Michael Haneke's Palme D'Or-winning Amour has continued its emergence as a strong outside bet for Oscars success after taking three top prizes from the National Society of Film Critics at the weekend.
The Austrian film-maker's French-language drama about an elderly couple dealing with the aftermath of a devastating stroke was named best film of 2012, while Haneke was garlanded with the best director prize and Emmanuelle Riva won best actress. It was also a good night for Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, which has an even better shot at being the year's big winner at February's Academy Awards; the historical biopic taking best actor for Daniel Day-Lewis and best screenplay for Tony Kushner's script. Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master achieved rare honours in what has been a disappointing awards season for the critically acclaimed period drama: it took best supporting actress for Amy Adams and best cinematography for Mihai Malaimare Jr.
The 60-strong National Society of Film Critics occasionally proves an Oscars bellwether, but is also capable of offbeat choices and has leaned notably towards non-English-language fare in recent years. In 2011 it named Lars von Trier's Melancholia as best film, and in 2007 it gave the award to Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir. Neither film was among the major Oscars contenders for its year of release. The NSFC did successfully spotlight Academy Award-winners The Hurt Locker and The Social Network in 2009 and 2010, however. Elsewhere, Matthew McConaughey won best supporting actor for his performances in Magic Mike and Bernie, while documentary The Gatekeepers, about Israel's secretive internal security service, won the non-fiction prize.
Amour has already won the best picture, best director, best actor and best actress prizes at the European film awards last month, as well as honours from influential critics bodies in LA, San Francisco, Boston and New York. It looks the clear frontrunner for the best foreign-language prize at the Oscars, but could yet break out of the foreign-language film ghetto to be a contender in mainstream categories, as Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful did in 1999.
A hint of the glitz and glamour to be expected at this year's Oscars was delivered at the weekend by the annual Palm Springs international film festival, which played host to Academy Award-winners such as Sally Field, Helen Hunt, Robert Zemeckis and Ben Affleck, as well as luminaries such as Naomi Watts and Richard Gere. Field, who stars as Mary Todd Lincoln in Lincoln, picked up a career achievement award, while Hunt took the spotlight award for her turn as a "sex surrogate" in The Sessions. Bradley Cooper and Watts received achievement awards for their performances in Silver Linings Playbook and The Impossible, while the cast of Affleck's Argo won the ensemble performance award. Zemeckis was named director of the year, and Gere won a special chairman's award for his performance in Arbitrage. The celebrity-centred awards are generally recognised as a harmless bit of fluff ahead of more meaningful ceremonies such as the Screen Actors Guild awards and the Oscars themselves.
The nominees for the 85th Academy Awards will be revealed on 24 January, with the ceremony proper following on 24 February at the Dolby theatre in LA.
