Awards Alert: "Hurt Locker" locks down top prizes from N.Y. Film Critics

The makers of Inglourious Basterds and Nine might want to keep the champagne on ice a little longer.

While those films both received a record 10 nominations from the Critics Choice Awards, awards-magnet The Hurt Locker blew out the competition at the New York Film Critics Awards, winning Best Picture and Best Director for action auteur Kathryn Bigelow.

The film, which details the terrifying circumstances of a crack American bomb squad unit in Iraq, recently won prizes for Best Picture and Director at the L.A. Film Critics Awards as well.  

The top acting awards went to up-and-coming ingenue Meryl Streep for her role as cooking queen Julia Child in Julia & Julia while George Clooney won Best Actor for his two critically acclaimed performances this year: Up in the Air and the stop-motion-animated Fantastic Mr. Fox, in which the star plays the titular, and fabulously furry, role.  

Streep voices the role of his fox(y) wife in the Wes Anderson-directed adaptation of the classic Roald Dahl book, which also popped Up's balloons by taking home the Best Animated Film award.

Supporting nods went to two sure-fire Oscar contenders: comedienne Mo'Nique for her decidedly unfunny portrait of the world's worst mother in the Oprah-endorsed drama Precious and Christophe Waltz for his duplicitious Nazi agent in Quentin Tarantino's wonderfully historically inaccurate action-drama Inglourious Basterds.

The Best First Film prize went to Steve McQueen (really?) for the film Hunger while the revered New York Observer film critic Andrew Sarris received an honorary award.  

For those keeping score at home, The Hurt Locker not only won top prizes from the New York and L.A. critics but also won Best Ensemble Performance at the recent Gotham Film Awards.

Co-star Jeremy Renner was given the Best Breakthrough Performance Award from The National Board of Review.  

Check back here tomorrow to see how the film fares with the Golden Globes nominations!