12 Years a Slave Dominate Spirit Awards

With one day to go until the Academy Awards, the stars gathered themselves for the more casual Spirit Awards honoring the best of the year's independent films. This year, however, you could have been fooled into thinking the results were from this year's Oscars. Let's just say if you were Oscar nominated, it was a good night for you. The winners from earlier today...

Best Feature: 12 Years a Slave
Best Director: Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave
Best Lead Actor: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
Best Lead Actress: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Best Supporting Actor: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
Best Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave
Best Screenplay: 12 Years a Slave
Best First Feature: Fruitvale Station
Best First Screenplay: Nebraska
Best International Film: Blue is the Warmest Color
Best Documentary: 20 Feet from Stardom
Best Cinematography: 12 Years a Slave
Best Editing: Short Term 12
Robert Altman Award: Mud
Piaget Producers Award: Toby Halbrooks & James M. Johnston
Someone To Watch Award: Shaka King, Newlyweeds
Truer Than Fiction Award: Jason Osder, Let the Fire Burn
John Cassavetes Award: This is Martin Bonner

The big winner of the night was Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave with 5 wins including Feature, Director, and Screenplay. Of course, it's also one of the frontrunners for tomorrow's big award show, but without its main competitors Gravity and American Hustle, it rightly dominated. I'm hoping Lupita Nyong'o's award here is just a warm-up for tomorrow, but the other actors who won look very likely to repeat with Matthew McConaughey, Cate Blanchett, and Jared Leto continuing their dominant run through awards season. The Oscar glow probably didn't hurt Nebraska either as it won First Screenplay.

Of course, there were other films honored that won't be present tomorrow such as Ryan Googler's Fruitvale Station and Destin Cretton's Short Term 12 winning First Feature and Editing respectively while Blue is the Warmest Color won International Film. As much as I loved the majority of today's winners, I did wish some of the less honored films and performers throughout the season had won such as Inside Llewyn Davis, Before Midnight, Frances Ha, Brie Larson, Julie Delpy, Oscar Isaac, James Gandolfini, etc.