The first major televised award show of the season has suddenly clarified the rest of the campaign leading up to its grand finale, the Academy Awards.
The 17th Annual Critics Choice Movie Awards, presented by the influential Broadcast Film Critics Association and aired on VH1, anointed some surprise winners during the two-hour telecast live last night from the Hollywood Palladium.
“The Help,” released last summer, clearly was not forgotten and made a deep impression on the critics– sweeping the acting categories. First, it was Octavia Spencer, who took the trophy as best supporting actress. And then, her castmate and fellow maid in the film, Viola Davis, accepted the award as best actress against a tough field of contenders including Meryl Streep, Tilda Swinton, Charlize Theron, Elizabeth Olsen and Michelle Williams.
Davis gave a rousing and emotional speech, chronicling her rise as an actress and citing women like those in the film, and her mother and grandmother as those who paved the way for her. She spoke of love and friendship–themes that are certain to presage themes in more of her speeches to come during the season.
“The Help” also took home the acting ensemble prize, topping “The Ides of March,” “Bridesmaids,” “The Descendants” and “The Artist.”
But it was the latter film that took the critics by storm, and was honored with the top prize of best picture handed out at the end of the show, which was hosted by comedians Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel. “The Artist” had already picked up three other awards during the evening, for costume design, score and best director.
Yes, we are all going to have to learn how to pronounce the name Michel Hazanavicius, the director of the silent film, which has become a box office phenomenon.
He charmingly accepted his trophy while citing other great directors in the room like Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.
Scorsese was given a huge honor by having none other than the legendary Bob Dylan serenade him for winning the critics’ Music + Film award for his brilliant use of music to punctuate the drama and his many acclaimed films.
We would have loved to hear more, but time constraints of a live telecast did not permit any encores that normally would have followed from the audience’ s rousing reception.
For best actor, the field could supply any” sexiest man alive” covers for the next six years–with the six actors being George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio (who with Olivia Harrison presented Scorsese with his music award), Brad Pitt (still hobbling on a cane from that knee injury) Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling and Jean Dujardin, star of “The Artist.”
But it was the charismatic Clooney who was awarded the trophy for his role in “The Descendants” as a middle-age man struggling with family relationships.
Score one for Entertainment Weekly for having Clooney and Davis as the cover photo in its recent Oscar race issue.
The screenwriting awards are also indicative of what’s to come in the categories of original and adapted. Woody Allen, not surprisingly in absentia, was awarded original screenplay honors and Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin (Pitt’s date for the evening) took the prize for their adaptation of Michael Lewis’ baseball exposé “Moneyball.”
Sean Penn appeared by satellite from Haiti to accept the Joel Siegel award for humanitarian efforts and young Thomas Horn, star of the 9/11 drama “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” got the best young actor award. On the other end of the spectrum– and he cited his age himself– Christopher Plummer was honored with the best supporting actor statuette for his role in a movie that not many have seen, “Beginners.”
In addition to the telecast, VH1, produced a dynamic second screen experience for viewers which included video streams from critics commenting on the proceedings as the night unfolded. The show also resulted in a number of trending topics on Twitter, most notably for Dylan, Plummer, Scorsese, Spencer and Davis–all deserving of further recognition.
