2015 Sundance Film Festival presents film awards – winners

Sundance Institute this evening announced the feature film Jury, Audience and other special awards of the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. The awards, celebrating artistry, innovation and adventure in independent filmmaking, were presented at the Festival’s Awards Ceremony, hosted by Tig Notaro in Park City, Utah; full video of the ceremony is at youtube.com/sff. The ceremony is the culmination of the 2015 Festival, which presented 123 feature-length and 60 short films – selected from 12,166 submissions – to independent film-loving audiences in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

The competition juries select films from their respective sections to receive a range of awards. New this year, jurors were asked to give an increased number of special jury prizes recognizing excellence in the craft of filmmaking as they deemed appropriate. The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award is still given to a U.S. Dramatic film for excellence in screenwriting. Audience awards are also bestowed upon films in each section.

65th Annual ACE Eddie Awards – winners

American Cinema Editors (ACE) held a gala ceremony for their 65th Annual ACE Eddie Awards recognizing outstanding editing last night in the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Serving as Master of Ceremonies was actress/comedian Mary Lynn Rajskub. Among the evening’s presenters were Matt Damon, Chris Pratt, Rene Russo, Allen Leech (Downton Abbey, The Imitation Game), Robin Leach, Nightcrawler director Dan Gilroy, Jeff Garlin and Amanda Fuller (Last Man Standing).

The winner for the Best Edited Feature Film in the Dramatic category was Sandra Adair for her work on Richard Linklater's Boyhood. Barney Pilling won for Best Edited Feature Film – Comedy or Musical for his cutting on Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Call for submissions: Lindalee Tracey Award

The submissions are now open for the next Lindalee Tracey Award. The Lindalee Tracey Award honours an emerging Canadian filmmaker with a passionate point of view, a strong sense of social justice, and joie de vivre.

Lindalee Tracey was an award-winning filmmaker, author, and entertainer, as well as a beloved wife and mother. Through her extensive body of work and indefatigable personality, Lindalee brought great joy to the world. She was passionate about bringing issues of social justice into her work, and championed people who are often ignored, underestimated or forgotten. Equally, she celebrated those who rise above disadvantage.

Lindalee passed away on October 19, 2006, at age 49, after a five-year battle with breast cancer. At the time of her passing, Lindalee’s family, friends and admirers created this award in her honour.

Nominations announced for the 2nd Annual Location Managers Guild of America (LMGA) Awards

The Location Managers Guild of America (LMGA) announced the nominations for its 2nd Annual LMGA Awards, which recognize the outstanding achievements of location professionals in seven categories. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on March 7, at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills.

Honorary awards to be presented at the ceremony will be the Eva Monley Award, the Humanitarian Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Trailblazer Award.

The 6th Annual 3D Creative Arts Awards – winners

Guardians of the Galaxy Wins Top Live Action 3D Feature
The Lego Movie Wins Animated Feature of the Year
House of Cards Wins for Best 4K Productions

The International 3D & Advanced Imaging Society bestowed 23 honors for “distinguished achievement” at the 3D Creative Arts Awards on Wednesday night, at Warner Bros. Studios in Hollywood.

“Directors and creative teams are pushing the emotional and technical capabilities of 3D to new heights, from China, Japan, the UK, throughout the EU, Russia, and India”

Guardians of the Galaxy (Marvel Studios/Stereo D) won for Best Live Action 3D Feature while Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (Prime Focus World/Weinstein) won for Stereography – Live Action. 300: Rise of an Empire (Warner Bros./Gener8) won for Best 2D to 3D Conversion and X-Men: Days of Future Past (20^th Century Fox/Stereo D) was awarded Best 3D Sequence/Scene of the Year.

2015 JUNO Awards – nominations

The nominees for the 2015 JUNO Awards were announced by The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) at a press conference at The Danforth Music Hall in Toronto this morning, as Canada's top artists now get ready for a trip to JUNO Week in Hamilton, March 9 – March 15, 2015.

Magic! garnered a leading five nominations: JUNO Fan Choice, Single of the Year, Breakthrough Group of the Year, Songwriter of the Year, Pop Album of the Year.

Close behind with four nods were Kiesza (Single of the Year, Breakthrough Artist of the Year, Dance Recording of the Year, Video of the Year) and Leonard Cohen (JUNO Fan Choice, Album of the Year, Artist of the Year, Adult Alternative Album of the Year).

