Awards Heat Up and New Festival Season Opens

The 2007 - 2008 movie awards season is now officially in high gear. It will culminate with the Academy Awards® in February. The 2008 film festival season opens tomorrow.

Nominations for movie and television awards have been stepping on each other's toes since November as they compete for media attention. In the meantime, the film festival season has been moving to earlier dates each year like the political nominations. The 2007 festival season closed in December. In California, the Palm Springs International Film Festival kicks off the 2008 season tomorrow, 3 January 2008, followed by the Santa Barbara festival on 24 January.

In between Palm Springs and Cannes in May, there are major festivals, including Sundance, Berlin, Tribeca, and San Francisco. Also, some specialty festivals such as Miami, Hot Docs, South by Southwest (SXSW) and the San Diego Latino festival. I cover them all, and others, on my Film Festivals Page.

The awards galas begin in earnest this month. The oldest active film critics association (begun in 1936), the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) Awards will be presented at the Gala 6 January, in New York City, followed the next day by the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA) - (Critics Choice Awards) at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, CA (Broadcast live on VH1).

The awards are galloping toward their first international gala, the Golden Globes® scheduled for Sunday, 13 January, Beverly Hilton Hotel, Beverly Hills, broadcast live on NBC, 8:00 p.m., EST. Globes are sponsored by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA). Some say the Globes predict the Oscars®. Not so. They hint. The HFPA members tend to vote for the Hollywood star that is "hot" in looks and / or the gossip columns. The term used by some critics for the HFPA is "star wh _ _ _ s".

Notice that I wrote the Globes, "are scheduled". If you haven't heard, there's a big writer's strike hanging over the awards season this year, but the Oscar® nominations will be announced Tuesday, 22 January, at 5:30 a.m. PT, in the Academy of Motion Picture of Arts and Sciences' Samuel Goldwyn Theater. It remains to be seen if the AMPAS® presentation gala goes forth as planned on Sunday, 24 February. The latest word is that it will go, even if the show is missing some of the frills of recent years. That could be a good thing.

I'm doing my best to follow all this on my Awards Page 2008 and my Film Festivals Page 2008 (links on the right sidebar as well). You will find links for the 2007 pages on my 2008 pages in case you wish to refer back.

Please note that the Awards are listed in the alphabetical order of the organizations giving the awards. Film Festivals are listed in chronological order by date held. Again, I suggest you use your Browser's "Edit" button, scroll down to "Find in this document," click and type a key word such as GOYA or GLOBES, for awards; SUNDANCE or PALM SPRINGS for festivals, etc.

There are new posts as the momentum builds, so I suggest you visit often. You do want to be ready for that Globe and / or Oscar® contest, or your office pools don't you? Good luck!

Since you read this far, here's the skinny on the most-likely best motion picture of the year, which leads where various award nominations and winners have been announced so far: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.

Oscar nominations are 22 January. If NO COUNTRY is not on the Academy Awards best picture nominations list, I'll eat this blog.