NYFCC Loves Sally & Matthew & Zero Dark Thirty
Monday, December 3, 2012 at 1:44PM The New York Film Critics Circle, the oldest critics organizations founded in 1935 has 35 members. Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out New York is the current chair and today they announced their winners, with a strong showing for Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln. Will the other groups to come talk back or merely parrot their choices? And on and on until Oscar.
♫ ladies of Tampa... New York City ♪
FILM Zero Dark Thirty
DIRECTOR Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty
ACTRESS Rachel Weisz, The Deep Blue Sea
ACTOR Daniel Day Lewis, Lincoln
SUPPORTING ACTRESS Sally Field, Lincoln
SUPPORTING ACTOR Matthew McConaughey for Bernie & Magic Mike
ANIMATED FILM Frankenweenie
DOCUMENTARY The Central Park Five
FOREIGN FILM Amour
FIRST FILM David France for How to Survive a Plague
SCREENPLAY Tony Kushner for Lincoln
CINEMATOGRAPHY Greig Fraser for Zero Dark Thirty
Do you approve of their choices? (Other than Zero Dark Thirty which you probably haven't seen yet.)
I understand the appeal of giving people awards for multiple films in a stealler year but I'm not sure what Matthew McConaughey did in Bernie in particular to merit diluting his Magic Mike performances with a share. This seems highly uneccesary. The most surprising choice (thus far) is Sally Field, an obvious Oscar hopeful but I didn't expect the critics orgs to rally for her... unless it's one of those years where they're just sticking close to the Oscar buzz titles.
Reader Comments (71)
@CharlieG - as far as I'm aware, the film hasn't been re-edited. I saw it in October 2011 (and reviewed it for this very website) and certainly found Weisz worthy of major recognition. Just because you don't agree doesn't mean everyone else saw a different version of the film.
Delighted to see Rachel pop up here - I hope the critics can bolster her to the Oscars, though they have a fair few actresses they could and might need to get behind (Riva, Cotillard, Wallis, Knightley...). And though I haven't seen it, I'm happy for Zero Dark Thirty anyway.
I'm SO glad they didn't fall for Hathaway. Well done, NY!
And I do hope the NBR surprises us with different winners on Wednesday. Spread the wealth, people!!!!
How nuts, and sorta hilarious, would it be if Sally won a 3rd Oscar this year? After Meryl FINALLLLLY gets her 3rd after spending literally decades amassing nominations without winning. Here's a creepy parallel: it would be exactly the same amount of time between each woman's first nomination and third win. Freaky!
I mean, I know it's not gonna happen, but think about it...
Rachel Weisz? ! Bleh. This race got less interesting all of a sudden.
That means Quvenzhane or Emanuelle will be snubbed.
Oh my gosh, some of you guys are taking these way too seriously! Rachel Weisz probably isn't as much of a threat for best actress as Tilda Swinton was for Julia. ABSOLUTELY TINY film.
Les Mis and Hathaway aren't in danger. Christ. Nor are Alan Arkin or Emmanuel Riva. It's one prize. Just wait until the organisations that list FIVE contenders get going. :/
Rachel Weisz probably won't even get an Oscar nomination, but it's great great great! that a critics group as popular as this proves that they are having things their own way!
I do hope we get more pleasant surprises like this one in a couple of days.
Biggest surprise to me is Sally Field. I thought she was great in Lincoln, perfect for the role. But if this is a harbinger of things to come at Oscar time, I find it difficult to believe Field will win a third Oscar. DDL, yes, but Field, I doubt it.
@brandz
You're terrified of Field locking arms with Streep and Bergman on only three tries. I'm rooting for Sally Field to take SAG.
Yeah, I wouldn't put too much stock into Weisz's win here. It definitely brings her into the conversation, but she's really going to need to pick up some other wins to keep that going. The most I could see her getting from here on out is a BFCA nomination, and that's only because they have six nominees.
And while I think this cements Zero Dark Thirty as a surefire nominee, in no way does this mean it's now the frontrunner. I know statistic don't mean much in the Oscar race, but it says something that NYFCC and Oscar have only had matching Best Picture winners in 4 out of the last 20 years. Granted, however, one of those years was last year. In order for Zero Dark Thirty to become the frontrunner, it would at the very least have to also win LAFCA.
I quite liked The Deep Blue Sea but found Weisz essentially vacant. I'd be curious to hear one of her staunch supporters give me just one example of something interesting, or surprising, or incisive she did with that role, which another (half-decent) actress wouldn't.
It looks like Lawrence and Riva were the runner-ups with Chastain also very much in the running.
Field apparently narrowly beat out Hathaway, whereas McCaunaghey beat out Waltz (for Django) and Tommy Lee Jones.
