Hollywood's Halloween Awards

Fans and stars alike showed up dressed as vampires, skeletons, and zombies to watch trophies be presented to Keith Richards, who earned the ‘Rock Immortal award,’ as well as other shows like True Blood, Star Trek and of course, Twilight.

The ‘Ultimate Scream’ trophy was presented to the Star Trek movie. Guests were surprised when William Shatner got up on stage to accept the award. He made his point clear when he said, “”This movie was big. Imagine how big it could have been with me in it? … I’ll be waiting for your call.”

The 2009 Grand Trophy winners include Munich, Germany’s klink, liedig werbeagentur gmbh, winning the Grand Award for “We Love Cinema” in the Business Theater category for Germany’s Tele 5. The winning piece was created to engage viewers and brand the new station as the preferred movie channel. Mexico City, Mexico’s Televisa SA de CV won the Grand for “Imaginantes Serrat, Cortazar” in the Craft: Animation category. The award-winning entry used bold animation to introduce the audience to a different way of looking at television. Wilder of London, England was awarded the Grand Trophy in the Short Film category for their entry “Ripple,” a black comedy about the randomness of fate and the results of one malicious act. Gothenburg, Sweden’s Stark Film & Event took home the Grand in the Industrial Productions: Internal Use category for their film titled “Night at the Elyseum,” a historic piece celebrating 100 years of the electrical network Goteborg Energi AB Nat.

For the second year in a row, England’s The Edge Picture Company swept the awards, taking home the title of Production Company of the Year. The London-based company was awarded 6 Gold Medals, 3 Silver, 5 Bronze and 7 Finalist Certificates. Entries receiving Gold Medals in the category of Industrial Productions: Internal Use, include: “Our Story,” for agri-business client Syngenta, “The Impossible Story,” for professional services firm Deloitte, depicting a 3D pop-up book brought to life, and “Make It Happen,” for the financial organization RBS Group. “Make It Happen” also won a second Gold Medal in the Craft: Cinematography category. The following entries received Gold Medals in the Industrial Productions: Public Relations category: “Dreams,” a piece created for Thompson, the travel company, to help employees change the way they see the world, and “Opening Doors,” a film about domestic abuse for Surrey Domestic Abuse Outreach Service.

The 2009 NYF International Film and Video Awards received entries from 30 countries spanning 5 continents. The competition honors “The World’s Best Work™” in feature-length, short and documentary films, informational, educational, corporate and industrial film productions, home video, and student productions.

All entries were judged by a panel of industry experts, including producers, directors, writers and other media professionals. All winning entries are promoted by our network of representatives in 62 countries around the world.
Originally posted by Gayle Mandel at MarketWire.com.

Oscar trophy trend, fact or fiction?

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt almost certainly are strong contenders in the best actor award category — shining, word has it, in their respective upcoming movies, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Revolutionary Road.”
But they and others might be up against a subtle force they can do little about in the best actor race: Oscar award voters tend to favor actors playing real people.

In the past six best actor races, there were three years in which an actor playing a real person was nominated for an award alongside actors portraying fictional characters, and each time the actor playing a true-life person won the award. You have to go all the way back to the awards for 2001 to find a counter-example: Denzel Washington’s victory for playing Alonzo Harris in “Training Day,” which bested Will Smith as Muhammad Ali and Russell Crowe as John Nash. Otherwise, it was actors playing real-life figures — Ray Charles, Idi Amin, Truman Capote — who took the statue award.

This year that means if even one from among the stellar group that includes Frank Langella (as Richard Nixon), Sean Penn (as Harvey Milk) and Josh Brolin (as George W. Bush) lands a best actor award nomination, everyone else will have to weigh that added factor.

Best actress favors real personnages even more; the statuette award has gone to women playing real people six of the eight years this decade. But with frontrunners such as Meryl Steep, Nicole Kidman and Sally Hawkins taking on fictional roles this go-round, this year may break form.

It’s hard to pinpoint what makes Oscar trophy award voters tilt this way. But one likely factor is a frame of reference: Philip Seymour Hoffman acting and sounding like Capote probably will move the voter more than Terrence Howard’s acting and sounding like Djay from “Hustle & Flow,” a person the Academy Award member has never seen outside the movie (and hasn’t seen at all if they’ve never seen the movie).

Plus, there’s the impersonation factor: How could a voter not think Jamie Foxx is good; he even looks like Charles.

It wasn’t always this way. In the 1990s, fictional characters bested real people in the best actor award category seven out of nine times they went up against one another. And an actress playing a real person won the award only twice in the 1990s.

So what’s changed?

For one thing, the rise of celebrity culture. The TMZs of the world have made it harder to separate actors from their roles since we now know them as real people — unless they’re playing other real people, in which case voters can identify with the person they’re playing.

