Gotham Awards 2006
2006 Gotham Awards
2006 Gotham Award nominees: Oct. 23, 2006.
2006 Gotham Award winners: Pier Sixty at Chelsea Piers, New York City, on Nov. 29, 2006.
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
The socially-conscious psychological drama Half Nelson, one of those rare low-budget American films that actually have something to say and that manage to convey their message without condescending to their audience, nabbed three Gotham Awards at a Nov. 29 ceremony held in New York City.
The story of a liberal-minded public school teacher (Ryan Gosling) who tries to impart wisdom and power to his inner-city students while himself trying to escape — through drugs — from his own powerlessness to change the world around him, Half Nelson won awards for Best Film (beating critics’ darling The Departed), Breakthrough Director (Ryan Fleck), and Breakthrough Performer (Shareeka Epps, who shared the award with Babel’s Rinko Kikuchi.)
James Longley’s well-received Iraq in Fragments was chosen Best Documentary. A rarity among American documentaries on the war in Iraq, which almost invariably focus on American military personnel, Iraq in Fragments portrays the Iraq disaster as seen through the eyes of ordinary Iraqis.
Steve Barron’s Choking Man, the tale of a pathologically shy Ecuadorian man (Octavio Gómez) working as a dishwasher in Queens, won the Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You Award, given to American feature films without distribution.
The Babel cast, including nationals from Mexico, Australia, the United States, Japan, and Morocco, was voted the Best Ensemble award.
Additionally, assorted tributes were paid to the likes of Kate Winslet, Edward Norton, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, Tim Robbins, and Babel director Alejandro González Iñárritu.
Referring to the controversy surrounding the inclusion of two big-studio productions — Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (Warner Bros.) and Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (Sony Pictures) — among the nominees for the Best Film Gotham Award, host David Cross joked about Scorsese’s crime drama, "How that ever got greenlit I have no idea."
The Gotham Awards and the Independent Spirit Awards are the two, for lack of a better word, awards (mostly) dedicated to independent American filmmaking.
The Independent Feature Project’s 2006 Gotham Film Award nominees were announced this past Monday, Oct. 23. Among the films found in the Best Feature shortlist are three major surprises, Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, (distributed by Warner Bros.), Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (distributed by Sony Pictures), and Todd Field’s Little Children (distributed by New Line Cinema). Since the IFP’s Gotham Awards are supposed to be dedicated to the promotion of independent American films, the above choices seem more than a little out of place.
More in line with the awards’ purpose are Ryan Fleck’s socio-psychological drama Half Nelson, which boasts a superb performance by (non-nominee) Ryan Gosling, and Kelly Reichardt’s Zen-like Old Joy (which cost about 1/1,000,000th of the Departed budget.)
(There’s no Best Director category. The director shares the Best Feature award with the producer. Curiously, there’s no Best Screenplay award — and no one shares any awards with the poor screenwriter unless s/he also happens to be the film’s director and/or producer.)
Among the five documentary entries are James Longley’s Iraq in Fragments, Davis Guggenheim’s environmentally conscious An Inconvenient Truth, and Amy Berg’s Deliver Us from Evil, about the Catholic church’s cover-up of cases of pedophilia.
At IndieWIRE, Anthony Kaufman discusses "A Crisis for Independent Films," while at the Los Angeles Times‘ The Envelope, Tom O’Neil rants against the Gotham Awards’ non-indie choices.
A brief quote:
"But I think it’s clear how and why this happened. Foolishly, IFP handed over the selection of nominees to a gang of New York film journalists. Instead of focusing on the aims, concerns and priorities of IFP, they pushed, as usual, their own, testosterone-driven agenda. What, oh, what did they think this was — a vote of the New York Film Critics Circle?
"Even though most members of the Gotham nominating committee are not NYFCC members, they do subscribe to journos’ current groupthink, I happen to know."
Best Feature
The Departed
Martin Scorsese, director; Brad Pitt, Brad Grey, Graham King, producers (Warner Bros.)
* Half Nelson
Ryan Fleck, director; Jamie Patricof, Alex Orlovsky, Lynette Howell, Anna Boden, Rosanne Korenberg, producers (ThinkFilm)
Little Children
Todd Field, director; Albert Berger, Ron Yerxa, Todd Field, producers (New Line Cinema)
Marie Antoinette
Sofia Coppola, director; Ross Katz, Sofia Coppola, producers (Sony Pictures)
Old Joy
Kelly Reichardt, director; Neil Kopp, Lars Knudsen, Jay Van Hoy, Anish Savjani, producers
(Kino International)
Best Documentary
Deliver Us from Evil
Amy Berg, director; Amy Berg, Frank Donner, Hermas Lassalle, Matthew Cooke, producers (Lionsgate)
Following Sean
Ralph Arlyck, director; Ralph Arlyck, Malcolm Pullinger, producers (Upstate Films/Shadow Releasing)
An Inconvenient Truth
Davis Guggenheim, director; Laurie David, Lawrence Bender, Scott Z. Burns, producers
(Paramount Classics & Participant Productions)
* Iraq in Fragments
James Longley, director; James Longley, John Sinno, producers (Typecast Releasing in association with HBO Documentary Films)
Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple
Stanley Nelson, director/producer (Seventh Art Releasing)
Best Ensemble Cast
* Babel
Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael Garcia Bernal, Koji Yakusho, Adriana Barraza, Rinko Kikuchi, Said Tarchani, Boubker Ait El Caid (Paramount Vantage)
For Your Consideration
Bob Balaban, Jennifer Coolidge, Christopher Guest, John Michael Higgins, Eugene Levy, Jane Lynch, Michael McKean, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, Harry Shearer, Fred Willard
(Warner Independent Pictures)
Little Miss Sunshine
Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, Alan Arkin
(Fox Searchlight Pictures)
A Prairie Home Companion
Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Garrison Keillor, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen, John C. Reilly, Maya Rudolph, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, L.Q. Jones, Sue Scott, Tim Russell (Picturehouse)
Shortbus
Sook-Yin Lee, Paul Dawson, Lindsay Beamish, PJ DeBoy, Raphael Barker, Peter Stickles, Jay Brannan, Justin Bond (ThinkFilm)
Breakthrough Director
Ramin Bahrani for Man Push Cart (Films Philos)
Laurie Collyer for Sherrybaby (IFC Films)
* Ryan Fleck for Half Nelson (ThinkFilm)
So Yong Kim for In Between Days
James Marsh for The King (ThinkFilm)
Breakthrough Actor (tie)
Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
* Shareeka Epps in Half Nelson (ThinkFilm)
Melinda Page Hamilton in Sleeping Dogs Lie (Roadside Attractions / Samuel Goldwyn Films)
* Rinko Kikuchi in Babel (Paramount Vantage)
Channing Tatum in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (First Look Pictures)
Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You
* Choking Man
Steve Barron, director; Joshua Zeman, Zachary Mortensen, producers
Colma: The Musical
Richard Wong, director; Paul Kolsanoff, Richard Wong, Angel Vasquez, producers
In Between Days
So Yong Kim, director; Bradley Rust Gray, producer
The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief
Jake Clennell, director/producer
Wristcutters: A Love Story
Goran Dukic, director; Adam Sherman, Chris Coen, Tatiana Kelly, Mikal P. Lazarev, producer
Gotham Tribute: Kate Winslet, Edward Norton
World Cinema Tribute: Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, and Alejandro González Iñárritu
Humanitarian Tribute: Tim Robbins
Special Tribute: Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban, partners in Wagner/Cuban Companies
Gotham Awards: 2005 2006 2007 2008
Film Awards: 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
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