It’s starting to look like early predictions that Slumdog Millionaire would be the Juno of 2008 were wrong: Juno, though a massive box office hit and an eventual Best Picture nominee, wasn’t selected as the Best Film of its year by a single critics group, an honor which Danny Boyle’s film has landed several times in the last week alone. Though excluded from AFI’s list of the Top Ten films of 2008 (it’s possible that Wendy and Lucy took its place — and if so, awesome), Slumdog was given top honors by the New York Film Critics Online (which I just joined, although I won’t be eligible to vote until next year), the Boston Society of Film Critics, and the National Board of Review (not purely critics, but often treated as such). The Los Angeles critics gave Danny Boyle Best Director, and most surprising (to me, anyway), the New York Film Critics Circle cited Slumdog’s cinematographer, Anthony Dod-Mantle, over Harris Savides, who shot their #1 film, Milk.
So what does it all mean?!? None of these groups have a particularly fool-proof track record when it comes to predicting Oscar glory, but the blanket of praise for Slumdog seems to have already lent the film an air of inevitability in a year otherwise lacking in films that everyone can get behind. Which is annoying for those of us who think Slumdog is a servicable crowd-pleaser which has been way over-praised. Which would mean that it *is* Juno 2, after all.
So yesterday, the Los Angeles Film Critics made the stunning move of voting Wall-E as the Best Film of 2008. Stunning, because this is the first time the body has ever given their top honor to an animated film; stunning because last year, they gave it to the decidedly less commercial There Will Be Blood, thereby giving that film one of the boosts it needed to be nominated for Best Picture. The rest of the LAFCA awards were split amongst a wide range of films: Danny Boyle for director, Sean Penn for Actor, Happy-Go-Lucky’s Sally Hawkins as Actor, and, in the biggest wealth-spreading move of all, Waltz With Bashir as Best Animated Film.
Now, today, the New York Film Critics Circle are voting on thier awards as we speak, and the results are leaking in dribs and drabs via member Mike D’Angelo’s Twitter stream. Like their LA counterparts, the New York critics have so far shared the love amongst a number of pictures––Rachel Getting Married for its screenplay, Slumdog Millionaire for its cinematography, Hawkins for Actress, Mike Leigh for Best Director––and so unless Happy-Go-Lucky takes Best Picture, we can either call this magnanimity, or we can call it what it likely is: there is not a single film this year that stands head and shoulders above the rest.
…Read more
