Flickering Sound Waves

The New York Film Critics Circle forms, together with LAFCA (Los Angeles Film Critics Association) and the NSFC* (National Society of Film Critics), the holy trinity** of critics awards. LA & NY combined can be a potent influential mix... not that they often agree. But this year they did, further underlining the dominance of The Social Network this awards season. The other big boost went to The Kids Are All Right, Lisa Cholodenko's warmly funny family-at-crossroads film, which picked up three major wins (Actress, Supporting Actor, Screenplay)

Picture The Social Network
Director David Fincher for The Social Network
Actress Annette Bening for The Kids Are All Right
Actor Colin Firth for The King's Speech

We already knew that Best Actress was shaping up to be a Bening vs. Portman showdown. But it was not confirmed in a neatly bi-coastal way since Portman did not take LAFCA yesterday. She wasn't even runner-up. Nevertheless, it's still firmly on track to turn out that way, a two-person battle, since they're the likely Globe winners in Comedy and Drama, respectively.


Supporting Actress Melissa Leo for The Fighter
Supporting Actor Mark Ruffalo for The Kids Are All Right
Screenplay Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg for The Kids Are All Right
Cinematography Matthew Libatique for Black Swan
Animated Film Sylvain Chomet's The Illusionist
Documentary Inside Job
Foreign Film Carlos
First Feature David Michôd's Animal Kingdom
Special Prize is there one this year? I haven't seen one specified online and their site has not been updated.

Having been a big fan of Animal Kingdom all year, I am pleased for David Michôd's win, since the praise has usually reduced the film to the Jacki Weaver show. Weaver aside, the entire cast is strong and so is the film so good on NYFCC for noticing.

Animal Kingdom's cast: Frecheville, Stapleton, Ford, Weaver, Joel Edgerton and Ben Mendelsohn

In other film critics org news today, The Southeastern Film Critics Association named The Social Network the years best and also hilariously named True Grit's Hailee Steinfeld the best "supporting" actress of the year. What she's supporting, other than her entire Coen Bros picture, we don't know. They used to call that "carrying" a film and that's only done by lead actors. What the Christ? She's even more of a lead than Frances McDormand was in Fargo! See also: BFCA Nominations for this year's most egregious Category Fraud party. Every year has one.

*in recent years it seems that the NSFC has been fading -- so perhaps the only powerful critics orgs are now LA & NY... at least in terms of media interest -- given NSFC's late voting and the ever expanding roster of film awards.