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SXSW 2013 Awards: 'Short Term 12' Wins Both Grand Jury & Audience

The 2013 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas has wrapped up this weekend. Winners for the audience awards at the festival were unveiled, along with the jury prizes given out last week. The big winner - a film called Short Term 12, directed by Destin Cretton, whose feature debut was I Am Not a Hipster, one of my favorite films of last year. Short Term 12 took home the Grand Jury prize for Narrative Feature, and went on to win the Audience Award as well, a similar double win just like with Fruitvale at Sundance earlier this year. As for docs, Josh Greenbaum's The Short Game took home the audience award. Full lists below.

Watch: 'Star Wars: Episode 7' as Directed by Michael Haneke Spoof

"Come on dad! Make an effort!" And you thought we were done forever with the Star Wars: Episode 7 if-it-was-directed-by spoofs. There's a video on YouTube (via Hollywood Elsewhere) that was first uploaded right in the middle of the Oscars a week ago. During France's César Awards show, held in late February as well, they aired a short spoof trailer for Episode 7 if directed by Michael Haneke, the German director of Amour, Funny Games, Caché, The White Ribbon. It's actually pretty damn funny and worth a quick watch if you haven't seen it already. The subtitle they use in the trailer translates to "The Obscure Side of the Force".

Five Ways to Improve the Oscars for Cinephiles & General Audiences

The Oscars are boring. It's pretty much a fact by now. Yes, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tries to spice up their live telecast of the annual awards ceremony with comedians, celebrities and musical numbers, but turning a few hours of backslapping and self-congratulations to and from Hollywood into true entertainment is hard in this age of YouTube and DVR's. So how do you turn something like the Academy Awards into a truly fun and entertaining event without pandering to a certain audience? I've got a list of five ideas that AMPAS might want to consider for the Oscars next year, and things might get better.

VFX Company Rhythm & Hues Protested Last Night's Oscar Ceremony

Ang Lee's Life of Pi won Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects during last night's Oscars ceremony, but that last prize leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of many who worked on the film. You might assume those who work on a film that wins an Oscar would be excited about it taking home the gold, but that's not the case for over 400 current and ex-employees of visual effects company Rhythm & Hues, which filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and fired over 250 employees last week. Deadline reports that many of those workers gathered and staged a large protest near the 85th Academy Awards ceremony last night.

See the Rest of Mondo's Gorgeous Oscar Posters for 'Argo' & More

Last week, the first round of posters that Mondo created to commemorate the nominees at the 85th Academy Awards (see a full list of the winners here) were unleashed, and damn were they exquisite. Last night, during the live broadcast of The Oscars, the rest of the posters were unveiled and sold out in quick fashion as usual. While you can't get ahold of these posters from Mondo anymore, they're still awesome, and might make a good desktop or cell phone background. SlashFilm has the posters for Wreck-It Ralph, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, Django Unchained, Brave and Moonrise Kingdom. See them all below!

Watch: Highlights from the 2013 Oscar Show with Seth MacFarlane

Well, the 85th Academy Awards have come and gone, and the awards were all over the place. Argo took home Best Picture, Ang Lee took home Best Director, Jennifer Lawrence won Best Actress and Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor. If you missed the show, we have a full list of winners right here, and we've also chosen some of the more memorable highlights from the night. The clips range from Seth MacFarlane's "Family Guy" style opening monologue which featured William Shatner as Captain Kirk to some fancy musical numbers (the whole show paid tribute to musicals) and some fantastic speeches from the winners.

2013 Academy Awards Winners - 'Argo' & Ang Lee Grab Top Prizes

The 85th Academy Awards are upon us and it's time to watch the show and announce the winners of the most prestigious award in Hollywood. The Oscar ceremony is being broadcast live from the Dolby Theatre with an odd host this year - Seth MacFarlane, nominated himself. Once again, we have nine Best Picture nominees from 2012, including Les Mis, Lincoln, Django, Beasts and of course, Ben Affleck's Argo, which has been building up tremendous awards momentum leading to this day. What will win this year? The full list below will be updated with winners marked as they're announced live tonight - refresh for any updates.

PICTURE:

Argo directed by
Ben Affleck

DIRECTOR:

Ang Lee for
Life of Pi

ACTOR:

Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln

ACTRESS:

Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook

Read on for the complete list of nominees and winners. Be sure to let us know what you think of the results!

