My Award Nominations: Best Actress

People are always moaning about this being a weak category. Every year it seems. I don't know about you, but I had a hard time deciding who to leave off this ballot. There are just as many worthy contenders missing the cut here as there are in the Best Actor race.

I'd love to shine my light on more of the under-recognized actresses of 2014, but these five (a handful of them already Oscar-nominated) were tops for me. Herewith, my Best Actress nominees:

My Award Nominations: Best Adapted Screenplay

No offense to any of the hardworking screenwriters who slaved away adapting some previous work into a movie that came out last year, but this category is just so... desolate. By far the weakest field I've seen since I started writing about this stuff. I looked up more Adapted Screenplay FYC posts on various Oscar blogs than ever before, because the Oscar frontrunners just weren't doing it for me.

I suppose that's a blessing in disguise, though, as it forced me hunt down some true gems that I probably would have missed otherwise. So for what they are, here are my five Best Adapted Screenplay nominees for 2014. Here's hoping 2015 has more to choose from.

Summer catch-up

Just reserving this space to comment on a few spring/summer flicks I never got around to writing up proper. It's not like I have anything better to do until the awards movies start creeping out of their fall festival hidey holes.