It is day four of awards season, and already some names are growing wearyingly familiar, and even the surprises don’t quite pop like they used to. On Monday evening, the Gothams announced their annual awards, followed swiftly by the Film Independent Spirit nominations announcement and the NYFCC’s winners, but director Martin Scorsese and his latest film, Hugo, were without some big awards love – until now. The National Board of Review has announced their best-of picks for the year, and Hugo has topped out as Best Film, with Scorsese grabbing Best Director. As the film opened just last week, here’s hoping that this NBR endorsement will pump up somewhat lackluster box office returns. Paired with a weekend box office free of new major releases, and maybe Hugo can swing up to the top of the heap. As for the rest of the Board’s awards, there’s a bevy of names here that already seem like old hat – picks like Christopher Plummer for Beginners and The Artist, The Descendants, and The Tree of Life as a “top” films for the year – but there are still a few eyebrow-raisers, as our friends over at /Film note, J.C. Chandor picking up another award for his debut, Margin Call, continues to be surprising. Where is Sean Durkin and his own Sundance hit Martha Marcy May Marlene? And J. Edgar as one of the year’s best? And a Breakthrough to Felicity Jones and Rooney Mara, but no Elizabeth Olsen? Bizarre, really. But there are [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]

David Fincher’s highly acclaimed flick The Social Network just took the top prize (and just about everything else it could) from the National Board of Review awards announcement. Just another stepping stone on the way to Oscar, right? Maybe not. Although it’s difficult to do anything but speculate on the complex nature of what a NBR win might do in the eyes of the Academy voters, if we can use the past to predict the future, The Social Network might have just won an albatross around its neck. The National Board of Review almost never picks the same winner as the Oscar voters.

It is that time of year again — time to kick the tires and light the fires on my Oscar Beat column, the official home of the chase for the little golden man.

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.