THE BIG SHORT, ROOM AND STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON WIN ARTIOS AWARDS

Here are the results of Artios Award voting by the Casting Society of America. Seven categories, seven different winners as no film was eligible to compete in more than one field. Major awards season players intermingle with lesser-celebrated titles, which is a pleasant and refreshing change from the usual slate of usual suspects. Check out the CSA's nominations for 2015 here, and their award winners below:

Best Casting (Big Budget - Drama)

Meagan Lewis, Pat Moran, Carolyn Pickman, Beth Sepko, Lucinda Syson, Victoria Thomas and Cindy Tolan (Straight Outta Compton)

Best Casting (Big Budget - Comedy)

Meagan Lewis and Francine Maisler (The Big Short)

Best Casting (Studio or Independent - Drama)

Robin D. Cook, Jonathan Oliveira and Fiona Weir (Room)

Best Casting (Studio or Independent - Comedy)

Angela Demo, Nancy Mosser and Katie Shenot (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl)

Best Casting (Low Budget - Drama)

Angela Demo (The Stanford Prison Experiment)

Best Casting (Low Budget - Comedy)

Kim Coleman (Dope)

Best Casting (Animation)

Natalie Lyon and Kevin Reher (Inside Out)

AAFCA FLIES THE FLAG FOR BLACK AMERICAN FILMMAKING WITH 2015 AWARDS

Doing what they're designed to do, and for which I sure can't fault them, the African-American Film Critics Association rewards a full slate of African-American themed films with its 2015 awards. Some of their choices might be more popular with the critical elite than others, and I can't say I'd have voted for Straight Outta Compton myself, but this is exactly the right response to last year's blanched-out awards season. Check out all the AAFCA's winners below:

Best Picture

1. Straight Outta Compton

2. Creed

3. Mad Max: Fury Road

4. Beasts of No Nation

5. The Martian

6. 3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets

=  Dope

8. Chi-Raq

9. Carol

10. The Big Short

11. The Danish Girl

Best Director

Ryan Coogler (Creed)

Best Actor

Will Smith (Concussion)

Best Actress

Teyonah Parris (Chi-Raq)

Best Supporting Actor

Jason Mitchell (Straight Outta Compton)

Best Supporting Actress

Tessa Thompson (Creed)

Best Screenplay

Rick Famuyiwa (Dope)

Best Song

'See You Again' (Furious 7)

Best Ensemble

Straight Outta Compton

Best Animation

The Peanuts Movie

Best Documentary

A Ballerina's Tale

Best Independent Film

Chi-Raq

Best Breakout Performance

Michael B. Jordan (Creed)

REVIEW - DOPE (RICK FAMUYIWA)

Strange how the most self-aware films are often also those with the least self-awareness, practically speaking. It would seem that the security of style that these films trade in largely rebuffs variation in interpretation, insisting instead on their own opinion of themselves. Rick Famuyiwa's Dope has a rather contradictory view of itself, not least in that its affectations infer that its level of self-awareness is high, while its unintentional hypocrisy dictates that this level is actually fairly low. This is a slick film, too slick in fact, but its swagger is earned - such an amount of effort has gone into making Dope feel effortless that you can forgive the filmmakers from getting a little high off their own product. No doubt they keep it lively, engaging and both visually and sonically interesting, though the problems begin to arise not in that Dope fails to push any boundaries in this regard, but that it seems to think that it does in others. Certainly, purporting to transcend cliche and stereotype, then reverting back to them in the very same scene, character, even line of dialogue, is a radical way of proposing a fresh discussion on racial and cultural aspects of American society, but that's not what Dope intends to do. Its sights are set higher, on serving as a voice of authority in this discussion, when it simply can't construct its argument with sufficient clarity to earn this. And thus, the self-awareness that drives this film, and surely engenders so much of its most appealing attributes, is the foremost reason that it doesn't work - it's so determined to prove to the viewer what kind of film it is, it neglects to even prove it to itself.