As the 84th Academy Awards move closer, we’re starting to get a better sense of how things will pan out. We recently shared the 39 songs that will contend for the Best Original Song category, and now the Academy has announced the 97 original scores eligible for the Best Original Score award. AMPAS is notoriously picky when it comes to eligibility in this category, and as we feared the scores for both Drive and Attack the Block have been deemed ineligible. Also disappointing is the ineligibility of Alexandre Desplat’s mesmerizing score for The Tree of Life.

While it’s upsetting to see some of the year’s best work side-lined, there’s plenty to be happy about. I was a huge fan of Howard Shore’s work in Hugo and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, as well as The Chemical Brothers’ brilliant work in the criminally underseen Hanna. Hit the jump for the full list, as well as who I think will make the cut.

In the U.S. awards race,  The Artist, The Descendants, and Hugo seem to have a steady hold on the lead, but across the pond it looks like they may have other (and better) ideas.  Today, the London Critics Circle Film Award nominations were announced and Drive and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy lead the pack with six nominations each.  A Separation and We Need to Talk about Kevin each landed five nominations a piece, and The Artist and Shame netted four nods each.  Attack the Block also got some love with nominations for Breakthrough British Filmmaker (Joe Cornish) and Young British Performer of the Year (John Boyega).

Hit the jump for the full list of nominees.  Winners will be announced on January 19th.

The 2011 Golden Globes nominations have been announced.  I don’t pay them much attention as an awards barometer since their nominations can be purchased (the Globes are run by the shoddy Hollywood Foreign Press Association) and the event is more to get a bunch of celebrities in a room together and hand them an over-valued award.  But that doesn’t mean it’s not a fun show to watch and this year should be plenty entertaining with Ricky Gervais returning to host.

As for the nominees, you’ll find the usual suspects: The Artist, The Descendants, Hugo, The Help, and Midnight in Paris.  I have to give the Globes credit for having a separate comedy category, which allows actors like Brendan Gleeson (The Guard) and Kristen Wiig (Bridesmaids) to get nominated.  As for “snubs” (again, it’s tough to take the Globes nominations seriously), nothing from The Muppets was nominated for Best Song .  Hit the jump for the full list of nominees.  Winners will be announced on January 15th.

Critics organizations have been doling out their honors for 2011 and for the most part, I feel like the nominations have been fair.  Today, the Screen Actors Guild announced their 2011 nominations and it’s Snub City (which is adjacent to Neglectedville and south of Ignoredtown).  The only nomination I really appreciate is Demian Bichir getting nominated for A Better Life.  It was a solid but underseen movie and he’s great in it.  There are some actors who I feel are more deserving of a nomination, but the guy deserves a career boost.

I can’t say the same for moronic nominations like Leonardo DiCaprio for J. Edgar, Nick Nolte for Warrior (everything he says sounds like a belch), and Glenn Close for Albert Nobbs.  The biggest snub is Albert Brooks being overlooked for Drive.  Critics’ organizations were showing him a lot of love and I’m not sure why SAG isn’t.  Other idiotic snubs include Michael Fassbender for Shame, Woody Harrelson for Rampart, Elizabeth Olsen and John Hawkes for Martha Marcy May Marlene, Kirsten Dunst for Melancholia, Charlize Theron for Young Adult, and Shailene Woodley for The Descendants.  Hit the jump for the list of nominations, which also include the nods for TV actors.  Winners will be announced on January 29th.

This awards season, the fastest way to a critic’s heart is probably through their passion.  Hugo was named the Best Picture by the National Board of Review, and The Artist received the top prize from the NYFCO and BFCA.  Both films now lead the Broadcast Film Critics Association’s Critics Choice Awards with 11 nominations a piece.  The other nominees for Best Picture were The Descendants, Drive (which looks like it’s not going out of this awards season without a fight), Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Help, Midnight in Paris (thought this would be doing a little stronger, but it’s still hanging in there), Moneyball, The Tree of Life, and War Horse.

