Brad Pitt got to celebrate his 48th birthday with his family this weekend, in Las Vegas. That’s a thing for him, isn’t it? I feel like Brad and Angelina go to Vegas for his birthday often. One year, wasn’t it a boxing match? Anyway, for this year’s festivities, Brad didn’t get a date night with his girl, he got family-friendly entertainment by way of the Cirque Du Soleil. Yes, Brad, Angelina and the kids all went to see Michael Jackson The Immortal. We don’t have the blurry photos of the Jolie-Pitts in Vegas – you can see them here.

Brad Pitt’s birthday weekend was quite a “thriller”!

The Moneyball star, who turns 48 on Sunday, was joined by longtime love Angelina Jolie and their six children in Las Vegas Saturday night to experience the Michael Jackson The Immortal, the Cirque Du Soleil touring show.

“They had great seats, sitting right beside the stage,” a source said. “They really seemed to enjoy the show. The performers didn’t know they were there and a few of them recognized them while they were on stage, so it was pretty exciting.”

After giving a standing ovation, Pitt, donning round glasses, Jolie, wearing a light grey dress, and the children left just as the cast gave final bows. The family spent the night at the lavish Four Seasons.

[From People]

What’s with Brad the glasses? I’ve seen him in reading glasses before, but it seems like in the past month or so, Brad has been wearing proper glasses full-time. Now, I like a man in glasses, but Brad makes it seem like he’s the “dorky-hot guy in high school that you don’t realize is going to be good-looking and then he takes off his glasses.” Or is that just with chicks? Whatever. Us Weekly’s source (inside the Cirque Du Soleil?) said that the “artists were pleasantly surprised by this unannounced visit.”

Anyway, happy 48th birthday to Brad – his official birthday was yesterday, and throughout last week, Brad received some early birthday presents in the form of major Best Actor nominations for Moneyball. He’s been nominated for a Golden Globe, a SAG, a Critics Choice, and I feel comfortable saying that he’s one the shoo-ins for an Oscar nomination. I’m very happy that this awards season will be full of Brangelina.

Photos courtesy of WENN & Pacific Coast News.

As we previewed yesterday, Angelina Jolie will appear in a pre-taped interview with Anderson Cooper for his talk show on Monday. In the coverage I did yesterday, Angelina was talking about her family’s nomadic lifestyle, and how she hates to “settle” and the whole thing inspired a very interesting conversation about Brangelina and how they’re raising the kids. As you know, I like Jolie. But I think this is one of her flaws – she acts as if she would be so disappointed in her children if one of them actually wanted to stay in one place for a year and put down some roots. Anyway, AC’s people sent us a lengthy transcript of Jolie and Cooper’s conversation, and here are some of the highlights:

Jolie on her Thanksgiving: “It was good, we actually Brad and I decided we were actually going to make the turkey and we were very successful and very proud of ourselves. We did it! I’ve tried on and off but this was just the two of us with the kids watching trying to pretend we knew exactly what we were doing.”

Family dinners: “We actually have family dinner every night. We make a point of it. It’s crazy. There’s a good five minutes were everybody is quiet and sitting together and then it starts to break off into different…No, no [video gams] and no blackberries for mom and dad.”

More on always traveling: “We do, we’re a big traveling. Now we are starting to get them where they each have their own luggage and they unpack their own clothes and pack their own because it was just getting to confusing for me to figure out but it’s great, it’s so much fun. Fortunately, my kids love to travel because I do and they’re very worldly and what I love is that they can be in New York in a hotel in Manhattan and think it’s so cool and then I can bring them to the middle of Kenya and drop them in a tent with no TV and no nothing and they’re just as happy as so I feel like that’s what we are trying to do to balance them.”

