“Boyhood’’ got a slight Oscar boost — and “Foxcatcher’’ didn’t — as the movie awards season got underway Thursday with announcement of nominations for the Gotham Independent Film Awards, the lesser-known 🌜East Coast equivalent to the Los Angeles-based Independent Spirit Awards.
Except for a special jury citation for its three lead actors, the Gothams’ nominating committee snubbed “Foxcatcher,’’ the fact-inspired story of Olympic gold champion br🔜others (played by Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo) who have ill-fated encounters with an eccentric multimillionaire (Steve Carell) in the 1990s. The emotionally distant film, which opens Nov. 14, has been heavily touted as a major awards contender since it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
Less surprising are the four nominations — best feature, best actor (Ethan Hawke), best actress (Patricia Arquette) and breakthrough ⛎actor (Ellar Coltrane) — for “Boyhood,’’ a critics’ darling filmed over the course of 12 years that will need to overc🔥ome the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’s historical antipathy toward the work of director Richard Linklater.
Rounding out the best feature nominees are “Birdman’’ (nominated for Michael Keaton’s performance as a Hollywood actor trying to make a comeback on Broadway), “Under the Skin” (Scarlett Johansson got a nod for best actress as a sexy extraterrestrial), Wes Anderson’s historical fantasy “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “Love is Strange,’’ a comedy-drama about an elderly gay couple.
Also nominated for best actor are Miles Teller as a drumming prodigy in the much-admired “Whiplash’’ (surprisingly snubbed for best picture) and a couple of surprises — Bill Hader in the little-seen comedy-drama “The Skeleton Twins’’ and Oscar Isaac for the New Yoꦐrk crime drama “A Most Violent Year,’’ which the nominators saw ahead of its world premiere at the AFI Fest in November.
Besides Arquette, best actress nods went to Julianne Moore, the presumptive Oscar front-runner at this point for her turn as a professor newly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in the upcoming “Still Alice,’’ Gugu Mbatha-Raw for the soon-to-open musical drama “Beyond the Lights,’’ and Mia Wasikowska as the long-distance hiker in “Tracks.’’