The Ballots Are Coming! The Ballots Are Coming!

Ballots for the 82nd annual Oscars went out to the nearly 6,000 AMPAS members today. So anything happening right now is GOLD. What'll be on their mind when they open up those ballots in a day or three? How many screeners did they make it through over the holiday break or will they just vote for their friends and their friend's friends again? My predictions in all categories have been updated over the past week and I hope to investigate a couple of the fuzzy technical categories in more detail very soon.

The eligibility list is also available (a lot more films played in LA to qualify than I suspected here in NYC). Awards Daily points to a great reminder about the ballot math works. Though the accounting process is interesting I find it's best not to think about it too much. It's such a wormhole to another mentally loony dimension from which one may never return. The buzz is more reliable than these dizzying mathematical equations.

Here's the next juicy things on the awards calendar...

• Dec 31st Online Film Critics Society nominees (I expect Sam Rockwell in Moon gets his first Best Actor mention)
• Jan 3rd, National Society of Film Critics winners
  
• Jan 5th, Producers Guild nominees
• Jan 7th, Directors Guild nominees (this used to be very exciting since it was actually more telling about the future Best Picture lineup than it was the Director lineup. But with 10 nominees coming in Best Picture some of the magic will be over. I'm guessing we get: Bigelow, Cameron, Eastwood, Reitman and Tarantino)
  

what'chu waiting for?
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