Analysis: Recovering (from) the Satellites

So the Satellite Awards are not particularly relevant to... well almost anything. That isn't to say that they're completely off. No, that would be too easy. One cannot bet with or against the Satellites, merely wait and see how close or how far off they are.

For example: Their love for Frozen River may be an example of them falling in love with a small picture that will have minimal or no impact like they did for "The Lookout" last year. It could also be a sign of things to come.

However, you can generally count on them to predict 2-4 nominees for best picture and 2-4 nominees in each category. They rarely, if ever, encapsulate all the Oscar nominees for acting even in the races where they supply more than 10 nominees. The lone exception is the Best Actress category, which is usually easy to reduce to an accurate shortlist of 10.

Add to this the snafu located in the Adapted Screenplay category that Guy Lodge at In Contention pointed out and it's hard to give too much creedence, but they can't be totally ingored.

So they told us what we knew already: Slumdog, Milk, and Frost/Nixon are major players in the Best Picture race. The big question is, will their love for "The Reader" catch on with the more influential awards? Only time will tell.