La La Land is starting to come up big. After landing 12 Critics Choice Award Nominations, the film has been named Best Picture of the Year by the New York Film Critics Circle.
The NYFCC historical bellwether rate for determining Oscar’s best picture is over 40%. Even if they’re off, they’re spot on in other categories, read last year they were the first ones to call Mark Rylance as supporting actor for Bridge of Spies, months before he took home the Oscar.
As far as other winners, Moonlight and Manchester By The Sea split three wins a piece. For the Kenneth Longergan movie, Casey Affleck took best actor, Michelle Williams (she was also recognized for Certain Women) and the director’s screenplay took a trophy as well. Affleck won a Gotham award earlier this week for his turn in Manchester and he was also nominated for best actor by the Broadcast Critics today too.
Moonlight took best feature, screenplay and a special jury award at the Gothams, but here with the NYFCC it was Mahershala Ali, who like Affleck, also had a great morning nabbing a best supporting win from NYFCC for the coming-of-age drama and a Critics Choice nom as well. Barry Jenkins took best director while the pic’s DP James Laxton also won.
Aside from best supporting actor, NYFCC synced with Oscar’s final winner in the best animated film category (Inside Out), and while the org gave Son of Saul best first film, that movie continued on to win best foreign language film. Other than that NYFCC lauded Weinstein Co.’s Carol with best film, best director Todd Haynes, Phyllis Nagy’s screenplay and Edward Lachman’s DP work. Carol was overlooked by Oscars in the best picture, director categories, but received nominations in screenplay, cinematography, costumes, original score, actress (Cate Blanchett) and supporting actress (Rooney Mara) categories.
