Can anybody beat Forest Whitaker?
Leonardo DiCaprio has a better statistical shot than anyone at the 12th Annual Critics' Choice Awards, having received a pair of Best Actor nominations Tuesday.
DiCaprio's in the running for adopting a South African accent in Blood Diamond. And DiCaprio's in the running for adopting a Boston accent in The Departed.
Whitaker looms large with the lone nomination for The Last King of Scotland—the movie about dictator Idi Amin that so far has brought Whitaker year-end plaudits from critics groups in New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Washington, D.C., as well as the National Board of Review.
The Queen's Helen Mirren has been just as unbeatable as Whitaker, likewise earning honors from all the major critics groups. Critics' Choice voters were no less impressed with Mirren, nominating the Brit in what has become her own personal category, Best Actress.
Among films, the mob-friendly The Departed, the multilingual Babel, the quirky Little Miss Sunshine and the splashy Dreamgirls led the way with seven nods each.
Unlike the other top critics groups, which announce short-and-sweet slates of winners, the Broadcast Film Critics Association (the outfit behind the Critics' Choice Awards) slots more than 100 nominees across 19 categories, offering the season's first potential preview of the overall Oscar race.
All of this is good news for Ben Affleck, who generated loads of Academy Award buzz for stepping into George Reeves' woolen Superman tights in Hollywoodland but had nothing to show for it—until Tuesday. Now, per the Critics' Choice announcement, he's officially a Best Supporting Actor nominee.
Jack Nicholson, Will Smith, Meryl Streep and Eddie Murphy are other big names who made their biggest splashes of the award-show season via the Critics' Choice nominations.
Nicholson, noted for being a good bad guy in The Departed, and Murphy, noted for being James Brown-esque in Dreamgirls, will go up against Affleck in the Best Supporting Actor race. The other nominees: Little Miss Sunshine's Alan Arkin, Flags of Our Fathers' Adam Beach and Blood Diamond's Djimon Hounsou.
Smith, who pursues the heartstrings in The Pursuit of Happyness, is in the Best Actor game opposite Whitaker, DiCaprio and...DiCaprio. Ryan Gosling, lauded as the crack-addict teacher in Half Nelson, and seven-time Oscar loser Peter O'Toole, lauded as the aged thespian in Venus, round out the field.
Streep, who went gray and scary in The Devil Wears Prada, is in the Best Actress race opposite Mirren. Also there: Volver's Penélope Cruz, Notes on a Scandal's Judi Dench and Little Children's Kate Winslet.
The Best Supporting Actress field is led by Jennifer Hudson, the odds-on Oscar favorite for Dreamgirls, and Catherine O'Hara, who has her supporters (and an NBR win) for the spoof For Your Consideration. Also nominated: Mexican actress Adriana Barraza and Japanese actress Rinko Kukuchi, both for Babel; Cate Blanchett for Notes on a Scandal; and Emma Thompson for playing the novelist out to get Will Ferrell in Stranger Than Fiction.
Elsewhere: Clint Eastwood picked up a Best Director nod for the Japanese-troops flick Letters from Iwo Jima, but not for the American-troops flick Flags of Our Fathers; Letters from Iwo Jima picked up a Best Picture nod and a Best Foreign-Language Film nod; Borat picked up a Best Comedy Movie nomination, but not an acting nomination for star Sacha Baron Cohen; and the Will Smith family picked up a second nomination—via a Best Young Actor nod—for Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, the elder Smith's eight-year-old son and Pursuit of Happyness costar.
The Critics' Choice Awards are scheduled to be presented Jan. 12. E! will broadcast the show on Jan. 20. (E! Online and E! Entertainment Television are divisions of E! Networks.)
Here's a review of the nominations for the 12th Annual Critics' Choice Awards:
Best Picture:
- Babel
- Blood Diamond
- The Departed
- Dreamgirls
- Letters from Iwo Jima
- Little Children
- Little Miss Sunshine
- Notes on a Scandal
- The Queen
- United 93
Best Actor:
- Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond
- Leonardo DiCaprio, The Departed
- Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson
- Peter O'Toole, Venus
- Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness
- Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland
Best Actress:
- Penélope Cruz, Volver
- Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal
- Helen Mirren, The Queen
- Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada
- Kate Winslet, Little Children
Best Supporting Actor:
- Ben Affleck, Hollywoodland
- Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
- Adam Beach, Flags of Our Fathers
- Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond
- Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls
- Jack Nicholson, The Departed
Best Supporting Actress:
- Adriana Barraza, Babel
- Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal
- Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
- Rinko Kikuchi, Babel
- Catherine O'Hara, For Your Consideration
- Emma Thompson, Stranger Than Fiction
Best Acting Ensemble:
- Babel
- Bobby
- The Departed
- Dreamgirls
- Little Miss Sunshine
- A Prairie Home Companion
Best Director:
- Bill Condon, Dreamgirls
- Clint Eastwood, Letters from Iwo Jima
- Stephen Frears, The Queen
- Paul Greengrass, United 93
- Martin Scorsese, The Departed
Best Writer:
- Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine
- Guillermo Arriaga, Babel
- Todd Field and Tom Perrotta, Little Children
- Zach Helm, Stranger Than Fiction
- William Monahan, The Departed
- Peter Morgan, The Queen
Best Animated Feature:
- Cars
- Flushed Away
- Happy Feet
- Monster House
- Over the Hedge
Best Young Actor:
- Cameron Bright, Thank You for Smoking
- Joseph Cross, Running with Scissors
- Paul Dano, Little Miss Sunshine
- Freddie Highmore, A Good Year
- Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness
Best Young Actress:
- Ivana Baquero, Pan's Labyrinth
- Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine
- Shareeka Epps, Half Nelson
- Dakota Fanning, Charlotte's Web
- Keke Palmer, Akeelah and the Bee
Best Comedy Movie:
- Borat
- For Your Consideration
- Little Miss Sunshine
- The Devil Wears Prada
- Thank You for Smoking
Best Family Film (Live Action):
- Akeelah and the Bee
- Charlotte's Web
- Flicka
- Lassie
- Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest
Best Picture Made for Television:
- Elizabeth I
- The Librarian
- Nightmares & Dreamscapes
- The Ron Clark Story
- When the Levees Broke
Best Foreign-Language Film:
- Apocalypto
- Days of Glory
- Letters from Iwo Jima
- Pan's Labyrinth
- Volver
- Water
Best Song:
- "I Need to Wake Up," Melissa Etheridge for An Inconvenient Truth
- "Listen," Beyoncé for Dreamgirls
- "My Little Girl," Tim McGraw for Flicka
- "The Neighbor," Dixie Chicks for Shut Up & Sing
- "Never Gonna Break My Faith," Aretha Franklin and Mary J. Blige for Bobby
- "Ordinary Miracle," Sarah McLachlan for Charlotte's Web
Best Soundtrack:
- Babel
- Cars
- Dreamgirls
- Happy Feet
- Marie Antoinette
Best Composer:
- Philip Glass, The Illusionist
- Clint Mansell, The Fountain
- Thomas Newman, The Good German
- Gustavo Santaolalla, Babel
- Howard Shore, The Departed
- Hans Zimmer, The Da Vinci Code
Best Documentary Feature:
- An Inconvenient Truth
- Shut Up & Sing
- This Film Is Not Yet Rated
- Who Killed the Electric Car?
- Wordplay