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The Los Angeles Critics Association picked their winners for 2006, and like the previously announced picks by the National Board of Review, it appears that this year’s clear fav is Letters From Iwo Jima. Also amongst the populist vote was The Queen – it picked up a no brainer best actress win for Helen Mirren, but also gave best supporting actor to Michael Sheen who did a great job at playing Tony Blair and a best screenplay for Peter Morgan – who manages to captivate the audiences’ attention from first act to last fade out. Some other worthy mentions that may not be the consensus with other associations are the nods to the production value for the upcoming Children of Men and a big cred goes to L.A Critics for having the balls to pick Sacha Baron Cohen (a tie with Whitaker) for Best Actor. The critics also had the foresight to vote the powerful and overlooked doc film Darwin’s Nightmare for the runner-up prize and my biggest surprise was to see that more than one person manage to see the restrained yet commanding performance from Luminita Gheorghiu in The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. She picks up a Best Supporting actress win for a Romanian film that was released in the U.S by Tartan Films in the early calendar.
Here are the complete list of 2006 winners:
Picture: “Letters From Iwo Jima”
Runner-up: “The Queen”
Director: Paul Greengrass, “United 93”
Runner-up: Clint Eastwood, “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters From Iwo Jima”
Actor: Sacha Baron Cohen, “Borat” and Forest Whitaker, “The Last King of Scotland” (tie) (no runner-up)
Actress: Helen Mirren, “The Queen”
Runner-up: Penelope Cruz, “Volver”
Supporting actor: Michael Sheen, “The Queen”
Runner-up: Sergi Lopez, “Pan’s Labyrinth”
Supporting actress: Luminita Gheorghiu, “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu”
Runner-up: Jennifer Hudson, “Dreamgirls”
Screenplay: Peter Morgan, “The Queen”
Runner-up: Michael Arndt, “Little Miss Sunshine”
Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki, “Children of Men”
Runner-up: Tom Stern, “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters From Iwo Jima”
Production design: Eugenio Caballero, “Pan’s Labyrinth”
Runner-up: Jim Clay and Geoffrey Kirkland, “Children of Men”
Music: Alexandre Desplat, “The Queen” and “The Painted Veil”
Runner-up: Thomas Newman, “The Good German” and “Little Children”
Foreign-language film: “The Lives of Others”
Runner-up: “Volver”
Documentary/non-fiction film: “An Inconvenient Truth”
Runner-up: “Darwin’s Nightmare”
Animation: “Happy Feet”
Runner-up: “Cars”
Douglas Edwards experimental/independent film/video award: “Old Joy” (Kelly Reichardt) and “In Between Days” (So Yong Kim)
New generation award: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris (directors) and Michael Arndt (screenwriter), “Little Miss Sunshine”
Career achievement award (previously announced): Robert Mulligan
