This hasn’t been a very good year for people who like awards surprises. And, so, this year’s most high profile indie film, say it with me — “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” —  has won the lion’s share of the more high-profile awards at Film Independent’s Independent Spirit Awards, this year hosted by Eddie Izzard.

To be specific, “Precious” nabbed “Best Feature” from a field that included the very popular “(500) Days of Summer,” Berkeley-bred Cary Joji Fukunaga’s surprisingly assured directorial debut, “Sin Nombre,” and “The Last Station.” Director Lee Daniels, whose work on “Precious” has been the single most criticized aspect of the somewhat controversial film, nevertheless beat the Coen Brothers work on “A Serious Man,” Fukunaga, James Gray of “Two Lovers,” and Michael Hoffman of “The Last Station.” “Precious” also took the Best First Screenplay. The best not-first screenplay went to Scott Neustader and Michael H. Weber of “(500) Days.”

In the acting categories, Gabourey Sidibe received the Best Female Lead for playing Precious herself and, naturally, Mo’Nique proved to own her category fully across all award shows and won the Best Supporting Female category. Among the males, Jeff Bridges, took the Best Male Lead award that is deemed pretty much his due this year for the country music drama, “Crazy Heart.”

Since the $40 million dollar budget of “Inglourious Basterds” presumably put it beyond the realm of the Spirits, Christoph Waltz was not nominated for Best Supporting Male. Instead, he cut a deal in which he collected the award anyway in return for helping the show to end early. Just kidding. Woody Harrelson in his non-zombie-thwacking mode took the award for his work in the low-key stateside wartime drama, “The Messenger.” (My sympathies to Christian McKay of “Me and Orson Welles” — so much critical praise and so few awards even when this year’s male 500 pound gorilla is safely out of the room.)

Best Foreign Film went to a film that doesn’t feel so foreign now that England is our 52nd state, “An Education.”  Best Documentary went to one some of you might actually have seen and found fun rather than upsetting, “Anvil! The Story of Anvil” defeated a list that included the highly praised “Food, Inc.” (For whatever reason, “The Cove” was not nominated.) Roger Deakins took the cinematography award for “A Serious Man.”

Among the special awards, the John Cassevettes Award, which goes to a film with a budget of less than $500,000, went to a favorite around these parts, Lynn Shelton’s “Humpday,” edging out another film we’ve kind of taken to our breast here, “Big Fan.” The latter film looked, literally, like a million dollars to me, so kudos to the penny-saving producers on that one. “A Serious Man” won the Robert Altman award for its acting ensemble.

You can see a complete list of nominees and winners here. You can also check and see if Indiewire ever corrects their typos here.

Ironically, according to Peter Knegt of Indiewire, the last time a single film swept the best picture prize from all three groups was when Curtis Hanson’s outstanding “L.A. Confidential” managed the coup in 1997. It lost the Oscar to James Cameron‘s sentimental and spectacular romantic melodrama, “Titanic” — one of the most widely disagreed with Best Picture winners in recent history. With “Avatar” becoming a wide popular favorite and a gigantic hit, a repeat of this scenario is not outside the realm of possibility.

“The Hurt Locker” also won major prizes for director Kathryn Bigelow and star Jeremy Renner, who edged out Jeff Bridges, currently a favorite the win the Best Actor Oscar for “Crazy Heart,” as well as Nicolas Cage for “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.” For Best Supporting Actor, once again “Inglourious Basterds” break out bad guy Christoph Waltz took the top prize, with another former unknown, Christian McKay, getting the second largest number of votes from critics for “Me and Orson Welles.”  The best screenplay nod went to the Coen Brothers’ ultra-dark black comedy, “A Serious Man.”

In something of an upset that, I’m guessing, might not be repeated at the Oscars, Yolande Moreau, of the French language biopic “Seraphine,” beat Meryl Streep in “Julie and Julia” by one vote for Best Actress. Once again, however, talk show host and comedian Mo’Nique added to a truly impressive number of wins with her work in “Precious,” taking yet another Best Supporting Actress prize.

You can see the complete list of winners at bottom of the Indiewire article I linked to above.

Variety has gone behind a pay wall. Jolly Carl DiOrio of The Hollywood Reporter is either taking a night off or filing later. Still, this is one week when, if I may paraphrase Bob Dylan, I don’t need a weatherman to tell me which way the wind’s blowing. As a science-fiction adventure sure-to-be blockbuster, James Cameron‘s “Avatar” has pretty much everything going for: huge ballyhoo, much of its centered on its groundbreaking use on “performance capture” (not mere motion capture) and what everyone seems to be describing as a new and more immersive 3-D, strong advance sales (skewing male as of right now), and solid reviews.  Sure, it’s actors aren’t precisely A-listers, but we all know what good stars are these days. I’m sure people will eventually remember that Sam  Worthington, Zoe Saldana, and Sigourney Weaver were in there some place.

