The Critics' Choice Awards ignore The People, choose The Artist as the year's best movie

By Sean O'Neal | January 13, 2012 | 5:05pm

Aux Features Film

Confronted with the seething rabble of the People’s Choice Awards, as they stormed the gates with their demands of Katy Perry and Harry Potter for all, the nation’s critics poured the hot, boiling oil of the Critics Choice Awards on the proletariat scum, flensing their unclean hides with their own, more refined picks for 2011’s best movies. Movies like Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist, which was the night’s big winner with four awards in all—Best Picture, Best Director, Best Costume Design, and also Best Score, with the Broadcast Film Critics Association essentially standing by as The Artist violated Kim Novak and cheering it on, like a scene out of Last Exit To Brooklyn. Of course, it wasn’t all elitism and implicit condoning of metaphorical sexual assault: Crowd-pleaser The Help took home Best Ensemble, Best Actress (Viola Davis), and Best Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer) awards, while Bridesmaids snared Best Comedy, all as a magnanimous sop to populist demand. Other than that—and other than a Best Action Movie nod for Drive, which continues to take accolades wherever it can get them—the ceremony more or less maintained the critical status quo so far, and The People’s cries were lost in the fire. Here’s the complete list of winners.

Best Picture
The Artist