George Clooney, Vera Farmiga in Up in the Air
Jason Reitman's Up in the Air, the tale of a corporate-downsizing expert and frequent flyer who begins to question both his ethics and his life's purpose, was voted best film of 2009 by the Southeastern Film Critics Association.
Among the other Southeastern Film Critics award winners were George Clooney as the downsizing guy in Up in the Air, Meryl Streep as Julia Child in Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia, Christoph Waltz as a mean Nazi in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, and Mo'Nique as a mean mom in Lee Daniels' Precious. All four performers have won awards elsewhere and all four could rightfully be considered the top contenders for the 2010 Academy Awards.
Here's a partial list of their previous wins: National Board of Review (Clooney), the Washington critics (Clooney, Mo'Nique, Waltz), the Boston critics (Streep, Mo'Nique, Waltz), the New York Film Critics Online (Streep, Mo'Nique, Waltz), the New York Film Critics (Clooney, Streep, Waltz, Mo'Nique), the Los Angeles critics (Mo’Nique, Waltz), the San Francisco Film Critics (Streep, Mo'Nique), and even Cannes (Waltz) and Sundance (Mo'Nique).
Olivier Assayas' family drama Summer Hours, starring Jérémie Renier, Juliette Binoche and Charles Berling (above), was voted best foreign language film. It's the fourth win for this family drama that up to now hadn't been getting all that much awards buzz. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, Summer Hours wasn't getting any buzz at all. That has all changed since the Los Angeles, Boston, and New York critics went for it.
Recognition outside critics' circles — i.e., the Golden Globes, the Oscars — looks iffy. Not helping matters is the fact that the film is ineligible for the best foreign language film Oscar because France submitted Jacques Audiard's acclaimed prison drama A Prophet instead.
And That Evening Sun, starring Hal Holbrook, has finally won a critics award: the Southeastern critics' Wyatt Award for a film "that captures the spirit of the South."