Clint Eastwood has just been handed the New York Film Critics Circle’s Best Director award for his work on Million Dollar Baby….terrific. There was obviously a bit of Sideways vs. Baby wrangling going on among the elite New York-area critics, with the Eastwood win smacking of some kind of spread-it-around compromise gesture. But good for Clint. Maybe between this and the Golden Globe nominations for Baby, he’ll loosen up and start playing the awards-hustle game. “That’s all it is,” said Kris Kirstofferson’s financial-shark character in Alan Pakula’s Rollover, in the midst of slapping down some wimpy associate. “It’s a damn game!”
