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Some people do care about it, including the people who make up the Broadcast Film Critics Association, who announced their awards on VH1 last Friday night, in what was called the Critics' Choice Awards. The big winner was diversity. Though the film that took home the Best Picture award, The Hurt Locker, also took home the award for Best Director, there was a lot of love thrown around at the year in film. Movies as diverse as The Blind Side, Avatar, Julie & Julia, Inglourious Basterds, and Up in the Air all took home some of the Critics' Choice Awards. The two awards we can get past right now are the ones that seem like foregone conclusions more than anything else: Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress. The winners here, as they were at the Golden Globes, were Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds, and Mo'Nique for Precious.

There's really no analysis for those two; Waltz and Mo'Nique should just prepare their eloquent acceptance speeches, because they are as close to locks to win as anything gets. I know, you're probably thinking I should just call them locks and get it over with, but I am, as always, very hesitant to ever claim something's a lock unless it's something like the sun setting in the west. What can I say? I'm not a gambler. Anyway, as mentioned, the winner for Best Picture and Best Director was The Hurt Locker, one of the three frontrunners for the Best Picture Oscar. What does this mean? Well, it means that one movie is starting to slow down quite a bit. Unfortunately, that movie is Up in the Air. Though the movie is still more of a frontrunner than, say, Precious, by not winning any major awards at either the Golden Globes or the Critics' Choice Awards, it's showing signs of peaking at the wrong moment.

That said, Up in the Air did win the same award at both ceremonies, for its screenplay, written by director Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner. Still, by missing out for George Clooney and the actual film, Paramount may be wondering yet again if it made the right move by leaving Shutter Island to waste away in the middle of February 2010. Clooney did lose Best Actor in both ceremonies to the same man: Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart. Bridges is proving that this could be the year he finally wins a gold statuette named Oscar. Like last year's push for Mickey Rourke, the push for Bridges is pretty similar: from Fox Searchlight comes a movie about a man who used to be famous, damaged himself up after leaving the spotlight, but wants to make a comeback. One is about wrestling, the other about country music. Bridges' advantage here is that there's no major and socially conscious performance from another potential nominee. It's looking more and more likely that he's going to ride this thunder to Oscar gold.

Finally, the other notable win here is in Best Actress, which went to a tie. Yes, there was a tie here, between Meryl Streep for Julie & Julia and Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side. And, yes, folks, those are the same two winners from the Golden Globes ceremonies. Even though some people may be surprised that the Best Actress Oscar category is going to come down to Julia Child and an outspoken Southern woman helping out a hefty teenager, there it is. Carey Mulligan for An Education, and Gaboury Sidibe for Precious will likely get nominated, along with, probably, Helen Mirren for The Last Station, but they're all just going to watch and hope that some fluke happens and they sneak in to steal the victory.

For Streep, it's, once again, a case of doing the right role and the right time. For Bullock, it's also about doing the right projects at the right time. Just think of what could've happened had All About Steve come out after The Blind Side, not before. Both of these actresses are past 40, and both are having banner years, with critical and commercial success. If I were a betting man - though we've already established that I'm not - I would still say that this trophy is Streep's to lose, but Bullock is having an undeniably strong showing in the last month or so. The Blind Side has been ridiculously successful, having snuck under the radar despite making over 200 million dollars. The film is liked well enough, and Bullock's time seems to have come. People like me - meaning, people who don't think Bullock's that charming - will just have to shrug and wonder what's wrong with the rest of you.

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