Image Credit: Merrick MortonThe Social Network has won the first major pre-Oscar Best Picture prize of the awards season, earning honors from the National Board of Review. The acclaimed film also won awards for Best Director (David Fincher), Best Actor (Jesse Eisenberg) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin). Last year’s winner, Up in the Air, ended up as an Oscar nominee but lost to The Hurt Locker; in other recent years, the NBR winner has lined up with the eventual Oscar winner (Slumdog Millionaire, No Country for Old Men). Missing from the group’s top 10: 127 Hours, The Kids Are All Right, and Black Swan — though it’s worth noting that four of last year’s 10 Oscar nominees weren’t recognized by the NBR either. The King’s Speech, meanwhile, made the top 10 list but failed to win any awards. Perhaps the biggest surprise (and a very pleasant one at that) is Jacki Weaver’s supporting actress victory for the amazing Australian drama Animal Kingdom. She and Eisenberg, along with Another Year‘s Best Actress winner Lesley Manville, pick up the biggest boosts in the overall awards race. The full list of winners is below. READ FULL STORY »
Tag: Pre-Oscar Prizes (91-100 of 193)
'The Social Network' wins National Board of Review prize
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'Winter's Bone,' 'Kids Are All Right' top Spirit Award nominees
Image credit: Sebastian Miynarski
Indie hits Winter’s Bone and The Kids Are All Right dominated the Film Independent Spirit Award nominees this morning, as Winter’s Bone earned a phenomenal seven nominations and Kids scored five. Both films were named in the Best Feature category, which also includes 127 Hours, Black Swan, and Greenberg. The upcoming drama Rabbit Hole also did very well, earning four nods, including acting citations for Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart.
Particularly because these nominees were chosen by a small group of industry professionals, there were a few surprising omissions. Though Kids stars Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo received nods, their castmate Julianne Moore did not. Likewise, Get Low scored two nominations (Best First Feature and Best Supporting Male for Bill Murray), but leading man Robert Duvall was overlooked. It also would have been nice to see Halle Berry in there for Frankie & Alice. And of course I’m steamed over the exclusion of Blue Valentine from the Best Actor (Ryan Gosling) and Best Feature races. Here are the nominees:
Best Feature
127 Hours
Black Swan
Greenberg
The Kids Are All Right
Winter’s Bone
Best Director
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
Best Male Lead
Ronald Bronstein, Daddy Longlegs
Aaron Eckhart, Rabbit Hole
James Franco, 127 Hours
John C. Reilly, Cyrus
Ben Stiller, Greenberg
Best Female Lead
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
Best Supporting Male
John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone
Samuel L. Jackson, Mother and Child
Bill Murray, Get Low
Jon Ortiz, Jack Goes Boating
Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right
Best Supporting Female
Ashley Bell, The Last Exorcism
Dale Dickey, Winter’s Bone
Allison Janney, Life During Wartime
Daphne Rubin-Vega, Jack Goes Boating
Naomi Watts, Mother and Child
Read the rest of the nominees after the jump. READ FULL STORY »
'Winter's Bone' wins big at Gotham Awards
Image Credit: Sebastian MlynarskiThe acclaimed indie drama Winter’s Bone was the big winner at the IFP Gotham Independent Film Awards tonight, taking home the Best Film and Best Ensemble prizes. Director Debra Granik’s Sundance prize-winner was the front-runner going into the ceremony, having been nominated for four awards in total, and has an outside chance of snagging of one next year’s 10 Best Picture Oscar nomination slots. Winter’s Bone wasn’t able to sweep the awards, however. In somewhat of a surprise, Daddy Longlegs leading man Ronald Bronstein (a past Gothams winner for his directorial debut, Frownland) beat Winter’s Bone star Jennifer Lawrence for Best Breakthrough Performance, while Waiting for “Superman” topped it for the Festival Genius Audience prize, which was voted on by filmgoers. The night’s biggest shut-outs, meanwhile, were The Kids Are All Right and Tiny Furniture, both of which went 0-for-2. The entire list of winners is below.
Best Film: Winter’s Bone
Best Documentary: The Oath
Best Ensemble: Winter’s Bone
Best Breakthrough Performance: Ronald Bronstein, Daddy Longlegs
Best Breakthrough Director: Kevin Asch, Holy Rollers
Best Film Not Playing At A Theater Near You: Littlerock
Festival Genius Audience Award: Waiting for “Superman”
Spirit Awards: Nominate these long shots!
We’re only a week away from the Nov. 30 announcement of the Film Independent Spirit Award nominees, which always manage to sneak a few pleasant surprises (like The Vicious Kind‘s Adam Scott last year) in with the expected indie hits. So here are three contenders I’m hoping might be recognized along with surefire nominees like The Kids Are All Right, Winter’s Bone, and Blue Valentine.
Best Actor: Dermot Mulroney, Inhale You’ve probably never heard of this drama, which was released last month. The story of an assistant D.A. who travels to dangerous Juarez, Mexico, to buy black-market lungs for his seriously ill daughter, it’s not always easy to watch. But Mulroney (pictured, left) gives a forceful performance as a dad who has run out of options.
