Image Credit: Jaap Buitendijk

Martin Scorsese’s 3D family film Hugo has won the National Board of Review’s prize for Best Film of 2011. The Thanksgiving-weekend release also won the Best Director award, while The Descendants also picked up multiple citations, for Best Actor (George Clooney), Best Supporting Actress (Shailene Woodley), and Best Adapted Screenplay. Missing from the largely predictable NBR top 10: The Help (which won an ensemble prize instead), Midnight in Paris, and Moneyball, as well as Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which didn’t screen in time. Meanwhile, Tilda Swinton’s victory for Best Actress for We Need to Talk About Kevin is a big help to her chances, although last year’s winner, Another Year‘s Lesley Manville, failed to make the Academy’s cut. Check out the full list of winners below.

Best Film Hugo

Top 10 Films
The Artist
The Descendants
Drive
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
The Ides of March 
J. Edgar
The Tree of Life
War Horse 

Best Actor George Clooney, The Descendants

Best Actress Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Supporting Actor Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Best Supporting Actress Shailene Woodley, The Descendants 

Best Director Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Best Original Screenplay Will Reiser, 50/50

Best Adapted Screenplay Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, The Descendants

Breakthrough Performance Felicity Jones, Like Crazy and Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Best Foreign Film A Separation

Top 5 Foreign Films
13 Assassins
Elite Squad: The Enemy Within
Footnote
Le Havre
Point Blank 

Best Documentary Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

Top 5 Documentaries
Born to Be Wild
Buck
George Harrison: Living in the Material World
Project Nim
Senna 

Best Animated Feature Rango

Best Ensemble Cast The Help

Best Debut Director J.C. Chandor, Margin Call

Spotlight Award Michael Fassbender, A Dangerous Method, Jane Eyre, Shame, X-Men: First Class

NBR Freedom of Expression Crime After Crime and Pariah

Special Achievement in Filmmaking The Harry Potter franchise

Top 10 Independent Films
50/50
Another Earth
Beginners
A Better Life
Cedar Rapids
Margin Call
Shame
Take Shelter
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Win Win 

Dave on Twitter: @davekarger

Image Credit: Merie Wallace

Two film-festival favorites — George Clooney’s The Descendants and Elizabeth Olsen’s Martha Marcy May Marlene — led the Gotham Award nominations with three mentions each, followed by the Ewan McGregor love story Beginners and the Michael Shannon/Jessica Chastain drama Take Shelter with two. The Gotham Awards, which honor films produced outside the major studio system, were the first to recognize eventual Oscar nominees like The Hurt Locker and Winter’s Bone. Nominees were chosen by small groups of film critics, festival programmers, and journalists. (Full disclosure: I was on the nominating committee for the Best Ensemble Performance and Breakthrough Actor catgories, while my EW colleague Lisa Schwarzbaum helped select the Best Feature and Breakthrough Director nominees.) The full list of nominees is after the jump. READ FULL STORY »