National Society of Film Critics Loves Amour

National Society of Film Critics is the last of the three big critics' groups to announce their annual winners and they have followed LAFCA's footsteps in giving their top prize to Michael Haneke's Amour. It's yet more fuel in the film's fire as Sony Pictures Classics awaits the Academy's nominations on Thursday, though with the voting deadline already passed, this prestigious honour will have no persuasive power on Academy voters.

As with LAFCA,  Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master came in second in the top category, but this wasn't the only place where NSFC agreed with their Los Angeles counterparts. Emmanuelle Riva and Amy Adams also topped the lead and supporting actress categories, respectively.

Daniel Day-Lewis and Matthew McConaughey were the winners in the male acting categories. McConaughey, whose award was shared for Magic Mike and Bernie, has been a critical favourite all season - he won NYFCC's prize for the same two films as well - and is still lurking right around the nomination zone despite missing out on SAG and Globe nominations.

In the nonfiction category The Gatekeepers just edged out This Is Not a Film to the top prize, ahead of a distant Searching For Sugar Man at third. Jafar Panahi's film also managed a citation for Best Experimental Film. Tony Kushner and Mihai Malaimare Jr. rounded out the winners with prizes in the screeplay and cinematography categories, respectively.

Full list of winners after the jump...

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Congratulations to the WGA Nominees

Before approaching the Writers Guild Nominations with Oscary enthusiasmbe forewarned: only guild members are eligible for these prizes which discounts a good chunk of the movies one might otherwise expect to see honored each year. Hollywood isn't nearly as averse to working with non-guild writers as they are about non-unionized actors (Beasts of the Southern Wild was the only significant "ineligible" situation when the SAG nominees were announced a month ago). One of the reasons for this is surely the prevalence of writer/directors who are often members of the DGA without being members of the WGA.

The benefit of this is that by their script eligibility rules they are forced to award films that have been largely ignored in the grand scheme of year end hoopla. The curse is that when you are nominated from a smaller field of potentials it might not feel as notable.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY  

• Flight, Written by John Gatins; Paramount Pictures
• Looper, Written by Rian Johnson; TriStar Pictures
• The Master, Written by Paul Thomas Anderson; The Weinstein Company
• Moonrise Kingdom, Written by Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola; Focus Features
• Zero Dark Thirty, Written by Mark Boal; Columbia Pictures (ARTICLE) 

not eligible and therefore unsnubbed so you could still see them on Oscar's list: 
Django Unchained, Seven Psychopaths, Amour, Your Sister's Sister, Take This Waltz, The Intouchables, Middle of Nowhere, Rust & Bone and The Impossible 

Typically we only here of what's been declared ineligible so it's tough to know what other films were competing although I'd feel worse for actor/screenwriter Reid Carolin's absence for Magic Mike above if he'd also played one of the Cock-Rocking Kings of Tampa. That'd be putting it all on the line for your movie!

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY 

• Argo, Screenplay by Chris Terrio; Based on a selection from The Master of Disguise by Antonio J. Mendez and the WiredMagazine article “The Great Escape” by Joshuah Bearman; Warner Bros. Pictures
• Life of Pi, Screenplay by David Magee; Based on the novel by Yann Martel; 20th Century Fox
• Lincoln, Screenplay by Tony Kushner; Based in part on the book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincolnby Doris Kearns Goodwin; DreamWorks Pictures
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Screenplay by Stephen Chbosky; Based on his book; Summit Entertainment (LOGAN LERMAN INTERVIEW)
• Silver Linings Playbook, Screenplay by David O. Russell; Based on the novel by Matthew Quick; The Weinstein Company

not eligible and therefore unsnubbed:
Les Miz, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Anna Karenina, The Deep Blue Sea, and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

The nominee list for the WGA is highly plausible as the final Oscar list in this category too, don't you think?

DOCUMENTARY SCREENPLAY 

• The Central Park Five, Written by Sarah Burns and David McMahon and Ken Burns; Sundance Selects
• The Invisible War, Written by Kirby Dick; Cinedigm Entertainment Group
• Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, Written by Alex Gibney; HBO Documentary Films
• Searching for Sugar Man, Written by Malik Bendejelloul; Sony Pictures Classics
• We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists, Written by Brian Knappenberger; Cinetic Media
• West of Memphis, Written by Amy Berg & Billy McMillin; Sony Pictures Classics 

Sugar Man, Mea Maxima and The Invisible War continue to show real strength in the oncoming Oscar Best Documentary race.

