I'd be sort of sad if I had to start my annual year-end film detrius thread here.

I wish I knew. Not literally, but I wish I knew. I guess people whose credentials didn't stack up to the standards of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assoc.

On the other hand, Peter Travers likes it.

Wait a sec, maybe that was just the trailer you saw? Isn't the hype on this one that S.S. used 1940s vintage equipment to shoot it?

interesting.

sad comment from any taubin.

nathan lee is a really good writer, personally prefer him to atkinson.

but foundas... ech.

The National Board of Review winners, however, are what this thread was created for:

Top 10 Films (winner in bold)
Babel
Blood Diamond
The Departed
The Devil Wears Prada
Flags of Our Fathers
The History Boys
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
Notes on a Scandal
The Painted Veil

Best Foreign Film
Curse of the Golden Flower
Days of Glory
Pan's Labyrinth
Volver
Water

Best Actor
Forest Whitaker, The Last King Of Scotland

Best Actress
Helen Mirren, The Queen

Best Supporting Actor
Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond

Best Supporting Actress
Catherine O'hara, For Your Consideration

Best Acting By An Ensemble
The Departed

Breakthrough Performance - Male
Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson

Breakthrough Performance - Female
Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
Rinko Kikuchi, Babel

Best Director
Martin Scorsese, The Departed

Best Directorial Debut
Jason Reitman, Thank You For Smoking

Best Adapted Screenplay
Ron Nyswaner, The Painted Veil

Best Original Screenplay
Zach Helm, Stranger Than Fiction

Best Documentary
51 Birch Street
An Inconvenient Truth
Iraq in Fragments
Shut Up & Sing
Wordplay

Top 10 Independent Films
Akeelah and the Bee
Bobby
Catch a Fire
Copying Beethoven
A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
Half Nelson
The Illusionist
Lonesome Jim
Sherrybaby
10 Items or Less
Thank You for Smoking

Best Animated Feature
Cars

has Letters from Iwo Jima even been released in LA?

is that the Oklahoma! Critics Circle?

1 United 93 (Paul Greengrass) The best movie in the last five years. No cheap shots in this one! I have friends who would watch a snuff film, yet they refuse to see this great action picture—I don’t get why.

2 Jackass Number Two (Jeff Tremaine) Playing on more than three thousand screens, Jackass 2 was the number-one-grossing movie in America on its opening weekend—and the male stars eat shit and drink horse semen for real. They’re nude a lot, too. If this isn’t cultural terrorism, I don’t know what is.

3 The Last King of Scotland (Kevin Macdonald) Forest Whitaker tops the performance of Joseph Olita in 1981’s Rise and Fall of Idi Amin, one of my all-time favorite trash masterpieces.

4 Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell) When was the last time the star of a film rimmed someone, sang “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and walked away with his dignity? A touching, lovely movie that I hope gets turned into a Broadway musical.

5 The Departed (Martin Scorsese) The best-acted film of the year from America’s coolest director. The final shot is beyond perfection.

6 Sherrybaby (Laurie Collyer) Maggie Gyllenhaal plays an ex-convict drug addict (the kind I see in Baltimore every day), and the film is so depressing and great that I wish I could see it with an all-female prison audience.

7 Inside Man (Spike Lee) Handsome bank-robbing outfits—so chic, so scary, so fashionably conformist.

8 Sleeping Dogs Lie (Bobcat Goldthwait) A feminist tale of a girl who once blew her dog and mistakenly tells her boyfriend. Now there’s a high-concept romantic comedy.

9 Hamilton (Matthew Porterfield) A tiny, minimalist art film from Baltimore that made it to New York and is astonishing in its simple beauty, amazing performances, and hypnotic pace. The real thing.

10 Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola) Sofia Coppola is Karen Kilimnik!

No shit. Jesus is that list depressing.

In any case, it's the worst year ever for me going to cinema from America or anywhere else.

I don't think it's all that shocking when US distributors seem to be taking fewer and fewer chances (or ones that do are folding). Tsai ming-Liang has completed two since Goodbye Dragon Inn that haven't been distrib'd.

Foreign detrius films are crowd-pleasers; even if I liked Volver OK, I'd likely put Kekexili (Mountain Patrol), Battle in Heaven, 4, Fratricide plus maybe Changing Times ahead of it.

Doesn't The Science of Sleep count as foreign?

L.A. FILM CRITICS
Picture: "Letters From Iwo Jima"
Runner-up: "The Queen"

Director: Paul Greengrass, "United 93"
Runner-up: Clint Eastwood, "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters From Iwo Jima"

Actor: Sacha Baron Cohen, "Borat" and Forest Whitaker, "The Last King of Scotland" (tie) (no runner-up)

Actress: Helen Mirren, "The Queen"
Runner-up: Penelope Cruz, "Volver"

Supporting actor: Michael Sheen, "The Queen"
Runner-up: Sergi Lopez, "Pan's Labyrinth"

Supporting actress: Luminita Gheorghiu, "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu"
Runner-up: Jennifer Hudson, "Dreamgirls"

Screenplay: Peter Morgan, "The Queen"
Runner-up: Michael Arndt, "Little Miss Sunshine"

Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki, "Children of Men"
Runner-up: Tom Stern, "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters From Iwo Jima"

Production design: Eugenio Caballero, "Pan's Labyrinth"
Runner-up: Jim Clay and Geoffrey Kirkland, "Children of Men"

Music: Alexandre Desplat, "The Queen" and "The Painted Veil"
Runner-up: Thomas Newman, "The Good German" and "Little Children"

Foreign-language film: "The Lives of Others"
Runner-up: "Volver"

Documentary/non-fiction film: "An Inconvenient Truth"
Runner-up: "Darwin's Nightmare"

Animation: "Happy Feet"
Runner-up: "Cars"

Douglas Edwards experimental/independent film/video award: "Old Joy" (Kelly Reichardt) and "In Between Days" (So Yong Kim)

New generation award: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris (directors) and Michael Arndt (screenwriter), "Little Miss Sunshine"

Career achievement award (previously announced): Robert Mulligan

----------

BOSTON FILM CRITICS
Best Picture: The Departed (ru: United 93)
Best Director: Martin Scorsese (ru: Paul Greengrass)
Best Actor: Forest Whitaker (ru: Ryan Gosling)
Best Actress: Helen Mirren (ru: Judi Dench)
Best Supporting Actor: Mark Wahlberg (ru: Michael Sheen, Alec Baldwin)
Best Supporting Actress: Shareeka Epps (ru: Meryl Streep)
Best Ensemble Cast: United 93 (ru: The Departed)
Best Screenplay: The Departed (ru: The Queen)
Best Foreign Film: Pan's Labyrinth (ru: Volver)
Best Documentary: Deliver Us from Evil, Shut Up & Sing (ru: 51 Birch Street)
Best New Filmaker: Ryan Fleck (ru: Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris)
Best Cinematography: Pan's Labyrinth (ru: The Painted Veil, Curse of the Golden Flower)

Idi Amin and Borat tying in LA is about the level of 'seriousness' present in the whole exercise.

Douglas Edwards experimental/independent film/video award: "Old Joy" (Kelly Reichardt) and "In Between Days" (So Yong Kim)

^the Ghettoizing Actual Art award?^

http://www.amctheatres.com/promos/showcase/

http://www.cinematical.com/2007/02/20/oscar-predictions-what-would-ernest-borgnine-do/