Django Unchained

After the holiday season, the movie world is slowly cranking up to speed. Although the really big news doesn't start until next week, with the announcement of the Oscar and Bafta nominations.

This week's biggest nominee announcement came from the Producers Guild of America, seen as a taste of the Best Picture Oscar race. The PGA's 10 feature film nominees are: Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Les Miserables, Moonrise Kingdom, Silver Linings Playbook, Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty.

Buzz is building over a possible Oscar nod for Naomi Watts for her harrowing performance in this week's biggest release The Impossible, a true dramatic thriller set around the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. And of course you can never count two-time Oscar winner Maggie Smith out of the race. She also has a film out this week: Quartet, directed by Dustin Hoffman and costarring veterans Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins and Billy Connolly.

Grabbers

Another new release is the Irish action-comedy Grabbers, which reminds us that Pierce Brosnan has just been named as the number one Irish export. The paparazzi caught up with him and his wife in Beverly Hills last week to tell him.

The new Seth Rogen comedy The Guilt Trip is still in the box office charts in America (it opens in Britain in March), and screenwriter Dan Fogelman still can't quite believe that Barbra Streisand stars in the movie. In an interview about the film he says that Streisand is "the coolest lady ever" playing a character based on his own mother. He also says she's the "hardest working person you've ever met" and can't quite believe he now has her on speed-dial.

Gangster Squad

While Ryan Gosling has his new movie Gangster Squad out next week, anticipation is building for his reunion with Blue Valentine director Derek Gianfrance in The Place Beyond the Pines, costarring Bradley Cooper and Eva Mendes. The film doesn't open until the spring, but a new trailer promises what looks like an intensely moving drama.

And finally, there's a new teaser trailer this week for the animated action movie Turbo, about a snail who yearns to move just a bit faster. From the makers of Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda, the action comedy features the voices of Ryan Reynolds, Paul Giamatti, Samuel L Jackson, Maya Rudolph and Snoop Dogg. It opens this summer.

Rich Cline