Here comes the big awards week. This is the week when a lot of different groups vie for attention as they hand out movie awards.
None of them are the Academy Awards. Those aren’t handed out until February 27th. The nominations won’t even be read until January 25th.
And this is the reason the Oscars should stay at the end of February. It’s good to let all these other groups get their moments in the sun.
Of course, two of this week’s groups come from credentialed critics; the other two are less, shall we say, serious.
Tonight, the New York Film Critics Circle has a modest ceremony. They bestow Best Picture on “The Social Network,” and gives it also Best Director (David Fincher). The NYFCC really liked “The Kids Are All Right,” so they awarded it Best Actress (Annette Bening), Supporting Actor (Mark Ruffalo), and Screenplay (Lisa Cholodenko, the director also). I loved this movie. It won’t win the Oscar. But this is a nice way of rewarding it.
NYFCC gave Colin Firth the Best Actor prize for his standout performance in “The King’s Speech.” Melissa Leo got Best Supporting Actress for “The Fighter.”
The other critics group with an award show this week is the Critics Choice Award. It’s shown on Friday night on VH-1. Each year this show gets better and better. Last year, Meryl Streep and Sandra Bullock locked lips-for fun- on the stage. The critics, drawn selectively from all over the country, send in their final votes today. No one will know until Friday who won what. I wish Les Moonves would promote this show from VH-1 to CBS. This could be the Tiffany network’s awards jewel in the crown. You can follow them at http://www.vh1.com/shows/events/critics_choice/_2011/tweettracker/
The two other shows this week range from ridiculous to who knows. On Tuesday night, the absolutely ridiculous National Board of Review, a group of fans who pay $600 a year to belong, hold a swanky dinner in Manhattan. The dinner is also around $600 a ticket, the NBR gives some kind of award to every movie so that the studios have to buy seats. This year they went heavily for “The Social Network.” They totally snubbed “True Grit” because it arrived late and they’d already made up their minds. Last year they snubbed “Precious.” They’re basically a joke.
Then, next Sunday, come the Golden Globes on NBC. The 80 member Hollywood Foreign Press Association is a complicated story. I’ll address it in the next day or so. They have an undeniably bad reputation. This year their own publicist mocked them. So did host Ricky Gervais on last year’s show. They gave nominations to two awful movies, “Burlesque” and “The Tourist.” hoping to get Christina Aguilera, Cher, Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie on their red carpet. We’ll see on Sunday how that plan paid off.
