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The results are in for the ninth annual Calvin Awards and the results are a bit more scattershot than usual. The explanation for this is simple. Several films garnered strong support this year including Inglourious Basterds, The Hurt Locker, Up and Up in the Air. Perhaps surprisingly, there wasn't a lot of passion for Avatar, which receives several nominations but doesn't win anything.

The possible explanation for this is that unlike the past two years of less than satisfactory cinema, 2009 saw a significant number of quality films released. Even the blockbusters were generally tremendous save for one notable exception that will take a beating in the Worst categories. Seriously, it gets hammered. Other than that, this was the rare year where we found ourselves wishing we could nominate more films rather than scrambling to find ten worthy choices in each category.

As was the case last year, our voting in all of the categories was up and the passionate debate we had in determining our selections reflects the overall excellence in most categories. BOP hates to be cynical about cinema; ergo, we love these years wherein we have more films we want to praise than ones we look forward to mocking brutally. A lot of the titles listed in the Best Overlooked Picture category this year would have been strong contenders in the overall Best Picture category had they been released either of the last two years. We were that impressed by about 25 truly great films this year.

As was the case the past three years, we have 18 categories whose results will be revealed over the next five days. We begin today with Best Album, Best Videogame and Best TV Show. The schedule for the rest of the week will see Best Cast, Best Scene, Best DVD and Best Use of Music on Tuesday, Worst Performance, Worst Picture, Best Overlooked Film, and Best Breakthrough Performances on Wednesday, the four acting categories on Thursday, and Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture on Friday.

Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Album
Best Breakthrough Performance
Best Cast
Best Director
Best DVD
Best Overlooked Film
Best Picture
Best Scene
Best Screenplay
Best Supporting Actor
Best Supporting Actress
Best TV Show
Best Use of Music
Best Videogame
Worst Performance
Worst Picture

Individual Ballots:

Martin Felipe
Kim Hollis
Eric Hughes
Jason Lee
Tom Macy
David Mumpower
Josh Spiegel
Reagen Sulewski


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