Explaining to the kids about war and refugees: “They do, and they’ve come with me to some. You know I try not to be one of those mothers that says, ‘Some people around the world don’t have,’ I try not to do that, but I try by example to bring them to places and hopefully they’ll make friends with people in different countries, coming from different backgrounds, dealing with different situations and they’ll understand that actually is what the world looks like, not this small world of just the place we live in our house. This is not reality, reality is all of these things. So they know and they are very good about you know, ‘Mommy has to go, mommy’s going to try to do some good and this thing is going on. So, I’ll be right back.’ They seem to be very generous about it and understanding that they’re kids and they want their mom but they also know that there are other kids that mom can try to help.”

Angelina on reading the reviews of ‘Blood & Honey’: “Well I have to read some things on this because I need to understand how people are receiving it if there is something more I need to explain in case it is being misunderstood. This is the first time I had to and it’s terrifying but I’ve avoided everything on myself.”

She doesn’t read any of the tabloids: “Which is so funny because I’m the most boring. I’m not totally boring but we do often say that because we don’t go out clubbing, we’re not big into fashion, we do a lot of dealing with kids and stuff.”

If Brad retires at the age of 50: “I’m happy for it. No, we were both racing to see which one of us gets to retire first. We both, like most people, we like being home. Whoever is the one whose home tends to be the happier one because we get to play with the kids and the other one is out earning the money… He was with the kids taking them to school in the morning then he’d come to the set in the afternoon and do stills photography. He was my stills photographer.

[Via Anderson Cooper’s show transcript]

La Jolie is “boring”??? NEVER. Okay, sometimes she is boring, but just when I think that, she says something that I find innocuous and everybody FREAKS OUT.

I’m also including some video clips below… Anderson and Angelina are seriously adorable together. Coop looks at her like… “If I was ever going to try a vadge, it would be yours.” And Angelina is all, “Oh, Silver Fox, BEHAVE!”

Photos courtesy of Anderson Cooper’s talk show.

The Critics Choice (also known as the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards) nominations came out yesterday, and today, the Screen Actors Guild Award nominations came out. I’m not going to cover every single person, so if you’d like to see the complete lists – GO HERE for the SAG nomination list and GO HERE for the Critics Choice nomination list. Here are some general thoughts:

*Brad Pitt scored Best Actor nominations for BFCAA and SAG, both for Moneyball. It’s pretty much guaranteed that he’ll be nominated for Best Actor, once again for Moneyball. Same with George Clooney and The Descendants – he’s guaranteed a spot on the Best Actor Oscar nomination list. Same for Jean Dujardin for The Artist.

*There’s NOOOOOOO Michel Fassbender at the SAGs!!!!! Shame got shut out of the SAGs, as did A Dangerous Method. Fassy will be at the Critics Choice, though – he got a nomination there. Ryan Gosling got a Critics Choice nom for Drive, but he got shut out of the SAGs too.

*Leonardo DiCaprio got nominated for J.Edgar on both lists, but I think his support is soft. If anyone is getting knocked off the Best Actor short list, I suspect it’s him.

*Melissa McCarthy got nominated on both lists too, for Supporting for Bridesmaids. Is Melissa headed to the Oscars?!? But… for Best Supporting Actress, there is no front runner. It’s an even bigger mess. Octavia Spencer for The Help? Jessica Chastain for anything? Carey Mulligan, maybe?

*The supporting categories are a mess, no one really knows who to nominate for what. I’m assuming Christopher Plummer is the leading contender for Best Supporting Actor, but other favorites include Ken Branagh, Jonah Hill (Moneyball), Nick Nolte (Warrior), and… Patton Oswalt?

*Best Actress is a mess too, but it’s starting to shape up. I’m seeing Viola Davis, Meryl Streep, Tilda Swinton and Michelle Williams on both nomination lists. That are four strong contenders, but the fifth lady… Lizzie Olsen? Glenn Close? Charlize Theron?

