Capote was named best picture of 2005 at the weekend by theNational Society of Film Critics (NSFC), who also voted the picture's star PhilipSeymour Hoffman best actor.

Reese Witherspoon won the best actress stakes for Walk The Line, David Cronenberg was named best director for AHistory Of Violence, while thatpicture's Ed Harris won best supporting actor and Amy Adams took correspondingactress honours for Junebug.

Noah Baumbach won the screenplay award for The Squid And The Whale, Fatih Akin's German romance Head-On won best foreign language honours, Werner Herzog's GrizzlyMan took the non-fiction prize, andChristopher Doyle, Kwan Pun-leung and Lai Yiu-fai won the cinematographycategory for Wong Kar-Wai's 2046.

Experimental awards went to William Greaves' Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One(1968) and Take Two (2005), and James Benning's trio of 2005 pictures, 13 Lakes, Ten Skies, and 27 Years Later.

The Film Heritage Award winner was Anthology Film Archives and Bruce Posner fortheir seven-disc box set of pre-1942 American avant-garde cinema UnseenCinema. Los Angeles Times criticKevin Thomas was commended for his 44-year tenure at the newspaper.

Members of the National Society of Film Critics, which comprises 57 ofAmerica's leading critics, cast their votes on Saturday [7] in theirtraditional meeting place at Sardi's Restaurant in New York City. The groupemploys a weighted ballot system.