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The Critics Choice Awards, given out by the Broadcast Film Critics Association, have successfully picked the Best Picture Oscar winner seven out of the last ten years (they went for Saving Private Ryan instead of Shakespeare in Love; Sideways instead of Million Dollar Baby and Brokeback Mountain instead of Crash). So things are looking better and better for Slumdog Millionaire, which all but swept the awards last night, taking Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Young Actor, and Best Composer.

Heath Ledger won Best Supporting Actor, and The Dark Knight won "Best Action Movie," a nonsense new category invented for the sole purpose of giving The Dark Knight an award. Sean Penn won for Milk, surprising no one. Anne Hathaway for best actress (tying with Meryl Streep) and Kate Winslet for Best Supporting Actress were less foregone conclusions.

Mildly off-topic, John Adams won the award for best TV Movie; Generation Kill, which remains my favorite film of any sort in 2008, wasn't even nominated, which is absurd.

The full list of winners is after the jump.

Eddie Murphy won a best supporting actor award! The Broadcast Film Critics Association held their Critics Choice Awards ceremony last night at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles. There has been much discussion about Eddie Murphy's performance in Dreamgirls much of that discussion revolves around the question of his portrayal is Oscar -quality. We'll find out January 23 if the speculations were correct; the Oscars will be announced early that morning. Murphy is also nominated for a Golden Globe for best supporting actor; he could very well take home another trophy Monday night.

Dreamgirls took home a total of four awards including best supporting actress for Jennifer Hudson. It's an exciting time for the American Idol star; fresh from the televised competition she is receiving an incredible amount of support from the critics (in particular the BFCA with this award) and was named one of the 10 Actors to watch by Variety back in September.

THE WINNERS

BEST PICTURE: The Departed

BEST ACTOR: Forest Whitaker, "The Last King of Scotland"

BEST ACTRESS: Helen Mirren, "The Queen"

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Eddie Murphy, "Dreamgirls"

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Jennifer Hudson, "Dreamgirls"

ACTING ENSEMBLE: "Little Miss Sunshine"

DIRECTOR: Martin Scorsese, "The Departed"

WRITER: Michael Arndt, "Little Miss Sunshine"

ANIMATED FEATURE: "Cars"

YOUNG ACTOR: Paul Dano, "Little Miss Sunshine"

YOUNG ACTRESS: Abigail Breslin, "Little Miss Sunshine"

COMEDY MOVIE: "Borat"

FAMILY FILM (LIVE ACTION): "Charlotte's Web"

PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION: "Elizabeth I"

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: "Letters from Iwo Jima"

SONG: "Listen," performed by Beyonce, "Dreamgirls"

SOUNDTRACK: "Dreamgirls"

COMPOSER: Philip Glass, "The Illusionist"

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: "An Inconvenient Truth"

The Critic's Choice Awards will air on E! on January 20.

Today Show critic Gene Shalit may not love those gay cowboys (yes, we know, they're sheepherders, but "cowboys" sounds so much more rugged and manly), but the rest of the film critics sure do. Brokeback Mountain stomped all over the competition at the Broadcast Film Critics Association's Critics' Choice Awards, snagging wins in three cats, including Best Picture. The film also won honors for Michelle Williams for Best Supporting Actress, in an award shared with Amy Adams for Junebug, and for Ang Lee as Best Director. The BFCA wins bode well for the films shot at Oscar gold next month - five of the six past years winners of Best Picture at the Critics' Choice.

Brokeback's Heath Ledger lost out to Phillip Seymour Hoffman for Capote, and Reese Witherspoon declared, "I love critics! This year, anyway," as she took the Best Actress prize for her portrayal of June Carter in Walk the Line. Paul Giamatti snuck in a surprise victory over George Clooney for Best Supporting Actor, while Crash won the screenplay and ensemble awards.  March of the Penguins continued to dominate the documentary scene, beating out Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Murderball, Mad Hot Ballroom and Grizzly Man, in a race that could end up closely mirroring the Oscars. However, two documentaries that I think should get noms - Favela Rising and Boys of Baraka - were ignored in the Critics' noms in spite of Favela Rising winning the International Documentary Association's top award for feature lenth documentaries in November (actually Favela shared the award with another film, Our Brand is Crisis, but still, other documentary filmmakers thought it rocked). Look for interviews with directors of several documentaries on the Oscar shortlist within the next month here on Cinematical, because we love you, and we know you need your serious film talk to wash the taste of Bloodrayne out of your mouths. 

Complete list of 2005 Critics Award winners and nominees is here.