*As for Best Ensembles/Best Picture nominees, my only guarantees are big nominations for The Help, The Artist, Hugo, and The Descendants. But that still leaves a lot of places and a lot of campaigning. I can’t believe how open everything is at this point in the awards season.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

It’s so sad, Angelina Week is over. Boo! Now we just have to content ourselves all of the photos from last week, plus tons of interviews which are still being released. On Friday, Angelina’s longish USA Today interview came out, and I didn’t get a chance to read it until the weekend. You can read the full thing here – she talks a lot about In the Land of Blood and Honey, of course, but she also throws in some personal details. Remember how In Touch Weekly’s sources claimed that Angelina was seriously addicted… to online shopping? Well, Angelina claims that she can’t even figure out Amazon. AMAZON! One of the easiest sites to navigate, honestly.

Angelina Jolie isn’t the wild child she once was — and she’s OK with that. Describing her younger self as “experimental, bold and a bit nutty,” the now 36-year-old actress tells USA Today she was “absolutely self-destructive” early in her career.

“I think a lot of young people in this business lose their way. You don’t know what is of value. You don’t know where you are. And you know something’s wrong, because it isn’t life as it actually is,” Jolie explains. “It’s like living in some warped reality.”

The actress — who shares six children with partner of six years Brad Pitt, 47 — finally settled down “once I started to learn about the world and I became grateful for everything that I certainly have. Since going through my first war zone, never have I woken up and not been simply grateful.”

Once she adopted son Maddox in 2002, the In the Land of Blood and Honey director realized there was no going back. “I knew once I committed to Maddox, I would never be self-destructive again,” Jolie says. “Now I have five more [kids], so I have to behave.”

Given her multiple responsibilities as a mother, lover, actress, director and U.N. ambassador, Jolie has learned how to multitask over the years. “I always Christmas shop early in case we have to travel somewhere,” she says.

“Brad and I were on Amazon.com for the first time a week ago. But we got lost. After an hour, we just shut it off,” she tells USA Today. “My brain is too scattered and the wires go in different directions. I’ll stick to catalogs.”

[From Us Weekly]

“But we got lost. After an hour, we just shut it off…” Because Angelina Jolie is now your mom who asks you “What’s up with all of this Facebooking?” Except that even my mother can navigate Amazon! So… Angelina and Brad just aren’t good at technical stuff? Angelina has claimed that before, so I guess I’ll believe her, but I thought more of Brad’s skills. Turns out he sucks at technical stuff too.

Oh, and what catalogs are they ordering from? I want to know! I used to work the phones at a catalog company, and I would be floored if Angelina was actually calling up and giving item numbers and checking on availability. What if you were the one who had to tell Angelina that you no longer had the Empress’s hoodie in pink?

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Ahh, I had forgotten this was happening last night. *slowly turns in Brangeloonie Merit Badge* In the Land of Blood and Honey premiered in LA last night, and the event was much bigger than the NYC premiere earlier this week. Angelina and Brad did another red carpet together, and I like this one so, so much more than the New York premiere. This time it’s all about how hot Angelina looks in her navy Romona Keveza gown – it’s fitted! It’s not a sack! HUZZAH. It looks great on her too, and love when she teases up her hair. Brad doesn’t look as hot as he did in NY, and I don’t know what’s happening with the big glasses. Is he trying to look intellectual, or does he really need them? He still looks good, granted, but my eye goes to Jolie.

Many of the stars of the film were there, including the two leads, Zana Marjanovic & Goran Kostic. Quick word about Goran Kostic: he’s rather sexy, right? All in black on this red carpet… he looks sort of like Daniel Craig with a weird nose – very unconventionally sexy. He has presence, I’ll give him that. And Zana is gorgeous – I’m including photos of Goran and Zana below.

Angelina’s drinking buddy (I’m assuming) and girl friend Gwen Stefani showed up to support Angie. As did Angelina’s dad. Meh on him, but I think Gwen looks kind of cute in her onesie.

