Do All These Awards Mean Anything For Oscar?

The Hollywood Reporter's Martin Grove does a good job of pinpointing why all these critics' awards and the Golden Globes and so on are NOT reliable precictors of Oscar success. But what they are good at predicting is success at getting Oscar nominations, I think. One mistake in his piece: Grove says Clint Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima" was "shut out" at the Globes when it didn't get a Best Drama nomination and thus lost momentum. Actually, as a foreign language film, "Letters" wasn't eligible for the Best Drama slot. It was eligible for Best Foreign Film, a nomination it received and is probably the front-runner to win since he's the only nominee in that category to get a director's nomination as well (two, in fact).