Artists with three nods each are Hedley (JUNO Fan Choice, Single of the Year, Album of the Year), Nickelback (JUNO Fan Choice, Album of the Year, Group of the Year), and Serge Fiori (JUNO Fan Choice, Album of the Year, Francophone Album of the Year).

Québec Cinéma's 17e Soirée des Jutra – nominations

This morning, Québec Cinéma unveiled the finalists for the 17th Soirée des Jutra.

With ten nominations, Mommy is the top finalist. The film by Xavier Dolan was selected for Best Picture (Metafilms - Nancy Grant), Best Director (Xavier Dolan), Best Screenplay (Xavier Dolan), Best Actress (Anne Dorval), Best Actor (Antoine Olivier Pilon), Best Supporting Actress (Suzanne Clément), Best Art Direction (Colombe Raby), Best Cinematography (André Turpin), Best Editing (Xavier Dolan) and Best Costume Design (Xavier Dolan). It also will receive the Jutra Billet d'or awarded to the film with the highest box office revenue in 2014.

SAG-AFTRA presents the 21st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards – winners

SAG-AFTRA presented its coveted Actor® statuettes for the outstanding motion picture and primetime television performances of 2014 at the 21st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards® in ceremonies attended by film and television’s leading actors, held Sunday, Jan. 25, at the Los Angeles Shrine Exposition Center. The 21st Annual SAG Awards® was simulcast live coast-to-coast by TNT and TBS at 8 p.m. (ET) / 5 p.m. (PT).

Honored with individual awards were Patricia Arquette, Julianne Moore, Eddie Redmayne and J.K. Simmons for performances in motion pictures and Uzo Aduba, Viola Davis, William H. Macy, Frances McDormand, Mark Ruffalo and Kevin Spacey for performances in television. The Screen Actors Guild Awards originated awards for the outstanding performances by a motion picture cast and by television drama and comedy ensembles. The Actor® for a motion picture cast performance went this year to Birdman, while the Actors® for television drama and comedy ensemble performances went this year to Downton Abbey and Orange is the New Black. Of the top industry honors presented to actors, only the SAG Awards are selected entirely by 111,228 performers’ peers in SAG-AFTRA. The SAG Awards was the first televised awards show to acknowledge the work of union members.

PGA's 26th annual Producers Guild Awards – winners

Last night, the Producers Guild of America (PGA) announced this year's winning motion picture, television, and new media productions at the 26th Annual Producers Guild Awards ceremony at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles.

The Jerry Seinfeld-created web series, Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee won the Producers Guild Award for Outstanding Digital Series.

The television program Breaking Bad and its producers Melissa Bernstein, Sam Catlin, Bryan Cranston, Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, Mark Johnson, Stewart Lyons, Michelle MacLaren, George Mastras, Diane Mercer, Thomas Schnauz, and Moira Walley-Beckett won the Norman Felton Award for Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television, Drama.

Closing the evening, the film Birdman and its producers Alejandro G. Iñárritu, John Lesher, and James W. Skotchdopole won the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures. This category is one of the most eagerly-anticipated of season, as it is widely considered a strong prognosticator for the Best Picture Oscar®.

Casting Society of America's 30th Annual Artios Awards – winners

The Casting Society of America (CSA) has named the winners for the 30th Annual Artios Awards, which took place tonight in both Los Angeles at the Beverly Hilton and in New York at 42WEST (formerly XL Nightclub), Cabaret & Lounge. Performers Patton Oswalt and Michael Urie hosted in Los Angeles and New York, respectively. This is the first year that the Artios Awards was moved to January to take place during the height of awards season.

Hosted by Michael Urie, New York presenters included Frankie Alvarez, Nina Arianda, Murray Bartlett, Jason Biggs, Raul Castillo, Carrie Coon, Edie Falco, Renee Fleming, Jonathan Groff, Gaby Hoffmann, Billy Magnussen, Cristin Milioti, Jay Pharoah, Danny Pino, AnnaSophia Robb, Jeremy Shamos, Cecily Strong and Lorraine Toussaint.

In Los Angeles, Jonah Hill was on hand to present Emmy Award®-winning casting director Ellen Lewis with the Hoyt Bowers Award, honoring esteemed casting professionals who have elevated the casting profession by embodying the unique spirit, ideals and creativity of famed casting director, Hoyt Bowers.