Meanwhile, Angelina covers the new issue of The Hollywood Reporter, joint with Jennifer Yuh Nelson, director of Kung Fu Panda 2. THR has excerpts of their conversation here. Angelina admits at one point: “I’ve scored some points at home because of Kung Fu Panda. They love Tigress, who is my alternate personality. Otherwise, they think Brad and I are just so not cool.” She also talks about what she learned from Michael Winterbottom and Clint Eastwood, and how she personally financed a large chunk of ITLOBAH. You can read more here.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Day 4 of Angelina Week. I am starting to grow tired of the media blitz. With Brangelina, it really is feast or famine. You can go months without any real news or genuine quotes from either of them, and then when either of them starts promoting something, I can’t even keep up with all of the press they do. Let’s see what we’ve got so far… Angelina will appear on the cover of the new issue of The Hollywood Reporter, which is interesting. They haven’t released the interview yet, though. Yesterday, all of the Jolie-Pitts enjoyed an outing to FAO Schwartz – you can see the photos here. All of the kids were making faces, but Angelina looked happy. Speaking of the kids, I go a chance to read Angelina’s full Marie Claire interview (which I previewed yesterday), and it’s really good. She talks about the kids a lot, and she says nice things about her “love” Brad Pitt. Oh, and the quote about her lack of girlfriends… yeah, that one will make headlines. Here are some highlights:

The Bosnian War: “I think it is still hard to understand what happened, and how it could happen 40 minutes away from Italy in the ’90s, at the time ‘Schindler’s List’ came out,” Angelina says. “You can’t make sense of something that innately doesn’t make sense: to rape and kill your neighbor with whom you have lived forever,” she added.

Jolie wrote the film as “an excuse to get out some of my frustrations [with] the international community and justice issues. I just assumed nobody would ever see or read it.”

How did she write? “Some of the very darkest sections were probably conceived in Shiloh’s art class; I was in the back corner, waiting for the kids to finish. And then somehow it slowly ended up being read by Brad, and then friends. There was a discussion of making it, and I just was terrified to hand it over to anybody. It wasn’t that I said, ‘I’m going to write something, and I want to direct it.’”

On girlfriends: “It was nice for me to play with other girls; I don’t really have girlfriends in movies, if you’ve noticed,“ she says, suggesting that the same is true off-camera as well. She quickly corrects herself: “Well, I have a few girlfriends. I just…I stay home a lot. I’m just not very social. I don’t do a lot with them, and I’m very homebound.”

Eventually quitting acting: “That doesn’t mean I’m stopping tomorrow. But I woke up one day realizing, God, I’m an actor. I don’t think I intended to be an actor. I think my mother wanted it for me. I loved telling stories, and I enjoyed the profession, but it is too late to be something else?,” the actress says.

On Brad Pitt: “He has expanded my life in ways I never imagined. We built a family. He is not just the love of my life, he is my family. I hold that very dear. I suppose what I’ve learned from Brad is to be able to have the kind of family whose happiness and well-being comes before your own. I’m very, very grateful to have such a loving family, and I wouldn’t have that without him,” Angelina explains.

Giving her kids security: “If they see Mommy and Daddy in need of some private time ’cause they’re going to kiss and whatever, the kids get all giggly and happy. Because it gives them some security,” Jolie says.

Another baby? “Nothing planned at the moment, but we just don’t know. I could end up pregnant,” Angelina says.

On Knox: “Knox is very much a dude. Very physical, tough. He loves dinosaurs and swords.”

On Vivienne: “She is so elegant and delicate. Vivi will pick flowers from the garden and put them in her hair. She likes to get her nails done and collects stuffed animals. It’s funny for me to have to buy all things pink and watch princess movies!”

On Zahara: She’s begun horseback riding – “she has found her thing.”

On Shiloh: She’s been riding the four-wheel vehicles known as quads – “It’s very funny to watch Brad try to teach Shiloh because she doesn’t want to listen. She doesn’t want Dad to sit on the back. She doesn’t want to learn about the brakes. She just wants to go!… it’s the combination of the two of us.”

On Pax: “He is extremely wild, but he has a very, very good heart. You know, like those punk rockers – when you really get to know them and they are just pussycats. But at the same time, he is going to get in some kind of trouble.”

