The BFCA will announce their nominees on Tuesday morning. Last year, No Country won, of course. So did Daniel Day-Lewis. Julie Christie won in the Actress category and Javier Bardem won supporting actor. Amy Ryan won supporting actress. The year before, the major awards matched up except for supporting actor. The AMPAS gave their award to Alan Arkin for Little Miss Sunshine over Eddie Murphy for Dreamgirls. The rest of the winners were basically the same. In fact, the BFCA was one of the few organizations to give their Best Pic prize to The Departed. And it won by a huge landslide apparently, which was one of the reasons we knew The Departed was winning.
Who are they exactly? They’re a very large group of anyone, basically, who writes reviews online and pays their way in. David Poland and Kris Tapley are BFCA members for instance. It’s not exactly exclusive. Somehow they’ve avoided the diss talk that the NBR and the HFPA have incurred even though there are plenty of folks in the BFCA who aren’t actual critics. That they are such a large group helps to determine the popular vote, however, which proves useful on occasion with Oscar predicting.
What to expect on Tuesday from the BFCA? On their website they list their highest rated films. That would put the Best Pic contenders this way (since the films haven’t opened, not as many members have seen them – expect the rankings to change over the coming weeks):
Dark Knight 96
Milk 92
Frost/Nixon 92
Slumdog Millionaire 92
Benjamin Button 89
The Reader 88
Doubt 85
The Wrestler 83
Revolutionary Road 78
Defiance 78
Probably Milk and Frost/Nixon are going to lead the pack. Slumdog with less actor nominations probably will be a strong contender, maybe the frontrunner, but I’ve got my money on Milk to really do well with this group. Last year, though, Into the Wild led the nominations and was shut out.
One other thing to remember about them is that everyone turns out for their show. It’s a great place to get noticed if you’re vying for an Oscar, which explains why it attracts more and more of the A List. The BFCA wants to obliterate the HFPA and become THE precurser to beat all others. But I find that they are reliable until they aren’t, just like very other precurser. The DGA still rules.
