Certainly no one will be confusing the Los Angeles Film Critics Association with the Golden Globes this morning. The LA crit pick for best picture of the year is the little-known arthouse curiosity WALL-E, with the vaguely Scandinavian-sounding The Dark Knight as runner-up. When will these artsy-fartsy dweebs in their berets and monocles figure out that they’re simply out of touch with the movie-loving public?

Perhaps you sense sarcasm. It’s true, I am tweaking my West Coast brethren a bit for picking two of the year’s most popular movies – but I should state for the record that both WALL-E and The Dark Knight are still in the mix for my own Top 10 list, so I’m not really complaining that much about their choices. If this is truly the consensus of the group, then let it be; there’s no rule that says critics can’t prefer mainstream fare to more adventurous, innovative or difficult material, particularly if the latter was in short supply this year. But I do have suspicions. Suspicions that critics, who are losing jobs by the bushel as newspapers bleed red ink, may be playing it a little safe, lest they be deemed completely irrelevant sooner than later. Not all critics, certainly – but you would expect the ones who live at show biz ground zero to be particularly susceptible to such fears. It’s no big deal, maybe, but it is sobering to recall that it was this same group that bestowed Best Picture honors on Brazil based on an unauthorized outlaw screening, and perhaps saved it from being released in butchered form or not at all. What exactly are they doing for WALL-E and The Dark Knight? What undiscovered audience are they serving?

On the other coast, the Washington DC critics have weighed in, bestowing their top honors upon Slumdog Millionaire. The Broadcast Film Critics have announced their nominations; among the ten movies contending for Best Picture are the abovementioned lonely robot and grim vigilante, along with Milk, Doubt and The Wrestler, among others. The full lists of all the awards and critics prizes announced so far can be found at Movie City News.

Related:
Roger Ebert: The Death of the Film Critic is the Death of Society
Ever-Mysterious National Board of Review's Year-End Awards