Image Credit: Merie Wallace
Two film-festival favorites — George Clooney’s The Descendants and Elizabeth Olsen’s Martha Marcy May Marlene — led the Gotham Award nominations with three mentions each, followed by the Ewan McGregor love story Beginners and the Michael Shannon/Jessica Chastain drama Take Shelter with two. The Gotham Awards, which honor films produced outside the major studio system, were the first to recognize eventual Oscar nominees like The Hurt Locker and Winter’s Bone. Nominees were chosen by small groups of film critics, festival programmers, and journalists. (Full disclosure: I was on the nominating committee for the Best Ensemble Performance and Breakthrough Actor catgories, while my EW colleague Lisa Schwarzbaum helped select the Best Feature and Breakthrough Director nominees.) The full list of nominees is after the jump.
Best Feature
Beginners
The Descendants
Meek’s Cutoff
Take Shelter
The Tree of Life
Breakthrough Director
Mike Cahill, Another Earth
Sean Durkin, Martha Marcy May Marlene
Vera Farmiga, Higher Ground
Evan Glodell, Bellflower
Dee Rees, Pariah
Breakthrough Actor
Felicity Jones, Like Crazy
Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene
Harmony Santana, Gun Hill Road
Shailene Woodley, The Descendants
Jacob Wysocki, Terri
Best Ensemble Performance
Beginners
The Descendants
Margin Call
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Take Shelter
Best Documentary
Better This World
Bill Cunningham New York
Hell and Back Again
The Interrupters
The Woodmans
Best Film Not Playing At A Theater Near You
Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same
Green
The Redemption of General Butt Naked
Scenes of a Crime
Without
The Gotham Awards will be handed out in New York on November 28.
SPOILERS FOR THE DESCENDANTS:
In the end Milo goes to college.
Ha, I actually saw “Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same” at Newfest. The film is as goofy and strange as the title suggests.
Great list. I’m pleased to see they’ve remembered Beginners–a lovely, underappreciated film.
What about Michael Fassbender’s movie Shame? Why only take movies made by Americans?
scenes of a crime is a heartbreaking film. saw it twice in new york and cried even more the second time. hope it gets the exposure it deserves
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thanks for the article, just saw the movie and eynjoed but but also came away thinking WTF?!I also was wondering about if he killed any girls that were born and I noticed that in one of the panning shots of the farm there were large white crosses that had been erected in one of the gardens. Were these the graves of the killed children or other members of the cult who had failed to escape?