While the Independent Spirit Award announces their nominations earlier than anyone else, they only handed the awards last night. The two big winners were Little Miss Sunshine and Half Nelson, but both have to be seen as underdogs for tonight's Oscars.

The winners:

Feature Film

• Little Miss Sunshine

• Sweet Land

• Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris for Little Miss Sunshine

• Ryan Gosling for Half Nelson

• Shareeka Epps for Half Nelson

• Frances McDormand for Friends with Money

• Alan Arkin for Little Miss Sunshine

• Jason Reitman for Thank You For Smoking

• Michael Arndt for Little Miss Sunshine

• Guillermo Navarro for Pan's Labyrinth

• Quinceanera

• The Road to Guantanamo

• The Lives of Others (Germany)

• Little Miss Sunshine was the big winner last night, winning in all four categories in which it was nominated. (It was practically a clean sweep, except the film earned two nominations for best supporting actor.)
• Half Nelson was the only other film to take home more than one award.
• Pan's Labyrinth took home best cinematography and despite the Independent Spirit Award's low predictive value, the film should repeat that performance tonight at the Oscars.
• Quinceanera beat out Twelve and Holding for the John Cassavetes Awards. While I voted the other way around, this is still a good choice.
• The Lives of Others won for Best Foreign Language Film, but it didn't have to compete with Pan's Labyrinth so it is still an underdog tonight.

- C.S.Strowbridge

Source: Independent Feature Project
Date posted: 2007-02-25