way.

Here on Such Moving Pictures, I'll mainly be covering the major groups, which includes the New York Film Critics Circle tomorrow, the National Board of Review on Wednesday (they have little bearing on the Oscars, but they're fun), and the LA Film Critics Association on Sunday.  After that, it will be a nonstop deluge of groups announcing.  I'll do some summarizing here and there, but if you want to know what the prestigious film critics of Northwest Montana think of this year's impressive crop of films, you'd best look elsewhere.

Happy prognosticating, my movie-loving friends, and may the best film win.