Fox Searchlight is getting its Oscar plans in order by announcing that they’ve set Steve McQueen‘s Twelve Years a Slave for December 27th.  Based on Solomon Northup’s autobiography of the same name, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Northup, an educated and married black man living in 1853 New York.  Northup was approached by two men about a job offer in Washington D.C., but when he showed up he was kidnapped and forced into slavery.  The film has lined up one of the best casts in recent memory.  In addition to Ejifor, the film also stars Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Paul Dano, Scoot McNairy, Quvenzhane Wallis, Paul Giamatti, Sarah Paulson, Garrett Dillahunt, Alfre Woodard, and Benedict Cumberbatch.  Fox Searchlight’s Oscar odds also go up when you consider that two films involving slavery—Lincoln and Django Unchained—grabbed Best Picture nominations last year (somehow, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter missed the cut).

The only other film set for December 27th’s is The Weinstein Company’s Oscar-hopeful Grace of Monaco starring Nicole Kidman as Grace Kelly.  I can’t wait to see Twelve Years a Slave, and I hope it will play at TIFF like McQueen’s first two features, Hunger and Shame.

There are many great things in Beasts of the Southern Wild, but Quvenzhané Wallis is the greatest.  Upon seeing the movie, I hoped Hollywood would find a place for her raw star power.  The Oscar nomination for Best Actress should help launch her, but there are more Keisha Castle-Hugheses than Anna Paquins among young Oscar nominees.  The most promising news yet is that Wallis will indeed headline the remake of Annie, following up on the speculative report from earlier in the month.  Can she sing?  I have no idea, but I can’t wait to see Wallis try.  The prospects of an Annie remake are iffy in a vacuum, but Jay-Z is curating the music and director Will Gluck (Easy A) is a good choice to make a musical with bite, so there is reason for optimism.

Will Smith, James Lassiter, Jada Pinkett Smith, Jay Brown, Tyran “Ty Ty” Smith, and Jay-Z will produce.  Gluck is currently rewriting the script for a Winter 2014 release.  Hit the jump for the press release with all the details.

Continuing on with our “Road to Oscar” feature, today we’re going to take a look at how the race for Best Actress played out over the past 12 months.  With the 85th Academy Awards taking place this coming Sunday, we figured this week would be a nice opportunity to reflect on how a number of Oscar categories got to where they are today.  Join us after the jump as we break down the race for Best Actress.

Though it was only a few weeks ago that we learned that Willow Smith was no longer going to be starring in the Will Smith and Jay-Z-produced musical remake of Annie, it appears that director Will Gluck (Friends with Benefits) already has his sights set on a pretty big get to lead the film.  EW reports that Beasts of the Southern Wild star (and Best Actress nominee) Quvenzhané Wallis is apparently in consideration to star in the redo, though the magazine cautions that Gluck and the producers have yet to make any firm casting decisions.  Hit the jump for more.

This year, Quvenzhané Wallis became the youngest person ever to receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination, for her performance in Beasts of the Southern Wild.  Recognized for her work as Hushpuppy, she was honored with a Virtuosos Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF).  Collider was there to cover and attend the event, and we’ve compiled the highlights of what the actress had to say, both on the press line and during the Q&A.

While there, Quvenzhané Wallis talked about getting over her nerves for her audition, what she remembers most about the film’s shoot, how director Benh Zeitlin helped with her performance, what she most likes about her character, the relationship she has with movie dad Dwight Henry, how fun the experience of making 12 Years A Slave was, how she’d like to voice an animal in an animated film, that she would love to do a musical, and that the whole awards show experience can be a little bit cuckoo.  Check out what she had to say after the jump.

If you missed seeing Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild in theaters before its four Oscar nominations substantially upped its buzz, you’re in luck!  Fox Searchlight has announced that a theatrical re-release will begin this weekend in select cities.  The indie picture is up for an Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Quvenzhane Wallis) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Lucy Alibar, Behn Zeitlin).  Hit the jump to see which cities and theaters will be showing Beasts of the Southern Wild starting this weekend.

If Disney ever made a film about the post-apocalypse, it might look something like the first twenty minutes of Beasts of the Southern Wild, a film so gorgeously designed, soulfully acted and inventively produced that I feel kind of bad for not liking it more than I did.

Hushpuppy, an adorable maternal orphan who speaks to animals lives with her drunk, terminally ill, possibly abusive father in The Bathtub (a sort of micro-Saint Bernard Parish; poor, ramshackle homes balanced on the edge of a grey sea and a massive levee protecting the “civilized” folks above).  When the ice caps melt, the bathtub is submerged and big-ass prehistoric pig monsters (called Aurochs, though in real life those were more like neolithic cows) emerge from the polar ice, she embarks on a quest to find her place in the universe.  Hit the jump for my review of the Blu-ray.

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.

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.

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.

The nominations for the 2013 Independent Spirit Awards have been announced, and Oscar hopefuls Silver Linings Playbook and Moonrise Kingdom lead the pack.  Both films picked up nominations for Best Feature, Director, and Screenplay with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper landing acting noms for SLP and Bruce Willis garnering a swell Best Supporting Actor nomination for his work in Moonrise Kingdom.  Beasts of the Southern Wild, Bernie, and Keep the Lights On round out the Best Feature nominees, while The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Safety Not Guaranteed were singled out for the Best First Feature award.  Also, Matthew McConaughey pulled double nominations for his stellar work in this year’s Magic Mike and Killer Joe, landing a Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor nod, respectively.  Notably shut out of the race entirely was Leos Carax‘s critically-lauded Holy Motors.

Hit the jump to check out the full list of nominations.  The winners of the 2013 Spirit Awards will be announced on Saturday, February 23, 2013.

The 2013 awards race is in full swing, and what better way to spend the Thanksgiving holiday then to take a closer look at how the categories are shaping up thus far?  Over the next few days we’re providing a bit of an overview of what the state of the race looks like at this point in time.  Yesterday we ran down the contenders for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress, and today we’ll be taking a look at the fiercely competitive categories for Best Actor and Best Actress.  Hit the jump to read on.

Lord help us, awards season is here again.  I’m a member of SEFCA (the Southeastern Film Critics Association) and my first screener arrived yesterday afternoon (it was for The Exotic Marigold Hotel).  Today, the Gotham Independent Film Awards have announced their nominees.  The Best Picture nominees are Bernie, The Loneliest Planet, The Master, Middle of Nowhere, and Moonrise Kingdom.  I haven’t seen Planet or Nowhere, but I’m a bit surprised at the absence of Beasts of the Southern Wild, although the film did pick up nominations for Breakthrough Director (Benh Zeitlin) and Breakthrough Actor (Quvenzhané Wallis).

Hit the jump for a full list of the nominees.  Winners will be announced on November 26th.

Though we’re a little more than halfway through the year, we’ve likely already seen the release of one of the best films of 2012: Beasts of the Southern Wild.  The magical, emotional drama is a film unlike any other, and its success is due in no small part to its force of nature star Quvenzhane Wallis, who was merely five years old when she landed the lead role.  A set photo from director Steve McQueen’s (Shame) upcoming period drama Twelve Years a Slave now confirms that the immensely talented actress has joined Chiwetel Ejoifor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Brad Pitt as part of the cast.

The film tells the true story of Solomon Northup, an educated and married black man living in 1853 New York who was abducted and forced into over a decade of slavery in the south.  Judging by this set photo, it appears that Wallis will be playing Northup’s daughter.  Hit the jump to take a look.