Columbia; DreamWorksYou wouldn't know it by Tuesday's Critics' Choice Awards nominations, but Skyfall, which wasn't nominated for Best Picture, was more highly rated by the broadcasting group that votes for the awards than some of the films that were nominated for Best Picture, including Lincoln, which led all contenders with 13 overall nods.
So yes, once again it's official: Some movies are Oscar movies, and some movies, no matter how good, just aren't.
Other things we learned—again—about awards season:
1. The Dark Knight Rises Is Also Not an Oscar Movie: And so Critics' Choice voters, who seem to try very hard to come up with the most Oscar-y nominations possible, excluded the AFI honoree and included The Master, which, granted, many people admire. Although again, on the Broadcast Film Critics Association's own site, the Batman movie was scored higher than the Paul Thomas Anderson movie.
2. And It Goes Without Saying The Avengers Is Not an Oscar Movie Either: And that's apparently why the broadcast critics devised the Action Movie category, where the critically acclaimed film picked up two of its three nominations (and where The Dark Knight Rises picked up three of its four, and…)
3. Skyfall Is the Real Deal…in Cinematography: Though the James Bond blockbuster is not being taken seriously as a Best Picture candidate, it is getting serious buzz for its look and earned a nod Tuesday for Roger Deakins. The film is also the real deal in Original Song for Adele's Shirley Bassey-channeling title tune, likewise nominated for a Critics' Choice Award. And props to the broadcast critics for taking the performances of Javier Bardem and Judi Dench seriously. Though the odds are long those stars will compete at the Oscars, they were nominated in the supporting categories today.
4. Argo, Les Misérables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook and Zero Dark Thirty Are Your Best Picture Front-Runners: They won AFI honors Monday; they earned Best Picture and Best Director nominations Tuesday.
5. Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, The Master and Moonrise Kingdom Are Your Fill-Out-the-Best-Picture-Category Fodder: They won AFI honors Monday (save for The Master); they earned Best Picture nominations Tuesday without corresponding Best Director nods.
6. The Hobbit Just Isn't Going to Be a (Big) Factor: Left off the all-important or at least pretty-important AFI list Monday, the Peter Jackson epic rebounded and picked up four nominations Tuesday, which is great, except for the fact that it didn't pick up any nominations in the glamour categories.
7. It's Never Too Early to Snub Leonardo DiCaprio: See how easy it was to not nominate him for Django Unchained? The broadcast critics were in true Academy-member form there.