Spirit Awards: The nominees and what ‘independent film’ means

Obvious Child star Jenny Slate is nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for best actress.

The nominees for the 2014 Independent Spirit Awards – the West Coast cousin to the GothamFilm Independent Awards – were released Tuesday, and among them, you will find the usual suspects. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Birdman leads the list with six nominations and is joined in the Best Feature lineup by Boyhood, Love Is Strange, Selma, and Whiplash.

The winners this decade have been Black Swan, The Artist, Silver Linings Playbook, and 12 Years a Slave. You perhaps will notice that list is comprised solely of nominees for the Academy Award for Best Picture, including two winners. This year, Birdman, Boyhood, and Selma are all likely Best Picture nominees, and it is possible the winner will come from among those.

The Spirit Awards began in 1985 with a mission to honor the best in independent filmmaking, and up until about 2000, the worlds of the Spirits and the Oscars remained relatively separate – with the odd Platoon and Pulp Fiction thrown in there. Now, however, if you find yourself wondering what the difference is between these awards, you are not the only one. Since 2003, the only Best Feature winner at the Spirits not to garner a nomination for Best Picture at the Academy Awards has been Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler in 2008.

I would suggest there are a few overlapping reasons for this shift. First, over the last decade, the number of Academy Awards precursors has increased 10-fold as every little critics organization across the country throws its picks in the hat. Much as they claim to honor the best in film for a given year, many just want to predict the Oscar winners and claim the glory of saying they got it right first. Unfortunately, the Independent Spirit Awards have fallen into this trap as well.

Second, as the big movie studios such as Warner Brothers, Sony, and others have focused on major blockbusters, they have spun off their own “independent” studios to buy or develop awards-caliber fare. Sony Pictures Classic and Focus Features are among the best in the business at this, and they produce many great films, but these mid-size prestige studios contribute to blurring the line between independent and studio filmmaking.

Related to this is the fact that the blockbuster prestige film is a dying breed. From 1994 to 2004, all but two Best Picture winners earned more than $100 million at the box office with films such as Forrest Gump, Titanic, and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King qualifying as mega-blockbuster hits. Since 2004, five of the nine best picture winners have failed to crack $100 million – including the lowest grossing ever, The Hurt Locker – and none has achieved the blockbuster success of the aforementioned movies.

None of this is to say the Spirit Awards lack identity or purpose, and the organization still finds places to nominate and award lesser-known, lesser-hyped, and under-the-radar fare, as one might hope from such a voting body. Sam Fleischner’s micro-budget indie Stand Clear of the Closing Doors pulled a supporting actress nomination for Andrea Suarez Paz, and the four nominations for Ira Sachs beautiful and sad Love Is Strange, including in the top category, are a tremendous showing for the little modern love story.

My favorite notice among the nominations is a best actress nod for Jenny Slate in the acerbic romantic comedy Obvious Child, a film I just caught up with on DVD and loved. The nomination is unlikely to vault the comedienne into the conversation for an Oscar, but the Spirit Award nomination is well deserved recognition for an honest, raw, and down-to-earth portrayal of a woman who is not quite ready to reach a turning point in her life.

So, while big names may dominate the list, we can still be thankful that there is room for people such as Slate and Sachs and for the smaller films that launch vital new voices into the industry. What "independent film" means anymore with regard to budget or prestige or box office prospects is up for debate, but in the hearts and minds of the artists, the spirit of independent filmmaking will always remain alive and well.

I hear the train a comin’: Awards season gets rolling

Scarlett Johansson is nominated for a Gotham Award for Best Actress for her role in Jonathan Glazer's Best Film nominee, Under the Skin.

Film awards season has a fairly nebulous definition. Most of the time, it is hard to tell you are in it until you are in the thick of it. Some might say it starts around the time of the fall festivals such as New York, Telluride, and Toronto. Maybe it begins after Labor Day, when the prestige movies of the fall and winter roll out. In reality, a number of year-end awards contenders premiere at the start of the year at the Sundance Film Festival or at Cannes.

However you define it, there is no denying its scope and influence. My personal fascination with film awards is their ability to highlight little-known, little-seen, and little-discussed movies and bring them into the mainstream. There are gems hidden in the art houses just waiting to be discovered and admired. This is where true efforts of cinematic genius reside, and if we do not go to them, it is unlikely they will come to us.

Late last week, the Independent Filmmaker Project revealed its nominees for the 2014 Gotham Independent Film Awards, the starting gun for the marathon to the Oscars. Limited to independent American films, the Gotham Awards spread their love to 24 different films across seven categories this year with Richard Linklater’s Boyhood leading the way with four nominations.

You can view all the nominees at this link, but I am pleased by the recognition for both Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette for their wonderful work in Boyhood and doubly excited by the nomination for Mia Wasikowska in the Best Actress category for her physically demanding, emotionally satisfying turn in Tracks. For our purposes, we will focus in on Best Feature Film and a slate of five movies that encompass a broad spectrum of stories and styles.

The Gotham Independent Film Awards nominees for Best Feature are:

Birdman

Boyhood

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Love Is Strange

Under the Skin

I have written extensively about Birdman here, but allow me to reiterate: This is one of the best movies I have seen so far this year. Its technical prowess is just jaw-dropping, and the performances from a stellar cast never fail to amaze. Michael Keaton is also nominated in the Best Actor category and should win in a walk. This is pure filmmaking at its most resourceful, insightful, and downright grand. It has the added benefit of delivering an incisive social critique in the guise of a solid entertainment.

Linklater’s Boyhood is a labor of love – love of storytelling, love of filmmaking, and love of people. The famous 12-year film has found an adoring audience throughout its four-months-and-counting run in theaters and for good reason. It is relatable and unique, dripping with passion for the art form, and ultimately rewarding in the richness of its characterizations and the depth of its explorations.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is the latest film from popular auteur Wes Anderson. One might think it impossible to get more idiosyncratic than many of his previous features such as Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, or The Fantastic Mr. Fox, but this may be the apex of Anderson’s peculiar stylistic obsessions. Ralph Fiennes is great in the lead role of this hard-to-summarize adventure yarn, but I admired this film more than I was moved by it, which truth be told, could be said of my reactions to all of Anderson’s work with the exception of 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom.

On the other end of the scale, it would be almost impossible not to be moved by Love Is Strange, Ira Sachs’ beautiful, heartbreaking story of two older gay men who get married but are forced apart by circumstance. Alfred Molina and John Lithgow play my favorite couple of the year so far in this low-key drama with more concern for human relationships than with political posturing.

Finally, there is the Scarlett Johansson-led Under the Skin, an intimate sci-fi drama from director Jonathan Glazer that explores what it means to be human, what it means to be lonely, and what it means to be alive. Johansson is nominated for Best Actress for this role, which gives her well-known charm and sex appeal an almost eerie quality.

Birdman, Boyhood, and Love Is Strange are still in theaters, while The Grand Budapest Hotel and Under the Skin are available on DVD. I would urge you to check out each of them, as they all offer a worthwhile viewing experience that will transport you into realms you may never have imagined. I will be pulling for Birdman but would not be surprised if Boyhood walks away with the top prize. The winners will be announced Dec. 1.