"Precious" and "Last Station" top indie Spirit film nods
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Film dramas "Precious" and "The Last Station" earned five nominations each, including best feature, on Tuesday for Independent Spirit Awards, the leading honors for movies made outside Hollywood's major studios.
Also among the best film nominees for the awards that often foreshadow indie movies competing for Oscars were romantic comedy "(500) Days of Summer," "Amreeka" and "Sin Nombre."
Newcomer Gabourey Sidibe, who plays an abused and impoverished young woman in "Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire," and Gwyneth Paltrow in drama "Two Lovers" landed in the category for best lead actress.
Joining them were Helen Mirren in "Last Station," about the final year in the life of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy; Maria Bello in dark drama "Downloading Nancy" and Nisreen Faour in "Amreeka," about a Palestinian mother and son who move to Illinois to start a new life.
The race for lead actor pits Joseph Gordon-Levitt in "(500) Days of Summer," a hit at art house box offices with $32 million in the U.S. and Canada, against veteran Jeff Bridges in "Crazy Heart" and Colin Firth in critical hit "A Single Man." They are joined by Adam Scott in "The Vicious Kind," and Souleymane Sy Savane in "Goodbye Solo."
The Spirit Awards are given out by Los Angeles-based, non-profit group Film Independent, and in recent years have been widely watched for which low-budget, indie movies might also compete for the world's top movie honors, the Academy Awards.
"Little Miss Sunshine," for instance, was made outside Hollywood's major studios and became a major hit after premiering at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. It went on to claim the best film award at the Spirits and was among the five films nominated for that year's best motion picture Oscar.
Source: Reuters
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