Other noteworthy nominations include Andy Serkis for Best Supporting Actor (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), and allowing six nominees in the acting categories allows me to forego anger over most snubs (John Hawkes for Martha Marcy May Marlene deserves as Best Supporting Actor nomination over Nick Nolte for Warriror).  Hit the jump for the full list of nominees.  Winners will be announced on January 12th.

Multiple critics associations announced their awards picks for 2011.  The awards race hasn’t really firmed up yet with The Artist winning the top prize from the New York Film Critics Online (NYFCO) and the Boston Film Critics Association (BFCA), The Descendants grabbing Best Picture from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA), and the San Francisco Film Critics (SFFC) honoring The Tree of Life.  The acting and directing catagories aren’t firming up either.  The only performer who is starting to emerge as a front-runner is Albert Brooks for Best Supporting Actor for Drive.  He was honored by the New York Film Critics, the NYFCO, and the BFCA.

On the one hand, it’s exciting that currently no film is dominating, but on the other hand, I think even from here we can see that Harvey Weinstein will probably be able to muscle The Artist to a Best Picture Oscar.  Hit the jump for the full list of winners from the NYFCO, BFCA, LAFCA, and SFCC.

The National Board of Review has announced their honors for 2011.  As always, the wide selection allows the NBR to technically have a say in directing awards season, and their picks remain solid.  While I didn’t go nuts over Hugo, a lot of people did and so it’s not surprising NBR gave it Best Picture and named Martin Scorsese as Best Director.  For the most part, I like all of NBR’s choices.  I’m glad any time Drive gets attention, the acting picks are all worthy, and I’m happy Crime After Crime and 13 Assassins got some love.  Notable snubs include Young Adult, Moneyball, and Martha Marcy May Marlene.  Of course, anything Clint Eastwood does has to make NBR’s Top 10 so that’s why a spot is wasted on J. Edgar.

Hit the jump for the full list of winners.

Awards season is officially in full-swing, with this morning’s announcements of the Gotham Awards winners and the full list of nominees for the upcoming Independent Spirit Awards. Now it’s the critics’ turn, as the New York Critics Circle have unveiled their list for the best in film of 2011. The Artist took home the top two prizes (Best Picture and Director), solidifying its status as an Oscar frontrunner. Brad Pitt was named Best Actor for his work in Moneyball and The Tree of Life, with the former also taking the Best Screenplay prize for Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian. As for Best Actress, the undeniably talented Meryl Streep took the honor for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.

In the supporting categories, Albert Brooks was recognized for his dastardly role in Drive, while the prolific Jessica Chastain was named Best Supporting Actress for her work in The Tree of Life, The Help, and Take Shelter. While The Artist was already running into the Oscars with a good deal of steam, Moneyball‘s two wins give the film a much needed boost heading into the thick of awards season. Hit the jump to see the full list of winners.

The nominations for the 27th Annual Independent Spirit Awards were announced this morning with The Artist and Take Shelter each nabbing five nominations. In addition to The Artist and Take Shelter, Drive, 50/50, The Descendants, and Beginners will duke it out for the top prize. Absent from the Best Feature list is Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, though the film was recognized in Best Supporting Male (Corey Stoll) and Best Cinematography. Also of note, Elizabeth Olsen and John Hawkes landed nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Male for Martha Marcy May Marlene, and Ryan Gosling and Woody Harrelson were both singled out in Best Actor for Drive and Rampart respectively.

Hit the jump to check out the full list of nominations. Recognizing the best in independent film, the awards will be handed out on February 25th, the day before the Oscars.

It may not have topped last year’s holiday in terms of totals, but Thanksgiving 2011 did prove bountiful for a handful of films.  Topping the list is Breaking Dawn Part 1 and its sophomore weekend estimate of $42 million and five-day holiday total of $62.3 million.  Meanwhile, The Muppets proved they still got game with a five-day total of $42 million.

