Eric Lavallée

Debra Granik's Winter's Bone went two for four at the 2010 Gotham awards claiming Best Ensemble and the coveted, top prize of Best Feature beating out the much-liked other Sundance titles in Blue Valentine and The Kids Are All right and TIFF titles Black Swan and Let The Right One In. I think many indie film insider would agree that this was Winter's Bone award to lose, and with tomorrow's Indie Spirit nominations unveiling (where we should expect more mentions) 2010 will have been quite the comeback year for Debra Granik, whose debut film Down to the Bone would critically do well but pretty much disappeared from the map straight-after.

Academy Awards didn't even consider for the 15 list of noms, but the Gothams didn't forget The Oath, Laura Poitras' doc about a pair of folks close to Osama bin Laden that was distributed by Zeitgeist films and will most probably be compensated by the Cinema Eye Awards right before Sundance in January.

If you ask me: this was a fight between an underdog in Winter’s Bone and a favorite in The Kids Are All Right (Annette Bening, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo). The underdog won.

When the Safdie bros. preemed their debut feature in Cannes (film formerly known as Go Get Some Rosemary), I was sort of shocked and admired by what I saw. Daddy Longlegs counts as a strong indication that Ronnie Bronstein might have opened the door to an unexpected extra career to that of filmmaking (his Frownland won at the Gotham awards in 2007).

Big congrats goes to the producers Frederick Thornton, Laura Ragsdale, Sierra Leoni and helmer Mike Ott whose Littlerock - a film that played at the San Francisco, Torino, Vienna and AFI Fest festivals receives a pretty sweet upstart package: a one week showing at the Cinema Village, and other cash prizes including some theatrical release strategy help from the fine folks at Donna Daniels PR.