VGThuy
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I figured I would make a thread separate from the movie thread so that one doesn't get bogged down too much by various critics picks and awards discussion.
Every year, various critics groups and industry and other award bodies come together and announce their choices for the best of the year. It usually gets started around festival time in the late summer/early Fall where studios and distributors submit films that they believe will be awards fodder. Then a lot of buzz happens there and we can see how much they follow through towards Oscar.
Oscar is not the be-all-to-end-all and a lot of these groups are worthy awards in their own right, but award season has become such a sport in the past decade or so that all of these different groups are looked at as Oscar precursors. It starts out with Gotham (New York independent film awards) and the Independent Spirit Awards (the L.A. based group). Then various critics circles start their announcements with The National Board of Review always being the first and the National Society of Film Critics often being last (even after the Golden Globes some times).
The big critics choices I always pay attention to every year are The National Board of Review, The New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the National Society of Film Critics (not to be confused with the Broadcast Film Critics Association that does the televised Critics' Choice Awards) only because they've been around the longest and tend to contain some of the more respected published film critics.
With the critics' choices, I don't think a movie not being named hurts them for Oscar so much. I think what they really do is give smaller movies a fighting chance to be in the conversation. I do think they may create a backlash that savvy rival studios can exploit if one film ends up dominating the critics' choices and non-critics who see it don't understand what the fuss is about and get behind another movie to ensure that critical favorite doesn't win. IMO, it happened with Boyhood and The Social Network where they dominated all the critics awards and then Birdman and The King's Speech took advantage and took all the guild/industry awards including Oscar.
After the critics make their choices, then various awarding bodies start announcing their nominees and winners. The Golden Globes are made up of the Hollywood Foreign Press and people still don't quite know who makes up those members despite its official description as being made up of published journalists (not film critics or academics or filmmakers) from around the world. They have a shoddy history, but I have to say they've been making pretty good choices for the last few years and I've agreed with the GG more than Oscar these days.
Then you have all the guild awards that represent different facets of the Hollywood industry: Editors, Cinematographers, Writers, Actors, Directors, Producers, etc. Many of these members are also member of the Academy (Oscars) but they contain many more members (in the thousands) than are represented at the Oscars as they consist of the entire union membership of these guilds and often include television members. This is where you see the most overlap with the Oscars.
The British Academy Awards (BAFTA) have also become pretty good precursors as its membership may overlap with the Academy as well.
Last, the Oscars are made up of over 6000 members consisting of those who work in the industry, or used to work in the industry. Membership is invite only. Each member is supposed to be a representative of one of the branches of the Academy (sound, visual effects, actors, composers, writers, directors, editors, cinematographers, etc.). Each branch is responsible for picking nominees for their respective categories but the full membership picks the nominees for Best Picture. Once the nominees are out, then the full membership may vote for all of the categories with some exceptions (I think foreign film and documentary film categories can only be voted by members who attend special screenings of all of the nominees...at least it used to be that way).
Also worthy of note, Best Picture is voted on a totally different system than the other categories. Unlike the other categories, a winner isn't chosen by the nominee who has the most votes, which run the risk of a plurality winner rather than a majority winner. Rather, the Best Picture nominees are ranked by all members from 1st to whatever the last number is for that year and whichever film has the highest ranking from that system will win Best Picture (much like the figure skating ordinal system). That's may help explain why Moonlight won Best Picture but lost most other awards to La La Land or didn't sweep the other awards that La La Land did not win.
So as of today, here are some of the announced nominees/winners from various bodies. Anyone may feel free to update this thread with new lists as I won't be able to keep up-to-date as quickly as I probably should for a OP of a thread like this.
Gotham Awards
https://gotham.ifp.org/
* = winner
The Independent Spirit Awards
https://www.filmindependent.org/blog/drumroll-2018-film-independent-spirit-award-nominees/
The National Board of Review
Est. 1909. They consist of a select group of film enthusiasts, filmmakers, film professionals, and film academics. I'm not sure if it's the same group every year.
http://www.awardsdaily.com/2017/11/28/2017-national-board-review-winners/
The New York Film Critics Circle
Founded in 1935, the Circle’s membership includes critics from daily newspapers, weekly newspapers, magazines, and qualifying online general-interest publications. Every year in December the organization meets in New York to vote on awards for the previous calendar year’s films.
