Spirits and Oscars.

By David Hudson on 02/21/2009

[Updated] With the presentations of the Spirit Awards tonight (to be webcast here) and the Oscars tomorrow night, "awards season," the three months the movie industry spends congratulating itself each and every year, finally draws to a close. By now you know who's nominated for which Oscar. But look over the collection of 20 reviews of films up for Spirit Awards in various categories at Hammer to Nail and you'll find a far more interesting batch. As Michael Tully writes, "This list should prove as a forceful reminder of just how exciting a year 2008 was for independent cinema."

"Who will win, and who should win?" IndieWIRE polls "some our writers, bloggers and friends" and runs their predictions and preferences: Spirits and Oscars.

Yojiro Takita's "Departures," nominated for a foreign language Oscar, has swept the Japanese Academy Prizes; Chris MaGee has the full list of winners.

Thoughts on the cinematographers... the Wind in the Trees.

More Oscar predictions: Joe Bowman, Jesse Hassenger (L); Mark Lisanti (Vanity Fair); Phil Nugent (Screengrab); Jeffrey Overstreet, who tags each prediction with a recommendation: "something that the predicted winner did earlier in their career that was much better than what's getting all the attention this year"; James Rocchi plugs in the "Virtual Borgnine" (Redbox); AJ Schnack (Spirits, too); Kim Voynar (Movie City News, plus a dab of Spirits); and Vulture. And at the SpoutBlog, Christopher Campbell lists the most likely surprises - if there'll be any surprises at all.

"It looks like an unfortunate trifecta for this weekend's Academy Awards," writes Ross Douthat: "A mediocre year for the movies, a distinctly lousy (and little-seen) set of nominees, and a seemingly predictable night of winners to look forward to." Also in the Atlantic, Lynda Obst explains why Hollywood is miserable this year; in short: fewer parties.

"Less through the ambitions of the academy itself than through a combination of entertainment-media overkill and film industry anxiety, the Oscars have taken on a cultural and economic importance that they can't possibly sustain and were never meant to have in the first place," argues AO Scott. "It may be that the more movies matter, the less the Oscars do. And vice versa."

Also in the New York Times, Ben Sisario profiles AR Rahman: "One of the most prolific and successful film composers in India, he has three nominations, all for 'Slumdog Millionaire': best original score and best original song, for both 'Jai Ho' and 'O ... Saya,' a collaboration with the Sri Lankan-British rapper M.I.A."

"If, as expected, Kate Winslet takes home the prize for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, it will be an outrage and a scandal, given that Oscar should have gone to Kate Winslet - but for 'Revolutionary Road,' not the dire 'The Reader,'" blogs New York's David Edelstein.

The AV Club presents a Mickey Rourke primer. Related: Lee Siegel in the Daily Beast: "In my waking nightmare, Mickey Rourke is about to receive an Oscar for his dreadfully overrated performance in 'The Wrestler.' I leap out of my chair and shout to the Academy from the audience, 'Don't do it! You'll set American acting back 20 years and create dozens of films in which the camera and special effects do the work of the actor. Get hold of yourselves!!' Then I'm dragged out of the glittering Kodak Theater and beaten senseless."

For the Independent, James Mottram interviews "Oscars' unsung heroes": Richard Jenkins, Melissa Leo, Michael Shannon and Viola Davis.

"When the opportunity arose to animate the opening dream sequence of the Oscar-nominated 'Kung Fu Panda,' [James] Baxter - who is working full time at DreamWorks on 'How to Train Your Dragon' - leapt at the chance to work in an anime-influenced style," writes Cristy Lytal in the Los Angeles Times.

Colleen Nika and Alex Gartenfeld talk with the nominated costume designers for Interview. Also, via Joe Leydon: "Sheila Benson and Chuck Wilson honor the under-appreciated, those actors who 'deliver a fully rounded character with the fewest strokes,' in the least amount of time."

Here at IFC, Brandon Kim lists "10 Original Song Oscar-winners That Actually Hold Up."

Online viewing and listening tips. Jerry Lewis "remains better known for his annual television fund-raisers, along with his off-color slurs about women and gay men, than for the more than 50 movies he's made during his improbable career as a star, writer, director, producer and technical innovator," writes Manohla Dargis, whose appreciation in the NYT is accompanied by audio commentary and pointers to film clips. "Mr Lewis has never been one to let bad taste stand in the way of his art. He embodied a certain kind of American exuberance bordering on the grotesque. He was likable and a bit pathetic, but he was also a little scary: you never knew when he might go off. He helped make comedy dangerous."

And on the occasion of his receiving the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award tomorrow night, David Schwartz introduces an edited transcript and an unedited recording of Peter Bogdanovich's interview with Lewis at the Museum of the Moving Image back in November.

Update: Alison Willmore will be live-blogging the Spirit Awards right here.

Tags: Spirit Awards 2009