Of all the various critics groups around the country, the one you should care most about is the Austin Film Critics Association. Why? Well, there’s two very solid and in no way biased reasons that I have: One is that Austin is the home base of Film School Rejects, the site you’re currently reading. And reason two is that yours truly is a member of said association, as is fellow Reject columnist Brian Salisbury. You may also recognize various friends of the site and past Reject Radio guests on the membership roster, including GordonandtheWhale.com founder Chase Whale, FearNet’s Scott Weinberg, Ain’t It Cool’s Eric Vespe, Movies.com’s Peter Hall and more. It’s a pretty impressive group, even if you take my membership into consideration. The other, perhaps less spoken reason, is that the AFCA is a group that won’t hesitate to buck the trends set by their big brother and sister organizations in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. They were the ones that called The Dark Knight the best of 2008, led the charge on The Hurt Locker as best pic of 2009 and resisted temptation in 2010, calling out Black Swan as the top film instead of going with everyone else who named The Social Network king. It’s a critics group that knows its stuff. And in 2011, they’ve chosen to honor Martin Scorsese’s Hugo as best pic, but awarded a great number of awards to fan favorites like Drive and Attack the Block. See the full press release just after the jump.

The wonderful group of fine professional film critics and journalists known as the Austin Film Critics Association — a group that includes the membership of yours truly and FSR Managing Editor Dr. Cole Abaius — has announced its award winners for the year 2009.

I love nearly everything about Austin,Texas. Now one more thing to adore is their choices of films to award, starting with The Dark Knight.