Welcome to the first ever Awards Round-Up post! With the Oscar season officially kicked off, there’s just not enough time for me to cover every event and every development in real time, so I’ve devised this Friday post to cover everything that happens until the curtain rises at the Kodak Theater on February 27. (Take a look at this awards season calendar, conveniently compiled by the folks at Entertainment Weekly.)
I’m attaching a poll to the end of this post, and I ask you to please vote. My goal is to post the results on next week’s round-up and keep the cycle going. The poll will relate to the “discussion” at the end of the post.
So … let’s begin.
Awards
National Board of Review announces. Yesterday, the historic kick-off of the season took place with the announcement of the year’s best from the National Board of Review, a “selective group of knowledgeable film enthusiasts, academics, film professionals, and students” in New York that reflect a wide range of interests.
In 2010, they clearly liked “The Social Network,” awarding in four major prizes, including Best Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay, three categories it is considered a frontrunner for at the Oscars. However, they gave a massive boost to the campaign of Jesse Eisenberg for Best Actor, who has a likely nominee but by no means certain due to his age. The NBR is usually a good indicator of Academy tastes in this category; their winner went on to be nominated 70% of the past decade and won 40%.
Another big winner was Mike Leigh’s “Another Year,” making the group’s top 10 list as well as picking up a Best Actress win for Lesley Manville. The movie’s support, initially through the roof, has grown tepid over the past few months, and these awards could indicate we are looking at a critical darling. Leigh’s movies often rack up these critics groups awards, and Manville could gain some thunder in the next month.
More on Sony Pictures Classics’ push to get Jacki Weaver’s performance in “Animal Kingdom” into contention later, but it appears to have paid off with a Best Supporting Actress win here. This category matched up with the Academy 6 out of the last 10 years, so things look good for Weaver. The NBR got the ball rolling for Amy Ryan, an unknown who marched into an Oscar nomination on virtually unanimous support; we could be looking at a similar storyline here.
Their top 10 list was nothing too out of left field as long as you know the NBR is obsessed with Clint Eastwood and lavishes excessive awards on his movies, so don’t look much into the inclusion of “Hereafter.” The list was mostly expected contenders with the encouraging inclusion of “Shutter Island” and “The Town,” two commercial powerhouses which may prove to be a threat to the established order.
As for exclusions, “The Kids Are All Right,” “Black Swan,” “Rabbit Hole,” “Blue Valentine,” and “127 Hours” were nowhere to be found. The exclusion of the latter is the most shocking since Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” won Best Picture from the NBR back in 2008. With the exception of Lisa Cholodenko’s comedy, all the other movies were fairly dark and gritty, which is not always well-received by the NBR.
This is a group notorious for high-profile exclusions, some indicative of where the race is going and others completely misguided. “Precious,” “The Reader,” “There Will Be Blood,” and “The Queen” are some of the recent Best Picture nominees to be overlooked; the last winner to be snubbed was “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” Then again, they’ve sent some messages by passing up heavily favored front-runners which ultimately fell short like “Nine” and and “Dreamgirls.”
Here is the abridged winners’ list:
B
est Film: “The Social Network”
Best Director: David Fincher, “The Social Network”
Best Actor: Jesse Eisenberg, “The Social Network”
Best Actress: Lesley Manville, “Another Year”
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, “The Fighter”
Best Supporting Actress: Jacki Weaver, “Animal Kingdom”
Best Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, “The Social Network”
Best Original Screenplay: Chris Sparling, “Buried”
Best Foreign Language Film: “Of Gods and Men”
Best Documentary: “Waiting for Superman”
Best Animated Feature: “Toy Story 3″
Best Ensemble Cast: “The Town”
Breakthrough Performance: Jennifer Lawrence, “Winter’s Bone”
Ten Best Films
“Another Year”
“The Fighter”
“Hereafter”
“Inception”
“The King’s Speech”
“Shutter Island”
“The Town”
“Toy Story 3″
“True Grit”
“Winter’s Bone”
The Gotham Awards. A pretty minor awards ceremony with little relevance to the Oscars, the Gotham Awards have never been a very good predictor of Oscar tastes simply because it strictly limits itself to American independent film. But their awards were more significant than usual.
Their 2010 pick for Best Feature was “Winter’s Bone,” the gritty Sundance favorite. It’s a significant victory because of the competition that it beat out. This category included heavyweights like “Black Swan,” “Blue Valentine,” and “The Kids Are All Right,” all of which have been in the thick of Best Picture discussion for quite some time. This could really mark the rise of “Winter’s Bone” to a strong Best Picture contender; last year’s winner was “The Hurt Locker,” and we all know how that turned out. (And for the record, it also beat out “The Kids Are All Right” for Best Ensemble Performance.)
Sight and Sound. “The Social Network” took home Best Picture of 2010 from the British publication Sight and Sound, a very respected film magazine. This might not be so significant if their past selections weren’t so incredibly artistic that 99% of the American population hasn’t heard of them. “Brokeback Mountain,” the 2005 indie darling that almost took Best Picture, was the last American movie to top their top 10 list. I think this victory means that “The Social Network” has incredible crossover appeal between the art-house theater and the multiplex that can’t be underestimated, which is what makes it such an appealing choice for the Academy’s Best Picture.
Marshall and the Movies 
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