With the musical Les Miserables making a big splash this Christmas, older versions of the story inevitably find their way to Blu-Ray at about the same time. There have been a lot of takes on this story, after all: at least a dozen, not counting concert videos of the stage musical. Not least among them is Bille August’s straight-laced production from 1998. It strips the story down to the bones and removes a lot of juicy elements in the process. But bolstered by a strong pair of leads, it also makes for a reliable introduction to the story: a sort of cinematic Cliffs Notes to get you up to speed quickly. Hit the jump for the full review.

The 2013 Golden Globes have just wrapped up.  I only watched the last hour of the ceremony because the Globes no longer have their awards season power due to voting schedule changes.  Reading tweets and Facebook posts, it seems like it was a fairly entertaining show (keep an eye out for Jodie Foster‘s acceptance speech for her Lifetime Achievement Award).  As for the winners, they were very “Globes” in that they were more populist choices that are unlikely to have much bearing on the Oscars.  Argo may have had a good night at the Globes by winning Best Picture (Drama) and Best Director, but I still think Lincoln is the picture to beat when it comes to the Academy Awards, especially since Ben Affleck was snubbed for the Best Director Oscar nomination.

Hit the jump for the full list of winners.

The 85th Annual Academy Awards announced its slew of nominations yesterday, but today the American Cinema Editors guild has released their nominations for excellence in editing for 2012.  Nominees for the 63rd Annual ACE Eddie Awards in the dramatic category include Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, Life of Pi, Lincoln, and Skyfall, while the comedy or musical category includes Best Picture hopeful Silver Linings Playbook and Seth MacFarlane’s R-rated comedy Ted.  Argo and Zero Dark Thirty seem like the formidable competition in the dramatic category given how expertly both films layer and manage tension throughout their running times, and coincidentally they both share one of the same editors: William Goldenberg.

Hit the jump to check out the full list of nominees in the dramatic, comedy or musical, and animated categories, as well as documentary and television categories.  The 63rd Annual ACE Eddie Awards will be held on February 16th.

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.

In anticipation of the announcement of the nominations for the 85th Academy Awards tomorrow morning, the American Society of Cinematographers has announced its list of nominees for outstanding achievement in cinematography.  Roger Deakins was singled out for his gorgeous work on this year’s Skyfall, as was Claudio Miranda for the breathtaking Life of Pi.  The list of nominees is rounded out by Seamus McGarvey for Anna Karenina, Danny Cohen for Les Miserables, and Janusz Kaminski for Lincoln.

Deakins has been nominated by the ASC for a total of 11 times now, winning for The Shawshank Redemption and The Man Who Wasn’t There.  Shockingly, he has never won an Academy Award despite being nominated for fantastic work like The Assassination of Jesse James, No Country for Old Men, and True Grit, but this could very well be his year.  Hit the jump to read the full press release, and click here to read my predictions for tomorrow’s Oscar nominations.  The ASC Awards will be held on February 10th.

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.

The Directors Guild of America has just announced their nominations for “Outstanding Direction in Feature Film” for the 65th Annual DGA Awards.  The nominees are as follows:

• Ben Affleck for Argo
• Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty
• Tom Hooper for Les Miserables
• Ang Lee for Life of Pi
• Steven Spielberg for Lincoln

These nominations, as well as the omission of certain other directors, carry certain implications heading into the Academy Awards contest.  Hit the jump for more DGA-related news.

The nominations for the 2013 Producers Guild Awards have been announced.  The PGA’s are a fairly reliable predictor of the Academy Awards, as last year all but two eventual Best Picture nominees (The Tree of Life and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) were PGA nominees.  This year’s contenders include expected fare like Argo, Les Miserables, and Lincoln, indies such as Beasts of the Southern Wild and Moonrise Kingdom, and critical favorite Zero Dark Thirty.  The PGA’s are also fond of singling out one “popular” choice, and in this year’s case that film looks to be the excellent Skyfall

In addition to the feature films, the PGAs also announced the nominees in television.  Drama series nominees include the usual suspects like Homeland, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones, while the comedy category is filled out by 30 Rock, Louie, Modern Family, and for some reason The Big Bang Theory.  Notably absent is HBO’s Girls and NBC’s brilliant Parks and Recreation.  Hit the jump to check out the full list of film and television nominees.  The 24th Annual PGA Awards will be held on January 26th.

