Spirit Awards 2015: The Complete Winners List

The 30th annual Film Independent Spirit Awards are being handed out today in a tent on the beach in lovely Santa Monica. Keep up with the winners as they are announced below.

Best Feature
"Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)" - WINNER
"Boyhood"
"Love is Strange"
"Selma"
"Whiplash"

Best Director
Damien Chazelle, "Whiplash"   
Ava DuVernay, "Selma"
Alejandro G. Iñárritu, "Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)"
Richard Linklater, "Boyhood" - WINNER
David Zellner, "Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter"

2015 Directors Guild Award Winners

For much of the night, women ruled. US-CINEMA-DGA AWARDS-TROPHYLesli Linka Glatter won best dramatic series director for Homeland, Jill Soloway took the comedy series nod for Transparent, Lisa Cholodenko for HBO’s Olive Kitteridge and Laura Poitras for docu Citizenfour.

FEATURE FILM

ALEJANDRO G. IÑÁRRITU
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
(Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Mr. Iñárritu’s Directorial Team:
Unit Production Managers: James W. Skotchdopole, Robert Graf
First Assistant Director: Peter Kohn
Second Assistant Director: Amy Lauritsen
Second Second Assistant Director: Catherine Feeny
Location Manager: Joaquin Prange

This is Mr. Iñárritu’s third DGA Award nomination. He was previously nominated in this category for Babel in 2006. He won the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Commercials for “Best Job” (Proctor and Gamble) in 2012.

Birdman (2014)

Where should I begin? Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu will go down as one of the greatest filmmakers to ever live. Birdman is one of the most creative films I've ever seen.

The plot involves a washed up actor named Riggan(Michael Keaton) trying to put on a stage play, in an attempt to revive his career. This is the most impeccable casting I've ever seen. Keaton, of course has a career that parallels Riggan's, playing a superhero and becoming more obscure once that ended over 20 years ago. The characters we meet along the way are equally interesting. There's Mike Shiner(Edward Norton), an actor who is perfect on the stage and anything but off it. Riggan's daughter Sammy(Emma Stone), who was neglected by her father and became addicted to drugs. Riggan's ex-wife(Amy Ryan) is also interesting in the way she so easily lets him manipulate her.

Its also a bit like watching a Quentin Tarantino production. The support characters are very strong, and creates a series of tense moments and scenes. You start to wonder... What's going to happen in this scene? Whats going to happen in the next few seconds? The subtext about advantage of ignorance is also good, and works at several layers. As are the outrageous scenes, most of which are confined in the tunnels of a Broadway theater. Its fast paced in many parts, with fast dialogue. So it can a bit hard to catch, for those not familiar with English. Which is interesting considering the writer/director's first language is Spanish.