We're more than halfway through the year, so we should have seen more than half of the nominees in all of this year's Academy Award categories, right? God I hope not. Of course, we all know that most of Oscar's favorite children are released in the final quarter of the year, but there are usually a few nominees found in films released before August 1st. Notable nominees that were out by now in previous years included The Hurt Locker, Up, Frozen River, The Visitor, The Dark Knight, La vie en Rose, Away From Her, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. What could those nominees be from this year? What's the state of the race today? Let's take a look at a few of the major categories as they stand right now.

There's a chance that we've already seen all of the nominees in this category, something we won't be able to say again in this entire feature. We have undeniably seen two of the likely three (last year there were five but I don't think we can expect that to happen again) in How to Train Your Dragon and Toy Story 3. They're IN. So, what's the third film? It could be Despicable Me if the Academy wants to spread the wealth to Universal. The film was well-liked enough and a hit with audiences. I think the highly-buzzed The Illusionist from the director of the nominated Triplets of Belleville will take that final spot but if Sony Pictures Classics bungles that campaign then Gru could finally get the respect he deserves and we will have the rare category that was filled by nominees with release dates prior to 8/1.

Last year it was The Hurt Locker vs. Avatar in both of these categories. So which films so far this year have a similar buzz? Inception certainly has the scope and

Something about this Oscar season has officially turned me off the Academy Awards. It's not that the Oscars were ever all that important but does anyone remember when they used to be more fun? With all the drama about inappropriate emails and campaign violations, something about this year has just left me feeling dirty and uninspired by the whole event. The acting categories are remarkably predictable, as are

What do Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, Paul Newman in The Color of Money, or even Kate Winslet in The Reader have in common? They all won Oscars for performances that very few people would call their absolute best. They could probably be called "career achievement" Oscars or merely “overdue” but it seems like the Academy has been making up

Magnolia Pictures and Shorts International continue their wonderful annual tradition of taking the ten films nominated for the Oscar for Short Film: Live Action & Animation and presenting them in a pair of theatrical releases (visit the program’s website here: http://www.shortshd.com/theoscarshorts/). The lineup is about to open at the Landmark Century in Chicago along with theaters in New York and Los Angeles and will be expanding

While everyone else is still arguing over whether The Hurt Locker, Avatar, Up in the Air, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, or some other choice is the best film of 2009, we're looking forward to what we expect to be talking about in eleven to twelve months – what are the best movies of 2010? We can't guarantee you what's going to be the

The 82nd annual Academy Award nominations were announced earlier today (see the clip below for the announcement), and, per usual, there's a couple things that might make you shake your head in disbelief. The thing everyone will be talking about is the expansion of the Best Picture category to 10 films. (See our piece on What if the 10 Nominee Rule Had Been Adopted Back in 2000?

The 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards have been awarded and it was James Cameron and Avatar pulling the big upset and taking home the trophies over the heavily favored The Hurt Locker and director Kathryn Bigelow. In our opinion, Ricky Gervais did a pretty good job as host this year (though we’d watch anything he was involved in, heck

The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow’s incendiary action drama following the lives of the members of a bomb disposal unit stationed in Iraq, was the big winner with the Chicago Film Critics Association in their voting for their 2009 awards. The film swept all five awards that it was nominated for, taking home prizes for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original

After going through the best supporting turns of the year earlier this week (check out that feature by clicking here) and dealing with the onslaught of awards and nominations this week including the Golden Globes and Chicago Film Critics Association (a group of which this critic is a proud board member), we thought we'd take a look at the names above the title that really stood out

A wry comedy-drama about a man who makes his living firing people and an adaptation of a classic piece of children’s literature were the big winners when the Chicago Film Critics Association announced their list of nominees for their 2009 awards earlier this week.

Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air and Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are each