My favorite memory of the Oscars last year was Karina Longworth’s Twitters hitting my iPhone every few minutes. The way she can describe Diablo Cody’s dress in one sentence had me turning to my wife saying, “You’ve got to hear this…” By the end of the night we had the iPhone sitting between us, propped on a pillow where we could both see each twitter as it popped up.

Sunday, February 22nd, Karina and a gaggle of other SpoutBlog writers will live-twitter the Oscars again. Check back here at 8:00 EST. If you won’t have a laptop with you to see all the action, you can at least follow Karina on Twitter.

Saturday, February 21st, Karina will also be at The Spirit Awards, twittering from the scene.  IFC’s televised coverage begins at 5:00 EST, hosted by Steve Coogan.

Want to see Karina’s Twitter stream? It’s embedded after the jump.

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The nominations for the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards are out, and there are a lot of causes for excitement. IndieWIRE has the full list; here are a few of the many reasons to celebrate:

• Silent Light, which still hasn’t officially been released in the US (although a run at NY’s Film Forum is pending), was nominated for best Foreign Film, alongside Cannes winners Hunger, Gomorrah and The Class, and the upcoming IFC release The Secret of the Grain.
• Three big nominations for Medicine for Melancholy: director Barry Jenkins and producer Justin Barber were nominated for Best First Feature, Jenkins was named alongside Nina Paley and Lynn Shelton as contenders for the Acura Someone to Watch Award, and James Laxton earned a nomination for Melancholy’s distinctive cinematography.
• Sean Baker competes against himself for the John Cassavetes Award for the best feature made for under $500,000; Prince of Broadway and Take Out were nominated alongside The Signal, Turn the River, and In Search of a Midnight Kiss.
• SpoutBlog favorites The Order of Myths, Encounters at the End of the World, The Betrayal and Man on WireUp the Yangtze join in the Best Documentary category; Myths director Margaret Brown was also nominated for the Lacost Truer Than Fiction prize, which goes to an upcoming nonfiction filmmaker.
• On the bigger film front, Rachel Getting Married, The Wrestler and Vicky Cristina Barcelona were amongst the most nominated films; Woody Allen will compete in the Screenplay category against fellow Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman.

The full list of nominees can be found here. The Spirits will be handed out, as per tradition, the night before the Oscars in Santa Monica.

In about 40 minutes, the nominations for the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards will be announced live by Zach Braff and Lisa Kudrow. You should be able to watch a stream of the announcement on IFC’s website starting at 11 EST. If you can’t watch at work, don’t fret–just check back here a little later, as I’ll have a recap early this afternoon.

The awards are in. Talking to Matt Singer from IFC News about the Independent Spirit Awards and the Spout guys recap the Oscars 2007. Forrest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson were great, but is it just us or are the Oscars trying to gain edge of the Spirit Awards?

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