'Winter's Bone' leads Gotham Independent Nominations

By Sarah Sluis

The Gotham Independent Film Awards released their nominations, and with three nods, Winter's Bone leads the pack. The film now occupies the place in the awards arena that The Hurt Locker held last year Of course, that's no guarantee that the movie will end up gleanding the most awards, as The Hurt Locker did, but it has well-positioned Winter's Bone for the awards season.

While the Gotham Independent Awards stays close to its mission and really does reward movies with small budgets and under-the-radar followings, its picks occasionally appear in that holy grail of awards ceremonies, the Oscars (besides The Hurt Locker, Capote and Sideways have ended up with Oscar nods for Best Picture).

Winter's Bone has the best chance of securing the following Academy Award nominations: Best Actress for newcomer Jennifer Lawrence (though she doesn't have nearly the amount of momentum as last year's ingnue nominee, Carey Mulligan), and Best Film. With ten nominees for the top film, the drama has a definite chance of squeezing in.

Then there's the subject matter. Winter's Bone is the anti-Blind Side. It's a "flyover state" movie without the sentimentality. Its depressing realism makes the based-on-a-true-story The Blind Side seem like a fairy tale. Jennifer Lawrence plays a young woman whose father has skipped bail after putting the family house on the line as collateral. She journeys through a meth-riddled criminal world in a quest to find her father and save her home in the Ozarks. This is the kind of movie that can make L.A. and New York-based Oscar voters feel like they "know" or "get" the in-between states. In the name of cross-geographical understanding, who wouldn't want to vote for this film?

I'm putting Winter's Bone back in my list of contenders. So far, many of the awards-seeking movies have failed to top Winter's Bone, and I'm rooting for this quiet underdog. Here's hoping Roadside Attractions can mount a campaign for it.