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What makes a great critic? As we launch our third Young Critics' Competition, Guardian reviewers offer some expert advice – and reveal the writers who first inspired them

'A critic is more than a spectator' Michael Billington, theatre critic

I started reading reviews avidly in my teens. I'm still haunted by a phrase Harold Hobson used about Waiting for Godot in the Sunday Times: "If you have only 15 shillings left in the world, go and see Waiting for Godot. If you have 30 shillings, see it twice."

But the critic who really obsessed me, and most of my generation, was Hobson's great rival, Kenneth Tynan at the Observer. What Tynan showed is that criticism is principally about writing well. Open his collected reviews on any page and you find the phrases lock perfectly into place. Here's one example, from a 1956 review of Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory: "Puffing on a cheroot,...

16th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards® Recipients Theatrical Motion Pictures Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role Jeff Bridges / Bad Blake - "Crazy Heart" (Fox Searchlight Pictures) Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role Sandra Bullock / Leigh Anne Tuohy - "The Blind Side" (Warner Bros. Pictures) Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role Christoph Waltz / Col. Hans Landa - "Inglourious Basterds" (The Weinstein Company/Universal Pictures) Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role Mo’Nique / Mary - "Precious: Based On The Novel ‘Push’ By Sapphire" (Lionsgate) Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Inglourious Basterds (The Weinstein Company/Universal Pictures) Daniel BRÜHL / Fredrick Zoller August Diehl / Major Hellstrom Julie Dreyfus / Francesca Mondino Michael Fassbender / Lt. Archie Hicox Sylvester Groth / Joseph Goebbels Jacky Ido / Marcel Diane Kruger / Bridget von Hammersmark MÉLANIE Laurent / Shosanna Denis Menochet / Perrier Lapadite...

16th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards® Winners

Theatrical Motion Pictures

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role

Jeff Bridges / Bad Blake - "Crazy Heart" (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role

Sandra Bullock / Leigh Anne Tuohy - "The Blind Side" (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role

Christoph Waltz / Col. Hans Landa - "Inglourious Basterds" (The Weinstein Company/Universal Pictures)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role

Mo'nique / Mary - "Precious: Based On The Novel .Push' By Sapphire" (Lionsgate)

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

"Inglourious Basterds" (The Weinstein Company/Universal Pictures)

Daniel BRÜHL / Fredrick Zoller

August Diehl / Major Hellstrom

Julie Dreyfus / Francesca Mondino

Michael Fassbender / Lt. Archie Hicox

Sylvester Groth / Joseph Goebbels

Jacky Ido / Marcel

Diane Kruger / Bridget Von Hammersmark

MÉLANIE Laurent / Shosanna

Denis Menochet / Perrier Lapedite

Mike Myers...

The morning the Screen Actors Guild announced the nominees for the 16th annual SAG awards. The actual ceremony will be held Saturday, January 23rd. There are a lot of gay-faves on the list of nominees.

For starters, Colin Firth picked up a nomination for A Single Man,and Sigourney Weaver is in the running for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries thanks to Prayers for Bobby.

Freshmen series Glee and Modern Family are competing against each other for Beest TV Comedy Ensemble.

And surprisingly (at least for me) the cast of True Blood is up for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.

You can check out the full list of nominess after the break!

Theatrical Motion Pictures

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role

Jeff Bridges / Bad Blake - "Crazy Heart" (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

George Clooney / Ryan Bingham...

Nominees for the 16th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG Awards) for both film and television categories were announced this morning. Michelle Monaghan and Chris O'Donnell announced the nominees at the Pacific Design Center's Silver Screen Theater in West Hollywood.

The 16th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards will be simulcast live nationally on TNT and TBS on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010 at 8 p.m. Et/Pt, 7 p.m. Ct, and 6 p.m. Mt from the Los Angeles Shrine Exposition Center. Recipients of the stunt ensemble honors will be announced from the SAG Awards red carpet during the TNT.TV and TBS.Com live pre-show webcasts.

If you want to predict the acting categories for the Oscars, look no further than the results of the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Voted by actors' peers, the SAG award has closely resembled the winners of the Oscars in the past few years.

For example, the SAG...

Sharing the movie references in Mad Men episodes just for fun, love of trivia, open discussions and occasional enlightenment.

1.2 "Ladies Room"

Paul: [conducting a tour of the office] Account Management: Where prep schoolers skip arm in arm a la The Wizard of Oz, joined together by their lack of skill and their love of mirrors. Account executives are all good at something ...although it's never advertising.

[Pointing to an office. In Rod Sterling voice] Submitted for your approval, one Peter Campbell, a man who recently discovered that the only place for his hand is in your pocket.

Do you watch it?!? Have you seen it, The Twilight Zone?

Peggy Olson: I don't think so. I don't like science fiction. The image of account executives skipping like pig-tailed girls from Kansas makes me smile. And speaking of pig-tailed girls... Of Course Peggy doesn't like science fiction. Is there anyone on the show more focused on reality as is? I mean apart from her temporary break from it.