Oscar Week: The Indie Awards
If the Oscars are making you nuts with their Hollywood bias — though there’s less glitz among this year’s nominees than ever — you can detox with the Independent Spirit Awards. Taking place this Saturday, and broadcast on the Independent Film Channel (IFC), the 23rd Independent Spirit Awards celebrate what you can do with film talent, working fast and on the cheap. Hosted by Rainn Wilson, of The Office and Juno, the ceremony takes place in front of an audience that gathers inside a beachfront tent in Santa Monica. On the Red Carpet, the Spirits are to cargo pants what the Oscars are to Dolce and Gabbana. The crowd is low-key and by my own witness not adverse to maverick behavior and controlled substances. Mostly, though, it’s a chance for the indies get a little cred. Here are a few of the nominees:
BEST FEATURE
The Diving Bell And The Butterfly
I’m Not There
Juno
A Mighty Heart
Paranoid Park
Only Juno is also on Oscar’s Best Picture list. But I think this award will go to Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There or Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which both represent rule-busting experimentation pushed to the max. You can’t say that about Juno.
Look for Haynes and Schnabel to duke it out for Best Director, though this indie crowd is too laidback to go in for backstabbing competition. Damn them. My personal pick would be I’m Not There, a Bob Dylan biopic that, even when it stumbles, re-imagines the form with real creative juice.
BEST FIRST FEATURE
2 Days In Paris
Director: Julie Delpy
Great World Of Sound
Director: Craig Zobel
The Lookout
Director: Scott Frank
Rocket Science
Director: Jeffrey Blitz
Vanaja
Director: Rajnesh Domalpalli
Love this category. At the very least awards for first-timers are damn encouraging. I’ve been saying YES YES YES to Craig Zobel’s Great World of Sound since the DVD came out last week. But if Scott Frank’s The Lookout wins instead, you’ll hear no bitching from me. Though I will bitch that the film’s gifted star, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is not up for Best Actor.
BEST MALE LEAD
Pedro Castaneda
August Evening
Don Cheadle
Talk To Me
Philip Seymour Hoffman
The Savages
Frank Langella
Starting Out In The Evening
Tony Leung
Lust, Caution
Not an Oscar nominated performance in the bunch, another good reason for the Spirit awards as a rebuke to the Academy. I give special props to Don Cheadle and Philip Seymour Hoffman, but Frank Langella does career-topping work as an author who’s lost faith in himself.
BEST FEMALE LEAD
Angelina Jolie
A Mighty Heart
Sienna Miller
Interview
Ellen Page
Juno
Parker Posey
Broken English
Tang Wei
Lust, Caution
Question Spirit people: Why no nod to Laura Linney for The Savages when her costar Philip Seymour Hoffman felt the Spirit hand? Of course, Linney won the Oscar nomination and Hoffman did not, but how do you see this movie and not see it as a dual victory? No matter. I think Ellen Page gets this one, giving Juno props in just the right category.
BEST SUPPORTING MALE
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Talk To Me
Marcus Carl Franklin
I’m Not There
Kene Holliday
Great World Of Sound
Irrfan Khan
The Namesake
Steve Zahn
Rescue Dawn
Not to keep playing The Lookout card, but since the Spirits nominated that excellent drama as Best First Feature, did they not notice how good Jeff Daniels was as the deviously clever blind guy? Just asking. Who’ll win? With all respect to Steve Zahn as a POW and Marcus Carl Franklin as a young, African-American Bob Dylan, Kene Holliday, as a con man posing as a record producer, just amazed me.
BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE
Cate Blanchett
I’m Not There
Anna Kendrick
Rocket Science
Jennifer Jason Leigh
Margot At The Wedding
Tamara Podemski
Four Sheets To The Wind
Marisa Tomei
Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead
Cate Blanchett will probably lose her Oscar to Ruby Dee. But here she should win in a walk for her miraculous performance as an electric, androgynous Bob Dylan. And good on you Spirits, for putting a spotlight on Jennifer Jason Leigh when everyone else turned unfairly on her husband Noah Baumbach’s tough-minded movie. And I like me some Marisa Tomei, who scored triumphantly and erotically in a crime drama that deserved a lot more love from the nominators. Talk about independent spirit — Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead had it in spades. But why carp when the Spirits get so much right? Peek in on Saturday — you might be pleasantly surprised.