The latest from James Cameron at this point has racked up an 82% “fresh” on the Tomatometer and a whopping 96% from the usually harder to please “top critics,” with only Village Voice‘s exacting J. Hoberman submitting a mildly negative review that is actually about as positive as a bad review can be.

Our own Jamey Codding is positive, but not quite ecstatic. Ken Turan, a critic I respect but often disagree with for his rather schoolmarmish tastes — don’t get him started on Tarantino — waxes poetic and compares the technical breakthroughs to “The Jazz Singer.” I personally hope that isn’t quite the case. 3-D is cool as an occasional treat, but I just don’t see how it’s necessary for every movie. Of course, there were people who said that about sound movies too, but don’t laugh too much because there are still people who thought they were right! (Not me. Being a word guy, I like talkies. My fogeyosity has limits) In any case, Roger Ebert might be summing things up nicely when he writes:

There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely.

So, we know that “Avatar” will, baring apocalypse or a mass, blindness-inducing plague, win the weekend. The real question is, by how much? Well, considering it’s opening in 3,453 theaters and probably taking up nearly every higher priced regular size and Imax 3-D screen in the country, I’d say the sky is the limit for the moment. Beyond that, I really don’t have the kind of information to make these kind of assertions, but fortunately there is Daniel Frankel of The Wrap who says that the gurus have agreed the Fox film will do over $60 million at least and possibly as much as $90 or $100 million.

As for the long term prospects over the coming weeks and months for “Avatar,” as far as I can tell there’s now reason to expect anything but some large degree of success. The good reviews, I think, bode well for far stronger than average word-of-mouth for an effects-laden blockbuster. Indeed, as word gets out of the film’s love story, more females will likely want to check this one out. Of course, as with Cameron’s extremely female-friendly “Titanic,” a backlash of some sort is inevitable.  “Titanic” is probably the most hated widely beloved movie ever made, though that sure didn’t hurt its commercial or Oscar prospects. I sort of suspect that won’t be the case here, but given the “Dances with Wolves”-style story and scenes that are being seen as referencing the more venal lowlights of the Bush Administration, some blowback and/or beneficial controversy from Sarah Palin’s idea of “real America” may be in the cards.

Still, this is the movies and spectacle always trumps ideology. According to Frankel, the really good news for James Cameron and company is that they have most of the nation’s 3-D screens to themselves until March. He’s a got a huge budget to recoup, but something tells me things will be just fine for Cameron.

There is another wide release this weekend and, with its appeal to adult women, “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” should theoreticaly have some counter-programming hopes for Sony and Relativity Media. However, I have a theory that movies with complete sentences for titles almost never do very well. In fact, things don’t appear to be too rosy for this marital comedy in which Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker are an unhappy married couple whose marriage is given a new lease on life when they wind up in witness protection. Forecasters are not bullish and the film is expected, as per Daniel Frankel, to make only about $8 million. The problem appears to be that people don’t think it’s funny. My PH colleague Jason Zingale certainly doesn’t seem to have found much to laugh about.

Perhaps aided by ever-lowering standards for rom-coms, the last film that teamed Hugh Grant and writer-director Marc Lawrence, the just kond of okay “Music and Lyrics,” did surprisingly well with RT’s “Cream of the Crop” critics especially. “The Morgans” however, have  so far generated a pretty lousy Rotten Tomatoes rating of 11%. Michael Phillips of “At the Movies” and the Chicago Tribune has my favorite RT pull quote of the week:

It’s not just the sound of crickets you hear watching this movie. It’s the sound of dead crickets.

I guess that’s like the sound of one hand, not clapping.

“Morgans” appeals to an older audience that, while not likely directly swayed by reviews, is a bit more discriminating with their movie going dollar. Let’s just say that, things are looking very, very good right now for “The Princess and the Frog” to hit the #2 spot this week.

There’s some Oscar activity — to widely varying degrees — in limited release. “Precious,” “Up in the Air,” “The Road,” and “Me and Orson Welles” are expanding to 1003, 396, 175, and 134 screens respectively.  The first two films’ Oscar hopes at this point seem a lot stronger than the latter’s. Rob Marshall’s highly touted Fellini-via-Broadway musical adaptation, “Nine” will show up in three theaters while the country music drama “Crazy Heart” with Jeff Bridges — definitely the man to beat this year so far for the Best Actor Oscar — will play in four houses. And, for aging romantics and the fogeyish-in-heart comes a historical romantic costume drama,  “The Young Victoria,” opening in 44 theaters. Oscar hopes are pinned on the lovely Emily Blunt in the title role.

