The Silly Season Comenceth: NBR Awards
The National Board of Review, typically among the first critics groups to bestow end-of-year honors, announced their winners today, with Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire picking up the top film prize, and Clint Eastwood (Grand Torino) and Anne Hathaway (Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married) picking up the top acting awards. Best documentary went to James Marsh's Man on Wire. The complete list can be found on indieWIRE.com here.
I can't comment on Slumdog, Torino or Rachel as I haven't seen them yet but the general buzz around the Internet and the real world is that there is not one obvious frontrunner for best picture. No Titanic, no Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, no ....Cras.... Oh, right.
At any rate, no one has a breakaway prediction with most top three lists containing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Milk and Slumdog. From what I've heard of the first of these, there's a question as to whether or not the Academy is as sappy as it was back in 1994 when the excremental Forrest Gump picked up the award over Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption. Still boggles the mind....
While the NBR isn't exactly the most respected critics group out there (David Poland in The Hot Blog fantastically referred to them thusly: "[The] NBR is the idiot drunk at parties... who also happens to be your first cousin. You can't really pretend it isn't there, but taking it seriously in any way is a sign of brain damage.") They generally do a pretty good job of predicting nominees....then again, they do choose 10 films, so how hard can that be?
Regardless, for better or for worse, they kick off the season and we follow along. Coming up: Golden Globes nominations on December 9th, The Broadcast Film Critics Choice nominations (either 12/9 or 12/12, depending on the source), Los Angeles Film Critics awards (12/12), NY Film Critics Circle awards (12/13) as well as critics groups from Boston, San Francisco and other cities and the Screen Actors Guild nominees on December 17th.
In January the other guilds announce their nominations, with the Producers guild going on January 5th (what the hell do the producers need a union for, really?), the DGA on the 8th and then the grandaddy of them all, Oscar® noms on the 22nd. Film Independent's Spirit Award nominations were announced last week.
Photo: Phil Bray
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