I never got to see it at the Philadelphia Film Festival, so I'll have to catch up with it there.

What is this, Iñárritu's fifth Oscar in four years?

More like in three years! He won three in 2015, one last year and another one now.

Here's some video of Agnès Varda dancing on stage with Angelina Jolie to brighten your day.

Were it not for the unforgettable Best Picture kerfluffle, I would say that the tributes to Agnes Varda and her acceptance speech are better than anything that happened during the February telecast.

I'm also really hoping that she wins Best Documentary for Faces Places and gets a competitive Oscar as a companion to the honorary one.

Independent Spirit nominations

A few particularly surprising snubs, namely Three Billboards in Picture, Gerwig in Director, and Willem Dafoe in Supporting Actor.

The Post’s reviews are stellar, and it’s pretty much immediately became the frontrunner for BP with the only quibble being if the new membership might not like something so traditional.

I would imagine at this point giving Meryl Streep a nomination is just something the Academy does out of habit (Regardless of whether she deserves it.) It's amusing seeing her there every year or so because she quite often appears (At least in my mind) to want the other women to win.

The buzz on this since May is it's possibly her best-ever performance, and even for her it seems like even hip A24-loving young internet critics are falling over themselves to talk about how great she is which is not a common development. Three Billboards has hit a weird snag due to it being at the weird backlash part of its release cycle which might just be temporary, but the Post is getting a lot of attention for being about the whole Trump/News thing and the troubles of a woman in the workplace, which makes it an even more savvy play to pick up the slack of Frances McDormand's (the frontrunner pretty much since the Weinstein scandal started) narrative slowly slipping.

Three Billboards doesn't have the feel of an awards juggernaut the way that it seemed it was going to going in. I may not like the film very much, but the general vibe of it is not that of something that's going to have a lot of Oscar heat. Maybe it's all the hate crimes and midget jokes - it's a mystery.

However, I can absolutely see the good will for Lady Bird ultimately getting it Best Picture. People seem to really love it, from the general feeling I'm getting, and since Ronan will probably not win Best Actress they may want to reward it elsewhere.

Phantom Thread, of course, remains the great unknown here.

I think the buzz from that thread was about right - it won't win Best Picture, but it could get nominated, and in addition to Day Lewis, Krieps may be nominated. Ultimately, of the ten-or-so-films seriously circling BP nods (The Post, Dunkirk, Shape of Water, Call Me By Your Name, Lady Bird, Three Billboards, Get Out, Darkest Hour, Florida Project, Phantom Thread) the only ones I can't imagine building a cohesive "actually win best picture" campaign are Darkest Hour and Florida Project (and probably Phantom Thread, but we'll see exactly how the reviews come out vs the buzz from it starting screening). It's a little funny how Dunkirk's held on for so long as the "traditional, old-guard" pick - it's not a very traditional, old-guard movie, other than subject matter! Three Billboards really could build up a narrative around itself but I think it was a mistake to go wide when they did and it just wasn't the right time for it in the season.

I have this pet theory that this year's Oscars are the 2010 Oscars again. Two years ago, a huge snub in the nominations phase (Dark Knight then, general OscarsSoWhite now) led to outcry and rules changes, which resulted in the smallest movie to ever win Best Picture (Hurt Locker then, Moonlight now) winning. Now, people extrapolated from that that the Oscars are new and cool they'll finally reward a beloved auteur (Fincher then, Nolan now)with a hyper-accessible new work but instead they'll go with the most traditional of traditional choices (King's Speech then, Post now).

If Phantom Thread is nominated, and it's very well reviewed, I think there's absolutely a path to a win in a weak/watery year. If it's only to make amends for the mistakes of a decade ago. Agree with you on The Florida Project though, sadly - doesn't seem like it made much of an impact upon release despite it being maybe the best of the year in a lot of ways.

If I had to put all of my money on this right now, I would say that Lady Bird is your winner, but Phantom Thread or The Post wouldn't surprise me. Don't see it happening for Dunkirk, it's too obtuse and loud and hasn't had a ton of buzz carrying it through the year from when it was released.

National Board of Review:

- Best Film: The Post
- Best Director: Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
- Best Actress: Meryl Streep, The Post
- Best Actor: Tom Hanks, The Post
- Best Supporting Actress: Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird
- Best Supporting Actor: Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project
- Best Ensemble: Get Out
- Best Original Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread
- Best Adapted Screenplay: Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, The Disaster Artist

Top 10 (in alphabetical order):

Baby Driver
Call Me By Your Name
The Disaster Artist
Downsizing
Dunkirk
The Florida Project
Get Out
Lady Bird
Logan
Phantom Thread

And The Post has won Best Picture.

Both for these awards and, essentially, the other ones about four months down the road.

The last time a NBR Best Pic and an Oscars Best Pic have been aligned was in 2008 when Slumdog Millionaire won both. I'd hold my horses on using this as a harbinger of things to come.

It’s pretty weird they do a top 10 besides the Best Film award, though. The lesson here should be that Downsizing really could still be in the mix if general audiences respond to it better than the US critics (it got a much warmer reception at Venice).

Yeah, it's always so confusing that they call it that since it's really their #2-11 in no particular order.

Seeing some not so great things about Downsizing on the Twitter timeline today. Apparently the stuff we see in the trailer is quite good (the first 45 minutes of the film or so), but there's another 90 minutes that are overly ambitious and have received a very mixed-to-bad critical reception from some. I've also seen similar reactions to The Shape of Water from some critics, and it's conspicuously absent from NBR's list... anecdotally, the initial heat around that film seems to have substantially cooled and it may wind up to be too niche to get a lot of awards traction.

Nobody Knows Anything at this point--remember when the NBR gave out a slew of awards to A Most Violent Year? We'll have to see how the NYFCC and the NYFCO vote on Thursday.

Judging from general industry chatter online it sounds like The Shape of Water is probably still in play. I have heard absolutely no one talking about Downsizing in spite of the fact that Alexander Payne has a very good track record with the Academy.

At first blush, The Post looks about as dull as A Most Violent Year, they do have that in common

One more observation: I think The Big Sick is still going to be a bigger presence by the time Oscar nominations come out than any of us expect. Picture, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay, maybe even Actor and Supporting Actor nominations. People (meaning literally anyone I've ever talked to who's seen it outside of a film forum) love that movie.

Guess I'm not people. Also A Most Violent Year is great. Don't know what that craziness is about.

Are you someone I know outside of a film forum? Because that's where I'm talking to you right now...

No, maybe the broader film forum posters aren't people would have helped the joke land.