The New York Film Critics Circle announced their Best of 2013 winners today and, as always, it was a slow moving ordeal as Sarah Polley‘s Stories We Tell won Best Non Fiction Film around 7:45 AM PST and the last of the twelve awards wasn’t announced until 12:07 when American Hustle was announced as the winner of the org’s Best Picture and I have to say, I didn’t see it coming, but more on that in my review which is just down the line.
The film also saw Jennifer Lawrence steamroll Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave) and Oprah Winfrey (Lee Daniels’ The Butler) for a Supporting Actress win and Eric Singer and David O. Russell’s screenplay also won, as the film took home three of the major awards.
It was nice to see Fruitvale Station continue its winning ways after last night’s good fortunes at the Gotham Awards where it took home a pair of Breakthrough awards. No real surprise at Best Actress as Cate Blanchett is expected to ride the wave of love all the way to an Oscar win for her work in Woody Allen‘s Blue Jasmine, but at Best Actor it was more of a toss-up as to who would win as Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave) is a strong candidate for the Oscar win, but the NYC crix decided to go with Robert Redford for his great work in the lone-man-at-sea pic All is Lost. This is a film that needed this kind of win as I have already pointed out, love to see the appreciation.
Lawrence’s win in the Supporting categories wasn’t the only interesting result as Jared Leto gets a little love bump for his fantastic work in Dallas Buyers Club. Nice to see.
Most notable is the lack of wins for 12 Years a Slave. While Steve McQueen took home the Best Director win, the lack of love at Best Actor, Supporting Actress, Screenplay and Picture is noticeable. Also, how about nothing for Gravity? Problem?
Of course, this is just he beginning of a very long season which continues tomorrow with the National Board of Review’s announcement and you can check out my Awards Calendar for even more.
The complete list of New York Film Critics winners is listed below and you can check out all my current Oscar predictions here and my Oscar Overture, which tracks several of these precursor awards, right here.
BEST PICTURE
- American Hustle
BEST DIRECTOR
- Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave)
BEST ACTOR
- Robert Redford (All Is Lost)
BEST ACTRESS
- Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
- Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
- Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)
BEST SCREENPLAY
- Eric Singer and David O. Russell (American Hustle)
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
- Bruno Delbonnel (Inside Llewyn Davis)
BEST ANIMATED FILM
- The Wind Rises
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
- Blue Is the Warmest Color
BEST NON-FICTION FEATURE
- Stories We Tell
BEST FIRST FEATURE
- Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station)
