We are a mere 36 days until the official winners are announced at the 2013 Independent Spirit Awards, so I will offer my predictions of who the winners will be this year. Last year my predictions were pretty solid, with an roughly 70% accuracy I correctly predicted 9 of the 13 unannounced awards. Unlike last year’s juggernaut The Artist, I believe this year there are two films that could both easily win the top awards. Both Beasts of the Southern Wild and Silver Linings Playbook stand good chances of being winners, making the predictions more difficult this year. I predict that Beasts of the Southern Wild will win the top two awards while Silver Linings Playbook cleans up the top acting awards. In addition to picking the winners for each category, I explain the reasoning behind my picks in detail under the categories.

Watch IFC on Saturday, February 23rd to see how my predictions hold up.

2013 Independent Spirit Award Predictions:

(My prediction for the winners are highlighted in bold red font)

Beasts of the Southern Wild
Bernie
Keep The Lights On
Moonrise Kingdom
Silver Linings Playbook

Wes Anderson – Moonrise Kingdom
Julia Loktev – The Loneliest Planet
David O. Russell – Silver Linings Playbook
Ira Sachs – Keep The Lights On
Benh Zeitlin – Beasts of the Southern Wild

Fill The Void – Rama Burshtein
Gimme The Loot – Adam Leon
Safety Not Guaranteed – Colin Trevorrow
Sound of My Voice – Zal Batmanglij
The Perks Of Being A Wallflower – Stephen Chobsky

Jack Black – Bernie
Bradley Cooper – Silver Linings Playbook
John Hawkes – The Sessions
Thure Lindhart – Keep The Lights On
Matthew McConaughey – Killer Joe
Wendell Pierce – Four

Linda Cardellini – Return
Emayatzy Corinealdi – Middle of Nowhere
Jennifer Lawrence – Silver Linings Playbook
Quvenzhane Wallis – Beasts of the Southern Wild
Mary E. Winstead – Smashed

Matthew McConaughey – Magic Mike
David Oyelowo – Middle of Nowhere
Michael Pena – End of Watch
Sam Rockwell – Seven Psychopaths
Bruce Willis – Moonrise Kingdom

Rosemarie DeWitt – Your Sister’s Sister
Ann Dowd – Compliance
Helen Hunt – The Sessions
Brit Marling – Sound of My Voice
Lorraine Toussaint – Middle of Nowhere

Breakfast With Curtis – Laura Colella
Middle of Nowhere – Ava DuVernay
Mosquita y Mari – Aurora Guerrero
Starlet – Sean Baker
The Color Wheel – Alex Ross Perry

How To Survive A Plague – David France
Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present – Matthew Akers
The Central Park Five – Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon
The Invisible War – Kirby Dick
The Waiting Room – Peter Nicks

Amour – Michael Haneke
Once Upon A Time In Anatolia – Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Rust and Bone – Jacques Audiard
Sister – Ursula Meier
War Witch – Kim Nguyen

Yoni Brook – Valley Of Saints
Lol Crawley – Here
Ben Richardson – Beasts of the Southern Wild
Roman Vasyanov – End of Watch
Robert Yeoman – Moonrise Kingdom

Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola – Moonrise Kingdom
Zoe Kazan – Ruby Sparks
Martin McDonagh – Seven Psychopaths
David O. Russell – Silver Linings Playbook
Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias – Keep The Lights On

Rama Burshtein – Fill The Void
Derek Connolly – Safety Not Guaranteed
Christopher Ford – Robot & Frank
Jonathan Lisecki – Gayby
Rashida Jones and Will McCormack – Celeste and Jesse Forever

Way Too Indie has teamed up with Fox Searchlight to give away two Blu-rays to one of the most imaginative films of the year, Beasts of the Southern Wild. It is a poetic fairy tale told through the point of view of a child’s imagination who has unflinching determination to find her place in the world. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this page (read below). Don’t forget for additional entries to win tweet at us and follow us on Facebook.

How do you enter the giveaway?

Step 1: LIKE Way Too Indie on Facebook

Step 2: Leave a comment on this page telling us what your favorite imaginary creature is.

* Additional chance to win: Follow @WayTooIndie on Twitter. Then tweet: “@WayTooIndie (your favorite imaginary creature) http://tooin.de/wild”, to enter.

Details on the giveaway
Winners will be selected at random. Two (2) winners will win one (1) Blu-ray of Beasts of the Southern Wild. If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within two days of being contacted. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen. Must be in the United States to win. Entries can be submitted until December 14th, 2012 at 11:59PM CT. This Sweepstakes is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook or Twitter. Good luck!