Runner-ups to Bigelow were PTA and Affleck (I know the film's a heavy Oscar-fave and I even enjoyed it, but seriously? Affleck over Haneke, Anderson etc etc?)
Runner-ups to DDL were Jack Black (?!), Phoenix and Denis Lavant.
Runner-ups to Kushner were Zero Dark Thirty and Moonrise Kingdom.
@brandz
I am with you... although I thought Field was excellent in Lincoln, I hope she doe not get a third Oscar ... Her 2nd Oscar was a travesty .. Norma Rae started her acting towards uncontrolled.
Goran, her character is a shell of a human being so "vacant" is actually a compliment. I really got the fog that she allowed her character to walk through was eating away at her. I saw her as very raw in that role.
Hurrah for Weisz and Bigelow!
I don't remember where I read it but I liked the comment by the reviewer who said that he had already seen Anna Karenina this year before Wright's version. Rachel Weisz played essentially the same role in The Deep Blue Sea and did a dynamite job. (I can certainly be persuaded that it'd be easier to obsess over Tom Hiddleston than Aaron Johnson).
First, exactly what Glenn said. Having experienced and been diagnosed with severe depression, Weisz absolutely captured that experience, she effing nailed it, and to see it play out on screen in front of me was dazzling and frightening.
Second, I really want to insist that people have been writing up their predictions without really paying attention to the ground. I've ignored all the Oscar blogs this year -- well, 98% less than I have in the past -- and I've been aware of Rachel Weisz since March, when "The Deep Blue Sea" was released. I was actually quite shocked when I read here and at other blogs that people were surprised by Rachel's win (I had predicted her over at Awards Daily) and even that she had a film in contention this year.
(In fact, I also correctly predicted Matthew McConaughey, but then I went too far out on a limb and thought Thure Lindhardt ["Keep the Lights On"] would win over Daniel Day-Lewis; silly me.)
J. Hoberman blogged about the voting which he took part in and said that Anne Hathaway was ahead in several ballots and only lost by a few votes in the final ballot. Also Weisz only beat Jennifer Lawrence by a few votes as well after a few ballots. Argo and The Master were just behind Zero Dark Thirty for best picture. Beasts of the Southern Wild was popular in the voting but was beat out by How to Survive a Plague in the last ballot.
Aren't the New York critics known for their surprise actor wins? I went to one of their awards dinners -- for the films of 1998 -- and they gave the actress prize to Cameron Diaz for "Something About Mary" (and her acceptance speech included the line "next time I promise that I'll actually act"). Bill Murray won supporting for "Rushmore" and Lisa Kudrow for "The Opposite of Sex." I don't think any of them made the Oscar list.
"I didn't expect the critics orgs to rally for her... unless it's one of those years where they're just sticking close to the Oscar buzz titles."
But wouldn't they have voted for Hathaway if that's what they were doing? They probably really liked the film and performance.
I'm rooting for Chastain for the rest of the season (of course without having seen ZDT because that's me) and I still don't see Weisz getting a nod. Riva, Wallis, Chastain, Lawrence, Cotillard, Watts and Mirren are the group from which the nominees will arrive.
Rachel Weisz is a blatant surprise, the film itself suffers much for its histrionic mood showboating, I doubt she will make it to the top 5, if she succeeds, sadly will be a championing victory, which most of the time it is the quintessence of the Oscar-seeking anual hurly-burly.
my review of THE DEEP BLUE SEA, http://lasttimeisawdotcom.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/last-film-i-saw-the-deep-blue-sea/
Interesting choices overall. But Seriously, Rachel Weisz? I think she is a wonderful actress, but Deep Blue Sea joined my very short list of movies so bad that I walked out of the theater before it finished. It was slow, over-complicated, visually flat, and inspired nothing but utter hopelessness. I like their out of the box choice, but how anyone could celebrate his film astounds me.
Wow. Myself and John Waters have "The Deep Blue Sea" as the #1 best film of the year. Absolutely, astonishingly brilliant film.
JT-What was complicated about "The Deep Blue Sea." It's the simplest of stories, a love triangle. Yes, it's told in flashbacks but it's not at all hard to follow. And I completely disagree with the film being visually flat. It is gorgeous. Terence Davies is very much a visual poet, and when I close my eyes to think of the film I can conjure many haunting images from the film. I loved the tracking shot inside the subway station during the Blitz and that scene of Tom Hiddleston and Rachel Weisz dancing to " You Belong to Me" is achingly romantic. I didn't come away from the film feeling hopeless. There seems to be a sense of freedom at the end. Unlike Lily Bart from Terence Davies's adaptation of "The House of Mirth", Hester will probably go on with her life. But maybe I'm optimistic.