It's the official start of award season as the Independent Spirit Award nominations were announced. Several films received nods, but I'm Not There and Juno were the big hits.

The categories and nominations are...

BEST FEATURE

• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
• I'm Not There
• Juno
• A Mighty Heart
• Paranoid Park

• Todd Haynes for I'm Not There
• Tamara Jenkins for The Savages
• Jason Reitman for Juno
• Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
• Gus Van Sant for Paranoid Park

• 2 Days in Paris
• Great World of Sound
• The Lookout
• Rocket Science
• Vanaja

• August Evening
• Owl and the Sparrow
• The Pool
• Quiet City
• Shotgun Stories

• Ronald Harwood for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
• Tamara Jenkins for The Savages
• Fred Parnes & Andrew Wagner for Starting Out in the Evening
• Adrienne Shelly for Waitress
• Mike White for Year of the Dog

• Jeffrey Blitz for Rocket Science
• Zoe Cassavetes for Broken English
• Diablo Cody for Juno
• Kelly Masterson for Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
• John Orloff for A Mighty Heart

• Angelina Jolie for A Mighty Heart
• Sienna Miller for Interview
• Ellen Page for Juno
• Parker Posey for Broken English
• Tang Wei for Lust, Caution

• Pedro Castaneda for August Evening
• Don Cheadle for Talk To Me
• Philip Seymour Hoffman for The Savages
• Frank Langella for Starting Out in the Evening
• Tony Leung for Lust, Caution

• Chiwetel Ejiofor for Talk To Me
• Marcus Carl Franklin for I'm Not There
• Kene Holliday for Great World of Sound
  
• Irrfan Khan for The Namesake
• Steve Zahn for Rescue Dawn

• Cate Blanchett for I'm Not There
• Anna Kendrick for Rocket Science
• Jennifer Jason Leigh for Margot at the Wedding
• Tamara Podemski for Four Sheets to the Wind
• Marisa Tomei for Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

• The Savages
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
• Vanaja
• Youth Without Youth
• Lust, Caution

• Crazy Love
• Lake of Fire
• Manufactured Landscapes
• The Monastery
• The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair

• 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Romania)
• The Band's Visit (Israel)
• Lady Chatterley (France)
• Once (Ireland)
• Persepolis (France)

I'm Not There

Also announced were the nominees for the three Filmmaker Grant Awards.

IFC/Acura Someone to Watch Award

• Ramin Bahrani for Chop Shop
• Ronnie Bronstein for Frownland
• Lee Isaac Chung for Munyurangabo

• Laura Dunn, director of The Unforeseen
• Gary Hustwit, director of Helvetica
• John Maringouin, director of Running Stumbled

• Anne Clements, producer of Ping Pong Playa and Quinceañera
• Alexis Ferris, producer of Cthulhu and Police Beat
• Neil Kopp, producer of Paranoid Park and Old Joy

• I'm not surprised Juno earned so many nominations given its early reviews. On the other hand, three of the other four Best Picture nominations earned less than 80% positive reviews, which is rather low for award contenders.
• Ellen Page's nomination was also not a surprise. She's been great when it comes to acting and picking out challenging projects.
• The Savages didn't earn a nomination for Best Picture, but did pick up four other nominations, include two for writer / director Tamara Jenkins.
• Lust, Caution was nominated for three awards, but strangely, Best Foreign Film wasn't among them.
• It was nice to see Great World of Sound pick up two nominations. It earned excellent reviews but didn't make any noise at the box office. The DVD comes out just a week before the awards are handed down, and that should prove to be good publicity.
• I'm happy to see Don Cheadle and Chiwetel Ejiofor pick up nominations, but I was hoping for more from Talk To Me.

- C.S.Strowbridge

Date posted: 2007-11-29