On Maddox: “I’ll be doing something and I’ll be frustrated, and he’ll hold my hand and say, ‘Are you feeling tired? Is that why you’re upset?’ Yeah, he really does take care of me.”

[From Becoming Gorgeous and The Fashion Spot]

Maddox, the little caretaker. Do you think Maddox ever wishes he and his mom could go back to when it was just the two of them? I’m sure he’s a lovely older brother, but I do think Madd and Angelina have a special bond – the bond of the first child and a single mom. And Empress Z rides horses! She really is royalty, isn’t she? She and Queen Elizabeth II should meet. But seriously, how lovely is the quote about Brad? “He is not just the love of my life, he is my family.” GAH! My Brangelina obsession just went into overdrive.

Marie Claire photos courtesy of The Fashion Spot.

These are some photos of Angelina Jolie yesterday in NYC. I really like this brown dress on her, honestly. I think this would have been a much better premiere look than the black sack separates that she ended up wearing. Angelina’s style strengths are 1) Coats and 2) Business attire. She does pretty well for herself if she’s just choosing suits and business-like dresses. I’m also including some photos from the premiere too, because I just can’t get over how hot Brad looks and how much he wants the Oscar this year.

Anyway, there’s still a ton of Jolie news to cover, because that’s what’s happening this week – All Jolie, All Week. This is how she promotes films nowadays. Yesterday, we had a preview of Jolie’s ABC News interview with Christiane Amanpour, and now ABC has released the full interview:

Why she wrote the script: “I was thinking and meditating on these international themes of violence against women, lack of intervention, and how human beings are changed and warped by war, and how some people come out stronger and some people are truly broken,” Jolie told “This Week” anchor Christiane Amanpour, who covered the Bosnian conflict in the 1990′s. “There’s no safe way to tackle these subject matters, but I think the important thing is to discuss them and tackle them. This is our generation’s war. … this was, you know, the worst genocide since World War II in Europe,” she said. “It was– ‘what were we all doing?’ And ‘did we do enough’ and ‘why do we not speak about this enough’ and ‘why I don’t know enough about this?’ And so I wanted to learn. I felt a responsibility to learn.”

How it felt to be behind the camera: The actress said it felt “bizarre” to play the role of the writer and the director, but added that it was “great not to be in front of the camera.” Jolie said “writing is the hardest because it feels the most exposed. When you’re an actress, you use somebody else’s words and you can always blame the director and the director can say the editor,” she said. “But the writer is the one that kind of sits alone in the room and writes what they think is important, funny, historical, topical.”

She doesn’t think the film will be a hit: “We did it because we felt this is a war that isn’t talked about enough,” Jolie said. “I know it’s a hard film to sit through, but it’s two hours to sit through something that’s very hard, and these people lived through it for many, many years, and it was many, many times worse than any reenactment could possibly be. And I feel like it’s a gift and a duty to sit through two hours of what they lived through.”

On home-schooling the kids: “I’m being very careful with their schooling, we’re home-schooling especially when it comes to history, to make sure it’s not one country’s point of view of their country,” Jolie said. “Because it has to be very balanced and they have to learn about their country so they can form their own conclusions.”

On adoptions: “I look at them and think what their birth parents must have gone through, what their birth grandparents would have done through, and so I feel connected to it,” Jolie said. “It’s a gift when you adopt a child from another country. This whole country enters your home.”

She and Brad disagree about the death penalty: “I won’t say whose side anyone is on, but it’s the one, the thing nobody brings up at dinner because nobody wants us to go off on each other,” she said. “But it’s fun. It’s a fun debate, you know? It’s a good– you want to be able to have — to respect each other’s views and to not be exactly– we’re not identical. We have– we have strong views.”

The future: “I don’t feel needed in a position of being an actor. I feel like I’m needed at home as a mom, and I’m hoping that I’ll find other things,” Jolie said. “I’d love to be able to write or direct or work on and produce more projects about issues dealing with situations that I feel passionate about.”