The best film I have seen all year so far, Beasts of the Southern Wild (read my review), just got a released date from Fox Home Entertainment. Beasts of the Southern Wild will be on Blu-ray and DVD on December 4th, 2012. Along with the release date they also provided the DVD cover and Special Feature details. Special Features that will be on the Blu-ray edition sound especially interesting as it will contain some of the auditions of the main characters, including the powerful performance from the young Quvenzhané Wallis.

Beasts of the Southern Wild Synopsis:

Teeming with magic, beauty and pure joy, this crowd-pleasing winner at the Sundance Film Festival has emerged as one of the year’s most acclaimed films. Newcomer Quvenzhané Wallis delivers an “Oscar®-worthy performance” (Philadelphia Daily News) as Hushpuppy, the six-year-old force of nature in an isolated bayou community. When her tough but loving father Wink (Dwight Henry) succumbs to a mysterious malady, the fierce and determined girl bravely sets out on a journey to the outside world. But Hushpuppy’s quest is hindered by a “busted” universe that melts the ice caps and unleashes an army of prehistoric beasts.

DVD & Blu-ray Special Features:
DVD:

• The Making of Beasts of the Southern Wild
• Theatrical Trailer
• Sneak Peek
• Stoker Theatrical Trailer
• The Blu-ray Experience
• Fox World Cinema
• The Sessions

Blu-ray Exclusive Special Features:

• Deleted Scenes with Commentary by Director Benh Zeitlin
• Auditions
• Quvenzhané Wallis
• Dwight Henry
• Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry
• Glory at Sea
• Music
• The Aurochs

Specs:
BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD Blu-ray & DVD
Street Date: December 4, 2012
Prebook Date: November 7, 2012
Screen Format: 16:9 (1.85:1)
Audio: English 5.1 DTS-HD-MA / English 5.1 DD DVD
Spanish 5.1 DD / 2.0 Surround DD DVD
Other Language Audio Feature 5.1 DD
Subtitles: English & Spanish
U.S. Rating: PG-13
Total Run Time: 04:44:69 / 03:48:70 DVD
Closed Captioned: Yes

Beasts of the Southern Wild is a poetic fairy tale told through the point of view of a child’s imagination who has unflinching determination to find her place in the world. The film was very well received at it’s premier with the New York Times saying that it is the best film to come out of Sundance in twenty years. It went on to win the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance as well as the Camera d’Or at Cannes. I received chills when lines were spoken, teared up during emotional scenes and was engulfed in the universe that was created. It is the most imaginative and emotional film of the year.

Beasts of the Southern Wild opens with narration from a 6-year-old girl named Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) who describes where she lives as the prettiest place on Earth – a place that locals call the Bathtub. Many of us would probably consider this isolated offshore New Orleans community a dump but the small community of residents hold on to it with relentless strength. Most would sacrifice everything they own to protect the land, which is what they will soon have to do.

Hushpuppy knows that she is special but at the same time she understands that she is just a small piece of a big universe. She believes that animals speak to her in code, although sometimes their messages are not all that important. Furthermore, she believes that everyone around her, including herself, is a wild animal. Her teacher reinforces this idea when giving her class a lesson on surviving in the wild that everything is meat, including themselves. This idea is shown when Hushpuppy visits a hospital and believes that it is a place where they plug sick animals into the wall.

It is hard to say that Hushpuppy lives with her father, Wink (Dwight Henry) as she lives in her own make-shift “house” that resides next to his. This may be due to the fact that there is no room for two people to live in the ramshackle. Perhaps it is because Hushpuppy likes to have the place filled with items that remind her of her mother, who Wink claims “swam away” one day. But the most probable reason is that Wink knows that he is not fit raise a child and this separation physically represents that.

Even though Wink may not be very fit to be a father he still preaches what he knows best, how to survive on your own. He does the best that he can do to show Hushpuppy how to self-sufficiently live off of the land. At first you assume that this is because it is the only way Wink knows how to live, which it is, but soon come to realize that his death approaching fast from his drinking habits. His questionable tough love tactics may prove to be effective training for Hushpuppy when he is no longer around to take care of her.

A huge storm is said to be rolling in as many of the residents scramble to get out of Mother Nature’s way. But Wink and some other hard-nosed refuse to leave the most important thing to them, the Bathtub. Their community is their own world and they have no interest in living on the other side of the levee. A place where people go to the grocery store to get their food instead of catching it yourself is a foreign place and lifestyle they wish not to visit.

