The Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA) will announce tomorrow morning their Critics Choice Awards nominations for 2017. As you all know already, the BFCA is “our people.” They are Film Twitter. They are Oscar Blogger Twitter. They are all that predict the awards, cover the awards, and shape the awards. There are also film critics mixed in. That makes their choices mostly in the safe zone of predicting. There are about 300 people in the BFCA. They are a mixed bag in terms of demographics, but they aren’t Academy voters. Critics are not industry, even if they do occasionally influence the industry. There is no question that lately it is getting harder and harder to tell Academy voters apart from the critics. The films recognized and championed by the two groups seem to cross over significantly.
The Critics Choice Awards have many, many categories, as you all know, with six names in each of the major categories. They rank their top three choices in all categories except Best Picture, where they get five slots.
We should expect the usual suspects for Best Picture, and for some reason there seems to be a good chance for The Disaster Artist to make a showing here, though not sure about Phantom Thread. I will go ahead and take a wild guess that The Post will lead the nominations, followed by Dunkirk and The Shape of Water.
Call Me By Your Name
The Disaster Artist
Dunkirk
The Florida Project
Get Out
Lady Bird
The Post
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Darkest Hour or I, Tonya or Mudbound
The last few stragglers are negotiable. I do hope that Darkest Hour gets in, but the critics seem to be unanimously giving it the cold shoulder — I do not know why.
For Best Actor, I would assume the lineup will be:
Timothee Chalamet, Call Me by Your Name
Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour
Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread
James Franco, The Disaster Artist
Jake Gyllenhaal, Stronger
Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out (just a hunch) or Denzel Washington, Roman Israel, Esq.
Best Actress
Sally Hawkins, Shape of Water
Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird
Meryl Streep, The Post
Frances McDormand, Three Billboards
Margot Robbie, I, Tonya
Jessica Chastain, Molly’s Game
Best Director
Jordan Peele, Get Out
Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
Steven Spielberg, The Post
Guillermo Del Toro, Shape of Water
Martin McDonagh, Three Billboards or Dee Rees, Mudbound
Sean Baker, The Florida Project or James Franco, The Disaster Artist
Supporting Actor
Willem Dafoe, Florida Project
Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards
Tracy Letts, Lady Bird
Armie Hammer, Call Me
Jason Mitchell, Mudbound
Michael Shannon, Shape of Water
Supporting Actress
Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird
Alison Janney, I, Tonya
Mary J. Blige, Mudbound
Octavia Spencer, Shape of Water
Tiffany Haddish, Girls Trip
Hong Chau, Downsizing
That’s about all I got, folks. We’ll be back here tomorrow AM with the actual nominees.
