The 2007 OFCS Nominees

The OFCS? What the heck is that? Why should I care about what they say? The Online Film Critics Society? So, like, all the rabid commenters from Amazon, Moviefone, and the IMDb get together and pick their favorite movies? Is that how it works? Well, no. And I can poke a little fun because I've been a proud member of the OFCS for the better part of a decade now. But according to our by-laws and various press releases, "Founded in 1997, the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) is the professional association for film journalists, scholars and historians who publish their reviews, interviews and essays exclusively or primarily in the online media. The mission of the society is to further the growth of an informed film audience through the online media and to promote awareness of the Internet as a viable media alternative."

So who's in the OFCS you might know? Lots of great writers like James Berardinelli, Ed Gonzalez, MaryAnn Johanson, Christopher Null, Nick Schager, Eric D. Snider, and a whole bunch more. (Note to link-clickers: Aside from the fact that they host our website and message boards, the OFCS is not really affiliated with the awesome Rotten Tomatoes.) Plus we're planning to add a bunch of great new critics within the next several months.

Anyway, one of the things that we (as a large group of hardcore movie nerds) like to do is combine our opinions and come up with our own year-end nominations and winners and such. Just like all the other movie sites and critics groups do, only hopefully with a noted degree of good taste. Here's how we vote: ALL our members get a ballot with 5 empty spots for each category. They fill in the spots as they see fit, and then we use our tabulation methods to get the nominees. Then we vote again for the winners. So aside from a small amount of message board "lobbying," it's really a wide-open voting process -- which means we're very bad at predicting the Oscar winners, but we're very good at knowing what movies we, as professional movie critics and passionate cinema junkies, like the best.

Enough blather. Here are our nominees for 2007.




I think we did a pretty bang-up job, although I desperately wanted either Helena Bonham Carter (Sweeney Todd) or Belen Rueda (The Orphanage) to get one of our Best Actress slots. Oh well. I'll be sure to stop back next week to share the winners.