Makeup and Hairstylists Guild winners

The Makeup and Hairstylists Guild handed out hardware for the first time in 10 years last night, and two of this year's Oscar nominees came away with winning honours; Bad Grandpa and Dallas Buyers Club, the latter of which I'm predicting to triumph with the Academy.

Winners and brief opinions after the cut.

My Award nominations: Acting Ensemble

Oh boy, where to begin. So many of this year's best movies owe much to the work done by their casts; transcending the sum of all the individual performances to become something more holistically powerful than any one actor could ever be (Even though those individual performances were indeed great). Check out the five best Acting Ensembles of the year, as far as I'm concerned, after the cut.

One Category at a Time: Cinematography

There are just 22 business days left until the Oscars, and yet it still feels like they're an eternity away. Part of that may have to do with the fact that the Winter Olympics (the only arena in which my home country can even come close to claiming world-power status, so I'll be watching them intently) has pushed the awards ceremony, and consequently the voting period, back a week.

That's an awful long wait, during which an awful lot can happen to affect the race. Gravity stands as the frontrunner at this moment, but we may have plenty of reason to believe otherwise by the time Oscar night is upon us. Heck: we have plenty of reason to believe otherwise right now! But I'll get to that category in due course. Obviously, I tend to start these prediction columns with the categories that are easiest to call, and one of the easiest calls this year is Best Cinematography.

My Award nominations: Cinematography

I'm kicking off this year's award nominees with my favourite of all categories, Best Cinematography. There was a lot of great work to pick from this year, and inevitably I had to leave some excellent work off my final five (some that will probably be Oscar recognized anyway).

Check out my top five below, accompanied by my favourite shot from each.

Capsule reviews for the first day of winter

Up here in the icy GTA (which felt not unlike the glacial Arendelle of Frozen this past week) it's easy for me to forget that winter hasn't officially hit us until today. Perhaps that because I so closely associate winter with the Oscar season, which lasts much longer than a mere three months. For me, that means a glut of November/December prestige titles to catch up on; more than I can possibly write full reviews for. So here are some 1-2 sentence reactions to various films I've taken in so far. I may add more as I see them.

NBR names Spike Jonze's "Her" year's best

Another day, another precursor triumph for a film I won't get to see for ages. The National Board of Review named Spike Jonze's postmodern romance Her the Best Picture of 2013, with Jonze himself taking Best Director honours as well. Nebraska picked up a pair of acting honours for stars Bruce Dern and Will Forte (both of them arguable co-leads).

My favourite choices of the lot: Stories We Tell for Best Doc (but you already knew that), and Prisoners for Best Ensemble (it'll definitely be making my top five ensembles of the year).