'Brokeback' selected as top film

Another organization chose 'Good Night, and Good Luck' for the honor.
NEW YORK (AP) -- The New York Film Critics Circle became the latest group to name the cowboy romance "Brokeback Mountain" as the year's top film, while the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures gave its best-picture award Monday to "Good Night, and Good Luck," George Clooney's depiction of Edward R. Murrow's on-air battles against Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
Both groups selected Ang Lee as best director for "Brokeback Mountain," in which Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal play cowboys who find forbidden, unexpected love in Wyoming during the summer of 1963.
"'Brokeback' was an old-fashioned romance that also fulfilled the group's impulse to be daring and original," said Gene Seymour, film critic for Newsday and president of the New York Film Critics Circle. "It combines the best of both these elements."
On Saturday, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association also chose "Brokeback Mountain" as its top film of 2005. With Golden Globe Award nominations scheduled to be announced this morning, it's emerging as a front-runner among a wide variety of films that have received acclaim.
Other recognition
The National Board was the latest group to recognize Terrence Howard with a breakthrough-performance honor for his varied work in several films this year, including "Hustle & amp; Flow," "Crash" and "Get Rich or Die Tryin'." He received similar honors over the weekend from the Los Angeles critics and the New York Film Critics Online.
Noah Baumbach won the original-screenplay honor for "The Squid and the Whale," his semiautobiographical story about divorce in a literary Brooklyn family, and Stephen Gaghan won the adapted-screenplay award for "Syriana," his multilayered thriller about oil, power and manipulation in the Middle East.
"Syriana" also was among the National Board's list of the year's top 10 films. The rest, in alphabetical order: "Brokeback Mountain," "Capote," "Crash," "A History of Violence," "Match Point," "Memoirs of a Geisha," "Munich" and "Walk the Line."
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