I’ve been beating this drum for a while now, and it seems that I’m not alone. The Annual LA Film Critic Society awards were announced yesterday and fittingly, the best movie of the year was named the best movie of the year. The critic group gave the nod to Wall-E.
It should also be mentioned that The Dark Knight was named runner up.
The Folks over at Yahoo give us this:
“WALL-E” and “The Dark Knight” were unusually commercial choices for the critics, whose past best-picture winners have tended toward smaller films such as 2007’s “There Will Be Blood” and other recipients that include “Letters From Iwo Jima,” “Brokeback Mountain” and “Sideways.”
This is the correct decision. LA Film Critics… you have chosen wisely.
The awards run down looks like this:
BEST PICTURE – Wall-E
Runner Up – The Dark Knight
BEST ACTOR – Sean Penn (Milk)
Runner Up – Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)
BEST ACTRESS – Sally Hawkins (Happy Go Lucky)
Runner Up – Melissa Leo (Frozen River)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)
Runner Up – Eddie Marsan (Happy Go Lucky)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – Penelope Cruz (Cristina Barcelona)
Runner Up – Viola Davis (Doubt)
BEST DIRECTOR – Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionare)
Runner Up – Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight)
BERST SCREENPLAY – Happy Go Lucky
Runner Up – Synecdoche, New York
Wall-E is far and away the very best picture of the year. I have serious doubts that the Academy will give it the award… but it sure as hell better get nominated.
Hey John, I gotta disagree with the boat scene. The point of the story was that Gotham, thanks to Batman, will not give into fear. And I also think it wasn’t long at all. I think it should’ve been LONGER.
But that’s just my opinion
I agree with Aaron. I found The Dark Knight to be flawless. Everytime I tried to look for a flaw, I found nothing. Now I did like Wall-E, I’m not saying I didn’t, but I found The Dark Knight to be better.
The Dark Knight’s gonna beat the Oscars record. 12 statuettes!
i hope not Wall-E does not win.
Here’s one for ya then… How does Harvey Dent get out of the penthouse alive? Even though the Joker may think Harvey dove out the window in a Bat-suit… Why would they just leave that penhouse without making sure? Do a room check… Oh here’s a two door closet right off the ballroom, with a 4-5 foot aluminum rod sticking through the handles. We went to all the trouble to put a poison galss in the commissioners desk, plant an envelope on some cops and fill her trunk with joker-cards, but we can’t check just the rooms on this one floor. Alfred, Harvey Dent and a whole bunch of very interesting potential hostages are left, to die, by Batman so he can save one girl.
The first 50 some minutes are pretty flawless. The music is great, the photography is AMAZING, and the FX are state of the art. But the Joker still can’t check the closet.
hey John, good to see you comment one of my comments again.
my level of appreciation of the film is extremely high. The Dark Knight is a great movie, yes, and i will admit that i didnt like it when i walked out of the theater, until it settled, then i loved it. ok, so not flawless, not totally flawless, here were the errors i picked up.
– Two-Face wasted in the final minutes.
– scarecrow.
-yes, the batman voice was pushed to hard, thus i didnt care for that.
the prisoner who threw the detanator out of the window.
-Scrawcrow spraying the medicine on Brian, would make him insane, but we find out when Brian says “were trying to help you” that he did not go insane
Hey Aaron,
Sorry man, I have to side with Jared here. There were a lot of mistakes with TDK. The whole ridiculous boat scene was just pathetic, the way they wasted Two Face was unforgiveable, the batman voice was worse than it was in batman begins, it was too long… yadda yadda yadda.
It’s a wonderful movie, but flawed. The fact that you think it’s “flawless” leads me to think you’re too blinded by your appreciation for the film to be honest about it.
nope, flawless
Dark Knight was flawless?????? Ummm, no. Many little flaws a throughout. I loved the movie, but it had its share of mistakes all through.
the dark knight was FLAWLESS, execpt for the misuse of Scarecrow, but that is hardly a flaw.
there was never a thing Dragon Slayer and i agree on more than….THE DARK KNIGHT
the only flaw of wall e is the last 45 minutes which are booooorrrrring and ruin the film.
