The 2017 Spirit & Razzie Awards

For the fourth year in a row, the Independent Spirit Awards gave the top trophy to the same movie that would win a Best Picture Oscar on the following night. For the first time in possibly ever, the Razzie Awards did something kind of interesting.

Spirit Awards

I’ve grumbled before and will no doubt do so again about how the Spirits Awards are no longer the corrective against the Oscars that they were originally designed to be. Rather than showcase movies that Oscar passed over or ignored, the Spirits largely nominate and reward the same films these days.

To be fair, it’s very possible that the Spirit voters this year all assumed that ‘La La Land’ would sweep the Oscars and wanted to give ‘Moonlight’ a consolation prize. Little did they realize or foresee the drama that would ensue at the Oscar ceremony on Sunday.

Unlike Oscar, the Spirits gave Barry Jenkins a Best Director statue. The two ceremonies also split in three of the acting categories. In fact, the Supporting Female trophy went to Molly Shannon for a movie I’d never heard of. Her acceptance speech was adorable.

On the other hand, Casey Affleck took Best Male Lead when it was a safe bet he’d also get an Oscar.

  • Best Feature: ‘Moonlight’
  • Best Director: Barry Jenkins, ‘Moonlight’
  • Best Male Lead: Casey Affleck, ‘Manchester by the Sea’
  • Best Female Lead: Isabelle Huppert, ‘Elle’
  • Best Supporting Male: Ben Foster, ‘Hell or High Water’
  • Best Supporting Female: Molly Shannon, ‘Other People’
  • Best Screenplay: ‘Moonlight’
  • Best Cinematography: ‘Moonlight’
  • Best Editing: ‘Moonlight’
  • Best Documentary: ‘O.J.: Made in America’
  • Best International Film: ‘Toni Erdmann’
  • Best First Feature: ‘The Witch’

Razzie Awards

The Golden Raspberry Awards have a reputation for almost exclusively going after easy targets that are widely disliked. Indeed, this year the highly-derided ‘Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice’ claimed four categories. While I fully agree with Jesse Eisenberg as Worst Supporting Actor (I cannot fathom what he was thinking with that performance), calling Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill the worst Screen Combo is unfair to those actors, who were not at fault for the material. I also think that the Ultimate Edition extended cut demonstrates that the movie’s screenplay was less an issue than simply a poorly edited theatrical cut that chopped the story into incoherent bits.

That said, I will give Razzie founder John Wilson some credit for focusing the worst of his wrath this year on convicted felon Dinesh D’Souza’s latest piece of fabricated agitprop bullshit, called ‘Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party’. That’s a lot ballsier than Wilson is generally willing to get.

  • Worst Picture: ‘Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party’
  • Worst Director: Dinesh D’Souza & Bruce Schooley, ‘Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party’
  • Worst Actor: Dinesh D’Souza, ‘Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party’
  • Worst Actress: The “Actress” Who Plays Hillary Clinton, ‘Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party’
  • Worst Supporting Actor: Jesse Eisenberg, ‘Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice’
  • Worst Supporting Actress: Kristen Wiig, ‘Zoolander No. 2’
  • Worst Screenplay: ‘Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice’
  • Worst Screen Combo: Ben Affleck & His BFF (Baddest Foe Forever) Henry Cavill, ‘Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice’
  • Worst Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel: ‘Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice’
  • Razzie Redeemer Award: Mel Gibson, ‘Hacksaw Ridge’

For the complete list of winners for each ceremony, see the official Spirit Awards web site and Razzie Awards web site.

5 comments

  1. Timcharger

    Josh: “the Supporting Female trophy went to Molly Shannon for a movie I’d never heard of. Her acceptance speech was adorable.”

    That adorable speech should have more views than (as of when I’m typing this) a lowly 21 thousand clicks.
    https://youtu.be/AbA4KCOhi8Y

    • Josh Zyber
      Author

      I’ve only seen the extended cut. I did not think it was that awful. Flawed and disappointing, yes, but not as bad as people’s reaction to the theatrical cut led me to expect.

  2. DarkMonk

    Gee Dinesh D’Souza’s movie is agitprop trash, but not Michael Moore’s piece of trash?
    Gee, I wonder how this site leans? Hmmmm.

    • EM

      Well, let’s see. The blog entry reported on the news that D’Souza’s film “won” some Razzies and didn’t report on the fake news that Moore’s film got them instead.

      I guess we know how you lean.

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