The Broadcast Film Critics Association announced the winners of the 18th annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards tonight.  While Ben Affleck was noted as the lesser of the Best Director snubs when Oscar nominations were announced this morning, the BFCA named Affleck Best Director and his Argo Best Picture.  They feature genre awards—action, comedy, and sci-fi/horror all have their own Best Picture category—so there’s a bit of an “everybody gets a trophy” philosophy.  But that allowed Jennifer Lawrence to pick up two trophies: Best Actress in an Action Movie (The Hunger Games) and Best Actress in a Comedy (Silver Linings Playbook).  Silver Linings Playbook earned four total; the Best Comedy winner brought Lawrence’s co-star Bradley Cooper Best Actor in a Comedy and the rest of the cast Best Acting Ensemble.

The four primary acting awards went to major Oscar contenders Daniel Day-Lewis, Jessica Chastain, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Anne Hathaway.  But the BFCA also found room for Collider favorites Skyfall, Looper, and Cloud Atlas.  See the full list after the break.

The nominations for the 85th Academy Awards have been announced, and it’s quite a whirlwind of nominees.  As expected, Lincoln landed the most nominations with 12, followed with Ang Lee’s Life of Pi which nabbed 11.  The big story here, though, is the Best Director category.  Shockingly, only two (two!) of the DGA nominees for Best Director made the Oscar cut: Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg.  The rest of the category was filled out by Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild, David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook, and Michael Haneke for Amour.  It was almost guaranteed that Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow would be landing nominations for Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, respectively, but shockingly neither made the cut.  Apparently those films just directed themselves.  Based off today’s nominations, it now looks like it’s (surprisingly) down to Lincoln vs. Silver Linings Playbook for the big win.

Hit the jump to check out the list of nominees, and click here to check them against my predictions (somehow I predicted the Best Picture and Supporting Actor categories perfectly).  The 85th Academy Awards will take place on February 24th.

Lincoln director Steven Spielberg is poised to have a big day tomorrow when the 85th Academy Awards are announced, but it appears that the filmmaker has decided to put the brakes on his next project.  Spielberg has decided to indefinitely postpone his big budget sci-fi adaptation of Robopocalypse, which was to have starred Chris Hemsworth in the lead role.  Production was set to get underway this spring, but apparently Spielberg decided the project wasn’t ready and is now going “back to the drawing board to see what is possible.”  The filmmaker isn’t dropping out of the pic entirely, he just didn’t want to rush such an expensive film.  Hit the jump for more details.

At last, Oscar is upon us.  Back in November I shared a look at the early awards season race by way of our 2013 Oscar Preview articles, and now nearly two months later there’s still quite a bit up in the air.  This truly is one of the more exciting awards races in recent years, as 2012 is so stacked with quality that there are a surprising number of uncertainties this close to the Academy Awards ceremony.  Nevertheless, I am once again foolishly going to attempt to predict how the Oscar nominations will shake out when they’re announced tomorrow morning, January 10th.  Hit the jump to check out my predictions.

In past years for my “Best of” list, I’ve been able to provide fun categories like “Best Kill” and “Best Quotes”, but sadly, that won’t be happening this year.  I keep notes throughout the year, but in July, my hard drive crashed, and because I am a foolish person, I didn’t back up the notes to a separate drive.  However, I do have enough information to do the traditional categories as well as Breakthrough Performance, “A Very Good Year”, Best Villain, Best Surprises, Biggest Disappointments, and a new category, “Best Movie You Probably Missed This Year.”  One final note: unlike previous years, the film had to come out in 2012; festival-only flicks don’t count, so that’s why there’s no love for The Place Beyond the Pines on this year’s list.

Hit the jump to check out my miscellaneous “Best of 2012″ picks.  Be sure to keep checking back this week as we’ll be running Top 10 lists from Adam, Dave, and me.

Les Misérables is a musical of big emotions.  Characters are brought to their lowest, experience love at first sight, sacrifice their lives for revolution, spend decades in pursuit of justice, and believe their quests are ordained by God.  The songs and their context can come off as cheesy, but the non-stop music and story wrap the production in grandeur that sweep the audience into a captivating world.  Paired with terrific performances, the film adaptation of Les Misérables is almost unstoppable.  But director Tom Hooper throws up a barrier as he constantly blocks out the tremendous production values with far too many close-ups and editing that chases the music rather than guides it.  We still hear the people sing, but their voices should ring louder.

Opening on Christmas Day is director Tom Hooper’s fantastic adaptation of Les Miserables.  Loaded with great performances and top notch filmmaking, Les Mis is absolutely a contender for all the year end awards and it would shock me if Anne Hathaway doesn’t win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her incredible work as Fantine.  Her one take rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” was incredible and it’s the type of performance that’s unforgettable.  For more on the film, here are five clips and all our previous coverage.

At the recent NYC press day for the film I got to participate in a press conference with Hathaway, Hugh Jackman (Jean Valjean), Amanda Seyfried (Cosette), Eddie Redmayne (Marius), and Samantha Barks (Éponine).  They talked about making the film, how they prepared for their roles, their characters, singing live on set, and so much more.  Hit the jump to either listen to the press conference or read the transcript.

