Washington Area Film Critics Honor Up in the Air
Smiling, with good reason: Clooney and the film he stars in get top honors from D.C. critics.
Up in the Air also topped the NBR's list, and seems the odds on favorite for the Academy Awards at the moment. It's hard to argue with a film that features Clooney's top-notch, charismatic performance (which also won him a Best Actor nod from WAFCA), and that sneaks some sensitively handled serious themes aboard a vehicle that would have defaulted to easy comedy in most directors' hands.
Many of the rest of the WAFCA's picks align pretty closely to the frontrunners that are expected to top most critics' polls: for Best Actress, Carey Mulligan's fantastic turn as a schoolgirl in 1960s London who enters into an ill-advised relationship with an older man in An Education; Best Supporting Actor is unquestionably Christoph Waltz for his magnetic performance as a Jew-hunting Nazi who is perhaps most frightening because he's so likeable in Inglourious Basterds; and Mo'Nique's shockingly dark and powerful portrayal of an abusive mother in Precious. One welcome surprise: Kathryn Bigelow takes Best Director honors for The Hurt Locker, a vastly better pick than the NBR's selection of Clint Eastwood, the who turned in an uncharacteristically lackluster effort with the inspiration-by-numbers of Invictus.
Since lists like these invite quibbles, here are mine. The first has nothing to do with the films selected, but rather the categories themselves. There's an award for art direction (picked up by the musical Nine), yet cinematographers and editors don't rate their own categories?
As to the films themselves, it's disappointing to see no acknowledgments for either A Serious Man or A Single Man. The former only got a nomination for original screenplay, and it belongs among the finalists for picture and director. The latter features a beautiful and heartbreaking performance by Colin Firth that should really edge out Clooney, as well as cinematography that is not only gorgeous to look at, but that subtly helps move the narrative and reflects the action of the plot. It might have been a lock if WAFCA actually rated it. Finally, passing over Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon, which is on par with his 2005 film Caché, for Best Foreign Film seems like a bad oversight. It is likely among the best films of the decade, let alone the year. But since Ribbon hasn't yet screened in D.C., one wonders if a significant number of the 48 critics in the association have not yet seen it. The winner, Sin Nombre, may have gotten a boost simply by virtue of the fact that it had a theatrical run here.
Here's the full list of winners; this list, along with the complete list of nominees, can be found here:
Best Film: Up in the Air
Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
Best Actor: George Clooney (Up in the Air)
Best Actress: Carey Mulligan (An Education)
Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)
Best Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique (Precious)
Best Ensemble: The Hurt Locker
Best Breakthrough Performance: Gabourey Sidibe (Precious)
Best Screenplay, Adapted: Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner (Up in the Air)
Best Screenplay, Original: Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)
Best Animated Film: Up
Best Foreign Film: Sin Nombre
Best Documentary: Food, Inc.
Best Art Direction: Nine