Eric Lavallée

Promoting themselves as a barometer for Oscar predictions – this pretty much group all the favorites and safe picks. Leading the pack are “Babel," "The Departed," "Dreamgirls" and "Little Miss Sunshine" each with seven nominations each. Now its in 12th year, the Critics Choice Award is voted on by film critics from almost 200 television, radio and online critics. The 12th annual Critics’ Choice Awards ceremony will be held on Friday, January 12, 2007, at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.

I was beginning to think that I’d be alone in championing Todd Field’s superb sophomore effort, but today the San Francisco Film Critics' Circle gave a trio of awards to his suburban drama. Little Children was selected for best picture, best adapted screenplay and Jackie Earle Haley picked up a second win for his best supporting actor. The biggest, most deserving surprise comes with the Best Supporting Actress that was given out to Adriana Barraza for Babel - she plays the Mexican-born nanny in deep dodo. Perhaps the biggest surprise was the winner for Best Original Screenplay – given to the modern day (high school) film noir Brick.

"should come in handy for those who still think of dollars bills when you mention the notion of becoming more green".

"should come in handy for those who still think of dollars bills when you mention the notion of becoming more green".

After half a week’s worth of film critic circles awards, looks like Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker are shoe-ins for some major silverware (including the Oscars), and George Miller’s Happy Feet is looking to be the consensus top animated pic, but where it is getting interesting is in the best feature film category. United 93 was selected as the top pic of the year by the New York Film Critics Circle - an organization of film reviewers from New York-based publications that exists since 1935.