Film Independent Spirit Awards

This must have been a busy weekend for award nominees. After flying back from London for the BAFTAs on Monday, everybody had to get ready for the SAGs on Saturday night. From there they had to change quickly and head to the beach in Santa Monica for the Film Independent Spirit Awards (also for TV this year) in the afternoon on Sunday. No time for dinner because the PGAs (Producers Guild Awards) were that night. They now have two weeks to recover and prepare for the big night of the Oscars on March 10. 

The Indie awards were live streamed on YouTube, hosted by Aidy Bryant. Big budget blockbusters such as Oppenheimer, Barbie and Killers of the Flower Moon were ineligible so these awards were slightly different from the SAGs, BAFTA, Critics Choices where the same winners keep marching up to the stage. Celine Song's Past Lives won two major categories--Best Feature and Director. American Fiction took Best Lead Performance for Jeffrey Wright and for Cord Jefferson's Screenplay. The Indies started giving out gender-neutral performance awards last year so there are a lot of nominees. Da'Vine Joy Randolph continued her winning streak by taking the Supporting Performance category for her moving performance as the grieving cook in The Holdovers. Beef also took home prizes after picking up awards at the SAG, Critics Choice, Golden Globe and Emmys. So I guess I should try it out on Netflix.

Protestors outsider the tent loudly chanted pro-Palestinian slogans during the show. I think they may have been preaching to the choir.

Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott in
All of Us Strangers.
Credit: Searchlight Pictures

I did catch up with one Indie nominated film which did not show up on Oscar's nominee list. All of Us Strangers (on Hulu) is a strangely beautiful combination ghost story and gay acceptance tale. Andrew Scott gives a sensitive, heart-wrenching performance as a gay screenwriter whose parents were killed when he was a boy, so they never got to know him as a gay adult. He goes to their old house and finds them there just as they were, frozen in time. It was weird seeing Jamie Bell and Claire Foy as the still-young parents since I still picture them as Billy Elliott and Queen Elizabeth.