"Sideways" Straight-Up Indie Winner

No two ways about it, Sideways was the straight-up winner at the Independent Spirit Awards.

The wine-swilling, change-of-life pic, which came in with a leading six nominations, swept the Spirits, including wins for Best Picture, Best Actor for Paul Giamatti, Best Supporting Actor for Thomas Haden Church and Best Supporting Actress for Virginia Madsen.

Alexander Payne took home the Best Director award and shared Best Screenplay honors with Jim Taylor.

The Independent Spirit Awards, honoring films financed at least partly outside the Hollywood studio system, are held the day before the Oscars on a beach in Santa Monica, provide a low-key kudos ceremony in contrast to the frenzy of Sunday's Academy Awards.

While many Oscar-nominated films do not qualify for Spirit Awards due to their swollen budgets and big-studio pedigrees, plenty of independent films are in the running at the Academy Awards--Sideways, for example, is up for five Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor and Actress and Best Screenplay. (And many movie fans thought Giamatti was unfairly overlooked in the Best Actor Oscar race.)

The movie features Giamatti as a down-and-out middle-aged guy who rediscovers the possibility of love with a wine enthusiast (Madsen) during a Merlot-reviling road trip with his buddy (Church) through California's wine country.

Other big winners at the Spirit Awards included Maria Full of Grace, which earned the Best First Screenplay Award for Joshua Marston and Best Actress honors for Catalina Sandino Moreno, who portrayed a Colombian woman who finds trouble after she agrees to work as drug mule and smuggle heroin into the United States. Moreno is also in contention for the Best Actress Oscar.

The Motorcycle Diaries nabbed Best Debut Performance for Rodrigo de la Serna and the prize for Best Cinematography.

Scrubs star Zach Braff earned the Best First Feature award for his ensemble drama Garden State, which he wrote, directed and starred in, along with Natalie Portman. Braff also recently nabbed a Grammy for compiling the film's soundtrack.

Hard-rocking pic Metallica: Some Kind of Monster captured the prize for Best Documentary and The Sea Inside, starring Javier Bardem, won Best Foreign Film.

Mean Creek received the John Cassavetes Award, which goes to the best feature made for under $500,000.

Samuel L. Jackson served as host of the awards, while Quentin Tarantino and Salma Hayek served as honorary co-chairs for the awards.

While the award ceremony itself is billed as relaxed, stars still stand to pick up plenty of swag at the Spirit Awards. This year, celebrity presenters stood to pick up goody bags provided by On 3 Productions that included such luxuries as certificates for laser eye surgery and teeth whitening, a lifetime membership to Netflix and a three-month VIP loan on a Vespa.

Spirit Award winners are chosen by the 9,000 members of the Independent Film Project/Los Angeles, which includes actors, directors, writers and other industry types.

Here's a complete rundown of the winners of the 20th Annual Independent Spirit Awards:

Best Feature: Sideways
Best First Feature: Garden State
John Cassavetes Award: Mean Creek
Best Director: Alexander Payne, Sideways
Best Screenplay: Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, Sideways
Best First Screenplay: Joshua Martson, Maria Full of Grace
Best Male Lead: Paul Giamatti, Sideways
Best Female Lead: Catalina Sandino Moreno, Maria Full of Grace
Best Supporting Female: Virginia Madsen, Sideways
Best Supporting Male: Thomas Haden Church, Sideways
Best Debut Performance: Rodrigo de la Serna, The Motorcycle Diaries
Best Cinematography:Eric Gautier, The Motorcycle Diaries
Best Documentary: Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Best Foreign Film: The Sea Inside
Bravo/American Express Producers Award: Gina Kwon
Turning Leaf Someone To Watch Award: Jem Cohen, Chain
DIRECTV/IFC Truer Than Fiction Award: Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, Born into Brothels