As the above indicates, Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air” collected the most nominations from the awards given annually by the Hollywood Foreign Press Assocation (HFPA) with six nods. Just behind it was most of the other films that are emerging as this year’s awards usual suspects. The Broadway musical adaptation from director Rob Marshall, “Nine,” got five nominations; “Avatar,” and “Inglourious Basterds” received four nominations each. Following with three nominations were “The Hurt Locker,” “Invictus” and “Precious,” as well as two names that are somewhat new to this year’s awards sweepstakes, Tom Ford’s “A Single Man” and the upcoming star driven comedy from Nancy Myers, “It’s Complicated.” (Thanks to Nikki Finke, or her inevitably long-suffering assistant, for providing not only a complete list of nominations, but also a convenient awards tally not only by film, but also by studio and TV network.)

Neither “A Single Man” nor “Invictus” made the cut for “Best Picture – Drama.” Meryl Streep and Matt Damon both got two acting nominations, with Streep competing against herself in the “Best Actress – Comedy” category for “Julie & Julia” and “It’s Complicated.”

One factor that somewhat complicates covering the Globes is that they separate dramas from comedies and musicals. This year, “Up in the Air,” which bills itself as a “dramatic comedy” but which a lot of people seem to see as simply a mature and relatively low-key comedy with topical overtones, was nominated in the drama category. This prompted the AP (via MSNBC) to opine that the nomination in that category could give it more “weight” for the Oscars. I have to say that, while it’s so wrong in some many ways, there may be some truth to that and getting the meme out that the film is more drama than comedy might help Oscar voters to nominate it.

To further mess with our heads, another film that is said to mix laughter with more serious aspects, “A Serious Man,” got a nomination for actor Michael Stuhlbarg in the comedy category. Also, Robert Downey, Jr. was nominated for the upcoming Guy Ritchie action-mystery fest, “Sherlock Holmes,” in the comedy category — which may or may not be fitting, though the film does seem to be is playing up the humorous potential of the Holmes myth.

A couple of modest surprises. “District 9” was nominated for Best Screenplay; nice to see genre picks getting their props. Also, it’s a law now that Christoph Waltz must be nominated for his A+ villainy in “Inglourious Basterds,” but missing was newcomer Christian McKay, whose universally gushed-over performance in “Me and Orson Welles” seems to have been shaping up to be Waltz’s possibly only real competition for the Supporting Actor Oscar. Not enough star power for the Globes, I guess. The Golden Globes has never been the tidiest of awards, that’s for sure. Nor are they known for being the most, well, merit-based.

Indeed, while La Finke is making with the invective as usual, she may have a point about the awards not registering very high on the integrity scale. I personally don’t take any awards all that terribly seriously — they are really only an aggregation of opinion, and so their value kind of depends on the thoughtfulness of the voters. Moreover, even where people might actually know their fields fairly well, their choices are often distorted by various outside factors such as visibility/name recognition, personal popularity, career achievement for non-career achievement awards, and what movies they actually got to see.

Still, the Globes may be a special case. In 1982, Pia Zadora, a young singer and former child actress and star of “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” with a very wealthy husband and a promotional campaign to match, won “New Star of the Year.” The award was purportedly on the basis of her soon-to-be Razzie-winning performance in a movie called “Butterfly.” Ms. Zadora has done a better job of living down the embarrassment than the Globes ever have.

Fittingly, then, the award show itself has always been a looser, more booze-infused, affair that many argue is therefore more entertaining than the Oscars. Eugene Hernandez is clearly correct in stating that the Globes “favor star wattage.”

Nevetheless, Anne Thompson makes a few interesting observations about possible Oscar tea leaves here. Where I can’t agree with her, however, is that she finds it a “shocker” that Sandra Bullock scored two acting nominations, one for “The Blind Side” on the drama side and one for “The Proposal” on the comedy side. She seems surprised that Bullock got even one nomination and skeptical that her “Blind Side” performance has a major shot at an Oscar nomination. My hunch is that Bullock is a shoe-in for an Academy nomination for the feel-good sports drama (nominating “The Proposal” for anything would be very unusual). The Academy likes to acknowledge somewhat populist sleeper hits and it also loves to honor actors who rise above their usual meh-to-okayness with a really special performance that’s better than just okay.

I call this the “Kim Basinger in ‘L.A. Confidential’ phenomenon.” I’d say that not only is it extremely likely that Sandra Bullock will get an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, but that her prospects for winning are actually very good. I mean, the Academy can give Meryl Streep a reasonable award just about any year they want for as long as she decides to make movies, but how many chances are they going to have to give one to Sandra Bullock?

