WALL●E, Bashir Are Critics’ Choice

Friday, January 09, 2009
By: Ryan Ball

Disney/Pixar’s WALL●E was named Best Animated Feature during the 14th Annual Critics' Choice Awards, presented on Thursday in Santa Monica, Calif. by the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA) to honor the finest achievements in filmmaking in 2008. The sci-fi family flick from director Andrew Stanton beat out several top toons, including Sony Pictures Classics’ doc Waltz with Bashir, which won Best Foreign Language Film.

In addition to besting Bashir, WALL●E topped Disney’s Bolt and DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. WALL●E was also up for Best Picture, but lost to director Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire from Fox Searchlight. Also up for the top honor were Clint Eastwood’s Changeling, David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Gus Van Sant’s Milk, Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon, Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt and Stephen Daldry’s The Reader.

In the Best Foreign Language Film category, Ari Folman’s Bashir won out over A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël) by Arnaud Desplechin, Gomorrah by Matteo Garrone, I’ve Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime) by Philippe Claudel, Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) by Tomas Alfredson and Mongol by Sergei Bodrov.

The Dark Knight, which swept the People’s Choice Awards earlier this week, was voted Best Action Movie by the BFCA. The other nominees were Paramount’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Iron Man, Sony/Columbia’s Quantum of Solace and Universal’s Wanted. The Dark Knight also earned Heath Ledger another win for Best Supporting Actor.

The tunes “Down to Earth" (performed by Peter Gabriel, written by Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman) from Wall●E and “I Thought I Lost You” (performed Miley Cyrus and John Travolta, written by Miley Cyrus and Jeffrey Steele) from Bolt were up for Best Song, but were edged out by the Bruce Springsteen song “The Wrestler” from the movie of the same name. To see the complete list of winners go to http://www.bfca.org/ccawards/2008.php.

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