Carey Mulligan in An Education (top); Tom Hardy in Bronson (bottom)
MOON Wins 2009 British Independent Film Award
At the British Independent Film Awards, National Board of Review winner Carey Mulligan (above) bagged her second best actress award this awards season — which has just begun. Had Mulligan been eligible for the Gotham Awards, she'd have given The Maid's Catalina Saavedra a run for her Chilean pesos. (The Gothams are supposed to honor American independent films, that's why Mulligan's British-made An Education wasn't eligible. Chile is in South America, which makes its film productions American. I guess. Except when it comes to the Spirit Awards, which have Sebastián Silva's socially conscious drama listed in their best foreign-film category.)
Other BIFA acting winners were best actor Tom Hardy, who transformed himself to incarnate mentally disturbed real-life inmate "Charles Bronson" in Nicolas Winding Refn's Bronson; best supporting actor John Henshaw for Ken Loach's fantasy Looking for Eric; and best supporting actress Anne-Marie Duff for Sam Taylor Wood's (early) John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy.
Taylor Wood also took home the best short film award, for Love You More, featuring Harry Treadaway and Andrea Riseborough. (Among the losers in that category was Sidney Turtlebaum, one of the semi-finalists for the best live action short film Academy Award.)
Also, Paul King's Bunny and the Bull, in which a young man (Edward Hogg, above, with Simon Farnaby) takes a memento-induced trip throughout Europe, won the best achievement in production award, while Ben Wheatley's Down Terrace, a dramatic comedy about a highly dysfunctional family, was voted the Raindance Award given to "filmmakers working against the odds."
And finally, Daniel Day-Lewis was given the Richard Harris Award for outstanding contribution to British Film; Michael Caine the Variety Award; and Daily Mail entertainment writer Baz Bamigboye the Special Jury Prize.
Last year, Slumdog Millionaire was the big winner at the British Independent Film Awards. Does that mean Moon has a chance at Oscar gold? Well, it may, but not because of its BIFA victory. After all, BIFA winners — unfortunately, if I may add — are often ignored on the American side of the Atlantic; Slumdog Millionaire was the worldwide sleeper-blockbuster aberration that proves the rule. In fact, thus far it's the only best picture BIFA winner to have received a matching best picture Oscar nomination.
But then again, with ten best picture nominees this year … who knows?