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National Board of Review Winners
Surprise surprise! The first critic’s year-end best list is out via the National Board of Review and it looks like an Eastwood/Scorsese duel might unfold yet again. Letters From Iwo Jima tops the chart as Best Picture, but Marty picks up Best Director honors. I imagine that more West coast circles and associations might give higher grades for Dreamgirls, while the bizarre omission of Little Children in all of the categories will be compensated by east coast critics.
Surprise surprise! The first critic’s year-end best list is out via the National Board of Review and it looks like an Eastwood/Scorsese duel might unfold yet again. Letters From Iwo Jima tops the chart as Best Picture, but Marty picks up Best Director honors. I imagine that more West coast circles and associations might give higher grades for Dreamgirls, while the bizarre omission of Little Children in all of the categories will be compensated by east coast critics. Without further ado, here is the complete winner breakdown.:
Best Film – Letters From Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood)
Best Director – Martin Scorsese (The Departed)
Best Actor – Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland)
Best Actress – Helen Mirren (The Queen)
Best Supporting Actor – Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond)
Best Supporting Actress – Catherine O’Hara (For Your Consideration)
Best breakthrough performance by an actress: Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) & Rinko Kikuchi (Babel)
Best breakthrough performance by an actor: Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson)
Best Original Screenplay: Zach Helm (Stranger Than Fiction)
Best Adapted Screenplay: Ron Nyswaner (Painted Veil)
Best Foreign Film – Volver (Pedro Almodovar)
Best Documentary – An Inconvenient Truth (Davis Guggenheim)
Best Animated Film – Cars (John Lasseter & Joe Ranft)
Top 10 Best Film
Babel – Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Blood Diamond – Edward Zwick
Departed – Martin Scorsese
The Devil Wears Prada – David Frankel
Flags of Our Fathers – Clint Eastwood
The History Boys – Nicholas Hytner
*Letters From Iwo Jima Clint Eastwood
Little Miss Sunshine – Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Notes on a Scandal – Richard Eyre
The Painted Veil – John Curran
Top 5 Documentary List
*An Inconvenient Truth
51 Birch Street
Iraq in Fragments
Shut Up & Sing
Wordplay
Top Independent films
Akeelah and the Bee
Bobby
Catch a Fire
Copying Beethoven
A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
Half Nelson
The Illusionist
Lonesome Jim
Sherrybaby
10 Items or Less
Thank You for Smoking
Career achievement awards: Actor Eli Wallach and producer Irwin Winkler
Billy Wilder Award for Excellence in Directing: Jonathan Demme
William K. Everson Film History Award: Specialty film distributor Donald Krim
Bvlgari Award for NBR Freedom of Expression: Water and World Trade Center
The awards ceremony will be held Jan. 9 at Cipriani’s 42nd Street in New York.
