Head on over to see the nominees.

Not many surprises — at least in the categories I’ve had time to go over. Although, if you follow me or the MovieByte account on Twitter you probably saw me and Fizz talking about how The LEGO Movie was snubbed for a nomination in the Best Animated Feature Film category. You may remember from my commentary on the Golden Globes that I thougth Big Hero 6 was the best of the year, but I think The LEGO Movie should have at least been nominated. Why the snub?

I still think The Imitation Game is probably the best picture of 2014. Of course I had not seen the film…

Get ready for the most cinematic event on TV, that’s not even “on TV” (if you think TV is the broadcast stuff). Season 3 of House of Cards is only a little over one month away. The new season will debut on February 27, and if the first two seasons are any indication, all of season 3 will be available for streaming in it’s entirety on that day, causing hundreds of thousands of viewers around the U.S. to lose all of their sleep that night binge watching.

The line between TV and cinema has been, in some quarters, becoming blurred. Yes, there’s plenty of TV out there that is not cinematic in the…

Directing Star Wars VII is apparently a terrifying proposition, but one that is overcome by just what an amazing opportunity it is to direct such a film. There’s not much here — J.J. is tight lipped as always — but, it’s Star Wars, you know? And therefore we have to scrutinize every little nugget.

Man I love this stuff. I wish we did more practical effects work in today’s films. Can you imagine how good stuff would work with real models and today’s digial compositing technology? Call me a softie for some of the old technologies, but I really think sometimes the old model work looks better.

On the other hand, hearing them talk about how long and how much work some of these shots took is pretty amazing too and you can’t blame filmmakers to some extent for embracing the digital revolution.

It was obvious to me in the theater that love and attention to detail went into every single frame of The LEGO Movie. As if to prove that point, Warner Bros. has just released this 4 minute promo/interview with the pair (and some others) talking about how they made The LEGO Movie look real. I really love that they did all the CGI based on all real LEGO bricks. They put every brick into their virtual inventory and so every single thing you ever see on screen is from “real” LEGO bricks. That is pretty amazing to me. It was a bold stylistic choice and one that paid off so well. And the level of…

We lose great actors every year because time marches on, people get old, accidents happen, tragedies are unavoidable. Some years we lose better actors than others. This tribute video highlights the actors we lost this past year. While I think it was an unfotunate mistake to play that sappy music throughout the entire tribute, even when music from the hightlighted video clashes, the video does serve to remind us of those actors that we lost.

I’m a little late running this now that it’s after Christmas — I had a lot of traveling and crazy scheduling, cut me some slack people! — but I enjoyed it and figured it’s still worth running. I re-watched Home Alone a few days ago so everything was fresh on my mind for this video, so that made it fun as well.

More promising evidence that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is relying heavily on practical sets rather than CGI: In an interview with Yahoo News, actor Oscar Isaac said there weren’t a lot of green screens backdrops around while shooting the eagerly awaited film.

“There was a lot of practical effects,” said the Inside Llewyn Davis actor, who is forbidden from discussing his specific role. “A lot of the stuff they actually made. There wasn’t a lot of green screen.”

Obviously there is an incredible amount of green screen and CGI in The Force Awakens compared to, say, Richard…

In my opinion, The Winter Soldier features some of the better visual effects and CGI we have seen. Why is this? Because during the film, you never once think about tihe effects or notice them — at least I did not. They never got in the way and they served the story.

This effects reel shows just how much CGI and work went into the film. Scenes I hadn’t fully thought of how much was involved. Whole shots composed of nothing but CGI and I never noticed. This is impressive, especially on the heels of The Hobbit series where I felt like the CGI was just a mess. It’s sad that it is too, because I…