I went to a friend’s apartment-warming party and he showed WALL-E on Blu-Ray…holy shit, it looks GORGEOUS. It’s a fantastic film, and unlike TDK, which I LOVE but find minor faults with, WALL-E is pretty much flawless. If I had to get into the nitty-gritty about which one deserves Best Picture, I might have to go with WALL-E.
THE DARK KNIGHT! THE DARK KNIGHT! THE DARK KNIGHT…NO!!!!! NOT WALL-E!!!
no no no no!! The Dark Knight is the best pic, but of course, that is an opinion
Nice to hear this. I watched the movie and I think it has earned the award!
Greetings
That’s great to hear that WALL-E’s getting the respect and recognition it deserves. Both that and The Dark Knight are my two favorite films of 2008 and I’m glad they were pretty much neck-and-neck.
Also, with buzz about both of these films heavily being considered for a Best Picture nomination, it’ll be a historic Oscar season; as WALL-E will be the 2nd animated film to be nominated for such an honor in the last 17 years (since 1991’s Beauty and the Beast), while TDK will be the 1st ever Batman film (if not comic-book film in general) to be nominated for the award as well.
And, despite the 4/10 The Wrestler received on TMB, it’s a movie I look forward to seeing. Mickey Rourke has been nothing short of hailed for his performance and it’ll be good to see him treating Wrestlers like living beings and not some gag-reel.
When it comes Oscar nom time, they will look at Wall-E, and, yes, they loved the picture. But it is animated-so guess where they will stick it? That’s right : “Best Animated Picture”. Now, Disney/Pixar could pull the film out of contention for that category in hopes of a “Best Picture” instead of “Best Animated Picture” (where it is a slam dunk…the only minor competition is Kung Fu Panda) and that’s the one of two ways it can sneak by.
The other way? If we get an announcement in less than a week where the Academy decides to lop off the Best Animated Picture category altogether and save five to six minutes. But it won’t happen- the only reason why it even exists is because of the quality of Disney’s films from the 90’s and then the Pixar magic that followed. They (Academy) didn’t want animated films competing with live action films then, why change now? I’m not saying it’s a great choice-it’s been a thorn in the side ever since and needs to be X’d out- but I’m just pointing out the sad truth.
AS for ‘Dark Knight’—
With the recent announcement that the score is back “in” as a contender for score, that’s a good surprise. *This* list of LA Critics winners is also a step up.
What’s also a step up?
The nominations from BFCA (Broadcast Film Critics- the largest group of U.S. and Canadian reviewers with more than 200 members) which I’m surprised wasn’t mentioned here or recent posts…so let me do this honor:
From Reuters:
For its awards, the BFCA nominated 10 films for top movie: “Milk,” “Benjamin Button,” “The Dark Knight,” “Changeling,” “Doubt,” “Frost/Nixon,” “The Reader,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” “The Wrestler” and “Wall-E.”
Best actress nominees included Angelina Jolie in “Changeling,” Cate Blanchett for “Benjamin Button” and “Meryl Streep in “Doubt,” among others.
BFCA nominees for best actor included Penn for “Milk,” Frank Langella in “Frost/Nixon,” Pitt for “Benjamin Button” and Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler.”
The BFCA awards will be given out in a ceremony televised on cable TV network VH1 on January 8. A full list of nominees is available at criticschoice.vh1.com.
With the winners and these noms this early stage, it pushes the potential for the pictures and the talents behind them to be nominated for Oscars.
It goes without saying that if Knight were nominated- and if by some miracle Wall-E slips in (the irony being it won’t be “best animated film” if it does) they will be nom’d for quality but also the ratings will be the LOTR type ratings- films people have seen and/or care about
WOW! Awesome… I couldn’t agree more! A Wall-E Academy win would/could change the face of the awards forever. It’d probably help with their TV ratings too. I can picture kids across the country having fallen asleep on the living room floor waiting for Wall-E to be picked. It HAS to be nominated, or they’re full of it… and then what… 31 years ago they b— slapped Star Wars. They “honor to be nominated” Beauty and the Beast… I hope Wall-E and Dark Knight being ‘commercial’ don’t ruin it for one another.