Anne Hathaway and Samuel L. Jackson are in a competition of sorts since they both have movies coming out on Christmas Day—Les Miserables and Django Unchained, respectively.  In a new Funny or Die video, the two actors decide to have a straight-up competition with a “Sad Off” in order to decide whose movie is more depressing.  Having seen both films, Les Miserables is easily more depressing and Django Unchained is a borderline comedy (there’s one scene that could have been in Blazing Saddles).  But really, their war of words boils down to which is worse: slavery or prostitution.  Despite the dark subject matter, the sketch is pretty damn hilarious, especially since Jackson builds the best gingerbread house ever.

Hit the jump to check out the video.

Director Kathryn Bigelow’s drama Zero Dark Thirty continues its dominant critics awards path, as it has picked up two more Best Picture wins from the New York Film Critics Online and Boston Society of Film Critics groups, adding to its previous wins from the New York Film Critics Circle and National Board of Review.  Bigelow also won Best Director from both organizations, while Daniel Day-Lewis took home Best Actor for Lincoln.  Emmanuelle Riva won Best Actress from New York and Boston, while she shared the award in a tie with Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook in the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

Los Angeles broke from the mold a bit by naming director Michael Haneke‘s devastating French-language film Amour the Best Film of the year.  They also awarded Paul Thomas Anderson Best Director for The Master and Beasts of the Southern Wild’s Dwight Henry the Best Supporting Actor honor in a couple of pleasant surprises.  Hit the jump for the full list of winners from all three critics groups.

And the barrage of marketing material for the Oscar hopefuls continues. Two highly anticipated December films—Les Miserables and Zero Dark Thirty—recently made their screening debuts, and on the heels of much awards buzz we’ve seen a number of materials from said pics hit the web over the past two weeks.  Earlier today we got a look at five extended clips from director Tom Hooper’s musical adaptation Les Miserables, and now Universal has released 18 high-resolution images from the film.  The production value on this thing continues to look fantastic, and I’m eager to experience the 2+ hours of song when the pic hits theaters.

Hit the jump to check out the images.  The film stars Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Samantha Barks, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Anne Hathaway.  Les Miserables opens on Christmas Day.

With director Tom Hooper’s adaptation of Les Miserables opening Christmas Day, Universal has just released five clips and they’ve started showing the film to critics around the country.  As we previously reported, reaction to the first screening at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall was followed by raucous applause with the principal cast taking the stage to a standing ovation at the end of the film.  The other night I caught a screening and can confirm Les Mis is the real deal and Anne Hathaway is easily the front runner to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.  In addition, the film is going to be nominated for a ton of other awards and Hooper is going to walk away from this being offered everything in Hollywood.  In the coming weeks I’ll be running exclusive interviews with some of the cast and filmmakers, but until then, check out the clips.

Les Miserables also stars Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Samantha Barks, Helena Bonham Carter, and Sacha Baron Cohen.

Having just finished his cut of the film at 2 a.m., Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper (A King’s Speech) presented the first screening of Les Miserables to a New York audience this afternoon. Not since 2002′s Chicago has a musical feature been a serious Oscar contender for Best Picture, but early reactions indicate that the trend could change this year. Each musical number was followed by raucous applause with the principal cast taking the stage to a standing ovation at the end of the film. It looks like Christmas has come early for the cast and crew of Les Miserables. 

The film stars Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Samantha Barks, Helena Bonham Carter, and Sacha Baron Cohen.  Les Miserables opens on December 25th. Hit the jump to read some audience reactions.

With the release of The Dark Knight Rises Blu-ray quickly approaching, we’re getting to see more of the extras that will be included on the disc.  We’ve already seen behind-the-scenes photos of the Bane/Batman fight, Tom Hardy’s transformation into Bane, and more.  Today, we’re getting a look at what went into Catwoman’s fight scenes, and the special effects that went into destroying the Gotham Rogues’ football field.

Hit the jump to check out the special features.  The Dark Knight Rises hits Blu-ray/DVD on December 4th.  Click here to pre-order it.

Oscar season is in full swing, folks.  2012 has been a fantastic year in film so far, and with merely weeks to go before 2013 begins there are still a couple of highly anticipated films that have yet to be seen.  Just like last year, I’ll be running down a preview of the upcoming Oscar race during this fine Thanksgiving week, giving readers a look at what the state of the race looks like right now.  To be clear, this isn’t a personal list but rather an objective look at how things look to be shaping up.  I’ve divided each category into frontrunners, likely to be nominated, and other contenders in order to parse out where things stand at the moment.  There are multiple strong contenders in nearly every category, so this is looking to be a rather heated run to the finish line.

We’ll be looking at a couple of different major categories each day over the next four days, and we’re kicking things off with the Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress categories.  Hit the jump to read on.

As we move closer towards awards season, studios are busy finalizing which of their films to push in which categories in order to give them the best shot at winning.  Given that the Best Picture snub for The Dark Knight in 2008 is widely considered a large reason why the Academy subsequently expanded the category to a larger number of nominees, we knew Warner Bros. would be launching a campaign for The Dark Knight Rises.  Alas, the “For Your Consideration” campaign for Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy closer is off and running, and we’ve got a look at which categories WB is pulling for.  Hit the jump for more.