International 3D and Advanced Imaging Society Announces Top Nominees for 3D Awards

Sky, Atlantic Productions & David Attenborough to Be Awarded With Society's Sir Charles Wheatstone Award; Harold Lloyd Award for Filmmaking to Be Awarded to Academy Award Nominee & French Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet

The International 3D and Advanced Imaging Society today announced its top nominated 3D features - Live Action and Animation, as well as the 2D to 3D Conversion categories were voted on by the International 3D Society's members for the 2015 Creative Arts Awards Ceremony to be held January 28th at Warner Bros. Studios.

The top live action nominees include Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Marvel/Disney), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (20th Century Fox), Exodus: Gods and Kings (20th Century Fox), Guardians of the Galaxy (Marvel/Disney), Maleficent, (The Walt Disney Studios), Noah (Fox/Paramount), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Paramount Pictures), The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Sony Pictures Entertainment), The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies (Warner Bros./New Line), Transformers: Age of Extinction (Paramount Pictures), and X-Men: Days of Future Past, (20th Century Fox).

Neon Nights: The Films of Michael Mann – Feb 5 to Mar 26 at TIFF Bell Lightbox

As Michael Mann’s Blackhat makes its premiere in January, TIFF looks back at the big-screen oeuvre of the crime-film auteur, which brought a grit and elegance to action cinema that has influenced nearly every police-procedural show on North American television, as well as successive waves of crime thrillers from Hong Kong and Korea.

Drawing on the influence of such male-centred directors as Sam Fuller, Sam Peckinpah and Stanley Kubrick, Mann’s tough-guy cinema offers a master class on masculinity — its nature and definition, in action and appearance. Mann explored his vision of manhood in a variety of different milieus and genres. Furthermore, his relentless pursuit of realism — whether telling the stories of real historical figures in The Insider, Ali and Public Enemies, recreating eighteenth-century frontier America in The Last of the Mohicans, or bringing a remarkable sense of verisimilitude to the crime fictions of Collateral and Miami Vice — has become as much a defining element of his style as the visual gloss of his rainslicked neon nights, the pulsing beat of his musical scores, and his masterfully staged action set pieces.

Broadcast Film Critics Association'a (BFCA) 20th Annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards – winners

The Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA) announced the winners of the 20th Annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards tonight, live from the Hollywood Palladium. The show aired on A&E at 9pm ET/6pm PT and was hosted by Michael Strahan.

Boyhood was named Best Picture and garnered three additional wins including Best Supporting Actress for Patricia Arquette, Best Young Actor/Actress for Ellar Coltrane, and Best Director for Richard Linklater.

Álex de la Iglesia: Dancing with the Devil – Jan. 30 to March 28 at TIFF Bell Lightbox

January 30 to March 28
TIFF Bell Lightbox

Like his cult-cinema contemporaries Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi, Spanish maverick Álex de la Iglesia began his career as an anarchic purveyor of high-grade schlock splashing his every fluid-drenched fever dream across the screen, before achieving international recognition as a bona fide festival-feted auteur. The endorsement and mentorship of Pedro Almodóvar helped in this regard, immediately placing the former comic-book artist on the critical radar and garnering Goya Awards (Spain’s Oscars) for even some of his earliest and strangest work. While his work has grown in scope and ambition, de la Iglesia has never surrendered or compromised his unique vision: his films are as strange and transgressive as ever, his sense of humour every bit as dark, biting and absurd. In this sense, de la Iglesia shares much with Canada’s own purveyor of the peculiar and the perverse David Cronenberg: both filmmakers have forced the film world to adapt to them rather than the other way around.

87th annual Academy Awards – nominations

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled the nominations for all 24 categories of the 87th annual Academy Awards. The announcement was made this morning by directors Alfonso Cuarón, J.J. Abrams, actor Chris Pine and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs. For the first time, nominees in all 24 categories were announced live.

Leading the field with nine nominations apiece were Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Birdman and Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel. Next with eight nominations was Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game followed by Richard Linklater's Boyhood and Clint Eastwood's American Sniper with six nominations. Each of these was nominated for Best Picture as well as Best Director, except American Sniper which missed out on the director slot.