Indie Oscar Nominees

March 8 -- There's good news and there's good news. Here are six films that earned nine Oscar nominations. And, though it would be a surprise if any of them took home a statue, the good news is the nominations have convinced the studios to run these films outside the New York-L.A. indy movie ghetto into what Hollywood calls "flyover."

None of them are open in more than a few hundred theaters around the country and they probably won't be, but they are all worth seeing (especially by intelligent, grown-up audiences like the audiences you all are part of).For the record Shadow of the Vampire is just plain fun and Before Night Falls is probably the best of the bunch.

O, Brother, Where Art Thou

The latest from the Coen brothers, Oscar winners with Fargo. George Clooney leads a trio of hysterically intelligence-challenged chain-gang escapees through rural Mississippi.

It's based on Homer's The Odyssey, the title tells us. But the Coen brothers also told us Fargo was a true story and they lied about that. There are some similarities, but the feeling is even closer to Preston Sturges' classic Sullivan's Travels. Nominated for two Academy Awards, best cinematography (so it looks good) and adapted screenplay (maybe it really is based on Homer).It's not in the best of taste, but there is a Ku Klux Klan sequence that is the funniest of its class since Springtime for Hitler. And if Oscar took comedy seriously, which it should, George Clooney would've had a nomination for best actor. B+

You Can Count On Me

You Can Count On Me was one of my 10 best last year. A serious film (which doesn't mean it isn't entertaining, it is, especially the scenes with Matthew Broderick), if Julia Roberts didn't have a lock on the Best Actress Oscar, Laura Linney would be the dead on favorite. Also nominated for Best Original Screenplay, it won the Writers' Guild Award in that category. B+

Before Night Falls

Before Night Falls, one of the best films of 2000, earned an Oscar nomination for its star, Spanish actor Javier Bardem who plays a Cuban poet persecuted by Castro. Directed by artist Julian Schnabel, his Basquiat was a very good film. This one creates a whole new vocabulary, a new way to use film to tell a real life story. The trial sequences are as edgy as Terry Gilliam's in Brazil; the way he shows us a suicidal reaction to a Castro excess is nothing short of brilliant. When I asked Schnabel (who is one of our finest and most successful contemporary artists) if he were surprised at how anti-Castro he turned out to be he admitted that, in the '60s, he never would've thought he'd make this turn but "persecution is persecution and freedom is freedom." A-