Film Bitch Award Medalists (aka If I magically chose all the Oscars)

by Nathaniel R

The Gold Medalists for acting this year: Colman, Cumberbatch, Negga, Domingo

The Film Bitch Awards are now in their 22nd year (gulp). While I don't normally track the stats of my own awards the way we all delight in tracking Oscar stats, I did notice that for the first time in all of those years the Picture/Director fields were an exact match. The nomination portion is more fun than the virtual medal ceremony since I've always believed that nominations are wins and spreading the wealth is more artistically accurate! The Power of the Dog emerged as the big winner (no surprise) with 5 Gold Medals. Dune and Zola were the only other films that picked up multiple gold medals in the Oscar parallel categories. (NOTE: The "extra" categories are not yet complete but we'll try to wrap them up before Oscar night).

See the Oscar parallel winners
Page 1  Picture, Director, Screenplay, Animated Feature
Page 2  Lead and Support Acting.
(Half of the 12 medalists -- gold, silver, and medal -- were not Oscar-nominated which is fairly typical. If I could choose only one "Performance of the Year" across all categories, it would be Ruth Negga for Passing. )
Page 3  Visual Categories
Page 4  Sound Categories

'The Lost Daughter' and 'Zola' are multiple Spirit Award winners

by Nathaniel R

The Film Independent Spirit Awards were held today and The Lost Daughter emerged as the big winner with Maggie Gyllenhaal taking home three statues: Feature, Director, and Screenplay. Zola, our Bronze Medalist for Best Picture, also performed well winning Female Lead and Editing. On television Reservation Dogs was the big winner with two prizes. A complete list of winners and teary funny acceptance speeches after the jump...

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Spirit Awards 2022: My Personal Ballot

by Cláudio Alves

The Film Independent Spirit Awards are upon us! After a few years of hewing concerningly close to the Oscars, this year's slot of nominees feels more connected to the organization's purpose of celebrating independent cinema, even the obscure stuff. Indeed, exploring the many nominated pictures was one of the highlights of this awards season. I discovered some beautiful gems and have new artists to look for in the incoming years. Isn't that the most beautiful part of movie awards – the uncovering of heretofore unknown talents and voices? It seems right, seeing as the Spirit Awards are voted on by cinephiles, all those who become Film Independent members out of their love for the seventh art.

With that in mind, I thought it could be fun to share my (not so anonymous) ballot for the Spirit Awards, perchance some predictions too…

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Nathaniel's Top Ten List (Best of 2021)

by Nathaniel R

Movies are not quite keepsakes anymore with physical media dying. Yet they remain emotional treasures to return to or reflect upon as real as any beloved mementos you could place in a keepsake box. For awards and list obsessives they take on extra-meaning as stand-ins for each calendar year as well. We have to have a gimmick for the top ten lists each year, else the task of putting so much love into words becomes too daunting.  So this year we've chosen memorable objects as a frame with which to remember the year's best. These great films were filled with fawned over items and knick knacks from "purty" paper flowers to restless coffee cups, from razor-sharp seashell bracelets to winning lottery tickets, from horny religious figurines to magical belts.

20 HONORABLE MENTIONS

So that you don't immediately ask "WHERE IS  ____?" here are the 20 films outside of the top 10 list that were loved and/or deeply admired. Plus, in keeping with the chosen theme, the visual object we most closely associate with them... 

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Oscar Volley: Adapted Screenplay - a wealth of good choices, but will the Academy make the right ones?

The Oscar volleys continue. Today Lynn Lee, Mark Brinkerhoff, and Eurocheese sound off on this year’s Adapted Screenplay race.

a wealth of options for Oscar voters

Lynn: Gentlemen, I don’t know about you, but from where I’m standing, Adapted Screenplay is an embarrassment of riches this year. There are at least three contenders that tackle the incredibly difficult task of illuminating their characters’ inner lives and psychology (The Power of the Dog, Passing, and The Lost Daughter) with minimal to no voice-over narration and they all do it brilliantly. Then there are the play adaptations – everything from Shakespeare via Coen (The Tragedy of Macbeth) to Shakespeare / Sondheim / Laurents via Kushner (West Side Story) to Jonathan Larson via Lin-Manuel Miranda (tick, tick …BOOM!) to Stephen Karam doing Stephen Karam (The Humans) – where each manages to pull off a bold departure from previous iterations while retaining basic fidelity to the source text. And then there’s my personal favorite, Drive My Car, which manages to be at once an ambitious expansion of a Murakami short story and a spectacularly moving adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at once.

That said, we can’t realistically expect most Oscar voters to be familiar with the underlying material for these screenplays. It’s a safer bet the nominations will align pretty closely with the Best Picture nominees or almost-nominees that don’t have original screenplays...

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