Nominees for the 21st Annual Critics’ Choice Awards, selected by the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA) and Broadcast Television Journalists Association (BTJA), were announced yesterday with the understanding that they wouldn’t be posted until today at 7 am. 13 nominations for Mad Max: Fury Road, nine nominations each for The Revenant, Carol and The Martian, eight for Spotlight, seven for The Big Short, six for The Hateful Eight, etc. The org blew off Beasts of No Nation — not cool. But otherwise they pretty much stuck to the same preferences that critics elsewhere have agreed upon.

BEST PICTURE: The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Carol, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Room, Sicario, Spotlight. HE comment: They’re spreading the peanut butter around. Spotlight takes it.

BEST DIRECTOR: Todd Haynes, Carol; Alejandro González Inarritu, The Revenant; Tom McCarthy, Spotlight; George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road; Ridley Scott, The Martian; Steven Spielberg, Bridge of Spies. HE comment: Spielberg?

BEST ACTOR: Bryan Cranston, Trumbo; Matt Damon, The Martian; Johnny Depp, Black Mass; Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant; Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs; Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl. HE comment: Redmayne? Leo wins.

BEST ACTRESS: Cate Blanchett, Carol; Brie Larson, Room; Jennifer Lawrence, Joy; Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years; Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn; Charlize Theron, Mad Max: Fury Road. HE comment: I’m thinking it might be Ronan.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Paul Dano, Love & Mercy; Tom Hardy, The Revenant; Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight; Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies; Michael Shannon, 99 Homes; Sylvester Stallone, Creed. HE comment: Dano, for God’s sake.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight; Rooney Mara, Carol; Rachel McAdams, Spotlight; Helen Mirren, Trumbo; Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl; Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs.  HE comment:  Jane Fonda’s Youth performance is a far more deserving contender than Helen Mirren’s Trumbo turn as Hedda Hopper and WAY more compelling than Jennifer Jason Leigh’s in The Hateful Eight, no offense.

I’m sorry but today’s Oscar Poker session felt a little curious to me. A portion of it, I mean. It seemed to me as if Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone and Awards Watch‘s Erik Anderson were teaming up and not giving my views their appropriate due. I’ve been at this racket for longer than either of them, and they made me feel like they were the knowledgable middle-class parents who like to pour milk over everything and say “on the other hand” a lot, and I was the 16 year-old malcontent whose views they “listen” to out of tolerance or something. It pissed me off and I said as much. But then we got past that. Again, the mp3.

As of today Love & Mercy‘s Paul Dano has been named Best Actor by the San Francisco Film Critics, the Gotham Film Awards, the Boston Society of Film Critics and the New York Online Film Critics, and has been nominated for Best Actor by the Indiana Film Journalists. He’s also been nominated for Best Supporting Actor by the Spirit Awards, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the Detroit Film Critics Society, the Satellite Awards, the San Diego Film Critics Society, the St. Louis Film Critics Association, the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association and a major critics group I can’t name until tomorrow (i.e., Monday).

Every December-January I scan the brightest prospects for the coming year…and then fall into a vague depression when I realize how many cheesy-sounding popcorn films are in the pipeline. I know this impression won’t last and that things will gradually brighten, but right now ’16 looks “entertaining” as far as it goes but not with an abundance of meaty, high-falutin’, critical-heart-flutter flicks outside of Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Hail Caesar! and Martin Scorsese‘s Silence and…well, those two anyway. I need to see more films made for guys like me because right now things seem a little light on that end.

Please consult Wikipedia’s 2016 film roster + my recent Sundance ’16 preference list and tell me if you’re feeling any excitement outside the aforementioned pair plus the following: Warren Beatty‘s still-untitled Howard Hughes film, Oliver Stone‘s Snowden, Jeff Nichols‘ Midnight Special, Robert Eggers‘ The Witch, Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups, Zack Snyder‘s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Paul Greengrass‘s untitled fifth Bourne film w/ Matt Damon, Ariel Vroman‘s Criminal, Richard Linklater‘s Everybody Wants Some, Antoine Fuqua‘s The Magnificent Seven, Peter Berg‘s Deepwater Horizon, Ed Zwick‘s Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, Justin Kurzel‘s Assassin’s Creed and Morten Tyldum‘s Passengers.

