We're gearing up to record our third annual Dionysus Awards Show.  This will be the third year in a row that we have given out Dionysus Awards for the most philosophically interesting movies of the year.   We're seeking nominations from you, our listeners.  Submit a nomination to comments@philosophytalk.org, along with information on how to reach you, in case we want to include you and your nomination on our final broadcast.  Please submit your nomination by January 9th, so that we have ample time to sort through them all and decides which ones we want to include in our awards show. 

This year,  the Dionysus Awards show work a little differently than in the past.  Instead of a live broadcast from the studios of KALW, we will "pre-produce" the show.  That will give us far more freedom to pick and choose movies and to include clips and other sound elements in the episode.  We plan, by the way, to market the show to the entire public radio system as a stand-alone, pre-Oscar special.   it's going to be great fun and a great episode.  And we'd love to have you be part of the action.  So step up to the microphone, and nominate the movies that you found most philosophically interesting for 2010.   You can also include philosophically interesting blasts from the past if nothing from the current crop strikes your fancy -- but we're  more likely to include movies from the past year than older movies. 

Don't just tell us what movies you liked, though, be sure to tell us why you liked it and why, in particular,  you found it philosophically compelling.

Let me make it clear that a movie can  doesn't have to be explicitly philosophical  in the way that, say, Inception is in order to count as philosophically compelling.  Indeed, some movies that try too hard and too laboriously to be philosophically interesting sometimes just don't work as movies at all.  As long as the movie is both good as a movie and  fruitfully looked at through the lens of philosophy, it's a plausible candidate for a Dionysus Award.  

So join the fun and submit a nomination!  You can do so by sending an e-mail to comments@philosophytalk.org.  You can also leave a comment here on our blog or over on our Facebook page  -- though those are by nature more public, of course.   No matter where you submit your nomination, make sure that we can get in touch with about it if you think you might like to talk about it on the air with us.

We'll be recording and editing the program during the last couple of weeks of January, for broadcast sometime early mid February  -- beginning February 13th on KALW and our other regular affiliates and hopefully right up until the time of the Oscars on other stations around the country.