While the Independent Spirit Award unofficially kick off Awards Season with their nominations, they are one of the last to hand out their actual awards, which they did on Saturday. As it has most of the time, The Artist led the way by earning four wins out of the five categories it was nominated it. So which one did it lose? And what were the other winners?

The categories and winners are...

BEST FEATURE

• The Artist

• Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist

• Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash for The Descendants

• Margin Call

• Will Reiser for 50/50

• Pariah

• Michelle Williams for My Week With Marilyn

• Jean Dujardin for The Artist

• Christopher Plummer for Beginners

• Shailene Woodley for The Descendants

• The Interrupters

• A Separation (Iran)

• Guillame Schiffma for for The Artist

• Margin Call

• Sophia Lin for Take Shelter

• Mark Jackson for Without

• Heather Courtney for Where Soldiers Come From

• The Artist won four of the five awards it was nominated for, and while the Independent Spirit Awards don't have the best track record when it comes to predicting the Oscars, I think this time around will be the exception.
• On the other hand, Take Shelter only converted one of the five nominations into a win.
• The Descendants picked up a couple awards, including one for Shailene Woodley, who probably deserved at least an Oscar nomination.
• The only other film to earn more than one award was Margin Call, although only one of those was announced last night. (The Robert Altman Award is announced the day the nominations are announced.)

- C.S.Strowbridge

Date posted: 2012-02-26