Michael Keaton drama leads pack with six nominations at awards increasingly seen as sound indicator of Oscars success
Alejandro Inarritu’s Birdman, starring Michael Keaton as a former star of superhero movies vying to make a comeback, is leading the charge for next year’s Spirit Awards with six nominations.
The Oscar-tipped black comedy is up for best feature, best male lead (Keaton) and best director, among other prizes. Its closest competitors are Richard Linklater’s acclaimed coming-of-age drama Boyhood, Dan Gilroy’s crime thriller Nightcrawler and Ava DuVernay’s Martin Luther King biopic Selma, all of which have five nominations.
The five nominees for best male lead are Keaton, André Benjamin (for Hendrix biopic Jimi: All Is By My Side), Jake Gyllenhaal (for Nightcrawler), John Lithgow (for Love is Strange) and David Oyelowo (for Selma). The best female lead prize will go to one of Marion Cotillard (The Immigrant), Rinko Kikuchi Kumiko (The Treasure Hunter), Julianne Moore (Still Alice), Jenny Slate (Obvious Child) and Tilda Swinton (Only Lovers Left Alive).
The Spirit Awards, organised by Film Independent, were a strong bellwether for Oscars success earlier this year. The 2014 winner of the best feature prize, 12 Years a Slave, went on to win the Academy Award for best film, while Matthew McConaughey also doubled up for best male lead and best actor for his turn as an Aids-afflicted hustler in Dallas Buyers Club. Likewise Cate Blanchett in the equivalent female categories for Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, Slave’s Lupita Nyong’o (best supporting actress/female) and Buyers Club’s Jared Leto (best supporting actor/male).
That could spell bad news for Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the legendary code breaker, which failed to pick up a single Spirit nomination. Other notable absences were Bill Murray for St Vincent, Reese Witherspoon for Wild and Jennifer Aniston for Cake.
Among the more surprising victors at this stage were Love is Strange (four nominations) which stars Alfred Molina and Lithgow as an elderly couple forced to move out of their home, and Nightcrawler, which despite its plaudits, had not previously been seen as an obvious Oscars frontrunner.
The 2015 Spirit Awards ceremony is due to take place on 21 February, 2015, the day before the Oscars, on the beach in Santa Monica. Click here for a complete list of nominations.