Independent Spirit Award Nominations Reaction.

The phenomenal Winter's Bone led the Indie Spirit noms yesterday with 7 nominations, while The Kids Are All Right followed with 5 and Black Swan had 4. This is great news for the absolutely brilliant drama Winter's Bone and will significantly improve its chances to making the top ten Best Picture list.

However there were some major and surprising snubs. Rabbit Hole nominated for Best Actor, Actress and Director but left out of the picture race. Blue Valentine given no love except for Michelle Williams (where's Gosling?) Julianne Moore completely shut out of Best Actress even when they expanded the category to nominate 6 actresses. Robert Duvall left out of Best Actor and costar Sissy Spacek left out of Best Supporting Actress. Diane Wiest and both Black Swan supporting Actresses (Barbara Hershey & Mila Kunis) left out of Best Supporting Actress.

All in all, I think the nominations are great! I am thrilled to see love for the supporting players of Winter's Bone, John Hawkes and Dale Dickey. Both are superb character actors and did spectacular, authentic work in the film. It was also nice to see some love for Naomi Watts and Samuel L. Jackson for Mother & Child, an extremely overlooked film I had the fortune to see at 2009's TIFF. It should have been Annette Bening's buzz worthy performance this year, however instead everyone is on The Kids Are All Right's bandwagon.

Anyways, happy for lots of Winter's Bone love and I sincerely hope that continues.

Next up National Board of Review tomorrow.