Today the Boston Society of Film Critics tied on their choice of 2008’s Best Picture, splitting their top honor between Slumdog Millionaire and WALL*E. Except they also gave WALL*E their Best Animated Film award. Due respect, but this seems to me like muddled thinking.

If you’re giving WALL*E your Best Picture award (along with Milk), you’re saying, “This Chaplinesque robot movie is so good it deserves honor and glory outside the animation ghetto.” Which is fine and good. But you can’t then turn around and say, “Oh, and it’s also the Best Animated Film.” That’s like a Catholic male convincing his Jewish wife to take vows as a Catholic so they can get married in St. Patrick’s, and then turning around and getting hitched a second time in her father’s synagogue as an honorary Jew.

One or the other, I say. Choose. If you need to answer nature’s call, get it done inside one bathroom and in one toilet stall.

The BFCA also split their Best Actor award, giving it to both Milk’s Sean Penn and The Wrestler‘s Mickey Rourke.

And of course Happy Go Lucky‘s Sally Hawkins — this year’s Amy Ryan — won for Best Actress.

The Beantowners gave their Best Supporting Actor prize to The Dark Knight‘s Heath Ledger, and Vicky Cristina Barcleona‘s Penelope Cruz won for Best Supporting Actress.

A Boston-only award enthusiasm for Gus Van Sant‘s Paranoid Park was revealed when the BFCA handed their Best Director trophy to Van Sant for Milk and PP, and when they handed their Best Cinematography award to Christopher Doyle and Rain Kathy Li for Paranoid Park

The Best Screenplay nod went to Dustin Lance Black for Milk.

The Best Documentary award went to James Marsh‘s Man on Wire , and Let The Right One In was named Best Foreign-Language Film. The Best Film Editing award went to Slumdog Millionaire‘s Chris Dickens , and the Best New Filmmaker award went to In Bruge director-writer Martin McDonagh. The Best Ensemble Cast award went to the Tropic Thunder guys. Does this mean Tom Cruise might fly to Boston to co-accept?