If the Matthew McConaughey hype train makes it all the way to Oscar town, let it be said that we were there to tearfully bid it bon voyage as it left the station. Today it made an important refueling stop on its journey, in Independent Spirit Awardville (it’s a terrible town name, no one’s arguing that), where McConaughey was nominated both as a supporting actor or his FilmDrunk-approved role in Magic Mike, AND as best lead actor in Killer Joe. I don’t know how he celebrated, but ten bucks says it was shirtless.

Here’s the full list of Nominees:

Best Feature
“Beasts of the Southern Wild”
“Bernie”
“Keep the Lights On”
“Moonrise Kingdom” (our review)
“Silver Linings Playbook” (our review)

Best Director
Benh Zeitlin, “Beasts of the Southern Wild”
Ira Sachs, “Keep the Lights On”
Julia Loktev, “The Loneliest Planet”
Wes Anderson, “Moonrise Kingdom”
David O. Russell, “Silver Linings Playbook”

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For people who don’t like that the Oscars are voted on almost exclusively by old, white men, there’s the Independent Spirit Awards, the awards show voted on almost exclusively by less old while men wearing Buddy Holly glasses. Seriously, most of the guys in this screencap came in the first 30 seconds of the monolog (video below), after which I think the director probably yelled “OKAY, THAT’S IT FOR GUYS IN GLASSES, PULL BACK FOUR, GO TO CAMERA SIX…”

Every year, the Independent Spirit Awards holds its younger, hipper, more casual, more t-shirts-with-sportcoatsy awards show the night before Oscars, and this year was no different. Seth Rogen did a 15-minute monolog, which at times sounded like he was bombing. Believe it or not, a giant warehouse full of loudly-clinking silverware is not the best comedy venue. Weird. Who’d have thought? But he wasn’t bombing, and in fact did pretty well, swearing a lot and even getting in a Brett Ratner dig. That kid’s going places, I tell ya, he’s like a young Billy Crystal. I especially liked the shot of Kirsten Dunst looking around to see if a joke was PC enough for her to laugh.

“I committed to watching all of your movies, that’s one of the things you have to do when you host. And I made it through at least the first five minutes of all of them. Some of them start pretty slow, I can tell you that.”

[The Independent Spirit Awards] have the distinction of being the only awards show that is completely inconsequential, like, literally. This won’t help you get paid anymore either. In fact, if anything, it PROVES you’ll work for nothing, so it f*cks you there.

“And most of all, without awards season, we wouldn’t know what a horrible bigot Brett Ratner is. That was crazy. Seriously, when that happened, was anyone like, ‘What?! Not Ratner!’”

“If this was the Oscars, after every funny joke, they’d have to cut to a shot of George Clooney looking charming. Since it’s the Independent Spirit Awards, they have to cut to Michael Shannon looking creepy.”

Anyway, you can check out the monolog and actual awards after the jump. SPOILER ALERT: they’re almost exactly the same as the Oscars. But it’s nice to see actors getting a free meal for once.

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Winter’s Bone, my favorite film from Sundance (with Hesher a close second), starring the hot and talented Jennifer Lawrence (pictured), cleaned up last night at the Gotham Awards, winning Best Feature and Best Ensemble Performance (though Lawrence lost Breakthrough Performance to Ronald Bronstein of Daddy Longlegs).  Meanwhile, the Independent Spirit Award nominations were announced today, with Winter’s Bone picking up seven nominations, including feature, director, lead, and supporting nods for Dale Dickey and John Hawkes (both deserving). You can see all the nominations after the jump.

It’s already available on Netflix so you can decide for yourself, but I worry that the awards are only going to keep people from seeing it.  It already has that awards bait-y look to it, and this will only confirm people’s suspicions.  But I promise it’s not that kind of movie, at least not in the way that 127 Hours was.   While it is super serious, awesomely acted, and lovingly executed, it’s at least a movie made for the sake of telling a good story, and not, say a vehicle for Danny Boyle to prove what an awesome director Danny Boyle is.  In fact, if Debra Granik ends up winning best director, I’d like nothing more than for her to run on stage, tell Danny Boyle “Now THAT’S how you chop peoples’ arms off,” do that “suck it” thing from WWE, drop the mic, and walk off stage.  That would be mad gangster.

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