My Award nominations: Supporting Actor

No clear frontrunner for me in this category this year. I'm not yet sure which of these five Supporting Actors I'll choose as the year's best:

LAFCA goes for Amour

The L.A. Film Critics Association handed Michael Haneke's Palme d'Or winner Amour their top prize, but the big winner of the day is Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, which picked up four awards after having been shut out by the NYFCC and NBR.

Another big winner with three wins of its own is Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild, and I'm tickled pink about it! Awards for the score and Dwight Henry's performance are both Oscar-worthy, and I'm hoping this might give 'em a boost in their respective races.

On average, a swell bunch of winners (from the ones I've seen, anyway).

Best Picture: "Amour" Funny that the first critics award not to go to Zero Dark Thirty still went to a film that the public hasn't been able to see yet!

Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, "The Master" A defendable choice indeed. The man's directorial voice is becoming ever more distinctive.

Best Actress: (TIE) Jennifer Lawrence, "Silver Linings Playbook" and Emmanuelle Riva, "Amour" This is Riva's third win of the day, coming after the Boston and New York Online critics.

Best Actor: Joaquin Phoenix, "The Master" A necessary win for him to keep his Oscar prospects alive.

Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, "The Master" Nice to see some attention for this difficult, easy-to-overlook performance.

Best Supporting Actor: Dwight Henry, "Beasts of the Southern Wild" Yes. Yes. Yes.

Best Screenplay: "Argo" Terrific pick. As great as Lincoln's screenplay is, I'd hate to see it hog all the writing awards.

Best Foreign Film: "Holy Motors" Did not care for it. Obviously trying to spread things around.

Best Documentary: "The Gatekeepers" Definitely in the hunt for Oscar.

Best Animation: "Frankenweenie" Might this one become the critics darling?

Best Film Editing: "Zero Dark Thirty" Can't wait to see it.

Best Cinematography: "Skyfall" Outstanding. Sadly, it feels like yet another Oscar that Deakins will lose.

Best Music/Score: "Beasts of the Southern Wild" Love this pick. The music branch is so resistant to newcomers, though.

Best Production Design: "The Master" Production design was top notch, but I wish they had gone with something more creative.

New Generation Award: Benh Zeitlin, "Beasts of the Southern Wild" Well deserved.

Douglas Edwards Experimental/Independent Film/Video Award: "Leviathan"

Review - Beasts of the Southern Wild

A remarkable meditation on the balance of nature and the inevitability of change, rookie feature director Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild chronicles the life-changing odyssey of a little girl and her small community as they attempt to keep their way of life afloat following a cataclysmic event.

Six-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis plays Hushpuppy, a fiercely curious child with simple yet profound knowledge about the way the universe fits together. In her bayou shanty town affectionately entitled The Bathtub (a marvelously constructed film environment that brims with character), she lives with her father Wink (Dwight Henry) and an assortment of free-range pets whose heartbeats she is always listening for – a reassurance that the pulse of the universe is still ticking. When news comes that a terrific storm approaches their low-lying tract of land, many head for higher ground, but Wink and a handful of other holdouts stubbournly stay to spite this catastrophic occurrence. Meanwhile, ancient beasts known as aurochs – think Erymanthian Boar, but bigger – are thawed out of the southern polar icecaps, and migrate north out of hunger towards the now sunken Bathtub. With their homes below water, the ragtag group of swamp dwellers band together and eke out a survival plan, while Hushpuppy watches and learns, all the while looking for a way to fix the broken piece of the universe and set things right once more.