"Mad Max" Leads the Critics Choice Award Nominations

Hot off of its impressive streak with the LA critics and the Golden Globes, "Mad Max" was nominated for an astounding 13 nominations. A film hasn't dominated the nominations this hard since "Black Swan" won 12 nominations back in 2010.

Other films with a strong showing were "Carol" and "The Martian" (9), while there was definitely some substantial support for "Room," "Spotlight" and "Bridge of Spies." Both Bryan Cranston and Helen Mirren nabbed nominations for "Tumbo," continuing off of their surprise success with both the SAGS and Globes last week. It would seem as if they're on track to repeat with Oscar, though I personally think the Academy will ultimately pass on them.

See the full list of nominations below. The award will air on January 17.

5 Favorite Golden Globe Nominations

As you may have heard, the annual Golden Globe nominations were announced yesterday, for better or worse depending on who you've been rooting for this awards season.

One thing I'll say, is that the Golden Globes are always the most exciting, bat crazy awards show. They've long eclipsed the Screen Actors Guild and Emmys in relevancy, and honestly, have some better choices than the Oscars in most cases. Last year they made history for nominating the incredible Ava DuVernay for Best Director, the first black woman ever nominated for the award. Oscar did not follow suit. In fact, if you look at their slate of nominees and winners last year, a lot of them are better than what Oscar ultimately picked.

This year's awards race is honestly all over the place, and while the Globes did a better job than SAG at forming a consensus, I still couldn't tell you what films have the edge at this point. But confusion aside, there are some really good nominations here, five of which really stood out to me.

Reacting To The Golden Globe Nominations

I've said it once and I'll say it again: It's a truly strange year. If you were to ask me which film had the edge after yesterday's SAG announcement and now the Globes, I still couldn't give you a confident guess.

"Trumbo" led yesterday's SAG nominations, the strangest occurrence I've ever seen. Today, "Carol" led the Golden Globe nominations, which is less strange, though still doesn't mean it's our frontrunner. The Globes have a long history with Harvey Weinstein, as every awards show does, so I don't know whether to chalk it up to the film's overall excellence or their affinity for Weinstein.

Similarly, "Brooklyn" a film I thought was universally beloved was not embraced as heavily here. "Room" on the other hand, showed some surprising strength, which could be good news for Brie Larson. Saoirse Ronan's surge in Best Actress critics' awards last week should not be overlooked, but if Larson starts winning, then look out.

Take a look at the full list of nominations below.

First Round of Industry & Critics' Awards: What Do They Tell Us?

It's that time of the year. After consistent guessing and predicting, we are finally starting to get a look at what films truly have the heat going into the Oscar race... at least for right now.

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?

Independent Spirit Award Nominations: "Carol," "Beasts of No Nation" and "Spotlight" Show Strength

The Independent Spirit Awards are hardly predictive of the Oscars; In many cases, they highlight the smaller films that get left out of the overall larger conversation. However, they're important to examine, because of how the high-profile films that do show up here.

So when a film like "Carol," one that is critically acclaimed but sort of an underdog when you look at people's Oscar predictions, leads the nomination count here, that's an important takeaway. It hardly means that the Golden Globes, critics and Oscars will follow the same path, but it shows where some of the heat and momentum is. For right now, at least.

Other leaders are the Netflix film, "Beasts of No Nation" and "Spotlight," while some presumed frontrunners fell a little flat. Take a look for yourself at the full list of nominations below.

"Carol" Is A Gorgeous, Quietly Intense Love Story

"Carol," is a lot of things. It's an adaptation of the brilliant Patricia Highsmith novel "The Price of Salt." It's masterpiece in the purest sense of the word; It's Todd Haynes most handsome, affecting work to date. It's a showcase for Cate Blanchett, and evidence that she is truly the best actress working today. How she manages to still surprise us all film after film is a thrilling mystery. More important than all of that, is that it is one of the greatest love stories ever committed to film.

Category Fraud Runs Amok Through Oscar Season

It seems that with each passing Oscar season, incidents of category fraud grow more common, and the conversation around it growing louder.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the  term, "category fraud" is when an actor or actress is campaigned for awards in the wrong category. It's usually done to avoid "internal competition", which is campaigning two performances from the same movie, or simply a case of the studio going with the less competitive category.

State of the Oscar Race

The Toronto Film Festival may be over, but awards season is just getting started. A bunch of potential Oscar players made a splash to the delight of critics and bloggers everywhere.

There were some notable surprises, but nothing that truly bombed; save for a few films, the big names more or less performed how they were expected to.

And then there were some films (the Rooney Mara/Cate Blanchett drama "Carol" for one) that decided to skip the festival altogether. That hardly matters; With Harvey Weinstein behind you, your film is assured some kind of nomination.

Here are a few of the biggest takeaways post-TIFF; Where do the current players stand?

What does Cannes mean for Oscar?

Rooney Mara won the festival's Best Actress award for her performance in "Carol", coming the second consecutive American actress to win after Julianne Moore last year. 

The Cannes Film Festival is the unofficial start to Oscar season; enough time has passed between the ceremony to begin murmuring about awards contenders, unlike Sundance which finds itself in the thick of awards season. However, success at Cannes rarely spells success with Oscar. Though there are those few that manage to maintain momentum throughout the year (Christoph Waltz from "Inglorious Basterds", Jean Dujardin and the team behind "The Artist") films that are favored by the Cannes jury don't align with Oscar's interests ("Blue is the Warmest Color, Kirsten Dunst in "Melancholia", etc).

However, this year's festival seems like it may be a little different; with so many films in competition, there are several that seem destined for Oscar glory, or at least a shot at it.

Let's take a look at some of the titles we could be seeing again come the end of the year.

Natalie Portman's Directorial Debut to Screen at 2015's Cannes Film Festival

This year's Cannes Film Festival is being headlined by some of the buzziest titles of the year. Not only will Oscar hopefuls "Carol" (Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Sarah Paulson), "Macbeth" (Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard), but Academy Award winner Natalie Portman makes her directorial debut with the Hebrew language biopic entitled "A Tale of Love and Darkness". Portman will also star in the film, but is eligible for the festival's prestigious Camera D'Or which is given to new directors.

It's Never too Early to Look Ahead

After playing a witch in last year's "Into the Woods", Meryl is looking to break her own record as a rock star mom in "Ricki and the Flash" 

Last year's Oscar season just barely ended, and it's already time to start looking ahead at the race that's already starting to form for this year. Though none of the actual contenders have actually premiered to the public yet (unless you count the gorgeous costumes from "Cinderella") there's a slew of buzzy titles with huge names that have people talking.

With nothing at the theaters really holding our attention at the moment, it's never too early to look ahead at what's to come.

Early Oscar Predictions

With this year's Cannes Film Festival finished, we have (un)officially began the 2014 Oscar season... which makes my brain hurt because it doesn't even seem like that long ago that I was watching Lupit Nyong'o and Jennifer Lawrence duke it out for Best Supporting Actress. But as it does every year, Oscar season seems to start just as it ends.