Spirit Awards. What They Do and Don't Say About Oscar.

Now that I've had a day to think over the Spirit Awards (nominee discussion) and what they reveal and obscure about the Oscar race, here's a deeper look for my Tribeca Film column.

Eligible "Best Feature" Snubs
Blue Valentine, Get Low, Somewhere, Rabbit Hole
Not eligible for "Best Feature" or Acting Prizes
The King's Speech, I Am Love, Another Year, Animal KingdomNot eligible for anything
Toy Story 3, The Social Network, True Grit, The Town, Etc...

Remember last year when Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire swept the Oscars, becoming the first... oh, no, wait, that didn't happen at all. That was the Film Independent Spirit Awards. They take place the day before the Oscars each year. And they take place in a tent. We don't know the square footage, but it’s safe to say that it’s got nothing on the Kodak Theater. 

Generally speaking, the Spirit Awards are a looser, rowdier event. You can even wear jeans. As a group, they’re much more likely to honor African-American abuse dramas (Precious) or intimate character studies of "broken down pieces of meat" (The Wrestler) or teen pregnancy comedies (Juno) than the mainstream Academy is. In fact, in their entire 25-year shared history with the Oscars, the “Best Feature” and “Best Picture” prizes have only gone to the same film once.

...read the rest in my weekly Tribeca Film column.
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Spirit Awards: "Winter's Bone" and "The Kids Are All Right" Lead.

Historically the Spirit Awards tend to honor a few of the major Oscar players each year but a win at the Spirits can sometimesLe be the last hurrah, a consolation prize as some would say, if the work is too "edgy" for lack of a less exhaustively employed word. Last year's big winner was Precious (refresh your memory?) It took home Picture, Director, Actress, Supporting Actress and Adapted Screenplay. There were only three crossover winners from Spirits to Oscars last year : Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart), Mo'Nique (Precious) and the screenplay for Precious. (The Hurt Locker was considered a 2008 film.)

So what fared well this year? Black Swan got four nods including Best Actress for "sweet girl" Natalie Portman. But it could peak at the right time. Full list after the jump with Winter's Bone (7) and The Kids Are All Right (5) leading the pack.




Eva Mendes and Jeremy Renner announced the nominees. And wow, it went by fast. My transcription speed, 75 wpm bitches, was not as fast as the larynxes of Eva & Jeremy... except when it came to Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul and Uncle Boonmee. But now I've caught up.

BEST FEATURE
You could very well see 80% of the list in Oscar's expanded Best Picture field. Only Greenberg would be a hard Academy sell.

• 127 Hours 
• Black Swan
• Greenberg
• The Kids Are All Right
• Winter's Bone

BEST DIRECTOR
It will be interesting to see who takes this prize. Winter's Bone probably has a leg up but will they really pass over someone visionary like Darren Aronofsky? Black Swan could well peak at the right time. Or will Kids supporters rally around Lisa Cholodenko who has been in that Spirit tent plenty of times.

• Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan)
• Danny Boyle (127 Hours)
• Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right)
• Debra Granik (Winter's Bone)
• John Cameron Mitchell (Rabbit Hole)

FIRST FEATURE

• Everything Strange and New (Frazer Bradshaw, Laura Techera Francia, A.D. Liano)
• Get Low (Aaron Schneider, Dean Zanuck, David Gundlach)
• Night Catches Us (Tanya Hamilton, Ronald Simon, Sean Costello, Jason Orans)
• The Last Exorcism (Daniel Stamm, Eric Newman, Eli Roth, Marc Abraham, Thomas A Bliss)
• Tiny Furniture (Lena Dunham, Kyle Martin, Alicia Van Couvering)

JOHN CASSAVETTES AWARD
This is for the real indies. The super low- budget films.

• Daddy Long Legs (Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie, Casey Neistat, Tom Scott)
• lbs. (Matthew Bonifacio, Carmine Famigletti)
• Lovers of Hate (Bryan Poyser, Megan Gilbride)
• Obsiledia (Diane Bell, Chris Byrne, Matthew Medlin)
• The Exploding Girl (Bradley Rust Gray, So Yong Kim, Karen Chien, Ben Howe)

ROBERT ALTMAN AWARD (ENSEMBLE CAST)

Hall, Guibert, Peet and Keener are lovely & amazing.

• To the director, casting director and cast of Please Give. That's a fine choice actually. Just watched it again this week and it's quite a funny collection of characters with plenty of actor interaction. That interaction is sadly missing in many films which are honored for ensemble work simply by having large or starry casts. Does Please Give have any hope of a SAG Ensemble nod or is it just too small and unheralded in a category that always (wrongly) pretends it's a "best picture" award. This can't hurt at the very least.  

BEST ACTRESS

An unprecedented six nominees this year which must mean there was some sort of tie and no tie-breaker system. But all six are good choices, so we won't bitch too much. 

