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!
’Inglourious Basterds’ and ‘Nine’ receive record Critics Choice nominations [Circuit/LAT]