Cannes Film Festival Awards 2009 - Michael Haneke Wins!

The 62nd Cannes Film Festival has come to an end. To put the finishing touches on another great festival, this year's awards, including the coveted Palme d'Or, have been announced. The jury was lead by actress Isabelle Huppert and included members Asia Argento, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, James Gray, Hanif Kureishi, Chang-dong Lee, Shu Qi, Sharmila Tagore, and Robin Wright Penn. There were a lot of strong contenders in the competition category this year, but big winner this year is The White Ribbon. Also, Best Director is a huge letdown, as I absolutely hated that movie! Read on for the complete list of winners.

Sound Off: The Oscar Ceremony - Your Favorite Moments?

As Yojiro Takita, director of Best Foreign Film winner Departures, said last night during his acceptance speech, "I am here because of films!" The Oscars are a time to celebrate any and everything film, whether it be the celebrities and their shenanigans, or the filmmakers and craftsmen who make it all look good, or the big execs who make everything happen. I'm one of those people who has grown up with the Oscars. I've watched the show since before I can remember and have never missed it, no matter where I am. This year's new format was refreshing to see and has obviously provided plenty for us to talk about the day after.

2009 Academy Awards Winners - Slumdog Millionaire Wins!

The 81st Academy Awards have arrived and it's time to announce the winners of the most prestigious award in Hollywood. The ceremony is being held live at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood where host Hugh Jackman will be taking us on an Oscars journey like we've never seen before. While our own favorite film, The Dark Knight, didn't get as much Oscar love as we think it deserved, there is still a fine selection of other great nominees this year, including Slumdog Millionaire and Mickey Rourke, amongst others. The complete list of nominees below will be updated with the winners as they're announced live on the show tonight.

PICTURE:

Slumdog Millionaire

DIRECTOR:

Danny Boyle - Slumdog Millionaire

ACTOR:

Sean Penn - Milk

ACTRESS:

Kate Winslet - The Reader

Read on for the complete list of nominees and winners and to let us know what your thoughts are!

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

2009 Independent Spirit Awards Winners Announced

The Independent Spirit Awards are an annual award given in the name of independent film, featuring those little indies which deserve the honor and recognition that they won't necessarily be receiving at the Oscars tomorrow. The winners were announced earlier tonight at the ceremony held on the beach in Santa Monica. Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler took home the most awards, a total of three, for Best Cinematography, Best Actor, and Best Feature. The rest of the winners couldn't be more deserving and I expect I'll end up liking these winners more than those that are chosen tomorrow night at the Oscars.

Stephen Colbert Predicts This Year's Oscars - Do You Agree?

Everyone's favorite Comedy Central talk show host, Stephen Colbert, has predicted the Oscar winners this year, which, as he says, is "not bad considering I never seen any of the movies, I just look at the posters when I'm outside of the theater protesting." So how does he do it? Well, he uses The DaColbert Code, which is his power to find patterns where none exist. Colbert predicts: Penelope Cruz will win Best Supporting Actress, Kate Winslet will win Best Actress, Heath Ledger will win Best Supporting Actor, Mickey Rourke will win Best Actor, and Slumdog Millionaire will win Best Picture. Those sound about right to you?

2009 BAFTA Award Winners - Slumdog Triumphs Yet Again

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts annual awards for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games, and animation took place today. Often known as the British equivalent to the Oscars, BAFTA is a charity organization which strives to "support, develop and promote the art forms of the moving image, by identifying and rewarding excellence, inspiring practitioners and benefiting the public." They've identified and rewarded a number of excellent films this year - Slumdog Millionaire being the most recognized with a total of 7 awards. Here's the entire rundown of who triumphed across the pond.

Danny Boyle Wins the 2009 Directors Guild Award

Slumdog Millionaire and Danny Boyle triumphed yet again at the Directors Guild of America Awards held last night in Beverly Hills. Boyle won the award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2008 over his fellow nominees which included Christopher Nolan for The Dark Knight, David Fincher for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Ron Howard for Frost/Nixon and Gus Van Sant for Milk. Ari Folman also won the documentary award for Waltz with Bashir. With this win, it's pretty much certain that Slumdog Millionaire is going to take both the Best Director and Best Picture Oscars on February 22nd.

2009 Screen Actors Guild Awards Winners

The winners of the 15th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards were announced today via a live telecast on TNT. Sean Penn and Meryl Streep both took top prizes. I'm very happy to see both Penn and Streep win, as they were my own two top choices in their respective categories, and certainly deserved the win. Additionally, Slumdog Millionaire was honored with the Best Ensemble Cast award and The Dark Knight won the Best Ensemble Stunts award. SAG president Alan Rosenberg commented stating that the ceremony "is about celebrating what we do and what we have in common, rather than what divides us."

Sundance Film Festival 2009 Awards Announced

The official awards for the 2009 Sundance Film Festival have been announced tonight. The big winners are We Live in Public for the Documentary Grand Jury Prize and Lee Daniels' Push for the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize. Additionally, The Cove won the Documentary Audience Award and Push won the Dramatic Audience Award yet again. Definitely some solid winners this year, as always. These awards always start to put the finishing touches on yet another Sundance, which means things are certainly winding down. You can see the full list of winners below. Audience award winners can be found at the bottom.