Most of the adults that stayed behind woke up from their daily hangovers to discover that the Bathtub is completely flooded. This means Wink and Hushpuppy must travel with a truck bed converted boat in order to get around. The longevity of the Bathtub is uncertain as salt water killed much of the available food options but even worse than nature’s wrath is government authorities that are coming in to remove them from the official evacuation area.

It is impossible to tell that Beasts of the Southern Wild was the Benh Zeitlin’s first feature film. The editing, cinematography, storyline, dialog and music all complimented one another perfectly. With a relatively low budget of just over a million dollars, he is able to make childlike imaginations of extinct creatures come alive as well as introduces more serious issues such as political allegories. He handles theses difficult portrayals magnificently.

Throughout the film I kept trying to figure out what the extinct Aurochs creatures represented. At first I thought they may represent the government authorities coming after them to “take them away” from their land. Then I thought it represented how Hushpuppy viewed herself in the world, wild beasts of the south. But near the end it seems like they represented her fears that she eventually conquers. Maybe it was something completely different or a combination of them all but the director leaves the interpretation up to your imagination.

There are a series of great shots when Hushpuppy is picturing her mother from the story that Wink tells. The shot follows the mother at waist level, from the perspective of Hushpuppy, as she walks around the kitchen. Magical things happen when her mother was in the kitchen and so was the scene when Hushpuppy eventually sees her mother. To top it all off, it is ingeniously filmed at the same level.

Quvenzhané Wallis had never acted before her role as Hushpuppy, which makes her incredible performance even more astonishing. When she tried out for the role she was only five years old but stood out enough to where Zeitlin picked her among the 4,000 others that were considered for the role. It is easy to see why. She was mesmerizing on screen and her voice narrating the film was unforgettable.

At the time of this writing, there is no one else that comes close to her performance this year and I would be shocked if anyone does. Wallis should be the front-runner to take home an Oscar for Best Female Lead at this year’s Academy Awards. Also a Best Picture nomination seems to be obvious even though it is still quite early to make such statements. These accolades would all be huge wins for the young crew as it still has not received a wide release in theaters and history shows that summer films tend to be more forgotten by the Academy.

Speaking of awards, the film may make the Independent Spirit Awards rather uninteresting to watch as it has the potential to clean up many of the awards. Best Female Lead, Best Picture, Best First Feature, and Best Director I would have to think would be shoe-ins for Beasts of the Southern Wild. We will know for sure in about six months when the award season is in full force.

Beasts of the Southern Wild can be a hard film to describe to those who have not seen it, much like last year’s The Tree of Life. It is an ambitious film with philosophical views on how the universe works from the eyes of a brave young child. My anticipation for watching this film was instantly high upon watching the trailer for the first time. This is a dangerous yet hard to avoid game to play as a film reviewer as it often leads to disappointment. It is something special when a film can lift you off your feet even when you are expecting it to.

Film Independent, the same organization that produces the Independent Spirit Awards, announced the 2012 Los Angeles Film Festival jury and audience award winners. Walking away with top prize for Best Narrative Feature in competition is Pocas Pascoal’s All is Well. The winner of Best Documentary Feature went to Everardo González’s Drought. Beasts of the Southern Wild can add another award win to it’s impressive arsenal of wins with the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature win it picked up here.

The entire list of 2012 Los Angeles Film Festival Winners:

All is Well, (director Pocas Pascoal)

Drought, (director Everardo González)

Wendell Pierce, Emory Cohen, E.J. Bonilla and Aja Naomi King, Four

Beasts of the Southern Wild, (director Benh Zeitlin)

Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and The Farm Midwives, (directors Sara Lamm and Mary Wigmore)

Searching for Sugar Man, (director Malik Bendjelloul)

The Chair, (director Grainger David)

Kudzu Vine, (director Josh Gibson)

The Pub, (director Joseph Pierce)

Asad, (director Bryan Buckley)

Piranhas Club, (director Lex Halaby)

One word came to mind after watching the trailer for Beasts of the Southern Wild, ambitious. Alright I lied, there were two words, ambitious and wow. The film made a splash at Sundace this year when it won the dramatic Grand Jury Prize Award. 6-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis was widely considered the Sundance darling of 2012 and it is not hard to see why.

From first time filmmaker Benh Zeitlin comes a story about a young girl named Hushpuppy who is raised by her drunk and barely present father. She uses her imagination to see the beauty in their natural surroundings to find a way to survive. Beasts of the Southern Wild is in select theaters June 27th.

UPDATE: Our review of Beasts of the Southern Wild

Official trailer for Beasts of the Southern Wild: