Frontrunner Friday: Moonlight and La La Land Battle It Out in Newest Awards Tracker

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The critics’ awards blitz of December is winding down with just a few regional groups yet to announce their winners from their nominations and then, of course, the National Society of Film Critics (NSFC) reveals theirs on January 7th.

For now, it remains a tight battle between Moonlight and La La Land in Best Picture and their respective helmers, Barry Jenkins and Damien Chazelle, for Best Director. Moonlight and Jenkins currently lead in both categories but just barely. The total number of wins are a pure total, not a weighted balance. For example, the Critics’ Choice wins, in theory, carry more weight than the Atlanta Film Critics Society. This chart is purely a visual tracker for how much impact a film or performance (or craft) is having on a broader level.

The acting categories have become quite narrowed down. In Best Actor, the 22 wins by Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea) has so dominated the field he barely left scraps for Denzel Washington (Fences) and Adam Driver (Paterson). Same goes for Mahershala Ali (Moonlight) in Supporting Actor. He has 21 wins to Jeff Bridges’s (Hell or High Water) four. Viola Davis (Fences) started out slow in Supporting Actress but is now nearly three times ahead of her nearest competitor (Michelle Williams, Manchester by the Sea). Best Actress is a bit more of a race, critics-wise. Isabelle Huppert (Elle and Things to Come) is ahead but Natalie Portman (Jackie) has given some chase.

Here is the list of critics’ associations, societies, and groups’ winners and a tally at the bottom. Click image to enlarge.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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