December 6, 2006

NBR. Top ten.

Letters From Iwo Jima The National Board of Review, the Iowa caucus of each year's awards season, has pronounced Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima best picture of the year. Variety has their full top ten.

Updates: Movie City News has the full list of award-winners. Perhaps most notable here is Martin Scorsese's being named Best Director.

David Poland: "[B]y this time next week, NBR will be nothing but a long forgotten bug on the windshield of the season. As they deserve to be."

Updates, 12/7: Nick Davis breaks down the list.

Todd McCarthy files a review for Variety: "Flags and Letters represent a genuinely imposing achievement, one that looks at war unflinchingly - that does not deny its necessity but above all laments the human loss it entails."



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Posted by dwhudson at December 6, 2006 12:22 PM

Comments

They like "The Devil Wears Prada" but they don't include "Children of Men"?! Or "Pan's Labyrinth"?! Or "Little Children"?! Or "United 93"?!

Is this a joke?

Posted by: Jeffrey Overstreet at December 6, 2006 12:43 PM

Depends on how you define "joke," I guess, Jeffrey. It's the National Board of Review. [g]

Posted by: David Hudson at December 6, 2006 1:19 PM

that was a really crappy list...

Posted by: tim t. at December 6, 2006 3:18 PM

Not to join the bandwagon or anything, but c'mon. This is a disappointing list for a disappointing year in film.

Posted by: Tyler Beane at December 6, 2006 10:11 PM

I've actually considered winning this award a rather dubious distinction for a while now. Though last year's winner (Good Night, and Good Luck.) was respectable. Hopefully that signalled a turnaround, as I really want Letters From Iwo Jima to be good, but right now my expectation that it will be is lower than it was yesterday.

Posted by: Brian at December 6, 2006 10:12 PM

I'm sick and tired of films being chosen for awards only on the basis of their being English language films with 'foreign' films being given some separate consolation prize. Anglocentricism has no place in art. Just for the record, the best films I saw in 2006 were: Climates (Ceylan); Three Times (Hou); The Death of Mr Lazerescu: Flanders (Dumont): Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa); Quei Loro Incontri (Straub-Huillet's last film); Time of Closure (devastating Swiss doc about a man dying) and Symptoms and a Century.

Posted by: ronald bergan at December 7, 2006 1:58 PM

Just to note, The National Board of Review does have separate categories for the Top Foreign and Top Independent films of year. Whether this is a consolation prize is up to personal judgment I guess.

Posted by: Tyler Beane at December 7, 2006 8:57 PM

I call that apARTheid.

Posted by: ronald bergan at December 7, 2006 10:42 PM