"Manda Bala" Wins Big at First Cinema Eye Awards

Born out of anger, to use the words of filmmaker Jason Kohn, the inaugural Cinema Eye Honors for documentary films awarded three prizes to "Manda Bala (Send A Bullet)" on Tuesday night in New York City. Kohn's doc, nominated in six of the nine Cinema Eye categories, was honored as best picture and also received awards for cinematography and editing.
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AWARDS WATCH | The Oscars: "No Country" Wins Best Picture; Coens Named Best Director

Ethan Coen and Joel Coen's "No Country For Old Men" was the winner of four big Oscars at the 80th Academy Awards tonight in Southern California. The film was named best picture of the year and the Coens won awards for directing and their adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel, while Javier Bardem won the best supporting actor Oscar. The Academy Award for best foreign language film went to Stefan Ruzowitzky's "The Counterfeiters" from Austria and the Oscar for best documentary was presented tonight to Alex Gibney's "Taxi To the Darkside."
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AWARDS WATCH | Coen Brothers Poised For Big Oscar Night

With their "No Country Old Men" nominated for 8 Academy Awards, 4 of which are for themselves, Joel and Ethan Coen are heading into Sunday's ceremony in an unlikely position: the overwhelming front runners. Having won a slew of critics awards, the DGA, the PGA, the SAG ensemble and an assortment of BAFTAs and Golden Globes, "No Country" -- which debuted last year at the Cannes Film Festival -- seems like a tough choice to bet against. Twenty-three years and twelve features after they debuted with "Blood Simple," it seems Hollywood is ready to give quite the embrace to the brothers Coen.
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AWARDS WATCH '08 | "Juno" Leads Spirit Awards; "Diving Bell," "I'm Not There," "Savages" Each Win Two

Jason Reitman's "Juno" led this afternoon's Spirit Awards, presented by Film Independent, taking home awards for best feature film, best female lead Ellen Page and best first screenplay for Diablo Cody. The ceremony took place in Santa Monica, CA, inside a tent along the beach, and was hosted by Rainn Wilson, while Oscar nominee Javier Bardem was this year's honorary chair. Joining "Juno" in the winner's circle were double winners "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "I'm Not There" and "The Savages."
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AWARDS WATCH | "Blood" and "Country" Lead 80th Annual Academy Award Nominations

Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country For Old Men" and Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" led the nominations for the 80th annual Academy Awards with eight apiece. In Los Angeles early Tuesday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Sid Ganis and Kathy Bates announced the nominees, including for best picture of the year:Joe Wright's "Atonement," Jason Reitman's "Juno," Tony Gilroy's "Michael Clayton," "No Country For Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood." "Into The Wild" was the most shocking omission, receiving just two nominations, neither for writer-director Sean Penn. The complete list of nominees is available below.
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AWARDS WATCH | "Atonement" & "Sweeney Todd" Win Best Picture at Golden Globes

At a press conference tonight in Los Angeles, the winners of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Golden Globes were announced. There was no real "leader" as four films led with two Globes a piece: "Atonement" won best drama motion picture and best score, "No Country For Old Men" took best supporting actor for Javier Bardem and best screenplay for the Coen Brothers, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" took best director for Julian Schnabel and best foreign language film, and Tim Burton's "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" won best comedy/musical picture and best comedy/musical actor for star Johnny Depp. "There Will Be Blood," "Into The Wild," "Ratatouille," "Away From Her," "La Vie En Rose" and "I'm Not There" each garnered a single award.
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15 Documentaries Named to New Shortlist; Festival Programmers, Doc Insiders Unveil New Nonfiction Awards

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' recent announcement of the short list of films competing for the best documentary Oscar stirred frustration among a community of filmmakers and insiders back in November. Fueled by online discussion via blogs, a coalition within the nonfiction and film festval community is launching a new outlet to celebrate the best documentary films of the year. Seeking to challenge the results of other institutions, filmmaker AJ Schnack, a vocal critic of the Oscar list, has enlisted the support of online independent film distributor IndiePix and the opinions of a host of North American film festival programmers to launch a new nonfiction filmmaking awards event, set for March 18, 2008 at IFC Center in New York City.
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AWARDS WATCH | "There Will Be Blood" Leads National Society of Film Critics Awards: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Cinematography