[From ABC News]

Oooh, she and Brad disagree about the death penalty? I’m guessing that Brad is against the death penalty and Angelina is for it. And I would LOVE to see them fight about it.

One last thing – Patricia Cornwell just confirmed in a new interview that Angelina is still attached to play Kay Scarpetta. Cornwell said, “We’re still in the early stages of production. She’s attached to the project but all the other pieces need to fit together to make sure everyone’s happy with it – but it’s looking hopeful that everything will fall into place soon.”

Photos courtesy of Fame.

Jesus, how great does BRAD look? That was my first thought when going through these photos of Angelina’s big NYC premiere of In the Land of Blood and Honey. Brad isn’t wearing a g–damn pair of sunglasses, nor is hiding behind some gross beard. He’s relatively well-groomed (for him), he’s wearing a nice suit, his hair is sexy length, and he looks clean. He must really, really want an Oscar, right?

As for Angelina… it was her night, and she looked… okay. I was going to make a big deal about her sack dress, but she’s wearing sack separates – a Joseph top and a Ralph Lauren skirt. I mean… black sack separates, covering up her bust and her figure for the most part. I’m so tired of this look on Angelina. This time last year, she was wearing a gorgeous, white, fuzzy Versace gown to the premiere of The Tourist. I just wish Angelina’s default style was slightly better. Her jewelry is OFIRA – which surprises me. Angelina designed her own jewelry line full of 1970s-style topazes – why not wear some of those?

I’m including photos of Angelina with Brad’s parents, Bill and Jane. Bill and Jane were with Jolie all of Monday as she promoted her film in interviews, and then she posed with them on the red carpet too. Personally, I think Jane Pitt and Angelina get along really well – they seem to enjoy each other, genuinely. I’m not so sure about Bill, though. He seems grumpy, but that might have nothing to do with Angelina. Also posing with Angelina: director and artist Julian Schnabel. Do they know each other? Oh, and James Haven was there with his girlfriend.

Photos courtesy of Fame & WENN.

This week’s tabloids are full of bizarre and negative stories about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. I was going to cover some of them, but then I saw this bizarre story of something that actually happened to Brad. According to Us Weekly, while Brad and Jonah Hill were doing a screening of Moneyball this past weekend, a “distraught” man confessed to suicidal thoughts during the Q&A session.

Brad Pitt was a real pal to a stranger in need on Sunday. Following a special screening of Moneyball at the Cary Grant Theatre in Culver City, Calif. on Sunday, the star, 47, encountered a distraught man during a Q&A session with hundreds of fans.

According to an attendee, a 30-something struggling actor announced to Pitt, costar Jonah Hill and the crowd that he was battling suicidal thoughts alone in his car before the night’s event– but the film gave him “a renewed sense of hope.”

(In the acclaimed film, Pitt plays real-life Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, who built a champion team using computer-generated analysis to draft its player.)

“It was a really awkward moment,” the attendee tells Us, adding that the actor got “choked up” as he revealed his battles to the crowd.

But Pitt didn’t flinch, the witness says. “He said, ‘Look, man, life is up and down, it’s a vicious cycle, but you have to go through it and deal with that,’” the observer reveals.

The father of six and longtime love to Angelina Jolie continued in his pep talk: “‘You can be down, but then you come back up again, and every failure can lead to success.’”

“It was a touching moment,” adds a second observer. “As he left the theatre he even stopped to talk with the guy to offer him some more words of encouragement because he was obviously fragile.”

Marvels the first witness: “Brad handled the situation really well in front of several hundred people — it was a difficult moment that shocked everyone.”

If you think you or a loved one are in an emotional or suicidal crisis, visit the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline online, or call 800.273.TALK.

[From Us Weekly]

I do think Brad handled it well. What are you supposed to do when a stranger lays down that kind of emotional confession at your feet? Hopefully the pep talk helped that dude.

