With the Independent Spirit Awards announcing their nominees last week, the Gotham Awards awarding their winners a few days ago, and now announcements from The National Board of Review and The New York Film Critics Circle, things are starting to fall in place... well sort of.
To be fair, these precursors do not decide the Oscars. If you remember back in 2010 when "The Social Network" won every critics award for Best Picture there was, and then went on to lose the Producer's Guild, SAG Ensemble Award and the Oscar, that fact is all too clear in your mind. But again, why these awards are important is because they show what films have heat and what films don't. They can sometimes translate into Oscar success ("The Artist" in 2011, for example) but in a mixed bag of a year like this one, where there is no clear consensus, it's a total toss up.
So, let's examine the first round of winners, shall we?
