Waltz away with honor

Israel's first animated feature, Waltz with Bashir, has taken the top honor at the National Society of Film Critics shindig. The award couldn't be timelier, as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict enters a new and dreadful phase. Other winners: Sean Penn for Milk, Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, and Mike Leigh for Happy-Go-Lucky, and a newcomer to the yearly honor roll, Hanna Schygulla for The Edge of Heaven.

SAG surprises

The increasingly prominent Screen Actors Guild award nominations have been announced, and while there's no Doubt about it, it's not looking good for Kristin Scott Thomas, a presumptive front-runner for Oscar consideration whose excellent performance in I've Loved You So Long was shut out. The blah movie surrounding it was a likely factor. If it's any consolation, come what may Academy Awards time, she's already received three Bob nominations, for that role, her supporting turn in Tell No One, and her Broadway appearance in The Seagull, which ends its run this weekend. Speculation aside,it doesn't get much better than that.

Golden Globes announced

For the record, just passing it on...The Reader, which seems unendurably middlebrow, gets a little ugly duckling love, as does Kristin Scott Thomas, terrific in the otherwise undistinguished I've Loved You So Long. She can relax a little about her chances for an Oscar nomination.

Awards season, again

Let the end-of-year exercise in congratulation and flagellation begin. The National Board of Review has made its listand checked it twice, and voted Danny Boyle's Mumbai-set Slumdog Millionaire the best picture of the year. In two eyebrow-raisers, Clint Eastwood's said-to-be-swan song performance in his typically self-directed Gran Torino won for best actor, with its screenplay claiming top honor in that category; early reviews suggest that the first is a gold-watch sentimental choice, and the second simply daft. (The trailer, and Eastwood's rusty bucket vocals on the title track, co-written and it would seem co-performed by the far more capable Jamie Cullum, don't hold much promise--as a crooner, Eastwood hasn't improved much since Paint Your Wagon--but I dig the circa-1983 poster.) Josh Brolin's win for Milk is a little curdling (as if Dan White were somehow being honored; would I have felt the same cway if he had won for W.?) and the blood-and-thunder Mongol a left-field foreign film winner (though it was an Oscar nominee) but it's good to see the excellent Let the Right One In and the "breakthrough" Viola Davis (for Doubt) getting a little NBR love. I imagine she, Eastwood, the slumdogs, and supporting actress winner Penelope Cruz should start going in for fittings now.