Into the Wild Strikes First Awards Gold
Ok, there’s no denying it now. It really is Awards Season once again as the first prizes were handed out last night at the IFP’s 17th Annual Gotham Awards. Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a long season.
Sean Penn’s terrific Into the Wild (which cost too much to be nominated for the Spirit Awards) won for Best Feature. Michael Moore’s Sicko won Best Documentary Feature. Ellen Page won the breakthrough actor award for Juno and Great Wall of Sound’s Craig Zobel earned a trophy for Best Breakthrough Director. Zobel’s film about talent scout scams in the music industry had just been nominated yesterday morning for the Spirit Award for Best First Feature. It’s one of those little movies I heard great things about, but managed to miss. I hope to check it out soon.
Rounding out the awards, the casts of Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and Talk to Me tied for Best Ensemble and Ronald Bronstein’s Frownland won for Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You.
The 29-year-old IFP (Independent Feature Project) boasts a membership of more than 10,000 filmmakers and industry professionals who support the independent film community.
Filed under: Awards, News
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Into the Wild is kind of a messy movie, but it’s definitely stuck with me and its ending is really great. Good to see it launch the season. I hope that Emile Hirsch and Hal Holbrook are recognized down the road as well.
I still have issues with it and I still have issues with McCandless, but it’s stuck with me as well. It’s one of those movies that sort of defies intellectualization. You feel it or you don’t. If you don’t, all you see are flaws. If you do, it has a pretty major impact.
I wondered when I saw it about its awards potential, but I have to say it’s the movie that seems to inspire the most passion in people when you’re talking to them about favorite movies of the year. It’s striking a personal chord for a lot of people.
I almost missed this comment over at H.E.:
“Oh and I forgot Frank. I’m happy to report DDL says both lines we argued about so in a sense we’re both right. I think you owe me a coke or something though.”
See? I was right….when I said that you were right. There was no way you, my significant other and that YELPer all hallucinated the same line. I owe you a PABST…BLUE…RIBBON and a hit of gas.
When did you get to see it again? Lucky bastard.
I finally saw Into the Wild, and I completely agree with your statements above. It really works on a gut level, in a way that’s hard to articulate.
Like the new design, by the way. The “no box office, no gossip” bit is great. I usually scroll right past that stuff at Poland’s site. I know it’s important to some people, but I really don’t give a damn who just got fired from what studio.
Is that your photo? Cool shades. You look a lot like a character from my all-time favorite comedy.
I take no real pleasure in being right, but I hate being wrong so it all kind of evens out….somehow.
I saw it again on Tuesday night. It was almost a whole different movie for me. I liked it even better.
Thanks for the kind words about the design in progress. I avoided doing it at first because I wasn’t sure if I actually had the stones to keep doing this writing in public thing, but here I am 6 months later. I guess it’s time to make the place truly my own.
frank, that is Craig. Looking very pleased with himself I must say. The funny thing is that he looks really different, yet somehow the same, whenever one sees him. As I overheard a mother explain to her daughter at Monterey Bay aquarium in reference to a fish that completely changed its color - he’s ‘a real camelia’.
One day that strangelove pic is going to be my Halloween costume. One day….
Kennedy? What kind of a name is that? That ain’t no Kraut name, is it, Sartre?