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.