"There Will Be Blood" dominated the National Society of Film Critics forty-second annual awards on Saturday in New York City, voted best picture while filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson was named best director by the group. The association of 61 leading American film critics also honored Daniel Day-Lewis as best actor and singled out Robert Elswit as the best cinematographer of the year. The news followed the film also being selected the best movie winning the same awards it two other national surveys of U.S. film critics.
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AWARDS WATCH | "Atonement" Leads Golden Globe Nominations; 7 Films Vying for Dramatic Best Picture

The nominations for the 65th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and television for 2007, were announced early Thursday morning by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. A whopping seven films were nominated for the dramatic best picture (American Gangster, Atonement, Eastern Promises, The Great Debaters. Michael Clayton, No Country For Old Men, and There Will Be Blood), while five films are vying for the best musical or comedy best picture award (Across The Universe, Charlie Wilson's War, Hairspray, Juno, and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street). The prizes, selected by a group of about 100 U.S. based reporters who write for international publications, will be presented in Los Angeles on Sunday, January 13th at 8 p.m., ET.

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AWARDS WATCH | "No Country" Takes New York; Coen Brothers Win Big With NY Critics

Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country For Old Men was awarded top honors on Monday by the New York Film Critics' Circle, taking four awards including best picture. The Coens themselves won awards for their directing and writing, while Javier Bardem was honored for supporting actor. Yesterday's big winner in Los Angeles, Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood," was awarded best actor for Daniel Day-Lewis's performance, while Robert Elswit won for cinematography.
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AWARDS WATCH | "There Will Be Blood" Wins L.A. Critics Prize

One day before the New York Film Critics Circle weighs in with its picks for the best movies of 2007, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) has announced Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" was their big winner. "Blood" nabbed the awards for best picture, best director, best actor (Daniel Day Lewis), and best production design (Jack Fisk). Only twice in the past thirty years has a film won both top prizes in Los Angeles and not gone on to an Oscar nod for best picture. Just behind "Blood" was Julian Schnabel's "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," named runner-up for best picture and director. However, it lost the award for best foreign language film to Christian Mungiu's "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days," which was also honored with a best supporting actor award for Vlad Ivanov, while its lead Anamaria Marinca received a runner-up nod for best actress.
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DISPATCH FROM AWARDS SEASON | "Atonement" Has High Hopes, "Grace" Spotlighted; Critics Prepare to Weigh In

With December well under way, awards season is about to enter a new phase as east and west coast critics groups prepare to weigh in with choices that will intensify the increasingly competitive race for end of the year attention. A year ago, must-read awards season blogger David Carr referred to the "Manhattan mentionocracy," which he described as, "a heaving mass of critics, reporters, film geeks and gossip columnists" who are part of the spectator sport that is the race for Oscar. Bloggers and prognosticators may have a lot to chew on in just a few days once the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Circle gather to vote for the best of the year in film.
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AWARDS WATCH | "No Country For Old Men" Tops NBR Awards

The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures announced their annual awards Wednesday afternoon, naming Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country For Old Men" 2007's Best Film of the Year. The awards, which kick off a series of critics' awards announced throughout December and early January, also awarded the Coens best adapted screenplay and gave the cast, which includes Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Kelly MacDonald, its award for best ensemble cast. "No Country" joined "The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford," "Atonement," "The Bourne Ultimatum," "The Bucket List," "Into The Wild," "Juno," "The Kite Runner," "Lars and the Real Girl," "Michael Clayton" and "Sweeney Todd" in the organization's top ten list. Last year, four of the five Academy Award nominees for Best Picture were featured in the NBR's top ten.
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AWARDS WATCH | "Into The Wild," "Sicko" Take Top Gotham Honors

The 17th Annual Gotham Awards were handed out tonight at Brooklyn's Steiner Studios, with no films taking multiple honors and Sean Penn's "Into The Wild winning best feature of the year. In addition to "Wild," Michael Moore's "Sicko" was named best documentary feature, "Juno"'s Ellen Page won the breakthrough actor award and Craig Zobel was named best breakthrough director for "Great World of Sound". The casts of "Talk To Me" and "Before The Devil Knows You're Dead" tied for the best ensemble cast award, while "Before The Devil"'s Marisa Tomei presented Gotham's unique "Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You Award" to Ronald Bronstein's "Frownland."
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AWARDS WATCH | "I'm Not There" Atop Spirit Award Nominations; "Juno," "Diving Bell," "Savages" Also Leading Race

