The last 24 hours have seen a veritable downpour of opinions on what have been the pinnacle moments of film in 2009: Crickets from Boston and Los Angeles have cast their ballots, the New York Film Critics will do so later today, and even those envelope-pushers at the AFI have staked their ground. And now, the Broadcast Film Critics Association have released their list of nominees for the 2010 Critics' Choice Awards, a ceremony that will be broadcast live by VH1 on January 15.
Both Inglourious Basterds and Nine fared very well this morning, each hauling in a record ten nominations. And after being bolstered by some rapturous reviews last week, Avatar continues to gain momentum; with each passing day, the film seems more likely to be included in the final list of ten Oscar Best Picture nominees. Here's a list of the nominees in some of the most-watched fields:
BEST PICTURE
Avatar, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Invictus, Nine, Precious, A Serious Man, Up, Up in the Air.
BEST ACTOR
Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart; George Clooney - Up in the Air; Colin Firth - A Single Man; Morgan Freeman - Invictus; Viggo Mortensen - The Road; Jeremy Renner - The Hurt Locker
BEST ACTRESS
Emily Blunt - The Young Victoria; Sandra Bullock - The Blind Side; Carey Mulligan - An Education; Saoirse Ronan - The Lovely Bones; Gabourey Sidibe - Precious; Meryl Streep - Julie & Julia
BEST DIRECTING
Kathryn Bigelow - The Hurt Locker; James Cameron - Avatar; Lee Daniels - Precious; Clint Eastwood - Invictus; Jason Reitman - Up in the Air; Quentin Tarantino - Inglourious Basterds
For a complete list of nominees, click here.
While this is no doubt a big day for the Weinstein Company, we couldn't help but notice that their prize pickup from the Toronto International Film Festival, A Single Man, was shut out of the Best Picture and Best Director races (though it did pick up four nods, including a Best Actor nom for Colin Firth and a Best Supporting Actress nom for Julianne Moore). This will no doubt cause Harvey some consternation, as he'll now have to figure out if his cash-strapped organization has enough funding to push A Single Man for the top prizes in the Oscar race, or if those funds should be used to support Inglourious and Nine. Should be interesting to watch!
