With Neil at Sundance, I’d like to take this opportunity to stage a coup and discuss Award’s season buzz with you, dear reader.

When Awards season rolls around, Robert Fure always wins “Most Rage Filled Rant.” What is both obvious and sad is that he created the award and is the only one who votes on the winner.

Today brings a host of new awards nominations with both the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the American Society of Cinematographers (ACE) announcing nominees for their respective 2009 awards.

The folks at Addictive TV have long been cutting and recutting films left and right for the purposes of keeping us diverted and entertained. So it’s fitting that their recent remix of Slumdog Millionaire has made today’s Daily Diversion.

Fans of The Dark Knight were pleased to find out that The Producers Guild of America (PGA) nominated it as one of the five best films of the year, right alongside Slumdog Millionaire, Frost/Nixon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Milk.

You may remember last year when one adventurous fan created 2007: A Year for Drama, a pretty cool little video montage of some of the year’s more memorable films. That same guy is back this year with 2008: The Cinescape, a similar montage set to Sigur Ros.

As is customary this time of year, it is my duty (and honor) to present you my list of the Ten Best Films of 2008. And in the past year we’ve seen an interesting range of films, have we not?

The 2008 film season brought us beauty in both traditional and unconventional ways. While there has been an argument that leading ladies are few and far between, I think there’s a strong case to be made against that. This list of ten female figures will hopefully offer proof of that.

Our resident sonnetist Adam Sweeney does some re-envisioning of his own, re-purposing the classic carol “The Night Before Christmas” with a little movieloving flair. Consider it our experimental article of the week…

It was supposed to be a battle between Jim Carrey versus Will Smith, but it was actually Old Man Winter that was the big winner at the box office.

Over the past two weeks, both THR and Daily Variety have been taken over by Universal and Imagine Entertainment’s Frost/Nixon, a serious Best Picture candidate. The question becomes whether or not this kind of advertising coup is fair to other films.

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.

The American Film Institute (AFI) responsible for those “100 Years, 100 _____” lists that get people riled up every year have come out with their list of 2008′s top films.

Are you an awards season junkie? Do you love to be able to sit there and look smart in front of your friends and family, most of whom only make it out to the movies once a year to see the latest Jim Carrey comedy, by being able to talk endlessly about all of the “important” movies of the year? If so, consider this your awards season to-do list.Fr

Directed by a Brit (Danny Boyle), based on a book by a former Indian diplomat and delivered with generous helpings of Bollywood flash and old-fashioned Hollywood-style romantic melodrama, Slumdog Millionaire is one of this year’s movies that will make you believe in the hype, among other things.

Kevin Carr looks at The Day the Earth Stood Still, Nothing Like the Holidays, Slumdog Millionaire and Wendy and Lucy, in theaters this week with the FSR Report Card.

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.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced their nominees for the 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards today, laying out what is generally regarded as a relatively accurate precursor to the Academy Awards nominations.

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.

Yesterday the Los Angeles Film Critics Association announced their 2008 awards, recognizing Pixar’s WALL-E as best picture.