Anderson's 'Blood' Wins Top L.A. Film Critics Assn. Award

Image credit: Melinda Sue Gordon

DANIEL DAY-LEWIS He gets the Actor's vote because ''it's hands-down the best performance of the year''

Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood came up big with the Los Angeles Film Critics Association on Sunday (Dec. 9), taking awards for best picture, best director, best actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), and best production design (Jack Fisk). The epic, 158-minute Paramount Vantage film opens on Dec. 26. The Julian Schnabel-directed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, about Jean-Dominique Bauby, the French magazine editor who communicates by blinking his left eye after a stroke leaves him paralyzed, was named best picture runner-up. Also doing well was Romanian import and Cannes Palme d'Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, which won foreign-language film and supporting actor for Vlad Ivanov's performance as an illegal abortionist. Marion Cotillard won best actress for her role as French chanteuse Edith Piaf in Picturehouse's biopic La Vie en rose, and Amy Ryan took best supporting actress for her work in two crime dramas: Gone Baby Gone and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. No End in Sight, Charles Ferguson's critique of the Bush administration's handling of the aftermath of the Iraq War, was named top documentary, while Disney/Pixar/s Ratatouille tied with Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's French-language Persepolis for the animation award. The L.A. Film Critics Association Awards will be presented on Jan. 12 at the Hotel Intercontinental in Century City. (Variety)