Held for the first time in Brooklyn, at Steiner Studios' Stage 3, the New York-based Independent Film Project's 2007 Gotham Awards for American independent films (despite last year's inclusion of The Departed, Marie Antoinette, etc.) wasn't dominated by any particular production — perhaps because there aren't that many Gotham Awards to go around: six in all.
Sean Penn's Into the Wild took best feature honors, but that was it for the drama about a young man (breakthrough actor nominee Emile Hirsch) who makes some seriously wrong choices while in the Alaskan wilderness.
Michael Moore's Sicko, a semi-finalist for this year's best documentary Oscar, won in the non-fiction category. Sicko is Moore's controversial look at the (ultra) expensive but inadequate health care system in the United States. (According to Bilge Ebiri in New York Magazine, "one could palpably sense the jovial air in the room getting sucked out when Best Documentary went to Michael Moore's Sicko over numerous other acclaimed, lower-profile films.")
Ellen Page was chosen breakthrough performer of 2007 for her performance as a pregnant teenager looking for the right parents for her upcoming baby, while Craig Zobel was the best breakthrough director for Great World of Sound, a comedy about a record company's talent scouting scheme.
The best ensemble award went to two films, Sidney Lumet's thriller Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, starring Ethan Hawke, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Albert Finney, Marisa Tomei, among others, and Talk to Me, Kasi Lemmons' drama about an ex-con-turned-talk show host in the 1960s, with Don Cheadle, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Martin Sheen, and others.
Ronald Bronstein's comedy Frownland (above), about a door-to-door salesman, took the Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You award. Earlier this year, Frownland won the Special Jury Award at the SXSW Film Festival.
Film reviewer Roger Ebert, one of the evening's special honorees, was on hand to accept introductions by Sidney Lumet (in person) and Martin Scorsese (on video). Due to his recent cancer surgeries, Ebert was unable to talk. His wife, Chaz, spoke for him.
Another special honoree, IFC Entertainment president Jonathan Sehring, remarked that his company releases films at movie houses and on DVD simultaneously because "the rest of the country deserves what we have in New York."
See also Tom O'Neil disses the Gotham Award organizers in The Envelope
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