Todd Haynes' "I'm Not There" led this morning's announcement of the 2008 Film Independent's Spirit Awards, with four nominations including best feature, best director and acting nods for Marcus Carl Franklin and Cate Blanchett, both for playing fragments of Bob Dylan. "There," which opened in 130 locations over Thanksgiving weekend, also recieved the inaugural Robert Altman Award, which is given to one film's director, casting director and ensemble cast. Alongside "There," with four nominations each, were Jason Reitman's "Juno," Julian Schnabel's "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" and Tamara Jenkins' "The Savages," all of which open in the next few weeks.
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DISPATCH FROM AWARDS SEASON | Schnabel Touting "Diving Bell" and Gotham Awards Set to Honor Independent Films

A lot of movies come out this time of year, noted Miramax president Daniel Battsek straining to make his voice heard over the din of a busy Manhattan lunch hour at Brasserie Ruhlmann in Rockefeller Center last week. Speaking to an intimate group of journalists, insiders and Academy members seated at a wing of tables on one end of the restaurant, Battsek praised Julian Schnabel's "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" as, "The most special film of the year." Moments later, the acclaimed artist turned filmmaker Schnabel walked over to a low divider separating his party from the general public eating nearby and yelled, "Excuse me!" briefly silencing the entire restaurant and asking the business people and tourists to quiet themselves while he made remarks to his luncheon attendees. It was just one of the many oppurtunities that the director has taken in recent weeks to promote his upcoming passion project.
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AWARDS WATCH | 15 Films Selected for Oscar Short List in Doc Feature Category

Fifteen documentary films have been selected for the "short list" of titles competing in the Best Documentary Feature category at the 80th Academy Awards, according to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Documentary Branch screening committee viewed the eligible documentaries in a preliminary round of screenings, according to AMPAS, and branch members will now select the five 2007 nominees from among the 15 titles on this shortlist.
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DISPATCH FROM AWARDS SEASON | The Marathon Continues: Coen's "Country" Leads Pack, but Keep an Eye on Penn

EDITORS NOTE: This is the first in a series of indieWIRE Awards Watch articles tracking the ups and downs of awards season. Links to individual predictions are included at the end of this article. As grotesque as Christmas decorations hung in department stores before Halloween, Hollywood's annual awards season seems to come earlier and earlier each year. But now, it's November and the newspapers have published their holiday movieguides chock full of large ads touting serious films. So, whether we like it or not, awards season is truly underway. In fact, if awards season is actually a marathon that begins over Labor Day weekend at The Telluride Film Festival (and really gets going days later at the Toronto International Film Festival), then we are already at about Mile 10, with under 16 weeks to go until Oscar night. After a cutthoat October that saw more than a dozen so-called prestige films vying for audience attention each weekend, moviegoers will be asked to buckle down even more over the next eight weeks as distributors and marketers try to carve out a path for their most important films of the year. Films must be released by the end of the year for consideration. And even before most of these new films screen for a single paying customer, insiders and observers will have already dissected and analyzed the films' chances of becoming a contender for year end honors.
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AWARDS WATCH | "Queen," "4 Months," Scotland," "Heaven," and "Rose" Lead European Film Award Nominations

The European Film Academy and EFA Productions announced its nominees at the Seville Film Festival Saturday, including prizes for best European film, director, actor and actress as well as prizes for screenwriting, cinematography and more. Cannes Palme d'Or winner "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," "The Last King of Scotland," "The Queen," and "The Edge of Heaven," and "La Vie En Rose" (La Mome) are among the multiple nominees, joining "Persepolis" on the list of titles vying for best European Film. The 1,800 EFA members will now vote for the winners which will be presented during the Awards Ceremony on December 1st in Berlin.
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AWARDS WATCH | Zobel, Penn, Baumbach Films Lead Gotham Nominations

More than four months before Oscar night, the annual awards season essentially got underway this morning as the IFP announced the nominations for its 17th annual Gotham Awards, honoring the best in independent film. Craig Zobel's low budget indie "Great World of Sound" was the biggest single nominee with three nods -- for best feature, breakthrough director and breakthrough actor -- topping a list that included double nominees "Into the Wild" and "Margot at the Wedding," as well as Julia Loktev's "Day Night Day Night." In total, 28 films were nominated in six categories: Best Feature, Best Documentary, Breakthrough Director, Breakthrough Actor, Best Ensemble Cast, and Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You.
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