An Oscar Boost for 'Blood'

BLOODY GREAT Director Paul Thomas Anderson strikes gold with There Will Be Blood, a breathtaking epic about an oil tycoon (Daniel Day-Lewis, pictured)

Bucking the critical groundswell in favor of No Country for Old Men, the National Society of Film Critics gave four prizes, including Best Picture, to There Will Be Blood during its 42nd annual awards voting on Saturday. The NSFC also honored the oil-biz epic for Best Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), Best Director (Paul Thomas Anderson), and Best Cinematography (Robert Elswit).

The NSFC also bucked the Best Supporting Actress trend, voting for Cate Blanchett's performance as Bob Dylan in I'm Not There over Amy Ryan, who's won virtually every other critics' award to date for playing a slatternly mom in Gone Baby Gone. Other NSFC winners include Julie Christie (Away From Her as Best Actress, Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) as Best Supporting Actor, Tamara Jenkins' The Savages as Best Screenplay, Charles Ferguson's Iraq War documentary No End in Sight as Best Non-Fiction Film, and Romania's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days as Best Foreign Film.

To date, the only other major critics' group to recognize Blood for Best Picture and Director is the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. The NSFC joins several other groups, however, in boosting Day-Lewis to front-runner status in the Best Actor race.

The National Society of Film Critics is a group of about 55 critics from top newspapers and magazines across the country, including EW's Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum. (Hollywood Reporter)