ADG Nominees: Period, Fantasy, and (Our Favorite) Contemporary

The Guilds Have Spoken! Or rather, they're beginning to speak. We've just heard from the producers and now the art directors. This time AMPAS will cut the guilds off mid-sentence since Oscar nominations are but a week away. But here are the nominations from the Art Directors Guild which includes production designers, art directors and set decorators. Production Designers are the bosses of this field and when it comes to Oscar only the production designers and set decorators and not the art directors share the Oscar nominations which is why it's a bit odd that it's always called "Art Direction" but AMPAS has finally changed the name of the category so it'll now be 'Production Design'

Anna Karenina may be dressed for grief but her bedroom sure is lusty.

Expect that the five nominated films for Oscar will be (mostly) culled from these three groups. And obviously, given that Oscar is Oscar and "Best" =  "Most" the bulk of the eventual Oscar shortlist will come from Period & Fantasy. TFE's favorite thing about the guild awards is that you can see what the craftsmen and women like best in contemporary work... which sadly rarely goes on to Oscar glory despite being difficult and creatively challenging in its own right.

Some notes on their nominees... and their nominee's past filmography glories after the jump

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The Producers Guild Nominees. Which Film Would Be The Hardest To Get Made?

I thought it might be interesting to look at tonight's Producers Guild nominations NOT as Oscar predictions -- they're always that since the industry end game is the Oscars -- but as what they're ostensibly intended to be: awards honoring producers who shepherded certain movies to the screen. The nominees...

Grant Henslov and Ben Affleck working on "Argo"

The Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures

• Ben Affleck, George Clooney, Grant Heslov for ARGO
• Michael Gottwald, Dan Janvey, Josh Penn for BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD
• Reginald Hudlin, Pilar Savone, Stacey Sher for DJANGO UNCHAINED
• Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Debra Hayward, Cameron Mackintosh for LES MISERABLES
• Ang Lee, Gil Netter, David Womark for LIFE OF PI
• Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg for LINCOLN
• Wes Anderson, Scott Rudin, Jeremy Dawson, Steven Rales for MOONRISE KINGDOM
• Bruce Cohen, Donna Gigliotti, Jonathan Gordon for SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
• Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson for SKYFALL
• Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Megan Ellison for ZERO DARK THIRTY

Producing is a very mysterious job from the outside looking in. Every film's producers have different jobs ahead of them based on a) what kind of project it is, b) how much fighting they'll have to do to get it made creatively and financially and c) whether they'll be separate from or very tied to the artistic decisions -- notice that only 50% of the nominated teams include the director of the film in question so some of these producers have far more influence on the final product than some of the others.

Barbara Broccoli with her Skyfall talent

No film has an easy road to movie theaters but if you remove your feelings about which of these ten films is "the best" from an artistic and/or entertainment standpoint and start thinking about what the particular challenges might have been, it feels like a different contest altogether, right? more...

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Holy Christmas Eve. It's More Critics Prizes

Argo is still soaring as precursors go...Tis the Season to Hear from Film Critics Circles and Orgs and Societies. The big news today – if you can call anything Off-Christmas news on Christmas Eve -- is that the Online Film Critics Society have announced their annual nominations with a parade of accordion accompanists on the streets of Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. Or at least that’s what I wish they’d done since they nominated Holy Motors for four prizes instead of the typical requisite runner up position here or there or nowhere. Instead of an accordion parade they just posted their nominations online…as societies are prone to do.

But they’re definitely worth mentioning this year as they seem to be sort-of-maybe a-little-bit-kind-of thinking for themselves beyond the standard pet-peevish traps -- there's plentiful category fraud (even though it doesn't really make sense for critics groups to do that unless they think of themselves as oscar pundits first in which case they might want to check their purpose and/ormission statements!) and the dismissals of Hugh Jackman and Matthew McConaughey, awardage impulses which tend to strike me as genre and gender-norms bias, respectively.

BEST PICTURE

• Argo
• Holy Motors
• The Master
• Moonrise Kingdom
• Zero Dark Thirty

lots more after the jump including weirdly formatted lists (i can't deal today. it's christmas eve) and three more regional critics prizes.

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