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Boston has been a very spotty indicator of awards glory, being more incompatible with the Oscars. Last year, though the critics here awarded Slumdog Millionaire"as its Best Picture...they also gave the same award to WALL-E. In fact, the three years before this announcement are the only ones since 1993 that Boston's critics matched up with the Oscars with regards to Best Picture. More than most critics' groups, Boston's society is a far more eclectic bunch, having awarded such films as Mulholland Dr. and Out of Sight as the best films of their respective years. We can't put too much stock into this group, but their having honored The Hurt Locker as the best film of 2009 is hard to ignore.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, there have been other critics' groups who announced their awards for 2009 recently. Let's finish off this Christmas edition of In Contention by taking a look at them. The Hurt Locker found friends in Oklahoma, Houston, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Austin, as all of the critics' groups in those cities awarded it as the best film of the year. Up in the Air got the top prize in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Florida, Indiana, St. Louis, Utah, and Washington, D.C. critics' groups. Basing on these and other critics' groups, though, it appears that, as has seemingly happened in recent years, the supporting actor categories are pretty much sewn up. Christoph Waltz, the clever villain in Inglourious Basterds, and Mo'Nique, as the hellish mother in Precious, have won, between them, 40 wins from critics' groups. The only other contenders (as in the only other actors to have won from various groups) are Christian McKay, as Orson Welles in Me and Orson Welles, and Woody Harrelson in The Messenger; & Anna Kendrick in Up in the Air, and Samantha Morton in The Messenger.

Let's clarify one thing before I leave you to your Christmas dinner. Critics' groups represent a vocal majority, but they are not Oscar voters. I'm not saying that movies like The Hurt Locker or Up in the Air won't be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, or that one of those movies may not win. However, Oscar voters are fickle, and sometimes make pointless or shocking decisions; remember Crash? Who's to say that they won't be won over as most audiences are with James Cameron's Avatar, a film that has wound up on some critics' top-ten lists? What of Precious, the season's first frontrunner? Then, there's always the possibility that, because of the labyrinthine Oscar voting process, a movie like Nine or Up could win the big prize, simply because of the rules of separating votes. Just as there are never any locks in the Oscar season, there's no guarantee that critics' groups, while important, will all match up.

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