“My most profound Police moment happened on the evening of December 8, 1980, in a small pub in the Stockwell section of London. Never a hardcore audiophile and even less so due to being poor, I was a little late in getting into their music. I had just bought a cassette tape of Zenyatta Mondatta maybe a month or so earlier but I hadn’t listened to it that much. I was edging my way in. Anyway there I was in London to do an interview with Peter O’Toole (hot at the moment off his career-reviving performance in The Stunt Man) for GQ. I was crashing with a couple of ladies I knew through a journalist friend, and I was sitting at a table and drinking a pint and feeling great about being in England for the first time alone, and then somebody got up and played ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’ on the jukebox. And all of a sudden I heard that song for the first time. The juke was putting out super-thrompy bass tones and it just sounded perfect, and from that moment on I was a Police fan. The next morning I awoke around 7 am to news on the radio that John Lennon had been shot and killed only a few hours earlier in New York City.” — posted on 2.27.15.

A Bluray of the restored Triumph of the Will (Synapse Films, 12.15) arrived yesterday. As expected, it’s the cleanest and sharpest rendering of this depraved but masterful propaganda classic ever. Supervised by restoration guru Robert Harris, the effort took two years. It’s derived from a new 2K scan, involved over 100,000 frames that were hand-cleaned and a fair amount of digital de-graining. But something grabs your attention even before watching the disc, and that’s the decision to abandon the traditional blue-trim packaging (routine on just about every Bluray the world over) in favor of funereal black. Harris says he insisted on the black trim, and that the Synapse guys, who had submitted a traditional blue-trim jacket to online sellers like Amazon a few weeks ago, agreed without issue. We all understand the metaphor.

Black plastic jacket for Synapse Films’ Triumph of the Will Bluray (12.15).

Synapse packaging as it appeared on Amazon last month

From a 10.29.15 riff: “The usual mixed feelings apply. Even when a film delivers repellent content true cineastes are able to recognize highly effective and even mesmerizing chops when they see them. I once bickered with Manohla Dargis along these general lines a dozen years ago. She was saying Triumph of the Will was and is reprehensible and I was saying, ‘Yeah, of course, no dispute…but you can’t say Riefenstahl didn’t have a great eye and a commanding visual style.’

I find this 1963 footage of JFK rehearsing remarks about the preservation of the oceans fascinating. The healthy complexion with the light brown hair. The nice cut of the bluish-gray suit. The contained, guarded vibe. A brief look of gruff vanity as he yanks his jacket sleeves toward his shirt cuffs. The first attempt followed by “All right, let’s start again” and then a realization that using “source” and “resource” in the same sentence wouldn’t work.

Monday evening’s 6:30 pm premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which has already involved shutting down Hollywood Blvd, from La Brea to Highland Avenue and the construction of a huge, block-long tent for a post-premiere reception, will allegedly take place at the Chinese, the Dolby (home of the Oscar telecast) and the El Capitan simultaneously. The detailed invite with a parking pass arrived in my inbox late yesterday, but it didn’t say which theatre I’ll be seeing the film in. For whatever reason Disney publicists have decided there’s a strategic advantage to keeping that information under wraps until guests begin arriving at 5 pm. I’ve decided to park three or four blocks away (the Highland garage will be a complete zoo) and hump it over. I’m also going to get there at 4:30 pm.

For me Christmas means taking time to visit family and friends and…you know, strolling around Manhattan and Crown Heights in nippy weather and the fun of wearing scarves and gloves and overcoats and sipping hot chocolate in cafes while snow flurries fall. It means not buying a tree or decorating it or any of that jazz, but definitely watching my Bluray of the 1951 Alistair Sim version of A Christmas Carol and attending a New York Oratorio performance of Handel’s “Messiah” at Carnegie Hall. And roaming around lower Broadway (West 4th to Canal) and poking around stores and whatnot. And that’s about it. A nice two-week detour (starting with my flight to NYC on 12.17) before it all starts again with the Golden Globes on 1.10.16, and followed by the 2016 Sundance Film Festival (1.21 through 1.31).