"Sideways" Goes Straight for Spirits

Sideways landed right side up Tuesday, leading the pack in nominations for the 2005 IFP Independent Spirit Awards.

The film nabbed six noms in all for the indie Oscars, including Best Feature, Best Actor (Paul Giamatti) and Best Director (Alexander Payne).

Virginia Madsen received a Supporting Actress nomination and Thomas Haden Church reeled in a Supporting Actor bid, while Payne and writing partner Jim Taylor garnered a Best Screenplay nomination for the film.

Sideways tells the story of a failed husband and writer (Giamatti), who gingerly wades into the terrifying waters of romance with a new interest (Madsen) while on a wine-tasting trip with a soon-to-be married pal

Trailing just behind Sideways was Maria Full of Grace with five nominations, including Best Feature and Best Actress for Catalina Sandino Moreno, who plays a women whose hopes for a better life lead her astray as she becomes a drug mule who smuggles heroin into the United States.

Rounding out the Best Feature category were Baadasssss!, Mario Van Peebles' chronicle of father Melvin's struggle to make the '70s-era black-power film Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song; thriller Primer, which captured the Grand Jury Prize for Top Dramatic Film at last year's Sundance Film Festival; and the Liam Neeson-starrer Kinsey, a biopic about the life of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey.

Other nominees in the Best Actor category include Neeson for Kinsey; Kevin Bacon for his role as a convicted child molester trying to reclaim his life after prison in The Woodsman; Jamie Foxx, who plays a jailed L.A. gang member crusading against violence in Redemption; and Jeff Bridges as a father coping to deal with family tragedy through drinking and sex in Door in the Floor.

In addition to Moreno, the Best Actress nominees include Kimberly Elise, playing a woman on death row in Woman, Thou Art Loosed; Vera Farmiga as a drug-addicted wife and mother in Down to the Bone; Judy Marte as a street-wise drug dealer in On the Outs; and Kyra Sedgwick as a mother who reunites with the daughters she abandoned in Cavedweller.

The Spirit Awards nominating committee honored the ensemble cast of Mean Creek--Rory Culkin, Ryan Kelley, Scott Mechlowicz, Trevor Morgan, Josh Peck and Cary Schroeder--with a Special Distinction Award.

"These young actors turned in performances so uniformly unselfish, and so intricately in tune with one another, that it became impossible to single any one of them out from their extraordinary achievement together," the committee said in a statement. "Their work is of such high quality that it moves beyond craft to achieve that mysterious truth and beauty that constitutes the finest acting."

The Independent Spirit Awards honor films whose funding comes at least in part from sources outside of the major Hollywood studios.

The awards will be doled out in a customarily low-key ceremony in a beachfront tent in Santa Monica on Feb. 26, the day before the frenzy of the Academy Awards.

Here's a round-up of the nominees for the 2005 IFP Independent Spirit Awards:

BEST FEATURE: Baadasssss!; Kinsey; Maria Full of Grace; Primer; Sideways

BEST DIRECTOR: Shane Carruth, Primer; Joshua Marston, Maria Full of Grace; Alexander Payne, Sideways; Walter Salles, The Motorcycle Diaries; Mario Van Peebles, Baadasssss!

BEST SCREENPLAY: Baadasssss!, Mario Van Peebles and Dennis Haggerty; Before Sunset, Richard Linklater and Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke; The Door in the Floor, Tod Williams; Kinsey, Bill Condon; Sideways, Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor

BEST FIRST FEATURE: Brother to Brother, Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite, Saints and Soldiers, The Woodsman

BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY: Brother to Brother, Rodney Evans; Garden State, Zach Braff; Maria Full of Grace, Joshua Marston; Primer, Shane Carruth; Robbing Peter, Mario F. de la Vega

JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD (best feature made for $500,000): Down to the Bone; Mean Creek; On the Outs; Robbing Peter; Unknown Soldier

BEST DEBUT PERFORMANCE (actors in their first significant role in a feature film): Anthony Mackie, Brother to Brother; Louie Olivos, Jr., Robbing Peter; Hannah Pilkes, The Woodsman; Rodrigo de la Serna, The Motorcycle Diaries; David Sullivan, Primer

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE: Cate Blanchett, Coffee and Cigarettes; Loretta Devine, Woman Thou Art Loosed; Virginia Madsen, Sideways; Robin Simmons, Robbing Peter; Yenny Paola Vega, Maria Full of Grace

BEST SUPPORTING MALE: Thomas Haden Church, Sideways; Jon Gries, Napoleon Dynamite; Aidan Quinn, Cavedweller; Roger Robinson, Brother to Brother; Peter Sarsgaard, Kinsey

BEST FEMALE LEAD: Kimberly Elise, Woman Thou Art Loosed; Vera Farmiga, Down to the Bone; Judy Marte, On the Outs; Catalina Sandino Moreno, Maria Full of Grace; Kyra Sedgwick, Cavedweller

BEST MALE LEAD: Kevin Bacon, The Woodsman; Jeff Bridges, The Door in the Floor; Jamie Foxx , Redemption; Paul Giamatti, Sideways; Liam Neeson, Kinsey

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Dandelion, The Motorcycle Diaries, Redemption, Saints and Soldiers, We Don't Live Here Anymore

BEST FOREIGN FILM: Bad Education, Oasis, Red Lights, The Sea Inside, Yesterday

BEST DOCUMENTARY: Bright Leaves, Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed, Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust Metallica: Some Kind of Monster Tarnation

SPECIAL DISTINCTION: Mean Creek cast: Rory Culkin, Ryan Kelley, Scott Mechlowicz, Trevor Morgan, Josh Peck, Carly Schroeder