Boyhood wins best film, director awards from New York critics

A peek at an Oscar winner? You can watch actor Ellar Coltrane grow up over the course of 12 years in the movie Boyhood, which won best picture, best director and best supporting actor awards from the New York Film Critics Circle on Monday -- PHOTO: U
A peek at an Oscar winner? You can watch actor Ellar Coltrane grow up over the course of 12 years in the movie Boyhood, which won best picture, best director and best supporting actor awards from the New York Film Critics Circle on Monday -- PHOTO: UIP

NEW YORK (REUTERS) - Boyhood, a coming-of-age drama filmed over 12 years with the same actors, dominated the New York Film Critics Circle Awards on Monday, winning best picture of 2014, best director for Richard Linklater and the best supporting actress category.

Actor Timothy Spall was named best actor for his portrayal of one of Britain's greatest painters, J.M.W. Turner, in Mr. Turner, and Marion Cotillard nabbed the top actress honours for roles in two films, The Immigrant and Two Days, One Night.

With presentation set for Jan 5 in New York, these are the first major movie awards in the run-up to the Oscars, the film industry's highest accolades.

Actor J.K. Simmons picked up the best supporting actor prize for playing a music teacher who terrorizes a student in Whiplash, while Patricia Arquette won best supporting actress as the mother in Boyhood, which follows a boy growing up from age five to 18.

The New York Film Critics Circle, founded in 1935, is among the oldest such groups in the country and its members represent newspapers, magazines and online publications.

The awards are regarded as a bellwether for the Oscars, which will be bestowed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Feb 22.

The NYFCC selected The Lego Movie as the best animated film and Ida, the story of a young woman on the verge of taking her vows as a nun in 1960s Poland, as best foreign film.

Citizenfour, a documentary by director Laura Poitras about former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who released tens of thousands of classified documents to the media, was named best non-fiction film.

The best screenplay award went to Wes Anderson for The Grand Budapest Hotel, a tale about a concierge in a fictional famous hotel between World Wars I and II, and the best cinematography prize to Darius Khondji for The Immigrant.

Jennifer Kent won the best first-film prize for her thriller The Babadook.

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