New York Film Critics Circle Awards - 2006 Winners
by Andre Soares
U.S. film critics continue to make a few curious choices.
At the 2006 New York Film Critics Circle Awards, announced earlier today, the most interesting winner was the Best Foreign Language Film: the somber 1969 French Resistance drama L’Armée des ombres / Armies of Shadows, adapted for the screen (from a novel by Joseph Kessel) and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. Both Meville (born Grumbach) and Kessel were French Jews who joined the Resistance in 1941.
Though made more than 35 years ago, L’Armée des ombres was only this year released in the United States. Yesterday, the film won a Special Mention from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. In the cast: Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and Simone Signoret.
Among the other top New York Critics winners were Best Film United 93, the tale of the plane that was brought down on a Pennsylvania field on September 11, 2001 (I haven’t mustered enough courage to watch this one, yet); Best Actor Forest Whitaker for incarnating Uganda leader Idi Amin Dada in The Last King of Scotland; Best Actress Helen Mirren for perfectly bringing to screen life another leader (Mirren had previously won in 2001, as a supporting actress, for Gosford Park), Queen Elizabeth II of England in The Queen; Best Director Martin Scorsese for handling the absurd crime drama The Departed (Scorsese had previously won in 1990, for Goodfellas); and Best Screenplay, The Queen by Peter Morgan.
Letters from Iwo Jima, the top film at both the Los Angeles Critics and the National Board of Review, showed up only once among the New York Critics top three choices: Third place for Clint Eastwood in the Best Director category.
In The Gold Derby, Tom O’Neil explains that The Queen and The Departed were actually the New York critics’ two favorites. However, due to their labyrinthine voting rules, United 93 won as a “compromise” choice. Reading O’Neil’s description of the event, I couldn’t quite figure out how the New York critics’ voting system works — or doesn’t work. In fact, the absurd strategic voting patterns described in O’Neil’s article make the New York Critics Circle awards seem like even more of a joke than the Golden Globes.
Full list of winners at the 2006 New York Film Critics Circle Awards
In another Gold Derby article, Tom O’Neil discusses the New York Film Critics’ bizarre way of appeasing two warring factions by picking a (sometimes absurd) third-party winner (e.g., Cameron Diaz, chosen Best Actress of 1998 for looking blonde in the godawful There’s Something About Mary).
Marrakech Film Festival 2006 - Official Competition
Marrakech Film Festival Awards - 2006 Winners
Australian Film Institute Awards - 2006 Winners
Asian Festival of 1st Films Awards 2006
Academy May Change Documentary Feature Eligibility Rules
Comments
Leave a Reply
Note: All comments are moderated. Different views and opinions are welcome, but abusive/bigoted/flaming comments will NOT be approved. Also, please be aware that the Alternative Film Guide has NO contact information for the talent mentioned in this blog or any information pertaining to or access to distributors'/producers' film prints.