It looks like Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has outpaced the competition to take the top spot in 2012′s final box office with $32.9 million.  Opening films Django Unchained, Les Miserables and Parental Guidance followed in box office order with Jack Reacher rounding out the top five.

Now playing 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, Matt’s review, and all our previous coverage.

At the NYC press day, I did an exclusive interview with director Tom Hooper.  We talked about why he wanted to make Les Mis after The King’s Speech, the reasons he wanted everyone singing live on set, how the first cut was almost four hours, his thoughts on doing an extended cut, the challenges of editing it down to two and a half hours, what might be on the Blu-ray, and so much more.  In addition, with Hooper doing such a great job on his first two movies, I’m pretty sure every studio would be willing to make whatever he wants to do next, so I asked his thoughts on comic book movies, would he be willing to take on James Bond, and more.  Hit the jump to either listen to the audio or read the transcript.

It became clear around September that putting together a Top 10 list this year was going to be incredibly difficult.  We’ve been provided with an embarrassment of riches throughout the year, and so the prospect of whittling it down to a list of my ten favorites proved daunting.  2012 seems destined to go down in history as “one of those years” like 1999, 1994, or 1977, where a large number of the year’s offerings will stand the test of time.  Though this list expresses what films I connected with most out of the past 12 months, there are at least 10 or 15 other movies that I also really enjoyed waiting just outside the wings.  If forced to pick my ten favorites from 2012, though, this is what I’ve come up with.  Hit the jump to take a look.

Now playing 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, Matt’s review, and all our previous coverage.

At the recent NYC press day for the film I did an exclusive interview with producer Eric Fellner (who runs Working Title with Tim Bevan).  Since Sid and Nacy in 1986, Fellner has produced 100 movies and he shows no signs of slowing down.  During the interview we talked about how Les Mis came together, the way the industry has changed over the past decade, whether VOD and online streaming become a real revenue stream, if we could eventually get an extended cut of Les Mis (the first assembly cut was four hours!), and more.  In addition, with Fellner producing so many other projects, I got updates on the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy sequel, Edgar Wright’s The World’s End, Ron Howard’s Rush, Richard Curtis‘ About Time, Everest and more.  Hit the jump to either listen to the audio or read the transcript.

Three additional titles piled into theatres on Christmas Day, capping off the busiest box office week of 2012. As expected, Universal’s Les Miserables was Tuesday’s clear winner, earning an estimated $18.2 million from 2,808 locations. Django Unchained placed second with just over $15 million from 3,010 locations – beating the $14.3 million debut of Inglourious Basterds to become the best opening ever for director Quentin Tarantino. After eleven days on top, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey fell to third place with $11.3 million, though that still placed it well ahead of Christmas Day’s final gift. The Fox comedy Parental Guidance had the widest release of the day (3,358 locations) but still wound up in fourth with an estimated $6.4 million.

Looking back on 2012, a ridiculous amount of highly anticipated films came out this year and with them came a comparable barrage of quality trailers. Since this year was heavy on the comic book-derived features, you can expect that to be appropriately reflected in this top ten list. Along with those juggernauts you’ve come to know and love over the last year, we’ve also included some trailers that got the blood pumping and the synapses firing in anticipation for 2013. Fair warning: there were so many fan-favorite movies this year that our top ten list is guaranteed to include AND exclude some of your favorites. Hit the jump to check out our top ten movie trailers of 2012.

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.