Film Independent Spirit noms
The Film Independent, non-IFP Spirit Awards selection committee really likes Todd Haynes‘ I’m Not There, and not just because of the four just-announced nominations — Best Feature, Best Director and acting noms for Cate Blanchett (a sure winner) and Marcus Carl Franklin. They’ve also selected the Weinstein Co. release to receive the org’s Robert Altman Award, a pat-on-the-back group award for the director, casting director and ensemble cast.
Lisa Kudrow, Zac Braff following the reading of nominations — Tuesday, 8:28 am, 2nd floor conference room, West Hollywood’s Sofitel.
Jason Reitman‘s Juno, Julian Schnabel‘s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Tamara Jenkins‘ The Savages also received four noms each.
The nominations were announced by Zach Braff and Lisa Kudrow at 8 this morning at the Sofitel in West Hollywood. I was sitting in the front row, having loaded up on the free scrambled eggs, roissants, crisp bacon and good coffee a little while before. I snapped the usual photos and left hurriedly when it was over. I left my digital recorder lying on the stage….brilliant.
I’m Not There, Butterfly and Juno were nominated for Best Feature alongside Michael Winterbottom‘s A Mighty Heart and Gus Van Sant‘s Paranoid Park.
I’m Not There (duhhh) will win the Best Feature award. Todd Haynes will take the Best Director award. The Best First Feature winner is too tough call. (The nominees are 2 Days in Paris, Great World of Sound, The Lookout, Rocket Science and Vanaja.) And I don’t know from the John Cassevetes Award.
A morbidly obese, revoltingly chummy glad-handing photographer who was sitting next to me went “ohhh” when Waitress director-writer Adrienne Shelly‘s name was announced as one of the Best Screenplay nominees, so look for a possible Shelly win as a gesture of sorrow for the tragedy that befell her last year.
Either Juno‘s Diablo Cody or Before The Devil Knows Your’e Dead‘s Kelly Masterson will win the Best First Screenplay award — edge to Cody because she lives here now and knows how to work the town, and because Masterson is a New Jersey hermit.
Angelina Jolie may win the Best Actress award for A Mighty Heart (her best performance ever), but if she doesn’t win the rightful winner should be Parker Posey for Broken English.
The Best Actor competish will be between Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Savages) and Frank Langella (Starting Out in the Evening) — edge to Hoffman.
Blanchett, as noted, as the Best Supporting Female award locked. There’s no hear on any of the Best Supporting Actor nominees but young Marcus Carl Franklin might take it on the strength of the I’m Not There coattails.
It’s too hard to call the Best Documentary nominees…pass. But the Best Foreign Film contest is between Cristian Mungiu‘s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (the best of the five nominees), Eran Kolirin‘s The Band’s Visit (possible recipient of a sympathy vote for having been fucked by the Academy and the HFPA with the language issue), and John Carney‘s Once, the little movie that could and did.
Were those pictures taken at an odd angle? Maybe it’s just their television personalities, but I would have thought that Kudrow would tower over Braff in real life.
You know, Diving Bell and the Butterfly will give I’m Not There a run for its money, wouldn’t be surprised if it was the surprise winner.
nice to see they screwed Sidney Lumet out of a nom. Was he not Indie minded enough for them?
Best lay off that crisp bacon lest you head toward morbid obese territory yourself, chum.
No complaints about the “Control” shut-out?
Edge to Cody also because Masterson’s screenplay was terrible, just barely rescued by Lumet’s cuisinart technique and the tremendous work of the cast.
Burma–what did you find terrible about Masterson’s script? I thought it was incredible all the way through.
The Best First Feature winner is too tough call. (The nominees are 2 Days in Paris, Great World of Sound, The Lookout, Rocket Science and Vanaja.)
ROCKET SCIENCE?!!?? That affected, annoying lumbering monster built out of spare parts from NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, ELECTION, THUMBSUCKER, etc?
To be fair, Anna Kendrick deserves her supporting actress nomination for RS, but that’s the only nomination it should have received.
actionman, Masterson’s script was tragedy for the sake of tragedy, piling on more and more illogical and inhuman action. It strained credulity, to say the last. Furthermore, it completely failed in its attempt to have the father be the third part of the triangle, and his portion was basically a fantasy. Try backing up into a cop car sometime and not getting in trouble. And the ending, don’t get me started.
Plus it fails the 21 GRAMS test. If you unstrung the actions and presented them chronologically, would it still have worked? Now don’t get me wrong, I have a healthy respect for truly dark tragedy. I thought HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG was close to a masterpiece. I just don’t think BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD earned any of it. Unless Kelly Masterson actually wrote down “Marisa Tomei gets naked” on his pages, he shouldn’t be anywhere near an Awards stage this season. What did you find so incredible about it?
Burma–check out my review of the film:
http://actionman-nickspix.blogspot.com/2007/11/review-before-devil-knows-you.html
Spoiler warning:
I didn’t see anything illogical about the movie. It worked precisely because of its logic. It’s a small scale story about dark, nasty people and I think that to call it tragedy for tragedy’s sake isn’t fair. Hoffman and Hawke’s characters are weak-willed losers who can’t do anything right. The film reminded me a lot of Fargo in that you had regular type people making one clumsy mistake after another after thinking they’ve crafted the perfect crime. It had shades of House of Sand and Fog as well, but that film was a Roger Deakins cinematography fest first and foremost (for me at least). I played the 21 Grams/Pulp Fiction “re-order the scenes” game atfer I watched it and it all added up to me. The acting was sensational, especially from Hoffman and Finney and Hawke. But Hoffman was a force of nature. The casual violence was startling, the heroin-addiction subplot that comes full circle was clever and sharp, Lumet’s steady and never flashy style was refreshingly old-school, and Marisa Tomei was fucking naked for 75% of her screen time! What’s not to like? I love the crime genre, I’m a big fan of Lumet when he has the right material, and I absolutely love Hoffman so for me, it’s one of the best movies of the year.
