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Critics Gaga for Clint's "Baby"
For once, Sideways didn't win a critics award. But in defeat, it may have kept its Oscar dream alive.
Alexander Payne's wine-praising film was bypassed by Clint Eastwood's sweaty boxing drama Million Dollar Baby for Best Film honors Saturday night from the National Society of Film Critics.
The group's award is among the most prestigious in movieland. It is also among the worst indicators of future Oscar success.
Since 1967, the National Society of Film Critics, comprised of top-flight newspaper and magazine scribes who care not if their picks coincide with conventional wisdom, have selected only two films (Annie Hall and Schindler's List) that have gone onto to claim the Best Picture Academy Award.
Many times, its members champion films, including Mulholland Drive, American Splendor and Out of Sight, to name three recent honorees, that don't even go onto claim Best Picture nominations.
Million Dollar Baby, up for Best Picture at Monday night's Critics' Choice Awards and Best Motion Picture, Drama at next weekend's Golden Globes, probably won't suffer that fate.
The Eastwood film is expected to rack up Oscar nominations across the board, including the high-profile acting categories where Hilary Swank, who buffed up for her role as a boxer, is a Best Actress contender.
The National Society of Film Critics didn't hurt Swank's chances in that regard, voting her Best Actress in a tie with Vera Drake's Imelda Staunton. (The group's acting picks have a better track record at the Oscars than its movie picks. Last year, Charlize Theron was honored by the group for Monster, en route to her Best Actress coronation at the Oscars.)
Jamie Foxx added to his pre-Oscar laurels with a narrow Best Actor win over Sideways' Paul Giamatti and Million Dollar Baby's own Eastwood. Foxx was honored for his work in both Ray and Collateral.
Overall, Sideways scored three wins, the most of any movie, for Best supporting Actress Virginia Madsen, Best Supporting Actor Thomas Haden Church and Best Screenplay for the tandem of Payne and Jim Taylor.
The comedy-drama, the darling of most critics groups, was denied a fourth win as Best Film possibly because of an East Coast bias against the California wine country-set tale, Roger Ebert wrote in Monday's Chicago Sun-Times. The Easterners tended to favor Eastwood, who last year was named Best Director by the group for Mystic River.
This year, Eastwood ran third in the Best Director race behind Payne and the winner, Zhang Yimou, of the Chinese epics House of Flying Daggers and Hero. (The group releases the tallies of the top three vote-getters in each category.)
Odds-on Oscar favorite The Aviator didn't win, show or place in any category. Which, all things considered, might not have been such a bad thing.
Here's a complete look at the winners of the National Society of Film Critics' awards for 2004:
Film: Million Dollar Baby
Actor: Jamie Foxx, Ray and Collateral
Actress: (tie) Imelda Staunton, Vera Drake; Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby
Supporting Actor: Thomas Haden Church, Sideways
Supporting Actress: Virginia Madsen, Sideways
Director: Zhang Yimou, House of Flying Daggers and Hero
Screenplay: Sideways
Cinematography: House of Flying Daggers
Documentary: Tarnation
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