Women Film Critics Circle
BEST PICTURE BY A WOMAN [tie]
Away From Her: Sarah Polley
Talk To Me: Kasi Lemmons
BEST PICTURE ABOUT WOMEN
Juno: Jason Reitman
BEST WOMAN STORYTELLER [Screenwriting Award]
Juno: Diablo Cody
BEST ACTRESS
Laura Linney: The Savages
BEST COMEDIC PERFORMANCE
Amy Adams: Enchanted
BEST ACTOR
Daniel Day-Lewis: There Will Be Blood
BEST YOUNG ACTRESS
Saoirse Ronan: Atonement
BEST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE [tie]
Hairspray
Life Support
BEST FOREIGN FILM [tie]
La Vie En Rose
Persepolis
BEST MUSIC
Hairspray: Nikki Blonsky, Queen Latifah
BEST THEATRICALLY UNRELEASED MOVIE BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
Life Support
**ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD
For a film that most passionately opposes violence against women
Redacted
**JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD
For best expressing the woman of color experience in America:
The Great Debaters
**KAREN MORLEY AWARD
For best exemplifying a woman’s place in history or society, and a courageous search for identity:
A Mighty Heart
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Judi Dench
SPECIAL MENTION FOR A FEMALE’S RIGHT TO MALE ROLES IN MOVIES
Cate Blanchett: I’m Not There
ACTING AND ACTIVISM
Angelina Jolie
BEST DOCUMENTARIES
Redacted [mixed media]
Strange Culture: Lynn Hershman-Leeson
Meeting Resistance: Molly Bingham, co-director
BEST EQUALITY OF THE SEXES [tie]
Away From Her
Becoming Jane
MOST OFFENSIVE MALE CHARACTERS
Crazy Love [Burt Pugach] *****Winning Loser
Norbit [Rasputia] *****Winning Looser
Good Luck Chuck
The Heartbreak Kid
Knocked Up
Revolver
Superbad
Who’s Your Caddy
WFCC TOP TEN HALL OF SHAME
Black Snake Moan***Winning Loser
Exterminating Angels***Winning Loser
Goya’s Ghost***Winning Loser
Atonement
Captivity
Gone Baby Gone
Hairspray/Edna [John Travolta]
Lust, Caution
Norbit/Rasputia [Eddie Murphy]
Red Road
BEST ANIMATED FEMALE
Enchanted: Elle
BEST FAMILY FILM
Enchanted
**ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: Adrienne Shelly was a promising actress and filmmaker who was brutally strangled in her apartment in 2006 at the age of forty by a construction worker in the building, after she complained about noise. Her killer tried to cover up his crime by hanging her from a shower rack in her bathroom, to make it look like a suicide. He later confessed that he was having a “bad day.” Shelly, who left behind a baby daughter, had just completed her film Waitress, which she also starred in, and which was honored at Sundance after her death.
**JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD; The daughter of a laundress and a musician, Baker overcame being born black, female and poor, and marriage at age fifteen, to become an internationally acclaimed legendary performer, starring in the films Princess Tam Tam, Moulin Rouge and Zou Zou. She also survived the race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois as a child, and later expatriated to France to escape US racism. After participating heroically in the underground French Resistance during WWII, Baker returned to the US where she was a crusader for racial equality. Her activism led to attacks against her by reporter Walter Winchell who denounced her as a communist, leading her to wage a battle against him. Baker was instrumental in ending segregation in many theaters and clubs, where she refused to perform unless integration was implemented.
**KAREN MORLEY AWARD: Karen Morley was a promising Hollywood star in the 1930s, in such films as Mata Hari and Our Daily Bread. She was driven out of Hollywood for her political convictions by the Blacklist and for refusing to testify against other actors, while Robert Taylor and Sterling Hayden were informants against her. And also for daring to have a child and become a mother, unacceptable for female stars in those days. Morley maintained her outspoken political activism for the rest of her life, running for Lieutenant Governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1954. She passed away in 2003, unrepentant to the end, at the age of 93.
**The Woman’s Right To Male Roles In Movies Award is intended to challenge that men have not only the most prominent roles in films, but also the most complex and fully drawn out characters. So when an actress can fight for access to such a role, and it may be rewritten for her, it is one of substance, and free of the usual shallow or demonized female stereotypes.
The Women Film Critics Circle website is WFCC.wordpress.com, and they can be reached at: Criticalwomen@gmail.com.