In news that will please a big Texas jock, Charlie has been awarded Best Original Screenplay by the Austin Film Critics' Association. The movie itself claimed 4th spot in their Top 10, between Milk and Benjamin Button. (The Dark Knight was #1.)

The A.V. Club ranked Synecdoche 3rd in their '08 wrap-up, putting it between The Dark Knight and Rachel Getting Married. (#1: WALL-E). They had this to say:

Viewers could go nuts trying to figure out which parts of Synecdoche, New York are real, and which parts are in the head of its hero, a regional-theater director (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who's turning his life into an elaborately staged drama. So at a certain point, the audience for this rambling meditation on truth and artifice has to stop thinking of it as a movie with a story to tell, and start thinking of it as an environment to get lost in. Writer-director Kaufman freely mixes absurdity and honest pathos in Synecdoche, and the mix is sometimes messy, and even unpalatable. But the scope of Synecdoche's imagination—and the deeply personal pain it explores—make it arguably 2008's most visionary film. At the least, it's likely to be challenging viewers long after most of this year's Oscar-bait has been forgotten. (Source)

Meanwhile, Don Kaye ranked it 10th, and Kim Morgan ranked it 5th, over at MSN.