LOS ANGELES - "Get Out," a horror thriller that examines US race relations, won the top honor at the Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday, independent film's biggest prize and the final awards ceremony ahead of the Oscars.
Jordan Peele, a comedian who wrote and directed the film, also won best director at the annual awards that recognizes the year's best independent achievements made on small budgets.
"This means so much," Peele said accepting the best feature award.
"We are in the beginning of a renaissance right now, where stories from the outsider ... are being honored and recognized and celebrated," Peele added.
"Get Out," which tells the story of a young black man who visits his white girlfriend's family as a racial satire, was a box office juggernaut for Comcast Corp's Universal Pictures, grossing $176 million at US and Canadian theaters.
The film has earned 4 Oscar nominations, including best picture, best director, best original screenplay and best actor for Daniel Kaluuya.
The last 4 winners of the Spirit Awards' top prize - "Moonlight," "Spotlight," "Birdman" and "12 Years a Slave" - all went on to win the best picture Oscar, which will be awarded on Sunday.
Frances McDormand, who has so far swept all major awards for her role as an aggrieved mother in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," won best actress at the casual beach-side ceremony. She is also tipped to win the Academy Award.
Timothée Chalamet, the 22-year-old star of "Call Me By Your Name," a coming-of-age drama about 2 young men falling in love, won the Spirit Awards' best actor.
Allison Janney, who has won all top awards as an abusive mother in biopic "I, Tonya" won best supporting actress while Sam Rockwell won best supporting actor for his part as a racist, alcoholic police officer in "Three Billboards."
Both Rockwell and Janney are nominated for Oscars.
Greta Gerwig won best screenplay for her coming-of-age tale "Lady Bird," which has earned five Oscar nods.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
LOS ANGELES -- "Wonder Woman" failed to conquer Oscar voters on Tuesday despite riding to one of the biggest box office hits of 2017 on a wave of female empowerment, making it one of the biggest snubs for Hollywood's highest honors.
The Warner Bros. movie, featuring Gal Gadot as the sword-wielding Wonder Woman, was the first stand-alone female superhero film since 2005 and earned some $825 million globally, making its filmmaker Patty Jenkins, 46, the highest-grossing female director in Hollywood.
But at Tuesday's Oscar nominations, Jenkins was left off the director's race and the film was snubbed in the best picture category, despite nods for other movies about women and made by women.
Instead, it was Guillermo del Toro's surreal fantasy romance "The Shape of Water" that led the Oscar nominations with 13 nods.
Speaking to Reuters, del Toro said that despite the omission of "Wonder Woman" at the Oscars, the impact of the film was "undeniable."
"Not only did ('Wonder Woman') break this archaic notion that this grand superhero-sized myth was done for 'the boys,' but it delivered it at a level of excellency that is a high watermark," the filmmaker said.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has traditionally disdained big action and superhero movies in favor of smaller art-house fare, like last year's Oscar champion "Moonlight" and this year's dark comedy "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," which landed seven nods.
Since 1990, only the 2003 fantasy epic "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" snapped that trend to win the top Oscar honor. Sci-fi movie "Avatar," still the biggest box office movie of all time, received a best picture nomination in 2010 but lost out to "The Hurt Locker."
SUCCESS FOR 'GET OUT'
This year's surprises include four nominations - including best picture, and best actor for Daniel Kaluuya - for Jordan Peele's "Get Out," in which an African-American man finds himself trapped at his white girlfriend's house with her strange family.
The $5-million horror movie from Universal Pictures became a box office success with more than $250 million globally and became a talking point around modern day race relations in America.
"I think that there's a piece of the black experience that is communicated in the film and through Daniel's performance that people of color recognize and haven't seen and that people not of color needed to see as well," Peele told Reuters.
Veteran actor Christopher Plummer, 88, was also a surprise contender in the supporting actor race for Sony Pictures' Getty kidnapping film "All the Money in the World." Plummer boarded the movie a month before its release, replacing actor Kevin Spacey because of sexual misconduct allegations.
Plummer stepped in after Spacey was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple men. Spacey issued an apology for the first reported incident, involving actor Anthony Rapp.
"Everything has happened so quickly of late that I am still a trifled stunned but excited by it all," Plummer said in a written statement of his nomination.
James Franco was excluded from the best actor race for "The Disaster Artist" after facing accusations of sexual misconduct earlier this month following his Golden Globe win.
Franco said the accusations were "not accurate." He lost out on Sunday at the Screen Actors Guild awards to Gary Oldman for "Darkest Hour."
Other snubs included Steven Spielberg in the directing race for press freedom movie "The Post," and its star Tom Hanks. "Mudbound" was left out of best picture and its filmmaker, Dee Rees, was also excluded from the directing race, but she landed a nod for adapted screenplay.
German film "In The Fade," which won the Golden Globe for best foreign language film and received praise for its lead star Diane Kruger, was left out of the Oscar foreign language race.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
