2014 Independent Film Awards - Update 5 Final

This year will do the same as last year with only listing the winners of the three Indie Awards, two in US and one in UK. We start today with the Gotham nominations and post will become final on February 15 with the Spirit Award winners.

2014 British Independent Film Awards
Nominations: Press Release
Winners: Official Site
Official Site here.
Comments: The highest number of nominations this year goes to ‘71 with nine (9) nominations including Best British Independent Film; Best Director and Debut Director for Yann Demange; Best Screenplay for Gregory Burke; Best Actor for Jack O’Connell and Best Supporting Actor for Sean Harris. Pride picked up seven (7) nominations and Catch Me Daddy, Frank and Mr Turner picked up five (5) nominations each.

As there were three film critics groups announcing their winners and to entertain myself watched the live stream of the BIFAs.  Just because that reason I watched as video quality was dark, the entertainment level was very low and if they honor film they should pay a producer to produce the live stream! Of course everything changed when Emma Thompson was honored with The Richard Harris Award, the clips in her career compilation was worth-watching plus, as always, her speech was glorious use of words and dark (very dark) humor!  Fantastic.  Also was specially pleased with Brendan Gleeson winning Best Actor for his great performance in Calvary and Pride taking the top honor.

Check Emma's very short interview at the winners row.



24th Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards
Nominations at Awards Official Site, IFP, and Filmmaker Magazine
Winners: Official Site
ifp Official Site here.
Comments: From the Gotham nominations we can see that Boyhood is the film with the most nods four (4) Best Feature, Best Actor, Best Actress and Breakthrough Actor.
Foxcatcher has NO nominations BUT already won an award: Special Jury Award to Steve Carell, Mark Ruffalo and Channing Tatum.
Will not complain about the Best Actress nods BUT I do miss Jessica Chastain!

On November 25th was announced that Uma Thurman will host the awards ceremony and a long list of great actors will present the awards, including Meryl Streep, Scarlett Johansson and more. The awards ceremony will be streamed live at ifp site from 6:30pm ET so if you wish you can watch it.

Birdman got the top award and there were NO surprises in Best Actress and Actor categories as favorites Julianne Moore and Michael Keaton won. Citizenfour won as Best Documentary and Ana Lily Amirpour won Breakthrough Director Award for A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (very curious about this movie).

Not much interesting but here is the almost 3 hours red carpet and awards ceremony video; still it's nice to see Uma Thurman plus Meryl Streep giving the award to Foxcatcher ensemble and ONLY Steve Carell attended the event ... an incident that I find doesn't speak good about the seriousness/relevance of the event.


30th Film Independent Spirit Awards
Nominations: Check News here and to read the official press release with the full list go here.
Winners: here
Official Site here.
Comments: Birdman leads with six (6) nominations followed by Boyhood, Nightcrawler and Selma with five (5) each. Perhaps the most unexpected nod for me is the Best Feature nomination for Love is Strange as the other four nominees, Birdman, Boyhood, Selma and Whiplash have much awards buzz. Most pleasant is the Marion Cotillard nomination for The Immigrant but I surrender to the high buzz that claims this is the year when Julianne Moore will get the long due recognition that she deserves; which makes supporting actress more interesting if you don't believe that Patricia Arquette will get all the honors. I still believe that Jessica Chastain, Emma Stone, Carmen Ejogo have a chance in this and other awards.

There were no big surprises yesterday February 21st as Birdman got the top award, Ricard Linklater got director, Emmanuel Lubezki cinematography and in the acting categories Michael Keaton, Julianne Moore, Patricia Arquette and J.K. Simmons were honored and by now you know in which categories.



Note: The post started with the Gotham nominations on October 23, 2014; will be updated as nominations and winners are announced until February 15, 2015.