Let’s face it – we all feel like the Award seasons are shit and really cannot wait for the Academy Awards to be over.

But in the ray of light within the darkness of the season is the Independent Spirit Award which, up until recently, has just been the Academy Awards a day earlier. Now there seems to be a direct split with not one Best Director from the Academy selection having an Independent Spirit Award and a Best Picture category that looks like this.

Oh yeah, that’s the good shit right there.

Hosted by Aubrey Plaza, who proved superb in her delivery and wit, the Independent Spirit Award showcased some worthy winners. The big heavy awards went to Barry Jenkins and his incandescent If Beale Street Talk, walking away with Best Director and Best Feature Film. He used his time of stage to celebrate female directors, big up Lynne Ramsay, and basically geek out!

Richard E. Grant scooped up Best Supporting Actor, finally, showing that his pure unadulterated joy/conniving dastardly plan is working. Best Supporting Actress went to the Queen Regina King for Beale Street.

Glenn Close accepted her award for Best Actress with her dog which we should do more and more of. Bring your pets to Award Season seems like a better year than the pile of dog dodo we’ve had this year. Best Actor went to Ethan Hawke for which means most of film twitter could, for a while, retire this meme.

Other notable awards go to Joe Bini for his superb editing on Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here. Bo Burnham scooped up the award for Best First Screenplay and Boots Riley won for Best First Feature for Sorry to Bother You. Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty won for Best Screenplay for Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Don’t you just love the indies?

Usually we end this sort of coverage with a full list of winners. But seeing as you can find them here, we just want to share we you Shangela’s performance because it is a slice of fried gold. And by fried gold, we mean chicken nuggets.