We’re nearly a month away from the 85th Academy Awards, and Oscar prognosticators now turn their attention to the various guild awards ceremonies that will be taking place over the next couple of weeks.  The guilds are a major bellwether for Oscar since the crossover between guild voters and Oscar voters is significant, and the Producers Guild Awards were handed out last night, making this already wide open race even more interesting.  Argo won the top prize at the ceremony, positioning the film as a serious Best Picture contender despite Ben Affleck’s lack of a Best Director nomination.  Hit the jump for the full list of winners and what this means for Argo’s Oscar chances.

Yesterday we brought you the Critics’ Choice Award nominees.  Tonight belongs to the Television Critics Association.  Homeland tops the list with 4 nominations.  While it got the extra boost over established veterans in the Outstanding New Program category, the taut thriller earned its spots in Best Drama and Program of the Year as well as the nod to Claire Danes for her stellar performance.  The critics understandably still love Breaking Bad and Bryan Cranston, Mad Men and Jon Hamm, Louie and Louis C.K., Game of Thrones and Peter Dinklage, Parks and Recreation and Amy Poehler.  Creator/star Lena Dunham is the freshest face in the bunch, representing in both Individual Achievement in Comedy and Outstanding New Program with Girls.  But as always, there are a few head-scratchers.  Jessica Lange for American Horror Story is a legacy vote, and while her scenery-chewing was very entertaining—for Individual Achievement in Drama?  No.  And Smash somehow sneaked into Outstanding New Program rather than, say, Veep or Awake.

Still, the TCA always gets more right than they do wrong, especially with their neat Heritage Award.  (This year’s eclectic contenders are Cheers, Lost, Saturday Night Live, Star Trek, and Twin Peaks.)  Read the full list after the jump.

The upfronts are nearing an end, and we’ve already seen the new schedules from NBC, Fox, and ABC.  Now it’s CBS’s turn.  The readers of this site may not exactly be CBS’s target demo—though I’m still watching and enjoying How I Met Your Mother—but The Eye is hoping to change that with a few promising new series slated for this fall.  Shifts for returning series include moving the Ashton Kutcher-enhanced Two and a Half Men to Thursdays, while The Mentalist (which is probably your parents’ favorite show) will now air on Sunday.  Also, the young-skewing comedy 2 Broke Girls has been pushed back to the prime 9pm slot on Mondays after doing well at 8:30.  Moreover, I’m now aware that a show unironically called Crimetime Saturday exists.

As far as new series go, I’m really only keeping my eye on Elementary at this point.  I didn’t really find the need for a new Sherlock Holmes series given that we already have the beyond excellent Sherlock (and, to a lesser extent, House), but I’m willing to check out this new drama (starring Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes and Lucy Liu as Watson) to see what they’ve come up with.  Hit the jump to check out CBS’s schedule.

The Artist has yet again taken home a major Oscar precursor award. The black-and-white silent film was recognized for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Pictures at the 23rd Annual Producers Guild Awards last night. This is yet another notch in the column that points to a very big night for The Artist at the upcoming 84th Academy Awards. In a slight surprise, The Adventures of Tintin was the winner among animated films, besting critical favorite Rango. On the television side of things, Boardwalk Empire won for excellence in dramatic series (beating out fare like Mad Men and Game of Thrones), Modern Family was the winner for the comedies, and the fantastically addictive Downton Abbey won in the movies of the week/mini-series category.

Hit the jump to see the full list of winners.

With awards season in full swing, the Producers Guild of America has just announced the television series nominees for the 23rd Annual Producers Guild Awards which will be announced on January 21, 2012 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. In the comedy category, I can’t believe a show with such inconsistent writing quality as Glee beats out something like Community, but there you have it. There’s still some deserving nominations with Modern Family and Parks and Recreation though. On the dramatic side of things Game of Thrones gets some well-earned loved for their first season and both Mad Men and Dexter continue their collection of accolades. For the rest of the nominees in each category as well as talk shows, competition shows and non-fictions shows, hit the jump.

Tonight was the 63rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards and the winner’s list included some great names.  Perhaps the best win of the night was Peter Dinklage picking up Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for Game of Thrones.  Not far behind was Kyle Chandler finally picking up an Emmy for Best Actor in a Drama Series for the final season of Friday Night Lights (the show also picked up an Emmy for Best Writing in a Drama Series).  Martin Scorsese picked up an award for his direction of Boardwalk Empire‘s pilot episode, and ubiquitous character actor Margo Martindale won Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her role as Mags Bennett on FX’s Justified.

The top awards for Best Drama, Best Comedy, and Best Variety, Music or Comedy Series went to last year’s winners Mad Men, Modern Family, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, respectively.  Best Miniseries or TV Movie was awarded to  PBS’ Downtown Abbey while CBS’ The Amazing Race picked up another Emmy for Best Reality-Competition Program.  Hit the jump for the full list of winners.

Writer, director, producer and actor Mike White is known for his rather eclectic dramedies, such as Chuck & Buck, The Good Girl, School of Rock, Nacho Libre and Year of the Dog, which is totally fine with him. Not looking to be a producer or director for hire, he enjoys working with his friends, like Jared and Jerusha Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) on their latest film, Gentlemen Broncos, about a lovable underdog (played by Michael Angarano) whose passion for writing science-fiction novels is turned upside down when his idol, the celebrated fantasy author Dr. Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement), steals his story at a writers camp.

At the press day for the film, Mike White gave some updates on what he’s currently working on, including the HBO pilot Enlightened, headed into production in January 2010, as well as the status of Them (with Edgar Wright) and School of Rock 2. Look for what he said on “Gentlemen Broncos” very soon.

Imagine if the same six or seven movies and their actors, writers, directors, etc. kept getting nominated for Oscars every year.  There would be slight deviations but for the most part, Academy members would just take their ballot from last year, peruse a couple of For Your Consideration ads, maybe read a critic’s list or two as a second source to make sure they weren’t making any selection deemed interesting, and you’d wonder if they just showed a repeat except they somehow replaced Jon Stewart with Hugh Jackman.

“TV’s Finest Night” is always a repeat and you cherish just about anyone who hasn’t won an Emmy in the past no matter the quality of the show.  Yes, “Mad Men” and “30 Rock” are excellent shows but barring a steep decline in quality, I already know who’s going to win next year because the Emmys are a bunch of lazy wimps who don’t watch anything outside the ten shows they already love.  Hit the jump for a list of tonight’s winners and only grumbling since this farce isn’t worth the energy of a blinding rage.