It looks like everything David O Russell and Jennifer Lawrence touch turns to gold.
The New York Film Critics Circle awarded the ensemble pic, American Hustle, the 2013 awards for Best Film, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress for Lawrence. But according to NYFCC member, David Edelstein, their victory was a slim one.
He told his colleague, Jesse David Fox from Vulture, that “the final vote for Best Picture resulted in a rare tie-breaker.” Many favored other pieces such as Gravity, Inside Llewelyn Davis and 12 Years A Slave. Edelstein said that Steve McQueen’s film hosted a strong camp to rival American Hustle’s, as shown by McQueen’s Best Director win, and that the vote for Best Picture was remarkably close, with some members expressing “visible dismay” when the final number was tallied.
The NYFCC along with the National Board of Review tends to set the bar for the other critic awards that follow, making American Hustle the big pic to beat.
The New York Post‘s Lou Lumenick posted his own ballot-by-ballot voting account of the voting procedure to Twitter, including the Circle’s rules that the proxy votes of critics not present at the voting drop out if a winner’s not declared on the first vote. After that, the balloting shifts to a weighted system wherein each critic votes for three films. The winner must not only get the most points, but most also appear on a majority of ballots. Hollywood Else reports that an anonymous account claimed that thirty to thirty-one critics were present with the rest voting by proxy.
Lumenick says that come the fifth ballot for Best Picture, only twenty-six members were still around, with American Hustle winning 14-12 over 12 Years A Slave.
That’s not to say that McQueen and Lawrence are the only award magnets to watch. The full list of the NYFCC’s 2013 awards follows below.
—
Best Actress — Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine.
Best Actor — Robert Redford, All is Lost.
Best Supporting Actor — Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club.
Best Cinematography — Bruce Delbonnel, Inside Llewelyn Davis.
Best Foreign Language Film —Blue is the Warmest Color, as directed by Abdellatif Kechiche.
Best Nonfiction Film — Stories we Tell, as directed by Sarah Polley.
Best Animated Feature — The Wind Rises, as directed by Hayao Miyazaki.
Best First Feature — Fruitvale Station, as directed by Ryan Coogler.
—
Source: Indiewire