Between repeat hardcore “Twilight” fangirls, their friends, and curious onlookers it really seems like a lock for the continuing vampire/human/werewolf romantic menage, considering the film’s spectacular $142.8 million domestic performance last weekend. Which is not to say there won’t be some success to go around this tme. Considering the longest official holiday weekend on the calender — and a “black Friday”-depressing economy that may put many folks in the mood to delay their shopping as long as possible — it seems more than very likely that there will be some nice money to be made at the nation’s multiplexes tonight through Sunday. (Hardcore talliers will be concentrating on the three day period starting Friday.)

The obvious favorite for the #2 spot, if only because it’s going to be booked into 922 more theaters than the next biggest wide release, is Disney’s PG-rated all-star comedy “Old Dogs.” With John Travolta and Robin Williams headlining with a premise that sounds like “Two Men and Two Six Year-Olds” and not much else in the way of broadly appealing, family-friendly comedies out there, this sure seems like a  sure thing in theory.

The slapstick-laden comedy, however, scored an abysmal 6% “fresh” rating at Rotten Tomatoes, but what of it? Director Walt Becker’s previous all-star comedy outing, “Wild Hogs” — the two films actually rhyme — was roundly reviled by most critics and then grossed over $168.2 million domestically.

Still, wouldn’t we all rather to win pretty? Our own David Medsker makes a salient point:

…You would think that Disney might step up their game a little bit after seeing just how successful their partners at Pixar have been by not taking the easy way, by using their early success to branch out and make some highly entertaining but also downright challenging movies (“WALL·E,” “Up,” “Ratatouille”). Disney got a taste of that themselves with “Enchanted,” and even “Bolt” to a lesser extent. Most of the time, though, it’s balls to the groin, and gorillas cuddling humans singing Air Supply….

As the quote attributed to H.L. Mencken goes: “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” On the other hand, some have given it a darn good try. We’ll see.

Next comes the producing Wachowski Brothers very R-rated, CGI blood-filled, attempt to wow the public with a little straight-up martial-arts violence: “Ninja Assassin” starring Stephen Colbert’s favorite Korean pop star, Rain. Directed for the brothers W by James McTeigue, who also handled their terrific/controversial “V for Vendetta,” this could be a canny attempt on the part of Warner Brothers at a bit of young-guy friendly anti-“New Moon” counter-programming. There’s certainly not much else going on right now for the highly stylized gratuitous violence market. Jason Zingale alludes to the holiday weekend in a split decision review that’s still more upbeat than most critics. So, the big question here is this: how many guys will want to, or be able to, check out all that mayhem in the middle of a family-oriented holiday weekend?

Now, the movie most of us cinephiles and geek types will be rooting for this weekend is Wes Anderson‘s stop-motion Roald Dahl adaptation, “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” which is venturing out from a successful arthouse release to compete on the general market. The only problem seems to be that Wes Anderson’s most widely praised film is still a Wes Anderson film and it’s been defiantly made in old-school, non-CGI puppet animation. On the other hand, it’s also a family film that should, in theory at least, play to the same audience as all the other simultaneous adult/kid pleasers. A lot of this, I think, will come down to Fox Searchlight’s marketing of the film as well as to whatever word of mouth developed over the last two weeks.

In limited release in 111 theaters, as per Box Office Mojo, but originally slated to go wide immediately, we have a major prestige pic from the Weinstein Company. “The Road” is based on the highly acclaimed novel by Cormac McCarthy and directed by John Hillcoat. His “The Proposition” was a big hit with critics but not particularly with me. (The low-budget pic with a cast of well-known actors made just over $5 million worldwide.) This tale of a father and son trying to survive as the bulk of humanity has degraded to murderous cannibalism — without any need for viruses, sun spots, or evil government programs gone badly wrong — is invariably described with words like “extremely grim,” “incredibly brutal,” and “beyond depressing.”  Will the numbers be described that way, too? It’s not clear what commercial good the popularity of the book and  a widely praised star performance by the always outstanding Viggo Mortenson can do here. I’d guess this one needs a significant Oscar nomination to do more than modest business, at best.

Finally, we have two well-reviewed arthouse contenders that I’m sure it’s possible we’ll be hearing from at Oscar time, Richard Linklater’s cinephile-bait, “Me and Orson Welles,” starring “High School Musical” fave Zac Efron, and the preciously named “Private Lives of Pippa Lee” starring a highly praised Robin Wright Penn and a cast of arthouse all-stars led by Alan Arkin, Maria Bello, and Monica Belluci. Still, the biggest news in more than ways than one is Disney’s return to traditional animation, “The Princess and the Frog” currently doing about as well you would think in two super-special engagements in New York and L.A. More on that later.