This will be updated throughout the night to reflect the winners as revealed. Additionally, I might be adding a small bit of editorial commentary beneath each category. Winners are highlighted in BOLD below.

Watch: Samberg's Hilarious Indie Spirit Opening Sketch & Monologue

"The only awards ceremony watched by more people at the show than on actual television." Ha! The perfect way to kick off the Oscar comedy to come (or perhaps end the evening) is with a some industry comedy from the Indie Spirit Awards. We posted the winners last night, which mainly included Silver Linings Playbook taking too many wins. Before all that was revealed, the Santa Monica ceremony was opened by host Andy Samberg, who started with a great fake trailer for an indie hit, Bottle Cap, and continued with an even funnier 10-minute monologue about all the nominated features and independent film industry. See below.

2013 Indie Spirit Awards Winners - 'Silver Linings Playbook' Takes 4

The Independent Spirit Awards are an annual award given in the name of independent film, featuring plenty of those little indies which deserve the honor and recognition that, this year, they might not receive at the Oscars. The 2013 winners were announced Saturday, via Deadline, at a ceremony at lunch in sunny Santa Monica on the beach. The big winner this year was David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook, hardly an indie feature if I might say, which ended up taking home the Best Feature, Director, Screenplay and Female Lead/Actress wins. A shame Beasts didn't win. Read on for the full list of Indie Spirit winners.

Oscar Sound Off: Do the Academy Awards Actually Matter in 2013?

This Sunday night, the 85th Annual Academy Awards Ceremony will take place at the Dolby Theatre right here in the heart of Hollywood. It's the biggest of all award shows, the culmination of months and months of speculation from supposed "experts" and millions of dollars spent behind the scenes to jockey certain films into the best position possible to take home as many trophies as they can. The question in the headline isn't meant to single out this year specifically, but instead to wonder, in an age in which technology makes award shows like these more ubiquitous than ever before, if the Oscars really still mean anything anymore.

Mondo's Oscar Artwork for 'The Master', 'ParaNorman' and 'Les Mis'

Fight. Dream. Hope. Love. Everyone is making Oscar artwork this year. Mondo, the poster art kings at the moment, are returning with their 2nd annual poster series for The Oscars tied to nominated films in select categories. A press email sent out has unveiled three of the posters in the new series, for three films from the 85th Academy Award nominees. Only one of them is a Best Picture nom, Les Miserables; the other two are nominated throughout the Oscars - Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, without any of Oscar-nominee Joaquin Phoenix on it, plus Laika's ParaNorman, nominated for Animated Feature. Take a look!

Must Watch: Oscars 84 Years of Best Picture Winners Retrospective

In only four more days the 85th Academy Awards will be taking place in Hollywood. It's almost time to see them make history once again and learn who will take home Best Picture this year. As we wait to find out what happens this Sunday, there's a video spreading fast around the web that is a must watch for any and all cinephiles, movie fans and those who grew up watching the Academy Awards every year. It's a "supercut" video retrospective, featuring footage of all 84 (soon to be 85) of the Best Picture Oscar Winners cut into a four-minute montage, set to "November" by Max Richter. A superb reminder of the beauty of cinema.

'Argo', 'Zero Dark Thirty', 'Sugar Man' Win 2013 Writers Guild Awards

With exactly one week to go until the Academy Awards, the 2012 awards season is coming to an end. The Writers Guild of America announced their awards tonight, putting a cap on most of the various guild awards in Hollywood. The 2013 WGA Awards were given to: Argo, written by Chris Terrio, for Best Adapted Screenplay, despite some controversy over alterations from the real story; Zero Dark Thirty, written by Mark Boal (who won for The Hurt Locker in '10) won Best Original Screenplay; and finally, the similarly-unstoppable music doc Searching for Sugar Man won Best Documentary. Interesting winners this year!

Watch: Oscar Nom 'Silver Linings Playbook' 30-Min Making Of Featurette

"The movie that became a movement." In the last week leading up to the Oscars, The Weinstein Company has released an incredibly lengthy, intimate featurette for David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook. The film is nominated for 8 Oscars, including Best Picture, and has been rocking at the box office in recent weeks. I'm personally not the biggest fan of the film, but I thought this impressive making-of featurette was worth mentioning anyway. Fellow noms Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper star in the film, with Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver, all of whom appear in this along with other guests like Dr. Oz. Enjoy!