'The Descendants' and 'Drive' Thrive at the 2011 Satellite Awards

I’m still waiting on the Best Picture winner from the Southeastern and Chicago Film Critics groups, which will be the last of the awards I will be tracking until January 12, 2012 when the Broadcast Film Critics Association hands out their awards at the 2012 Critics Choice Awards. However, tonight the International Press Academy announced the winners of the 2011 Satellite Awards where The Descendants took home the award for Best Motion Picture and Best Screenplay, but Drive was the night’s biggest winner taking home four Satellite Awards for Director (Nicolas Winding Refn), Actor (Ryan Gosling), Supporting Actor (Albert Brooks) and best Sound.

Joining The Descendants with two wins was The Tree of Life for best Original Screenplay and a Supporting Actress win for Jessica Chastain, which may be a sign the actress will face a problem of competing with herself as she has been racking up awards lately for her Supporting role in The Help, but with lauded performances also in Tree of Life and Take Shelter there may be an issue where she’s awarded often and yet not enough when it comes Oscar time.

Viola Davis won best Actress for The Help, The Adventures of Tin Tin won best Animated Feature, Senna won best Documentary and Marco Beltrami won as an interesting choice for Best Score for his work on Soul Surfer.

I’ve included the full list of film winners directly below and you can browse the list of nominees and television winners right here.

I have also updated my “Oscar Overture” with the Best Picture win for The Descendants, the film’s second major win in a week after being awarded Best Film by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

As of now the Best Picture race seems to be boiling down to a competition between The Artist and The Descendants. I have not yet updated my Best Picture predictions, but while many are saying The Artist is the front-runner my opinion is moving toward The Descendants at this moment, but once The Artist expands a bit wider Christmas weekend I may have to change my mind once again.

Stay tuned as I’ll have a more detailed and official batch of Best Picture updates very soon. For now, here are those winners…

Best Motion Picture