*SPOILERS herein*
actionman, it’s an excellent point about FARGO. There was a huge amount of Lundegaard in Hoffman’s Andy, but BEFORE THE DEVIL had none of that film’s mordant wit and lacked the sweetness of Marge. Plus Andy at the end suddenly becomes a gun-toting take charge psycho, a development that the Coens would have found absurd. Macy’s crybaby antics upon his arrest are a much more realistic end for such a man.
Also, to add, Lumet directed the hell out of the thing and Hoffman(until the woozy finale) and Hawke were superb. Brian O’Byrne and Michael Shannon stole the picture though. I’m not saying it’s a bad movie, I’d give it about a B/B+, putting it about on the level of 3:10 TO YUMA, THE BRAVE ONE and DAN IN REAL LIFE. I just thought the script was inherently weak.
Burma…we will have to agree to disagree I guess. The lack of sympathetic characters like Marge and Norm “Son-of-a-Gundersson” from FARGO in BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS was one of the reasons why I liked it so much…it was a bleak, unrelentingly nasty movie about devious, twisted people. True, the mordant wit on display in FARGO and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is much more prevalent than in BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD, but I tend to think of FARGO, and to a much lesser extent NCFOM, as black comedies. BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD doesn’t remotely resemble a black comedy at all, it’s a serious morality tale/tragedy, and by the end, it’s as if you’ve just watched a play by Shakespeare. Also, at the end of the film, Andy isn’t a “take charge psycho” by any stretch; he can’t bare to shoot someone straight out so he puts a pillow infront of the gun nozzle and he’s genuinely nervous and even hesitates before pulling the trigger. He was sloppy in those murderous moments, not confident, and the rage he exhibited earlier in the film greatly contributes to the believability of him fucking over the heroin dealer. I agree with you on Michael Shannon–he’s a real talent, his performance in this and in Bug are total standouts. I really enjoyed both 3:10 TO YUMA and DAN IN REAL LIFE as well, but regrettably missed THE BRAVE ONE.
See, I was worried about Before the Devil passing the “21 Grams test”, and I thought it succeeded.
By opening with the robbery, it keeps it from being just another heist gone wrong picture. A genre I find irresistable despite being burned repeatedly by the way, but that’s another story.
The importance of the robbery itself is minimized, though in terms of the lives of the characters it’s the key turning point. The story is more interested in how each character got to that point and the aftermath.
Hoffman’s transition seemed earned to me. A person facing the absolute nadir of their entire lives when all the strings they thought they were pulling have fallen slack can react in a couple of ways: one is to curl up into a fetal position on a motel room bed as the cops break in the door and the other one is to snap and react with extreme violence. Both make sense to me.
Yet, after rereading some of what you said BurmaShave, I think I was applying your criticism of the screenplay to your opinion of the whole movie. My first reaction was that it was good but not great. Maybe better than your B+ but I’m going to have to see it again.
“Do you mind if I call you Chico?”
Glad we can agree to disagree in a civil way, actionman. cjKennedy you make an interesting point about minimizing the importance of the actual crime, though certainly not its effects.
As for the IFP’s, I think Irfhan Khan has a much better chance at Best Supporting Male than Wells is letting on. He’s been one of the extraordinary performers this year, in THE NAMESAKE, THE DARJEELING LIMITED, and especially A MIGHTY HEART. Glad he’s been nominated for something. Next stop: Bond villain.
he’d make a GREAT Bond villian, I completely agree with you on that.
How bad is it that my first thought re: Irfan Khan as a Bond villain was that his evil plot to take over the world would have to involve telemarketing?
Civility and actually talking about movies. Imagine.
Jeff:
You do realize that these awards are voted on by FIND members as a perk (incentive) for spending $90 a year to keep the whole rickety organization funded, yes? The same group of people who collectively voted Little Miss Sunshine over Half Nelson and Pan’s Labyrinth last year? They’re essentially the People’s Choice Awards for LA-based film fans and so while the nominations, which are decided on by small panels, may reach for eclectic (the as yet unreleased Paranoid Park) or obscure (see the entire Cassavettes category) titles, the winners almost always skewer populous. In fact you have to go back to 1993 to find a winner in the best feature category to find a winner that wasn’t the highest grossing film of the nominees. So aside from the fact it would have your vote, I’m Not There had better sell a whole, hell of a lot more tickets if it’s to be the foregone conclusion you seem to think it will be.
does anyone know where THE DIVING BELL & THE BUTTERFLY is being released in Los Angeles this weekend? It’s not listed under the “coming soon” section at the Arclight’s website…any chance of it showing up at The Landmark on Pico?
Diving Bell’s at the Landmark starting 11/30.
sweet, thanks ASD.
congrats to all favorites! I just moved this news to http://www.Richromances.com where many hollywood celebs and moviegoers are busy with talking about this.
I was also very happy with Irfan Khan’s nomination. I also like every film he’s been in this year, but his best work was in THE NAMESAKE, so I was glad to see him recognized.
“where many hollywood celebs and moviegoers are busy with talking about this.”
Right now I’m busy with writing about this.
Appreciated your work with the other spammer, Wells, keep at it.
I wish Zach Braff’s face would just go away already