Natalie Portman, the star of the ballet thriller “Black Swan,” at the Gotham Independent Film Awards on Monday. She is a likely Oscar contender. 
“Brooklyn, Brooklyn in the house!” Darren Aronofsky shouted from the front of the Ziegfeld Theater on Tuesday night. Mr. Aronofsky, the director and Coney Island native, was living out a childhood fantasy when his film “Black Swan” had its New York premiere at that Midtown Manhattan movie palace, which he frequented while growing up. “Mom, I have a confession: I cut out of high school to see ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ in this theater,” he said, later admitting it wasn’t a one-time thing.
Melena Ryzik and colleagues report on all the news and the nonsense of awards season.
Annette Bening, an Oscar contender for “The Kids Are All Right,” at the Gothams, starting the awards season in New York. 
Vincent Cassel, an actor in “Black Swan,” at the Gothams. It was a local-boy-made-good moment for “Black Swan,” which opens in select cities on Friday. For the premiere the red carpet extended down the block, the paparazzi screamed for the stars — Natalie Portman, in a décolleté black gown, Mila Kunis, in a cream one, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder, Vincent Cassel — and afterward, everyone gathered at a party in the chandeliered St. Regis hotel, which was decked out in tarnished mirrors and strategically placed black and white feathers. The mood was jubilant, and the look was slightly creepy, appropriate for a fantasy- and horror-tinged story of a perfectionist ballerina (Ms. Portman) madly preparing for “Swan Lake.”
Downtown on the same night, in the back room of an Italian bistro in Chelsea, “The Kids Are All Right” was having a little soiree, one so low key that even the presence of two of its stars, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo, caused barely a ripple among the restaurant patrons out front. The film, about lesbian parents (Ms. Moore and Annette Bening) who must deal with meeting their children’s sperm donor (Mr. Ruffalo), was a Sundance Film Festival hit and an indie success story when it opened this summer. Both films represent the vision of dedicated directors, who labored for years to get their work on screen despite having impressive credits. And both could wind up in a catbird seat come Oscar night. Already this week they have earned accolades, scoring multiple nominations from the Film Independent Spirit Awards, which will be handed out the day before the Oscars at the end of February. As a director Mr. Aronofsky was also honored Monday night at the Gotham Independent Film Awards, the traditional opening day of statuette campaigning in New York. (“Black Swan” and “The Kids Are All Right” were nominated there too but lost the top prizes to “Winter’s Bone,” a lower-budget drama set in the Ozarks.)
As surely as the holiday season brings sugarplum fairies and eggnog, it also means the start of a few months of fiercely competitive self-promotion for Hollywood. The weeks leading up to the Oscars are a fanciful slog of cocktail parties, luncheons, lesser award shows and industry screenings, all of which I chronicle daily in my role as the Carpetbagger columnist. Already there is a short list of films that are likely to be anointed with one of the 10 best-picture spots, including, in addition to “Black Swan” and “The Kids Are All Right,” “The Social Network,” “Inception,” “The King’s Speech” “Toy Story 3,” “127 Hours” and “Winter’s Bone.” “The Fighter,” a boxing film from David O. Russell, and “True Grit,” the Coen brothers remake of that John Wayne classic, are latecomers to the still wide-open race, adding drama to the ever-shifting predictions from Oscarologists.
One thing my compatriots agree on: The contest for best actress will be noteworthy. Besides Ms. Bening, Ms. Moore and Ms. Portman, Jennifer Lawrence, the 20-year-old star of “Winter’s Bone,” and Nicole Kidman, playing a grieving mother in “Rabbit Hole,” are being lauded for standout performances. (In what may be a glimpse of the competition to come, the Spirit Awards nominated six actresses instead of the usual five this year; Ms. Bening got a nod, but Ms. Moore didn’t.)
Directors rarely admit to Oscar considerations when making a film, but Lisa Cholodenko, the director and co-writer of “The Kids Are All Right” with Stuart Blumberg, is an exception. “We did so many revisions,” she said, having a cigarette outside her party on Tuesday, “and we were so painstaking about making sure these characters were spot on, and that they worked and they worked together and they were funny and complicated and dramatic and all the things we knew they could be. And at the end of the day we thought: If we get the right people to play these parts, and it all comes together in the right way, these are like Oscar parts.”
But even with Ms. Bening and Ms. Moore attached “The Kids Are All Right” was difficult to make. “I was with the project for five years,” Ms. Moore said at the party. She hung on through all the revisions and delays because, she said, she liked Ms. Cholodenko’s work, her colloquial style and the story. Ms. Cholodenko, whose previous films “High Art” and “Laurel Canyon,” made her an indie darling, built the film around her two stars. “I was desperate to work with them,” she said. Still, her budget was scraped together.
The same was true for Mr. Aronofsky. He got a taste of the awards hullabaloo with his previous film, “The Wrestler,” about a washed-up fighter played by Mickey Rourke, and has been plotting a ballet film for years. “ ‘Black Swan’ was probably harder to make than any film I ever did,” he said. “I thought because I was doing something sexy with Natalie Portman and Vincent Cassel,” who plays the ballet company’s director, “I thought it was going to be really easy. And then we had to split our budget by two-thirds to get it made.” (The film, from Fox Searchlight, cost $13 million; “The Kids Are All Right,” which cost less than $4 million, was bought by Focus Features after Sundance.)
In Hollywood terms those are pittances. (The forthcoming Disney movie “Tron: Legacy,” for example, has a production and marketing budget of at least $150 million.) But it’s worth noting that both “Black Swan” and “The Kids Are All Right” wound up at the boutique divisions of major studios, which still have the distribution and marketing might the smaller indies can only dream of. The distance between economic reality and Oscar glitter may be the greatest for “Winter’s Bone,” a modest film, in budget and style, which was a surprise Gotham winner.
“It’s a huge deal to have work that can’t be on billboards, necessarily, be spoken about, and have clips shown, and have a discussion ensue,” said Debra Granik, the film’s director. She admitted to having serious nerves about awards season. “The contraction of the lungs, the viscera, the capillaries — it’s just not a way to live,” she said.
But for the anointed few there is more agita, and promotion, ahead.
“I’ve done 20 days of press,” Mr. Ruffalo said at the party for “The Kids Are All Right,” “for a movie I worked 6 days on.”
Mekado Murphy contributed reporting.
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