The Boston Society of Film Critics (BSFC) is an organization of film reviewers from Boston are publications, formed in 1981 to make “Boston’s unique critical perspective heard on a national and international level by awarding commendations to the best of the year’s films and filmmakers and local film theaters and film societies that offer outstanding film programming.” Every year the Boston Society of Film Critics give their Boston Society of Film Critics Awards, many of which go on to acclaim at the Golden Globes (in January) and the Oscars (in February). [NOTE: Those titles below without links have not opened in Worcester yet.]

Best Picture - No Country For Old Men
Best Actor - Frank Langella for Starting Out in the Evening
Best Actress - Marion Cotillard for La Vie en Rose
Best Supporting Actor - Javier Bardem for No Country For Old Men
Best Supporting Actress - Amy Ryan for Gone Baby Gone
Best Director - Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Best Screenplay - Brad Bird for Ratatouille
Best Cinematography - Janusz Kaminski for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Best Documentary - Crazy Love
Best Foreign Language Film - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Best Ensemble Cast - Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

This year’s Best New Filmmaker, a category added in 2004 to memorialize late Boston critic David Brudnoy, was awarded to Ben Affleck for Gone Baby Gone. This year’s awards will be officially given out at a ceremony at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, MA on Sunday, January 13, 2008. The ceremony, open to the public, includes a cocktail reception at 5 p.m. that will provide attendees with the opportunity to meet and mingle with Boston’s top film critics. A screening of one of the BSFC honored films follows at 7 p.m. An invited guest, to be announced, will engage in a post-screening Q and A with the audience.

OSCAR NEWS:
Watch the tops, nurse the bottom
AMC’s luxury theater shows the 5 Oscar contenders
By Elizabeth Meyer

How brave are you? AMC Theatres is testing the mettle of movie fans this Saturday, February 24, by showing all five Best Picture Oscar nominees in succession, starting at 11:00am. We do not usually recommend anyone venture out of Worcester County for film entertainment — especially with the recent spike in variety here lately — but we do make two exceptions. First is the spectacular Jordans IMAX in Natick (which opens 300 on March 9), and second is AMC’s Premium Cinema in Framingham, where their Best Picture Showcase substitutes for their regular first-run programming this Saturday. Premium is one cool place, fusing the “cinepub” style of The Elm Draught House or The Strand Theatre with the upscale, first class comfort of National Amusements’ Cinema De Lux. Add to that a full dinner menu, full bar (meaning there are never children allowed) and free unlimited soda and popcorn (with real butter), and you have a movie experience beyond compare and worthy of our full recommendation.

The Best Picture Showcase is $30.00 for all five features, and reservations are recommended, as seating is limited. To reserve tickets or for more information, call (508) 628-4422, or visit AMC’s website at www.MovieWatcher.com.

WORCESTER MOVIES WEEKLY’S
OFFICIAL 2007 OSCAR PREDICTIONS
[drag over titles to find out who we’d pick]

BEST ACTOR
❐ Leonardo DiCaprio - Blood Diamond
❐ Ryan Gosling - Half Nelson
❐ Peter O’Toole - Venus
❐ Will Smith - The Pursuit Of Happyness
❐ Forest Whitaker - The Last King Of Scotland

BEST ACTRESS
❐ Penélope Cruz - Volver
❐ Judi Dench - Notes On A Scandal
❐ Helen Mirren - The Queen
❐ Meryl Streep - The Devil Wears Prada
❐ Kate Winslet - Little Children

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
❐ Alan Arkin - Little Miss Sunshine
❐ Jackie Earle Haley - Little Children
❐ Djimon Hounsou - Blood Diamond
❐ Eddie Murphy - Dreamgirls
❐ Mark Wahlberg - The Departed

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
❐ Adriana Barraza - Babel
❐ Cate Blanchett - Notes On A Scandal
❐ Abigail Breslin - Little Miss Sunshine
❐ Jennifer Hudson - Dreamgirls
❐ Rinko Kikuchi - Babel

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
❐ Cars
❐ Happy Feet
❐ Monster House
.
.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
❐ Deliver Us From Evil
❐ An Inconvenient Truth
❐ Iraq In Fragments
❐ Jesus Camp
❐ My Country, My Country

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
❐ After The Wedding
❐ Days Of Glory (Indigènes)
❐ The Lives Of Others
❐ Pan’s Labyrinth
❐ Water

BEST DIRECTOR
❐ Alejandro González Iñárritu - Babel
❐ Martin Scorsese - The Departed
❐ Clint Eastwood - Letters From Iwo Jima
❐ Stephen Frears - The Queen
❐ Paul Greengrass - United 93

BEST PICTURE
❐ Babel
❐ The Departed
❐ Letters From Iwo Jima
❐ Little Miss Sunshine
❐ The Queen