Rachel Weisz and Daniel Day-Lewis took an important early step towards Oscar glory by scooping up the top awards from the New York Critics Circle.

The awards are an important stepping stone towards the Oscars, giving those who get a boost important monmentum as Academy members prepare for the list of nominations announced on January 10.

Rachel’s win is all the more important as it came for a performance in British movie ‘The Deep Blue Sea’, a film that will need consistent wins to generate enough buzz to get Academy voters talking.

In the movie she plays the cheating wife of an important judge, a performance which bagged her the Best Actress prize.

Daniel’s Best Actor win for his playing of Abraham Lincoln was more predictable, with it coming beside onscreen wife sally Field’s Best Supporting Actress gong. The pair were honoured for their roles in a film which is going to be an obvious Oscar contender Steven Spielberg’s ‘Lincoln’.

Combining one of the most revered Presidents in US history with Spielberg and two-time Oscar winner Day-Lewis may look like a dream combination destined to sweep the board, but at the Critics Circle Awards Spielberg was beaten to the Best Director trophy by Kathryn Bigelow.

Bigelow’s ‘Zero Dark thirty’ followed an altogether more recent piece of US history, the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the movie also won Best Film, hinting that the hitherto relatively ignored contender could start moving up the Oscar betting fast.

Matthew McConaughey won the Best Supporting Actor prize, both for his role as a prosecutor in black comedy ‘Bernie’ and as a strip club owner in ‘Magic Mike’, also boosting his Oscar chances.

The other big winners were Tim Burton, winning Best Animated Film for ‘Frankenweenie’ and Michael Haneke, who’s ‘Amour’ won Best Foreign Language Film.

Source : Entertainment Wise