Back in October, the New York Film Critics Circle made the bold decision to move up its annual selection of the year’s best, believing that this would allow them to get the jump on all the other critical bodies doing the same. Of course, this ignored the fact that a) today has seen at least two other groups parsing out judgmental lists already, and b) that’s not even counting all the other as-yet-unofficial accolades that have been handed out for months now, such as the Confrontational Guy On The Comment Board Awards and the Coworker Who Apparently Only Saw The Help Awards. But no matter: Aside from delaying its decision by a day in order to accommodate a special screening of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, the NYFCC pushed full steam ahead with its decision to declare that the year is officially over, and that they probably weren’t even going to like Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close anyway.
As it turns out, they didn’t even like Dragon Tattoo, preferring mostly films that they saw months ago—like Moneyball, a movie that has mostly gone unrecognized so far, but here scored both a Best Screenplay win and Best Actor for Brad Pitt, who wins for his performances in both it and The Tree Of Life. Meanwhile, other than a confirmed win for Albert Brooks in Drive, which is great, the rest of the list is somewhat predictable, with The Artist taking both Best Picture and Best Director, Meryl Streep collecting her first of what will probably be several obligatory trophies for The Iron Lady, and Jessica Chastain successfully playing the odds during her breakout year. Also, Werner Herzog won for Cave Of Forgotten Dreams and will hopefully say something Werner Herzogian when these are officially presented on January 9. Here’s the list of winners. [via LAT]
Best Picture: The Artist
Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Best Actor: Brad Pitt, Moneyball and The Tree Of Life
Best Actress: Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Best Supporting Actor: Albert Brooks, Drive
Best Supporting Actress: Jessica Chastain, The Help, The Tree Of Life, and Take Shelter
Best First Feature: Margin Call
Best Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian, Moneyball
Best Cinematography: Emannuel Lubezki, The Tree Of Life
Best Non-Fiction Film: Cave Of Forgotten Dreams
Best Foreign Language Film: A Separation