Top indie awards nominations announced

Anne Hathaway’s angsty drama Rachel Getting Married, illegal immigration tale Frozen River and introspective smalltown yarn Ballast dominate the nominations for this year’s Spirit Awards with six nods each.

The Spirit Awards are announced on February 21, the day before the Oscars, and honour the year’s best independent movies.

Other films featuring prominently in the nominations are Sean Penn’s Milk (biopic of a San Francisco gay rights activist Harvey Milk), The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky grappler starring Mickey Rourke), Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. It’s also been announced that as well as its three regular nominations, Synecdoche will be awarded the Robert Altman award – given to the year’s best ensemble movie. Well, that’s spoilt the surprise there.

Dawn Hudson, executive director of Film Independent, which organises the awards, said: “This is truly the year of original voices, among both veteran and new filmmakers.” And so on, and so on…