Nat'l Society of Film Critics picks "Inside Llewyn Davis"

NEW YORK - The National Society of Film Critics selected "Inside Llewyn Davis" as the best film of 2013.

Joel and Ethan Coen won Best Director for their portrait of a musician navigating the changing folk music scene of the early 1960s.  They beat out Alfonso Cuaron for "Gravity" and Steve McQueen for "12 Years a Slave." Both films were also runners-up for Best Picture.

"Llewyn Davis" star Oscar Isaac won Best Actor.  Cate Blanchett, playing a down-on-her-heels socialite in Woody Allen's "Blue Jasmine," won Best Actress.

Jennifer Lawrence won Best Supporting Actress for her performance as the wife of a con artist in "American Hustle," while James Franco earned the Best Supporting Actor Award as a crime ring leader in "Spring Breakers."

The Society, made up of 56 voting members for publications around the country, held its 48th annual awards vote Saturday at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. There is no nomination process to the awards, and no awards reception; winners will receive scrolls.

The meeting was dedicated to the memory of Roger Ebert and Stanley Kauffmann, two distinguished Society members who died last year.

The results of voting, including runners-up, were:

BEST PICTURE
1.  "Inside Llewyn Davis" (23 votes)
2.  "American Hustle" (17)
3.  "12 Years a Slave" (16)

BEST DIRECTOR 1.  Joel and Ethan Coen, "Inside Llewyn Davis" (25)
2. Alfonso Cuaron, "Gravity" (18)
3. Steve McQueen, "12 Years a Slave" (15)

BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM
1.  "Blue Is the Warmest Color" (27)
2.  "A Touch of Sin" (21)
3.  "The Great Beauty" (15)

BEST NON-FICTION FILM
(tie) 1.  "The Act of Killing," Joshua Oppenheimer (20)
1.  "At Berkeley," Frederick Wiseman (20)
3.  "Leviathan, " Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel (18)

BEST ACTOR
1. Oscar Isaac, "Inside Llewyn Davis" (28)
2. Chiwetel Ejiofor, "12 Years a Slave" (19)
3. Robert Redford, "All Is Lost" (12)

BEST ACTRESS
1. Cate Blanchett, "Blue Jasmine" (57)
2. Adele Exarchopoulos, "Blue Is the Warmest Color" (36)
3. Julie Delpy, "Before Midnight" (26)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
1. James Franco, "Spring Breakers" (24)
2. Jared Leto, "Dallas Buyers Club (20)
3. Barkhad Abdi, "Captain Phillips" (14)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
1. Jennifer Lawrence, "American Hustle" (54)
2. Lupita Nyong'o, "12 Years a Slave" (38)
(tie) 3. Sally Hawkins, "Blue Jasmine" (18)
3. Lea Seydoux, "Blue Is the Warmest Color" (18)

BEST SCREENPLAY
1. "Before Midnight," Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke (29)
2. "Inside Llewyn Davis," Joel and Ethan Coen (26)
3. "American Hustle," Eric Singer and David O. Russell (18)

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
1. "Inside Llewyn Davis," Bruno Delbonnel  (28)
2. "Gravity," Emmanuel Lubezki (26)
3. "Nebraska," Phedon Papamichael (19)

EXPERIMENTAL FILM
"Leviathan," Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel

FILM HERITAGE AWARDS
The Museum of Modern Art, for its wide-ranging retrospective of the films of Allan Dwan.
"Too Much Johnson," Orson Welles' first professional film, recently discovered by Cinemazero (Pordenone) and Cineteca del Friuli, and restored by George Eastman House, with funding by the National Film Preservation Foundation.
The British Film Institute, for restorations of Alfred Hitchcock's nine silent features.
The DVD "American Treasures from the New Zealand Film Archive."

BEST FILM STILL AWAITING AMERICAN DISTRIBUTION
"Stray Dogs," Tsai Ming-liang
"Hide Your Smiling Faces," Daniel Patrick Carbone