Even if DiCaprio and Pitt are unable to buck the recent trend favoring real-life portrayals, they can take solace in the likelihood they’ll have other shots at the top prize award. But the seeming voter bias toward real-life bios could also impact a few once-in-a-lifetime performances. Those include the comeback for Mickey Rourke, whose Randy the Ram in “The Wrestler” is a tragic figure to rival Willy Loman; Richard Jenkins, whose understated Walter Vale in “The Visitor” is exquisitely subtle; and Christian Bale, whose Batman in “The Dark Knight” is so darkly evocative.

Originally written by Steven Zeitchik, The Hollywood Reporter

LOS ANGELES — The backstage trophy table was the place to be for serious celebrity watching at Sunday’s 60th annual Primetime Emmy Awards - never mind that it was in the basement of a parking garage.
At one point Conan O’Brien was chatting on his cellphone as Amy Poehler and her husband, Will Arnett, walked by on their way to the elevator that would take them to the press tent. Kiefer Sutherland strolled by the trophy table just ahead of Tom Selleck. Christian Slater paused to wave to a group of firefighters working the awards show.
Also walking by the table that contained some five dozen Emmy statuettes was Lily Tomlin, who joked, “I like these three.”
Emmy winner Jeremy Piven, best supporting actor in a comedy series, surveyed the table and joked, “It looks like Hanukkah!”
The Emmy each winner carries off stage is just a prop. Winners give it back and head to the table in the parking garage adjacent to the Nokia Theatre to collect the real one.
As winners were collecting their Emmys, eight limo drivers were seated nearby, embroiled in an intense poker game. The drivers were paying the celebrities absolutely no heed.

Originated from The Canadian Press

Tony Kushner, the award-winning playwright who has spent much of his time in recent years writing Hollywood scripts, is the first recipient of a newly created $200,000 prize for playwriting, by far the largest theater award in the nation, and one of the biggest cash awards in any of the arts.

Times Topics: Tony KushnerThe unusually generous prize, named the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, will be formally presented on Wednesday. It was created with an eye toward attracting talented playwrights and bolstering the status of their profession.

“We wanted to make a splash,” said William Zabel, who is on the board of the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, which is issuing the award. “We want people to realize the theater is important, and that a playwright who gets the award is important to our society and our culture. We wanted to create something that was really significant, like the Pritzker Prize in architecture or the Pulitzer in journalism.”

The Pritzker carries a $100,000 cash prize; a Pulitzer is worth $10,000.

Mr. Kushner already has a Pulitzer, which he won for his two-part epic, “Angels in America,” as well as two Tony Awards, an Emmy and an Olivier Award (the British version of the Tony) for best musical. His works include “A Bright Room Called Day,” “Slavs!” and “Homebody/Kabul,” and the musical “Caroline, or Change,” written with the composer Jeanine Tesori.

Surprised and thrilled to be the first recipient of the new prize, Mr. Kushner said, “Playwriting is in a lot of trouble now,” adding that even someone who has “a string of successful plays cannot make a living at it.”

Mr. Kushner pointed to himself as a case in point, since he now divides his time between New York and Hollywood, working on a screenplay about Abraham Lincoln for Steven Spielberg, and another about Woody Guthrie. The screenplay for Mr. Spielberg’s “Munich,” written by Mr. Kushner and Eric Roth, was nominated for an Oscar.

Mr. Kushner said that he planned to put the money away “to buy me time to work on plays,” which he hopes to do full time when he finishes the two films.

Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater and one of the judges, said that while there were many extremely qualified candidates, the committee wanted to pick a person who would be “universally recognized in the theater community as the right choice.” Mr. Kushner’s talent, seriousness and status as a public intellectual quickly made him the consensus choice, Mr. Eustis said.

Mr. Eustis originally commissioned “Angels” at the Eureka Theater Company in San Francisco and directed both parts when they had their debut in 1992 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

In addition to his own work, Mr. Kushner has adapted and translated classics, including Pierre Corneille’s “Illusion,” S. Y. Ansky’s “Dybbuk” and Bertolt Brecht’s “Good Person of Setzuan” and “Mother Courage and Her Children,” which was performed in Central Park in 2006 with Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline. He also wrote the English-language libretto for the opera “Brundibar” by Hans Krasa.

The trust, which was created in 1986 with part of the fortune Mr. Steinberg made from real estate, has donated more than $40 million to support regional theaters, leadership courses, scholarships, playwriting commissions, producing and more, said James Steinberg, a son of Harold and Mimi’s.

“Theater ought to be at the center of American culture,” he said, adding that the award was a way to honor playwrights and raise the visibility of theater.

Mr. Steinberg said his parents always loved the theater, and took him and his two siblings often. Even as a child, he sat through O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” Now he said he sees at least 100 productions a year.

The Mimi, as the trophy is nicknamed, was designed by David Rockwell and will be awarded every two years. In the alternating years the trust will issue two $50,000 awards for playwrights who are just starting out; the first is to be presented next year.

Originally written by Patricia Cohen