Boyhood

At a meeting in New York City earlier today, the members of the New York Film Critics Circle announced the winners of their annual awards, which will be handed out at a special ceremony early next year. The biggest prizes, Best Picture and Best Director, went to Richard Linklater and his epic ‘Boyhood,’ which took 12 years to make. The other big winner of the day, in a bit of a surprise, was James Gray’s ‘The Immigrant,’ which hasn’t gotten a ton of attention during awards season so far but picked up two trophies from the NYFCC, for star Marion Cotillard and cinematographer Darius Khondji.

341 movies were submitted, and nominating committees of “writers, directors, producers, cinematographers, editors, actors, critics, casting directors, film festival programmers, and other working film professionals” chose their favorites. (What, no caterers?) Those votes were tallied and the results are the nominees below, for the 2015 Film Independent Spirit Awards, generally regarded as the most important and prestigious awards for independent film in the country.

Although you'd think that starring in Richard Linklater's 'Boyhood' -- a film that took twelve years to make -- would be a labor of love, star Ethan Hawke found a way to make the project even more personally appealing. He used it as an audition for the next 'Star Wars' movie. Well, sort of.

Every film is a cultural artifact. As singular works of art, movies are their own self-contained contributions to popular culture, but their often essential inclusion of things like music, fashion, and slang within their own narratives puts them into a unique space – art wrapped around art, culture enveloped in culture. It’s why even bad period-set films are so fun to watch, as seeing canny cultur

Filming on 'Boyhood' started in 2002. Then, Linklater filmed his cast -- Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane and Linklater's own daughter, Lorelei Linklater -- every year for 12 years, finally finishing in 2013.

The 'Boyhood' trailer isn't shy about sharing the film's countless accolades (including one from our own Mike Ryan), but can you blame 'em? Richard Linklater's upcoming epic won rave reviews out of Sundance and SXSW, where it was described as a masterpiece and one of the best films of the year. If the trailer is any indication, none of that is empty hype -- this looks like something truly special.