The Los Angeles Film Critics Association announced their 2012 film awards today where The Master took home the most awards but couldn’t beat out Michael Haneke‘s Amour for Best Picture and yet, couldn’t win Best Foreign Language film.
Amour‘s Emmanuelle Riva also tied for Best Actress with Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook), but otherwise The Master took home Best Director (Paul Thomas Anderson), Best Actor (Joaquin Phoenix), Best Supporting Actress (Amy Adams) and Production Design. I updated the awards live and have left the rundown as the day went on directly below exactly as it played out.
Beasts of the Southern Wild was the day’s first winner with Dwight Henry starting things off with a Best Supporting Actor win (Christoph Waltz was runner-up for Django Unchained) followed by a win for Dan Romer and Benh Zeitlin for Best Music/Score.
Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables, The Dark Knight Rises) may be the front-runner for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars, but with the LA critics she could only manage runner-up, with the win going to Amy Adams (The Master).
Best Cinematography will be an interesting category at the Oscars this year as there are so many to choose from and a wide variety of candidates and styles. The Los Angeles critical core decided Roger Deakins (Skyfall) was the best, but will it help the long-time nominated, but never won cinematographer at the Oscars?
The Gatekeepers was named Best Documentary over current Oscar favorite Searching for Sugar Man in race that is going to be tight as How to Survive a Plague also looks to be a potential contender.
The Master was named runner-up for Best Music/Score while it did win for Best Production Design and Tim Burton‘s Frankenweenie was named Best Animated Feature.
After a lunch break the group returned to award Best Editing, which went to Dylan Tichenor and William Goldenberg for Zero Dark Thirty. Goldenberg was also named runner-up for his work on Ben Affleck‘s Argo. This marked the first time the group handed out an award for editing.
Best Screenplay doesn’t take into account Original or Adapted as they are all lumped together, but both the winner and runner-up ended up being adaptations. Chris Terrio winning for his Argo screenplay with David O. Russell‘s Silver Linings Playbook taking runner-up status. I have been collecting as many of the Oscar contending screenplays as I can for you to download and if you haven’t yet checked them out click here for all 27 collected so far.
It seems a foregone conclusion that Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln) will be winning the Oscar for Best Actor, but there is no love for Day-Lewis from the LA critics as Joaquin Phoenix (The Master) takes the honors with the critical darling Denis Lavant (Holy Motors) taking runner-up.
Best Actress is going to be a fun race to watch at the Oscars as Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty) and Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook) will battle it out with their polar opposite performances. Well, if you put any stock in the LA critics having an effect on the race, what do you make of a tie for Best Actress between Lawrence and Emmanuelle Riva for her moving performance in Michael Haneke‘s Amour?
Will it be Steven Spielberg (Lincoln) or Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty) to win Best Director at the Oscars? If the Los Angeles Film Critics have anything to say about it Bigelow is in play, but Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master) is the king.
Speaking of king, The Master couldn’t win everything as it only managed runner-up for Best Picture, losing to Haneke’s Amour. How that makes sense I have no idea, but that’s how it goes.
Amour has now been added to my Oscar Overture, compiling the list of major precursor winners leading up to the Oscars.
This is the last of what I consider to be the current year’s “major” precursor awards until the new year begins with the Critics’ Choice Awards on January 10, 2013.
Updated winners are listed below. Feel free to predict the winners as this group tends to take a long time to announce their winners.
Best Picture
- Amour
Runner-up: The Master
Best Actor
- Joaquin Phoenix (The Master)
Runner-up: Denis Lavant (Holy Motors)
Best Actress (TIE)
- Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook)
Emmanuelle Riva (Amour)
Best Supporting Actor
- Dwight Henry (Beasts of the Southern Wild)
Runner-up: Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained)
Best Supporting Actress
- Amy Adams (The Master)
Runner-up: Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables, The Dark Knight Rises)
Best Director
- Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master)
Runner-up: Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty)
Best Screenplay
- Argo (Chris Terrio)
Runner-up: Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell)
Best Editing
- Zero Dark Thirty (Dylan Tichenor and William Goldenberg)
Runner-up: Argo (William Goldenberg)
Best Cinematography
- Skyfall (Roger Deakins)
Runner-up: The Master (Mihai Malaimare Jr.)
Best Documentary/Non-fiction Film
- The Gatekeepers
Runner-up: Searching for Sugar Man
Best Animated Film
- Frankenweenie
Runner-up: It’s Such a Beautiful Day
Best Foreign Language Film
- Holy Motors
Runner-up: Footnote
Best Music/Score
- Beasts of the Southern Wild (Dan Romer and Benh Zeitlin)
Runner-up: The Master (Jonny Greenwood)
Best Production Design
- The Master (David Crank and Jack Fisk)
Runner-up: Moonrise Kingdom (Adam Stockhausen)
Douglas E. Edwards Award
For Independent/Experimental Film/Video
- Leviathan (dir. Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel)
