Carol Leads Spirit Award Nominations
Tuesday, November 24, 2015 at 2:00PM
NATHANIEL R in Anomalisa, Beasts of No Nation, Carol, Oscars (15), Room, Spirit Awards, Tangerine, Todd Haynes

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

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

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...

BEST FEMALE LEAD

Between the recent Globe ruling that Rooney Mara had to compete as leading actress for Carol, this new nomination and the Cannes Best Actress win this summer, The Weinstein Co should probably readjust their Oscar campaign pronto. People just aren't blindly accepting it like they usually are willing to. It'd be so wonderful to have a double nomination in lead again. It hasn't happened since Thelma & Louise (1991) largely because everyone stopped trying with the rise of Category Fraud. But we can't congratulate the Spirits too much for being anti-category fraud since they thought it was okay in the case of the year's other wonderful co-lead queer Christmas movie Tangerine.

Such a competitive year. Notice the absence of Blythe Danner and Lily Tomlin's well received indie films. And notice that Room was eligible but didn't score in very many places. 

BEST MALE LEAD

This feels genuinely suspensful as to who might win, no? Kudos to the Spirits for finally having some nominees again that we had to scurry to research (ahout out to Koudous Seihon!)

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE

If Cynthia Nixon doesn't win this for her blazingly tough can't take your eyes off of her work...

There's only one category fraud situation here (Mya Taylor, who is wonderful but one of two leading ladies for Tangerine) which is a nice change of pace for a supporting category at any awards show these days.  Jennifer Jason Leigh's fun voice performance (her Cyndi Lauper bit is just great) was surely helped along by the fact that the movie uses its vocal work as a thematic device in addition to just using it as a dialogue vessel.

BEST SUPPORTING MALE

Uff. Paul Dano is so good in Love & Mercy (his best performance by a comfortable margin I think) but is is really supporting? Hmmm. It's probably time to see Bone Tomahawk I kept hearing different names touted as the MVP so Richard Jenkins isn't the only actor winning strong reviews for it.

ROBERT ALTMAN AWARD
(Their Ensemble Prize... there are never nominees just a winner)

Spotlight will receive a similar prize at the Gothams and will surely go on to win SAG's Best Ensemble prize. But will all these group honors create a weird vacuum of traction for any individual player when it comes to Oscar recognition?

BEST SCREENPLAY

Tough category!

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Wonderful that they strayed from an all Best Feature field... Ed Lachman's genius work on Carol must not go unrecognized so hopefully this is the beginning of a stream of kudos of one kind or another. Spirit eligibilty requires a budget of under 21 million and honestly Carol sometimes feels like the production budget for cinematography alone was a good half of that.

BEST EDITING

We have an interview coming up with Nathan Nugent. Stay tuned.

FIRST FEATURE

One of their most valuable categories in that it draws attention to very low profile films... which "fiercely independent" prizes should.

FIRST SCREENPLAY

JOHN CASSAVETTES AWARD
(Best Feature on a Budget of less than 1/2 a million)

Question: did they opt out of Tangerine because it was nominated for Best Feature or did they simply not think of it as a cheaply produced movie?

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM
(Not eligible in other categories)

Go see MUSTANG. It's out now

All but Girlhood are also Oscar candidates this year for Best Foreign Language Film. Girlhood is not eligible because each country can only choose 1 representing film for Oscar and France went with Mustang. Because this category also includes British films there are sometimes English language films in the mix (though not this time). For example this year The Danish Girl and Suffragette were not eligible for the Spirit Awards except in this category.

BEST DOCUMENTARY

KIEHL'S SOMEONE TO WATCH AWARD
(A $25,000 grant for emerging filmmakers)

PIAGET PRODUCER'S AWARD
(A $25,000 grant for resourceful creative tenacious producers)

TRUER THAN FICTION AWARD
(A $25,000 grant for emerging documentarians)

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