Every year, various critics groups and industry and other award bodies come together and announce their choices for the best of the year. It usually gets started around festival time in the late summer/early Fall where studios and distributors submit films that they believe will be awards fodder. Then a lot of buzz happens there and we can see how much they follow through towards Oscar.
Oscar is not the be-all-to-end-all and a lot of these groups are worthy awards in their own right, but award season has become such a sport in the past decade or so that all of these different groups are looked at as Oscar precursors. It starts out with Gotham (New York independent film awards) and the Independent Spirit Awards (the L.A. based group). Then various critics circles start their announcements with The National Board of Review always being the first and the National Society of Film Critics often being last (even after the Golden Globes some times).
The big critics choices I always pay attention to every year are The National Board of Review, The New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the National Society of Film Critics (not to be confused with the Broadcast Film Critics Association that does the televised Critics' Choice Awards) only because they've been around the longest and tend to contain some of the more respected published film critics.
With the critics' choices, I don't think a movie not being named hurts them for Oscar so much. I think what they really do is give smaller movies a fighting chance to be in the conversation. I do think they may create a backlash that savvy rival studios can exploit if one film ends up dominating the critics' choices and non-critics who see it don't understand what the fuss is about and get behind another movie to ensure that critical favorite doesn't win. IMO, it happened with Boyhood and The Social Network where they dominated all the critics awards and then Birdman and The King's Speech took advantage and took all the guild/industry awards including Oscar.
After the critics make their choices, then various awarding bodies start announcing their nominees and winners. The Golden Globes are made up of the Hollywood Foreign Press and people still don't quite know who makes up those members despite its official description as being made up of published journalists (not film critics or academics or filmmakers) from around the world. They have a shoddy history, but I have to say they've been making pretty good choices for the last few years and I've agreed with the GG more than Oscar these days.
Then you have all the guild awards that represent different facets of the Hollywood industry: Editors, Cinematographers, Writers, Actors, Directors, Producers, etc. Many of these members are also member of the Academy (Oscars) but they contain many more members (in the thousands) than are represented at the Oscars as they consist of the entire union membership of these guilds and often include television members. This is where you see the most overlap with the Oscars.
The British Academy Awards (BAFTA) have also become pretty good precursors as its membership may overlap with the Academy as well.
Last, the Oscars are made up of over 6000 members consisting of those who work in the industry, or used to work in the industry. Membership is invite only. Each member is supposed to be a representative of one of the branches of the Academy (sound, visual effects, actors, composers, writers, directors, editors, cinematographers, etc.). Each branch is responsible for picking nominees for their respective categories but the full membership picks the nominees for Best Picture. Once the nominees are out, then the full membership may vote for all of the categories with some exceptions (I think foreign film and documentary film categories can only be voted by members who attend special screenings of all of the nominees...at least it used to be that way).
Also worthy of note, Best Picture is voted on a totally different system than the other categories. Unlike the other categories, a winner isn't chosen by the nominee who has the most votes, which run the risk of a plurality winner rather than a majority winner. Rather, the Best Picture nominees are ranked by all members from 1st to whatever the last number is for that year and whichever film has the highest ranking from that system will win Best Picture (much like the figure skating ordinal system). That's may help explain why Moonlight won Best Picture but lost most other awards to La La Land or didn't sweep the other awards that La La Land did not win.
So as of today, here are some of the announced nominees/winners from various bodies. Anyone may feel free to update this thread with new lists as I won't be able to keep up-to-date as quickly as I probably should for a OP of a thread like this.
Gotham Awards
https://gotham.ifp.org/
* = winner
The Independent Spirit Awards
https://www.filmindependent.org/blog/drumroll-2018-film-independent-spirit-award-nominees/
The National Board of Review
Est. 1909. They consist of a select group of film enthusiasts, filmmakers, film professionals, and film academics. I'm not sure if it's the same group every year.
http://www.awardsdaily.com/2017/11/28/2017-national-board-review-winners/
The New York Film Critics Circle
Founded in 1935, the Circle’s membership includes critics from daily newspapers, weekly newspapers, magazines, and qualifying online general-interest publications. Every year in December the organization meets in New York to vote on awards for the previous calendar year’s films.
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selections not in terms of quality but categorization. I remember when Jim Carey won for Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy for the Andy Kauffman biopic he did and he was like “I thought we did a drama.”