Should we move on to less weighty subject matter? The Enquirer has a rough story about Brad and the uncool Bermuda Triangle plus Chelsea Handler. I was going to ignore this story, but I’ve seen other versions of this, and it’s a blind item too, so I’m wondering if there isn’t a kernel of truth to it. Here’s the basic gist:

Brad backed out of a TV interview with Chelsea Handler after both Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston blew a gasket.

“Talk about bad choices,” said an insider. “Brad really got raked over the coals by Angie and Jen. For Brad, it’s all business. He just wanted to promote his movies.”

But Angelina is still harboring a lot of resentment towards Chelsea Handler after Chelsea’s profanity-laced rant in New Jersey last December.

Brad also got an earful from Jennifer, who was livid that he was trying to buddy up to Chelsea, one of her closet friends.

“Brad had to beg off the invite with the lame excuse that he couldn’t make it due to ‘film commitments,’” said the insider.

[From The Enquirer, print edition]

What is more unlikely, that Chelsea Handler would agree to have Pitt on her show, or that Brad would agree to appear on Chelsea Lately? I don’t know – I think they’re both unlikely. The kernel of truth might have been that the studio booked Brad on some television shows, and Chelsea Lately might have been one of the shows in contention, but nothing came of it. Plus, there’s the CAA connection – Chelsea is with CAA now, and Brad has been with CAA for a while. I think Brad is hustling for an Oscar, but I doubt he would chat with Chelsea for his campaign… right?

Photos courtesy of WENN.

I still haven’t seen Tree of Life. I wasn’t really looking to see it, either, but I suppose I will rent it whenever it comes out on DVD. When I read the reviews of Tree of Life, it just sounded like something that I would roll my eyes at – Brad Pitt playing a father in 1950s, Sean Penn as the son who is all grown up, interspersed with artsy-fartsy imagery… meh. But I liked that Brad got such great reviews for the film, and early awards-watchers claimed that Brad could get a big awards season push for the Best Actor Oscar.

Then, months later, I saw Moneyball. I reviewed it here – I LOVED Moneyball. And it’s Brad’s movie too – Jonah Hill stole some scenes, but it’s Brad’s film, and he looked amazing and he seemed… grown up. He was convincing as a world-weary man just trying to succeed against the odds. His face was beautifully lined, and all of a sudden, it was really clear-cut that Brad really is Robert Redford’s successor. So I really hoped that when the awards season really got under way, that Brad’s push would come for Moneyball – it’s a bigger film, it’s a crowd-pleaser, and I hoped that Brad would be acknowledged with awards for a “big” movie rather than an art-house one, perhaps following the Sandra Bullock/Blind Side-awards-season pattern.

Well, the critics awards have begun to come out, and Brad is starting to get more of a boost. Tree of Life just tied for Best Picture at the Gotham Awards, and just a few hours ago, The New York Film Critics Circle announced their awards for 2011. Brad takes Best Actor for both Tree of Life AND Moneyball. Sidenote: Meryl Streep won Best Actress for The Iron Lady and Jessica Chastain won Best Supporting for all of her 20 million roles this year.

While I think Brad is definitely going to be nominated for many of the big awards, I do have some questions. First, which film will he be nominated for? Tree of Life as the art-house favorite, or Moneyball as the film that people have actually seen? He was the lead actor in both films, and Academy rules stipulate that Brad could not be nominated twice in the same category. So which would it be?

Also – who will Brad be up against? Michael Fassbender for Shame or A Dangerous Method? Fassie has the same problem as Brad – two potentially lead-nomination-worthy performances in the same year, although I think it’s clear that the studio will be making a bigger push for Shame rather than Method. So, who else? Gary Oldman for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – maybe. George Clooney for The Descendents. Maybe Leonardo for J. Edgar, but meh. There are other names being thrown around, of course, but I’m starting to get a weird feeling… the same weird feeling when I realized that Colin Firth was in the perfect position to win the Oscar during the last awards season. Is it Brad’s year to win?!?

Photos courtesy of Fame.