The pregnancy comedy Juno was chosen as the year’s best
independent film and won two other honours Saturday at the Spirit
Awards, including best actress for Ellen Page.
The ceremony, in which tributes were paid to Australian actor
Heath Ledger, was a warmup for Hollywood’s big show, Sunday’s
Academy Awards, where Juno and Page are in the running for
the same categories.
Page gushed thanks for Juno director Jason Reitman and
writer Diablo Cody.
“This is so, so special, but this is pretty much all Diablo
Cody’s fault,” said Page, who played a whipsmart pregnant teen
giving the baby up for adoption in “Juno.”
“She wrote one of the best screenplays I have ever read and
created a teenage female lead I feel like we’ve never seen
before.”
Moments of the ceremony were a tribute to Ledger, who died of an
accidental prescription drug overdose on January 22 at his
Manhattan apartment.
One of six actors playing incarnations of Bob Dylan in director
Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, Ledger was remembered as
“probably one of the most beautiful independent spirits of all” by
Cate Blanchett, winner of the supporting-actress prize for
portraying Dylan in his transition from folk icon to electric
rocker, a role that also earned her an Oscar nomination.
“We all loved him so dearly,” Haynes said of Ledger, recalling
that the actor had started making music videos and intended to go
into directing himself. “I have no doubt he would have made an
astounding director.”
Ledger was a Spirit Award best-actor nominee two years ago for
Brokeback Mountain, the best picture winner.
Diablo Cody won the award for best first screenplay and is up
for original screenplay at the Oscars.
“This is the coolest award in the coolest category. There is
nothing like writing a first screenplay,” Cody said.
Reitman missed out on the directing award, which went to Julian
Schnabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, based on
the memoir of French Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered
a paralysing stroke. The film also won the cinematography prize for
Janusz Kaminski.
Both Reitman and Schnabel are nominated for best director at the
Oscars. Most key Spirit Award recipients had Oscar nominations.
Philip Seymour Hoffman, who won best actor for the sibling drama
The Savages, is nominated for supporting actor at the
Oscars for Charlie Wilson’s War.
Co-star Laura Linney missed out on a Spirit Awards nomination
but is up for best actress at the Oscars for The Savages.
The film’s writer-director Tamara Jenkins won the screenplay award
for The Savages, which also earned her an Oscar slot.
Also nominated for best picture at the Spirit Awards, I’m
Not There received the first-ever Robert Altman Award
honouring Haynes, Ledger, Blanchett and co-stars including
Christian Bale and Richard Gere, who were among the performers
taking on personifications of Dylan.
The Altman award was created after the filmmaker’s death in
2006, the prize going to a filmmaker, casting director and acting
ensemble, a nod to Altman’s gift for big casts and overlapping
story lines. Altman was nominated a year ago as best director for
his final film, A Prairie Home Companion.
Chiwetel Ejiofor won supporting actor as a radio station manager
signing up an ex-con who becomes an outspoken on-air activist amid
the 1960s civil-rights movement in Talk to Me.
While most Spirit Award winners are unknown to general
audiences, Juno followed last year’s top winner,
Little Miss Sunshine, as an independent film that has
soared into the mainstream. Juno is closing in on $US130
million ($A141.6 million) at the domestic box office, the biggest
commercial hit among the best-picture contenders at the Oscars.
Spirit Awards host Rainn Wilson, who has a small role in
Juno, wisecracked that the film managed to avoid the fate
of obscurity “like every single other movie we’re honouring
today.”
The Irish music romance Once, whose stars Glen Hansard
and Marketa Irglova have a best-song Oscar nomination, was named
best foreign film.
“This is amazing to start making little films for a hundred
grand with your mates in Dublin and not have any permits,” said
Once writer-director John Carney. “I guess that’s
independent filmmaking.”
Other Spirit Award winners were:
Documentary: Crazy Love.
First feature: The Lookout,
directed by Scott Frank.
John Cassavetes Award, given to a film
made for less than $US500,000 ($A544,000: August
Evening.
Presented by the cinema group Film Independent, the Spirit
Awards honour movies that cost less than $US20 million ($A21.8
million) to make, with a significant part of their budget
originating from outside the Hollywood studio system.
Other criteria for nominations include films’ originality and
provocative subject matter.
AP
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