'Sideways' leads Indie Spirit nominees
 |  Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church and their film "Sideways" were all nominated for Independent Spirit Awards. |
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| | Best film nominees | - "Baadasssss!"
- "Kinsey"
- "Maria Full of Grace"
- "Primer"
- "Sideways"
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LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- "Sideways" led contenders Tuesday for the Independent Spirit Awards with six nominations, including best film, lead actor for Paul Giamatti and director for Alexander Payne.
"Maria Full of Grace" was second with five nominations for the awards, which honor movies whose financing comes at least partly from independent sources outside the Hollywood studio system.
The drug-running drama "Maria Full of Grace" joined "Sideways" in the best film category, along with "Baadasssss!," Mario Van Peebles' re-creation of father Melvin's struggle to make the 1970s black-power flick "Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song"; "Kinsey," a film biography of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, with Liam Neeson in the title role; and "Primer," a twisting techno-thriller that won the top dramatic honor at last winter's Sundance Film Festival.
The road-trip comedy "Sideways" also earned nominations for Virginia Madsen as supporting actress, Thomas Haden Church as supporting actor and Payne and Jim Taylor for their screenplay.
The non-profit Independent Film Project, which sponsors the awards, will announce winners in a ceremony February 26, the night before the Academy Awards.
Giamatti, nominated as lead actor last year for "American Splendor," this time was cited for his "Sideways" role as a failed writer and husband bumbling through a fresh chance at romance on a wine-tasting spree with a buddy who's about to be married.
Other lead-actor nominees: Neeson for "Kinsey"; Kevin Bacon for "The Woodsman," in which he plays a child molester trying to set his life straight after prison; Jeff Bridges as a father coping with a family tragedy through booze and extramarital flings in "The Door in the Floor"; and Jamie Foxx in "Redemption," playing Stan "Tookie" Williams, an imprisoned L.A. gang member who becomes a crusader against violence.
"Maria Full of Grace" star Catalina Sandino Moreno earned a lead-actress nomination as a young Colombian woman whose hope for a better life leads her into a perilous gambit as a "mule" smuggling heroin to the United States.
Also nominated for lead actress were Kimberly Elise as a woman traumatized by childhood abuse who lands on death row in "Woman, Thou Art Loosed"; Vera Farmiga as a wife and mother falling deeper into drug addiction in "Down to the Bone"; Judy Marte as a street-tough Jersey drug dealer in "On the Outs"; and Kyra Sedgwick as an abused wife who returns home to reunite with the daughters she abandoned in "Cavedweller."
Besides Church for "Sideways," supporting-actor nominees were Jon Gries, "Napoleon Dynamite"; Aidan Quinn, "Cavedweller"; Roger Robinson, "Brother to Brother"; and Peter Sarsgaard, "Kinsey."
Along with Madsen for "Sideways," supporting-actress contenders were Cate Blanchett, "Coffee and Cigarettes"; Loretta Devine, "Woman, Thou Art Loosed"; Robin Simmons, "Robbing Peter"; and Yenny Paola Vega, "Maria Full of Grace."
"Baadasssss!" star Van Peebles joined Payne in the directing category. The other nominees: Shane Carruth, "Primer"; Joshua Marston, "Maria Full of Grace"; and Walter Salles, "The Motorcycle Diaries."
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