Best Supporting Actress: Ann Guilbert, Please Give Just looking at her face (pictured, center) makes me laugh. As Catherine Keener’s grumpy New York City neighbor who just won’t die, the Dick Van Dyke Show veteran simply steals the show. Check out the trailer to see how she turns one word (“Dry”) into a comedic master class.
Best Foreign Film: Animal Kingdom Since it’s Australian, this is the only category where the riveting crime drama is eligible. Just for the mesmerizingly villainous performance of Ben Mendelsohn (pictured, right) alone, David Michod’s twisted family tale deserves a slot.
Helena Bonham Carter wins Richard Harris Award
Oscar-nominated actress Helena Bonham Carter will receive the Richard Harris Award at this December’s British Independent Film Awards. Bonham Carter, who stars in the Harry Potter films, as well as this season’s The King’s Speech, will join Tilda Swinton as the second female winner of the award, named for the famed Irish actor who died in 2002. Bonham Carter was nominated for an Oscar for 1997′s The Wings of the Dove.
Joel McHale to host Spirit Awards
Image credit: Albert L. Ortega/PR Photos
Actor and comedian Joel McHale will host the Film Independent Spirit Awards on Feb. 26. With only a handful of movie credits (including Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant!) on his resumé, McHale isn’t exactly a fixture on the indie film scene like past hosts Samuel L. Jackson or John Waters. But the star of NBC’s Community (and more notably, the host of The Soup on E!) could actually be the perfect person to skewer the oftentimes self-serious movie biz a bit at the ceremony, which thankfully returns to its beachside setting this year. Nominees will be announced on Nov. 30; the telecast will air on IFC on Feb. 26 at 10pm.
Okay, Academy: Now it’s your turn to make a host announcement!
Roman Polanski: Dark horse Best Director contender?
Image credit: Guy Farrandis
Over the weekend, the nominees for the European Film Awards were announced, and the film receiving the most nominations, in a surprise, was Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer, starring Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan. Meanwhile, Mike Leigh’s highly-touted upcoming drama Another Year received only two nominations, while the acclaimed Italian film I Am Love (starring Tilda Swinton) was completely shut out. But it’s the seven nods for The Ghost Writer that are making me wonder if Polanski (who shocked many when he beat Gangs of New York‘s Martin Scorsese and Chicago‘s Rob Marshall for Best Director in 2003 for The Pianist) could be a dark horse contender this year as well. Oftentimes the directors branch does reserve one slot for a left-field, often non-American candidate (like Fernando Meirelles for City of God, or Mike Leigh for Vera Drake) whose film isn’t exactly a front-runner for Best Picture. This year’s there’s also Leigh and The Way Back‘s Peter Weir, but if the directors think outside the box, they could feasibly go for Polanski.
While The Pianist was a December release, however, The Ghost Writer came out all the way back in March, so many voters may have forgotten about it already (if they even saw it in the first place). Awards DVDs will help the film’s case—but it remains to be seen if the Academy will want to open the Pandora’s box of recognizing perhaps today’s most controversial filmmaker yet again.
'The King's Speech' tops British Independent Film Award nominees
The upcoming Colin Firth comedic drama The King’s Speech scored eight nominations from the British Independent Film Awards, with Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley’s Never Let Me Go tied for second place with six. Most interesting in today’s announcement was the placement of Another Year‘s Lesley Manville in supporting actress while her costars Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen were nominated in the lead categories. That’s the opposite of how their campaigns are expected to go. Also, although Another Year‘s Mike Leigh earned a Best Director nod, the film itself was left out in favor of the jihadist drama Four Lions. And I also find it very intriguing that the same film (The Arbor) could be nominated for both Best Actress and Best Documentary. The full list of nominees is after the jump.
Gotham Award nominations: Who was overlooked?
I had the pleasure of serving on the Gotham Awards nominating committee this year and think today’s list of nominees reflects what a strong year it was for independent film. Anyone who’s read my blog so far this season will know that I was especially happy to see Blue Valentine and The Kids Are All Right make the cut. But some high-profile awards contenders that were eligible didn’t end up scoring any nominations, among them Get Low, Somewhere, The Tempest, Rabbit Hole, and Never Let Me Go. Since the Gotham nominees are chosen by small groups of journalists, an omission today doesn’t exactly sound the death knell for a film’s overall momentum. I still do think Get Low (and to a lesser extent, Rabbit Hole) have a shot at competing in some major Academy categories. Below are the nominees:
Best Feature
Black Swan
Blue Valentine
The Kids Are All Right
Let Me In
Winter’s Bone
Best Documentary
12th & Delaware
Inside Job
The Oath
Public Speaking
Sweetgrass
Best Ensemble Performance
The Kids Are All Right
Life During Wartime
Please Give
Tiny Furniture
Winter’s Bone
Breakthrough Director
John Wells, The Company Men
Kevin Asch, Holy Rollers
Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, I Love You Phillip Morris
Tanya Hamilton, Night Catches Us
Lena Dunham, Tiny Furniture
Breakthrough Actor
Prince Adu, Prince of Broadway
Ronald Bronstein, Daddy Longlegs
Greta Gerwig, Greenberg
Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone
John Ortiz, Jack Goes Boating
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