December
9
LA Film Critics Reward There Will Be Blood, Day-Lewis, Cotillard
As I suspected, the National Board of Review vote for No Country for Old Men moved the LAFCA to seek another consensus winner, a film that could use their support: There Will Be Blood. Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis also won director and actor, respectively. As expected, La Vie En Rose's Marion Cotillard won actress, and Gone Baby Gone's Amy Ryan continues to solidify her supporting actress Oscar slot. A screenplay win for The Savage's Tamara Jenkins can only help push her forward. And 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days continues its surge of impressive wins. Here's Variety.
LA Film Critics' 2007 LAFCA Awards
Best Picture: There Will Be Blood
Runner-up: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Runner-up: Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Actress: Marion Cotillard, La Vie En Rose
Runner-up: Anamaria Marinca, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Runner-up: Frank Langella, Starting Out In The Evening
Screenplay: Tamara Jenkins, The Savages
Runner-up: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Foreign language film: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
Runner-up: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
New generation: Sarah Polley, Away From Her
Supporting actress:
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Runner-up: Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
Supporting actor:
Vlad Ivanov, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days)
Runner-up: Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Best Feature Animation (tie):
Persepolis and Ratatouille
Documentary/Non-fiction film:
No End in Sight, directed by Charles Ferguson
Runner-up: Sicko, directed by Michael Moore
Production design:
Jack Fisk, There Will Be Blood
Dante Ferretti, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Music:
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, Once
Runner-up: Jonny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood
Cinematography:
Janusz Kaminski, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood
Douglas Edwards Indie Award:
Colossal Youth directed by Pedro Costa
Career Achievement:
Sidney Lumet
The Boston Film Critics went for No Country for Old Men.
And Lust, Caution dominated Asia's Chinese-language Golden Horse Awards. 
The IDA honors Michael Moore's Sicko.
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So watch now, for the New York Film Critics NOT to vote for TWBB tomorrow, and also not necessarily to side with the NBR with "No Country..." They'll do something different. Just to BE different...
"Sweeney"? "Atonement?"
Posted by: Stephen Holt | December 09, 2007 at 07:20 PM
If you're right that TWbB and Diving Bell got wins and runner-ups to give their profiles a boost then good for the LA critics. But is it realy beyond possibility that, you know, they actually thought them the most deserving? The depth of support across eligible categories for these two films suggested to me that they were genuinely admired. But perhaps I'm being naive.
Posted by: sartre | December 09, 2007 at 08:08 PM
Anne--
You're quite incorrect in your blog yesterday, assuming that LAFCA picked THERE WILL BE BLOOD because of National Board of Review. Where do you folks covering every micro-detail of the awards season come up with this stuff? I think you're just guessing at these things, and that applies to all of the bloggers/columnists trying to sniff out a fresh angle. But that leads you into fictions. I can assure you that if you had popped into the meeting and done a flash poll asking which film won NBR voting, the huge majority of LAFCA members would either not know,not care or be merely guessing. No one cares about NBR. They're a joke, proof being that the only thing that stuck in my mind about their list is that it included THE BUCKET LIST. It should be pretty clear from the results that the group at large felt that THERE WILL BE BLOOD was the best American film of the year, by several miles.
Bob
Posted by: Robert Koehler | December 11, 2007 at 12:34 AM
As soon as I saw the NBR award for No Country for Old Men, I thought, now the LAFC will find another worthy film that needs their help. Of course you genuinely feel that TWBB deserves your kudos. But many of you also feel that way about No Country for Old Men. The fact that many of you don't take NBR seriously is one reason--consciously or not--that their vote might have been a factor with the way the LA critics went. Maybe not for you, but for your colleagues.
Posted by: anne thompson | December 11, 2007 at 12:40 AM
Anne/David--
Here's another example of what I mean. This nonsense today from David Poland---
"I suspect that No Country will continue to take critics group hits – aka not winning a dominant amount – because of its front-runner status amongst “art” films in the race to be Oscar nominated...it continues to look like critics will give kudos to films they don’t really think will get the love on Oscar Sunday and hope that one or two less mainstreamed picks will slide in with their help. Nothing wrong with that."
This is a fiction. No such calculation exists, particularly in a year where there were votes for a wide range of films, but with one film (TWBB) the clear favorite. What I realize now is that you folks are projecting your own particular focus, which is driven by an Oscar calculus, onto other voting groups. This is where you get into trouble, since none of this goes on in the group. You may both be absolutely convinced in your theses, that a group such as LAFCA calculates its votes based on some other organization's activities (in your case, Anne,the National Board of Review; in your case, David, AMPAS). But you would both be wrong.
Trust me on this.
Bob
Posted by: robert Koehler | December 11, 2007 at 12:42 AM
You know, Bob… I completely believe YOU.
And I completely believe that no one ever says, “We can’t do X because Group 1 did X already,” out loud.
But I also know that there are all kinds of motivations in all the groups other than simply, “this is what is best.” And while I trust that you behave on standard that alone, not everyone is so pure.
For clarity’s sake, LAFCA was first this year and others will react to it. Would NY have gone No Country if LAFCA had? Who knows? But human nature is human nature.
Ironically, the critic-lite BFCA has the most pure voting system, amongst the larger groups. Vote by e-mail… no discussion… no negotiations… no personalities… just “what do you want to see in?” Add ‘em up.
And so you know, the reason I ask Gurus and Gurus 2.0 to deliver at the same time, even though they publish on different days, is so G2ers won’t be influenced by the senior circuit… because even though none of the guessers would ever admit it, people ARE influenced. Each week, I have seen certain Gurus ahead or behind the curve of those who have seen movies early. I can see when a few Gurus have heard from a long-lead writer who is talking a film up or down all over town. I would guess that you could chart who of us saw what movie in what week simply by looking at the numbers rise and fall.
Or would Sidney Lumet have gotten a lifetime achievement honor weeks ago if anyone thought the film was going to have a real shot at Best Picture or he for Best Director?
I’m not all that cynical about the individuals, but Bob, baby, you gotta acknowledge that the rest of the world is not Koehler pure… just as you use screeners for a serious purpose and others just want their toys…
Finally, I don’t think that ANY critic group pays any attention to NBR. It is, as I keep saying, irrelevant to anyone but media. But I also would say that Ms. Ryan is benefiting greatly from groups wanting to push her to an Oscar nod. I don’t think any sane person can objectively put her performance and Cate Blanchett’s in the same realm… unless they don’t like Blanchett’s performance at all, which is anyone’s right. LAFCA members, like most critics, like to push towards a better future, rather than lingering in the obvious nominee and likely winner… and that is an influenced bias as well.
I completely respect LAFCA’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days nods… but that is its own form of self indulgence… much as NYFCC giving Best Foreign Language to Army of Shadows last year then giving it to The Lives of Others this year… making a statement that you don’t care about the real world is as much a game as giving in, albeit a better one.
Julie Christie over Marion Cotillard in NY? Really? Unbiased? Uninfluenced? Passionate argument?
D
Posted by: David Poland | December 11, 2007 at 12:45 AM
I love how Criss Angel was able to read Oprah's eyes to figure out what number she'd written on a piece of paper...
Posted by: Edward Wilson | December 11, 2007 at 09:16 AM