I don’t know if you are ready for this, but here is your second (count it), your second dose of Oscar Beat this week! If you are excited, the great. If you aren’t excited, then you should be.

Yesterday the National Board of Review handed out their year end awards, an event that is closely watched by Oscar predictors every year. The reason they are so closely spied by critics and industry insiders alike? Because it is one of the first major awards list of the year and it very often is a good gauge on the Oscar races. Some in the industry, including David Poland of The Hot Blog, say that the NBR Awards are relatively meaningless. Only time will tell whether NBR’s list will be relevant in late February, but that won’t stop me from dissecting it a bit.

First on the list (which can be found in its entirety here) is their award for Best Picture of the Year is Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima, which is yet to be released and has been ill screened thus far. It is also Clint’s last ditch effort to get into the Oscar race after Flags of Our Fathers (review) was a relative critical flop. Can you smell the politics at work? I can.

Some not so surprising victories were Martin Scorsese taking the nod for Best Director and Djimon Hounsou taking the Best Supporting Actor win. Scorsese, in my opinion, is doomed to get tons of recognition and then lose to Clint Eastwood on Oscar night. Hounsou, who was sensational in Blood Diamond (review), beat out plenty of great supporting performances from this year - Brad Pitt from Babel, Jack Nicholson from The Departed (review) and Eddie Murphy from Dreamgirls, a performance that so many are now talking about. My thoughts would be that Nicholson is the front runner throughout the rest of the season, hands down.

Another interesting observation that I made when looking at the Top 10 Best Films list put out by the NBR was not was did make the list, but what didn’t make the list. The Clive Owen rich, aggressively intriguing Children of Men, which will release very late in the year, was not there. The trailer looks amazing, the film screams worthy and the cast should hold up well. My wonder is why this film didn’t make the cut. It will be interesting to see if it makes up for it later in the season.

Speaking of the awards season, it is just heating up. Good reason for you to come back often for more Oscar Beat!