If We Had an Oscar Ballot 2016

If We Had an Oscar Ballot 2016

What follows is a hypothetical scenario in which we are Academy voters who commit the ultimate sin of showing you our completed ballots. Never mind that ballots were due several days ago - we're professional procrastinators.

Note: Like many Oscar voters, we could go through the motions of voting in all 24 races, but, for the sake of honesty (and what we hope the real voters practice), we'll abstain from the categories where we have yet to see all the nominees. So no Animated Feature (though we'd cast one vote each for Moana and Zootopia of those we've seen), Foreign Film, Documentary Short, or Documentary Feature (we braved the 7+ hours of O.J.: Made in America, but still have two nominees to see for completion's sake). Oh, and no Makeup & Hairstyling either because we can't be bothered to watch Suicide Squad. But enough about what we didn't see - here's who and what we're rooting for Sunday night!

Read More

The 3rd Annual CineMunchies: Honoring the Best of 2016 in Cinema

The 3rd Annual CineMunchies: Honoring the Best of 2016 in Cinema

With the end of the year fast approaching (the film year doesn't end until the Oscars this Sunday, duh), it's high time to award the CineMunchies! We discussed our top ten films of 2016 in last week's CineDrunk, and now we're bestowing honors for the best food moments in film, the best feline performance, and more!

For our Best Picture and acting awards, we attributed points based on our personal rankings, and those with the most points became our honorees. For other categories, we used a combination of secret ballot, tea leaves, and martini-fueled caucusing.

Cheers to another year of cinematic superlatives!

Read More

CineDrunk: Best of 2016 - Top Ten Lists

Priorities. Choices. Top Tens. We'll follow Viola's lead and just get to it.

viola-champagne

Click below for the auditory feast, or listen and subscribe to CineDrunk via iTunes.

2016 Oscar Nominations Reactions

2016 Oscar Nominations Reactions

The nominations for the 89th Annual Academy Awards have landed, and La La Land danced away with 14 nominations - tying the record for the most nominated film in Oscar history with All About Eve (1950) and Titanic (1997). Not so close behind were Arrival and Moonlight, with eight nominations each. Though there may not have been as many shocking snubs or surprises as in year's past, Oscar still had some curveballs to throw (No Amy Adams?! Hey, Michael Shannon! Mel Gibson - really?).

Have a listen to our initial thoughts on this morning's announcement below, and don't forget to subscribe to our CineDrunk podcast on iTunes. Read on for a list of the nominations and predictions results.

Read More

Final 2016 Oscar Nominations Predictions

Final 2016 Oscar Nominations Predictions

The day we've all been waiting for has arrived!

November 3, 2020!?

Sadly, no. The Oscar nominations will have to do for now. The 89th Annual Academy Awards nominations will be announced Tuesday morning at 8:18am ET (you can view a live stream of the announcement via the Oscars website). On hand to reveal the nominees in all 24 categories: actors Jennifer Hudson, Brie Larson, and Ken Watanabe, writer/director Jason Reitman, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezski, and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs.

2016 certainly had its ups and plentiful downs, but it was a pretty decent year for film (if you knew where to look). I expect this year's Oscar nominations to mostly reflect that quality (though full disclosure, we here at CineMunch think awards behemoth and Oscar frontrunner La La Land was good, but wildly overrated). Our own personal top ten lists and choices for the best of the year will drop next month. In the meantime, let's guess what the Academy will deem the best of the best.

Read on for my final nominations predictions.

Read More

2017 Golden Globe Awards Predictions

2017 Golden Globe Awards Predictions

Contrary to what the calendar says, the holidays are not over. They've only just begun! Welcome to Awards Season 2016-2017, continuing this weekend with the Golden Globe Awards!

Hollywood's best and brightest (or in some cases just newest) stars of ALL the screens will gather Sunday night dressed in their second finest frocks for the second most important red carpet of the year. The awards will be handed out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, whose membership numbers fewer than 100, so their choices do make for the occasional head scratch, eyebrow raise, or spit take. Jimmy Fallon hosts and some lady named Meryl Streep will receive this year's Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award.

So grab a pitcher of your second favorite mixed drink, follow along with us on Twitter @CineMunch throughout the telecast (starting at 8pm ET on NBC), and read on for my foolhardy predictions!

Read More

2016 Fall Movie Preview: Most Anticipated Films

2016 Fall Movie Preview: Most Anticipated Films

It's October!

Keep your pumpkin spices and knitwear, give us great cinema for adults. Yes, these are exciting times. We're looking to add to our favorites of the first half of 2016, make up for a mediocre summer season, and crown new frontrunners in the all-important Oscar race. Below you'll find the twenty films we're most anticipating between now and the end of the year. Clicking on a film's title will take you to the trailer. To see what we were looking forward to last year or the year before (as a basis for our judgment), click here or here.

Now bring us prestige or bring us death.

Read More

2016 Emmy Awards Predictions

2016 Emmy Awards Predictions

The 68th Annual Emmy Awards will bestow show shiny trophies upon the best in television from the 2015-2016 TV season on Sunday, September 18th. Oh, the Emmys. They either award the same shows and performers year after year or the winners list is full of several WTFs, though that's never consistent from year to year (or even within the same year), so they can be difficult to predict. This will likely be a year full of sweeps: "Game of Thrones", "Veep", and especially "The People v O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story" are expected to clean up in their respective fields.

And victories for those programs would be more than fine with us! Our latest podcast detailed all our favorite things from the past year in TV, many of which are nominated this year. Below you'll find Matt's predictions in all televised categories, in the presumed order they will be announced. Jimmy Kimmel hosts this year's show, which will air on ABC beginning at 8pm ET. Be sure to mix some drinks and follow along with our commentary on Twitter @CineMunch.

Read More