National Society of Film Critics names picks for 2012
Credit: Sony Classics
We're less than five days from the Academy Award nominations announcement, and the last of the critics circles has now announced its own choices for the best of the year. While these critics aren't voting members of the Academy, their tastes often reflect an overlap with its roughly 6000 voting members each year. In this sense, Michael Haneke's devastating look at grief and age, "Amour", has received a huge boost from being named the top film by the National Society of Film Critics, a national consortium of 60 prolific film critics. Now, it's completely up to the viewer to decide whether or not these critics are proper arbiters of good taste, but I am definitely surprised at the number of relatively populist choices are in evidence this year, from shout-outs to Jennifer Lawrence, to an award for Matthew McConaughey. Who knows? By Thursday, he could be an Oscar nominee. And frankly, I'd be perfectly okay with that, given the kind of year he's had.
Full list of winners and runners-up, via CBS News.
Best Picture: "Amour"
Runners-up: "The Master"; "Zero Dark Thirty"
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, "Lincoln"
Runners-up: Denis Lavant, "Holy Motors"; Joaquin Phoenix, "The Master"
Best Actress: Emmanuelle Riva, "Amour"
Runners-up: Jennifer Lawrence, "Silver Linings Playbook"; Jessica Chastain, "Zero Dark Thirty"
Best Supporting Actor: Matthew McConaughey, "Magic Mike"/"Bernie"
Runners-up: Tommy Lee Jones, "Lincoln"; Philip Seymour Hoffman, "The Master"
Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, "The Master"
Runners-up: Sally Field, "Lincoln"; Anne Hathaway, "Les Miserables"
Best Director: Michael Haneke, "Amour"
Runners-up: Kathryn Bigelow, "Zero Dark Thirty"; Paul Thomas Anderson, "The Master"
Best Nonfiction: "The Gatekeepers"
Runners-up: "This Is Not a Film"; "Searching for Sugar Man"
Best Screenplay: Tony Kushner, "Lincoln"
Runners-up: Paul Thomas Anderson, "The Master"; David O. Russell, "Silver Linings Playbook"
Best Cinematography: Mihai Malaimare, Jr., "The Master"
Runners-up: Roger Deakins, "Skyfall"; Greig Fraser, "Zero Dark Thirty"
Best Experimental Film: "This Is Not a Film" by Jafar Panahi
Film Heritage Awards: Laurence Kardish, Senior Film Curator at MoMA, for his extraordinary 44 years of service, including this year's Weimar Cinema retrospective; and Milestone Film and Video for their ongoing Shirley Clarke project.