The Independent Spirit Award nominations are out today, the first key announcement of the film awards season. Not that reading this list will give you a good indication of the eventual Oscar nominees. The Spirit Awards are fun because their focus is more narrow than most award groups and their selections are often offbeat, occasionally recognizing films that have only played film festivals and have no distribution deals.
That said, this year's crop feels a little more conventional than usual. Compare this year's Best Feature nominees (Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, The Squid and the Whale, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) to last year's (Baadasssss!, Kinsey, Maria Full of Grace, Primer, Sideways).
Choices like Baadasssss! and Primer were only-at-the-Spirits outside the box selections. The same can't be said of Capote, Good Night and Squid, which are all heavyweights on the art film circuit in terms of box office, critical and media attention. Brokeback has yet to open but it's already a significant critical success and a (deserved) Oscar frontrunner. Only Three Burials feels remotely like a maverick pick (the yet-to-be-released movie could still become a Big Deal, although that seems unlikely). The nominating committee didn't even have to go back very far to come up with this group: the "oldest" movie on the list is Capote which opened in September, Good Night and Squid debuted a week later and the two westerns bow next month. (However, if you're going by festivals, Squid is the oldest since it premiered at Sundance. It's the only Sundance movie nominated for best feature.)
The five movies nominated for best feature also dominated the overall list. Squid and the Whale earned the most noms (6) and its feature competitors all landed four. No other movie was nominated in more than three categories.
The spring and summer indie sensations were relegated to the "Best First Feature" category (like Crash and Me and You and Everyone We Know) or less (like Junebug's noms for supporting actress, yay for Amy!, and first screenplay, Mysterious Skin's nom for director, Broken Flowers' nom for supporting actor, Hustle & Flow's nom for actor).
Maybe it means the "bigger" indie movies released at the end of the year are simply better. Frankly I haven't seen enough of them yet to say (someday soon I will see Capote and Good Night and Good Luck, I truly will), but if the Spirit Awards really are getting more predictable, and/or more reflective of the Oscars and critics groups, they risk losing their unique charm.
Take a look at this category:
BEST MALE LEAD
Jeff Daniels, The Squid and the Whale
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Terrence Howard, Hustle & Flow
Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck.
All great performances, no doubt, but last year the committee found room for Kevin Bacon in The Woodsman and Jeff Bridges in The Door in the Floor (not to mention Jamie Foxx for his festival-screened TV movie Redemption). This year's lower profile contenders, like Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Mysterious Skin and Bill Murray in Broken Flowers, weren't so lucky.
Then again...
BEST FEMALE LEAD
Felicity Huffman, Transamerica
Dina Korzun, Forty Shades of Blue
Laura Linney, The Squid and the Whale
S. Epatha Merkerson, Lackawanna Blues
Cyndi Williams, Room
This probably speaks to the larger issue of a lack of great, highly visible, roles for lead actresses but the category includes actresses from a feature nominee (Linney), a festival-screened TV movie (Merkerson), an ultra-low profile Sundance winner (Korzun), a film with no distribution deal (Williams) and a bona fide Oscar contender (Huffman). Sadly Huffman, as the Oscar contender, will probably win (even though her movie is awful it also earned nominations for first feature and first screenplay). I would've liked to have seen Miranda July in here for Me and You and Everyone We Know but it's a great mix anyway.
Next up in the frenzy is the National Board of Review's top ten list and winners on December 7, followed by LA and New York critics group announcements and the Golden Globe noms (on Dec. 13).
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