Below is the list of winners of the National Board of Review awards along with their annual ten-best lists.
Total Mentions
(5) Up in the Air (4) Invictus (3) The Messenger (2) Burma VJ; (500) Days of Summer; The Hurt Locker; Moon; The Most Dangerous Man in America; A Serious Man
The Winners
Film: Up in the Air Director: Clint Eastwood – Invictus Actor: (TIE) Morgan Freeman – Invictus; George Clooney – Up in the Air Actress: Carey Mulligan – An Education
Supporting Actor: Woody Harrelson – The Messenger Supporting Actress: Anna Kendrick – Up in the Air Foreign Film: Un Prophète Documentary: The Cove Animated Feature: Up Ensemble: It’s Complicated Breakthrough Actor: Jeremy Renner – The Hurt Locker Breakthrough Actress: Gabourney Sidibe – Precious Directorial Debut: (TIE) Duncan Jones – Moon; Oren Moverman – The Messenger; Marc Webb – (500) Days of Summer Original Screenplay: A Serious Man Adapted Screenplay: Up in the Air Special Filmmaking Achievement: Wes Anderson – Fantastic Mr. Fox Freedom of Expression: Burma VJ; Invictus; The Most Dangerous Man in America
Top 11 Films (Alphabetical)
An Education
(500) Days Of Summer
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Invictus
The Messenger
A Serious Man
Star Trek
Up
Up In The Air
Where The Wild Things Are
Top 10 Independent Films (Alphabetical)
Amreeka
District 9
Goodbye Solo
Humpday
In The Loop
Julia
Me And Orson Welles
Moon
Sugar
Two Lovers
Top 6 Foreign Films (Alphabetical)
The Maid
A Prophet
Revanche
Song Of Sparrows
Three Monkeys
The White Ribbon
Top 6 Documentaries (Alphabetical)
Burma VJ: Reporting From A Closed Country
The Cove
Crude
Food, Inc.
Good Hair
The Most Dangerous Man In America: Daniel Ellsberg And The Pentagon Papers
I think Nine has a very, VERY good chance of being one of the 10 nominees. Aside from the extremely good early review from Variety, it’s got an all-star cast, many of whom have either been nominated, or won Oscars before. Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench and Sophia Lauren have all won Oscars. Kate Hudson has been nominated before. That makes up the vast majority of the major actors in the film. Rob Marshall is a nominee, for Chicago, which won Best Picture. Memoirs of a Geisha didn’t get much attention outside of technical awards, and many have been waiting for Marshall to return to musicals since Chicago was such a resounding success. I think Oscar will definitely notice that. Other people working on the film are also Oscar nominees or winners. The Cinematographer, Dion Beebe, for example, won for Memoirs of a Geisha. If the film doesn’t make it into the 10 nominees for Best Picture, it’ll be because it gets resoundingly bad reviews.
The problem with the list of musicals you mention is that all but one of them had tepid to nasty reviews (Dreamgirls had strong, but not stellar notices; Mamma Mia received a tepid reception and Phantom and Producers were blasted by critics). And to Dreamgirls’ credit, it was the most nominated film of the year and, had there been ten Best Picture nominees, it’s mention would have been guaranteed.
With Nine, however, you have a proven Oscar nominee at the helm, the first review I’ve read from Variety seems to be glowing, and I think Nine suffers most from being a Weinstein child. Although Inglourious made the list, Nine did not. And I wonder if they are rejecting films that release so late in the year. Invictus is the only one of the major films is releasing after this week to get a mention. I don’t know if they didn’t see it or they are nonplussed by so many late-year releases earning attention, which may well be the case.
What further confirms that in my mind is that they seem to have a Clint Eastwood fetish. Gran Torino and Changeling both made their Top 10 list last year and Clint even won for Best Actor, the only prize he received, yet prompted him to be touted as a possible Best Actor spoiler. The Oscars not only ignored Gran Torino, but gave up only three nominations for Changeling.
It’s a little too early, in my opinion, to get a consensus opinion on this stuff. The NBR can be helpful, but it can also be a hindrance. In my previous article, I mentioned out they have had a decent track record at banking Best Picture nominations from their list since 2002. Well, looking at their history prior to that, it’s not so rosey. The previous three years alone only saw two mentions make it through. On top of that, only twice in the last ten years has their Best Picture selection also won the Oscar (though it was the two most recent, so who knows). If you take it back to twenty years, which isn’t necessarily the best comparison, that total increases to 7. Still, 7 in 20 isn’t that great of a record.
Agreed. However, it does raise the questions that do movie musicals still hold the lock for major prestige awards like they once did? Chicago seems to be the last real musical to make major waves. All of the others afterwards fell short (The Phantom of the Opera, Dreamgirls, The Producers, Mamma Mia). Of course, how well they’re made does go into question, but it could show that musicals may not have the clout that they did in the 1950s and 1960s. Nine may still be in the running, but it’s chances of being a big sweeper could suffer.
Precious may be seen as more of an acting triumph, if only because of how difficult the movie may be to sit through. There’s a long history of movies that have fallen under that category (Requiem for a Dream, A History of Violence, I’m Not There, etc.) So Sidibe and Mo’Nique may have cemented themselves for nominations for acting, but Best Picture may be a bit of a hard sell.
The Lovely Bones is going to need some seriously good reviews at this point to get more than technical nominations, I think. Sure, we have ten potential Best Picture nominees, but is the Academy going to pull more of the same nominees?
Wow. Precious goes almost completely unnoticed. Only one award for “Breakthrough Actress”. I have to wonder why that was. I would have expected it to get more attention here. It wasn’t even mentioned as one of the best Independent Films. I wonder how much that hurts its Oscar chances.
I don’t know that it hurts the film’s chances. If this were a five-nominee year, perhaps, but we can have ten nominations. I would say that Precious is still in the running as are both Nine and The Lovely Bones despite all being roundly ignored.
Below is the list of winners of the National Board of Review awards along with their annual ten-best lists.
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