And so our 2012 Oscar Preview has come to a close. Over the past three days we’ve brought you our coverage of how the race stacks up for Best Supporting Actress and Actor, Best Actress and Actor, and Best Animated Feature, Screenplay, as well as the technical categories. Today, we’re covering the big ones: Best Picture and Best Director. There are two early frontrunners for the big prize, but we’ve still got a number of unseen pics that could play the spoiler. As for the director race, does Steven Spielberg have a shot at his first trophy in over a decade, or will an Oscar virgin take home the prize? Hit the jump for the current state of the race in the Best Picture and Best Director categories.

Continuing on with our look at the 2012 Oscar race, today we delve into Best Animated Feature and the technical categories. As Pixar’s Cars 2 was the studio’s worst-received feature to date (it currently sits at 38% on Rotten Tomatoes), we’ve got ourselves an actual competition in the Animated Feature category. Not only that, but if all 18 films that were submitted to the Academy are deemed eligible, we’ll have a total of five nominated films. This leaves us to debate the merits of Rango and The Adventures of Tintin against the likes of Puss in Boots and Arthur Christmas.

Additionally, we’ve taken a stab at Best Original Screenplay, Best Adapted Screenplay, and the technical categories. As these are incredibly tricky to predict this far out (and my picks would be doomed to haunt me come February), I’ve simply listed a couple of frontrunners in each category instead of going in depth. Though it’s still early, we’ve got an overall picture of how things look like they’ll stack up; so hit the jump to check out the state of the race so far. If you missed our previous preview articles, be sure to take a look at our picks for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress, and Best Actor and Best Actress.

Mixing comedy, romance and melodrama to tell a story set at a pivotal moment in movie history, The Artist is itself an example of the form it celebrates:  a black and white silent film that relies on images, actors and music to weave its singular spell. Having never written a silent film, Michel Hazanavicius immersed himself in the genre to gain an understanding of what did and didn’t work. Along with watching films, the director read cinema histories as well as memoirs and biographies of silent era directors, producers and stars, and he drew inspiration from the work and lives of such stars as Douglas Fairbanks, Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson, John Gilbert and Greta Garbo.

We sat down with Hazanavicius at a roundtable interview to talk about his heartfelt and entertaining valentine to classic American cinema. He told us how he immersed himself in the silent movie form, which artists from that era inspired the creative decisions he made, and why it was a moving experience for him to scout locations in Hollywood that still mirror what it looked like in the late 1920s. He also described his complicated collaboration with his composer, his thoughts on which of today’s modern actors could be successful in a silent film, and why he’s glad he didn’t have to do a silent film in 3D.

[This is a re-print of my review from the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. The Artist opens today in limited release.]

We owe a debt of gratitude to silent films. That may seem like an obvious statement but today the films of that era are considered quaint, and to an extent they are. The progress of cinema is to create an imitation of life and the world has sound. But what if it didn’t? What if the real-world was a silent movie and those who had thrived in that environment had their existence disrupted by the cacophony of noise and progress? Michel Hazanavicius‘ The Artist explores this idea but never in the weighty, heavy-handed manner. It’s a silent movie about a silent movie star but rather than coming off as self-indulgent and irritatingly meta, The Artist is always playful with its conceit. Its light-hearted attitude, thoughtful subtext, and a magnificent performance from star Jean Dujardin, makes for a engaging and uplifting love letter to silent cinema.

Yesterday we unveiled our picks for the top contenders in the Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress categories for the upcoming 84th Academy Awards. Today, we’re taking on Best Actor and Best Actress. Though it’s still relatively early in the race, we’ve got some surefire contenders and a couple of clear frontrunners for the top acting categories. In addition to Academy darlings like George Clooney and Meryl Streep, we’ve seen some extraordinary performances from relative newcomers likes Elizabeth Olsen and Michael Fassbender. As I stressed yesterday, it’s still pretty early so things can definitely change between now and February, but there are certainly some clear frontrunners in these two races already. Hit the jump to see find out how everyone stacks up.