Carol Leads Spirit Award Nominations

The Film Independent Spirit Award Nominations are out with Carol leading the way with six nominations. Cary Joji Fukunaga, who the Spirits have always loved, is also on fire with five nominations for his Netflix streaming Beasts of No Nation. 

Yes, darling, six nominations!

BEST FEATURE

• Anomalisa
• Beasts of No Nation
• Carol
• Spotlight
• Tangerine

Two Oscar threats (Carol & Spotlight) two singular critical darlings (Anomalisa & Tangerine) and one whatsit straddling the line between TV & Movie & New Distribution Models (Beasts of No Nation). A shortlist with strong range of comedy, drama, procedural, romance, and queer content.

Sean Baker and his movie camera, the iPhoneBEST DIRECTOR

• Sean Baker, Tangerine
• Cary Joji Fukunaga, Beasts of No Nation
• Todd Haynes, Carol
• Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson, Anomalisa
• Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
• David Robert Mitchell, It Follows

The critical darling horror flick It Follows (reviewed) just missed the Feature list but was probably close given that it forced a six-wide category for direction. Fun Fact: This is Todd Hayne's sixth (!) nomination at the Spirits for Best Director, which means that, yes, he has been nominated in this category for every single one of his theatrically released features. He's only won it once though (2002's Far From Heaven). More after the jump...

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Special Report: Spirit Awards Preview/Predictions

?????The Spirit Award nominations are announced a week from today. Here's special guest and our podcast cohort Joe Reid to preview/predict the nominations.

The 2015 Film Independent Spirit Awards will announce their nominations next Tuesday, the earliest full slate of nominations (the Gothams can call me when they get supporting categories) and for many the clearest opening bell for awards season. After them, the critics awards start rolling in, then the Golden Globe nominations, and by then we're off to the races. I have always found the Spirits to be the most difficult to predict and the most fun. Partly because they happen so early in the season but also partly because the qualifications are always just a bit mysterious.

A reminder, per the Spirits' rules and regs: to qualify, a film must be an American film made for under $20 million, and have either been released in theaters in 2015 or played one of six major U.S. festivals (Sundance, Los Angeles, New Directors/New Films, New York, Telluride, Toronto). Of course, even with those rules, there are splittable hairs. 

predictions after the jump

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DVD: Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Pimp

New on DVD & BluRay this week are three films which awards season completists will need to see...

• Mr Holmes in which 76 year-old spry Sir Ian McKellen is aged up to play the world's most famous detective at 93 years of age as he mind begins to deteriorate. Mr Holmes was a leggy arthouse hit this summer but can that be converted into an awards run for Sir Ian? We shall see...
• Tangerine, one of the year's best films, follows Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) & Alexandra (Mya Taylor), best friends & hookers, as they search for Sin-Dee's boyfriend/pimp (James Ransone) who cheated on her "with real fish!" during her latest prison stint. It's the most unexpected and awesome Christmas comedy ever. It's already snagged multiple Gotham nominations but pray for Golden Globe, BFCA, Spirit nominations and top ten lists because this Sean Baker gem deserves them.
• Trainwreck, or The Coronation of Amy Schumer as 2015's It Girl. Expect Golden Globe Comedy nominations

Also out this week

• Star Wars Episodes I-VI Steel Book Collection
  The amount of times they've convinced people to buy the Star Wars films in different versions / formats is like Swindling Achievement of the Century right?
• Pay the Ghost in which Nicolas Cage collects another paycheck. He collects loads of them but they surely have less zeroes on them by now.
• Self/Less in which Ben Kingsley steals Ryan Reynolds body (I mean... who wouldn't?)
• We'll Never Have Paris a romantic comedy with Melanie Lynskey, Simon Helberg, Maggie Grace, and Zachary Quinto
• Two Men in Town a restoration of the 1973 French ex-con drama with Jean  Gabin, beautiful Alain Delon, and young Gerard Depardieu

Gotham Nominees: Teenage Girls, Lesbian Romances,Trans Women

You might think that October is too early to get nominations for Best of the Year but you'd be wrong. 

Diary of a Teenage Girl scored big leading the Gotham nominations

At least according to the IFP Gotham Independent Film Awards. They're the East Coast answer to the Indie Spirit Awards and perhaps we're imagining it but it's almost as if they announce earlier every year.  They're also juried which is why their nominations are sometimes really cool / odd. Like most of the Oscar precursors worth loving, Gotham marches to their own drum. So what's the takeaway and reward for these films? A fresh flag planted down that you really should watch them and for indie films, that's a big deal.

The biggest winners this morning are surely Tangerine (3 nominations) and The Diary of a Teenage Girl (4 nominations). Both were hits at Sundance and well reviewed when they arrived but both are small enough to slip through "Best of" cracks on critics list and with awardage. But both are strong enough filmmaking visions and entertaining and even accessible enough that with enough concentrated attention it will be possible to imagine them cracking a surprise big nomination somewhere... like, say, The Golden Globes. 

The other big winner is everyone -- we finally have an awards lineup that in interested in female voices.  Full list follows 

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An Evening With The Duplass Brothers

Kieran, here. When I saw Sean Baker’s Tangerine (discussed here), I was taken aback to see Mark and Jay Duplass (pictured left, in that order) listed as executive producers. While they’re certainly known for micro-budget features (their first film, The Puffy Chair was made for only $15,000), an indie dramedy about transwomen of color in East Hollywood seemed a far cry from their typical oeuvre.  Listening to them talk last night at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater, I quickly realized my perception of them was misguided. They themselves seem aware of how they are perceived. Mark joked at one point: 

I think people think we sleep in bunk beds together. We're actually married and we have children--with other people"

Once the conversation turned to Tangerine and why they signed on as executive producers, they were eager to discuss the Sundance breakout hit. [More...]

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