• Special guest SpoutBlogger Joe Swanberg already passed along the news that Ronnie Bronstein won the Gotham Award last night for Best Film Not Playing At a Theater Near You. Other Gotham winners: Into the Wild took Best Feature, Sicko took Best Doc, and Craig Zobel won the Breakthrough Director award for his wonderful Great World of Sound.
• From the Onion Headlines Come To Life file: a bunch of striking horror film scribes got together in LA yesterday and staged an exorcism in front of the Warner Brothers lot. Scott Kosar, who makes a living writing remakes of movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, used a bullhorn to ask God to “repel the greed that bewitches these studios.”
• Oh yeah — the strike’s still on, and no one but Nikki Finke has anything of substance to report.

I’m sure a press release will be forthcoming, and when I get it I’ll post it, but here’s what I deem to be the exciting news from this morning’s Independent Spirit Awards announcement, most of which involve friends and/or pet projects of Spout:

• Aaron Katz’s Quiet City is nominated for the John Cassavetes Award for the best feature made for $500,000. Also nominated in that category: Shotgun Stories and The Pool, two films I’ve heard great things about but have yet to see.
• The Monastery, which was disqualified for Oscar consideration after it was broadcast against the filmmaker’s wishes on European television, got a Spirit nomination for Best Documentary.
• Ronnie Bronstein (director of Frownland and star of Joe Swanberg’s upcoming Spout web series Butterknife) and Ramin Bahrani (director of Man Push Cart and Chop Shop) have both been nominated for the IFC/Acura Someone to Watch Award, which comes with a grant worth (I think) $20,000.
• Craig Zobel and Julie Delpy were nominated for Best First Film, for Great World of Sound and 2 Days in Paris, respectively. Sound’s Kene Holliday was also nominated for Best Supporting Male.
• Broken English, a film which was dismissed by many but which I really enjoyed, earned nominations for Best Actress (Parker Posey) and Best First Screenplay (Zoe Cassavetes).

Otherwise, the usual suspects are all there: lots of I’m Not There, Diving Bell, A Mighty Heart and Juno. More later.

UPDATE: See the full list of nominees after the jump. Surprises, omissions, excitements? Comment, please.

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• New indie production/distribution company Elephant Eye is teaming with Palm Pictures to produce Craig Zobel’s follow-up to the Gotham-lauded Great World of Sound. Zobel co-wrote Turkey in the Straw with Barlow Jacobs, who wrote and starred in one of my favorite underseen films of the year, Low and Behold. The Hollywood Reporter says the project is expected to have a higher budget than Sound and to “include more A-list stars.”
• Following in the illustrious footsteps of Clint Eastwood and, um, Ben Affleck, Martin Scorsese’s next project will be based on a Dennis Lehane novel–this time, it’s Shutter Island. Scorsese will once again direct lil’ buddy Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead.
• Sidney Lumet will receive a Career Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association at their annual awards gala in January.
• Marc Graser reports on how the Southern California wildfires are impacting Hollywood life. You’ll take some comfort in knowing that although flames threatened to shut down productions in Santa Clarita and half of Los Angeles’ luxury hotels are booked full of Malibu refugees, “Paris Hilton’s home just steps away up the beach was unaffected.”

IFP has just announced the nominations for their Gotham Awards, which will be handed out in Brooklyn next month. I’m so happy to see that Craig Zobel’s fantastic Great World of Sound has been nominated in three categories–Best Feature, Breakthrough Director and Breakthrough Actor–the most nominations of any single film this year. Zobel’s feature, which Magnolia released with little fanfare last month, shares the Best Feature category with four, relatively “big” indie-arm titles: The Namesake, I’m Not There, Margot at the Wedding, and Into the Wild.

I’ve privately bitched about the lack of publicity surrounding Sound (even the release date seemed misguided, as it fell right in the middle of the Toronto Film Festival and thus necessarily turned coverage of the movie by bloggers and other indie journalists of limited resources into an afterthought), so I’m hoping these nominations will give Magnolia the impetus to give the film a stronger push. According to the distributor’s website, they’re still planning a slow roll-out to smaller markets through December.

Other Spout favorites to make the cut: Julia Loktev’s Day Night Day Night earned two nominations, for Breakthrough Director and Breakthrough Actor; and Ronnie Bronstein’s Frownland will compete in the Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You race.

As of this writing, IFP hasn’t posted the list of nominees on their website, but you can check out an alphabetical list on nominees, ripped from the press release, after the jump.

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