The National Society of Film Critics (NSFC) voted Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood best picture at the weekend and named Anderson best director and the film's Daniel Day-Lewis best actor.

The group voted Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days best foreign language film and No End In Sight by Charles Ferguson best non-fiction film.

The NSFC's 42nd session bestowed the best actress award on Julie Christie for her performance in Away From Her, while supporting actor and actress honours went to Casey Affleck for The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford and Cate Blanchett for I'm Not There.

Best screenplay was awarded to Tamara Jenkins for The Savages and best cinematography went to Robert Elswit for There Will Be Blood.

The critics met in Sardi's restaurant in New York, where 41 of the 61-strong group voted in a weighted ballot system on Saturday [Jan 5] and dedicated the results of the meeting to the late critic, author and Society founder Hollis Alpert.

The results in full, including the number of votes cast in each category, appear below:

BEST PICTURE
There Will Be Blood (48) - Paul Thomas Anderson
The Diving Bell And The Butterfly (28) - Julian Schnabel
No Country For Old Men (27) - Joel and Ethan Coen

BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM
4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days (57) - Cristian Mungiu
The Diving Bell And The Butterfly (42) - Julian Schnabel
Persepolis (18) - Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud

BEST DIRECTOR
Paul Thomas Anderson (47) - There Will Be Blood
Joel and Ethan Coen (29) - No Country For Old Men
Julian Schnabel (29) - The Diving Bell And The Butterfly

BEST NON-FICTION FILM
No End In Sight (43) - Charles Ferguson
Sicko (20) - Michael Moore
Terror's Advocate (18) - Barbet Schroeder

BEST ACTOR
Daniel Day-Lewis (66) - There Will Be Blood
Frank Langella (34) - Starting Out In The Evening
Philip Seymour Hoffman (21) - The Savages, Before The Devil Knows You're Dead

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Casey Affleck (37) - The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
Javier Bardem (30) - No Country For Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman (29) - Charlie Wilson's War

BEST ACTRESS
Julie Christie (53) - Away From Her
Marion Cotillard (50) - La Vie En Rose
Anamaria Marinca (28) - 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett (42) - I'm Not There
Amy Ryan (29) - Gone Baby Gone and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Tilda Swinton (23) - Michael Clayton

BEST SCREENPLAY
Tamara Jenkins (28) - The Savages
Paul Thomas Anderson (19) - There Will Be Blood
Ronald Harwood (17) - The Diving Bell And The Butterfly

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
There Will Be Blood (51) - Robert Elswit
The Diving Bell And The Butterfly (40) - Janusz Kaminski
No Country For Old Men (33) - Roger Deakins

BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM
Profit Motive And The Whispering Wind by John Gianvito

FILM HERITAGE AWARD
Ford At Fox, a 21-disc box set from Fox Home Video.

FILM HERITAGE AWARD
Ross Lipman of the UCLA Film and Television Archive for the restoration of Charles Burnett's Killer Of Sheep and other independent films.

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