LAFCA Awards, thread 2: Beasts of the Southern Cali

[hurricanesmith]

That will never, ever happen here.

Everyone used to agree on Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's Nobel Peace Prize, until Greg got here.

HS

[McTeague]

Fuck it, fuck it. I switched to "Amour" as my runner up all the time. I kept reading the reviews from LA voters and kept telling to myself "damn it, it really has the best reviews from this bunch". But then I saw their track record with foreign films (one win in their entire history, or something like that?) and then I saw everyone else's predictions, and then I saw how bad my no-guts-no-glory predictions had went in NY, and I kept editing it back to The Master and ZDT. Fuck it. When I play safe they go wild, and vice-versa.

[electric_storm]

Nice rundown of the whole awards here btw:

http://weblogs.variety.com/thevote/2012/12/lafc.html

Seems "Beasts" was unofficially their 3rd placer.

[with_one_voice]

Nice rundown of the whole awards here btw:

http://weblogs.variety.com/thevote/2012/12/lafc.html

Seems "Beasts" was unofficially their 3rd placer.

Makes sense, considering the shocking win for Dwight Henry.

This is interesting. Their top 5 in Best Picture voting:

The best-picture voting saw "Amour" earn enough of a consensus to vault over "Beasts," "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Holy Motors" into a showdown with "The Master," which, having just copped a directing prize for Anderson, yielded graciously to Haneke's film in the run-off.

[with_one_voice]

Also I just want to add that I think the voting methods of these critics group is really, really stupid. Like, they gave Amour the win because they had already given PTA Director? I just think that's silly, that they're deliberately modifying their selections to essentially "spread the wealth". And the NYFCC system seems even stupider, how Lawrence and Chastain were tied, but people hated them so much that they all just supported someone (Weisz) who no one even cared about in the first place. It's just ridiculous that these political motivations affect the results for these groups - and these groups carry weight, too. These problems could easily be solved by voting on every category at once using a ranked (preferential) ballot. That way none of this "I'm gonna support this person who I didn't care about before JUST so Lawrence doesn't beat my favorite Chastain", or "I prefer The Master to Amour but we just gave The Master a Director win so let's not give it Best Picture". Like, ugh.

[Joscar]

The biggest take-aways of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awards:

Amour becomes only the third foreign language film to take top honors, after Best Picture nominees Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Letters from Iwo Jima. Also, it is only the third film to take both the Cannes Golden Palm and LAFCA Award for Best Film, after Secrets & Lies and Pulp Fiction, both of which were nominated for Best Picture as well. Is there an overlap in LAFCA and Academy voters? No. But Amour is certainly in very prestigious company, and especially due to its subject material, must be considered as a dark horse Best Picture contender.

Further analysis here: LAFCA Analysis: Los Angeles Film Critics Are in "Love"

[tnb]

Wow so PSH and Dowd were very close to winning the supporting cats!