• Annette Bening (The Kids Are All Right)
• Greta Gerwig (Greenberg)
• Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole)
• Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone)
• Natalie Portman (Black Swan)
• Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine)

LEAD ACTOR

The Ryan Gosling snub for Blue Valentine smarts. He's just so terrific in it... and worthier than any of the performances selected save Bronstein (who I haven't yet seen so who knows.)

• Ronald Bronstein (Daddy Longlegs)
• Aaron Eckhart (Rabbit Hole)
• James Franco (127 Hours)
• John C Reilly (Cyrus)
• Ben Stiller (Greenberg)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
"Mimi" got a nomination. Take her ou-ooooot tonight. This lineup is very indie. Sometimes it's hard to tell the Spirits apart from more mainstream prizes but in the supporting categories, they're often true to their roots.

• Ashley Bell (The Last Exorcism)
• Dale Dickey (Winter's Bone)
• Alison Janney (Life During Wartime)
• Daphne Rubin-Vega (Jack Goes Boating)
• Naomi Watts (Mother and Child)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Interesting that Philip Seymour Hoffman did not get a nomination for Jack Goes Boating, a vanity project since he directed and starred, but the supporting cast did.

• John Hawkes (Winter's Bone)
• Samuel L Jackson (Mother and Child)
• Bill Murray (Get Low)
• John Ortiz (Jack Goes Boating)
• Mark Ruffalo (The Kids Are All Right)

CINEMATOGRAPHY

• Adam Kimmel (Never Let Me Go)
• Matthew Libatique (Black Swan)
• (Tiny Furniture)
• (Winter's Bone)
• Harris Savides (Greenberg)

DOCUMENTARY

• Exit Through The Gift Shop
• Marwencal
• Restrepo
• Sweet Grass
• Thunder Soul

SCREENPLAY

• The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg)
• Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz)
• Please Give (Nicole Holofcener)
• Rabbit Hole (David Lindsey-Abaire)
• Winter's Bone (Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini)

FIRST SCREENPLAY

• Jack Goes Boating (Robert Glaudini)
• Lovely Still (Nik Fackler)
• Monogamy (Dana Adam Shapiro and Evan M Wiener)
• Obselidia (Diane Bell)
• Tiny Furniture (Lena Dunham)

FOREIGN FILM

I wish they'd stop including British films in this category. They have such an unfair advantage. Sad that I Am Love didn't make this list. So much more worthy of respect paid than The King's Speech, you know?

• Kisses
• Mademoiselle Chambon
• Of Gods and Men (Apichatpong Weerasethasakul
• The King's Speech (Tom Hooper)
• Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

SOMEONE TO WATCH

Someone should do a study of how many of these nominees each year ever get another crack at the movies. It's such a brutal business.

• Mike Ott (Littlerock)
• Laurel Nakadate (The Wolf Knife)
• Hossein Keshavarz (Dog Sweat)

TRUER THAN FICTION

Another documentary prize.

• Sweetgrass (Ilisa Barbarsh, Lucien Castaing-Taylor)
• Marwencol (Jeff Malmberg)
• Summer Pasture (Lynn True, Nelson Walker)

PRODUCERS AWARDS

Does this mean Meek's Cutoff will not be eligible next year when it's released? The Spirits have different eligibility rules than Oscar but it seemed like such a likely Spirit Awards contender.

• In-Ah Lee (Au Revoir Tapei)
• Adele Romanski (The Myth of the American Sleepover)
• Anish Savjani (Meek's Cutoff)

Gotham Award Winners

If you'd like running commentary IndieWire provided. If you're short for time here are the winners.

Best Documentary The Oath
Breakthrough Director Kevin Asch for Holy Rollers
Breakthrough Performance Ronald Bronstein from Daddy Longlegs 
Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You Littlerock (Mike Ott)
Festival Genius Award Waiting For 'Superman'
Best Ensemble Performance Winter's Bone
Best Feature Winter's Bone
Tributes: Hilary Swank, James Schamus, Darren Aronofsky, Robert Duvall


The most interesting detail was that, despite a strong night for Winter's Bone, Jennifer Lawrence did not win Breakthrough Performance. I now kick myself for missing Daddy Longlegs which was on my Sundance schedule at least twice and I kept having to rearrange and missed it.  The other immediately noticeable development was in the Documentary field. The field was entirely composed of films that did not make the Academy's Finalist List, Inside Job excepted. The terrorism doc The Oath won.

(Speaking of those Oscar finalist documentaries, I'm only seen a handful but Restrepo, detailing one deployment for US soldiers in Afghanistan is my personal favorite of the lot thus far. Still, none of them compare to Last Train Home, which gets shunned awards-wise.)

What's next for Winter's Bone? Tomorrow will undoubtedly be another good day for the scary Ozark-set drama. The Spirit Award nominees, the big deal for indies, will be announced at 11 AM EST. Expect it to lead the nominations, or thereabouts. From there the awards path for Debra Granik's well loved minor hit gets trickier. Will the critical enthusiasm translate to mainstream movie prizes like the The Globes and Oscar? Stay tuned.

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