Tomorrow is the big day when the Academy is set to announce this year’s Oscar nominees, and traditionally that meant that today was supposed to be the day that The Golden Raspberry Award Foundation announced the contenders for The Razzies, the annual set of awards that are unique in that they recognize the worst in the world of moviemaking instead of the best. This year things are being done a little differently over at Razzie headquarters, however.

The major criticism I saw this morning of the New York Film Critics Circle and their live-voting awards show, as broadcast to the world by several member Twitter accounts, was that they seem to be placing a higher priority on being first than any other element of being relevant. Then again, their choice for best picture — Michel Hazavanicius’ silent smash The Artist – is the talk of The Town this awards season, so it doesn’t seem out of left field or completely irrelevant that they chose to honor it with both Best Pic and Best Director. What is striking about this morning’s NYFCC awards, however, isn’t the awards at all, it’s the fact that they were mightily overshadowed by the postings of a fake account on Twitter. Is that a comment itself on the awards process itself, that the most entertaining part of it all what the part not taking it seriously in the least? Lets explore a bit, shall we?

Whereas Pixar has dominated the category in recent years, the sense that Cars 2 isn’t a shoe-in for awards season is offering a spotlight to a wider field. In fact, it’s also a wider field that will beget more nominees – if there are 16 eligible in the given year, 5 nominees will make the short list. If the numbers stay steady, this would mark the third time since the Best Animated Feature‘s inception in 2001 that there are more than 3 films up for the big prize. According to The Wrap, the list of films that have been submitted for consideration include: The Adventures of Tintin, Alois Nebel, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, Arthur Christmas, Cars 2, A Cat in Paris, Chico & Rita, Gnomeo & Juliet, Happy Feet Two, Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil, Kung Fu Panda 2, Mars Needs Moms, Puss in Boots, Rango, Rio, The Smurfs, Winnie the Pooh, and Wrinkles. Just because they’ve been submitted doesn’t meant they’re all eligible. Several haven’t done qualifying runs in Los Angeles theaters, and many are questionable because of their use of motion capture or live-action blend. In the mo-cap cases of Tintin, Happy Feet Two and Mars Needs Moms, filmmakers have been asked to discuss their methods and intentions with the process in order to prove eligible. The Smurfs and Alvin and the Chipmunks are also animation/live-action hybrids, so their fate is unclear at this time. Without them, and without, say, the Czech Republic’s rotoscoped Alois Nebel, the [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

After months and months of thinking about it, I finally realized that the real question was “Why not Cookie Rocket?” Fox is thinking the same thing, because they’ve dropped a metric ton of Planet of the Apes news onto an unsuspecting citizenry who will soon be taken over by primates. For one, they’re committed to earnestly lobbying for Andy Serkis as Best Actor during awards season, and for two, they’ve signed him to “multiple future installments of the series.” Director Rupert Wyatt was already contractually on board for a second film, and it seems obvious that the success of the first did the heavy lifting of creating a new franchise out of an old one. A sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes is not far off. As Russ Fischer smartly opines over at /film, Serkis may have also, or may also discuss doing second unit for the second film since he’s doing that on The Hobbit, and because the entire world would probably watch a movie directed by Caesar. On second thought, if the man playing the world’s smartest simian also directs the second unit for the movie, then the apes really have taken over. Probably exactly what Fox wants.

This year, someone who has never won a DGA award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement will win a DGA award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement. The filed includes three first-time nominees – Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan; Tom Hooper for The King’s Speech; and David O. Russell for The Fighter – as well as two returning nominees – David Fincher for The Social Network (who was previously nominated for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and who has won several commercial directing awards from the DGA) and Christopher Nolan for Inception (who was previously nominated for The Dark Knight and Memento). None of these directors has won the award, which means the Director’s Guild of America’s pattern of celebrating new talent (even talent that’s been around a decade) will continue. In the past 25 years, the DGA has only had 4 repeat winners – Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood and Oliver Stone. With this list of nominees, it’s guaranteed that yet another new name will join their ranks.

The Producers Guild of America is known for aligning its picks with the Oscar nominations with the startling regularity that can only come when two groups share the same voting pool. That’s why groups like, say, the Hollywood Foreign Press (who I think actually nominated a nip-slip video this year) doesn’t match up at all. The PGA, which announced its award nominees today, went 9 for 10 last year, and by the looks of this list, they might just do it again in 2011.

Check out which of your favorite television shows and movies won with this complete listing of PGA winners. Tiger Woods isn’t on here.

Why at least one film journalist seems to think so.

No one likes a sell out. But selling out goes both ways. This time of year, directors sell out in a different way. I’m talking about all the major mainstream Hollywood directors who “sell out” to do the award film released at the end of the year.

Kevin and Neil are overwhelmed with the impending awards season, feverishly trying to watch all the films at press screenings and on studio-provided DVDs. They know this makes you jealous, but such is the life of illustrious film critics.

I currently have 28 different DVDs of award films that various studios have sent me. That’s about 50 or 60 hours of movies to get through in the next two weeks before the nomination window opens… in addition to the other seven mainstream movies I have to see in the next week.

The folks over at FunnyorDie have put together a little parody of what the Golden Globes Red Carpet should have been like…

We promised you commentary on the winners of this evening’s Golden Globe Awards, and here it is — so settle down already.

No Country for Old Men finds home atop 6th annual Central Ohio Film Critics Association awards.

It’s a surprising shortlist for the best visual effects Oscar this year, with some startling inclusions and some even more startling omissions.

Throughout the year, our own Kevin Carr has been dedicated to one thing: drunkenness. Here is to a year’s worth of drinking games!

Here you go Hollywood — when the awards are handed out, you will be making your acceptance speeches on the sidewalk.

For a moment there, you may have thought that you had seen the last of “The Oscar Beat”, our now annual feature that brings you the best (and worst) of Awards season.

2007 has been filled with movies that the studios whore out to critics in order to get awards. The worst ones are the films that take themselves too seriously or cover the “meaningful” issues. Occasionally, these films actually win awards, so each year we are guaranteed a steady stream of this crap in the late-fall and winter.