The 20th annual Gotham Independent Film Awards were held on Monday night in New York, and the winner was a big surprise to many. Winter’s Bone played at festivals and in limited release earlier this year to rave reviews, but since then it had virtually dropped off the radar.  Monday night the film snagged Best Feature Film at the award ceremony.  Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan was heavily favored to win.

This year the Gotham Awards were hosted by Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci, who appeared as a married couple in Easy A this year, with Emma Stone.

In addition to best feature, the film snagged Best Ensemble Performance, but star Jennifer Lawrence failed to take home the award for Best Breakout Actor. That honor went to Ronald Bronstein, from Daddy Longlegs.  Best Breakout Director was also an upset. Lena Durham (Tiny Furniture) was favored to win, but the honor went to Kevin Asch (Holy Rollers).

Other notable awards include the following:

• Best Documentary The Oath, directed by Laura Poitras.
• Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You Littlerock, directed by Mike Ott.
• Festival Genius Audience Award Waiting For Superman, directed by Davis Guggenheim.

The Gotham Awards are considered one of the early awards predictors for the Oscars. Last year The Hurt Locker won Best Feature Film and Best Ensemble Performance, and went on to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

The show also took time to honor Anne Hathaway, Hilary Swank, and Robert Duvall.

[via Indie Wire]

Easy A is a modern twist  on the classic novel The Scarlet Letter, and it’s a nice throwback to all the 80′s teen comedies like Can’t Buy Me Love and The Breakfast Club. A standout performance by up and coming actress Emma Stone elevates this comedy above most in the genre.

Olive is a beautiful, smart and self-assured high school student who suffers the same fate of all gorgeous ladies in romantic comedies-she can’t get a date.  Yeah, right.  Olive spends her Saturday nights at home singing to her dog. Rather than fess up to that fact, she tells her best friend that she was out with a college boy, and implies that she lost her virginity.

Word of the (pretend) coupling travels quickly via texting and such, and Olive is soon rebuked by the females at the school for being  the school slut.  At the same time, she has a new found popularity with the men, who believe they might have a shot at her.

When her best male friend (who is gay) waffles on whether to come out of the closet or not, she urges him to wait until after high school. They concoct a plan to silence his tormentors; she’ll pretend to sleep with him and everyone will think he is straight.

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High school comedies have gotten a pretty bad reputation as of late. If it weren’t for films like Mean Girls or the original series of Scary Movie films, the genre would be completely devoid of appeal of any kinda. Then we have a film like Easy A, which looks like it could just break that mold once again.

The film stars Emma Stone, who most fans fell in love with during her role in Zombieland, and other just consider the “poor man’s Lindsay Lohan”. Either way, she’s on the rise in Hollywood, and Easy A could just be her big picture to make that happen.

The film is a modern-day take on The Scarlet Letter, except it takes place in high school, and there’s no actual sex. The cast is what will turn heads the most, bringing names like Thomas Haden Church, Patricia Clarkson, Malcolm McDowell, Stanley Tucci, Lisa Kudrow, and Fred Armisen to a film that could just turn out to be “not every other high school movie.”

Don’t take our word for it. Myspace is bringing us the first 10 minutes of the film, which you can check out after the jump. Check it out, let us know what you think, and catch Easy A in theaters this Friday.

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The latest release from WWE Studios, Legendary stars WWE star and corporate mascot John Cena alongside Patricia Clarkson, Devon Graye and Danny Glover in the most heartfelt film the company has been a part of. Devon plays the role of Cal Chetley, a target for bullies in his small Oklahoma town, who lives with his mother Sharon (Clarkson).

Against his mother’s wishes, Cal decides to join the high school wrestling team despite his small stature as a way to reconnect with the father he barely knew and the brother Mike (Cena) he has rarely seen in the past ten years. Down on his luck and filled with self-loathing, Mike reluctantly begins to train his brother in the ways that made him a championship wrestler which ultimately helps bridge the gap between the two.

It’s hard to hear the premise of Legendary and not begin to see correlations to Rudy. An undersized kid trying to make it in a sport based on physical superiority and muscle mass that only has his heart helping push him forward. Thankfully, WWE Studios pushed past a story just about high school wrestling and added a layer to Cal Chetley and his new obsession.

As a result, there is a lot of emotion behind everything happening that doesn’t feel like a Rudy ripoff. This young man didn’t always dream of being a high school championship wrestler. He just sees it as a way to connect to a past and a family that is so far away from him.

The relationship between older brother Mike and mother Sharon is also incredibly well done. The few times they are on screen together is incredibly uncomfortable as Sharon appears to be in physical pain from being in front of a son that has chosen to stay out of her life for so many years that she never forgave for something that wasn’t even his fault. The deeply conflicted Mike also has some great scenes when he is apart from his family that show just how much his grief has consumed his life.

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Martin Scorsese’s latest potboiler bears the unmistakable markings of a classic film noir. Cigarette smoke  hangs heavy in the air  and tendrils about the characters, almost taking on a life of its own. Dream sequences become engulfed in flames and smoke. The camera lingers on one character taking a drag off of a cigarette and inhaling the smoke directly into his nostrils.

The smoke  is so pervasive that I kept thinking there has to be a reason for it, beyond atmosphere.  My conclusion is that the smoke is an allegorical symbol for “smoke and mirrors”, quite apropo because on Shutter Island, nothing is as it appears.

Leonardo DiCaprio (with a thick Boston accent) plays Teddy Daniels, a U.S. Marshal who has been summoned to the mysterious Shutter Island, a foreboding chunk of land surrounded by rocky precipices. This makes the island ideal for housing dangerous and severely disturbed psychiatric patients. The movie takes place in 1954, when psychiatric patients were routinely given lobotomies, and other “treatments” were inflicted that are considered unethical and inhumane today.

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