Jonah Nolan's Response to The Dark Knight Oscar Snubs

Besides Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer, one of the three people who wrote the screenplay for, and helped make, The Dark Knight an incredible movie, is Jonathan Nolan, aka Jonah Nolan. He is Chris' brother and has helped write the screenplays for The Prestige and The Dark Knight. As we all know, the Oscar nominations hit yesterday and while TDK did get a solid 8 nods, it was missing from the big categories like Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay. Yesterday we posted Andrew Stanton's response, and today we have Jonathan Nolan's response to the Oscar nominations and lack of The Dark Knight.

Andrew Stanton's Response to Wall-E Oscar Nominations

As we all know, the nominees for the 81st Academy Awards were announced this morning and there were some big upsets, including an excess of nominations for The Reader and a lack of big nominations for The Dark Knight. But one film that is, for the most part, getting a lot of well-deserved love is Wall-E. The film received a total of 6 nominations, for Best Animated Feature, Original Screenplay, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Score, and Original Song. The film's writer and director, Andrew Stanton, has written a brief response to the nominations announcement this morning that we have for your reading pleasure below.

81st Academy Awards Nominees Announced!

The nominees for the 81st Academy Awards, the most prestigious award in Hollywood, have been announced today. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made the announcement this morning from the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. No need to spend any more time introducing this, let's get right down to it! This certainly seems like a very interesting year for the Oscars, with a more typical selection than everyone was initially expecting. I'm a bit happy to see things like Wall-E's screenplay nom and Man on Wire's documentary nom, but what happened to The Dark Knight?! Take a look!

Christopher Nolan's Globes Speech in Honor of Heath Ledger

For those of you that didn't watch the Golden Globes ceremony tonight (or just want to re-watch this part), we've got one of the best acceptance speeches of the night to share. Heath Ledger posthumously won the Best Supporting Actor award for his work in The Dark Knight and director Christopher Nolan accepted the award in his honor. His speech was heartfelt, touching and inspiring and we're glad to be able to show it to you again already. As always, I love featuring great acceptance speeches, even if they're not funny, and this is certainly one of them worth featuring tonight. So watch it (again) and enjoy!

2009 Golden Globe Winners - Slumdog Millionaire Triumphs!

The winners of the 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards, the precursor to the Oscars, were announced tonight at an extravagant ceremony held at The Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills. Thankfully the results this year weren't as big of an upset as last year, with Slumdog Millionaire taking the top prize as Best Drama as well as winning awards for Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Original Score as well. As for the ceremony itself, it was a definite improvement over the 30-minute press conference from last year, but was still a vast step down from the Oscars. Try again next year, HFPA! Read on for the full list.

2009 Directors Guild Awards Nominees Announced

The Directors Guild of America has announced the five nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2008. Given we also saw the Writers Guild Awards and Cinematographers Society Awards nominees this week already, let's just jump right into it. The nominees are: Christopher Nolan for The Dark Knight, Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire, David Fincher for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Ron Howard for Frost/Nixon and Gus Van Sant for Milk. These are the exact same nominees as the Producers Guild, which means these five are surefire Oscar noms.

2009 Writers Guild Awards Nominees Announced

In addition to the American Society of Cinematographers, the Writers Guild of America has announced their nominees for the 2009 Writers Guild Awards today. The winners will be announced on Saturday, February 7th. There are three separate categories of nominees - original, adapted, and documentary. Last year's big winners were Juno and No Country for Old Men, both of which also took home an Oscar, which is why this is an important announcement. These nominees don't seem to be too far out of the ordinary and are a very strong indication of the probable Oscars nominations we'll be seeing in just a few weeks.

American Society of Cinematographers Awards Nominees

Cinematography is one of the many aspects of filmmaking that I hold in very high regard. For me especially, I'm affected more by extraordinary cinematography than anything else. So I'm excited to announced the nominees for the 23rd Annual American Society of Cinematographers Awards. Like every other society or guild in Hollywood, the ASC hosts its own awards to honor the very best cinematographers from this year. If you've been arguing with your friends over who did the best work, then look no further, because these 5 individuals deserve this distinction. Without further a do, let's take a look at the nominees.

Marco's Official Top 10 Film Experiences of 2008

Another year at the movies and another list of top ten films. I personally believe the rumors about 2008 are all true — it has been a bad year for movies. How else can you explain so many mediocre titles ending up on all the top ten lists everywhere? My personal list is just as disjointed. I only gave four stars to my top pick and three-and-a-half to the three other titles below it. The rest of my top ten list is made up of three star movies that moved me in one way or another. That's pretty sad considering I usually have an abundance of four stars movies to choose from. Let's just get right down to it, starting with my honorable mentions.

2009 Screen Actors Guild Awards Nominees Announced

The nominees for the 15th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards have been announced today. Yet another awards show in the very top tier (which also includes the Golden Globes and Academy Awards) is the Screen Actors Guilds Awards, where the actors themselves choose the best performances from amongst their peers. These nominees are usually very similar to those at the Oscars, so this may be a good indication. This year I think this is exactly what we'll see, or at least, it's my own exact line-up for nominations having seen nearly all of the big contenders. Doubt leads this year, with 5 nominations in total, but I think it'll only really win one category (Supporting Actress). Check out the full list of nominees below.

IMDb's MOVIEmeter Top 25 Films of 2008

We all probably use IMDb way too much - but that's just because it's one of the greatest movie websites ever created. However, I'm going to guess that most people have never heard of the MOVIEmeter - right? The MOVIEmeter is an industry tracking service on IMDb that simply measures how many times a movie (or celebrity) has their profile page viewed by visitors. In essence, it's a way of determining what the top searched movie or celebrity is on the site - a good indication of who or what people are thinking about. IMDb has compiled their own Top 25 Films of 2008 based on this statistic - so let's get on with it.