Gotham Awards.

"The 17th Annual Gotham Awards were handed out tonight at Brooklyn's Steiner Studios, with no films taking multiple honors and Sean Penn's Into The Wild winning best feature of the year," report Eugene Hernandez and Peter Knegt at indieWIRE. "In addition to Wild, Michael Moore's Sicko was named best documentary feature, Juno's Ellen Page won the breakthrough actor award and Craig Zobel was named best breakthrough director for Great World of Sound. The casts of Talk To Me and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead tied for the best ensemble cast award, while Before the Devil's Marisa Tomei presented Gotham's unique 'Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You Award' to Ronald Bronstein's Frownland."

Updated through 11/29.

And they take note of several highlights of the evening; of the six tributes - six! - the one most remarked on elsewhere is surely Roger Ebert's. Sidney Lumet did the honors and "Ebert loved every second of it, his eyes dancing as he surveyed the crowd and gave a long hug to his old friend Mr Lumet," blogs David Carr. "And as he left the stage, Mr Ebert did a few steps in time with the band, smiling all the while."

Hours before the evening began, David Poland posted an open letter from Jeff Lipsky, an appreciation of Ebert well worth reading. You may already know the My Dinner With Andre story, but Lipsky tells it well.

Update: Anthony Kaufman on Roger Ebert: "Here is a guy whose voice has been synonymous with movies who can no longer speak. It's a cruel human tragedy that's sad and touching." And Noel Murray comments: "[T]hough I think he went through a creative lull a few years back, his work of late has been full of passion and vitality and keen observation. The man's a national treasure, and indirectly responsible for as much good criticism as he himself has generated."

Updates, 11/29: "For me, Ronnie's win is especially nice," blogs Matt Dentler. "It was almost precisely a year ago that I fished Ronnie's film out of the submissions, put it on, and was instantly hypnotized. For all those filmmakers out there who feel you have to have 'connections' and 'legacy' to get attention or noticed, Frownland is proof against that."

More congrats for Bronstein come from David Lowery, Joe Swanberg and Michael Tully.

Posted by dwhudson at November 28, 2007 12:25 AM