The Women Film Critics Circle Awards 2010

The Women Film Critics Circle is an association of fifty-five women film critics and scholars from around the country and internationally, who are involved in print, radio, online and TV broadcast media. We came together in 2004 to form the first women critics organization in the United States, in the belief that women's perspectives and voices in film criticism need to be recognized fully.

BEST MOVIE ABOUT WOMEN
Mother And Child

BEST MOVIE BY A WOMAN
Winter's Bone

BEST WOMAN STORYTELLER [Screenwriting Award]
The Kids Are All Right: Lisa Cholodenko

BEST ACTRESS
Annette Bening/The Kids Are All Right

BEST ACTOR
Colin Firth/The King's Speech

BEST YOUNG ACTRESS
Jennifer Lawrence/Winter's Bone

BEST COMEDIC ACTRESS
Annette Bening/The Kids Are All Right

BEST FOREIGN FILM BY OR ABOUT WOMEN: *TIE*
Mother
Women Without Men

BEST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Conviction

WORST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Black Swan

BEST MALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE: *TIE*
Another Year
The King's Speech

WORST MALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Jackass 3D

BEST THEATRICALLY UNRELEASED MOVIE BY OR ABOUT WOMEN [Includes films released on DVD or TV, or screened at film festivals, in recognition of the limited opportunities available for films by and about women on screen]
Temple Grandin

BEST EQUALITY OF THE SEXES: *TIE
Another Year
Fair Game

BEST ANIMATED FEMALES
Despicable Me

BEST FAMILY FILM
Toy Story 3

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Helen Mirren

ACTING AND ACTIVISM
Lena Horne [posthumous]: [6/30/17- 5/9/10] As an anti-racist activist, she refused to appear before racially segregated US Army audiences in WW2 Italy-since the army was officially segregated, the policy was to have one show solely for white troops and another show solely for black troops. Horne insisted on performing for mixed audiences, and since the US Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound up putting on a show for a mixed audience of black US soldiers and white German POWs. Horne was also branded a 'communist sympathizer' by many right-wing conservatives because of her association with Paul Robeson and her progressive political beliefs, which led her to be blacklisted in the 1950s. Lena Horne passed away on Mothers Day at the age of 92.

*ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: For a film that most passionately opposes violence against women:
Winter's Bone

*JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: For best expressing the woman of color experience in America
For Colored Girls

*KAREN MORLEY AWARD: For best exemplifying a woman's place in history or society, and a courageous search for identity
Fair Game

COURAGE IN ACTING [Taking on unconventional roles that radically redefine the images of women on screen]
Helen Mirren/The Tempest

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN AWARD [Performance by a woman whose exceptional impact on the film dramatically, socially or historically, has been ignored]
Q'Orianka Kilcher/Princess Kaiulani

BEST DOCUMENTARY BY A WOMAN
A Film Unfinished

WOMEN'S WORK: BEST ENSEMBLE
Mother And Child

BEST SCREEN COUPLE
Another Year: Jim Broadbent/Ruth Sheen as Tom and Gerri.



*WFCC TOP TEN HALL OF SHAME*

*Please Note: The WFCC Top Ten Hall Of Shame represents the 'don't tell me to shut up' sidebar contribution of individual members, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the entire Circle. Also, members may be objecting to particular characters in a film, and not the entire movie.


MOMMIE DEAREST WORST SCREEN MOMS OF THE YEAR AWARD:

*Melissa Leo
The Fighter

*Jacki Weaver
Animal Kingdom





BLACK SWAN
*For turning 'everything was beautiful at the ballet' into a horror venue populated by female stereotypes.

CATFISH
*The documentary exploits the woman who 'invents' Facebook personalities (if indeed this all is to be believed). It's a smarmy movie in every respect.

*For it's blatant audience manipulation without any honesty. These filmmakers clearly used a real family for personal gain.

I AM LOVE
*Did Tilda Swinton really need to stand up her dead son at his funeral in order to dash off like in a late for a date emergency, to lock lips with her lover? Mommie Dearest Award runner-up.

INCEPTION
*For making sure that one (& only one) 'good' female character is on hand for the express purpose of killing the one (& only one) 'bad' female character so none of the men have to do it.

JOLENE
*Based on a story by Doctorow, it's a flagrantly misogynistic story, an excellent example of how tales about abused women are turned into porn films.

*Ditto, THE KILLER INSIDE ME, see above.

KICK-ASS
*For the exploitation of a 12 year old girl.

 *I resent the film's implication that the best way to empower a girl is to portray her as a chirpily sadistic killing machine (and one who uses the 'c' word, to boot).

THE GHOST WRITER
*At large Polanski sets up Olivia Williams' Lady Macbeth spouse as not only the instigator of UK's collusion in Iraq, letting Blair off the hook. But the predatory extreme seductress aggressor nearly rapes the gullible Ghost as well, when cornering him in his tub with an offer of towels to dry his tush. The Female Made Me Do It defense.

TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE
*This film tells young girls, it's okay to sell your soul for a guy.

YOU AGAIN
*For perpetuation of the same-old same-old stereotypes of hysterical insecure women and reasonable, sage men.

The Women Film Critics Circle

Awards Season & Second Looks

SHELLEY WINTERS' PLACE IN THE SUN

By Penelope Andrew

Sixty years ago (1951 films competing for 1952 awards), Vivien Leigh -- who hadn't been nominated since her win for Gone With the Wind in 1939 -- won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for A Streetcar Named Desire over actresses such as Katharine Hepburn and Shelley Winters for The African Queen and A Place in the Sun, respectively...

CONTINUE TO READ HUFFINGTON POST ARTICLE HERE

Penelope Andrew is a NYC-based writer who contributes to The Huffington Post, WestView News, and Critical Women on Film. She is a member of the Women Film Critics Circle.

Women's Work: Lubitsch & Chomet, Cluny Brown & The Illusionist

...Lubitsch's last film is a zany yet sophisticated satire on English manners laced with hilarious, sexual innuendo using every plumbing metaphor available. The English and their drains are just too damned stopped-up, which provide Boyer and Jones--her first, highly successful attempt at comedy--golden opportunities to delight us at every turn. When they can no longer deny their attraction, Belinski declares: "I would build you the most beautiful mansion, with the most exquisite and complicated plumbing, I would hand you a hammer, and say, Ladies and Gentlemen, Madame Cluny Belinksi is about to put the pipes in their place!"...

CONTINUE TO READ HUFFINGTON POST ARTICLE HERE

Penelope Andrew is a NYC-based writer who contributes to The Huffington Post, Westview News, and Critical Women on Film. She is a member of the Women Film Critics Circle.